Worm is owned by John C. 'Wildbow' McCrae

There was a girl lounging on the couch in the Wards' area when Clockblocker walked in. One who hadn't been there before.

One who shouldn't be there now.

She was maybe a year or two younger than he was. Her hair was long and dark. Her mouth a little too wide. She wore glasses. It was hard to tell from the way she was sprawled, but Clockblocker's first impression was that she was tall.

She was wearing gift-shop sweats. The black ones with 'VILLAIN' stenciled on the legs and across the back, done up like— No, they were actual PRT-issued supervillain prisoner sweats.

"What the fuck?" he blurted. "Who are—"

But no, that answer was obvious, wasn't it? There just weren't that many parahumans his age in Brockton Bay, even fewer who had any reason to be wearing those sweats. She was too tall to be Rune, the hair was too dark to be Tattletale, and she was too skinny to be Hellhound.

"Skitter." His voice was too neutral to be flat, but it was a harsh, abrasive neutrality.

"I never really did like that name," she commented without looking up from the tablet she was examining.

"You never objected to it on PHO," Clockblocker said lamely.

"It really wasn't as bad as it could have been," she said.

"How bad could it have been?"

"Since I spent four months trying to come up with something that wasn't overtly villainous, or make me sound like an escapee from an after-school television show aimed at elementary students? Pretty bad."

"What the fuck are you doing here?"

She held up a finger. "Wait one. Vista is in the lift, and if you could get Kid Win from his lab we can do the whole meet and great and ask questions in one go without everyone repeating themselves."

I'd scrolled up and re-read the same page a dozen times when Clockblocker returned with the other two Wards.

I looked up to find them wearing full costumes. Go figure.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" Vista's demand echoed Clockblocker's. Cute.

"Long version or short version?" I asked as I set the tablet aside and turned on the couch to face them, a petty power move I'd learned from Lisa and Coil. Sitting while they stood put me in a position of social power.

"Short," Clockblocker said.

"I needed a place to crash for a few days, Miss Militia sent me here."

"With the help files?" Kid Win asked.

"I turned myself in this morning," I said. "Part of the arrangement we came to is that I join the Wards—"

"Like hell," Vista said.

"—in another city, but it'll be a few days before they finish processing the paperwork and getting all the lawyers to agree."

"How the hell did you pull that off?" Clockblocker asked.

"Coming in? I used the front door," I said.

"Not what I meant," Clockblocker said. "Director Tagg never would have agreed to it."

"Yeah," I said, running a hand through my hair, "about that…" I shrugged, might as well get it all done at once. "The DA wasn't too thrilled with a lot of his decisions ranging from the offer Tagg made me, to the bit where he unmasked a supervillain in the middle of a school full of kids. Especially one he was accusing of, you know, murder, hostage taking, high treason—"

"What?" Clockblocker blurted.

"I know, right?" I asked "Apparently at some point I declared war on the country or something."

"That's not—" Clockblocker bit back whatever he was going to say. "He wouldn't bargain. Not with you."

"Pretty much nailed it," I agreed. "That's why he brought in Alexandria and they put together this little scheme to get me to think they were killing my friends one by one until I either confessed or snapped and killed them."

"That's insane!" Vista said.

"Which was pretty much the DA's reaction," I agreed.

"No," she said as she shook her head. "There's no way—" she held up a fist, finger jabbed out at me. "You're lying! Alexandria is a hero! I bet you'd just love to drag her and her reputation, all of us even, through the trash."

"You can ask Miss Militia," I offered.

Vista took a step back and got out her phone, and talked in hush tones for maybe a minute. "Militia says she's legit," she said sourly. She turned to glare at me. "She also said that they were running a ploy to get you to confess, they weren't really hurting your 'friends.'"

"But I didn't know that," I said. Was it strange how calm I felt while she threw her accusations in my face? "The extortion scheme—"

"Legitimate ploy."

"If it was legit, why am I here and not a cell?" I asked. "Tagg and Alexandria attempted to extort a confession—"

"Stop calling it that," Vista ordered.

"What else do you call an attempt to compel someone using force, or the threat of force, against another?" I asked.

"It was fake."

"I didn't know that."

"Vista," Clockblocker said. "Did Miss Militia say anything else?"

Vista crossed her arms. I didn't need to see her eyes to know that she was glaring at me from behind her visor. "She also said Tagg is on his way out."

