6.5

If you finished up early enough, you even had plans to try out some of the crosswords in the newspaper as a potential hobby – though the disinterest you felt in even the idea before trying it didn't bode well – and possibly even getting a start on some of the beginner's sign language that you had downloaded from the University's site.

Practising often and early was the best way to get into any new activity, you had learned that much from your many attempts at cooking since starting to try new recipes not too long earlier, and rushing yourself past the stage of burning spices in a pan rather than toasting them had been the fastest way to access flavour.

Pulling on your trainers, you took the street for your usual morning jog and make a circuit in the opposite direction of your house than you had the previous time, again trying to take notes of anything local that could give you information about the area. Picking up more and more about the city you were in was difficult, and couldn't begin to replace the lifetime experience you had in Brockton Bay, but life was lived a single day at a time and there was no shortcut for experience. You simply had to live it.

As you felt your feet pound the pavement, you ran through some of the issues of the move in your head. Somehow, thinking while moving made things much easier, and even when solutions didn't come to problems there was a certain levity that the exercise added to them. Your lungs were hard at work, blood was pumping, and that made everything else seem a little bit less intimidating.

Vicky and Amy's ongoing tensions which seemed to be cooling into an uneasy truce. Gallant's attempts at stopping Amy from going absolutely off the wall. The ever present threat of Lung that you had left behind – even knowing that he wasn't likely to cause much trouble for at least a little while as a result of your thinker power's investigations.

It all seemed a little out of reach, but somehow considering it made it feel a little more immediate and tangible. Even the void in your head – the corona, you had learned it was called – seemed to agree, and surged and pulsed with the same energy that you felt from the run. Endorphins were a brain chemical, as far as you knew, so maybe the corona received some kind of kickback from the jog as well.

Could go some way to explaining why you often felt that you thought clearer and had your powers closer to hand during a fight.

Circling back around to your own street, you made your way up the drive and opened the door, slipping your shoes off and heading up to the shower. Dad didn't seem to take much notice of it, but making sure he knew made you feel better anyway – made it slightly less likely that he would run the kitchen sink and boil you alive, if nothing else.

As you showered, the water felt amazing on your skin. Better than usual, even, though you couldn't put your finger on why. With the heat up, and steam filling the air, it felt as though you could simply reach out and wrap the haze around you like a blanket. As though you could pull it into your embrace.

Water clinging to your hair, you felt the same sensation as you made your way back to the kitchen for breakfast. It was difficult to explain. If anything, as absurd as it sounded, it reminded you of the feeling you got when you were using your reptilian senses; the idea of accessing more information than you could have, of reaching into something unknown and pulling details from it that simply shouldn't have been there.

Your corona shifted, and you felt it pull hard, a lancing headache shooting through your hair for only a split second before it faded into nothingness.

Catching yourself against the wall was the only thing that stopped you from hitting the floor.

Blinking the veins of fire from your eyes, you stood back upright. The pain had gone as soon as it arrived, and you couldn't even remember truly what it felt like. It was like it had happened to someone else.

Mind distracted, you hit the kitchen and began assembling your usual breakfast of oatmeal, grabbing some fruit from the cooler in the fridge to throw on top.

In the same way that the water in the shower had called to you, you could feel something different in the apple. Even as you sliced it, the juice running in a thin wash across your skin, it pulled on your senses as though inducing you to respond. The oatmeal bubbled on the stove quietly, and you gave it a stir. No use burning it.

You cut another slice of the apple. It pressed on your senses again, and this time you couldn't help but reach out to it, responding to its call.

In your hands, the world stood still. In an instant, as though eternity itself flitted through your fingers, the apple began to shrivel, the skin gaining a looseness and then a wrinkliness that you associated with fruit long past its sell-by, but with none of the mould that you would have expected. It bent over itself, a waxen, plasticky texture overtaking it, before it dried even further. The entire apple half crisped in your hands, desiccating. Flakes of it shed away, before in only seconds, it dripped through your fingers as dust.

You could feel your head throbbing. The oatmeal on the stovetop bubbled again.

