“This is hilarious, adorable and disturbing,” Clockblocker said, chin in his hand. “I can’t make up my mind which is the most.”

  The subject of his attention looked over her Fugly burger at him and burped cutely.

  “Charming.”

  “So I’m told,” Ladybird said. “And what do you mean ‘disturbing?’”

  “You’re supposed to be an herbivore, and you’re eating cow meat,” Clockblocker said. “Don’t you find that off-putting in the least?”

  “Depends on the mythology you subscribe to, you know,” Ladybird pointed out. “There’s a lot of fantasy franchises out there that feature carnivorous unicorns.”

  “The Bad Unicorn series is supposed to be satire!” Clockblocker objected.

  The end of the month had come up and the Wards’ patrol schedule had undergone its mandatory change-up. Armsmaster felt it was best to familiarize the Wards with as much of the city as possible and with one another; Miss Militia considered it a safety measure, preventing the Wards from falling into predictable patterns that criminals might exploit.

  Though she was sorry her time as Vista’s partner was being halted for now, Taylor regarded the reasons for the patrol change as only sensible. Of course she was a little less sanguine about her new partner being Clockblocker. Beyond wondering how their powers and abilities would work together, she was uncertain how well her personality and that of the team prankster and troublemaker would mesh. Her past at Wilson High had made her a little skittish about people with a joking frame of mind-- and what they might consider “funny.”

  So far, so good though. He did have an oddball sense of humor… but he also seemed to have enough sense to stay away from certain topics, and to refrain from pulling any pranks on the newest Ward. Well, second newest.

  “So how do you figure Vista’s doing with the new recruit?” Cockblocker asked before taking a bite out of his own burger. His faceless visor was up so he could eat, but he wore a sheer black cowl underneath it to hide his identity.

  There’d been a lot of positive fallout from the kidnap rescue. Protectorate P.R. indexes were at an all time high, with an especial load of positivity about both Vista and Ladybird. (the footage of their impromptu victory dance atop the wrecked van was a worldwide hit on Youtube, and there were topic threads all over PHO about them.) And it would seem that the higher ups were loosening up about what both Vista and Ladybird were qualified to handle; Ladybird was now patrolling with Clockblocker in the downtown area, and Vista was essentially getting an informal ‘sideways promotion’--- they had actually managed to sell her on the idea of being an unofficial, in-team coach for the newest members of the Wards. She had taken to the role like a duck to water. Maybe in the end, Taylor mused, just the simple gesture of respect was all Vista really needed.

  Which brought everything to the topic at hand. “Well, she’s sort of off the patrol roster this month, but I think Vista’s getting into being a ‘mentor’,” Ladybird said, dunking a few fries in burger sauce and noshing. “And it doesn’t hurt that Eight Ball is closer to her own age. Those two are getting thick as thieves.” Eight Ball being the newly inducted Dinah Alcott. The moment her parents had learned that Dinah was a Cape, they had pounced on the offer of a place in the Wards with both feet. That had put a smile on Director Piggot’s face, at least fleetingly.

  Of course that smile had vanished rather quickly when Dinah’s parents had shown up with Carol Dallon in tow, briefcase armed and loaded.

  Still, the PRT had come out way ahead. Good PR from a rescue, good relations with the Mayor’s office, and a brand new precog Thinker in the ranks.

  “You would talk her into picking ‘Eight Ball’ as a name, though,” Ladybird added.

  “It’s a good name,” Clockblocker grinned.

  “You did it just so you could pick her up, shake her, look in her ear and yell ‘SIGNS POINT TO NO,’” Ladybird deadpanned. “She’s getting really sick of that, by the way...”

  Clockblocker just cackled. Suddenly he stopped laughing. He looked over Ladybird’s shoulder and groaned. “Oh boy, it’s them again,” he said, sliding his visor down.

  “Them? Them who?” Ladybird looked over her shoulder. What she saw out of Fugly Bob’s picture window soured her relative good mood almost instantly.

  It went without saying that the revelation that the PRT had recruited a real, live unicorn into its ranks had been a huge hit nationwide. International, even. (Carol Dallon’s estimate of how much revenue Taylor’s image would bring to the PRT was short by almost an order of magnitude.) With that sudden and unexpected popularity however came an equally unexpected down side; not all her new “fans” were exactly well-balanced. Brockton Bay was about as far as you could get from the granola-crunchy shores of California. But the existence of a genuine, real live honest-to-gosh mythical creature had resulted in the harbor city receiving a rapidly increasing influx of fruits, nuts and flakes. Everything from crazed fantasy fans to cryptozoologists to new-age mystics had flooded into the city, adding a truly unique tang-- or in the case of some, a noticeable pong-- to the tourist crowds.