"Extorting confessions. Tsk tsk," I said. "Did she mention the part where I saved his life?"

"Wanted him to stew in disgrace?" she asked spitefully.

"I save his life and I'm a vindictive bitch. I let him kill himself and I'm the one who drove him to suicide." I shook my head. "That's the problem with my power. People take one look and assume 'villain.'"

"Have you looked at yourself?" Clockblocker asked.

"That's what Armsmaster said the first time we met," I said. "He took one look at me and asked if I was a villain. Who does that? For that matter, who expects a villain to answer that honestly?"

"Right," Vista said. "You met Armsmaster and he didn't bring you in. This was before you assaulted everyone?"

"Um… No," I said. "According to the charge sheet this would have been immediately after I'd just finished assaulting, sixteen people. In my defense, I interrupted them from killing four kids, and Armsmaster took credit for Lung, so they only put sixteen on the charge sheet instead of seventeen."

"Wait," Kid Win said. "Just wait a moment. You want us to believe you started out a hero, took down Lung, and then what, gave credit to Armsmaster and decided to be a villain?"

"Actually…" I grinned at his expression. "That isn't far off."

"Pull the other one," Clockblocker said flatly.

"No, it really isn't. Think back to April, just before the bank robbery. Armsmaster brought in Lung and got a bad rap for it."

"Because the Tinkertech tranquilizers he used nearly killed Lung," Vista said. "Some kind of bad reaction."

"Bad reaction hell. Those drugs he used shut down Lung's regeneration and Armsmaster didn't tell them about the insect and spider venom I'd pumped Lung full of."

"Sure," Vista said. "Just like you didn't kill Director Calvert, or subvert Lily, or get Sophia thrown in jail, or whatever the fuck you did to Trevor!"

"Vista—"

"No, Dennis," she said, ripping off her visor. "I think if she's going to come into our place, take over our couch, that we're owed some fucking answers!"

"Foil, Lily, wanted a home," I said. "I barely talked to her, but it sounded like her family has been a non-issue for years, and that she was bounced around from Ward team to Ward team whenever some place found itself short-handed. She found a home, not a team that the PRT could pull her away from the next time it was convenient, but a home, in Brockton Bay."

"With a villain."

"Love isn't something that should be criticized." I thought about telling her just how unhappy Parian had been to have to come to us. How the PRT hadn't given her a viable alternative, but no. Leave it at that.

"Chariot was Coil's. I don't know what their exact arrangement was, but knowing how Coil operated it was probably a mix of cash and a very real threat to Chariot's civilian family, maybe with some low-grade favors worked in.

"Um… Calvert and Sophia are both long stories, which would you like first?"

Vista shook her head. "Did you kill Director Calvert?"

"Not until after he shot me, locked me in a room to die, and then set the building on fire for good measure," I said. "To be fair, from his point of view I probably deserved it."

"It wasn't all that you deserved," Clockblocker muttered.

"I kinda disrupted his plans to rule Brockton Bay. You see, Thomas Calvert was the civilian identity of Coil."

I laid out what I knew of Coil's workings and then, still on a roll, did my whole 'origin story' concerning Hess, her repeated attempts to kill Grue and me, the conference at Winslow, finding out her identity—but leaving out the part about Armsmaster setting me up to get killed by Leviathan, Defiant didn't deserve that story to ever be told to someone who didn't absolutely need to know it—and the kidnapping.

"That's fucked up," Clockblocker said sometime later.

I shrugged and picked up the tablet again. "Exactly what services does the Youth Guard provide?"

"The Youth Guard?" Clockblocker asked.

"Yeah," I said. "Tutoring, counseling…" I got the sensation I was talking to myself so I looked up at them. "What?"

Clockblocker had taken his helmet off to reveal pale skin and a shock of red hair. Kid Win looked even more normal: brown hair, blue eyes. It was instantly-disappear-into-a-crowd normal.

"Miss Militia went through some of the advantages of the Wards program," I said. "Honestly, none of it was stuff I didn't already know from research. I don't get the more exhaustive in-brief until the paperwork is done, but I don't expect any real surprises there either. But the Youth Guard wasn't involved in Brockton Bay so I never had a reason to do a deep dive."

"Never thought of setting them on us?"

"Clock—"

"Dennis," he said. "I'm Dennis."

"Taylor," I said. "And no. I had enough stuff to deal with without involving an unknown."

