19

Chapter Text

Things became… crowded.

Taylor had retreated back to her father's house, but that still left all four of the former Undersiders, Sparky, Greg, Theo, Rune, and all three of Rachel's dogs. The Lost Workshop was a fairly good size, but it was still getting a bit close. Reluctantly Bayleaf had broken down and had set about expanding into the abandoned buildings around them. Mr. Hebert had been more than helpful in this, showing him how to set up a shell corporation to purchase the properties, then shuffle them around in rather creative ways that all but made them disappear into the legal undergrowth, metaphorically speaking. (In Earth Bet, as in Bayleaf's home reality, if all the companies incorporated in Nevada actually had office buildings in the desert they wouldn't have room for the sand.)

Taylor was startled at how much her father knew about such legal grey areas. Bayleaf, not so much. Even if a man was honest as the day is long himself, one did not help run a Union shop without learning a few of the less straight-and-narrow methods of financial obfuscation, and how to work with the system or manipulate it to one's own ends. And it needs to be said: Taylor was her Daddy's little girl. In their new, challenging, extralegal circumstances, her gifts for strategy and cunning and resource management that had surfaced in another timeline as the villainness Skitter thrived and bloomed.

Her first suggestion was an obvious one. Corporate registration in Earth Bet, just as in Bayleaf's own homeworld, was a wonderful thing. In a few days, with her Daddy's help fetching and filing the paperwork and her filling it out, Bayleaf's little businesses was now four different perfectly respectable corporations in the lovely state of Delaware: Worldcraft Inc, Azeroth Ltd, Agents Inc., and ZugZug Inc. Azeroth Ltd. in particular was now the proper owner (on some legal document in some file in some state, somewhere) of the Lost Workshop as well as the entire block of warehouses mashed up around it.

Making sure they remained hidden was Bayleaf's brainstorm. While they could now use the warehouses to load and unload deliveries, it wouldn't do to have capes seen streaming in and out. He put Lei Ling to work and had her summon an Earth Elemental to dig a tunnel out through the floor. They didn't have to dig far: fortune smiled and they struck one of the many abandoned tunnels that ran hither and thither below the city. Like most port cities Brockton Bay had once had its share of smugglers over its many centuries, from colonial traders evading the British tariffs to moonshiners keeping the throats wet at local speakeasies. There were more than a few little excavation projects like this hidden below the city. The tunnels they'd hit wandered for quite a stretch, popping out in several obscure and not-so-obscure locations.. perfect for their needs.

Bayleaf briefly contemplated making an entire underground base and moving into that, but Taylor pointed out that many of the tunnels were already wet with standing water-- Brockton Bay sat on a rather large aquifer, so between that and the fairly heavy annual rainfall one couldn't dig down very far without a great deal of machinery to continually pump out the drainage. In the end Bayleaf put his faith in the expert opinion of the local girl and merely had Lei Ling's Elemental reinforce the tunnel with stone arches, but otherwise left it untouched. It wasn't perfect, but at least now they could get out of the lair without pouring into the back alley like midgets from a clown car.

Clown cars. He would have to do something about transportation…

Their biggest coup was an accident. The warehouses were, to put it mildly, horribly run down inside. In order to make them more livable Adrian secured several steel shipping containers from the DWU at reasonable prices, shrunk them down and had Shar'Din teleport them to the Lost Workshop. Several of the walls separating the various warehouses had been knocked out. Then the cargo crats had been stacked up, bolted in place, fitted with plumbing and electric lines and cheap flooring, and turned into simple if functional rooms and workspaces. It divided the larger spaces into multiple floors, and turned the entire thing into a warren of steel-walled rooms, storage spaces, tunnels, and corridors, linked by metal staircases and bridged by walkways scavenged from the warehouses that branched out in every direction from the original Workshop. It looked, as Fennek put it, like a habitrail for a race of giant gerbils... but it worked.

One of the outstanding advantages of owning a cluster of small warehouses was that nobody thought a great deal about them receiving odd shipments all hours of day or night, especially if they were dropped off at two or three different loading docks at different times. paranoia had every government agency in the alphabet soup tracking everything that crossed a state line... but money talked. The near obliteration of international shipping due to the Endbringers was a worldwide problem, and EVERY company out there had stockpiles of 'lost causes' that they had no hope of unloading, so when someone came along waving cash and asking for "discreet delivery," they were inclined to listen.. The Alliance managed to get such eyebrow-raising purchases as eight bedroom furniture sets, several hundred pound bags of potting soil, ceramic pots and grow-lights, a thousand plastic greenhouse roof panels, several hundred pound bags of semiprecious stones, several TONS of metal ingots, jumbo bags of doggie chow, archery equipment, random machine parts, a thousand sheets of vellum, plant seeds and seedlings of every variety trundled up to their very doorstep… all without stirring any more attention than any typical in-and-out storage facility in any harbor city.

It took very little to encourage the other Warcrafted to exercise their talents. The urge to craft was as strong on the Warcrafted as it would have been on any regular Tinker; all it took was giving them a supply of raw materials and they set to it with a will.

