Author's Note: This is a work of fanfiction based on Worm, published and owned by Wildbow and found at parahumans. wordpress .com. No ownership of this setting or source material is claimed or implied. The story here is heavily intermixed with the original material, it is highly recommended that the audience read the original story before reading the fanfiction here. For those familiar with Worm, this is an alternate history in which the administrator shard did not transfer from Danny Hebert to Taylor. Inspiration for this story was drawn from this reddit thread r/Parahumans/comments/4ak6m0/spoiler_what_if/ and the original author's statements about what would happen in this circumstance. The fanfic author took a few liberties for narrative purposes but has kept every aspect as true to the original as possible. And the final chapter of this story is going to include a post-script that itemizes every change and explains explicitly why those changes were made. Thank you for your patience and your comments.Class ended in five minutes and all he could think was, an hour is not long enough for lunch.

He checked his watch and then pulled out his cell phone to send a text. His fingers were long and narrow, with the bone structure of an academic or an artiste, but the calluses on his palms and fingertips spoke to a less sedentary lifestyle than that. His fingernails tapped against the phone's case as he sent a message. Outside now, picnic on front lawn. He pulled a bandanna out of his back pocket and mopped at his forehead, scrubbing a light dapple of sweat away from his skin. The weather was cool enough that he could get a chill if he left the sweat to evaporate off his skin. He had ridden over fast to make the most of his time, and now he was a bit mussed and he tried to get himself presentable. He ran the bandanna over his thinning dark hair then put his glasses back on, blinking as his cell buzzed in his left hand.

K, it said. He arched an eyebrow. Mr. Gladly must have let the class out early again if she was responding so soon. One of his rules in letting her take a cell phone to school was that she leave it on vibrate and that she not answer it during class.

He tapped a rapid message back to her. Avoid upstairs girl's bathroom, Emma +2 headed that way.

The return text took only a few seconds. Okay. Thanks.

He slid his own backpack off of his back. It was an athletic model, with a foam pad built into it to soak up sweat from off his back. It wasn't as big as most bookbags, but it held enough. In this case, a beach towel he could spread on the grass and an insulated cooler bag with padded sides, and a thermos. His bike was chained up to the rack just twenty feet away. There was no basket on the front, or we would not have needed to bother with the backpack. He tucked his cell phone into the side pocket of his cargo shorts and sat back on the blanket, using the natural slope of the high school's front lawn to recline back on his long, lanky elbows with his legs stretched out comfortably in front of him.

The teenage girl that flopped down next to him a minute later was even more slender than he was, but she was willowy where he was wiry. They had the same large, slow-blinking eyes behind their glasses, though she had her mother's dark curly hair and wide mouth that smiled easily. "Hey Dad," she said, leaning over to give him a casual half-hug before she leaned forward and unzipped the cooler bag. "What'd you bring? Cavatini? This is leftovers from Tuesday, Dad, that's cheating."

"Leftovers need to be eaten," he said easily. "The thermos has tea for you." He pulled his knees half up to his chest and looped his arms around them while she opened the tupperwares and released clouds of steam, and unrolled the terrycloth that held the aluminum tableware. "So, Mr. Gladly let class out early?"

"Yeah," she said, handing him one plastic dish and keeping one for herself. The pasta casserole was a family favorite even now that their family was just the two of them. He took his fork and dug in while she popped the lid on the thermos and breathed deeply, inhaling the calming scent. "We've got homework in his class, to think about the impact that capes have had on our world. There's gonna be a group project on Monday, and he'll be giving the winners treats from the vending machines."

"Uh huh," he said, noncommittally and neutrally, as he picked up another forkful.

"I'm torn between blowing it off just to avoid the MSG and sugar substitutes and levodextroglucosamate, or going all over-achiever on this and taking a trip to Protectorate HQ this weekend so I can dominate this assignment," she said, her tone ambivalent.

"Don't you dare drop your grades just to stay clear of junk food," he said, giving her a theatrically overdone mock-scolding with his eyebrows drawn down and a waggling finger. "Your therapist is still worried that you're anorexic, and she's barely accepting that your mother and I both have that sort of metabolism. If you give her any more reason to worry, I'll fit you with a feedbag."

Taylor snorted. It wasn't funny, really, but it was an attempt to be funny, and sometimes that's enough when people love each other. "Okay, no blowing off the assignment then. So what do you say, shall we drop by PHQ this weekend? Even if we don't see anyone, we can take the tour or something. Heck, even the PRT guards in the lobby have probably got enough insight into the topic to guarantee me an A grade on this."

Her father snorted. "Subtle, you're not."

"Yoda, you're not," she retorted. "C'mon."

He sighed. "Okay. We can go. But we do it my way, all right? We don't commit to anything until we're really sure about it."

"Got it," she said, nodding. "Even though it's been three months and I can't imagine being any more cautious that that. By the way, thanks for the heads-up on Emma and Madison and Sophia. Lately my good days are just when I can steer clear of them altogether."

"We watch out for each other," he reminded her, offering a fistbump. She rolled her eyes, but only left him hanging for a few seconds before she rapped her knuckles against his. He pulled his hand back with his fingers splayed, mimicking the sound of an explosion as he did, and her eyeroll grew more severe.

She was taking a big swig of her tea when a sharp, slightly nasal voice called out from behind them. "Mister Hebert!" it called out.

Danny Hebert sighed, and swiveled his head to look up the slope of the lawn to the front doors of the high school. Mrs. Blackwell stood on the front stoop, with her badly-bobbed hair and her pinched, severe face and her clothes that crossed the line from 'professional' to 'morose'. He sighed, and rolled himself up to his feet. "You enjoy the picnic, honey, I'm gonna talk to your principal." He walked up the incline, cutting across the grass until he hit the paved walkway and strolled up to where she stood. She had her arms crossed and glared down at him past her nose, using the stairs to seize a psychological advantage of height. That was added to the psychological advantage that she held by standing still and having him walk to her. He negated that petty power play by walking a bit more slowly, so that she was waiting on him and growing impatient on his timetable rather than scrambling to accommodate her schedule, and then he hit the steps and walked up, but rather than stopping in front of her several steps down so that he was craning his neck to look up at her he walked to the top so she had to turn to the side and crane her neck to look up at him, he had most of a foot of height over her and he used it.

"Yes, Principal Blackwell?" he said, smiling pleasantly.

"Mister Hebert, your daughter needs to eat in the cafeteria, students are not allowed to leave school grounds for lunch until their senior year," she said, her tone accusatory.

"She's on school grounds," he pointed out. "She's on your front lawn. Heck, the district owns the empty lot across the street and the undeveloped land behind the football field, I could take her two blocks from here and still be on school grounds." He kept his tone light and casual, but firm. "We're just having a picnic. A little bonding time in the family."

"She should be bonding with her peers of her own age." The woman snapped back, making no effort to be as non-confrontational as he was.

He arched an eyebrow at that. "Because that worked so well in January. What, did someone complain that their favorite victim has been avoiding them?"

Her scowl sharpened and she lifted her shoulders as if to puff herself up and look bigger. "I-"

Danny interrupted her before she could burst out whatever outburst she had planned. "Look, you've got the note from her psychiatrist in your files. She is to have a low-stress environment, with regular breaks and accommodation for her defense mechanisms," he pointed out. "That is part of the deal you signed as a court settlement."

"I can't just have her walk away whenever," Blackwell retorted. "If the other students get the same idea we'd never be able to enforce the tardy policy or truancy."

Danny kept his tone mild and curious, cocking his head to the side. "Do you have many students here that have a psychiatric profile and a court order that they be given a low-stress environment?" he asked.

"No, but-"

"No, so their case is different than hers," Danny cut in again. "Tell me, when your superintendent signed off on the court settlement that ended the lawsuit, did he intend for you to defy the terms of the settlement?"

The Principal's cheeks tightened and her eyes hardened, she was past the point of listening. "Just get her inside."

"When I am damn well good and ready, or at the end of her lunch period, whichever comes first," he replied. He turned, and walked down the steps, cutting across the grass to where Taylor sat. She looked pensive, her shoulders hunched in on herself. Her phone was on the towel next to her, open to some idle texts to one of her classmates.

"I heard some of that," Taylor said. "You shouldn't have done that, you antagonize her and she'll take it out on me."

Danny laid a hand on her shoulder. "If she tries to give you a hard time, tell me about it. Any little thing, any big thing. Between that court order, your psychiatric evaluations, the fact that they kept you in the same school as those girls, and every other way they've dropped the ball, they're on thin ice as it is. My union's got about a hundred kids in this school, if I start posting pamphlets that kids in this area are getting sub par treatment, the PTA will be overrun at the same time as their superintendent is hit with contempt of court. And that's without help from our 'friends'."

She let out a low, sliding whistle of appreciation. "Blitzed from all sides. I like it. Thanks for taking care of it, Dad." He grinned and scuffed her hair, then returned to eat the rest of his lunch while she told him about math and English. Inside he was a turmoil. Had she been right? Should he have capitulated to the Principal's petty demands? Would antagonizing the administration hurt his girl in ways he couldn't prove? Or was he doing the right thing by getting her some fresh air on the warmest day they'd had so far this spring, away from a school that had already pushed her right past her breaking point? The boiling questions and uncertainty and the need to do the right thing, it had been a part of his life for a long time now. Even before his daughter's troubles at school. Ever since his wife had died in that car crash.

It had been a turning point. If Dinah Alcott or some other thinker in the same vein had looked at that night, they would have seen two branching paths. A slightly warmer day, a slightly colder day. One in which a female doctor with a minor head cold had come in to work, and another path in which she had called in sick and the ER shift had been covered by a male doctor called in on his day off. One path in which Danny and Taylor Hebert got the news of Annette's death from a sniffling, sympathetic-looking young woman, and one path in which they heard it from a harried, annoyed older man. One path in which Danny and Taylor clung to each other for support, one path in which their relationship strained to the point of estrangement. One path in which Danny became phobic of cell phones, one in which he developed an aversion to cars.

