49

"Gonna be dark soon..." Taylor murmured as she wheeled her bike through the red torii arch. Beside her, Sunny made a sighing sound. "Yeah, that's the worst part of winter. How short the days are. The cold's at least an excuse to get comfy and warm."

That seemed to perk Sunny up, and the wolf bounded ahead towards the Shrine's office, where blankets and space heaters and (hopefully) hot chocolate awaited. Taylor followed, setting the bicycle aside to lean against the building before opening the door and letting them both inside. Taylor's favorite wheeled transit was just a packmule these days, as once Thanksgiving had passed Brockton Bay suddenly remembered that it was the middle of winter and it had begun snowing on a regular basis. The Pawprint sidewalks were remaining mostly clear of ice and snow, and while the wolf wasn't saying anything about it, Taylor thought it safe to assume the cleared route was Sunny's doing.

"Well, whatever. Don't get too comfy, remember Dad's coming by soon," Taylor said, as she shook off her coat and hung it up on a peg. "Do you think the estimate for the price of the hot springs will be high, Sunshine?"

Sunny paused and tilted her head, taking a few moments to seriously consider the question. Then she shrugged.

"...very helpful, thank you." Taylor sighed as she sank into her own chair, and Sunny perked up at the sound. The wolf even left her cozy nest of blankets and shed fur (the ratio of blanket to fur was a question Taylor did not look forward to answering, come spring) to come sit over by Taylor's desk. The canine tilted her head again, this time actually taking things seriously. Taylor smiled and gave the wolf a pat on the head. "Sorry, I guess I'm kind of worried. And maybe a bit disappointed, though it feels kinda silly."

Sunny made a questioning noise and tilted her head a bit further. Taylor scritched her ears a bit more. "I'm glad things are working out, I just kinda hoped it'd work out a bit sooner, y'know? The ground's probably gonna get too frozen to build on or something, I never see much construction going on in the winter. That means waiting until spring at least, maybe even summer if it's too wet out. And I just feel kinda silly, or maybe ungrateful, to be wishing for more."

Sunny made an understanding sort of murmur, and the pair fell silent, content to watch the snowflakes drift outside the window of the small office. Several minutes passed in tranquility.

"...a hot soak sounds amazing though."

Sunny outright collapsed to the floor, making a mournful howling sound of complete and abject longing.

*.*.*.*.*

A car horn sounded outside twice in quick succession, prompting Taylor to struggle back into her winter coat and venture outside the office again, Sunny close on her heels. Her father was getting out of a large van, one she'd never seen before, but of course his own car had been crushed beneath a heavily-armed plastic toy. This must be a rental. That didn't explain the second vehicle that drove up and parked near the sidewalk, but Danny quickly waved Taylor over to introduce her to the half-dozen people that exited the second van. It turned out they were a handful of old contacts and co-workers from the Dockworker's Union, people that Danny had tracked down in his quest for people able and willing to do the electrical, plumbing, and other assorted skilled work needed for the onsen.

"So! I was thinking," Danny said, after handing Taylor the quick writeup he'd done for estimated costs, "It's still going to cost a pretty penny in materials just to get the place up, and I don't even know what you'll end up needing to keep it running, aside from maybe towels. So I called a few friends, who called a few friends—as you can see—and concluded that it'd be nice to do the simple infrastructure work ourselves, rather than hiring a company. That is, if you don't mind your old man lending a hand?"

"Oh, of course not!" Taylor smiled brightly, and Sunny started wagging her tail. "I tried to start it myself weeks ago, but I couldn't really do it alone. I'd be happy to have your help."

Danny nodded, his expression considering. He walked to the back of the van he'd driven up in and placed his hands on the door latches of the back of the vehicle. "Do you mind if your old man lends... eighty hands?!"

Danny flung open the doors to the van and people streamed out. No- they were Pawns. Plastic figurines with mismatched designs, all with a basic paint scheme and with no identifying markings. The Pawns marched out of the van in two neat rows, the ones in back still growing in size. Both Taylor and Sunny backed away from the miniature army, eyes wide. The friends and ex-Dockworkers Danny had brought laughed.

Danny Hebert grinned and cracked his knuckles. "Ladies and gentlemen, let's build a resort."

*.*.*.*.*

Sometime later, a low rumble heralded a new visitor, if the term could be applied to Armsmaster. The Protectorate leader's motorcycle turned a corner at the far end of the street and slowed down to a stop a few meters from Danny's van. The hero dismounted his vehicle and strode over to Danny, his halberd, for the time being, still magnet-locked to the back of his armor. Danny could see Armsmaster's jaw visibly tighten as another squad of Pawns marched by, carrying sacks of dry cement. "Chessman. What. Are. You. Doing."

"Doing some yard work on my day off. Why, what does it look like?"

"It looks like an unsanctioned use of Protectorate equipment, in civilian identity, in the middle of ABB territory, and at the direction of a Master."

"Might need to adjust your visor, sir. These Pawns are mine, paid for out of my own pocket, and you'll note none of them have Chessman's or the Protectorate's emblems on them." Danny hooked his thumbs into his belt loops, the very picture of subversive compliance. "I'm also not on the clock, Brushstroke never asked for me to do this, and technically this is neutral ground and not ABB holdings."

Armsmaster stayed quiet, and Danny didn't need Gallant to tell him the Tinker was frustrated beyond belief. He didn't have any room to censure Danny, at least not as far as Danny had been able to find in careful re-readings of his contract and Protectorate off-duty regulations. A few moments of watching the Pawns work later, Armsmaster spoke quietly through gritted teeth, "You do know that tomorrow we're both going to be in front of Piggot's desk for this?"

"It will be fine, I've already gone over all the- oh hi honey!" Danny broke off his consolation to greet Taylor, who had come out to see who had arrived. His daughter's power was with her, as usual, and as the wolf turned its gaze towards Armsmaster Danny swore its expression shifted a few more degrees towards Smug.

"Hi Dad! Oh, and hello Armsmaster! I didn't know any Protectorate heroes were coming by today. Would you like some-"

"No," Armsmaster said. The Tinker pointedly ignored the irritated glance Danny shot at him.

"Oh. Well... okay. Anything I can help you with, then?"

"...do you even have a permit to dig foundations? Or had the power lines and cables underground pointed out?" Sunny's tail stopped its languid waving. The wolf stared at the Tinker before it abruptly turned around and dashed back across the Shrine grounds, towards the office. The three left on the sidewalk watched the wolf awkwardly turn the doorknob with its teeth, and let itself inside.

"I believe so, yes... at least, I did remember to have the utility companies locate the buried wires and such when I had them re-connect the power and water to the cafe, on the other side of the shrine. The rest of the paperwork should be in the filing cabinet, and," Taylor winced as a loud crash sounded from within the office, "...I'm gonna go help Sunny look."

"Taylor's pretty good about crossing her t's and dotting her i's. I'm not worried," Danny remarked once Taylor had fled. "She's been keeping good records of everything, and I made some phonecalls earlier, so... erm. Armsmaster?"

From the angle of his helmet's visor, the hero wasn't looking towards the office where Taylor had gone to. Nor was he looking in the direction of the Pawns, still busily working in the neighboring yard. Instead, the Tinker wasn't looking anywhere in particular, just staring into the middle distance. Growing concerned, Danny said his name again, and reached out to give his armored shoulder a rough shake.

"I-" Armsmaster started, then swallowed. He continued in a low, monotone voice, "I'm demanding paperwork from a dog."

"Uhh..."

Armsmaster slowly turned, and walked back to his motorcycle without a word, heedless of Danny calling out to him again. The Tinker started the vehicle back up and drove off, and was long gone before Tayor and Sunny jogged back over to the sidewalk, the wolf with a folded set of papers in its mouth.

"Taylor," Danny said, his voice tight, "Did you or Sunny do something to Armsmaster?"

The pair exchanged a baffled look before turning back to Danny and shaking their heads. The gesture looked kind of odd on a wolf, but Danny couldn't deny that the canine actually did look confused. Danny sighed, and started looking for his work phone.

*.*.*.*.*

After being politely, but firmly informed that the Master/Stranger Quarantine cells were not a Time-Out Room, Armsmaster did something he'd likely not done in years:

He took a sick day.

That meant retreating to his lab, and locking the door in case Piggot got any funny ideas about not allowing him to remain on Protectorate grounds while not on the clock. His phone was silenced to everything short of emergencies and tossed onto a desk, followed by his helmet. He pulled the cot he usually slept on out of a wall, lay down, and proceeded to stare through the ceiling and into the gaping maw of existential crisis.

It took a long while for Armsmaster to become aware of a blinking green light over by his workbench, where a monitor setup for Dragon was installed. He dragged his hands over his face and sighed. "Dragon, I know you have an emergency override that you think I don't know about, just use it. I'm not getting up."

The monitor turned on with an almost guilty beep. "Eheh... sorry. You didn't respond to a couple of emails I sent you, and I got a little worried. What's going on?"

"Nothing work-related. Well, nothing directly work-related."

"You can tell me anyway."

Armsmaster went quiet again, and when he next spoke it was with none of his usual certainty. "Dragon... am I an asshole?"

"Um."

"...oh."

"N-no! Just- you can be a bit abrasive to people who don't know you well. And you're rather curt when speaking." Armsmaster didn't look over at the monitor, but he heard Dragon sigh over the speakers. "What brought this on?"

"I stopped by Bushstroke's shrine today. Chessman was helping her build something, that hot spring. I asked if she even had permits for digging and construction."

"Ah... okay?"

"No, not okay. I'm not- that's not my jurisdiction! I don't really care if she's doing it, as long as it doesn't hurt anybody. I just..." Armsmaster raised one hand back up to his forehead, and held it there. "I just said it because I wanted to throw a wrench in her and Good Dog's plans. That's all."

"Oh. I see."

"And it just... occurred to me that I didn't want that. In general. That's... not why I'm here, in the Protectorate."

"It's not the kind of hero you wanted to be," Dragon finished for him. She was always better with words than he was. He could hear the hesitation before she asked the next question, voice gentle. "What made you decide to join the Protectorate?"

There was really no easy way to put that into words. After almost a minute of trying, Armsmaster simply said, "I thought I could be doing more."

"And are you?"

These days? Anchored to Brockton Bay, where for years there'd been no way to proceed without tipping over a careful balance of power and making things worse for everyone. Tinkering to counter the same villains, because taking them out simply wasn't often feasible. Doing nothing but work, spending every day mired in paperwork and legal tape and trying not to screw up in front of the press. And even if he did it all perfectly, there... really wasn't anywhere to go from here. He was already head of the ENE branch, above him was the Triumvirate and not much else, and after this long it was looking like they weren't interested in filling Hero's vacant spot.

Looking at it all together like that, it was hard to suppress the odd thought that came to him: this wasn't fun anymore.

"Not really, no," he finally answered.

"Well," Dragon offered carefully, "maybe after this E88 thing, you could take a little time off, so you can think it over? What you want from the Protectorate, and from yourself."

"...yeah. Maybe I will."