Actions Remaining:

- Try out the following hobbies: reading, cooking, woodworking, swimming, puzzles

- Learn more about Atlanta as a city, beyond the parahuman element

- Go with Rachel to a shelter and support her getting a role there (Saturday 23rd)

- Look for tinker inspiration in other media, including fiction

- Get Protectorate advice on using your Master power effectively

Finished a Tinker project, got some studying done, had a slightly less terrifying meeting with Cinereal, spoke to Flashdrive about his own life a bit which has got us started on looking to science fiction, and continued moving along. Perhaps a little bit dry as a chapter, but hopefully it's a good transition.

6.5

You stood at the kitchen counter and watched the dust fall through your fingers, coating the work side with a fine powder.

The air seemed tight and close to you, and you could feel your feet tingling against the floor with the same sensation that you had felt towards the apple. With some small experience, you knew better than to succumb to it, but you still feel the urge to try it again. The void in the back of your head seemed to appreciate that notion, and there was a sense of distant curiosity about it; the look of an infant gazing upon something dangerous without fully comprehending the threat that was upon it.

Pulling the bread out of the cupboard, you set a single slice down on the counter. It sat there, white and crumbly on the surface, perhaps man's least featured creation. You extended a single finger towards it, tentative and reluctant, before you found the very edge of your digit resting on its surface. The power tugged at your skin, ravenous, and you allowed the tiniest flicker of it to emerge, before pulling it back in. You had no idea how long it had been active, but less than a second was clear. Beneath your gaze, the bread appeared unchanged.

Unwilling to allow your hand to touch it again, risking the integrity of the experiment, you passed the knife you had been using for the apple to your dominant hand and reached out, brushing it against the surface of the bread.

A rough, metallic sound rang out, and you registered what had happened instantly. You'd heard the sound before, of course; stale bread. Very stale. Without even touching it again you knew that it would be close to rock hard – useless to eat. As though it had been left out on the counter uncovered for days at a time.

It was at that moment that Dad walked into the kitchen, holding the newspaper.

'Good morning Taylor. Might I ask what on Earth you're doing?'

Jumping at his presence, you turned to him, and then turned back to yourself; your oatmeal had begun to burn on the stove and you scrambled to move it away from the heat, the dull warmth of the pan handle on your skin reminding you again to be more careful what you touched. Picturing things from Dad's perspective, it must have been a strange sight; walking in on you, holding a knife, with your arm extended in fearful discovery towards a slice of bread, totally ignorant to the steam turning to smoke from the pan besides you.

If you weren't slightly better at controlling yourself, you would have slapped your palm to your forehead.

'I think I've got a new power.'

'Well of course you do,' he said, barely pausing as he reached across you to retrieve the bread. 'It's a day ending in Y, after all.'

'It's not funny Dad. It's a bad one, I think.'

'There's no such thing as a bad power, dear. If you don't like it, you can just choose not to use it.'

As though a record skipped in your mind, you realised that he was right. After all, that had been what you'd been doing with your other newest power since you discovered it; without a good use for your animal mastery in mind, it had simply gone on the shelf. If you didn't want to use it, you didn't have to.

'I guess that's true.'

Even so, it didn't feel like a particularly heroic power to have access to. Would you have felt that Armsmaster was such a hero as a child if you had known that he had a secret death ray in his halberd? Probably not.

'What is it, then? I promise I won't judge.'

'I'm not totally sure. I touch things and they age? Decay? Skip in time? Disintegrate? I'm not sure.'

'And does it seem to be always on, or can you turn it off?'

'I can turn it off, I think. I have to reach out with it.'

'Well then, turn it off and then give me a hug.'

And you did, crashing into him hard enough that you were surprised he didn't fall over. Dad didn't look like a very muscular person, and whatever he had built up from working on the Docks had faded long ago since transitioning to a desk based role, but you were his daughter, and he would always have strength enough to hold you when you needed him. Regardless of how hard you could hit.

