Taylor looked up the front steps of Arcadia High. Way, WAY up. “In what rip of the fabric of space and time is this possibly a good idea?” she said out loud.

  “I'm boggled myself,” Danny Hebert said, looking down at his daughter in a mix of distress and amusement. They sat in his truck out in front of the school, watching everyone come and go.

  “Why are they sending Wards to a public school anyway? Wouldn't home schooling or even in-house tutoring be better?”

  Danny grimaced. “It would be, but the politics--”

  “Ugh, nuff said.”

  “--The politics are messy,” he continued, giving her a smile and a look that said he'd prepared a lecture and wasn't going to be thwarted at delivering it. “If the PRT or the Protectorate provided the Wards with in-house tutors, the usual suspects would accuse them of 'isolating the children from outside influences so as to control them.' In this state, the teacher's unions fight homeschooling tooth and nail for the same reason, and the state government obediently writes out miles of regulations to make it pretty much impossible. Same story with correspondence schools.”

  “Which is how they get away with having schools like Winslow in their system, right?” Taylor muttered. She was well aware that there had to be more than one Winslow High out there... it was a big state.

  “Ding ding ding!” Danny said. “It doesn't matter how bad an option you are, if you're the only option available.” He looked past Taylor at the school. “The only think keeping Arcadia as high quality as it is are tons of alma maters who donate to it regularly-- to say nothing of the tons of bennies they get for having so many Wards attending school there. Plus, having the PRT on your back along with the PTA will keep you on the straight and narrow.”

  “A PTA of one-percenters, no less,” Taylor noted. Her gaze swept over the school, her ears twitching back and forth.

  “Yeah, that'd definitely help,” Danny agreed idly. “I wouldn't want to be the Principal here. With half a dozen Wards here? I bet she spends most of her time sweating bullets that the lid will come off this box full of crazy and leave her holding the handle.” He paused. “You see your escort yet?”

  “No, she said she'd be here waiting for us right at-- oh no wait, there she is!” A pair of girls were walking out the double doors; one was a rather stunning blonde, the other was a somewhat mousier brunette with freckles and a frizzy 'do. Taylor waved a hoof eagerly. “Panacea-- Amy! Over here!”

  The healer girl spotted her immediately and waved back. The blonde with her was... more enthusiastic. “That's gotta be her sister Glory Girl,” Danny said.

  “What makes you say that?”

  Danny snickered.“The way she saw you, clapped her hands to her cheeks and hopped up in the air.” He paused with a grin. “Aaaaand didn't come back down.” The girl could be heard squealing 'omigosh she's so kyuuute' clear across the street. Taylor laughed out loud when Amy started frog-punching Vicky to shut her up-- or trying to. One punch to the arm and the healer was left standing there, grimacing and clutching her bruised knuckles. Taylor snickered into her hoof.

  The two Dallon girls made their way to the car as Taylor daintily hopped out. Glory Girl nearly squeed again, but a volley of hissed imprecations from her sister stopped her. “Um, hi,” Taylor said cautiously. “You must be Victoria?”

  “Call me Vicky,” the older Dallon sister said with a grin that nearly split her face in half. She bounced on her heels, her hands tucked under her arms as if she was struggling with herself not to reach out and grab something. Taylor could guess what. For some reason Taylor found herself absolutely captivated by how the blonde girl’s hair shone in the sun as she bounced around...

  “Vicky! Aura!” Amy hissed, giving her sister another finger-bruising poke. Victoria squeaked, and suddenly Taylor’s head was clear again. She shook her head till her ears flapped. “Sorry about that. Vicky keeps forgetting to tamp down her aura when she’s wound up.” Taylor nodded. She’d heard of Glory Girl’s odd ‘aura of adoration.’ When she cranked it up she could make a crowd of people swoon over her, or send them cringing to the floor in abject terror. It was certainly odd experiencing it in person.

  Vicky pooched out her lip and scowled. “I’m not wound up.”

  Amy rolled her eyes. “Ignore her,” she said. “She collects Lisa Frank memorabilia.”

  “I do not!”

  “Do too. The whole room is lined with it.”

  “It is NOT!”

  “In case you haven’t guessed,” Amy said, ignoring her outraged sister, “I’m Amy Dallon, and I’m to be your guide through the illustrious institution of Arcadia. I’ll be accompanying you to all your classes today to make sure you get your feet and/or hooves under you.” She gave her sister the side-eye. “And so will my sister Vicky Dallon, who wheedled her way into this as well, probably to get out of her algebra test this period--”

  “Heyy...”

  “Okay, we’ll have to head to the principal’s office to sign you in, get your schedule and all that...” Amy went on. Taylor was only paying partial attention. She was paying more attention to the other Dallon sister. Vicky was standing there in a pose that had gotten very familiar to Taylor over the past few weeks: her hands firmly tucked in her pockets, leaning forward slightly, with a too-wide smile on her face and a sort of strained look in her eyes.

  Taylor sighed in weary amusement. She sat down on her rump on the pavement and held up her forehooves to the hovering girl. “Go on, get it out of your system--”

  “EEEEEEE!” Vicky snatched the unicorn pony up off the ground and cuddled her like an enormous baby doll.

  “Vick-ee!” Amy said, exasperated.

  Taylor looked over Vicky’s shoulder at the healer as Vicky rocked her back and forth, an expression of bliss on her face. “One just grows used to it,” Taylor said.

  It took a while, but Amy finally persuaded Vicky to put the unicorn down long enough for her to say goodbye to her father. Once Danny Hebert had driven off (laughing his ass off) and Vicky had managed to get control of herself, they all trooped in through the double doors and into Arcadia.

  Amy looked her over. “That’s a… slightly different look from the last time I saw you,” she said.

  “Oh this.” Taylor turned about. “The other stuff was for when I was kitted out for superhero stuff. This is more ‘casual dress.’” Her boots had been replaced with some simple hoof slippers. Her panniers were plain tan canvas, and her usual HUD bubble visor had been replaced with a rather large-ish pair of round-lens glasses. “Actually it’s almost the same as all my usual gear; it’s just not as flash.” She tipped her head, sending text scrolling briefly across the inside of her glasses. One of her panniers opened briefly; a small robotic gripper poked out and waved at them, making Amy squeak in surprise. “Kinda need it for most day to day stuff,” she said a bit ruefully as the gripper retreated back into the pannier.