"Shit," Vista said. "Okay, you know what? I'll fucking bite. You know the joke about how when someone says they're with the PRT and they're here to help, it really means they're from the Public Relations Team and here to look good?"

"Sure," I said.

"The Youth Guard says they exist to help us, but it's all BS. You asked about services. There are none. Everything is about helping parents keep 'agency,' whatever that means, of their kids. If your Dad wants to sue the PRT over the Wards program, they'll help. Otherwise, nada.

"Second thing, you know what their penalty is for a first offense? I mean, when the local PRT and/or Protectorate office screws up and they get to come in?" before I could even shake my head she was continuing. "The Youth Guard dings us, the Wards. Our hours cut. The number of days we can operate cut. Our pay docked. For something the PRT did, explain how that's supposed to help me?"

I shook my head. "I thought there were fines—"

"Sure, ten thousand, first offense. Basically, a week's worth of office supplies. It sorta gives a new meaning to 'we need to order more toner.' Oh, and sensitivity training, can't forget that one. It doesn't matter what the screwup was, or if the training is relevant to the issue. A first offense screwup warrants all department heads receiving four hours of sensitivity training and a 2-hour meeting with Youth Guard representatives."

"Okay, so it's a little screwed up."

"No," Vista said. "It's a lot screwed up. I don't know where to begin. Okay. Those days we're cut? We aren't supposed to come in. You were talking about getting away from school and I understand that perfectly. It is, literally, the same deal for me and that is all you are getting from me on that subject."

"Copy," I agreed. I nodded. Clearly the case even if I didn't know just how messed up her situation was.

"For most of us the Wards are an escape. From school, from family, from the pure fucked-up-ness that is normal life. So the Youth Guard steps in and 'helps' us by throwing us back into whatever it is we're trying to get away from. The Case 53s, those that are still in the program, have it even worse because a lot of 'em had nowhere else to go, but aren't allowed to be on base, in residence, whatever the fuck you want to call it, if the Youth Guard has cited their program."

"Okay," I managed, but she was in full tilt now so I sat back in the couch and let her rant.

"Second—" we'd long past 'second' and she was on her third or fourth point, but I saw no reason to point this out "—we lose access to the ancillary services. The PRT has us regularly sit down with shrinks, and I suppose it might help some of us so that makes it worthwhile even when I feel like it's a waste of time but they're paying me for it so…whatever. Thing is, if you're one of those people being helped and your therapy date is on a day you can't come in, guess who isn't going to therapy? Or tutoring. Or say I'm picking up some specialty class… Lot of services like that, group them in with the benefits I forgot to mention."

"Sure," I said.

"Third, we're supposed to keep our grades up. Only that isn't good enough for the YG. We're Wards. We're supposed to improve, which is pretty damn hard if you're pulling straight-As but whatever. The thing is, it isn't hard. We get to go to good schools and the PRT has a shit-ton of 'educational resources.' I mean, access to college professors, subject matter experts willing to teach pretty much anything including how friction ratios effect steering outcomes in aeronautical use under reduced gravity loads and the like, hell, Thinkers who specialize in 'knowledge acquisition, transmission, and retention.'"

I had to think about that for a moment. "So… College instructors, rocket scientists, and… Thinkers who are expert teachers?"

"Pretty much. I mean, we aren't all super geniuses, but to not meet your educational targets you either need to blow off school entirely or have some massive learning impediment. Usually. But the Guard steps in, we go on restriction, and suddenly no more tutoring or educational assistance, stuck in the crappy place we're trying to get away from, and, 'oh gasp, horror of horrors, the poor sweet darlings' grades are falling. We need to do something quick because the PRT obviously can't do anything right!'"

She shook her head. "The PRT hands the Wards a really nice carrot. And it is, don't get me wrong. I'm making stupid-amounts of money for someone my age even without the trust fund, never mind the stuff I'm getting to learn for free. But the PRT is also a pretty nasty stick, just bad enough that you know it's there, and if you screw up there are all sorts of unpleasant ways that they can remind you of it.

"But the Youth Guard? Fucking assholes, that's what. Forget trying to 'help' us. They're the 800-ton gorilla the PRT pulls out to threaten Wards back into line, and also drive us together by giving us a common enemy."

"It's not… It can't be…"

"It's not so bad, but yeah, it's that fucked up," Vista said. "The Youth Guard doesn't like to get involved, usually. It cuts into the time they can stand around telling each other what wonderful people they are. There are a couple of true-believers that are bug-house nuts though. Mostly it's better off to just ignore the hell out of them."