Saturday, 23rd​ April

Having spent most of the previous day recovering with Dad and formulating a plan regarding your new power – informing the PRT seemed rather appropriate – as well as reaching out to Gallant once your mind had become clear enough to remember that the world existed beyond your strange powers, you had arrived at the PRT headquarters early Saturday morning without having done most of the homework you had planned to do on the day prior. Shifting things to Sunday seemed easy to justify in the face of a new power that seemed to cast you as a villain almost by its very existence.

With a plan organised on the phone with Rachel to go searching for a shelter in the afternoon, though, there was no way around your responsibilities. Morning had to be for getting things done, and as much as you may have disliked it, Taylor Hebert was not the kind of person who scared easily.

More than enough of the previous two years had been spent in fear, and the foolish trepidation you had felt in Cinereal's office on that first day of meeting had reminded you how silly it all was. Making a resolution to never do it again was easy enough, and that began with informing Cinereal of your new powers and submitting yourself once again to testing.

With your morning free, you entered headquarters and gave a nod to the receptionist, the LED lights of your mask giving a jolly smily face, before you trudged up the stairs, missing the elevator of the Brockton Bay PRT dearly.

Once you reached the top floor, you inhaled deeply and then marched. In a single, uninterrupted parade, you made your way to Cinereal's door and swung your hand up to knock abruptly on the glass panel, the momentum of your stride catapulting the hand up with some force. It was only by some degree of luck, you thought, that you hadn't accidentally punched your hand through to the other side.

'Come in.'

Cinereal's voice came through clearly despite the obstacle, and you didn't hesitate, swinging the door open and stepping inside.

The Protectorate leader was sat at her desk, as she typically was upon your arrival, and had a cup of tea, ice cubes jingling with her motion, clutched in one hand. As you made your way to the front of her desk, she took a short sip before blowing slightly on the rim to dislodge any of the chalky makeup that had come off and stuck to the glass. Black lines running vertically, roughly an inch between each of them, ran down through the white this time.

'What is it, Penumbra?'

For once, you were glad that there was little in the way of formality – you had practiced what you wanted to say on the way over, and having no opportunity to forget it played to your advantage.

'Firstly, I would like to say that I am accepting your proposal to empower members of the local Protectorate and Wards programme en masse. That is to say, three at a time. I'll leave it up to you to choose who and exactly when.'

Cinereal remained motionless, allowing you to continue.

'Secondly, I have to tell you that I have developed two new powers that need testing, in line with the rules of my Ward contract, and that while one of these doesn't seem to be immediately obvious in use the other one seems extremely dangerous, and I would like any advice you have on using it productively. Of course, if no such use comes up, I'm happy to retire it without any use.'

You exhaled quietly, controlling your breath as you finished.

'Is that all?'

A shiver ran down your spine, but you didn't let it show.

'Yes, ma'am.'

She took another sip of her tea, before once again blowing the powder of her makeup away, and placing the glass on her table. Condensation marked out where her fingers had been around the glass, and you noticed that she had rather well manicured nails, painted a scarab black and lipstick cut, on the diagonal.

'Monday, starting at eleven in the morning. You will empower myself, Glacial, and Flashdrive. We will decide on the following group of three afterwards. Is this amenable to you?'

'Yes, ma'am. Tinkers tend to enter a fugue after being empowered, so it might be worth making sure that Flashdrive has nothing else to do for the rest of the day.'

'Done. With regards to your new powers, please explain them.'

And so you did, beginning with your master power – as far as you understood it – and then proceeding to what you had started calling, with Dad's influence, power hand kill. You didn't think you were ever going to say it out loud, but apparently it was a reference to a game that he had enjoyed as a teenager, some twenty years earlier, and you weren't going to try and rob him of that. If someone forced you to say it out loud, you would probably call it the less grammatically arduous name of 'my striker power'.

The corners of Cinereal's lips pointed downwards briefly as you outlined the power, but they recovered to their usual neutrality quickly, and she didn't speak as though her opinion of you had been coloured by the addition of the new power at all. In fact, if you weren't aware of the topic of the conversation you would almost believe she hadn't heard you.