In the path where Taylor and Danny didn't speak, she bottled up the abuses of her bullies and felt herself helpless and isolated when things came to a head. In the path where Taylor and Danny supported each other, she always felt like she had an ally to get her through those times. But the comfort of his daughter came with increased anxiety that he might lose her, increased pressure and stress at every thing that harmed her or scared her. In this path, Danny Hebert had gotten a phone call in January that his daughter was going to the emergency room for a nervous breakdown after her bullies had tormented her in a particularly horrific way. His support had made the difference to her, his love had kept her from developing a trigger event. But the stress of responsibility had given him his own trigger event.

A turning point. One path rather than the other.

But he still struggled with that boil of self-doubt and guilt. The slow simmer of "should I or shouldn't I", the bubbling of "was that the right thing or the wrong thing?" The intersection of responsibility and confusion was a tough crux to bear.

"Tea?" she offered, holding out the thermos with the last swallow of cooling tea in it.

"Yours," he replied, nodding to her. He dug the re-usable water bottle from his bag and tugged the cap open, taking a long swig of chilled water to hydrate for his trip back to the union hall. "It's not a bad day out, is it?" He stared across the scape, taking in the trees that rustled in response to the wind, the low clouds scudding across the blue-gray sky.

Taylor shrugged. She was wearing a thick green fleecy hoodie over her top, and two pairs of fluffy socks inside her tennis shoes. "Not bad. Little chilly still."

"I guess I'm still warm from the ride," he conceded.

"Probably," she said. "I know I already said thank you for helping me steer away from Emma-"

"You did."

"-but can I also say that it's a little creepy knowing how easily you know that? Like, the fact that you know that, means that now I know too much about the school. Ick."

"Don't give me that 'ick'. You've read enough to know that they are hygienic and safe."

She doubled down on the 'ick' face. "I've read enough to know that they can get addicted to human blood. Ick."

He shrugged. "It's a forty-year-old building. Wooden supports, utility crawlspaces, basement boiler room, all of the exterior doors have foxing or scuffing on the insulation. You're lucky there's not lead paint and asbestos."

"Still, rats in the walls?"

"Not all of the walls," he lied smoothly. "Just enough for me to keep track of stuff. They have great hearing, and a powerful sense of smell. If I move them to the vents, they can tell me a lot about what's going on."

Taylor closed up her tupperware container. "Still, it's the fact that you're going to ride away, and they'll still be here. I don't mind the ones you control, it's the others that bug me."

the noise in the cafeteria changed timber, more clattering of dishes and the voices were pitched to a higher degree of anticipation. "Sounds like your lunch period is nearly up," he said, and leaned over to give her a hug before she stood up and started stretching. "Don't forget your art project, okay?"

"Sure Dad," she said while he wrapped everything up in the beach towel and stuffed it into his backpack. She came in for another hug before she jogged up the steps to her next class. Danny Hebert slung the pack over his shoulder and went to the bike rack.

The chain was a thick insulated cable with a combination lock built into it, the combination was also his PIN code at his bank. The chain was fairly new but already rather weathered, scraped in places. The bike itself was nearly the opposite, a secondhand frame picked up from a pawn shop that had been cared for and tuned up so that only a close inspection showed the years on it. It was a hybrid, geared like a road bike but with the wider thicker tires of a trail bike. It was good for rough roads, sidewalks, gentle inclines, and daily commutes. The tradeoff was that the longer gears and heavier tires made it harder to ride than either a road bike or trail bike, requiring more leg strength to push the pedals. It was bright white, with a brown leather seat cover and black rubber pedals.

Danny looped the chain until it fit into his cargo pocket, buttoned it closed and swung his leg over the bike to take the saddle. He had very long legs, which gave a long pedal stroke and required tires so large they were hard to find, fully 30-inch diameters. It added to the difficulty of the pedal-push, made it harder to start from a stop, but gave him more top-end speed on the straightaways. And, the harder it was, he reminded himself, the better a workout it was. He pushed the toe of his shoe into the strap, and pushed down, easing out into motion. He fit his other foot in and picked up some speed, let himself lose himself in the ride for a bit.

He didn't have a lot of hair for the wind to blow through, but the exhilaration of blood pumping and swift movement was a rush of its own. He kept to the sidewalks, since drivers in Brockton Bay couldn't be trusted not to aim for the cyclist and crowd him off the road. As long as he stayed clear of the Boardwalk the pedestrians on the sidewalks were not thick enough to impede him. But stopping at the red lights was a pain. It seemed like every time he got up to a good cruising speed, he came to a red light and needed to stop, put a foot down, wait, and then start again. He let himself grunt with the exertion of starting, Tallboy his trainer encouraged him to use a "focused exhale" to help his effort. Much like the way that swearing can increase one's pain threshold, grunting and gritting teeth can increase one's effective strength and stamina. Tallboy was full of tips like that.

The most annoying part was sitting still when he could see the gaps that he could slip through. The way was clear, there was nobody coming, but the light was still red. After being on the bike for a week he had realized something important about them: they have much better visibility than the cars around them. It was easier to judge where the cars were and how fast they were traveling, much easier to see and know where it was safe to go. In a car, there was more guesswork, more trust, on the saddle of the bike he could look and see where it was safe and where it wasn't. And that just made it harder to be patient at unnecessary stops.

He was panting and sweating when he got to the Union Hall for the Dockworkers' Association. His bike was the only one chained up at the rack outside. He mopped at his face as he pushed open the front door, waved to the receptionist, and made his way to his office. He dropped off his backpack behind his desk and reached into the wardrobe for a fresh pair of slacks and a clean button-down shirt and a towel, then he carried those to the small shower at the back of the building. He pulled his flip-flop shower shoes from the locker there and stashed his sweaty clothes inside, locked with a combination. He showered down, applied deodorant, and dressed up in clean dry clothes before he went back to his office.

But while he was under the chilly spray of the water, he was somewhere else as well. He was in the sewers that ran underneath the building, exploring in the dark. He was in the storm drains that ran alongside them, scavenging for anything useful or edible. He was in the long grass of the vacant lot across the street, gnawing open seed clusters. He was in the basement of the building, hunting cockroaches. He was in the walls of the building, grooming for lice and ticks. He was everywhere that a rat or mouse was, for two blocks in every direction. He was even in the bottom drawer of his desk, a spacious cabinet that locked from the outside. A small hole was gnawed in the bottom of the drawer, just wide enough for the power cord to a laptop. The five creatures opened the latches to their cage with complicated maneuvers and coordination, then swarmed out in concert. They opened the lid to the laptop, and took positions. Four rats' eight paws rested on the home row keys of the laptop, one was positioned next to the trackpad, and five pairs of eyes stared at the screen. They typed as fast as a trained man, and they read several times as fast. Danny could take in far more information through his power than he could through his own senses. Their vision wasn't very sharp, but adjusting the settings on the control panel had raised the default size of text enough that all four rats could read easily and comfortably. So while he took his shower, he was reading his email and taking notes on how to deal with incoming situations.

As far as his coworkers were concerned, he never seemed to be at his desk but he was working harder than ever, on top of every situation as it developed.

In the afternoon he had some interviews to take care of, four young prospects that wanted to work the docks and join the union. It was all the qualified applicants they'd gotten all week, the Dockworkers' Association got less and less interest as the years went by, the docks all but closed down. For each of them he gave them his full apparent attention, holding direct eye contact and speaking earnestly to each of them during their interview. Normally the hard part of interviewing was getting as much authentic information as you could from the subject and still take adequate notes for the future. Four rats in the drawer took his notes for him, detailed and full-formed by the end of the interview. And one of the rats from the basement followed his instructions, crawled up through the air shaft to sneak up to the vent right beside the seat that the interviewees sat at. A few sniffs could tell him as much as many probing questions.

The first was an earnest young woman, just out of high school, the daughter of a dockworker who had heard about the job from her father for years. The rats sniffed her, she was healthy and strong with a clean smell of soap. Danny wrapped up that interview quickly and assured the kid that she had a job starting Monday. The kid gave him an effusive thanks and a handshake that nearly crushed his knuckles, the girl had more than enough strength and energy to keep up. The second was a strongly-built young man who had two semesters of college behind him and no degree, with a brooding look about him and shifty eyes. Danny pressed the questions, asking about college and why he had left, and the boy grew evasive. The rat's nose could pick up the acidic tang of stress-sweat, and the sound of a heartbeat speeding up irregularly, both of which Danny had come to identify as signs someone was lying or covering something up. The rats in the drawer hit the search engines, looking up details, and in minutes he had unearthed the fact that the boy had been accused of sexually harassing a classmate.

Danny leaned forward, his elbows thumping on the desktop as he placed his hands flat on the tabletop. "Jeremy, the people at your school said you did some things. Some improper things," he pressed. The boy's heart rate revved hard, and he was sweating anxiety into the air so strongly that Danny was surprised his human nose couldn't pick up on it. "Now, I need to hear from you whether you did those things, okay?"

The boy's face fell in disappointment, and Danny had to imagine that the boy had heard that question a few times already. "No, I didn't," Jeremy said, dropping his eyes and sighing. His heartbeat leveled out and his skin surface ran clear, the boy was telling the truth and resigned to not being believed.

"I believe you," Danny said, and the boy's eyes snapped up. "But you know you're going to work hard to put this behind you, work hard to get the life you want with this hanging over your head, right?" Jeremy was given a probationary status, allowed to earn his way into full membership. Danny thought the kid could thrive with the right direction, or may fall into the habit of quitting out when the going gets rough.

The third was a skinny kid whose father had worked the docks for years. Danny knew the kid's mother and father from block parties, barbecues and bar crawls going back a long way, both big burly folk with great attitudes and strong work ethics. Their son was a chip off the old block, genial and earnest. But the rats smelled something on the boy. Not a lie or fear or anger, but a dark wrongness in him. The kid was sick. He was not skinny because he had skinny genes like Danny, he had burly strong genes from both his parents but something was wrong in the kid, and it was going to kill him. Soon, by the signs of it.