  Among the truly notable negatives among this crowd was one Madame Trelawney. She was a tall, stoop shouldered, gangly forty-something woman with a prominent sharp beak of a nose and a mane of long, frizzy hair that hung down past her waist. Her wardrobe looked like the salvage from a Sixties consignment shop. She thick, coke-bottle glasses, bracelets and hoop earrings and long loops of bead necklaces strung from quartz crystal points, worry beads, dried seeds from some rainforest tree and a mismatched mish-mash of religious and mystic symbols (considering the pedigree of most of the haphazard collection, Taylor could only marvel that one half of her jewelry collection hadn’t declared holy war on the other.) She had a tie-dye headband holding her mad lion’s mane of hair back out of her face, hemp sandals, and was otherwise dressed in a color-clashed mix of shawls, scarves and draping cloth. She claimed to be a seeress, a mystic, a shaman, a sage, and she had proclaimed herself to be Taylor Hebert, aka “Ladybird’s,” spirit guide.

  The PRT had quickly determined that she had been subsisting for the past twenty years or so as the leader of a small new-age cult convent somewhere out in the California desert. Upon hearing a news bulletin of Ladybird’s debut, she had announced that the little purple unicorn was a “herald of a new Celestial Age,” and that she, Madame Trelawney, was chosen by the Spirit World “to guide the new ascendant in her apotheosis.” She and her faithful followers had loaded up their Volkswagon bus and driven cross-country to Brockton Bay….

  Where, after making a spectacle of herself on one of the PRT tours, she was told in no uncertain terms that not only did Ladybird neither want nor need a “spirit guide,” but that the redoubtable Madame Trelawney would find herself thrown into prison if she attempted to approach Ladybird, her family or friends, the Wards, the PRT or the Protectorate against their wishes ever again (or as it was more pithily put, “If you ever come running up to us again, there better be an Endbringer on your ass.”) Lacking the funds to return to their convent-slash-squatter’s shack in the desert, they had set up housekeeping in the Docks someplace and now made a living selling new age trinkets, doing astral readings, and annoying the hell out of the natives.

  It seemed at the moment that the Madame and her loyal flock were setting up a protest outside Fugly Bob’s. Among their numerous insufferable flaws, the Tambourine Heads were, you guessed it, Vegan. And being Californians, it wasn’t enough that they themselves were Vegan and practically subsisted on little more than nutritional smugness-- they must press and insist and coerce everyone else around them to join in their superior lifestyle, whether they wanted it or not.

  “Whaddya think it’ll be this time, the guy in the chicken head or the naked chick with the butcher cuts labeled on her body?” Clockblocker said as they watched the Tambourine Heads warm up with a-- what else-- tambourine chorus line about the evils of meat. “I’m rooting for the naked chick, personally.”

  Ladybird was too busy trying to hide behind a makeshift modesty screen made up of their menus. “Don’t know, don’t care,” she groused. “Please just don’t do anything to draw their attention this way.”

  “Good luck with that, we were given window seats for a reason. Oh look, it’s Chicken Head,” Clockblocker continued. “Guess it’s too cold for naked butcher block chick. Oh well.” The chanting and tambourine whacking was getting rather loud.

  “Should we do something?” Taylor said.

  “I've just called the cops,” Clockblocker said, holding up his phone. “Hello, 911? This is Clockblocker, I'm at Fugly Bob's and Madame Trelawney's at it again. You might want to send a squad car... right, okay, gotcha.” He hung up.

  “But--”

  “We're Capes, not cops, Ladybird,” he said as he put up his phone. “Generally we're supposed to stick to catching robbers and fighting supervillains, and let the cops handle things like breaking up crowds for disturbing the peace. Unless they start committing an actual violent crime, or the Chicken Head guy starts shooting death-ray eggs out his butt at people, we're kind of sidelined.” He shrugged.

  Taylor grumbled and glared out the window at the Tambourine Heads, stymied. She took a bite of her burger-- just as Madame Trelawney glanced at the window and saw her. Their eyes locked. Trelawney's expression of dissipated outrage morphed into one of mortified horror. She stood, mouth agape, and pointed in horror at the lavender unicorn.

  It took a moment for Taylor to realize that the thing triggering the misplaced California nut-crunch was the hamburger in Taylor's hooves. Her course of action was obvious; she took the biggest, most jaw-cracking bite out of it that she could and proceeded to noisily and visibly chew, glaring at Trelawney all the while.

  Trelawney's mortified squeal was audible right through the glass. Taylor chewed more noisily, taking another enormous bite and getting ketchup and relish all over her face. “Arm NARM NARM NARM NARM...”