One of the warehouses, thanks to years of storms and neglect, had almost no roof left; doors and windows were boarded up, frosted plastic panels swiftly and discreetly filled the gaps in the tin roof, rows of pots and shelves were laid out, pipes were laid, and the empty space was converted into a greenhouse to fulfil the needs of the team's alchemists, herbalists and inscriptionists. A few instructions to the GadgetBots and it was quickly built; a mere touch of Druidic power and rows of potted seeds became rows of thriving potted plants. In less than a day a burned-out husk of a building had been transformed into a hidden garden paradise, and Lei Ling and Hemlokk were soon picking it over for ingredients for their respective inks and potions. Their undisguised glee at creating their first batch of healing potions was unforgettable.

Another of the warehouses had been claimed by Rachel and her dogs. Most of it was dedicated to running space for Brutus, Judas and Angelica, but to her old teammates' surprise she set up a portion of the upper gallery as a target range and a storage space for her weapons. What might have surprised them more was that she set up more than just facilities for dogs. If one were to look at the pens, habitats and enclosures that were rapidly filling "her" warehouse space, one could be forgiven for assuming she was planning the beginnings of a small zoo…

The tanning and skinning equipment were cause for more immediate concern. Rachel was a hunter now and the urge to use those skills was particularly strong with her. She had found a long, circuitous route to the woods on the outskirts of town or to the local parks and was spending a vast portion of time disappearing into them with her dogs and her spear… Bayleaf only hoped to have things sorted out before he found her busy making a stray-cat coat or there was a notable dip in the local squirrel and pigeon population.

Sparky-- Shar'Din-- soon had two or three cargo rooms as his own, one with the walls lined with shelves and the shelves packed with jars, bottles and tins ready to fill with Enchanting materials, the other filled with swatches of cloth, dressmaker dummies snatched from a shuttered department store and a shiny new sewing machine or two. His plea for dozens of yards of cotton, wool, linen, silk and other more exotic cloth got him some odd looks from some of the others, but the blood elf was oblivious. He and Parian were soon thick as thieves, exploring their increasingly exotic craft. Bayleaf wasn't certain what they were working on, but he'd put in requests for some bottomless haversacks for everyone. God knew they'd need them.

Greg had been surprisingly easy to please. Once the load of ingots arrived he'd taken tools in hand, muttered something about 'things he'd been planning for ages,' and all but took over one of the furnaces and the smelter. The sound of anvils ringing could be heard day and night ever since… to the annoyance of several of the other tenants of the Lost Workshop. Bayleaf in fact was growing concerned about him; the former gamer nerd was becoming very shut-mouthed and reclusive, and seemed obsessed with his work at the forge. He never even showed any interest in using their semi-pirated internet or in playing any of the computer games Aisha brought in. As little as Bayleaf knew about him, it seemed very unlike him. It was something of a relief to see Theo… Shen… join him at the forge and lend a paw to his metallurgy. The kid needed friends.

Of course Bayleaf himself probably seemed obsessed at the moment. He had moved his automated parts creator/ recycler system into one of the steel storage containers and had it going full blast, scrap going in one end, Gearspring parts for his engineering toys coming out the other. Between that and the magefires of the furnaces he was pushing the gnomish generator that powered the Workshop to its limits. He and Regent were spending all their time together bent over the tinkering worktables, rebuilding Bayleaf's depleted armory-- and finally beginning work on some of the bigger projects, now that Bayleaf had an extra pair of tinkering hands.

Everyone, Warcrafted or Undersider, had at least one gnomish handcannon or rifle now. It was also worth noting that, at Fennek's wheedling insistence, everyone had a replica of Glory Girl's headband as well.

It was a relief to Bayleaf that Regent dove in so readily. The poor neophyte Vulperan had been suffering from his neural rebuild, practically reliving all his worst memories in vivid detail, like a remastered recording. Working on the engineering projects seemed to help him fend off the flashbacks, at least for a while.

As for Brian and Lisa, they were in the thick of things as well. At Taylor's suggestion, Lisa and Aisha were busy pushing the base's cobbled-together computer system to the limit to keep Coil as preoccupied as possible: hacking into Thomas Calvert's files, canceling out his credit cards, revoking his driver's license, changing his legal address of residence, putting him in the BBPD as on record with over a thousand moving violations… Lisa had long plotted out all sorts of cyber warfare to wage against Coil, the supervillain; but until a brainstorming session with the team's resident juvenile delinquent she had never considered the possibilities available for tormenting her enemy by going after his civilian identity.

And like many people who lead a double life, Thomas Calvert had gone to a great deal of effort to protect one identity and only given passing attention to the other... and Aisha it turned out was an undiscovered genius at finding hilarious ways to torment someone via mundane means. Even as Lisa was embezzling funds from Coil's criminal operations she was keeping the would-be Bond villain hopping by having his public identity subscribe to a gay porn publication, put on a watch list for sex offenders (public nudity), and declared legally dead. The cackling of the two as they worked late in the night was enough to keep the male members of the troupe awake and nervous.

Brian, on the other hand, was being kept busy as a 'face.' Despite the annoying disadvantage of being an African American in a city half-overrun by a bunch of neonazi clowns, he was good at it. He was tall, handsome, charming, well spoken and could work as easily in a three piece suit or in a set of biker leathers. He was perfect for delivering packages, doing mail runs, dead drops or pickups, or for speaking with people face-to-face that the Warcrafted most definitely did not want to.

He did, however, demand one concession: A legitimate job. That had been easy enough. A bit of hacking, some paperwork hocus pocus and computer wizardry, and he was now the sole employee, at Taylor's suggestion, of Azeroth Ltd as a "Corporate Representative Liason." His salary was in paid out through the shell corporation via a quite legitimate trust fund in his and Aisha's name (which had been tidily stuffed full of cash from his share of the take from Lei Ling's impromptu jewel heist and leached off of Coil's illegal bank accounts.)

The goal after all was for Brian to claim custody of his little sister. And it was effective; already the paperwork was moving through the digestive tract of the body politic. It was a source of sneering sarcasm for all involved that the bureaucratic nincompoops at Child Protection Services regarded him as a "fit" guardian now that he seemingly had a struggling nine-to-five job--- whereas if they had fabricated a seven-figure trust fund for him and his sister (as was Adrian's first suggestion) then the army of Government Moral Superiors would have probably fought them tooth and nail...

All of this had progressed with terrifying speed. Most of it was accomplished within a week or less. As limited and clumsy as they were, it was amazing the sort of force multipliers that parahuman or Warcrafted powers could be, if applied right-- to say nothing of what was possible with an ever-growing number of GadgetBots to help with the scutwork. It sort of made Bayleaf wonder why most Tinkers didn't start out making helper robots first, then moving on to their zap guns and shrink rays or whatever.

But they were hitting a plateau. They simply did not have the exotic metals, minerals, or other materials to bring themselves up to the threshold they needed. The few enchantment materials that Bayleaf had gathered were already exhausted, save for a few crumbs of strange dust here and a shard of essence there. Disenchanting their own crafts would reclaim some few of those arcane ingredients, but in the end would gain them nothing; it would just be a slow form of self-cannibalism, like trying to subsist entirely on one's own recycle bin. It was time, in warcrafter parlance, to go farm.

But before even that, there was one minor matter that Bayleaf and Hemlokk-- Adrian and Taylor-- needed to finish up.

School, Adrian decided, was stupid.

No, seriously, it was a waste of time. And not just because of this "get up, go to school, save the world" nonsense circumstances had stuck him in. Seriously, hadn't those idiots in PRT heard of homeschooling? Or hired tutors? High school dropouts and single moms were routinely doing a better job educating and socializing their children than million-dollar public schools packed with college-educated teachers. But no. Public Schooling was a system over a century old in the Western world... which, with the Western world's mayfly memory span, made it seem an almost sacred institution. The truth that noone wanted to admit was that it was not; it was in fact nothing but a hundred-year-old social engineering experiment, one that was failing dismally.

Of course Adrian could just be bitter. He was, after all, currently STUCK in that social engineering experiment--- again--- and was consequently daily having to resist the urge to punch certain peoples' heads through the nearest brick wall.

At the moment though he contented himself with a little random on-the-spot street justice.

Going to the can in Winslow could be an adventure all by itself; roll the dice and consult the random encounter table, kids: will it be a drug deal, an attempted homicide or just some kids sneaking a smoke in the toilet stalls? Today it looked like a little good old fashioned brutality. Adrian had walked in and found two punks giving some kid a swirly. They had apparently been at it for a few minutes and to judge by their victim's weakening struggles, were doing a damned good job of coming close to actually drowning him. Adrian cut the festivities short by grabbing the two punks by the shirt collar and banging their heads together as hard as he could.

The two morons slumped to the floor, the sound of coconuts echoing in their noggins, their victim's legs falling to the floor of the stall with a splash. Adrian grabbed the kid by the belt-- it looked to be a freshman and a scrawny one at that-- and yanked him out of the toilet before he drowned. The kid dropped to the floor, choking and coughing, toilet water pooling around him as he coughed up water.

"Go get the nurse," Adrian barked at the nearest kid in the bathroom. The kid jumped and ran. Adrian cussed to himself as he heaved the two bullies to the side and helped the half-drowned freshman sit up. The kid was still coughing. Adrian hoped the nurse brought some penicillin or poison treatment or something; God only knew what was in that toilet water.

Poison treatment, right. Adrian dug in his backpack and pulled out a couple of thumb-sized vials; one red, one yellow-green. "Here, drink these," he said, thumbing the stoppers. The kid took them and, after a moment's pause, knocked them back. His cough cleared up and he actually perked up a bit. As Adrian watched a barely noticeable bruise on the kid's cheek vanished. It was only a beginner's healing potion and an antitoxin, but it was more than enough to do the trick. He was going to have to remember to congratulate Taylor on her brewing.

"What--" the kid started to ask.

"Energy shot," Adrian lied glibly, palming the vials and pocketing them. No sense giving the authority figures an excuse to freak; this was the age of zero tolerance after all. Giving a fellow student an aspirin was enough to get you dragged out of school in handcuffs if some Niedermeyer spotted you.

The school nurse came bustling in-- was it some sort of mandatory thing that all school nurses "bustle?" Adrian would give anything to see one that scurried, or loped-- and let out a sound of disgust as she took in the scene: two unconscious upperclassmen, a sopping wet freshman lying on the floor in front of a toilet stall, and the school troublemaker crouching next to him. "Oh, what happened here?" she said, giving Adrian an accusing glare.

Adrian stared at her and jerked his thumb at the two concussed bullies. "They slipped in their own piss," he snarked. "S'not safe trying to drown another student in a toilet, you know." Her face puckered up like she'd licked a thistle, but she went to examine the knocked-out students. One of them moaned as she looked him over and the other moved slightly. "Oh joy, they're alive," Adrian said in a monotone.

Well, this just soured his whole day beyond words. Even as he was being marched to the Principal's office, he was brooding over it. He had hoped that this next few days would be the last he and Taylor would have to deal with things here, but it should have been obvious to him that Winslow's problems ran deeper than just three spoiled brat girls. He palmed and pocketed the spycams hidden in Blackwell's office while the officious bat bumbled around her office, swearing under her breath while she hunted for missing forms and banged her shins on everything (she hadn't fixed Taylor's little sabotage YET?)

What they had already would certainly shut down Emma, Sophia and Madison for good. But could he really walk away after that, and think it was enough?

Taylor's first clue that something up was the crowd of girls gathered at one end of the hall. She recognized the formation; a half dozen or so girls gathered together, just ever-so-casually hemming in another girl, keeping her from getting away. It was certainly strange seeing one of these little hen-peck parties from the outside. She'd been at the center of them more often than not.

She drew closer, close enough to hear the barbs the other girls were throwing back and forth about the one in the middle.

"Is she actually fatter than she was last week?"

"Ugh, yeah. I'd slit my own throat before I let myself get that porky."

"S'not surprising. I heard the boys pay her in Twinkies for hand jobs."

"Or blow jobs."

"Uh uh. No way they'd let anything that important near her mouth--!" The bitch-circle sniggered and jeered, a poisonous and hateful sound.

Taylor drew closer. For a wonder, none of the Bitches Three were present. This was apparently a little freelance bullying by the "in" girls, no Queen Bee supervision necessary. The girl in the center was nobody she knew; just a shortish, slightly plump girl she'd seen in the hallways from time to time. She was curled up around her books and trying to get into her locker. Every time she got the door opened one of the taller girls behind her would slam it shut.

Something very bad and very dangerous curled inside Taylor, just under her breastbone. She felt the first inklings of the Change; the prickling in her pores, the itching in her nails trying to turn into claws. If she'd had a mirror she'd have seen flecks of gold growing in her eyes. Her senses sharpened suddenly, the scents of each of the girls suddenly jumping out in her mental tableau in bas-relief, individual aromas of perfume and hairspray and-- cayenne?

The girl nearest to her had an oh-so-cute little "bimbo purse" hanging by a strap from her shoulder. Taylor zeroed in on it. The bag was open; she could see the gleam of keys inside and a very familiar sort of metal cylinder dangling from the keychain…

In Western culture at least, girls fight with emotional attacks rather than physical. The tendency of most adolescent girls confronted with this sort of situation would be to try, with very questionable success, some cutting or clever verbal attack to try to get the bullies to back off. At one time Taylor herself might have opted for that sort of confrontation.

But she'd changed. She was the Wolf now, and the Wolf knew that words were for bleating sheep.

Her hand dove into the purse and deftly plucked out the keychain with its pepper spray canister; for a rogue with epic-level pickpocketing it was child's play. With a practiced flick of her thumb she opened the cap and emptied the can in a sweeping circle, catching all the girls surrounding their victim square in the eyes. She crimped the can nozzle with her thumb, making it spring a leak, and dropped the keychain back in the bimbette's purse…. All of this in a single motion that took less than a second.

The circle of girls fell back, shrieking and screaming. Taylor grabbed the round-faced girl's wrist and dragged her, both their eyes and noses streaming, to the nearest bathroom. She wedged the door shut, jamming it, and pulled the girl to the sink so they could splash their faces and eyes.

Pepper spray was a chump's version of self defense; it was inaccurate, it got everywhere, it had an effective range of "please stab me" and it incapacitated the victim almost as badly as the attacker. That worked in her favor right now, though. None of the girls had gotten a good look at her, and they were going to have far more immediate burning issues on their mind. Any would-be rescuers would too: that slow leak she'd left in the bimbette's pepper spray can would make things incredibly uncomfortable for anyone who got too close. The Bitch Squad was going to be tied up for, oh, at least a good while.

Of course her own wolfen senses were making it that much worse for herself, but she guessed you couldn't have everything. While the other girl moaned and tried fruitlessly to soothe her eyes with cold water, Taylor fished blindly around in her backpack. She squinted at the vials in her hands. Red for healing, green for antitoxin, she supposed that would work--

She gulped down two, then forced two of the vials in the girl's hands. "Here, drink these-- no, DRINK them," she insisted when the girl went to pour them in her eyes. The girl swallowed the contents, then blinked and sighed in relief as the potions began to work.

"Wow," the girl said, blinking in surprise this time. Even the red was fading from her eyes, Taylor noticed. She indulged in a moment of smugness: her first potion-making triumph. "What was that stuff?"

"Herbal remedy," Taylor fibbed. "What… what the hell was all that about in the hall?"

The girl looked at her like she was stupid. "Since when does it have to be about anything?" she asked bitterly. "They were bored, they're evil bitches, and I was there. That's all that mattered." She splashed more water on her face.

"...You're right," Taylor mumbled. "Dumb question, never mind. Are your eyes okay?"

"I'll live." The girl hunched up over the sink, trying to shut Taylor out with her shoulders and the fall of her crimped hair. Taylor wasn't sure what to do. She'd known, intellectually, that she couldn't possibly be the only bullying victim in the school. But she'd been so wrapped up in her own misery that she'd never even noticed other students being preyed upon.

Or she had… but she hadn't cared. She cringed inside as she remembered instances; moments where she'd caught sight of some boy being pushed around in a corner, or overheard some girl being verbally cut to ribbons. Or… how many of those 'gang fights' she'd seen, avoided, and dismissed had just been some luckless kid getting thrashed on for being the wrong color in the wrong place and time?

And did that matter? Did some kid who got drafted into the ABB by Lung "Mister Persuasion" the Dragon deserve to go through hell in school any more than any other kid? How many kids joined gangs just to feel like they were protected? Didn't every kid deserve to at least feel safe going to school?

Taylor and Adrian could take what they already had and force the school--- no, call it what it was, blackmail-- and blackmail the school to transfer them out. They could even get Sophia, Madison and Emma suspended or expelled, even. But what about all the other bullies, and the gangs, and everything else? What about all the other kids still stuck here?

Taylor felt sick. She could bail out like a rat abandoning a sinking ship, but what about this girl here? She was a Warcrafted. She was supposed to be a hero. How could she be a hero if she just saved herself and ran away?

"Uh, hey," the round faced girl said. "T-Thanks I guess." She half-smiled. "That was actually pretty cool." Taylor gave her a half smile back. The girl looked around. "Why aren't they all bombing in here trying to wash that shit off their faces? Or to drag us off by the hair?"

Taylor scratched the back of her head. "Probably because we're in the boy's room," she said, hitching a thumb at the row of urinals behind them. "Oh calm down, I jammed the door," she said to the girl's alarmed look. "I figured this would be the last place they'd look for us, anyway." She looked at the girl and stuck out a hand. "Taylor Hebert."

"Ashlee." The round faced girl took her hand and shook it. "Oh yeah, right," she grimaced. "I've heard Sophia and her friends talking smack about you."

"Wow, small world," Taylor quipped.

"Think it's safe to go out there yet?" Ashlee said, looking at the door.

Taylor thought of the USB drives already piling up back at the Lost Workshop. "Don't worry," she muttered to herself, the decision firming in her mind. "We'll make sure it is one way or the other."

Adrian was stuffing his books in his locker at the end of a long, incredibly irritating day-- really, seriously, he was considering just dropping out-- when he was grappled from behind. Taylor's arms wrapped around him in a rib-creaking hug. "Whuff!" He said. "Not that I'm complaining, but what brought this on?" he chuckled, turning around in her arms to face her.

"Adrian..." She looked up at him. "We need to talk."

That sobered him up quickly. "Do we need someplace private?" he said somberly.

By way of answer she tugged him over to the janitor's closet and pulled him inside, closing the door behind her. She pulled the light chain, illuminating the cramped musty place with a fifty watt bulb. "It's… our plan for taking out the Three Bees," she said.

"Are you having second thoughts?" he asked. There was no judgment in his voice, just an honest question.

"No! Yes… Not..." she paused, trying to gather herself. "It's not enough." At his raised eyebrows she went on. "It's not what you're thinking," she hastily added. "What I mean is…. Sure, we can get Sophia and Emma and Madison suspended or expelled. We can even get the PRT over a barrel, force them to deal with Shadow Stalker. We could probably even arm twist Blackwell into transferring us over to Arcadia or even some other school or even get them to pay through the nose for all that's happened.

"But what about the other kids here? I wasn't the only victim. Emma, Sophia and Madison weren't the only bullies. I get to escape scot free, and the Three Bees go up the river-- but everyone else just gets to shuffle deck chairs..." She shook her head, cringing. "What about Aisha? What about Greg?---" she growled. "Once you and I are gone it'll just be new bullies, new victims and it keeps right on going on..."

She turned away from him, rubbing her arms as if she was cold. "That's not good enough. It's not right. I know we're wasting time on this, that a stupid school is penny ante stuff, I know we're supposed to have an entire world to save, but-- we're supposed to be heroes. I can't be a hero knowing I ran away just to save myself." She took a deep breath. "I don't just want to run away. I want to FIX this. I want to save everybody who's been a victim, not just myself."

Adrian felt warmth fill him. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, her shoulder blades against his chest, and kissed her on the top of her head. "I can't tell you how much I'd hoped you'd say something like that eventually," he said softly.

"I should've said it sooner," she said, guilt ridden.

"You said it soon enough," Adrian insisted.

"I had to save some girl named Ashlee from a bunch of Emma wannabees just a couple of hours ago--"

"I had to rescue some freshman kid from nearly being drowned in a Swirly," Adrian chuckled. "I've been in Blackwell's office all day while she called the cops in and tried to get something to stick to me. Too bad for her the kid I saved told the cops I rescued him. After he got all the Ti-D-Bowl out of his sinuses, anyway."

Taylor laughed a little, mean though it was. "So what do we do…?" she said.

Adrian huffed. "Well. First let me ask. How do you feel about getting a GED?"

She turned her head to look up at him in puzzlement. "A GED?"

Instead of answering the obvious question, Adrian pulled out his phone. "Hello, Aisha? Where are you? … Still in Winslow, good, good. Okay, if you got any cameras still out, pull 'em down and bring 'em in. It's time to make some movie magic."

Another week crawled by.

Shadow Stalker… well, stalked into Director Piggot's office, her cloak flaring dramatically behind her. "I'm here," she said, salty as always. "So what's the big deal this… time…?" She was brought up short as she found herself facing a distinctly unamused looking Emily Piggot across her desk. That was nothing unusual, Piggy was always unamused. What was new were the equally unamused looking Armsmaster, Miss Militia, and quartet of PRT troops surrounding her.

Shadow Stalker hesitated. Before she could muster the nerve to do something precipitous, Piggot spoke. "SIT," she said.

Deciding to play it cool for the moment, or at least telling herself that was her decision, she sat. Before she knew what was what, Armsmaster stepped to her side. There was a metallic clink, and Shadow Stalker was manacled by her wrist to her chair arm. She could see lights blinking on the cuffs; it was Tinkertech, and electrified. She couldn't escape from it. She shook her manacles and glared at the Director. "The hell is this??" She demanded.

Piggot said nothing. She simply scooted her office chair to the side and pulled out a remote, clicking it once. A flatscreen monitor descended from the ceiling behind her. Another button was pressed and the screen lit up. Piggot never took her eyes off her the entire time.

A familiar looking image faded into view: an aerial photo of Winslow High. The camera panned over the building as text began scrolling up the screen and a voiceover began. The voice was female, but digitally altered to be unrecognizable beyond that.

"We are an anonymous group of Brockton Bay public school students. What you are about to see is un-altered footage of day to day activities inside Winslow High School, as recorded by ourselves..."

The aerial footage was followed by scenes from a very recognizable hallway, showing a very recognizable trio of girls in the process of crowding around a fourth. "The three girls here are Madison Clements--" the voice said; an arrow appeared over one girl. "Emma Barnes--" Another arrow appeared. "And Sophia Hess. At the time this was filmed these three girls had been engaged in a two year long bullying campaign against another student… the one you see here." The victim, whose face was not visible from this angle, was circled. The girl was clearly retreating, trying to placate the other three somehow. Without warning the one marked as Sophia-- and it was recognizably her-- lashed out and punched the girl violently, rocking her head back on her shoulders. "The bullying campaign included verbal abuse, harassing emails, theft and destruction of the victim's property and as you can see here, violent physical assaults..."

A choking noise came from Shadow Stalker.

Piggot paused the video. "Something you care to add, Shadow Stalker?" she said in a voice as dry as alum.

"That's not me," Shadow Stalker rasped. "That video's a fake! THAT'S NOT ME!"

"And here we have another bullying incident, this time against a male student," the voice went on, over top footage of a rapidly escalating shove-fest by a group of the school's football players with an asian student in the middle. "If you look in the upper right corner, you can see Mr. Gladly, one of the school teachers, witnessing the incident and promptly walking the other way..." The one-way shoving match rapidly progressed into a beatdown.

Gladly felt a drop of sweat trickle down the back of his shirt collar. The Board of Directors for the Brockton Bay Board of Education looked distinctly unimpressed with either him, or the squirming Principal Blackwell sitting next to him. The recording was only fifteen minutes in, and had shown over a dozen fights, criminal incidents, and unambiguous incidents of physical and other abuse, many with nearby teachers or other staff acting as witnesses.

"This incident was ALSO reported to Principal Blackwell. Once again no meaningful action was taken..."

The Mayor's face was grim; his lips were pressed together so tightly they were white as the Youtube video continued to play. His staff were all seated around the polished oak meeting table, watching as well. The room was as silent as a tomb. For over a solid hour they had sat there and witnessed the disadvantaged children of Brockton Bay being forced to live in an environment so barbaric as to rival that of a maximum security prison. Everyone present knew that heads were going to roll, and Mayor Christner was going to be gleefully swinging the axe.

The dreadful video finally ended. The narrator delivered one last final speech.

"It took us less than a month to accumulate all the footage you have just seen. When we began compiling this, our original intent, as students and victims of this environment, was to try and persuade-- no, to coerce-- Principal Blackwell into expelling the perpetrators and into allowing us to transfer to a better, safer school somewhere else in the Brockton Bay educational system.

"But the more we saw, the more obvious it was how insufficient this would be… and how unfair to the rest of the student body, who could NOT escape this environment this way. We could have used this for bribery or blackmail-- but we are not interested in blackmail."

"We knew, even before we began recording, how useless going through the system would be for obtaining justice. We already tried with Principal Blackwell. We already tried with the board of educators. And already Emma Barnes' father is surely standing on his chair, proclaiming that everything shown here is inadmissable in a court of law--"

"It isn't!" Alan Barnes said, standing up in the back of the auditorium.

This was greeted with censorious gavel-banging. "We are fully aware of what is admissable and inadmissable in a court of law, MISTER Barnes," the man at the gavel said. "This however is a hearing. So you will refrain from further outbursts or you will be removed from these proceedings forcibly. Bailiff, rewind and resume the recording." Alan sat down with a frustrated thump next to his cowed-looking daughter.

"--is inadmissable in a court of law, due to a list of petty legal technicalities he can recite all day.

"But we are not interested in spending months or years and countless tens of thousands of dollars wrangling with… people… like Mister Barnes in a legal battle or class-action lawsuit. Only a fool wrestles a pig in its own wallow." An outraged yelp came from Alan Barnes' direction, and more than a few spiteful chuckles rose elsewhere at the clever dig.

"We are only interested in one thing… getting the truth out where it can't be ignored anymore.

"Which is why we posted this online, on Youtube and on over a dozen other sites, servers and in multiple downloadable formats.

In the cafeteria at Arcadia High, and the dingy gymnasium of Winslow, the students there unknowingly aped each other as they gathered round laptops and cell phones and watched slackjawed as the manifesto unfolded.

"We could blame the gangs and the crime rate for everything wrong in Winslow. But no other school in Brockton Bay suffers problems like this.

"We could blame City Hall for funneling money away from a school in a disadvantaged community like the Docks. But fifty years ago Winslow didn't have a fraction of the budget it has today, and somehow it had none of the problems of gangs, drugs, crime and violence it has today either. Money isn't the problem.

"We could point fingers at a particular staff member-- one particular incompetent teacher or school principal isn't the problem. Though they certainly ought to be held accountable for how they let it fester.

"So who do we blame?

"We lay the blame at the feet of every person in a position of power and authority who knew about this situation, who had the power to FIX this situation, and who out of cowardice, laziness or greed DID NOT FIX IT.

"Because even the students from the poor neighborhoods of Brockton Bay ought to be able to feel safe at school."

Danny Hebert sat back as the video ended, his hands wiping down over his face. He'd just watched over an hour of footage of everything from schoolyard bullying to assault with deadly weapons-- all of it in his little girl's school. "Good night," he said. "I knew it was bad there but I had no idea…" His expression soured. "Half the Dockworker's Union has kids that go to school there or will be in another year--"

He shook his head. "Well, you've certainly thrown the cat in among the pigeons. From what I've heard heads are rolling from the Mayor's office on down. The Mayor's furious because your little world-wide internet broadcast has embarrassed his administration… made it look like it only cares about the rich and influential neighborhoods, suggesting they're siphoning money away from schools like Winslow and into Arcadia…. He's tearing through the Board of Education, tearing heads off shoulders and demanding to know where the school budget is going and why everyone was asleep at the wheel.

"The PRT-- well, Shadow Stalker hasn't been seen in days--"

"And the PHO gossip is that she's been yanked off the streets for disciplinary action," Lisa cut in smugly. "Which, as it so happens, is correct..."

"The Board of Education, well it looks like they're firing pretty much everybody in Winslow, starting with Blackwell and working their way down," Mr. Hebert went on. "Sophia, Madison, Emma and a dozen or so other students are being expelled or suspended..." his expression soured. "Alan is fighting Emma's expulsion tooth and nail of course, but it's pretty much a done deal."

He looked at his daughter gravely. "Even without those three--- If I had known how bad that school was, I would never have let you go there… no, forget that. I'm not letting you stay there another day. I don't know how we'll wrangle you an entry to Arcadia, but--"

"Well it's not like you can't afford it," Brian said, half amused. The rest of the Warcrafted (and the last two Undersiders) had gathered in the Lost Workshop around the big screen to watch the video Lisa, Taylor and Adrian had spliced together. "In case anyone's forgotten the cast iron safe full of bills and gemstones in the next room." He chuckled as Mr. Hebert blinked in surprise; he'd apparently forgotten that his little girl was now a millionaire or close to it. "You hear that, Aisha? We're getting you out of Winslow." He called over to his sister, who was rooting more sodas out of the fridge.

"Really? Ariiight!"

"Yeah, you ain't got the grades for Arcadia, but now we got the money we could get you into Immaculata--"

"Aaaaugh, no, not the NUNS!!"

Grue spent the next few minutes laughing himself sick.

"I've been meaning to ask about that," Mr. Hebert said. "Most of you kids are still school age--"

"GED," Lisa said, waving a hand.

"Same here," Brian agreed.

"Can't go to school," Lok'Tara grunted. She was sitting off to one side surrounded by her dogs, sharpening her hunting spear. "Don't need to anyway."

"Couldn't care less," Fennek said cheerfully, kicking up his heels. He was ensconced in an overstuffed chair with a bag of doritos and a soda as big as himself, the Vulparen all but vanishing into the cushions.

"Homeschooled mostly," Lei Ling said, wincing a bit as she remembered why. Most homeschooled families were perfectly normal, healthy and well-adjusted people; the Herren clan was one of the unpleasant exceptions.

"Tutored at home," Shen contributed.

"But you will all be pursuing your education," Danny Hebert pressed.

Adrian sighed and sat back. "Actually, I'm going to be dropping out," he said. At Mr. Hebert's upset look he continued, "Oh I'll get my GED-- The silly people who run the world do like their paperwork after all-- but higher education isn't for me. The only reason I went into that hellhole in the first place, Mr. Hebert, was to get your daughter out."

"But an education is important, Adrian," Danny Hebert said, upset.

Adrian looked at him, an oddly amused expression on his lupine face. "Really? ...Okay, let's examine that statement. Why?"

Danny opened his mouth, but Adrian interrupted. "No really, why? Think about it, sir. Why? To learn a vocation? A secure income? I've seen people with college degrees waiting tables for a living. And how many of your dockworkers are sitting idle for lack of work?

" Mr. Hebert, I arrived on this planet with literally nothing but the clothes on my back and within a week I had secured enough money that I could be living on Captain's Hill right now. I can pick gemstones and precious metals out of the ground by feel. I've been implanted with a comprehensive knowledge of engineering, not just the blueprints for a few toys but the underlying principles, that I could walk into any industry on the planet and demand a seven figure salary… and get it. An income or a vocation is not a problem."

"What about broadening your horizons, expanding your vision?" Mr. Hebert protested. "You need to get a glimpse of the bigger world out there--"

"With all due respect, sir, have you met any college kids lately?" Adrian said with a snort. "You'll never find a bigger bunch of insulated, close minded, arrogant, prejudiced tosspots in your life. If an education broadens your mind, I'd hate to see what narrows it!

"You don't broaden your horizons by sitting in a classroom, poring over a grossly overpriced stack of books and learning to get top marks by agreeing with everything your professor says. You expand your horizons by going outside, finding the nearest horizon and walking towards it."

"The thing is, Mr. Hebert," Adrian pressed on when he saw the discomfited look on Danny's face. "This broken, corrupted, overpriced and defective so-called educational system, even if it were at it's best, doesn't really have anything substantial to offer us. I know that, after over a hundred years of self-promotion, the educational system here has become a cultural touchstone…a sort of symbolic rite-of-passage. But that's all that it is. It adds no more of substance to a person than a primitive tribe's ritual tattoos, or bungee jumping off a platform as a rite of manhood.

"We've already gained everything worth getting from them. And anything we didn't, we could get somewhere else-- vocational school, self education-- for far less of our blood, sweat, tears and sanity.

"He's right, Daddy," Taylor said, putting a hand on her father's shoulder. "The school system-- it just doesn't have anything to offer us anymore." She snorted, thinking of Winslow's bully and gangster ridden halls and its dismal educational staff. "If it ever did."

"And in our particular case… all the Warcrafted… We've already surpassed them. Heck, between us, with our knowledge of herbology, leatherworking, metallurgy, chemistry, animal domestication, medicine, clothmaking, weaponscrafting, mechanical design and construction, to say nothing of our arcane knowledge, we could literally rebuild civilization from ground up. Take it from the stone age to the modern age singlehanded within a few years. Go to school? We could build a school, and serve as half the staff!"

"Don't get me wrong," Adrian said. "If Taylor wants to finish out traditional high school and go to a traditional college, I'd be there cheerleading her all the way. Heck, I'd buy her textbooks and carry them from class to class for her. It's just that there are better, and wiser, ways to get everything those institutions offer." He looked around. "Especially with the tasks ahead of us."

Danny Hebert's response was surprisingly muted. The man ran his hand over his balding head wearily and looked at his daughter. "So… what are you planning to do?" he said.

"I'm… thinking of trying for my GED," she said. "They offer the test in Brockton Bay near the end of summer. If I study hard, I think I can pass." She shrugged. "Then… I think maybe a year or so off-- I hear we're going to be kind of busy during that time," she added wryly, giving Bayleaf a sidelong glance. "Then I'll think about college. But right now I kind of think saving the world takes precedence over getting a good report card."

Danny fell back in his chair, his cheeks puffed out. "I suppose I can live with that," he said.

"What about me?" Aisha said suddenly, poking her brother. "Do I get some options?"

"Like what?" Brian said. Aisha looked over at Adrian expectantly.

"Well, there's home schooling, correspondence schooling, which is really just homeschooling only with more postage… tutoring, which is just the teacher coming to see YOU…."

"I'll take 'idle rich uneducated dropout' for $500, Alex," Fennek quipped, munching a chip. Lisa swatted him with a sofa pillow. "Augh, my doritos!" He stuck his nose down in the bag to observe the damage, grumble-whining to himself.

"Truth time: is it harder than regular school?" Aisha said skeptically.

"Oh, definitely," Adrian said. "It's always harder when you go off the beaten path. You got to decide for yourself though whether it's better."

"Well," Shen said. "Now that we've successfully turned the Brockton Bay educational system on its ear, what's our next step?"

"We've all got some things to deal with," Adrian said. "Equipment to finish, personal matters to close out--

"First off, we're running low on arcane ingredients." There was some grumbled agreements around the room about this. There had been some quibbling over the rapidly vanishing store of arcana. "We need a steadier supply of the stuff, and sifting through garage sale junk isn't going to cut it anymore. But I have a few ideas on that. I'll be going to see Faultline again… but also, we need to make contact with Uber and Leet."

"Why those two losers?" Aisha snorted. But Lisa squinted at him, then gave him a knowing smile.

"We also need to see about yanking the plug on Coil for good," Adrian said. "Stringing him along has been hilarious, I'm sure--" several of the girls snickered. "But it's time to put him to bed. The PRT is supposedly planning a move on him, but… considering who's really at the top in the PRT, I'd rather not run the risk they'll softball the guy." The others nodded grimly; finding out that Cauldron had created Coil and many other villains had been a shock; learning that Cauldron was in control of the Protectorate and the PRT and making them sandbag against villains that Cauldron wanted to keep in circulation had been an outrage.

"And third, we need to figure out Parian's power… and we need to contact Flechette."

"Why them in particular?" Danny asked.

"Because we've got it on good sources that Parian's power, somehow, in some way, is a threat to Behemoth," Adrian said, leaning forward so his elbows rested on his knees and steepling his clawed fingers together. "And it's a confirmed fact that Flechette is carrying the Stinger Shard… the weapon which the Entities use to fight one another, and which can kill an Endbringer. If she knows how to use it.

"The next Endbringer attack is due literally any day, so time is already running out."