  “Why the robo-claw? Don’t you have telekinesis?” Vicky asked.

  “Yeah, but I can’t levitate things indefinitely,” Taylor said. “And sometimes I need to hold something in place while I fiddle with something else. ...Plus, it’s sort of a field test for some new tech,” she added in a confidential tone. “Something Armsmaster and Dragon are working on to help the disabled.” Both Dallon girls made silent ‘o’s and nodded.

  “Well, they shouldn’t give you any trouble about using it, then,” Amy said. “Handicapped accessibility, and all that. And you do sort of qualify-- no offense.”

  Taylor shrugged. “Won’t deny it. Magical super floaty powers or not, you learn real quick just how much you’re going to miss having thumbs.” She stepped back as Vicky opened the office door for her. “Thank you.”

  Taylor could immediately tell things were different here. The administrative office of the school was light, airy, open, and had a clean professional look… what she could see of it. Once again the disadvantages of being a knee-high mythical ungulate were asserting themselves, as she was currently looking UP at the underside of the front counter. “Hello, girls,” she heard a woman’s voice say. “Weren’t you supposed to be escorting a new student today?” The voice said with a lilt of curiosity.

  “Hello, Mrs. Mann. What-- oh, she’s right here, wait a minute--” without warning Amy bent down and stuck her hands under Taylor’s armpits.

  “Hey!”

  Amy heaved the little unicorn up off the floor so she could see over the counter top. Taylor waved a hoof feebly at the middle aged, bun-haired lady behind the counter. “Uh, hello,” she said with an awkward smile.

  Mrs. Mann looked surprised for a moment, but quickly pulled up an impressive poker face. “Ah, you must be Taylor Hebert, aka Ladybird,” she said. As if she dealt with lavender superhero unicorns every day of the week and twice on Sundays.

  “That’s me,” Taylor said. “Amy, put me down please? No, not-- not on the floor, up on the-- oof!” she had her purple rump plunked down on the counter. “Aheh.”

  Mrs. Mann heroically suppressed a grin. “I understand you’ll be using some, ah, specialized equipment for your particular needs while you’re here?” She asked.

  “Um, yes. A laptop computer with HUD glasses, and some quarter horsepower waldoes,” Taylor said. The grippers popped out, clicked their metal fingers, and retracted. The secretary barely even raised an eyebrow.

  “Well it’s unusual but it’s nothing that wouldn’t be covered under Equal Access rules,” she said. “If you ever want to bring in any other equipment… from your, ah, after school job… we will need to be notified in advance.” Taylor nodded in understanding. She could just see Kid Win absentmindedly dragging a lunchbox full of his half-finished widgets and doohickeys to school if anybody let him. “And here is your schedule, the school rulebook and a few other odds and ends...” she said, holding out a trapper-keeper folder. Taylor deftly plucked it out of her hand with her telekinesis and slipped it into one of her panniers.

  “And here--” the secretary dropped a stack of hardback books onto the countertop next to Taylor with a thump that made the unicorn squeak in surprise-- “are your textbooks. Lunch is in about ten minutes; your last two classes of the day after that are Computer Sciences and English Lit, so you’ll want to keep those with you.”

  Taylor nodded and floated the two books into her panniers, while Vicky made to show off her muscles and grabbed the rest of the stack. “We’ll just pop these in your locker on the way,” she said cheerfully. Mrs. Mann gave Amy a slip of paper with the locker number and combination. “Locker 123-A, first floor,” she said. “Have a good first day, Taylor.”

  “Thanks,” Taylor said, hopping down to the floor. Her booties made a soft thump as they hit the tile.

  The three trotted off to find Taylor’s new locker, Vicky prattling every step of the way about the teachers, who was strict, who was easygoing, who was a colossal bore, which of the kids were in the in-crowd (her and all her friends, natch, but there were pretenders to the throne)… Taylor found it privately amusing that Glory Girl chattered about “Dennis” and “Eric” but seemed to have no clue that the two she described were actually Clockblocker and Kid Win. Surely she knew her boyfriend was actually Gallant…?

  “Ah, here it is,” Amy said, coming to a halt. “123-A.” Vicky and Taylor stopped as well. They were all standing in front of a locker with a bright industrial orange painted door and a built-in combination lock. “Here, let me get the lock,” Amy said. She spun the dial, quickly clicking it back and forth, and yanked the handle. “Ta da,” she said as the door swung open.

  Taylor looked up at the open locker. As a human it would have been taller than her; as a knee-high little unicorn pony it loomed. The inside was dark flat gray and it seemed to grow wider and taller as she looked and it filled her vision from top to bottom and side to side big enough now to swallow her whole and even though her hooves were rooted to the floor it was getting closer and--

  “Taylor? Taylor!” Vicky was shouting. “Taylor, what’s wrong?” Taylor shook all over. Somehow she’d backed all the way across the hall without realizing it. Her rump was pressed against the wall, her legs stiff and her hooves pushing her back.

  “Taylor? Ladybird, what’s wrong?” Amy said, startled. One momentTaylor had been perfectly calm. But the moment the locker door had swung open the tiny unicorn’s pupils had shrunk to dots. She’d let out a whinny, an actual whinny of fear and backpedaled into the far wall. She was pressed against it even now, head lowered, ears laid flat, one forehoof raised as if ready to kick out at whatever was in front of her. Amy had gone to a dude ranch one year at the age of ten (dragged there by Vicky, who had been going through her ‘crazy about horses’ phase at the time.) She hadn’t exactly been over the moon about the trip but she did remember a few things the ranch hands had taught them all, one of them being how to read a horse’s body language. And this particular pony was absolutely frightened out of her mind. “What…. What is--”

  It was Vicky who figured it out first. “Ohmy-- oh jeez, it’s the locker,” she said.