The questions boiled in Danny's brain, the right move or the wrong move. Would telling the kid now help him, or rob him of his last few good months? Would he have a reasonable chance of survival if they got him immediate care? Would it be worth giving up his secret identity right here right now in this room? Would the union's insurance be able to help the kid? Would it be fair to the union to hire this kid knowing that he was going to cost them money and not be able to work for a long time? What was the right answer? What combination of loyalty and mercy was the right amount? Who should he be protecting?

He wrestled those questions for a while, even as he asked all the standard questions. Finally, he nodded. "Okay, Tomas, you got a lot of what we like to see. But I'm gonna need a clean bill of health. Go get yourself checked out, your parent's PPO should cover a lot of tests and stuff. Have them check you out for infectious diseases or blood-clotting issues, and we'll have you on the job." He grabbed his notepad and wrote on it infectious disease, blood clot factor, and tore off the page and handed it off to the kid. Hopefully the kid would go straight to the doctor and the doctor would recognize the early stages of leukemia in time for treatment. Hopefully. Danny tried to ignore the fact that he was playing odds with a young man's life.

The fourth interview should never have gotten past the application process, it was a teenager with a low forehead who had gone through a string of dead-end jobs, six in the past year, including a run-in with the cops when he was suspected of being part of the ABB, the local gang known as the Azn Bad Boys. Danny was still not sure why anyone would contract "Asian" down to "Azn", especially if they were trying to inspire fear. But that was just part of why Danny didn't think like street gang members. The boy started asking some questions like what day of the month the Union collected dues payments, whether it was cash or checks or deductions, things like that. Danny shut down that line of questioning early, put off by the sketchy teenager's behavior. The rat in the vents breathed deep, getting a strong sense of the teenager's body scent. Then Danny showed the kid to the door.

In a minute the rats had already finished the last of the four interview notes and sent them off, explaining his reasoning for hiring one, putting one on probation, sending the third away for a physical and denying the fourth outright. Multitasking had saved him at least an hour, maybe two. He set aside the last teenager's information, and emailed it to himself so he'd have a backup copy of it.

He paced around the room while ten paws and ten eyes checked his email and responded to requests for information or updates to event scheduling. His role was partly in hiring, and partly in relations. He was a spokesman for the members as well as being one of the gatekeepers to membership, which meant that he knew pretty much every dockworker in the city, a number that dwindled slowly. Dockworkers were a stubborn breed and they held on long past the point that other folk might have left to find a more fruitful line of work, but as industry in the city slowed down year by year, there was less and less work and more and more of the union members were forced out to either relocate to some other city or retrain for some other job. So a large part of his job, more every year, was in finding ways to get the dockworkers back on the job and revitalize the local industry.

Brainstorming and consulting on that project was one of his driving goals, nearly an obsession. The closet of his office was full of blueprints, maps, folios, binders and manuscripts from various proposals that had some merit, but not enough interest from those who had the power or authority to make the changes. But over the past few months, he had started to think about alternative solutions, answers for this current age and not the previous generation. Answers from the superhero community. He'd been thinking about it more and more since Taylor's breakdown, since his visit with her in the hospital, since his trigger event, since he'd gained superpowers to control rats and mice.

And the Protectorate had been a presence in the city of Brockton Bay for twenty years now, while the city slowly declined. While wealth inequality got worse, while unemployment went up, while street gangs flourished. It was clear that they were not going to take action to save the city from its real issues, preferring to patrol the rooftops until a supervillain struck and they could fight. But he knew that the best way to get a suggestion through to people like them was from the inside. He would make himself a superhero, and then he could get the other heroes to help him. Supergenius tinkers, reality warpers, empaths, celebrities, they could get a lot done that would help people. But it wouldn't be easy, he couldn't come to them as a supplicant begging for their attention, they'd tell him that they would 'consider' his proposals, like the mayor, the city planner, the bank manager... And he couldn't come to them as a junior member and wait ten to twenty years for them to integrate him well enough to take his proposals as the words of an equal. No, he needed to short-circuit the process and make them listen to him now. It was the only way to protect all the people and save the city from itself.

He shook his head, and stepped away from those intrusive thoughts. He stepped out of his office and went to visit Barry the treasurer, and his little friend in the vents slipped out into the crawlspaces and kept pace. The rat's nose picked up more traces of the fourth interview subject, the teenager who'd been busted as a possible ABB member. The teenager had been snooping around Barry's office. Danny wished he could manage to be more surprised than he was by this.

Barry looked up. He was a towheaded guy in his thirties, with the shoulders and wrists of a stevedore and the paunch of a stevedore sitting a desk job. "Hey, Danny. What's up?"

"Eh, one of my interviews went astray, have you seen him?"

"Asian kid, about yay tall, eyebrows way down here?"

"Yeah, that's the one."

"Yeah, he was here. Couldn't find his way around, had a lot of questions."

"Thanks Barry. Hey, how are we set up for Wilma's baby shower?"

Barry scowled at the numbers in front of him. "It's not good. The budget doesn't have any fat to trim, you know, I can't just move some numbers around. I'm squeezing blood from stones here. But I swear on the grave of Jason Cecenovska, my third grade bully, that I will find a way to throw her a baby shower. It's hard to find outside funding, and hard to hold a fund raiser without hurting our respectability as an organization."

"Yeah, I know," Danny said, scowling slightly along with the other man. "Still, you're the best, you'll figure it out."

Barry snorted through his nose. "Don't you forget it. Are you up to anything new?"

"Petitioning the governor to call in the Army Corps of Engineers to clear out the Boat Graveyard," Danny replied.

Barry rocked back in his seat, eyebrows climbing. "Is that ambitious, or desperate?"

"I'm hoping it doesn't come off as desperate," Danny chuckled, and then walked away. He went back to his office, made sure he had finished up everything that needed done for the day, and then he unlocked his bottom desk drawer and guided the five rats inside down through the air vents to join the others in the basement, then he had some of them scent mark the air vents with a pheromone to encourage them not to explore into it. He changed into some riding clothes and walked out, locking up behind him. It was only a half-hour early, not conspicuously early. At home he locked the bike into the garage, sitting where the car used to park, a handful of repair tools scattered about nearby. He skipped the half-broken bottom step and let himself into the house, locked up behind him.

He grabbed a quick shower, just enough to get him clean and relaxed, then he picked up his cell phone. Taking a nap. Got a mission tonight.

Costume finished? Taylor texted back.

Not yet. But won't need it tonight. He dropped the cell phone onto its charge station and dropped his head on the pillow, and three hours later Taylor was shaking him awake.

"Huuuuuuuhhh?" he mumbled, his eyes gummy with sleep.

"Sundown, and suppertime," his daughter said. "C'mon, get up and get something to eat."

"Nothin' too heavy," he said, mostly coherently.

She took his hand and helped him up out of the bed. "Nah, baked potatoes. Starchy carbs to slow-release through the night so you'll have an even supply of energy until you come back," she said. "C'mon, you get fed, suited up, and then I'll be here to run dispatch."

"You should sleep, got school tomorrow," he said, coming into the kitchen to find the potatoes baked, slashed open at the top to let out the billows of steam that melted the butter across the tops of them.

Taylor shook her head. "If I was the superhero out on patrol, you'd worry yourself sick. Well, I worry too. So I'm gonna be right here on the phone, talking to you the whole time. If I tried to sleep I'd just lay awake worrying, so if I'm gonna be awake I'll be doing something useful," she said. Her tone was stubborn, brooking no argument.

"Fine," Danny said. "But no costume tonight, I'm just investigating. Snooping. And a middle-aged man on a bicycle in the middle of the night is less conspicuous than an armored superhero on patrol in the middle of the night."

"Fine," she said back to him. She paused next to the basement door, and quirked an eyebrow. "Are you doing that?"

Danny sprinkled chives over the potato set at his place. "Oh, yeah, I've got them working right now," he said, nodding. "Don't worry, I'll lock them out again before I leave."

They ate with little more than small talk, and then he cleared the table and cleaned the dishes quickly while she laid out her homework on the table in their place. Then he opened the basement door and walked downstairs. The cellar was a hive of activity, rats bustling everywhere. A couple dozen were busy finishing a painted map of the city across one empty wall, working in concert to manipulate paintbrushes and cans of paint to draw in streets and buildings with fine-tipped bristles. They clung to the wall like acrobats, claws dug into the concrete while they worked. In the center of the room was a fresh new bike, gleaming from the showroom floor, done in black, with a few pieces of black-painted balsa wood laying at its side. The balsa had been chewed into the right shape, everything measured by tiny paws and claws. The block of wood on the table was not balsa but hardwood oak, a massive slab that had been part of a tree that nearly took out Kurt's garage before the guys got together and chopped it down. The oak had been gnawed down to shape as well, but this shape was being fitted to a nearby mannequin, the two pieces of oak fitted to the front and back of the humanoid figure to fit as a front-and-back torso armor as well as a separate full-face helmet. The large block of oak was sitting nearby, making a set of wooden armor had only used up a third of it. On the end of the workbench was a pair of rats with a piece of chalk, taking notes on a small blackboard that was labeled "Patrol checklist". Others were pushing a hand-broom and a dustpan around the floor, picking up dust and splinters and tufts of fur. There were no droppings, any such business was taken to the garden in the backyard. A sink on the side wall was filled with warm water and a lather of soap, and there was a constant ring of rats using it as a hand-wash station, cleaning themselves before returning to work, moving smoothly so that none of them bumped each other, delayed each other, none of them needing to wait a turn or rush through the job. Clean-pawed rodents were tugging laundry from the dryer into a hamper, and then pushing the hamper up onto the back of a couple dozen more that stood in formation, making a living platform. They scampered off while more animals moved wet laundry from the washer to the dryer. More rats ran about in the rafters, stringing electrical cord and ethernet cable from one side of the basement to the other in seconds what would have taken a workman hours to do. In a corner a squad of rodents was patiently sorting, collating and stapling information packets for the Dockworkers, working with a speed and efficiency of three motivated file clerks.

Danny and Taylor stepped to the side as the laundry hamper scampered up the basement stairs and veered off towards the bedrooms. "I still don't want them in the kitchen," his daughter reminded him.

"I know, don't worry," he said, chuckling.