"So they have what, monitor the Wards programs, and help the parents of Wards sue the PRT, and that's it?" I asked.

"Pretty much, yeah," Clockblocker—Dennis—said. "Why?"

"Because I'm— Is there a big screen I can put this up on?"

"Television," Kid Win gestured to the giant flatscreen on one wall. He did something and the tax form I'd been looking at was up for everyone to see.

I scrolled up and the television copy did the same thing. Nice!

"Okay, this is their IRS Form 990—"

"You're looking at the Youth Guard's taxes?" Dennis asked.

"As the man said, follow the money," I said. "Okay, a lot of this is pretty straight forward. 'Total number of individuals who received more than $100,000 of reportable compensation from the organization.' There's pay the IRS wants to know about, and stuff it doesn't care about. This we can see that there's exactly 1,893 individuals who earned stuff the IRS wants to know about in excess of a hundred-k. 'Total revenue,' how much did they bring in, round up and call it three-dot-two billion."

"I can't believe you're in their taxes," Dennis muttered.

"Total employees, just long of thirty thousand," I said.

"Why are we looking at this?"

"Because this," ooh, split-screen, nice! "is the 990for the American Red Cross. Look at the numbers: total employees, call it twenty-one-k; hundred-k and over, 1249; total revenue, two-point-one billion.

"So the Youth Guard has half again the ARC's paid workforce, over-one-hundred-k employees, and revenue totals. But…the ARC is everywhere. After a house fire, after a tornado, after a hurricane, after an Endbringer. Vista, you said there are what, five thousand Wards? Six? Are you telling me that the Youth Guard needs five employees—employees, not volunteers—to every Ward just to provide oversight to the Wards programs and occasionally sue the PRT? Where the fuck is the rest of the money going. And what the hell are the volunteers doing?!"

I looked around to find the three Wards staring at me. "What?"

"We aren't sure if you're being rhetorical or not," Dennis said dryly.

I blushed. "It's usually Li—Tattletale figuring this stuff out."

"And you hack into the IRS just to look at peoples' tax returns?" Dennis asked.

"Okay, first of all, I didn't hack," I said. "Second, the better information Tats has to work from, the better the result. Call this pre-research for her. But I'll ask again, what the fuck is the Youth Guard up to?"

"I've got nothing," Dennis said. Vista and Kid Win nodded agreement.

"Right," I said. "I know just who to call."'

"Your old friends?" Vista asked sarcastically.

"Nope," I said, getting out my phone. "We're going to do this, you know, legally."

"Oh. Miss Militia then," Dennis said.

"Better," I said as Calle answered. "How do you feel about suing the Youth Guard?"

Vista's eyes bugged out at me.

"Wait a moment," Calle said. "I'm still with Miss Militia. Let me put you on speaker."

"Miss Hebert?" Miss Militia asked.

"Worst case, I'm looking at an international conspiracy with unknown but probably nefarious motives aimed at the Wards and, potentially, undercutting the Protectorate and/or PRT. Best case, a really fucked up money-making scheme that ballooned to the point of the absurd. Um, or I could be wrong. Insufficient information and the like. But I'm pretty sure I'm not."

"You are with the Wards?"

"Yes. Yes I am."

"Tell them to bring you up to the Director's office."

"Right."

I hung up. "We have to go to the Director's office. Should I just go, or pretend that I haven't fully scouted out the building and let you lead?"

Dennis sighed, turned, and headed out into the hall towards the bank of elevators. "Fucking Masters. At least promise you'll keep your bugs out of my room and not listen in."

"I'm a reformed villain," I said as we crowded in. "Destroying local micro-ecosystems is one of those things I'm not supposed to do unnecessarily anymore."

"If you don't, I will find a way to put the Barney and Friends theme song on an endless loop, and then go home to my family every night until you leave."

"Dennis," I said evenly. "I really don't respond well to threats."

Tension built as the lights above the door continued to flick as the elevator moved.

"But," I said, leaning against the back wall, "if it'll make you sleep easier, get Miss Militia to sign off on moving the arthropods out of your room for the duration of my stay."

The doors slid open and I walked out through the gap between Vista and Kid Win. The Director's office was only a short way down the hall and I left them behind as I walked right up to it and knocked.

"Enter!"