  “Ohmigosh,” Amy said. It took no more than that to clue her in; Thanks to the internet, Taylor’s triggering event had become the second most infamous bullying incident since Carrie’s night as homecoming queen. Mentally kicking herself Amy crouched down and shuffled forward, reaching for the traumatized filly. “Oh look at her, she’s shaking--”

  “Taylor, it’s okay Taylor-- No more locker, see?” Vicky said as Amy scooped the shivering Ladybird up. Vicky hastily slammed the gaping door of the locker shut. It responded to this rough treatment by promptly springing back open. Vicky gave them both an awkward grin and slammed it again. The steel door naturally sprang back open again. She grabbed it by the latch and proceeded to do a minor jazz-hands routine with it, trying to get the latch to catch but jerking it open and closed too fast for it to fall in place. “Shut you friggin--” she growled.

  Amy and Taylor stared as Brockton Bay’s mightiest flying brick proceeded to do battle with a locker door-- and lose. The farcical struggle went on for several seconds, till Vicky finally handled the problem in her own, world famous style: She got mad and punched it. With a Skrunch of tortured metal the locking mechanism was mashed flat, the door bent inward around it like a prize fighter curled up around a punched gut.

  Taylor gasped. It was easy to forget just how casually strong Glory Girl really was. “Vicky!!” Amy yelped.

  “Ack!” Vicky looked around with panic in her eyes. “Wait, I can fix it, I can fix it,” she said. She pulled the door open (it took some effort; she really had jammed it into its frame with that punch) and began to woingle it back and forth in her hands like a housewife trying to straighten out a mashed foil pan. That was the final straw; with a sad little series of pings the pin hinges snapped, leaving the teen heroine standing there holding a mangled locker door in her hands.

  Amy stood there and stared. The unicorn cradled in her arms stared. One or the other, but Vicky would bet on the unicorn, let out a tiny snerk.

  Calmly, without a word, Vicky set the battered door down. She picked up Taylor’s books where she had dropped them and stacked them neatly inside the now-doorless locker. Then she picked up the door and ever-so-gently placed it in the opening, balancing it just so, and crimped the frame with her fingertips to hold it in place. She gave the two a beaming smile. “There, all done. Now what say we go to lunch…?”

  “Vicky,” Amy said. Her voice was incredibly world-weary.

  “Nobody saw anything--” Vicky started.

  “Vicky--”

  “It could have been anyone that broke that door! Hypothetically… I mean, like, the football team---”

  “What, were they supposed to have tried to eat it?” Amy snarked.”That door looks like Hellhound’s dogs used it for a chew toy!”

  “Look, all we need is to be somewhere else when the custodian finds it--” Vicky pleaded.

  “Too late,” someone said. Vicky froze and turned around. Standing down at the end of the hallway was a middle-aged man with a name badge that said “Smith,” a toolbelt and an incredibly seen-it-all expression on his face.

  “Well there goes my allowance until NEXT summer,” Vicky said sourly, stabbing her straw into her milk. She drained the pint carton till the sides crumpled.

  “You’re assuming Mom and Dad don’t just divert it permanently into paying for accident liability insurance,” Amy snipped, taking a healthy bite out of her pita roll.

  “You mean someone would actually give Collateral Damage Barbie insurance?” Dennis snickered. “Ow! Hey, quit it!”

  Vicky had reached across the table and grabbed the redhead by the ear. “How many times a day do I gotta threaten your life?” she said, smiling sweetly.

  “Okay, okay, ixnay on the Arbie-Bay!” She released the ear. Dennis sat back down, rubbing his reddened ear and scowling. “Gee, can’t imagine where anyone got the idea you have a temper...”

  “The same place they get the idea you have a sense of humor,” Vicky sniped back. Dennis mimed being struck in the chest by an arrow and keeled over.

  It wasn’t normal for all the teen capes in Arcadia to be sitting together at the same table for lunch. Normally they avoided “cliqueing up,” as Kid Win put it, to avoid generating suspicion about their secret identities. Even if they were best friends as Wards, they had to act as if they were complete strangers… except for Gallant, aka Dean, who was dating Vicky (as Dean) and had to act like they were complete strangers (as Gallant)… and it was unclear whether Vicky and/or Amy knew Dean’s secret identity or not--

  Taylor shook her head. Then in comes the little lavender unicorn to make things even MORE confusing, she thought. Taylor, aka Ladybird, basically had to kiss any hope of a secret identity goodbye, thanks to how she’d Triggered. But of course she still had to keep track of who knew her as Ladybird, the celebrity magical little unicorn they’d seen on TV and who knew here personally and when and why and then there were friends of a friend and...

  Keeping track of who knew who and in what identity was such a pain in the plot she could totally sympathize with New Wave and their tragically failed effort to start a legacy of unmasked capes. She wasn’t crazy enough to recommend it, though, and neither was anyone else after what had happened.

  Vicky and Amy’s whole family had publicly unmasked when they were just little kids. They’d begun talking about a ‘new age of accountability’ for capes… and then some maniac looking to score points with Kaiser and the Empire Eighty Eight had murdered one of them. It had gone very bad and very ugly for said maniac-- judging by what was left of the body, Kaiser himself had killed the man for breaking the unwritten rules-- but the damage was done; noone, hero, villain or PRT, even joked about giving up the unwritten rules, especially secret identities, after that.

  Of course there were capes like Taylor who simply couldn’t keep a secret identity because their powers made them too distinctive. Quite a few, in fact. (Particularly case 53s, the mystery capes with three things in common: complete amnesia about their pasts, powers that altered or mutated them into obvious, less-than-human forms, and a strange “C” shaped tattoo somewhere on their bodies.) But beyond the obvious hazards of the “mask free life”, Taylor was learning there were other drawbacks as well. Like privacy. It was a rare day indeed when she could go out in public without being swarmed by people wanting a photograph or an autograph or, it seemed, just to annoy the hell out of her with questions ranging from the repetitive and banal to the weird and disturbing.

  Of course this time it had played to her advantage-- sort of. The moment Vicky and Amy had walked into the cafeteria escorting Ladybird, everyone in the room had (naturally) swarmed the table they sat at to try and finagle a seat next to the newest cape in the Bay. Vicky, however, was Queen Bee of the school, and Her Majesty had promptly issued a decree that everyone in the school couldn’t possibly sit around a single table at the same time, so everybody could just return to their seats and leave the new student alone. She’d even sent her regular in-crowd off (“just this once, guys, let me get Ladybird here situated.”) In all the bustle, of course, the Brockton Bay Wards all managed to discreetly hang back and secure the few seats that were available. Dean had been buttonholed by his girlfriend to go fetch Amy, Taylor and Vicky’s lunches from the cafeteria line; Dennis had been commandeered to fetch a couple of chairs; she had tagged Chris to sit with them because he was on the computer club and the school chess team…

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  Taylor had more than a niggling suspicion that the Ward’s carefully-maintained secret identities weren’t even tissue thin to Vicky.