'You will report to the medical bay on the ground floor, on the opposite end of the building to Flashdrive's workshop, immediately after this meeting. You will tell them what you have told me, and you will undergo any testing they say, within reason. Power testing at Brockton Bay will have made you aware of the expected boundaries of testing, I trust?'

You nodded.

'Excellent. Anything else?'

Almost on impulse, you opened your mouth to tell her no, but stopped for a second.

Part of the reason you had been so reluctant to join the Brockton Bay Wards in the first place had been the danger of your power and the revelation that they had been infested by leaks, leaks which had later turned out to be connected to the supervillain Coil. The risk of discovery was precisely why, aside from the desire to avoid being press-ganged into service, you had lied about your powers in the submission of your independent hero papers.

Proceeding with power testing in Atlanta, by all means a city with just as much crime as Brockton Bay at the very least, without performing similar diligence felt as though it was, in itself, a form of crime.

Chances that there are unknown leaks in the ATL PRT?

0%

'No, ma'am, nothing at all.'

'Dismissed.'

You turned away and moved out of the room, head held high, before making your way down to the medical bay as instructed. Knowing that you didn't have to ruin Cinereal's day with the reports of hidden spies did wonders for taking the pressure off routine testing.

As you made your way down, your helmet gave you the alert of an incoming message.

Gallant: Amy seems okay. She's made some progress. Not a lot, but she asked me about anger management, which is something at least. How are you settling in? I know that it must be difficult moving so far away.

Resisting rolling your eyes was easy, but only because you knew that the concern was genuine. Gallant, bland a figure as you still believed he was on an interpersonal level, did seem to be a legitimately nice guy and though you were aware that his relationship with Vicky had been slightly tumultuous at times, it was hard to begrudge his presence given all of the free advice he had given you and the tremendously difficult job he had trying to keep Amy from becoming a nightmare sister.

Still, you had hoped for a little more than questions about anger management. It had been pretty much two weeks since Amy had pledged to you that she would get some help, or similar things in different wording, and there was apparently little sign of that.

Penumbra: I'm well, thanks for asking. Anger management? She said she would talk to someone. Should I message her or something?

Gallant: I would say no. It might not sound like it, but I can tell there's been some improvement. If you try and push her too hard too quick, she might clam up again. That's the mistake we made the first time, I think. Let her work through what she has now and then she might be more willing to listen for more. Things won't be perfect quickly.

Gallant: And I'm glad you're doing well :)

Click to shrink...

Firing back a message of understanding, you made your way to the medical bay and dismissed the alerts of your helmet's communication systems. Once you developed a way to scan powers, you were definitely going to build that into the visor as well – it seemed common sense, and you wondered why Armsmaster hadn't done the same to his own helmet.

Or maybe he had, and you simply hadn't had cause to find out yet. After all, it wasn't as though you had seen the man in frequent combat, and the only major mission you had seen him on was with Coil – a fight in which he did almost nothing except get shot at by civilians with laser guns.

Entering into the Medical Bay, you quickly found a man wearing a white coat and explained your situation to him. Despite his balding head and thick glasses, he appeared relatively young and quickly ushered you into a room which appeared almost a mirror image to the rooms you were used to in the Brockton Bay PRT headquarters. Much like the Ward's meeting room, it appeared to be of a set design. You imagined that if you were to enter a PRT medical bay anywhere in the United States, from Seattle to Miami, you would find much the same decoration and layout.

Several doctors came in and out and you found yourself answering question after question, many of them repeating what Cinereal had already heard but a handful of them new. In some cases, they asked questions about which you were not sure – this was particularly true when it came to the power hand kill, and with each uncertain answer the man holding a clipboard gave off a mildly disgruntled groan, to both your annoyance and the visible annoyance of whichever other doctors happened to be in the room, circulating through as they were with regularity carrying some boxes and pieces of equipment.

