“So,” the tall girl said. She wasn’t looking directly at Sabah, instead focusing somewhere around her feet.

She should have been nervous. A strange pair of capes waltzing into her store out of the blue was always a good reason to panic. But then, most capes didn’t seem this shy, or nervous, and Sabah had certainly never seen a cape as adorable as the little girl looking up to her big sister with wide, guileless eyes.

“Okay, I can explain,” the girl said again. “Right. My name is Taylor, like Crochet said, and I’m sorta-kinda a parahuman,” she admitted.

Parian nodded slowly. She didn’t want to spook the girl, not if she could do something to her or her shop.

“My power lets me make - this part’s hard to believe - little sister versions of other capes.” Taylor fiddled with her fingers, then gestured between Parian and Crochet. “And, yeah. I kinda used it on you, mostly not on purpose. And I wanted to say sorry.”

Sabah had two and two and when she put them together the answer was ‘little Sabah clone.’ She stared at the girl standing in front of her, the girl using her power to hold up an awful, awful dress in the air behind her. “Okay,” she said.

“Okay?” Taylor asked hopefully.

Crochet started to smile.

“No, not okay,” Sabah bit back. She didn’t know how she was supposed to handle this. “Can you turn your power off?” she asked Taylor.

“And kill Crochet?” Taylor asked right back, her horror clear as day.

Crochet’s eyes widened and she took a small step to the side, as if to hide behind Taylor. “No, no, nevermind,” Parian said.

Crochet looked up at her... progenitor? Older sister? Master? Then moved towards Parian again. “I’m sorry if we’re making you uncomfortable, Miss Parian,” she said. “Big Sis is great, but she’s not so good at talking. I really did just want to compare notes about fashion, and, and if you don’t want to be my mommy, that’s okay.”

Sabah decided not to open that particular jar of worms. Instead she took a deep breath and turned towards Taylor. “When you... copied me, was it about a week and a half ago?” she asked. There was a vague memory of meeting Taylor about that long ago floating around, but it was after an event and she had met plenty of normal looking folk just like Taylor.

“Yeah, about then,” Taylor agreed.

“Okay,” Sabah said. “Then that’s about the same time as my powers went weird.”

“Your powers did what?” Taylor asked.

“They were less responsive, a bit slower. I hardly noticed. I thought it was a head cold at first. It’s passed, they’re back to normal now,” she said, adding the last to reassure the panicking girl.

“But you’re okay now, right?” Crochet asked. “Big Sis didn’t hurt you?”

“I suppose she didn’t,” she admitted.

Crochet nodded quite seriously, the expression ill suited to such a chubby-cheeked little face. “That’s good. If Big Sis had hurt you while you two were making me, then that would be an awful crime.” She then gestured at her dress. “So can you to make up so that we can talk about fashion?”

Sabah wanted to have a seat, not talk about fashion, but then Crochet looked at her, eyes pleading for attention and the most awful piece of clothing floating over her shoulder. Her lower lip trembled, her eyes filled with unshed tears and she started blinking rapidly to keep them in place even as she joined her hands together in pleading.

She folded.

***

“Wow, that’s low, even for you,” Lisa said.

Telling Coil off over the phone like that was probably not a good idea. In fact, it was downright rude. But he was an entire bagful of dicks and deserved every ounce of rudeness she could shovel onto his plate.

She figured she was getting bonus karma points for telling him off while he was asking her oh so nicely to kidnap someone’s munchkins.

“Now, now, Sarah,” Coil’s voice oozed over the line. “I hardly believe this is beyond the Undersiders’ abilities. Or did I perhaps misjudge the competence of your team?”

She huffed. “I’m not saying we can’t do it,” she said. “I’m saying that it’s pretty low. Kidnapping a politician or some businessman probably wouldn’t be an issue, but this is a kid you’re talking about. Grue at the very least will protest on principle alone.”

She felt bad about throwing Brian under the bus. Sorta bad. Mildly discomforted, really. But he was an easy excuse to get out of doing the job. Not that it sounded hard. She just didn’t want to do anything Coil asked on principle.

“Then I’ll leave it to you to persuade your team leader. I want those children, my little Tattletale, and I want them sooner rather than later.”

“Do you even hear yourself talking? Those stranger danger videos aren’t guidelines on how to act, you know. Kind of the opposite.”

“Joke all you will. You’ll get the job done if you know what’s good for you. The information has been sent already. You should have received it by now.” The line went dead before she could get another jab in.

She sighed and started thumbing through her phone.

Finding the email and opening it, she found herself looking at three profiles, each one for another young woman. Taylor Hebert, the eldest daughter of the Hebert household, who in every picture looked a little worse for wear as if she carried the weight of the world on her shoulders.

Her power hinted that she was the family’s mother figure as well as the older sibling and it was a lot of work for her. Coil wasn’t sure if she had powers or not, and there wasn’t enough there for Lisa to guess either way.

The other two profiles weren’t as large. Cheshire Hebert, a short, black skinned girl that wore a mischievous smile in every picture, and Crochet Hebert, who had middle eastern features and held herself up as if wanting to seem taller.

Lisa glared at the images. They were clearly all sisters. Her power and mind told her as much, but they were also all of different ethnicities. Different mothers, maybe? Different fathers? It was obvious that they were siblings, but something was off about it.

She dismissed it after a moment. The two younger girls were probably little more than a year apart. Easy enough for the Undersiders to grab. The problem came from their powers.

Well, she still had some time to work it out, and to find a way to convince Brian to act.