  “So what happened this time?” Kid Win-- Chris, call him Chris when he’s not in his mask, Taylor reminded herself-- asked.

  “Taylor had a… well she had an attack of PTSD,” Amy said. “Related to her Trigger Event.” She winced as she said it. It was usually seriously taboo to talk about people’s Triggers.

  “I don’t know what happened,” Taylor said, her face hot. “Vicky opened the locker for me and the next thing I know, I...”

  Sounds of understanding went up. “No need to say any more,” Carlos said, holding up a hand. “We shoulda figured on something like that...”

  “--I mean, what a stupid phobia to have,” Taylor went on, lamenting. “A fear of lockers?”

  “If phobias made sense, nobody would hav them. Anyways, it’s not a phobia, exactly,” Carlos corrected. “PTSD. Weird things can trigger it-- sights, sounds, smells… anything that brings back the memory of the trauma.” He paused at the other’s looks. “You… pick up a few things after a while. Um. With the kind of stuff I do...” He busied himself with peeling open a mayo packet and putting it on his sandwich.

  Great. She could have another panic attack at any time, and no clue what might trigger it. SO much better than a phobia. “What did you mean by… uh, never mind,” Taylor said, glancing around the table.

  “What?” Carlos asked. Taylor looked meaningfully over at the only two non-Wards at the table. “Oh, them. Uh, yeah, they know,” he said, giving the two girls a slightly rueful look.

  “Hey, I’m not that blonde,” Vicky said, giving her hair a toss over her shoulder. “Dean and I are dating. I’d have to be pretty dumb-- and deaf-- not to recognize his voice after him whispering naughty things in my ear.” She smirked and Dean blushed. Amy on the other hand scowled like a raincloud had passed overhead. What was that all about, Tayler wondered? “And the rest of ‘em it wasn’t too hard to figure out. I just had to watch and see who in Arcadia was hanging around with Dean and trying hard to look like they weren’t hanging around with Dean.” She propped up her elbow on the table and rested her chin in her hand. “Of course some were easier to figure out than others. Pathetically so.” She gave Dennis a smug smirk.

  “And what’s that supposed to mean?” Dennis demanded loftily.

  Vicky tapped her chin with her finger. “Hmmm, gee, who do I know at Arcadia who’s dumb enough to think it’d be funny to call themselves ‘Clock Blocker’ on national T.V.? Hmmmm, it’s such a mystery--”

  The others laughed while Dennis pulled a rude face at Vicky. “Really, guys, should we be talking about this here?” Taylor said with a worried frown. “This cafeteria is full of people who could overhear.”

  Chris-- Kid Win-- shook his head and tapped a small box on his belt that Taylor had thought was an old-fashioned Walkman. “Anti Eavesdropping Acoustic Barrier,” he said. “Makes a barrier that imitates and reflects the crowd noises around us back out. Anyone more than a foot or two away just hears more crowd noises.” He grinned. “And ‘Tinkers are B.S., yeah, I know.”

  Taylor mentally shrugged it off. That wasn’t even the most comic-bookish-weird thing she’d dealt with in the past hour. “What did you mean ‘you should have known?’” She asked Carlos.

  Carlos shrugged, looking awkward. “As team leader of the Wards, the PRT ends up giving me dossiers on everyone,” he said. “Even the psych evals. Aaaand now that sounds super creepy,” he went on when he caught Taylor’s expression. “Sorry...”

  “No, no, I get-- I get why,” Taylor said, waving a hoof in dismissal. “It’s just, well, out of all of us here I feel like I’m the only one running around with all my dirty laundry hanging out in the breeze.” She tried to laugh it off, but anyone at the table could read the expression on her face. (With her wide cartoonish eyes it was almost impossible not to, she had already learned much to her chagrin.)

  The way in which Capes got their powers was largely a mystery, and the PRT went out of its way to keep what the public knew about it as vague as possible. But once Taylor had joined the Wards she’d gotten the new-member flyleaf handout version given to her: All Capes, regardless of their powers, Triggered the same way. They went through what was literally the worst, most horrible day of their lives. The kind that left lifelong scars. And normally even talking about it was as taboo as breaking the Unwritten Rules.

  Normally. But at that moment something was bubbling to the surface that was urging them all to speak out.

  There was a moment of awkward silence while everyone suddenly focused on their meals. Chris suddenly spoke up. “Mine was when the repo men showed up,” he said. Everyone paused in mid-bite and looked at him. He ran his fingers through his hair. “My family, we’re not… we weren’t… well off,” he laboriously spelled out. “Things were really bad right then. Mom and Dad in debt, Dad out of work, and everything always breaking down… and here come the repo men, taking the car.” He laughed awkwardly. “Mom flipped out, went into hysterics and dad wasn’t much better. The way they were talking we were all going to be out in the street in a week. I just locked myself in my room and stuffed my fingers in my ears and wished to God I could just-- just FIX things-- make something, ANYTHING that worked--”

  “And you passed out, and woke up with the engineer’s manual from Star Trek in your head,” Dennis said.

  Chris snorted. “Yeah. Didn’t help one darn bit, either. Instead of fixing the broken appliances, I just kept going into Tinker Fugues and waking up with the toaster oven and the TV in pieces all over the house and some new half-finished doohickey I couldn’t remember making sitting on the coffee table. Didn’t THAT make Mom happy.” The others laughed, just a bit. “Fortunately Armsmaster spotted me one day when I was out scrounging for parts, spotted the signs, and got me on board with the Wards. Things have been… well, not great but better with a little more cash coming in.” He grinned and made a mock toast with his milk carton in Ladybird’s direction. “And thanks to our resident legal shark in a unicorn suit, there’s more of that now too.”

  The others laughed, but Taylor blushed. “Don’t thank me, thank Amy and Vicky’s Mom,” she said. “She’s the barracuda with a briefcase, not me.”

  “Still...” Chris said.

  Carlos grimaced. “Couple of guys at my old school-- gang bangers-- liked to use me for a punching bag every now and then. One day they switched up to knives.” His grimace soured and he shook his head. “They went bugnuts. Fifteen stab wounds, in pretty much all my major organs.” Amy and Taylor gasped. “Maybe it was my imagination, but I remember feeling my organs shutting down, one by one. If my powers hadn’t kicked in on the ambulance ride--” he shuddered. Dean put his hand on Carlos’ shoulder. Nothing more needed to be said.

  Dennis leaned back in his seat, balancing on the back two legs, ruminating. “Mine was when I was in the hospital,” he said, staring at the ceiling.

  “Were you injured?” Vicky said.

  Dennis didn’t move his eyes from the ceiling tiles. “I was getting bone marrow extracted,” he said, his voice uncommonly flat. Amy wasn’t the only one to grimace. “My Dad has cancer… Leukemia. They wanted to test mine, see if I was a compatible donor. I insisted actually.” He pursed his lips. “I was lying there butt in the air with a doctor driving a needle into my spine and I overhear a couple of the labcoats and nurses outside the door, who apparently thought they were using their indoor voices, muttering about how it was pointless, that Dad probably couldn’t go through the procedure anyway because reasons, too far gone, yada yada… took me a second after I woke back up to notice the doctor was standing really still...just glad he pulled the needle out before my power set in...”

  “Your father--?” Vicky yelped, then dropped her voice to a near-whisper. “ Has cancer?? Why didn’t you say something?? Amy would have fixed him right up, right Ames?” She looked at her sister. Amy looked a little guilt-stricken, but she nodded. “See? Why didn’t you come to us?”

  “But we did,” Dennis said, his feet hitting the floor. “We went through the hospital system, got on the waiting list--” an old pain crossed his face.

  It was all about triage, Taylor realized. Even with miracle healers like Panacea around, there were just too many sick and injured and not enough miracle to go around easily. Every Cape with healer powers, no matter how trivial or how rife with bad side effects, was booked solid for months and even years in advance.

  And they had to be booked. Back when the world had first started learning about the extent of Amy’s healing powers as Panacea, people had swarmed her. Swamped her. Her family and the hospital Amy worked through had to establish a strict, seemingly stone-hearted policy of forcing all people actively seeking Panacea’s help or the help of any other Cape healer to file for it through a multi-layered bureaucracy. Between that, the healing she did at the local E/R, and the healing she did at the Endbringer fights, she had to deal with an unending torrent of patients… but without the system they had set up that torrent would have been a flood that drowned her.

  “I’m sorry, Dennis,” Amy blurted out. “We, I just didn’t know.” A look of resignation crossed her face. “Look, we’ll fly right out to see your Dad, right after school.”

  Dennis looked like someone seeing a sunrise he’d never hoped to see. “R-really?” he said.

  “No, of course not. Your Dad can just die of cancer,” Amy said, a little waspish. “Honestly, what do you think of me?? What’s the address?” she pulled out a pen and one of her notebooks.

  “S-sorry...” Dennis stuttered. “...it’s room 14 at the, uh, terminal cancer ward in St. Jude’s… and Amy?” He looked more sober than Taylor had ever seen him. “Thank you.”

  “Geez,” Vicky said with a half-laugh. The humor was strained. “After what all you’ve been through, you must think I’m the biggest wuss in the galaxy.” She ran her fingers through her hair and looked away from everyone.

  Taylor was puzzled for a moment, then memory cleared things up. That was right, everyone knew Vicky’s power-story; Vicky had Triggered after getting fouled during a basketball game. She’d celebrated by promptly flying up to the basket and doing a slam-dunk… which had cost them the game, as powers were against the rules now. Taylor had never really thought about it before, and yeah, second-generation capes did supposedly Trigger easier. But she had to agree; it did seem sort of wimpy. Getting fouled in a game? Really?

  “There was a lot going on in the background most people don’t know about,” Amy said, suddenly defensive of her sister.

  “Like what?” Taylor asked.

  Amy puffed up a little and scowled, but Victoria spoke. “A lot of stuff,” she said. “Family… issues. And stuff.” She tried to look casual about it.

  “Think about it, Ladybird,” Amy said sullenly. “We were just talking about how Capes get their powers by literally going through a Day from Hell. The kind that gives you flashbacks and trauma--” she glared pointedly at Taylor, who winced. “-- and scars that last your whole life. And literally every single member of our family is a Cape. Think about it.”

  “A little less ‘Brady Bunch’ than it looks, and a little more ‘Married With Children,’ I’m guessing?” Dennis quipped. Vista wasn’t available, so Taylor telekinetically dope-slapped him. “Ow.”

  “Yeah, look… Mom is a real type A-plus personality. Which is great if she’s your lawyer; not so hot if she’s your Mom. She’s always been… kinda difficult to live with. Dad… he’s got clinical depression. Even when he takes his meds he’s barely there sometimes.

  “About the time of the game, Mom and Dad were having real troubles. Dad was hitting a really bad low with his depression, which was stressing Mom out. And when Mom gets stressed, everybody else gets stress too. She was leaning real hard on me and Amy all the time, pushing hard on our grades, on our futures, ya-de-ya-da… I wasn’t even sixteen yet and she was already pushing for me to get a sports scholarship, talking about how there were talent scouts from every college in the country at the game... Of course it was the Championships, first time in years we’d gotten that far, so the coach was leaning on us pretty hard too.

  “And I was pretty wound up because people were noticing for the first time ‘hey, that’s Victoria Dallon! From that whole family of capes, right?’ ‘Yeah, why hasn’t SHE Triggered yet?’ And the other girls on the team were giving me a lot of crap, some of ‘em were saying I only got on the team because of who my parents were--” she waved a hand in the air, rolling her eyes like she was pretending it was nothing.

  “Well, between all the crap at home and at school and the team, I was just sick of it all. I decided I was getting out. Oh You Tee. I even had a big master plan. I was going to win that championship trophy. Then I was going to get on the inside track for a sports scholarship like everyone was talking about. Then the instant the ink was dry on that scholarship, I was going to blow this dump.” She smirked ruefully. “I was going to take a scholarship at the college the farthest away from Brockton Bay as I could get, rent a little apartment for me and Amy, and get us both out of all that mess. Maybe even change my name if that’s what it took--”

  “Well, we get to the day of the game. The last few seconds are counting down, we’re down by one, everyone’s wound like someone tightened a watch spring with a wrench. And I’ve got the ball, I’m headed down the court to make the winning layup-- and BAM! I got fouled.

  “By a girl on OUR TEAM.”

  “What?” Dennis said, half choking on a mouthful of potato chips.

  “Priscilla Peters. She’d resented me from the day I joined the team, thought I was stealing her place. Still, I never woulda thought she’d throw the championship game just to ruin things for me, but… there you go.” Vicky picked an apple off her lunch tray and polished it a little viciously. “She crowded in to trip me, knocked me out of bounds. She managed to made it look like one of the other team did it, but-- I’m getting up off the floor, and she looks back and gives me this look, you know? I knew it was her, and she knew, and she knew I knew--” she bit into the apple savagely.

  “And I look up in the stands” she said around a mouthful of apple. “And there’s my Mom looking mad and disappointed-- the whole school looking mad and disappointed-- and my big brilliant master escape plan has gone gablooey all over the floor right in front of me--” she swallowed. “And yeah, that’s when I triggered.

  She laughed suddenly. “And they give us a penalty throw, and wouldn’t you know my powers kick in and I start flying right then? Turns out, and most people don’t know this, but my flight power sort of defaults to ‘on.’ If I get agitated and I’m not paying attention, I go airborne. And I didn’t even know I had a flight power then-- I step up to the foul line, get ready to throw, and the next thing I know I’m in the air and headed for the basket. ” Her smile turned sour. “That’s the thing that kills me the most. Do you realize that if I had just… stayed on the ground for two more stinking minutes… done the free throws, gotten the two points… we still would’ve won and everything would’ve worked out?” She dropped the half-eaten apple on her tray with a thunk. “But no.”

  “At least in all the excitement about me getting powers, Mom forgot to be upset at me for ‘blowing my big opportunity.’” Vicky made quote marks in the air. “Of course now that I have powers she wants to practically have me surgically attached to New Wave for life. Every other sentence is about how whatever I’m doing will make New Wave look, think of New Wave’s reputation, New Wave this and New Wave that. Boy is she in for a surprise when I turn eighteen. Me and Ames are gone, and that’s gospel.” She proceeded to scarf down her sandwich.

  “Why take Amy?” Carlos said out of the blue. “I mean, yeah, it has to be kinda lousy for her too, but...”

  Amy and Vicky traded a long, very uncomfortable look. “Go ahead and tell them,” Amy said. “It’s nothing they won’t figure out.” She snorted. “The PRT probably has a file on it someplace.” She tucked her head down and looked away, scowling.

  “Mom… isn’t very fond of Amy,” Glory Girl finally said. It was like the words were painful to say.

  Amy spun back around in her seat and faced them all. “I’m adopted,” she said with the air of someone delivering a fait accompli. “And it wasn’t Carol Dallon’s idea. In fact to go by the conversations Vicky and I have overheard over the years she was dead set against it.”

  Several jaws dropped around the table. “Then why--?”

  “Probably because she felt responsible for me being homeless,” Amy snapped, cheeks flushing. “My father was a supervillain--- one she helped put away.” She rubbed her arms with her hands as if she was trying to warm herself. “It was so long ago, I can’t remember anything more about him… just a bunch of adults having a big fight in our house while I hid in a closet. Then the police taking my father away--- I can’t even remember his face; just that he was my Daddy and he was going away-- while Carol and Aunt Sarah argued over who I would go with while I cried..” her chin crumpled a little then smoothed. “I guess Carol lost that argument.”

  “That’s… awful,” Carlos said, stricken.

  “It gets better,” Amy snarked. “Whoever my father was, Mom apparently had real issues with him. She’s been convinced from day one that because he was a villain, I was going to turn out to be just as evil as him.” Oh yeah,” she said to their astounded looks. “Bad egg, bad seed, blood will tell, I’ve heard em all, whenever she was ranting to Aunt Sarah about me, whenever she thought I wasn’t in earshot. And a couple of times when I was.

  “Once I got powers, though-- well, now she thinks I’m going to turn into a cackling supervillainess the instant her back is turned.”

  “But you’re a healer!” Taylor exploded. “The world’s greatest and most powerful healer, to boot! Forget what powers you ended up with,” she said, waving a hoof in negation as Amy seemed about to protest. “Good powers doesn’t mean good people. And it seems pretty obvious to me that with a little imagination you could still use those powers to do pretty awful things.” At this, Amy seemed to freeze. “But you didn’t. You’ve spent every day of your life since you got those powers using them to heal people. Of your own free will! Doesn’t that mean anything to her?”

  “If emotional problems made sense, nobody would have any,” Dennis quipped, his voice sober.

  “That’s, that’s just not fair to you, Amy,” Taylor said firmly. She was getting more than a little angry about it. “You’re a good person, and-- and you deserve better than that. Anybody would deserve better than that.”

  “That’s why I’m taking her with me when I make my Big Escape,” Vicky said with cheerful defiance, throwing her arm around her sister’s shoulder. For some reason Amy cringed a bit at her sister’s embrace? No, Taylor decided, she’d imagined it. Or maybe Glory Girl had used a little bit too much strength again.

  “Hey, what about me?” Dean teased.

  “Oh, I’ll definitely be bringing my boytoy along,” Vicky said confidently. No, Taylor definitely didn’t imagine the sour look that flitted across Amy’s face that time. “No extra rooms in our little apartment needed. We’ll just stick you in the linen closet for safekeeping.”

  “Well, this little shindig got kind of heavy fast, didn’t it.” Dennis said. There was a certain amount of less than cheerful assent from the rest.

  “Well, we could always go back to talking about Vicky’s Most Embarrassing Moments,” Amy said with a sly look.

  “Hey!”

  “You mean besides beating up mean ol’ lockers in the name of poor cute li’l unicorns everywhere?” Dennis teased. “And is that ‘ever,’ or just this week?”

  “Heyyyy--!”

  The mood slowly lifted as Amy proceeded to regale everyone with stories of her sister’s more, ah, interesting gaffes from when she was new to her super powers. Vicky would have retaliated with a few stories of her own, but things being what they were she was in short supply on dirt on her sister. Unfortunately everyone else had dirt on her…. She ended up sitting there sulking with her arms crossed while the others swapped stories of some of Vicky’s more outrageous pratfalls at Arcadia.

  “Well, as much fun as it would be to relive highlights like Vicky’s first, and LAST, day helping out in the cafeteria…” Dennis stage-whispered to Taylor. “Spaghetti hanging from the light fixtures, no lie...” he resumed his normal voice. “...I think it’s about time some of us started slipping away at random intervals so as to divert suspicion?” That said, he got to his feet and slid his tray off the table, then made a big show of seeing someone across the room. “Yo, Keith! We still on for that Guild Raid at the end of the week…?” He sauntered off.

  “Likewise,” Chris said with a rueful smile. “Gotta get to remedial math early--”

  “Remedial math?” Taylor said, surprised. A tinker who needed help with math? Did not compute, pun intended.

  “Yyyeah. I got dyscalculia,” Chris muttered. “My stupid power didn’t fix that. Oh no, of course not...” he pulled the little box off his belt and slid it across to Dean. “In case you wanna keep chewing the fat without people listening in,” he said.

  “Don’t bother,” Dean said, turning it off and sliding it back. “Looks like we’re gonna be joined by some civvies in a second anyway.” Almost as he spoke, two preppy-looking girls-- a pair of Vicky’s usual hangers-on (good or evil, school princesses always had hangers-on, Taylor reflected) slid into Chris and Dennis’ vacated seats. Amy rolled her eyes but said nothing. She was apparently familiar with them and thought little of them. As little as she possibly could, Taylor would guess from Amy’s expression.

  “Hiyeee,” one of the new girls said. “We saw everybody was peeling off and figured it was cool to sit with you again,” she said to Vicky. “It is cool, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, shame on you for running us off, Vick,” the other said with a mock pout. “We know Miss Popular is hella busy, but really--” She threw a very practiced looking smile over at Taylor. “So, aren’t you going to introduce us to the new Cape?”

  Before the lunch hour was out, several people had managed to infiltrate and “introduce themselves” as one Ward or another drifted away. After what felt like the hundredth round of hellos, squees, questions ranging from the peculiar to the inane and generic ‘oh how cutes’ Taylor had more than enough. Thankfully Amy picked up on it, and pleaded getting Ladybird to her next class (Computer Tech, thank heaven!) so the two of them could make their escape. Vicky, on the other hand, had English on the other end of the school, much to her disappointment. She and her entourage had to head the other direction when the bell rang.

  “Looks like you and I have the same computer class,” Amy said. “Bit of good luck I suppose.” She looked down at the unicorn trotting along beside her. “Taylor… Ladybird… I’d appreciate it if you sort of forgot all Vicky was saying about us leaving New Wave and running off together and all that--”

  “Oh, of course,” Taylor said hurriedly. “Even if it wasn’t all Unwritten Rules stuff everyone was talking about-- I’d never want to air someone else’s dirty laundry!” Unlike Emma, Taylor thought to herself with a touch of bitterness. To Emma precious confidences were just another weapon. “I can’t imagine Vicky plotting to ‘run away from home’ would go over too popular with your parents, either.”

  “It’s not just that.” Amy slowed her pace down the hall and rubbed her forehead. “I was talking more about the ‘us running off together’ thing.”

  “I don’t get it.” Taylor stopped and looked up at her, a puzzled expression on her face.

  Amy ran a hand down over her face. “Look. Um. This is… screw it. A while back, I… had a crush on Vicky.”

  Taylor gave her a long slow blink. “What.”

  “Look, it happens,” Amy said almost explosively, even as she looked up and down the hall to make sure noone was close. “Girls hitting puberty and still figuring out their hormones often get crushes on older girls… or that’s therapists and psychiatrists say anyway.” She rolled her eyes. “On top of that, I was orphaned, I was alienated, I was messed up, and Vicky took me in, wanted to be ‘best Big Sister ever’ when even my ‘Mom’ wanted nothing to do with me. She was my rock for the first few years of my life as Amy Dallon.

  “Then, on top of all that, just about the time I get my first period-- she gets her powers.” She paused meaningfully.

  Taylor made a silent “Oh” and nodded. “The aura.”

  “Which she STILL doesn’t control very well,” Amy said irritably. “It’s almost as bad as her flying every other step. But it’s nothing compared to what it was when she first got it. A few months of getting whammied by her ‘love me, adore me, worship me’ field and I was dragging her off to our room to confess my undying love for her.” She snorted. “That went well. It freaked Vicky the hell out. Then Carol found out and she REALLY freaked out. The next thing I know we’re double-booking Dad’s therapist for whole-family sessions, to un-screw my head so we all didn’t end up on a special episode of Maury Povich.”

  “Vicky completely spazzed, thinking that her aura had ‘turned me gay,’” Amy quoted. “I think her coping mechanism has been to go into denial; sort of shut it out of her mind that it ever happened. The rest of us, the therapost sort of concluded that my crush was just a weird thing triggered by being exposed to Vicky’s aura so much, and he instructed me to do mental exercises to learn to distinguish when my feelings were really my own, that sort of thing.” Her smile turned wry. “We could’ve stood a lot more family counseling, but Carol ended the sessions once she decided we were all ‘fixed’-- which coincidentally was about the point the shrink’s discussions started poking around our OTHER family issues.” Her smirk was as dry as a martini.

  “Do you… still feel that way? About Vicky?” Taylor asked very carefully. That would explain the flashes of jealousy she’d seen earlier, she realized. She wasn’t jealous of Vicky over Dean; she was having feelings of jealousy of Dean over Vicky.

  Amy sighed and shrugged. “That’s like asking someone who quit smoking how they feel about cigarettes,” she said. “It’s like catching a sniff of tobacco smoke. All it takes is catching a whiff of that stupid aura and those old feelings bubble up-- whether I agree with them or not.

  “If you’re asking me whether I’m lesbian or not, after all I went through I’m starting to think my sexual orientation is ‘Ew, No.’” Taylor giggled awkwardly at that. “But to get back to my point… please don’t bring this up. Not ever, really, but especially where people can hear about it. The last thing I need is for rumors of me and Vicky being in some teen lesbian incest relationship to get out on the grapevine. The next thing you know they’d get back to Carol and she’d go right off the rails, convinced I was trying to destroy New Wave’s rep with a sexscandal, or converting Vicky into my evil lesbian minion, or something.”

  Taylor laughed out loud. “Okay, okay, mum’s the word,” she said. They reached the classroom door just as the bell rang and went inside.

  The teacher was a rail-thin balding man in a sweater vest and tie, with thick spectacles and a prodigious walrus mustache. He stood up behind his desk. “You’re cutting close for a tardy, miss-- oh, I see,” he said, giving Amy and Taylor a double-take. “our new, er, Cape student.” He looked at Taylor over his glasses. “Miss Ladybird, are you sure you’ll be able to participate in this class? We do use--”

  Taylor smiled at him and lit up her horn. The computer keyboard next to him glimmered with lavender sparks and clattered to life. A moment later “HELLO WORLD” scrolled across the screen in flashing letters. The teacher peered at the screen over, then under, then through his glasses. “Oh. Well never mind then. Ahem. Please take a seat.”

  Overall Taylor was pleased with what she saw. The computers weren’t state of the art, but they weren’t a decade out of date like Winslow. The assignment for the day was a fairly simple bookkeeping program; Taylor finished hers in class and brought it up to the front desk on a thumb drive just as the bell rang. “Ah, very good,” the teacher-- Mr. Edgars-- said. He looked at her in interest. “So tell me, Miss Hebert; how has your first day here been?”

  “Oh, very good,” she said as the student shuffle went on around them. “Everyone’s been very friendly and open.” Almost too open. What was it that had everyone spilling their most personal stuff in front of her?

  “Ah,” Mr. Edgars said with a knowing smile. “Sounds like the Rubber Duck Protocol in effect.”

  Whoops. Had she said that last bit out loud? “Er, Rubber Duck Protocol, sir?”

  Mr. Edgars chuckled. “It’s a trick that most old-school programmers use,” he said. To her astonishment he reached in his desk and pulled out… a bright yellow rubber duck. He set it on his desk next to his computer. “You see, the idea is that you take the rubber duck, set him down next to the computer, and try to explain to him-- or her, equal opportunity duckies and all that-- what the code you are writing is supposed to do. It’s an old trick for helping you spot mistakes in your code. Works pretty good, too.” He gave the duck a squeeze; it went “squack” amiably.

  “I don’t see what that has to do with me, Sir,” she said, a trifle petulant.

  Mr. Edgars folded his hands on his desk. “Miss Ladybird, I’m sure many people have noted to you that you are, quote, ‘cute.’ You’re small, inoffensive, innocent-seeming, with childlike proportions, large expressive eyes---well to sum up you look trustworthy and harmless. And like a good listener.” His smile was of good humor.

  “At the same time, no offense, you don’t look remotely human. Or you do only in the most abstract sense. You’re well clear of the uncanny valley and way up on the opposite side… Which means you don’t look, to a human hindbrain, like anything that would or could ‘rat them out’ any more than a faithful dog. Which is why most people will spill out their hearts and souls to their loyal pet beagle than they would to another human being.

  “And in case you haven’t noticed, people-- teenagers especially-- have a lot they wish to unburden from their souls… and not too many people they’re willing to unburden to. As a teacher I try to present a sympathetic ear, the school provides counselors, and so on, but… well.” He looked at her soberly. “That’s a lot more important power than anything you can do with that magic horn of yours, if you ask me. I would ask... as a personal favor? Please be kind to those people who entrust you like that. And try to see it as a gift rather than a burden. You could do a lot of good... or harm… depending on whether you have a compassionate ear.”

  Taylor thought of Emma. “I understand,” she said.

  Mr. Edgar made a shooing motion with his hand. “You’d better hustle. The bell rang and Miss Dallon is looking impatient.” Taylor started and spun about on her hoof to gallop for the door.

  “Problem?” Amy asked, holding the door open.

  “No. He just wanted to pass on some food for thought, I guess.” Taylor said as the door closed behind them. Well, my locker turned into a phobia trigger, lunch turned into a group therapy session and my programming teacher turned into Yoda. What’s next on the agenda?

  She got her answer when she reached the English Lit class. Once again they walked in just as the bell rang and as the teacher started lecturing. She was another lanky type-- not bony and scrawny like Madame Trelawny, but tall and lean like a basketball player in the off season, with a curtain of ink black hair that hung down to her belt as she paced back and forth in front of the blackboard. “Okay, welcome back to English Lit-- take a seat, take a seat,” she interjected, not looking to see who came in under the wire. “We’ll be starting on a new novel this week, a classic fantasy novel. Now there are some who would dispute whether this book should be listed as a ‘classic’ of English or Western literature, and would complain that it’s not traditional fare for this course-- but well, screw ‘em.” the class tittered. “The most important measure of how great a work of writing is should not be just how old it is, or how, God Forbid, how traditional it is. “Great Works” should not be code for “horrible old books everyone thinks YOU should read.’” She picked up a paperback off her podium and held it up. “This is the novel. There is also an animated movie-- and no, watching that will not be enough to pass the tests, not by a long shot-- and surprisingly, an earlier or ‘lost’ version of the same novel by the author that was radically different from the one we all learned about. In fact we will be comparing all THREE versions of the story, movie included, so take a guess as to which students will get the highest grades on their essays. The title of the novel is...”

  She held up the book as if she were advertising it on a home shopping network… and clapped her eyes on the tiny bespectacled lavender unicorn sitting, eager and attentive, in the front row. Her eyes went round as saucers and her jaw dropped. Then she started to giggle. The giggles broke into guffaws of laughter as she sagged helplessly against her podium.

  “Ma’am?” Taylor said.

  The teacher waved her free hand helplessly. “Oh forgive me Ladybird,” she gasped. “But oh, the timing!” She cackled and held up the book. Everyone in the front row began chuckling; the laughter spread as the punch line of the joke got spread backwards through the room.

  “Our book for this quarter is Peter S. Beagle….‘The Last Unicorn’...” the teacher plunked down on her desk and laughed till she cried.

  Taylor groaned and planted her face in the desktop.