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  Clockblocker blithely hit his helmet commlink. “Hello, Comms? Hey Vista. Guess what, we're at Fugly Bobs having lunch and the Tambourine Heads are right outside. Yeah, anti-meat protest. Trelawney just saw Ladybird through the glass eating a double cheese with onion rings and is flipping out. Yeah, she-- oh, nice touch... she's wiping her face with the bun now. Trelawney looks like she's about to pop a blood vessel--”

  “What? Oh, hello Miss Militia. Okay, so the moment she steps in side she's in violation of the restraining order? Gotcha. Shouldn't be too long...” He paused as Trelawney began banging her open hand on the glass shouting 'stop that!!' at the gluttonous little unicorn. Taylor responded by stuffing some fries in her mouth on the next bite and chewing with her mouth open, her snout pressed against the glass. The rest of the diners and the waitstaff were losing it, holding up their smartphones to film the action and laughing their behinds off.

  Trelawney finally had enough. She marched to the front doors, her parading minions in her wake, and barged in, the bell on the door jangling as they poured into the dining area. “YOU!” she said, pointing at the guy running the grill with an outstretched finger. She stood tall and defiant as Galadriel at the mirror pool. “Defiler! You desecrate the sacred acolyte's ascension with your ROASTED FLESH OF MURDER!”

  The teenager wielding the spatula blinked. “Uh, no, it's cow, I'm pretty sure,” he said.

  Trelawney gave him a half-shriek of disgust. She turned to Taylor and all but flung herself on her knees. “Please do not do this, anointed one,” she half-whimpered. “Don't pollute your ascended body with the flesh of innocent animals!”

  Taylor gave her a contemptuous look. “Madame Trelawney, what did you tell me your spirit animal was again?”

  “The great horned owl, herald of wisdom, and the white fox, who--”

  “And what do you think owls and foxes live on-- celery sticks?” Taylor snorted. “Go away, Madame Trelawney,” she sing-songed, “your spirit animals are laughing at you.”

  The Tambourine Heads who had followed her in gasped in scandalized shock. Trelawney shot to her feet in a towering rage and opened her mouth to go into one of her famous squalling, honking tirades--

  “One potato, two potato, three potato, four--” Clockblocker sang, rapidly touching her shoulder and the shoulders of everyone in her entourage. They immediately froze as his time-stopping power turned them into living statues. The rest of the diner broke out in applause. “Thank yew, thank yew,” Clockblocker said, accepting the cheers with sweeping bows. “This has been a citizen's arrest for violating a restraining order, brought to you by Clockblocker and Ladybird, we're here all week, be sure and TRY THE VEAL--” that earned him an extra gout of laughter. Moments later the BBPD poured in and cuffed the immobile seeress and her faithful acolytes in preparation for hauling them off.

  “Ugh, I can't STAND that nonsense,” Taylor growled as she clip-clopped down the sidewalk, head hung low.

  “It happens,” Clockblocker said, easily keeping pace with her. “You remember reading about this stuff in history class. People with powers first started showing up, people got weird. People started running around saying they were demons, or aliens, or alien demons, or reincarnated gods or angels--” he shrugged. “I remember reading how those fringe religious types used to freak out whenever a cape with wings showed up.” his voice soured a bit. “Before the Simurgh appeared, anyway.” The two capes shuddered.

  “At least I've not got any weird fetish groups chasing me,” Taylor muttered.

  Clockblocker actually stopped in mid stride. “Uhh. Don't go on the ParaFanfic Online servers,” he said.

  Taylor looked back at him. “What??”

  “Ladybird, they've already got an entire directory for fanfics just for you,” he said. Her pupils turned to pinpricks and her jaw dropped. “Hey, it's happened to nearly all of us,” Clockblocker hastily added. He scratched the back of his head. “Thank God the mods cracked down on the fics featuring Vista before they even started, but most of them get around age-limit issues by saying it's aged-up or five years in the future or whatever--”

  “Who the hell are they pairing me up with??” Of the half-dozen appalled questions that surged forward to be asked, that was the one that got up.

  Clockblocker shrugged. “Most everyone you can think of. Though most of them have the other person transformed into a pony by mad biotinkers or you get transformed into a human or you both get turned into half-human half-pony hybrids--” he was starting to ramble. “Though there are a lot of fiction crossovers too; I saw one where you were in a lesbian relationship with Lady Amalthea from the Last Unicorn--”

  Taylor made a nauseated sound. She resumed marching down the street, refusing to look at the time-twisting Cape. “My opinion of you is lowered dramatically just by the fact that you know these things,” she snorted.

