"So those guys there are not Enforcers and I'm not as homeless as you think I am," she said as she practically dragged me towards the bus stop I was heading to anyway. She had taken one of my baskets and was carrying it in her other hand so she could casually hold mine tightly. I was practically her hostage.

"Why? What? Who?" I had so many questions that maybe it was better I lapsed into caveman speak to say them. The girl glanced back at our tails before saying,

"I don't know. I stole a lot of money from some rich people, could be that. But I don't think so, I covered my tracks pretty well. You should already know the 'What', they want to capture me, maybe kill me but I doubt it. And I'm Lisa by the way.

"Um, Taylor," I muddled through my introduction. "And how do you know all this?" Lisa gave me a look just as they approached the bus stop. There were some people about, making it so the faux Enforcers couldn't step in without making a scene. Lisa pulled us to the far side of them and pulled me close. I felt a blush rise up to my face as she began whispering into my ear. Between that and the way she was holding my hand, I had no doubts about what everyone around was thinking. Coupled with the fact that I was very cleanly dressed while she wasn't only added to the embarrassment of what they might have been thinking.

"I have a power that lets me know things," she whispered. That drew me back a few steps in my think and raised so many more questions. I decided to start tackling them one at a time and hope they don't raise any more questions. I didn't have high hopes.

"Why are you telling me?" I whispered back.

"Because you are a hero, or at least trying to." I bit back annoyance when she said that. I suppose it shouldn't have been that big of a deal, she did reveal her power to me first and she didn't reveal me to a whole bunch people. But even I knew this was poor form.

Suddenly, Lisa stopped holding herself like she was whispering in my ear and laid her head on my shoulder and I froze.

"Lisa," I whispered. "What are you doing?"

"The old lady thinks we're a cute couple," Lisa answered causing my blush to deepen. "The two guys are kind of in the closet. The man closest to us just discovered his newest kink and the other woman next to the aforementioned old lady is proud at such a public display of affection. The edgy teenager just doesn't like the Enforcers as a whole. If the Enforcer touches either one of us they probably won't stand for it. And I'd bet more than one will think the Enforcer actually part of the E88. So long as we stay like this there is a decent chance he isn't going to stop us."

"A decent chance?"

"Well, if we kissed he won't touch us at all."

"No." I said firmly.

"Fair enough."

The Enforcer stopped a few feet away from the stop and eyed us seriously for a few moments. A buddy joined him a moment later and they started arguing with themselves quietly. After a moment one of them brought out a phone and made a call. The second one just stared at us the entire time his friend was on the phone. After a minute his buddy hung up and the exchanged a quick word. After that, they just silently stared at us until the bus came.

Lisa pulled me onto the bus before everyone else and we were in a seat near the very back by the time I realized what exactly was happening. She let go of my hand finally gave me space. I let out a sigh of relief and felt the heat on my cheeks starting to fade.

"Thanks for that," Lisa said.

"You're welcome?" I wasn't sure what exactly I was supposed to say. I did save her from some Enforcers, but on the other hand she knows I'm a cape. But I know she is also a cape so it kind of goes both ways.

"Now, question." Lisa started. "Do you mind if I came over and used your shower?"

Sometime later I was back at my house and I some how got talked into letting Lisa use my shower. This whole encounter seemed kind of surreal, but I was quickly adjusting. Now that Lisa was out of sight for a minute, I could settle down and get serious.

I pulled out a map of Brockton Bay and spread it out on my dinning room table. Next, I grabbed several coloured markers I had bought. The first thing I did was uncap a red marker and began outlining the ABB territory that I knew of with it. When I was done with that I took up a blue marker and drew the lines around the Empire territory. Both would have changed a little since last night, and there was bound to be much more drastic changes over the next couple of days. But these were the hard boundaries that have changed for a long time, and more than likely they weren't going to change all that much.

I went to my room and grabbed my old laptop, setting it up at the table starting the booting process while I went back to the map. Next, I outlined The Merchants with a green marker. Their territory has been in flux ever since they took some here in the city, but every time they got annoying they would be beaten back by the others and their territory wouldn't really grow at all.