She looked around at the bustle and business of the basement. "Still, it looks really good. That painting came together faster than I'd thought," she said, gesturing at the city map.

"I made that my big priority," he said. "I kept most of my manpower on that since I started it. And the fine detail work, individual buildings, street names, I cheated a bit. There weren't enough brushes, so I just got some mice to dip their tails in the black paint and hold still so the rats could use the tails to draw or write. I'm just now starting to move my attention away from it and the armor, as you can see," he said, gesturing at the cable-crew in the rafters and the chalkboard-checklist. "I've got a fair bit more to do, but the rest of it should all come together quickly, it's just a dozen small short projects."

She shook her head, and her black curls bounced around her cheeks. "I still can't believe how you can do this. So many things at once, such precision and coordination. The multitasking is really the most impressive part of this. Controlling rats? That's not a big deal. But controlling this? That's something else." She paused, and looked around. "Did those rats come down yet?"

"They're not done folding," he said absently, as he pulled a crate of unsorted papers into the corner for the rats to sort and staple.

She made a face. "Dad, we're going to have to talk about you setting your psychically-linked henchmice to fold my clothes, okay? That's just a bit too much."

"You're probably right," Danny conceded. "Okay, I'm going to get changed and get my bluetooth, and I'll brief you on the rest while I ride, okay?"

"Sure Dad," she said, stepping aside as a dozen rats stampeded back down the stairs to start new assignments, then she and he started walking back up the stairs. She sat at the dining-room computer and booted it up while he changed into cargo shorts and a tank-top, athletic socks and lightweight sneakers. He picked up his prescription goggles from the bedside table, cycling gear that worked as well as his glasses for correcting his vision. A couple of bandannas in his pockets, and he fit the bluetooth attachment into his ear while he dropped the cell phone into his pocket and buttoned it up tight. He laced his sneakers up tight, and then walked out of the bedroom. He paused, staring at the back of his daughter's head a minute while he collected his thoughts. So many people he had to protect, but especially her.

"You're staring. And lurking," Taylor pointed out.

He laughed under his breath. "Guilty on both counts. C'mon, give me a hug before I go."

She did, him leaning down to let her wrap up around his shoulders. Her shoulder dug into his throat and he didn't care. She felt so small in his arms, her ribcage narrow and delicate. He let the warmth of her body seep into his for a minute, then they disengaged. "All right, I've got the bluetooth in, I'll call you before I'm out of the garage. Just put me on speaker and you can run ops from here," he said. "Keep the phone with you, even if you're going to the bathroom or the kitchen. Okay?"

She snorted derisively. "I'm sitting at home. Why are you acting like you're worried about me?"

"Dads worry," he said, smiling, and then he cleared his throat before he got too sappy. "Okay, I'm out, just a voice away though."

In the garage he picked up a painter's mask and tucked it into a free pocket, and strapped on the goggles. He opened the garage door, wheeled the bike out, closed and locked the garage door, and then dialed Taylor.

"Operations control, my name is Taylor and I'll be your dispatcher for this patrol," she said, with prim professional efficiency.

"Very funny," he drawled out, as he threw a leg over the bike and set the pedals. Her voice in his earpiece came through loud and clear, seated firmly and clipped gently to the arch of his ear. "Okay, if you open my email you'll find an address that I emailed to myself. I just want you to confirm it for me real quick." He could have been worried about neighbors watching, but he had a dozen field mice on lookout duty that helped him be sure that nobody was paying attention to his comings and goings.

"I've got it. 922 Lost Way, it's off Duke Street just north of Handler. I can navigate you in."

He nodded, then reminded himself that she couldn't see it. "I'd appreciate it. Pushing off now." He stood on the pedals and rolled out, gathering speed as he left the driveway and exited onto the street. Behind him, rats finished up their various tasks and began streaming out through the coal chute. The last of the cable-crew ran back to switch off the lights in the basement, others emptied the dustpan into the garbage can. The last dozen of them mustered at the entrance to the coal chute and then worked together to wedge the lid closed, setting the latch that held it shut. Then they each squeezed out a spray of urine, tainted with the musk of a territorial challenge and danger so that no more rats would try that entrance while Danny was out of range.

"So what's the mission?" Taylor asked in his ear.

The rats poured out of the house, the yard, and dove down into storm drains and the culverts that led down to the waterside where a hundred nooks and crannies made good nesting sites. Danny paused a block away and set the painter's mask on over his mouth, then covered it with a simple brown bandanna tied up like a bandit's mask covering him from the bridge of his nose to his throat. "It's a kid that I think was casing the union hall for a burglary. I'm gonna shake him down for information and try to find out what the plan is, where and when and who," he said. The other bandanna, also brown, went over the top of his head, tied like a do-rag.

"That sucks. The union has enough troubles without some bums swiping the entire budget," she said.

"Well, I think the guy is with the ABB, so not just a bum," Danny replied. The painter's mask kept the bandanna from muffling his voice too much. "So, that's why I'm being extra-cautious. I don't intend to get without a block of trouble, out of sight the whole time." He started pedaling again, now that he was better-disguised.

"Dad, the ABB has supervillains in it. I've read up on these guys, they're no joke at all. The leader, Lung, he's fought Endbringers to a standstill, and he's got supersenses of his own. You need to be really, really careful around this, you're not the only one who knows more than he's supposed to. And he's got two lieutenants, a teleporting assassin who creates expendable clones of himself and a tinker whose specialty is bombs. The ABB may not be Empire Eighty-Eight, but they're not just some street gang that you can mess around with!"

Danny used a couple mice and rats to scout ahead, watching his path for traffic or other issues. He blew through a red light and it felt great, building speed instead of stopping. Only a couple of cars in sight, and none heading his way. "Got it, thanks for the warning, dispatch. It's not like the seventies, when a bunch of punk kids would get themselves a name and a hangout and start wearing the same colors and acting like criminals. The Bloods, the Crips, Kings, those were the days. Sure, they were shooting people and stealing stuff, but the cops could act against them without having a bulletproof monster attacking them. These days the only gangs worth mentioning are all led by villains."

"Don't do that Dad, I hate it when you get nostalgic for life before the capes."

He sighed wistfully. "It was so great, the only thing that made anyone better than anyone else was just money. There were no villains, no tinkers, no-"

"No Endbringers."

"Morbid," he admonished her. He pushed himself harder, speeding along the sidewalk. "But yeah, none of that stuff. Back then, when we read a comic book about superheroes fighting villains it was just a fiction you could put away when you were done with it."

"And you're one of the lucky ones that got powers," she pointed out. "Think of all us poor helpless mortals, how we feel."

His radius of effect moved with him, a wide-ranging circle of awareness and control. He could feel two blocks ahead, each rat and mouse that entered his sphere. Where they were, what they were doing, everything they saw and smelled and heard. He was instantly in control of their muscles, thoughts, instincts, even parts of their biology that were more basic than instinct. He had experimented and he could put females into heat out of their cycle, he could start a hibernation, and most importantly control their pheromones and other chemical communication, which gave him a limited ability to control and direct them even without his direct intervention. "So Taylor, tell me about school. Did the principal act like a jerk? Did she try to get revenge like you thought?"

"No, nothing like that," Taylor said. "But, an hour after you left a mouse peed on Emma's shoes. I don't know how it's your fault, but I know it's your fault."

"I was miles away, airtight alibi," he said. In truth it only took a small amount of pheromones to get other mice to respond to a challenge of territory.

Her voice was doubtful, but still amused. "Don't overdo it, okay? If anyone notices that mice keep bothering the people that bother me, they'll draw the wrong conclusions. Anyway, band practice didn't go well, I may get dropped to third chair flute. I've just been having a hard time getting enough practice in, and Hector has really been pushing to take my spot."

He swerved to avoid a patch of gravel that washed down from a construction site onto the sidewalk and dried in place there. "It's about time management, Taylor. Remember, we've been reading about this? Practicing this?"

"I've been practicing helping you," she pointed out. "Not the same thing."

The street lights flickered on, one by one. "Hmm, maybe I've been putting too many demands on you, and not helping you out enough in return. If so, I'm sorry about that," he said. "I've just been preoccupied lately. And you've been a huge help in putting this together. I would hate to be doing this without you, or worse yet in spite of you. I'm not going to be Peter Parker, hiding my powers from my own family. I might keep a secret identity to keep you safe, and so I can keep working at the Dockworker's Association, but keeping secrets from family is just a terrible idea."

She heaved a sigh. "Fine. Okay, already. In sixth period, the vice principal came into my class on some pretext, and then made each of the girls in the class line up for a fingertip-check to make sure everyone was in dress code. It was humiliating and ridiculous. Everyone but me. He told me to stay seated and specifically called out everyone else. So all the rest of sixth period everyone was glaring at me, whispering, accusing me of getting special treatment."

Danny rode in silence for a minute. "Seriously? Holy shit that's juvenile. I think your principal has been spending too much time around high-schoolers, they've gotten into her head. Sounds like she's totally willing to turn this into a vendetta though."

"Just let it go Dad. We can't even argue that they were singling me out for abuse, because they specifically singled me out against abuse. They conspicuously treated me better than everyone else, which is the opposite of proof that they're trying to violate the terms of the court order."

"They need to be called out, they need to understand that this sort of crap is at least noticed," Danny argued back. "Hang on, I'm crossing Handler now. Got my eyes open for Lost Way."

"It'll be on the left," Taylor said into his earpiece. "Hang on, 922 is close to the corner, you should be able to pick out the house without even leaving Duke."

Danny slowed, stopped. He was on the opposite side of the street from the turnoff onto Lost Way, and he didn't even look in that direction as he put down his kickstand and began a meticulous inspection of his tires and gearchain. Meanwhile, mice swarmed through the back fence and approached the house. It took a few minutes for rats to make their way up through the storm drains to this address. The light was fading, and the dark-furred creatures could slither out into the open and approach the house. Definitely the right address, he remembered what the Asian teenager had smelled like to the rats back at the office. A housemouse found a crack in the brickwork almost a half-inch across, and squirmed into it. The flexible skull compressed to get through the gap, and its joints slid to fit through the space. With time and effort, a mouse that size could squeeze through a quarter-inch gap, half-inch was easy. It wriggled its way in until it hit the fiberglass insulation in the walls, and he navigated it up and around until it an exit through the cabinetwork under a bathroom sink. A few minutes of sniffing around, wriggling under doorframes, and investigating showed him a menopausal Asian woman, a noisy cockatiel, and an empty bedroom decorated for a teenager.