Dealing first with your master power, you detailed what you believed it could do and they made sure to schedule you in for another test the following week; apparently the procurement of various animals and a safe space in which to test more thoroughly required slightly more advance notice than a single morning, however they were happy to offer the suggest of using the animals for reconnaissance. Possession of birds for flights across the city without exposing your presence seemed to be seen as a unanimously good idea, and the potential of instructing animals to act as sleeper agents was tabled pending further investigation.

Before too long, the man with the clipboard left, leaving the paper on the desk nearest the window, which had a computer sat upon it. You recognised it as the spot the doctors generally took up when you were empowering someone, and recalled Clockblocker throwing a clipboard like a boomerang through the air from nearby just before you had left home. Smirking, you wondered whether he would enjoy the opportunity to terrorise a whole new batch of medical personnel.

The clock cycled through its hours with the regularity of government scandal, and you were instructed first to test your striker power on paper, then cloth, then a steel scalpel. Over time, the materials became more esoteric and bizarre; a rock taken from the parking lot, rubber from a shoe in the lost and found, a piece of surgical tubing, printer ink broken free from the cartridge and allowed to dribble into a Petri dish, which you were them instructed to dismantle as well.

Time passed, and everything the doctors could imagine to place in front of you wilted, rotted, warped, ran, and crumbled into dust or gravel, as though eroded by some invisible sandblaster.

Even water, placed into a cup, acted as though your finger was a straw, and evaporated off almost too quickly for your touch to stay in contact with it. The pace of its withdrawal was astounding.

'Two more things, Penumbra, then you're free to go,' said the doctor who had ferried in the newest tray laden with items. 'Firstly, this one.'

Placing a tray of meat, presumably taken from the cafeteria, in front of you, you reached forward and prodded it. It took less than five seconds for the process to be complete, acting just as the apple had the previous day; first dehydrating rapidly until it shrunk in side, the edges curling up as the colour greyed dangerously, looking for all the world like something you would very much be best advised to avoid, before beginning to calcify and then fall away from itself, crumbling into dust that coated the bottom of the tray upon which it was sat.

The doctors whispered between each other.

'I told you I started with an apple,' you said, somewhat frustrated by the endless circuit of dissolution. 'That I can do food shouldn't surprise anyone.'

'It's not that it's food, no, it's that it's both food – that is, organic materials, and none-organic materials. No Manton Limit, see. Strange. Dangerous.'

'I had gathered it was dangerous already. May I ask what the last test is?'

'Of course.'

The clipped tone that came in response made it clear that your impatience had begun to be noticed, but as you watched the clock hit twelve thirty, you were acutely aware that you were supposed to be meeting with Rachel at one.

While you held no great desire to walk out in the middle of power testing, you were very much willing to do so if it meant keeping an appointment with one of the few people that you cared about. If Cinereal were to find a problem with it, she could bring it up with you personally and you would be sure to tell her that – though, you suspected that if the doctors themselves could avoid confronting her with seemingly petty grievances, they too would rather do so.

Another steel tray, of a similar style to the one the meat had come in, was laid out in front of you. Perhaps two feet cross and a single foot in width, it had an apple, a piece of gauze, and a stapler placed upon it.

'We would like you, if you would, to lay a single finger on the very edge of the tray and then transmit your power through it. Once it is clear that the tray has begun changing, we would like you to attempt to push further and see if your power is limited to the object you are touching, or whether it can jump, as it were, from one object to those contacting it.'

Like Clockblocker's boosted power could, you thought, although a little different. Still, you were happy to try. Thankful that the final task didn't seem particularly lengthy or taxing, you placed a single finger on the edge of the tray as instructed and then simply opened the floodgates. The doctor's description wasn't wholly accurate – the experience was much less like pushing a power outwards and more like giving in to a devouring urge, less physical and more sensational, though you couldn't deny there was a slight physical tugging feeling associated with it. Almost as though it was tugging at something beyond you, though, on Taylor Hebert as a person rather than the just the body.

Whether that made any sense to anyone else or not, you doubted severely, and consequently you kept it to yourself.