Miss Militia was sitting behind the desk. Calle was sitting in front. And to one side, standing looking out the floor-length windows on Brockton Bay and looking like he'd lost fifty pounds, was James Tagg.

He turned and looked at me. "You," he said, his voice sour with disgust and hate, though how much was directed at me and how much at himself was…actually, I didn't care about that. The asshole had set me up to think he'd signed off on Alexandria hurting and killing my friends.

Fuck him.

I suppose that answered Vista's question. I was a vindictive bitch.

"International criminal conspiracy?" Miss Militia asked.

"Got one of those smart screen wall things?" I asked, holding up the tablet.

She gestured at a wall and it lit up.

Ooh, fancy. Swipe, swipe, tap-tap-tap, and both tax forms were on the wall.

"Okay," I said. "These are, respectively, the IRS Form 990 for the Youth Guard and American Red Cross—"

Tagg cleared his throat. "Looking into tax records is illegal."

"They're both 501(c)(3) organizations, not private individuals," Calle said. "The 990s are public documents."

"What he said," I agreed. "Thing is, I'd heard about the Youth Guard. Pretty much everyone has. TV ads, ads on the bus stops, ads on the busses… But I wasn't sure what they did so I asked Vista and—

"Hang on," I said as something else occurred to me. "You mean Congress actually gave a non-governmental organization that they have no control over, oversight authority of federal law enforcement? Isn't there a huge accountability problem with the government delegating its power that way?"

"Yes they did," Miss Militia said simply. "And yes, there is. I'm not sure where you got conspiracy from that though."

"Right, right," I said. "Okay, so, tax forms! Yay! Oh, Calle, remind me to get an accountant and tax guy so the IRS doesn't try to Capone me next April." I cleared my throat, "back to the matter at hand. We can see that the Youth Guard is roughly half-again the ARC, revenues, employees, highly-paid employees…"

"Yes."

"So what do they do?" I asked. "The ARC is everywhere. Fires, floods, refugee camps, blood drives. They do…stuff. The Youth Guard, the way the other Wards tell it, sues the PRT when a Ward's parent or parents are upset, and punishes the Wards when the PRT screws up, and that's it."

Miss Militia frowned. "Um…"

I turned to Calle said. "If they're pulling in over three billion a year, that's a half-million per Ward per year, assuming six thousand Wards. I know, I know, infrastructure, rent, lights and water at their offices and shit. But that's admin. That's, effectively, Dad. Personnel? Five-to-one on the Wards. The Dockworkers have four full-time equivalent admin positions—only two actually full-time—and they have direct oversight of two hundred, call it one to fifty. Most of the Guard's money should be programming that, ostensibly, helps the Wards. So where is it going?"

"That, Taylor, is a very good question," Calle said. "Tell you what. While Miss Militia figures out how she's going to launch a criminal investigation of the Youth Guard, why don't the five of us," he flicked his eyes over the other three Wards in the office with me, "find an unused conference room and we can discuss the particulars of this delightful phrase I know called 'class action.'"

"Right." I turned to Miss Militia. "I'll monitor their office and let you know if they say anything interesting."

"Not," she said, "without a warrant you don't."

"I can't help it," I said. "I effectively overhear anything a bug that's in my range perceives."

"Taylor, you can't—" Miss Militia closed her eyes briefly. "Send them outside. All of them."

"So I should disrupt the non-human ecosystem of every building in my range?" I asked. "I can't affect the non-arthropod insectivores in the buildings, they're going to come out looking for food. And if the insect population outside buildings suddenly spikes people will notice the birds and such. And there there's the little problem of what happens whenever I move. It'll be really easy for someone to map my movements that way. Maybe not good enough to ID me, but close enough that a bomb would work. Or to figure out where I live. For that matter, if I only relocate bugs when we're investigating someone, it'll tip them off that law enforcement is on to them."

Miss Militia's eye twitched. "And if you don't relocate your bugs?"

"Then I get to listen in on every family dinner, business deal, domestic dispute, and convenience store robbery in my range," I said.

"People have a right to privacy."

I crossed my arms. "Good for them. But at what point does a murderer's right to privacy a murderee's right to not be murdered?" I asked. "And at what point does my 'respecting their privacy' become complicit in the murder?"

"Taylor," Miss Militia said. "Powers are complicated. That's what training is—"

"Fuck it, no," I snapped. "Powers aren't complicated. The implications are, but powers themselves are really, really simple. Yesterday I was a villain, and I could spot an escalating fight, buzz a few bugs to remind them I was around, and stop it before it got to the point of violence. But now I'm a hero and listening to a fight that's gotten to the violence stage and you're telling me that powers and complicated and that people have a right to privacy instead of giving some guidance on how a hero is supposed to fucking do both!"

"Where?" Tagg asked, speaking for the first time since accusing me of illegally hacking the IRS. As if! Even Aisha had better sense than to go messing around with the IRS!

I pointed out a window. "Two buildings that way. Seventh floor, far-right corner of the building."

He pulled out a cheap flip-phone which he opened. "Domestic dispute that's gone badly violent. Corner of Kearsarge and Seventh…" Tagg finished the call, then pulled the battery out of the phone. "Carry a burner or two. Local cops are overworked, not incompetent. It's not preempting by any means, but it's something."

"Uh?" I blinked.

"My drawer. You mentioned your Mom's flute. That piece is important to me and you made a mess of it."

"Sorry?" I asked uncertainly. This was not the James Tagg that had unmasked me or had been in the interrogation room with me. "It seemed the safest course either way."

"You aren't the first criminal to flip," he said conversationally. "Most of 'em, mundane and powered, end up right back where they started. Some of those, the ones the PRT wants to hang on to because they're useful or the PR headache would be too big, get shipped to one of the quarantine zones. Hess probably would have done well at Eagleton if she hadn't been a Ward and thus stuck in Brockton Bay. People like her? That's normal. Her story is statistically most likely to be your story.

"You, someone with your power and ruthlessness contempt for the rules and willingness to hurt people to get what you want. You'll either get yourself killed saving the world, or become an unholy terror that will scar the living memory of our species. I'm not sure we'll survive either one of you. Safer either way to put a bullet in your head, or dump you in a hole you'll never climb out of.

"Or both."

Well fuck him! "Did it ever occur to you, working all those Simurgh quarantines, that you became exactly what she made you?"

His eyes flashed at that. But he just shook his head and pushed towards the door. "We'll talk more tomorrow, Militia. I know Emily is still around if you want to solicit her advice as well."

Miss Militia watched the door slam shut. "It's a good thing I don't sleep because it seems as though my days, and nights, are going to be very busy." She turned and glared at me. "Good catch," she said finally. "Now, while I get to work on this…mess, why don't the five of you find a conference room and…talk."

A/N 1: The Youth Guard's presence within Worm's canon is limited, but Wildbow did give us some figures (in particular the number of employees which were used to extrapolate the other figures cited) and some sense of how prevalent they are, a general size, and a little history.

Ostensibly they are looking to interfere on the behalf of all parahuman children (only three of the ten-points in the YG 'mission statement' specifically refers to the PRT or Wards). As a practical matter getting the villains to agree to monitoring is unlikely (sorry, Rune). Likewise, they might be able to alert Child Services on New Wave, but since that's a family organization, and the Supreme Court case that brought the Youth Guard into existence specifically refers to the PRT and Wards, direct interference would be problematical.

We, of course, don't get a very detailed look into their other operations and programs (if any). Which brings us back around to the questions of just what are those thirty thousand people (and volunteers) doing during their days. And why a nonprofit is exercising oversight powers on a federal law enforcement agency.

A/N 2: This was the actual one-shot. After my original plans for the aforementioned Meeting Points crossover went awry, I realized I could use it as a lead-in for this. I don't really have any plans to continue it past this point as it would veer back to canon. Taylor in the Wards in another city (albeit with reduced restrictions on communication), Tagg is in retirement (effectively dead), Alexandria is disgraced (effectively dead though still tooling around with Cauldron), Miss Militia is in charge of Brockton Bay PRT, etc… I'll leave the YG outcome up to your imagination, as well as whether or not Tagg was really planning on shooting himself or not.

That said, I do have an idea for one more one-shot building on the same theme (albeit at a very different place), and if someone wants to drop an idea, I'll take a look.

And with all that out of the way. Ahem…

A.N: Another Matter for Lawyers has been up for a while so the coming soon section was unecessary. Additionally, I was told that the first section closely resembled that of ack1308's Hope Comes to Brockton Bay. I can't say I remember reading that story, but on review I can't help but agree that the similarities are galling. As such, and because the scene itself does not serve the rest of the fic, I have removed it.