The rats at the front yard took point, sniffing around to find the most recent trace of the boy, sniffing deeply to acclimate themselves to the sneakers he was wearing, trousers, everything. An astounding amount of rat DNA was coded for their sensory organs, almost 10%, and they were well-evolved for those senses. Matched to a human being's understanding of the world and abstract ideas, plus superhuman communication, it was a very powerful tool. He started pulling rats up from out of storm drains up and down the street, searching for traces of the teenager.

"The house is empty," Danny said low enough that only Taylor could hear him. "The trail leads east, into the Docks.'

He was remounting his bike when Taylor responded. "Bad neighborhoods. Watch yourself very closely, stay out of any trouble. Check in block by block."

"Hey now, I'm the dad and you're the daughter," he retorted, as he rode off in pursuit of the trail. Rats swarmed up the ladders of sewers to sniff around the manholes from underneath, searching for a single specific scent. Field mice hid in tall grass but crept near the sidewalk to smell for a trace. Rodents in walls went on high alert to find the evidence. And Danny followed the trail, all the while appearing as nothing but a bandanna-masked cyclist, oblivious to the increasingly rough neighborhoods he was riding through. The good news was that the worse the neighborhoods got, the more eyes he had to watch his back and check his surroundings. He moved rats and mice to the open, to windows or rooftops or high vantages so he could watch everything from every angle, and he could see everything, hear everything. His perception and awareness became incredibly rich, a two-block radius of near-omniscience. And as he left an area, the rodents returned to normal behavior, none the wiser.

"Crossing Delphine. Crossing Glazer. Hang on, I've got a hit," Danny murmured. "An arcade on the east side of Buckingham, just north of Rockway. The place is called Mischief Night Arcade."

"Searching," Taylor said in return. "Huh. Not a lot to find. I'm not a hacker. I've got a phone number for them, some interior images. Not even a name for the owner."

"Keep checking," Danny said. "Try finding articles from the Brockton Times." He slowed and stopped again, pulling into a narrow alley. There was nobody lurking further back, and nobody on the sidewalk for half a block in any direction. The rats underneath Mischief Night started working up from the basement up into the walls and air ducts. Rats from storm drains and sewers started mustering up near at hand, and small mice swarmed in from neighboring tenements and restaurants. Rodents were very good at hiding, and especially at hiding from humans. Most people had no idea how many of those animals they were in close proximity to, how many were just out of sight. But when you brought them out into the open and put them all in one place, it became an impressive display all at once. Not that these were blatantly in the open, he was keeping them in the dark and out of sight. But the sheer mass of them even impressed Danny. They scrambled up the walls as fast as squirrels up a tree, and into the ductwork and through cracks into the attic space above the ceiling.

The interior was dark, and noisy with discordant electronic sounds. The air swam with the smell of bodies and sweat, and food and hot electronics. But he began slipping his rodents into the interior, creeping along in corners and running along behind the banks of arcade stands. Staying to the cracks, the crevices, the narrow spaces, he spread them out to smell around, search around. And he got a hit.

"Dad? The only thing in the news is that apparently the place burned down October before last, and rebuilt since then. It was burned on the night before Halloween, some folks call it Mischief Night or Devil's Night. The owners were investigated for arson, but the results were inconclusive. The owner's name is listed as Jason Cheng, but there's a lot of them in the Brockton Bay phone book, can't narrow it down."

"Who rebuilt it?" Danny asked. The Asian kid from the office, the sulky brooding teenager who had interviewed with him, was hanging out leaning against a game but not playing. And the two other teenagers with him, both Asian, a boy and a girl, were also not playing, but they were deep in heated conversation. He couldn't hear a word of what they were saying, and the sounds he could make out didn't sound like English anyway. There were a dozen Asian languages spoken in Brockton Bay, and more dialects than that, and Danny could only barely tell Chinese from Japanese from Vietnamese by sound if he listened carefully. The three of them were talking back and forth, and he couldn't even tell if it was something important. All of their heartbeats were level and their sweat did not betray stress, but he could not tell more than that. He grimaced, and waited.

"Huh, the contractor that rebuilt it was Johnny Cheng, who appears to be Jason Cheng's brother or brother-in-law, this article is vaguely phrased. Anyway, yeah it sounds like this was not entirely aboveboard. How did you know to ask about that?"

"Taylor, sweetie, Daddy works in union politics, and the history of labor unions and organized crime is basically the same history. Besides, I've got a real good idea how shoddily this place was built, someone was definitely cutting costs and cutting corners. I wonder about this wiring, it is a rat's nest, if you'll pardon me saying so."

"Don't do that, no puns," she said back. "Okay, I'm going to try to search both Jason Cheng and Johnny Cheng and see if I can triangulate some more details about them."

"I've got the kid in front of me, two others with him. This is either going to be a long stakeout, or I can provoke a little action now and see which way he goes." Now that he was done riding, the sweat on his skin was starting to cool, and the early spring weather was uncomfortably cold, especially now that the sun was set and the wind was shifting, blowing in cold off the bay.

Taylor's voice was stern, again challenging the parent/child hierarchy. "Dad, you took a nap earlier just so you'd be rested for this. And you promised me a patient, hands-off investigations mission."

"Fine, stakeout it is," Danny Hebert said, moving his bike further back into the alley. A single door with no pull handle from the outside marked the wall to his left, and it only took a minute to direct a rat into the right place. It scaled the door frame, flipped the deadbolt, and pressed the push bar just enough that the door opened a crack. Danny caught it with his fingernails to hold it in place for a few seconds while the rat dropped to the ground and gave it a better push with more leverage. The door opened an inch, and he pulled it open and stepped inside without even glancing down at the rodent that had let him in. The building he was in was a hair salon, which was bad for interesting magazines to read but good for comfortable chairs. He pulled the door closed to keep the heat in, and took a seat. The front windows had burglar bars but no sensors hooked up to the windows glass, which meant there probably wasn't a security system to worry about. Even still he kept his lookouts on alert on the street to see if any cop cars came his way. "Finding anything on the Chengs?"

"Not much. Some background, some other family members, enough to try triangulating from them instead. This is remarkably more boring than I thought it'd be."

"Paper trails and old-fashioned investigations really are," he said. "Even in the digital age. I spend a lot of time like that, trying to find a bit of leverage, trying to find what someone's interests are, what angle they might be easy to push against. That, and figuring out which interviewees are actually serial killers. The trick is patience and attention to detail."

"Well, there's a ton of details," she replied. "Enough that it's getting hard to make sure I've got the right Jason and Johnny anymore."

Danny leaned back, stretched out. "I can help check that stuff out when I get home. It's not time-sensitive mission-critical information, anyway. You should probably be doing your homework right now."

"It's Friday night, I've got all weekend. That art project is turned in, so this World Issues assignment about the impact of parahumans on our world is the only major grade I've got to worry about right now. I've got a worksheet in math, two chapters in literature, and two days to take care of them. So there is nothing keeping us from a long, boring stakeout."

"I should have brought the woodworking projects with me so I'd be able to work on those while I'm here," Danny sighed. The two of them chatted for the next couple of hours, small talk and reminiscences. In the midst of their chat they mutually concluded that mint chocolate-chip ice cream needed to be added to the grocery list for this week, that Danny needed more practice with turning an omelet, and that Brockton Bay could do with a Coney Island-style amusement park on the Boardwalk.

"Like, it'd be an easy sell for the mayor because he loves the tourism dollars and the tourism dollars love him," Taylor was pointing out. "He's got more friends on the Boardwalk than anyone does. And a carnival would mean more visitors to the stalls and stores, more hotel reservations, all of that. But it also means that the local factories would start back up to make the steel and the pieces for the rides and the games, and once those have been started up I don't think the owners are going to shut down right away if there's a chance they could make even more money by staying full-time, which means exports from the city, and the dockworkers are back in business!"

"I'm loving the idea, and I'll start working on it tomorrow," Danny said, sitting up and straightening his masks. "But they're on the move. Put a pin in that and a note for me to follow up, but first I've got to check these kids out."

Taylor spoke into his earpiece. "How are you going to do that without showing your face, speaking to them? They're not going to have business cards that say 'ask me about the ABB', right?"

A block and a half away, the three teenagers were walking down the paved sidewalks in silence, hands in pockets with jackets zipped up. Danny repositioned his forces and planned his move. Only one shot at a first impression, he thought to himself, and then made his move.

Rats can run at over twenty-four miles per hour for a short dash, about the same as an Olympic-level sprinter. When bunched up tightly, pushing each other forward, moving simultaneously with perfect precision like coiled springs, that speed can get doubled. The three teenagers were overwhelmed by a writhing carpet of rats that seemed to appear out of nowhere, conjured from thin air, bludgeoning into them from the side with enough speed and mass to knock them down to the ground. Furry sleek bodies muffled their screams. Tiny claws scrabbled for purchase, leaving hundreds of criss-crossing scratches on faces and hands and necks and the girl's bare legs. Snapping teeth were everywhere, scissoring through clothing, clipping through denim and zippers, burrowing in towards flesh and skin. The three rolled to their feet and ran, sprinting away without looking back. They even left behind three shoes, the laces chewed through. The tide of rats receded, slinking away into the shadows and the sewers and the alleys, except for a couple dozen that picked up cell phones, keychains, wallets, receipts, and anything else that the teenagers had on them. And those rats trotted down the sidewalk to bring him what they'd gleaned.

"It won't flip," Taylor pointed out. "You've made it too thick."

"But it's light, airy," Danny protested. "It's hearty, but fluffy, and it should turn just fine."

"Do you want to wreck it to prove that point?" Taylor asked him.