  “Hey, I didn't WRITE 'em,” he protested, catching up and matching pace with her. “And like I said, it happens to everyone. I mean, one of the biggest subsets of cape fics is lemons about a three-way love triangle between Glory Girl, Gallant, and Dean Stansfield, Glory Girl's boyfriend.”

  Taylor's little pony face screwed up in confusion. “but isn't Dean... I mean, uh, isn't Gallant...” It was a rather open secret among the Wards that Glory Girl's boyfriend was also the Ward cape Gallant.

  “I know. That's what makes it hilarious,” Clockblocker said, chortling. “It's the ones where Dean ditches Glory Girl to run off with Gallant that disturb him the most...”

  “Awwwgh.”

  “You just gotta let that stuff roll off your back, Ladybird,” Clockblocker advised. “There's not really any way to stop them, or to get the people on ParaHumansOnline to stop with their weird shipping speculations, or to get nutburgers like that Madame Trelawney to wake up and smell the reality. You just have to...” he shrugged. “Just hold on to the positives.”

  “Like what?” Taylor demanded.

  “Like how you give people hope.”

  “Me? Give people hope?” Taylor scoffed.

  Clockblocker looked at her. That blank, full-face visor of his could really be unnerving, Taylor realized. “Yeah, hope. I take it back, go on PHO sometime. For every loony out there who thinks you're some sort of sign of cosmic revelation, or has a really weird thing for plush toys, there's another who talks about how seeing footage of you running around, doing tricks with your power to make little kids laugh, or rescuing kittens from trees, or busting bad guys with your Kickass of Cuteness, made them smile again. How seeing a fairy tale come true made them believe that wonderful things could still happen in this world.” His voice was unusually serious.

  Taylor actually had to sit down on the sidewalk for that one. “Wow,” she said. “I... had no idea.” She looked up at Clockblocker, tilting her head and giving him a curious smile. “That's some unusually profound stuff, coming from you.”

  “Yeah. I try to keep it light,” Clockblocker said. “There's too much Batman and not enough Spidey out here, you ask me.”

  “Who and who?” Taylor said, baffled.

  “Batman and Spiderman-- old comic books from, like, the fifties or sixties,” Clockblocker said. “Batman was this super-genius martial arts vigilante with like, a thousand bat-themed gadgets on his utility belt... and so grimdark he shit Shadow Stalkers. No lie.” Taylor snickered. “While Spiderman was this college kid who got spider-powers. Super strong and agile, could climb walls like a spider and had a danger-sense... oh, and he had gizmos on his wrists that let him shoot spider webs to tie up crooks.

  “I used to read my dad's old comic book collection all the time. I liked Spidey way better than Bats. Because no matter how much danger he was in, or how bad things were, or how scared he was, Spiderman always joked and quipped and even laughed in the bad guy's face. It drove the bad guys berserk and it gave the heroes a boost, and all the citizens he rescued knew everything was going to be okay because 'the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man' was there to save the day.” He sounded almost wistful at the end.

  “That's the kind of hero I always wanted to be. That's kind of why I joke around so much. Hey, if I can walk into a crisis and put a smile on somebody's face.... that and I'm actually a goofball.” He waved his hands, indicating all of himself. Taylor chuckled.

  “It's... okay, don't spread this around but it's also why I wear this visor,” he went on, indicating his blank visage. “Same reason Spidey wore a mask that covered his whole face. That way, nobody can see how scared we really are.” He fell silent, seemingly a little embarrassed about opening up that much.

  Taylor pondered that. He was a Striker, and one with a pretty use-limited power. She never realized how scared he'd have to be, charging into battle against armed thugs and monsters and capes with terrifying powers, hoping that he'd get close enough to 'tag' them with his bare hand before they crushed him like a grape. He basically went out ready to grasp a burning brand with his bare hand every day, over and over again-- and his only concern was to keep other people from being afraid. “That's... pretty cool, actually,” Taylor said. “You're a lot more than I gave you credit for, Clock.”

  “Don't worry, I won't let it go to my head,” Clockblocker quipped.

  “Hmm.” Taylor tapped her chin with a hoof, squinting. “Web-shooters...” She looked up at Clockblocker suddenly. “Clockblocker, tell me, how does your power know when to stop?”

  “Huh?” The question caught him off balance.

  “I mean... okay, suppose you grab a guy by their wrist and time stop them. How does your power know to freeze all of him, and not just, say, his shirt? Or a whole car and not just the bumper or door?”

  “Oh. Well, some of it seems to be controlled by my intent, but it also spreads,” he said. “Like water filling a glass. The greater the volume the slower the speed, but that's still pretty fast. And of course jumping from one thing to the next that's touching, but not one piece? Slows the whole process down.”

  “So it zips along something long and thin really fast, but takes more time to fill up something big and bulky?”

  “More or less, yeah. I can freeze a person almost instantly. But say, this whole building and everything in it?” He slapped the wall of the office building they were passing. “Probably up to a minute. And of course I'd be pooped out for a darned long time after doing it. So no, unfortunately I couldn't time-freeze an entire city in an Endbringer attack.”

  “Too bad,” she commiserated. But not what I was aiming for. Let's see... “ her head began bobbing and tipping in the little motions the other Wards had come to recognize as her using her visor to browse the web. The lights flickering across her visor finally stopped. She smiled confidently. “Okay, um, you don't have to listen to me, but... I think I have some ideas how to make your power more useful.”

  She could almost hear him raising his eyebrow behind his visor. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah, c'mon, according to Google Maps there's a dollar store right around the corner.” She trotted off at a cheerful gait.

  “Dollar store?” Confused but curious, Clockblocker followed.

  The robbery was textbook. The hoodied crook came into the gas station, gun drawn, and demanded cash. The register was emptied-- a ridiculous fifty dollars-- and the robber prepared to flee. He backed out the door, gun held out at the ready.

  CLINK!

  Something metallic came out of nowhere and latched onto his hand. The world blinked, and suddenly his gun was gone and his wrists and ankles were cuffed. That Ward Cape, Clockblocker was standing there, along with that little pale purple unicorn, who was smirking at him. Clockblocker juggled something metallic and springy between his hands. “And that's why you don't try robbing gas stations in Brockton Bay,” Clockblocker said smugly.

  “A Slinky?”

  Armsmaster stared at the springy metal toy in his gauntleted hand. It boggled the imagination, but one of his Wards had used this silly damn thing to stop an armed robbery.

  “Cheap, disposable, and self-retracting,” Clockblocker said. “And it turns out, a great way to give me a ranged attack.”

  “It sort of came to me when Clockblocker explained that his power propagates through what he touches-- and it can propagate at especially high speed through a thin line or wire,” Taylor said. “Oh we tried several things. My first idea was to let one of my extra-large jumping spiders leap off the end of his fingertip with an anchor line--”

  “Yeeeek,” Clockblocker said fervently.

  “--But he kept doing that,” Taylor said drily. “So we tried a lot of different things. Thread and fishing line were too dangerous-- it would be like leaving invisible razor wire trailed all over the place! Silly string looked good, but we couldn't figure out a way he could freeze the spray-string without time-freezing the can... But the Slinky worked just about perfectly.”

  “I see you attached a neodymium magnet to the end,” Armsmaster pointed out.

  “And a couple of wall-tacky things,” Taylor agreed. “To make it stick long enough for Clockblocker's power to cross over to the target.”

  “A... novel approach to the problem,” Armsmaster said. “It does seem to have a few drawbacks though.”

  “Yeah, it's a bit too bulky to carry more than four or five of these things,” Clockblocker agreed. “And the magnet and wall-tackies won't always stick well.” His voice turned hopeful. “So I was thinking...”

  “That I might come up with a more efficient version of your, ah, delivery system?” Armsmaster said. The two nodded. He seemed to think for a minute, walking the slinky between his hands. “Hm, perhaps a hairspring clamp or gripping claw at the end,” he pondered. “Something like a mousetrap. Or one of those molecular cohesion pads Dragon was talking about. Hmmm...”

  “Oh, and we also found these things,” Taylor said. She pulled a wooden stick about the size of a pencil out of her bag. It had a roll of decorated paper wrapped around one end. “These 'chinese yo yo' things. You flick the stick and the paper coil comes out.” She gripped the stick in her teeth and shook her head like a dog; the coiled paper reeled out several feet like a corkscrew party favor, then snapped springily back to the stick. “They're only made of paper, but something between the slinky and this might be a more efficient way to wind the springs---”

  “I'll work with these a bit, see what I can come up with,” Armsmaster said. He took the chinese yo-yo from Taylor, still distracted by the slinky. “I'll have Kid Win tinker a bit with them too, see if he has any ideas.” He started walking off, muttering to himself about memory metals and ductility. “Oh, and good work today, you two,” he said over his shoulder.

  Taylor leaned in to Clockblocker. “Was that for the armed robber we caught, or the slinky?” she muttered.

  “Don't care, I'll take kudos where I can get 'em. Brofist!” He held out his fisted hand to her.

  “Oh. Uh, bro... Hoof, I guess.” Taylor grinned and bumped the bottom of her hoof against his knuckles.