Moments passed, and the tray began to oxidise, pitting with dark black freckles that slowly began to work their way through the metal, but still the things sat upon it remained inviolate. Steel began to visibly weaken, and a corner of the tray fell away, clattering on the floor and breaking into fragments from the fall, and only then – as though a switch had been flicked – were you able to sense something deeper. The hunger of simmered below the death's touch surged and you felt hollow inside, as though you had opened up a stomach that could not be satiated, and when you turned to it you saw the speckling crawl up the items on the tray one by one, before they too began to thin and crumble.

As the tray weakened further, you felt your finger fall through the age and the connection was broken between you and the testing materials.

In a single moment, the room seemed to widen out and the call of ravenous consumption died away, going quiet once more. Blinking to yourself, you looked around the room and noticed that nobody else seemed to have realised that there was anything strange going on.

Even as they made note of the way it had transferred from one object to another – apparently only making the leap once the initial structure had become 'clearly untenable', whatever that meant, and ending as soon as you lost contact – you stayed quiet. And you barely heard what they said as you left the room.

You couldn't wait to meet with Rachel.

Calling her on your way out of the Medical Bay, you were surprised at the response.

'Hey, just finished up with the testing. Where can we meet?'

'I'm in the lobby. Waiting for you.'

'Oh, I didn't expect to drag you out here. Isn't it your day off?'

'Easier than trying to tell you where I live. I don't know the street name yet and you probably wouldn't know it if I did.'

While it was something of a surprise, you couldn't deny her claim. You barely knew the name of the street you lived on, and you lived there and had been jogging on it pretty much daily. It probably was much easier for her to just show up at a mutual meeting place, though you couldn't deny that you were disappointed not to get a look at where she was staying. Still, you had only just arrived and there was plenty of time for house-warming. Maybe you could even stay over at some point, if she felt like that was a good idea.

'Makes sense. I'll see you in a minute.'

Without a farewell, the phone clicked on silent and you couldn't help yourself by smile. Even the grim note you had left power testing with had worn away, and you wondered exactly how it was that Rachel had grown on you so quickly. She wasn't exactly pleasant, in the conventional sense, though you didn't think she was mean either. Just exceedingly blunt and completely ignorant or uncaring about social conventions as most people experienced them.

Maybe it said something about you and your own experienced with the nature of teenage girl power dynamics that you felt so drawn to someone who shucked them off so effortlessly and imposed her own standards with iron force.

As much as you didn't like thinking about it, it made sense, and as you emerged out of the lengthy hallway and saw her stood in her costume, you let the thought drain from your mind.

'Hey,' you called, 'let's head through to the Wards rooms so I can get changed and we can head out.'

While in general you wouldn't have spoken so openly, the reassurance that the PRT had no eavesdropping villains – or at least, none of that were in the position to spy – made you slightly more willing to talk. The only other person in the room was the secretary who had already seen you out of costume and was almost certainly aware of who you were simply by virtue of that – unless you were vastly overestimating her intellect – and unlike the Brockton Bay headquarters, the stone facade in Atlanta and the lack of glass doors meant that the possibility of passers-by hearing you from outside was basically none-existent.

'Sure.'

Eloquent as ever, you lead Rachel back to the Ward's rooms, where you quickly got changed into a spare outfit of negligible value and aesthetic quality – while you were happy to keep a few spare changes of clothes, having learned from the night of Hookwolf's capture that such things could be helpful, you weren't willing to donate the nicer clothing you had bought under Vicky's instruction to mouldering in a drawer. And that went double for days where the goal was to find an animal shelter; somehow you suspected that such a place wasn't exactly the venue for your finest garments.

Still, not wanting to show your face to any other Wards or Protectorate members who might have been around, you sent Rachel ahead to scout and tugged your hood over your head. While her private life was somewhat in repair as a result of the move to Atlanta, Rachel had spent a long time without a civilian identity to speak of and wasn't particularly protective of her new one. You, on the other hand, felt an urgency to keep your personal life as far from heroism as possible.

It just didn't seem fair to drag Dad into things, and as brave you liked to think yourself, you still wanted the option to switch off if necessary.