He looked down at the skillet. "It looks delicious. It doesn't need to get flipped, I guess. Maybe the next one." Meanwhile rats in the basement were laying out receipts and applying sticky-notes to the painted map of the city, scrolling through contact lists and comparing the results to the phone book's listings, and making a list of terms to look up translations for. He had already taken the information from the wallets and had his rats carry them to a public mailbox to drop off so they'd be returned to the owners. He was investigating them by ransacking their pockets, but he wasn't trying to steal from them or make them replace their ID cards. He knew as well as anyone what kind of hassle that could be.

He put a cover on the skillet so the steam could cook it through without having to flip it over. Taylor was sitting at the kitchen table, her legs bunched up under the chair while she propped her head up on her hands, elbows on the table. But the angle she had her head craned at looked awkward, uncomfortable. She seemed incredibly unaware of her own body, even for a teenager. She pushed the newspaper away. "Nothing about freak rat attacks on teenagers in the Docks area. So, that's good."

"And they're definitely ABB, so that's good too," Danny said. "I went through their deleted contacts, and almost every one of them is an ABB member that got arrested," Danny said. "And a lot of their current contact numbers are for suspected or known ABB members. So, no worries that I accidentally mugged three innocent kids."

"None of which will be discussed when we walk into the Protectorate headquarters today," Taylor said pointedly. "Super-secret identity."

He took the lid off, checked to see that it was cooked through, and slid the omelet onto a plate for his daughter, then started cracking eggs in again. "In fact, we'll be going in disguise. The cameras around the building and inside it are rigged up to facial-recognition software, I'm gonna spoof that just to be on the safe side."

They took the bus down to the Boardwalk, and walked along the quaint boulevards lined by shops that charged prices so high that only tourists would pay them. Here and there could be spotted the enforcers, a private-security force employed jointly by the Boardwalk businesses to make sure that undesirables stayed away and didn't disturb the spenders. Danny spent five bucks on a ballcap with the motto "Beautiful Brockton Bay Boardwalk" with a stylized image of the coastline. They walked along, and he casually reached into his pockets and pulled out a few sticks of gum, unwrapped them and started chewing, the gum puffing his cheeks out almost like a chipmunk. Another dip into his pockets produced a small sealed package of sticky-tack, used for hanging posters and other such uses. The wrapper went with the gum wrappers into a garbage can painted with the coral-pink, sky-blue and off-white that predominated the decorating on the Boardwalk. He massaged the sticky-tack into softness, then broke it into three pieces. He casually applied one behind each ear, propping them out and changing their profile, then the third on the bridge of his nose, massaging it on until it added a beaky hook, then Taylor handed him a small jar of zinc sunscreen and he layered that on over his nose, concealing the bluish stickum under a thick white layer. He put on the ballcap, and his disguise was complete. Just another casually-dressed tourist, protected against the sun, wearing his merchandise, taking his daughter to visit the local Protectorate offices on a Saturday afternoon in the spring.

Taylor let go of his hand as soon as they were through the door, approaching the receptionist to see who was available to speak to her. Danny slid to the side, looking at the promotional photos, listening in to the tour guide describing each of the photographed scenes. He stopped in front of the brochure rack, and browsed about. "About the Protectorate", "About the Brockton Bay Protectorate", "What to do if you see a supervillain", "I think I have powers", "How to help against Endbringers", "Jobs with the PRT". Danny picked up one of each, and tucked them neatly into his back pocket. He walked around the room, looking at the posed promotional posters, and also the blurry action shots of the local heroes fighting against some villain or another. There were even pictures of the Wards, the local team of teenagers that were training to graduate up to the Protectorate. Disturbingly, there were as many members of the Wards as there were of the Protectorate itself. He could think of three or four possible explanations, but they were all hinting at something terrible.

He looked over the roster, and tried to imagine himself in there. Armsmaster, Miss Militia, Dauntless, Assault, Battery, Danny Hebert, Velocity, Triumph.

Nah, it defied the imagination.

Not least of all because he was planning on going out in costume tonight and he still had not picked a name for his costumed identity. He had been leaning towards Pied Piper, for his ability to lead and control rats and mice, but it seemed a bit weak and he was half-sure someone out there already had that name. What was left for him? The Amazing Rat Man? The Rodent King? The Man From NIMH? On the other hand, there was a girl in New Wave whose official handle was "Glory Girl". And he knew that there was some woman somewhere whose handle was "Mouse Protector". Maybe he was overthinking this, the bar was actually pretty low.

He finally shook himself out of his thoughts when Taylor tapped him on the shoulder. "I've got what I need," she said.

"Yeah, me too," he said, smiling at her. They walked out, back to the bus stop.

He had the rats unlatching the coal chute before they'd even stepped off the bus at their stop. By the time they'd gotten to the door he had them hard at work downstairs. He paused, and looked down at the broken step. "Hmm, I should do something about that," he said, and then unlocked the door. They walked in and Danny went to scrub the gunk off his face while Taylor organized her notes for her homework. He stepped out of the bathroom to see his daughter shoving a cell phone at him, one of the ones he had acquired from the teenagers last night.

"You've got a text," she said. "Three of them, actually. Something's going down tonight."

Meet at Dover and Seaside, tonight 9pm, was all the text said. The name on it was one of the ones that Danny had traced to a low-level ABB member with an arrest on his record and suspicion of a few more crimes. The same text was on all three phones, sent at the same time as one mass text to dozens of other numbers.

"Well, damn," he said. "Just like Boondock Saints. I guess tonight's the night."

The next several hours were set aside for preparation and family time. They made some soup to eat together while rats used a bit of sticky-tack to attach a small ref flag to the intersection of Dover and Seaside on the big map. Finishing touches were put on the armor and helmet, and he tried them on for size, then set them down to get altered somewhat. He made sure his phone was charged, and brought a spare battery. A handheld multitool, a flashlight, crowbar, a few evidence bags, a small bag of latex gloves, a roll of quarters, a roll of duct tape, a cigarette lighter, fifty feet of thin rope, mouthguard, a handful of small wooden wedges, a large water bottle, and a handful of zip ties were all gathered and sorted on the dining room table alongside a large black backpack. Rats downstairs glued padding into the interior of the helmet, collapsible crumple zones of styrofoam like the ones in bicycle helmets. He gathered his winter hoodie, the thick green one with the fleece lining, and a pair of olive-drab cargo pants from the military surplus store, and a pair of black tabi slippers. Those had been a suggestion from Taylor, a kind of Japanese footwear with great traction and flexibility and a very soft sole that should make almost no sound if he needed to move quietly.

"Show it to me before you leave," Taylor insisted. "C'mon, put it on."

Danny rolled his eyes theatrically but he picked up the clothes. "Sheesh, it sure is a good thing my daughter is so excited and supportive about me being a superhero," he sighed, and then went into the bathroom. He stripped down to a tank top and boxer briefs, then pulled on the cargo pants. They were thick and thickly stitched, with extra layers to reinforce the knees and hips, making it extremely durable. He cinched the web belt down tightly around his narrow waist, and then pulled on the hoodie and zipped it up. The fleece layer itched against his bare arms and shoulders and the back of his neck. He ignored the itching and bent down to pull on the tabi slippers and cinch the ankles of his cargo pants tight around them to keep the loose ends from catching in the bicycle chain. It also made his legs look muscularly tapered, he noticed. He picked up the back piece of the breastplate and swung it behind him, then backed up against the wall to hold it in place while he fastened on the front and clipped them together. It filled out his torso a fair amount, gave him a lean but fit look, fit to his broad shoulders and narrow waist with a deep taper, and the padded sleeves of his hoodie did much the same. He slid the helmet down over his head, it was a featureless blank with a pair of eyeholes that fit to his cycling goggles, and it looked almost stonily impassive when it stared back at him from the mirror. He flipped the hoodie up, and the assembled affect was almost intimidating, in a way that the individual pieces were not. He opened the bathroom door and walked out where Taylor could see.

"Oh, that's not bad," she said, pacing around him to examine. "But it needs something. It's not superhero yet."

"It's not supposed to be superhero," he said. "It's supposed to be just protective enough in case I wind up getting in a little trouble, with enough pockets to carry the stuff I'm likely to need. I can get a real costume later when I join the Protectorate."

Taylor was already walking away, talking over her shoulder. "Hear me out, I'm gonna try something here." Danny fidgeted for a minute, trying to find the comfortable way to wear the tabi slippers, and trying not to feel self-conscious in home-made armor. She came back a minute later, carrying his olive-drab duster-cut longcoat. "Here, try this on top," she said, handing it off. Danny slipped his arms down the sleeves and shrugged it up over his shoulders while she turned down the dimmer switch, bringing the light level in the room down to what it would be on a streetlit sidewalk. "Holy cow," she said. "That's not bad. But I still think it should have some kind of motif or insignia. It's kind of generic, doesn't make much of a statement."

"As opposed to Mouse Protector?" he shot back. They had both seen her costume, with the wide round ears on her helmet and the cartoonishly stylized symbol she wore. "If it's kind of generic, that's fine for now. It lets people draw their own conclusions without committing to anything. But the real problem is that this armor doesn't give me any flexibility in my waist, I won't be able to ride the bike like this. I'm going to need something cut higher, and I'll be losing protection. Or maybe I need segmented armor. Honestly, I should just wait until I'm a member and have my own costume before I try anything like this. The bandannas I had last night worked fine."

"Just give it a try before you give up on it," Taylor admonished him. "I'll worry less if you're protected."

"I'll feel more protected riding on a bike two hundred yards away from trouble," Danny replied, pushing back the hoodie and sliding the helmet up off over his head. It seemed tighter coming off than going on. "But, I'll give it a shot. After all, the breastplate has a quick-release, if it gets in my way I can ditch it."

He pulled down a backpack from the hall closet, the backpack he normally wore for camping trips or afternoon hikes. He fitted the two plates of the armor into it, nested together to take up less space. Then the two halves of the balsa-wood shell, then the helmet and then the trenchcoat, packed in tight to keep the wood pieces from rattling or scratching each other. Then the crowbar went in, the rope, the hoodie, water bottle and all the rest of his tools. He stood in his tank top, cargo pants, tabis, and goggles, hefting the backpack. "Not too conspicuous," he judged begrudgingly. While he was packing his bag, Taylor went down to the basement to bring up the bike that was stashed there. The frame on it was white and black, and from a distance looked mostly like his regular bike. It was cut differently, angled differently, with aftermarket handlebars and seat cushion. The frame was lighter on this bike, made of hard titanium that weighed nearly nothing, but the tires were much heavier, made of solid rubber instead of inflated inner tubes, unpoppable and indestructible, but even harder to pick up speed than his regular hybrid bike. He carried it through into the garage, and gave his daughter a hug before he rolled up the door and wheeled the bike outside. She gave him a wave, then rolled the door back down and locked it behind him.

He slung the backpack onto his back and cinched the straps tight, then fit his feet to the pedals and started riding. He grunted as he started, but once he was started it got a lot easier to push the pedals. His phone rang in his pocket, and he activated the bluetooth. "Dispatch, this is patrol, over," he said.

"Funny dad, funny," she said. "Okay, I'm at the computer, following you along. Don't forget to put away the basement rats and lock them out, okay?"

"Doing it now," Danny said, as the last one latched the coal chute. "I've got my lookouts scouting for a good place to change clothes, as well as danger, unusual phenomena, and traffic situations." A block over and down an alley, a stray dog was barking at a rat to chase it away from a garbage bag full of kitchen scraps behind a restaurant. Four more rants arrived and worked together with coordinated tactics to chase the dog away, dropping down from a fence to latch onto the back of its neck until it bolted. Then the rats feasted, while the females involved all suddenly entered heat out of their normal cycle. In the storm drains two rats that were about to fight over territory instead marked their mutual borders and went about their business. Danny had read that 30% of all food went wasted, and from the senses of the city's rodents he could believe that number. Every garbage can had something edible in it, something that the rats could eat. Bruised bananas, moldy bread, fish heads and wilted celery was only the beginning, there were dented cans and expired eggs. The dumpsters often had locks and other countermeasures, but rats that were suddenly human-smart and perfectly-cooperative could overcome those easily. Where he went, the rats and mice feasted.

He rode hard, and he counted on the rats and mice in the area to give him an accounting of where was safe to ride and where was not. Tiny heads popped out of drainpipes and tall grass, over the tops of fences, giving him hundreds of points of view for everything in the region. Especially anything that could be smelled or heard. He could see breaks in traffic from a block away, and knew whether to speed up or slow down to scoot through the windows of safety, tuning all those senses to give him a super-acute understanding of what was going on around him. And any bad patches that the rodents didn't warn him about, he could just ride over with his solid-tube tires. He got up to twenty-five miles an hour and held that pace, since he didn't need to slow or stop for much of anything. He was making better time than the cars on the street that could only briefly top thirty-five and then slow back down for lights again.

And as he traveled the streetlights grew fewer, weaker, more of them broken than working, and his rodents got thicker and more prevalent. He had the street blanketed in eyes and ears and noses when he pulled over and opened the backpack. The first thing he did was assemble the clamshell casing over th bike. The black-painted balsa wood fit over the white parts of the frame, so now witnesses would describe a black bike, but any prying eyes that saw him leave his house would swear it was his usual white bike he rode. The housing also covered the gearchain of the bike, cut the wind resistance slightly and protected the mechanism from jamming up or getting knocked off place. As light as the balsa wood was, the bike was probably easier to ride with the housing in place. And it also had room for his water bottle, rope, crowbar, and evidence bags. He clipped it shut, and then got dressed.

First the hoodie, still itchy and uncomfortable. He used a wall to wedge the back armor in place, then clipped the front piece on and slid on his helmet. He flipped the hood up and then slipped on the trenchcoat. The rest of his tools were tucked into his pockets, even the bike chain went into a cargo pocket. From a small distance nobody would even be able to tell there was anything odd about him, he was just a guy in a hoodie and a coat riding a black bike, as long as he kept his head down and didn't turn towards anyone so they could see the full-face mask and helmet. He rode on, now keeping towards shadows and swerving around pools of light, popping up and down the curb as need be.

And two blocks away from the meeting grounds, he pulled over into an alleyway. He checked his phone, twenty minutes early. "Dispatch, I'm close enough," he said. "Beginning remote reconnaissance."

"You're hilarious," she said into his ear, dripping sarcasm all over the place.

The rats moved quietly, creeping out of walls and attics and cracks and drains, collecting all about the intersection. They mustered up and massed in place, and he could see and hear and smell everything that happened. "Dispatch, patrol here. There are a couple dozen people on the sidewalk. Some teenagers, some young adults. I can smell gun polish and whetstone oil. Even someone carrying a pipe, someone else a length of chain. There's a good number of them here, and I've got more convening from neighboring blocks. I'm thinking at least thirty or forty people, all told. No costumes, no unusual appearances. Hang on, gonna adjust that estimate upwards, some cars are pulling into the parking lot on the corner, there's a few people getting out of them. Looks like nobody wants to be late."

A dozen young people all murmuring to each other, mostly in English, he was able to eavesdrop easily. Most of it was griping about the weather or negotiating the exchange of a cigarette for one owed later, but one sentence stood out for him: "I heard Lung was gonna be here, did you hear that?"

"Dispatch," Danny said, fully aware that he was using this faux-formality to insulate himself from the situation. "Patrol here, on-site intel indicates that Lung is on his way. Please refresh me with Lung's dossier?"

"Sure thing patrol," Taylor said. "Okay, here we go. Half Chinese, half Japanese, leader of the Azn Bad Boys. Came to power in that gang a couple years ago. His history indicates he's been a veteran of the cape scene for a while, he fought Leviathan to a standstill during the Kyushu attack, but after that he stopped showing up to those events. His power starts at a base level and then builds when he fights, the longer and harder he fights the more his power builds. From a standing start he's got moderate super-strength, agility, durability, regeneration, super-senses, and pyrokinesis. When he powers up all of those powers grow, and in addition he grows a metal carapace, claws, and apparently shapeshifts into a steel-skinned dragon. He's even reported to grow wings. Sounds like the kind of guy you take down in one shot, or not at all."

"Thanks dispatch," the first-time superhero said. "I'll take that under advisement. I may ask you to call the Protectorate for backup, but wait for my signal on that."

"Okay, dad," she replied. Meanwhile he put his feet back to the pedals and rode on, circling two blocks north and two east, sweeping around and keeping the intersection in the outer boundaries of his power's reach. As he rode north, more rats came into his control, and he sent them scampering and running through the streets and tunnels and alleys to go join their comrades at Dover and Seaside. He paused for a few minutes when he reached his northern limits, giving the rats a head start, then turned east and started sending the rats he found there down to the intersection. He stopped when he was due north of Seaside on Dover, and eased himself into an alleyway. He kept a few dozen rats near himself as lookouts and backup, but the rest he collected in the shadows and any hiding place he could find at the intersection. Inside garbage cans, mailboxes, on top of roofs, the branches of the trees, adjacent basements, storm drains and long grass and ledges and niches. Sixteen city blocks worth of rats, all collected in one place, drawn into the open, ready to respond. Most city dwellers had no idea how many rats and mice they lived in proximity to, but the rodents had spent centuries learning how to hide, to sneak, to stay out of sight. And people that did see them tended not to talk about it over-much.

This was the most rats he had ever called under his control at once, consolidated like that. There were thousands of them, at a conservative estimate. And gathering them had taken most of his twenty-minute head start.

A door opened at the end of an alley, a steel fire exit in the back of a building facing the opposite street, and five men walked out. Dozens of beady black eyes watched the five men, taking them in. Four were wearing street clothes, that were either well-chosen off-the-rack or were actually tailored to them, and from them came the smell of gun oil and slight fear. The fifth one, in the front, was wearing only a pair of loose-fitting blousy pants and an angular metal mask that covered his entire face from his full head of black short-cropped hair to his throat. The masked man was tall, and strongly-built, with an easy confidence of a fighter in his element. Danny already knew that would be Lung, the other four men his top lieutenants.

Danny hung back, two blocks away, hiding his bicycle between some folded cardboard boxes next to a dumpster and leaving a few rats to keep an eye on it while he crouched down in the shadows and watched through the eyes of rodents, listened through their ears. But when he heard Lung clearly declare that the intent of tonight's mission was to "kill those kids", he froze in place and his spine washed with cold water. His brain switched gears. "Dispatch, this is patrol, I'm shifting the objective. Original plan was to investigate and gather leads, maybe pick up a scent trail I could use to bring down Lung and Lee and Bak-what's-her-name all at once. But I'm also going to move to stop him tonight, he's talking about killing kids. I'm gonna shut him down, and also investigate for leads."

"Don't overreach," his daughter warned him. He could hear her typing something in the background while she spoke. "Should I alert the Protectorate what's going on?"

"Anonymously," he replied.

"Got it, I just opened a disposable cryptmail account. I should get some burner cell phones, you should too."

"You can explain later how you know so much about burner phones," Danny Hebert said. "Shit, they're on the move. I'm going for it."

"Be careful."

"Nobody to get hurt except the rats, I'm not in danger," he assured her. A thousand rats shifted a few feet, and suddenly the Azn Bad Boys were surrounded, rings of glinting yellow eyes in the dark staring at them. They looked around, but all they saw was more rats, all moving in close. They drew weapons, guns and knives and chains and pipes, and Lung scoffed aloud as he called up two balls of fire into his hands.

"Dispatch, confirm that Lung has a regeneration power," he said.

"Confirmed."

"Okay," Danny said, and the rats on one side of the circle made their move. They could cross twenty feet in a second, but the way he had them stacked they could push each other and boost that speed. Stacked as deep as they were, they could cross forty feet in the blink of an eye, and a pair of chisel-like incisors bit into Lung's flesh, his heel, just behind the ankle bones, and snipped shut like a pair of scissors through a thick rubber band, hamstringing the supervillain. And then the rats linked up, paw to paw, teeth to tail, and pulled back the way they had pushed before, retracting their attack as fast as they had struck. Forty feet in the blink of an eye, back into the shadows. Lung roared in anger and turned to burn the rats that had attacked him, but his foot lost purchase and slid out from under him, tumbling him to one knee. And from behind, the rats struck again. They slithered between the feet of Lung's men, ignoring them in their attack. This time teeth closed on the tendons across the back of his knee, and then they were gone. Lung's leg stopped responding, and he had to put a hand down to keep his balance.

Danny had seen a documentary once about medieval life, and it had included the sport of bear-baiting. In bear-baiting, a bear was chained to a post while the men gathered around it with dogs. They would let the dogs lunge in to attack, then leap back. The bear was dangerous enough to kill the dogs with one swipe of its claws, but the dogs only ever attacked it from behind, retreating when it turned. It would face the dogs that attacked it last, and expose its back to other dogs. Whichever way it turned the dogs were on the defensive, whichever way it was vulnerable the dogs were attacking. And Lung was his bear.

The supervillain barked out an order that Danny couldn't make out, his voice raw, and the Bad Boys started advancing on one side, shooting down at the rats or swinging their weapons at them. Lung followed, half-crawling and half-crouching, dragging his wounded legs. Another wave of rodents snapped out like a cracking whip, snipping one of the tendons in his wrist before retreating, and two fingers of Lung's hand curled up against his palm, slowing down his movement even more. The man bellowed, and burst into flames.

"Whoa. Did you know he could catch fire?" Danny murmured.

"Doesn't say anything about it here," Taylor replied. "Guess we're learning something new."

"So is he," Danny said. Two blocks away, Lung looked up and around as a sudden deep cracking noise echoed through the street. The ABB gang members jumped back, some of them going back-to-back as they looked around for the source of the noise. And then the tree fell, aimed for Lung. The gang members broke and ran, all but the four lieutenants all sprinting to get clear as the thirty-year-old maple tree tipped and creaked and toppled, leaves streaming as they crashed down on the burning supervillain. Heavy branches beat at his head and his shoulders and his back, and he roared in frustration and burned his way through the foliage, burning the wood to ash even as it scratched him, bruised him. His ankle was just starting to heal through, and he tested half his weight on that side as he tried to pull himself through.

And then the sprinkler broke in the narrow front lawn at his side, water splashing all around, hissing as it hit his aura of flames. It puddled under his feet, dampened and darkened the pavement. Rat teeth gnawed through the pipe just as rat teeth had gnawed through the maple tree's trunk. Hundreds of rats could do the work of dozens of beavers, they were all rodents after all, and maple was a fairly soft wood. Lung cursed as he hobbled along, the water coughing up clouds of steam as it struck his fire, and his flames grew thin where they were doused. More water burst forth, he walked out of one spray and into the next, waiting for his knee to heal. Lung paused, looked up. There was another maple tree ahead, this one's branches entwined with power lines. He looked down at the ankle-deep water that was puddled nearby. With a muttered curse, he steered around that, hobbling well out of the maple's path should it fall towards him. His lieutenants hung back, staring at the ring of rats that stared at them and moved with them.

The tree cracked, falling in a rush, bringing down the power line. Lung hobbled faster, grunting as he limped along at an undignified pace. His lieutenants looked from the rats to him and back. A hydrant burst somewhere nearby, a crescent wrench operated by dozens of paws opened the valves and released a flood of water. Towards Lung. He froze, watched as the streaming water moved his direction, and he looked sideways at the storm drain just between him and it. He relaxed visibly, seeing how the water would pour down the drain and not reach him. The water reached the drain, and immediately spread from there, the drain blocked up from below. Water washed around his bare feet, while a couple dozen rats scampered forward with a downed power line clutched in their teeth. the end of it sparking where the insulation was broken.

Danny Hebert cold actually hear Lung's screams from where he crouched, without listening through the rats. The electrocuted supervillain staggered away, crawling up the maple tree to keep himself clear of the water. The branches bent under his weight, forcing him to keep climbing just to gain scant inches. The branches burned under his hands, and he shut off his flames to keep from burning the support away that kept him up away from the rising water and dangerous electricity. The rats climbed easily, staying safe and clear. Still-burning branches near him scratched at his skin, tiny cuts all over his body. And then the rats hidden in the street began to strike, cutting his Achilles tendon again, nipping through his earlobe and the septum of his nose. The man bellowed in frustration and pain, but the metal scales still did not emerge from his skin. His powers boosted the longer he was fighting, but Danny's bear-baiting tactics denied him the ability to fight. The man was being picked apart, injured, humiliated, but there was nothing and nobody to fight against and so his powers were trapped at low ebb. His lieutenants, retreating to higher ground, saw it all.

Lung finally got himself up the branches and away from the water, laying on the thick bole of the trunk. He crawled on his belly, half his limbs useless, and burst into fire again to keep the rats at bay. The tree bark burned slower than the branches, so he could ignite here without falling into the electrocuted water. As long as he could hold his fire up, he could keep from getting injured while he pulled himself to safety. The driveway in front of him was dark with dampness as he approached, but it wasn't the deep water he was worried about. His hand grazed the dark spot, and it ignited with a whoosh. Gasoline streaming down the driveway burned fast and hot, bright against his eyes, and he recoiled as his hands and face were burned.

"Hey dispatch," Danny murmured. "Lung's only immune to his own fire. If he hits a flammable liquid, he's vulnerable."

"I'll see about adding that to his write-up," Taylor answered.

Lung staggered to his feet, still burning, clutching his hands to his chest while he howled with rage and pain. He limped away, faster and faster, almost blind in his rush, and bulled through a wooden fence and into an antique store. Rats watched as the building lit aflame, and then the building next door, and the two across the back alley. Lung was throwing fire all about to cover his escape. "Lung is making a break for it, using his fire to keep the rats away," Danny said. "I'm breaking off, or he'll set fire to half the city until I do."

"Got it," Taylor said. "I'm calling fire services to let them know."

"Next time we fight Lung, we call the fire department first to let them get ready in advance," Danny said. "Oh, hang on, the Protectorate has arrived."

Armsmaster pulled up on his high-tech motorcycle, and stared around at the scene. Fallen trees, power lines, gushing water, burning buildings, an oil slick of gasoline burning on top of the spreading water. His suit was well-insulated, so he stepped off the kickstand and waded to get the power line, lifting it clear of the water and hauling it to a safe distance, setting it on top of a car with the sparking end of it hanging harmlessly in the air.

"Thanks," said a deep, hollow voice behind him. Armsmaster spun, his Halberd whipping up into a combat stance leveled right on the figure. It was cloaked, and either armored or made of something harder than flesh. The face was blank and featureless, smooth except for a pair of glinting eyes. The hood was green, and as the light-correction mode of his visor kicked in Armsmaster could see that the cloaked figure's mask and armor were made out of thick-grained wood, with only a narrow slice of flesh visible at his throat. His cloak trailed down from green to tan to brown, its spreading wings merging into a horde of rats that seemed to stretch as far as the eye could see, all staring at the Armsmaster. The other man paused, caught off-guard by the sudden movement of the Halberd. "Uh, I mean, thanks for taking care of that. I really didn't know how I was going to fix that power line so it was safe."

"Some kind of urban druid?" Armsmaster asked, staring around at the rats, the fallen trees, the burst pipes. "Control over the natural world, creatures and plants?" He considered to himself that the downed power line would represent the element of lightning.

"What?" asked the wood-faced figure. "No, not... not entirely." The Armsmaster's onboard software included a vocal-stress analyzer to tell when someone was lying, and it read that answer as 'inconclusive', a rare reading for it to show. Part of that may be interference from the wooden mask, and maybe the druid had a strange vocal inflection that the software was not calibrated for. "Um, thanks for showing up, Armsmaster, but I may have called you out for nothing," the druid said. "Lung got away, and if we try following him right now he'll just keep burning buildings until we stop." Another pipe burst in the lawn, spraying water towards a burning building down the street. Overhead, Armsmaster could hear thunder rumbling as the druid called in a rainstorm to help stop the blazes. He had to wonder if wifi internet signals were an urban druid's natural element, that he could send an email to the Protectorate without any onboard computer at all. Armsmaster's onboard scanners didn't show even a smart phone signal on the man, just a regular cell phone in a pocket.

Colin, the Armsmaster, frowned and flipped the Halberd around, planting the butt of the shaft on the ground and leaning on it slightly. "Lung? He was here?"

"He was going to kill some kids," the druid said. "I'm not sure who."

Armsmaster grimaced. "Probably the Undersiders. He and they have been jockeying for this district for a few weeks. We've been interested in taking them down, but they're slippery. Teenagers, but they always seem to be a step ahead of us, or more. Might have done us a favor if you had stayed back and let Lung and the Undersiders fight it out amongst themselves. Whoever wins takes over the territory and we get the balance of power back."

"Oh, come on, you can't really mean that," the druid said, shocked. "You sound like you're conceding these neighborhoods to the villains."

Armsmaster shook his head. "It's not like that. But a power vacuum is dangerous." In the distance, fire-engine sirens could be heard approaching. "Will you be joining the Protectorate?"

"Soon," the druid said. "But first, I want to see how much I can help on my own. I've got a life, a daughter, a job, and I still need all those things. Joining the Protectorate is a huge obligation of time, and I'm not ready."

"You're not wrong at all about that," Colin scoffed, half-grinning.

"If I may ask?..." the druid let the words hang.

"Ask."

"Why do you patrol? You're a tinker, right? An inventor? Isn't your time spent better in your lab, rather than driving aimlessly around the city hoping that you happen to be in the right place when a crime happens?"

Armsmaster's mouth creased in a frown. "Not sure you want to join, but you want to tell us how to do our jobs. Look, I'm a tinker, but sometimes I need some fresh air, some time outside of the workshop."

"No doubt," Danny Hebert said through his wooden mask. "It's just a question what was bugging me. Thanks for humoring me. If I call again this time next week, will you be on patrol again?"

"Probably," Armsmaster admitted. "Saturday nights are a hotspot, it's all-hands-on-deck time, and my patrol route takes me past here."

"Super," the druid said, stepping back. The rats receded like a tide with him, as the fire engines approached. "I'll che