I took up a grey marker and let my gaze move to the Boardwalk around Lord Street. The Boardwalk was an odd place as far as gang activity went. It had a line of sight with the oil rig that the Protectorate Headquarters sat on and usually had incredibly fast response time from them. The Enforcers didn't have an allegiance with any of the gangs and would throw members out given the chance. But the Boardwalk was lucrative territory, and even with those two deterrents they couldn't stay away.

As a solution to this, the Boardwalk was a sort of pseudo neutral zone between the gangs. Each one save for the Merchants had a finger in the pie. The ABB had most of the restaurants, the Empire had most of the stores. Coil was there presumably, but I didn't know what he had.

All the gangs had a mutual understanding around the Boardwalk, if no one causes trouble they all get a piece of it.

So when guessing where exactly The Workers had set up became the real question. It obviously couldn't be on the Boardwalk itself, so it had to be somewhere just behind it and close enough to Lord Street to warrant have some gang members stay around.

After some consideration, I tentatively circled a small area where I guessed they would be. In the corner of my map I wrote with the same grey marker: The Workers, lead by Sapien.

With that done, I move back over to my laptop now that it had finished booting up and started doing some research.

The ABB and the Empire had been part of Brockton Bay for so long I couldn't remember a time where they weren't. The only changes over the years had been when Coil and The Merchants carved out places for themselves. Since then there has been a three-way power struggled between the three of them that actually matter.

Over that time, small groups like The Workers had come and gone like clockwork. They rose up when there was a power vacuum no matter how small, and then when they became too much a problem they were put down by the other gangs. They are like the Merchants Mark One because of the way they stole territory that was too invaluable to squabble over when the stronger gangs just lost some fire power.

So, doing about ten minutes of research I found all of the most common locations in the city for small time gangs to take during these power struggles. There were six in total. One the Merchants already had, and one a noted with a touch of pride I had already circled near Lord street.

Returning to the map I outlined the four other possible locations as where the other new gangs The Workers mentioned might be holed up in.

At that moment Lisa appeared at the table in one of my t-shirts and a pair of my jeans and glanced over my map. Her hair was clean and combed now, hanging loosely around her shoulders. It looked much better that way.

"Already noticing the new gang movement?" She asked without looking away from my map.

"Why are you wearing my clothes?" I asked, a little shocked.

"Because you don't want these." She said with a wave of her hand. "This shirt would have exposed your midriff and you wouldn't like the way these jeans hugged you. So I figured I'd borrow them. Beats the rags I was wearing."

I bit back any complaints I had. She was right, of course, and those jeans hugged her just as much as they would have hugged me.

"So," Lisa said, pulling out a chair from the dining table and slumping into it. "You want to know about these other gangs?"

I raised an eyebrow at her. "They only just popped up last night. How could you have heard about them?"

"I was out on the streets, obviously," She answered. "I heard a few things, and anything I didn't my power told me."

Right, her power to know things. Like that didn't sound rather broken.

"About that," I started. "Exactly what does your power do?" If Lisa was going to be hanging around like it seemed she on doing, I might as well get to know what her power actually was. That and some of the things she knew were a little concerning.

Lisa grinned at me before answering. "Knowledge. It's like hyper intuition. Like Sherlock Holmes."

I shook my head. "That sounds a little ridiculous."

"It's not as powerful as you think it is. Now," Lisa moved forward and leaned over the map, grabbing the grey marker I had used to draw the small territories. "I don't know where they're situated at, but I know some names." She started writing down some things just under where I had put The Workers.

"You have a group called Pedites lead by some cape calling themselves Plebeian. Then there is a group called The Doctors with a cape named Proletariat. Finally, there is a group called Industry. From what I can tell they have a cape called Civis. And no, I don't which territory belongs to which and I don't know what abilities these capes have. Although…" She trailed off.

"What?" I prompted.

"They all seem to have operated rather similarly. With Hookwolf gone The Empire will be fighting the ABB and can't spare the time to go after these small time gangs. Giving them a chance to set shop. And depending on what these capes of theirs can actually do, they might just stick around."

"That sounds like it could be a problem." One thing that tended to hurt everyone is more permanent shifts in power like this. The possible consequences for these new gangs just being there could be almost anything. Not to mention if the four of them decided they all had a better chance if they worked together.

Something about these new groups really bothered me. I couldn't quite tell what it was, but something about them made them feel more dangerous than they should have felt. It was almost as if-

"Uh, Taylor," Lisa interrupted. "You're turning white." I opened my eyes, once again not realizing I had closed them, and looked down to see my skin was indeed a milky white. I cursed myself, I was too focused on these smaller gangs that I had stopped focusing on staying in my human form.

I swallowed and started focusing again. Thankfully, my skin The to go back to its normal skin tone almost immediately. I let out a sigh of relief. It seemed that while it took an hour to go from horse to human, it didn't take nearly as long just to reverse the effects of starting human to horse transformation.

"Alright," Lisa said with a shake of her head. "I gotta know now, what exactly is your power? I can't get a read on you."

I opened my mouth to answer, but stopped myself. I didn't know Lisa, she could be anyone. Sure, I had let her use my shower, but she had really needed it and I just saved her from getting kidnapped or killed. If you could call it saving when I really just got used as an escape route.

"Come on!" Lisa said with a roll of her eyes. "I know you're a cape, that much is for certain, and I know where you live. If I actually wanted to harm you in any way I would already have a leg up on the competition."

"That's reassuring," I told her sarcastically. She rolled her eyes at me.

"Look," she said, becoming much more serious. "I picked you out of the crowd to help me because I know that you're trying to be a hero. I know that you're trying to do good so let me tell you my options.

"One, I go back on the street like I had been before. With my power I could probably get a nice set up over time. I already have plenty of money, just no way to use it yet without it getting tracked back to me. I can solve that too, but it'll take time. So until then, I'm homeless. Which means at any point whoever sent those goons after me today can try again and next time you won't be around to help me.

"Two, I could go to one of the gangs for protection. They way I look though that means I have to join the Empire or take a chance with one of these new gangs. Not exactly a great choice if you catch my drift.

"Three, I can join a local independent hero. I get protection from them and they get my intelligence to back them. All things considered, that is my best choice."

"You forgot going to the Protectorate." I pointed out.

"Not an option," Lisa said with a frown. "And before you ask, I don't want to talk about it."

I let out a heavy sigh. "So basically, you want to form an independent hero team with me and if I refuse, you go back on the streets and end up in the hands of whoever sent the fake Enforcers after you. That about sum it up?"

"Basically yeah." A refreshed vulpine grin spread across Lisa's face. "And really, wouldn't a Thinker power like mine be nice to have?"

Well, she wasn't wrong.

Letting out another sigh, I reached for my ancient laptop and started pulling up Assault's PHO account. It looked like he was temporarily banned but his posts were still up. It looked like there were thirty pages of responses.

As I pulled them up I found that the Armsmaster had released a statement to the public about Hookwolf's arrest. Eagerly, I scanned through the article and found several mentions of Nova, including an outright statement linking me to Assault's posts. When the press asked him questions about my appearance he gave no comment. I wasn't sure how to feel about that but decided it was probably for the better. There really was no explanation for the horse thing and I had convinced them all that I was a Case 53. A little extra cover on my identity.

Leaving the pages up, I turned the computer to Lisa and rose up out of my seat.

"I have some practicing to get done, so I'm going to go get into my cape appearance. Read that while I'm gone."

For better or worse, I left Lisa with my laptop and those web pages to go turn into my horse form. It would appear that I now had both a teammate and yet another awkward conversation with my father.

A/N So two things about Lisa:

1) It was stated that she had stole not only from her parents but also several other rich people and covered her tracks when Coil had captured her and recurited her. Yet she was still in pretty bad shape and looking pretty homeless when he got her. Her not being able to use the money because it would cause her to get noticed is my explaination for that.

2) Lisa's power can work on Taylor when she is human, but when she goes horse it just stops working correctly. This is mostly because her shard will continuously think of Taylor's powers as if they also came from shards, which they generally don't.