Though, with how often you found yourself sat at the kitchen table processing questions for your thinker power and working on tinker ideas, and apparently developing new striker powers over breakfast, the idea of keeping things away from the home seemed entirely ludicrous.

Emerging from the ATL PRT through the parking garage exits, the same way as you had done several times in Brockton Bay as part of patrols that required vehicles, you found yourself on the street alongside Rachel and you allowed her to take point. While you could have used a phone to look up some directions, the reality was that Rachel could probably sense – through smell, if nothing else – where she was going without your help and asking probably would have simply come across as an insult.

'So,' you asked. 'Settling in okay?'

'It's fine.'

'Regent not giving you too much trouble?'

'He's annoying but not stupid. Keeps out of my place.'

You agreed with that. While he hadn't had too many opportunities to show it, there did seem to be a sharpness about him that belied the frivolity of his usual presentation, and you wondered how much of it was an affectation rather than a genuine display of his interests. Maybe you'd show him your true face one day, he'd see fit to share his, and you would find out – that might be something to consider. Not yet, though. A little longer. Just to be safe.

As you walked, considering Regent's situation, you suddenly realised what your agreement with Cinereal meant for him; he had been so opposed to being empowered, for reasons that you couldn't even begin to put your finger on, and knowing that he had probably been scheduled in for it without his knowledge was not something you enjoyed. He had until at least Tuesday, that was for sure – Cinereal had already told you who was going to be included on Monday – but that only left you with a few days to talk to him and give him a heads up.

You weren't sure how he would take it. The way he had reacted, almost ready to flee, when you had suggested it in Brockton Bay made you feel as though it wasn't something he felt to be negotiable. Would he confront Cinereal about it? Attempt to skive off it, and just take the punishment? Or even run?

It was something you couldn't help but wonder. Of course, if the worst came to worst, you could use your Thinker power to make sure his reaction wouldn't be too adverse but you weren't really sure whether that was the best idea. With only two days to go before it became a real issue, you would have to figure it out fast.

'Found one,' Rachel said suddenly, pulling you from your thoughts. 'A few streets over.'

'Lead on.'

And she did, her pace increased somewhat. You weren't sure how she could tell a shelter from a pet shop or just someone's house with a number of animals, though you figured that there had to be something.

'How can you tell?' You asked, keeping your tone light so as not to imply some level of doubt.

'Smells like sickness. You spend long enough around it, you know it. Shelter dogs always have something wrong with them.'

Grit had made it into her words, and you didn't push any further. Part of interacting with Rachel seemed to be in knowing when to back off and give her a little bit of space, even just within the moment.

After a few minutes of walking, you turned the corner on to a street and immediately knew what Rachel had been talking about. Off in the distance, at the end of the road, there was a low, squat building. You could hear the occasional barks easily enough once you were within range, and you wondered if that didn't play a role in Rachel's ability to locate such places. It made sense.

Making your way inside, you let Rachel take up the lead role. While you knew that she wasn't exactly the world's most personable individual, she had done this before, and knew way more about animals than you did. In all honestly, were it not for the sake of getting out and exploring more of the city yourself, spending time with friends and avoiding turning into a hermit on Vicky's command, you may not have even thought to make the trip in the first place.

When it wasn't directed at you, Rachel's brusque social manners almost made for something comedic. She brute forced her way through introductions, cut off small talk, and narrowed the focus onto her potential as a volunteer within the span of roughly three minutes, and by the time she had signed some papers in a scraggly swirl, the lady at the desk and the surprisingly cheerful woman behind the desk looked as though they had found themselves on the wrong end of Regent's taser.

A few hours later when you made your way out, your own clothes covered in dog hair, Rachel was wearing the first genuine smile you had seen on her face in some time, and you were glad you had come along.

'How was it?'

You didn't trust your own judgment on a place like that.

'Not bad. Going to take a while to train them though. They don't listen well right now.'

'Maybe, but I'm sure you'll get things in order pretty quick. You've worked with shelter dogs before, right?'

She snorted. 'I wasn't talking about the dogs.'

Actions Remaining: