When we got to Detroit, I had to take a break. I was getting too close to this case and had overlooked something, more than a few somethings.

Louis’ sex life was not my business. The fact that I had almost gone ballistic when they started joking about that water-pushing hussy’s tits pressing against a window was my business. Nowhere in my orders had there been a mention of keeping him from having a social life. The fact that the whole time he’d been on his little tour date I had been dwelling on it and wishing it was me went so far beyond the bounds of duty and common sense that I had to take a step back.

This protective monitoring detail had been my first real field assignment, and I was truly worried it would be my last. I had been furious that they had not only assigned a senior field agent but one from an entirely different service. Once I had discovered what the actual assignment was, keeping him protected as well as monitoring him, I had understood the precaution. The DMA was was all about enforcement, not protective details, and Baldwin’s insight was surprisingly useful.

My dad, before he retired, was a major general in the marine corps training command, and now he worked as a high school coach. My older brother was a marine corps pilot, and my little brother had chosen to enlist rather than go to college to become an officer. I knew that there were a lot of women in my position who would have joined up as well, but my dad had been supportive when I chose to pursue a career in law enforcement instead of upholding the family military tradition.

I needed advice, very badly. So I gave my dad a call. He knew I was a metahuman, so I had to be very careful about what I talked about, but he had a lot more experience dealing with the slippery ground I was walking on.

“Hey, Skippy! Good timing. Please tell me you are calling to say you are headed down to Quantico to grab dinner with your old man.”

I sighed into the phone, “Not exactly. Do you have time to talk?”

I heard what sounded like a paper wrapper and the sound of other voices murmuring in the background. “Sure, I have about twenty minutes left until my next class. Hold on just a second.” And I heard the sound of paper getting crumpled up and chewing noises. In a moment he was back. “Yep, just finished lunch.”

I heard sounds of swallowing, like he was drinking something as I started my question, “Well, I got my first DMA field assignment. I cannot tell you much about it, except they put me with a senior agent from another force because the assignment is… weird. Not enforcement exactly, but the senior agent’s my advisor, and he basically told me about some stuff that worries me.”

He coughed a little, “Please don’t tell me you are getting involved with an agent from another department. If that’s the case, you are in pretty deep shit.”

I laughed a little, “Oh hell no. I mean, don’t get me wrong, he’s got that whole agency jaw thing going on, and I like him well enough for a guy that’s supposed to be my babysitter, but he’s really old, and I am not going to go screwing up my career for a guy that’s your generation even if I were interested.”

He coughed a little, and I could hear the creaking of a leather couch as he flopped onto it. I’d always been a little too perceptive for my own good, and that had only increased with training. “So what’s up I can give you advice on?” he asked.

I sighed into the phone, “I know you have always looked at the DMA like an alien, especially when I was recruited, but with my special issues, it was the best deal I could look for. I hate admitting you were right about departments, but this crap is starting to look shadier than the CIA.”

I quickly outlined the general gist of what Baldwin had told me, including the Keenan thing, but kept names and personal stuff out of it. He didn’t need to know that I sorta wanted to throttle Aquantis for some stupid reason, so I kept it to the fact that I was escorting a metahuman parolee around to help set up Vigilante teams and that the idea had probably arisen from my academy dissertation about doing exactly that, which was why I was involved, as well as Rosenbaum’s threats.

After I finished, he let out a long sigh. “Oh, sweety. This shit is radioactive. You said the Rosenbaum woman is being held?”

“Yes, She is. I think she got hit by the pedo flack. She’s not in a cage, but she is one of those bounce-back types. This stinks all the way from the top to the bottom, and I am not just worried about my career, this is the kind of stuff that sort of winds up with a bunch of guys in black with automatic weapons putting a bag over your head in the middle of the night.”

He sighed again, “Okay, I have had to resign myself to the idea that I could lose any of you at any time. I hate the thought that the little girl whose diapers I changed could be in the line of fire, but you got a double helping of that responsibility thing even without a dead uncle Ben. I can’t dictate your conscience, but I got out for nearly the same reason, a radioactive situation.”

I found myself nodding at my phone. I answered, “Yeah, I know, I need to look towards my future. Recuse myself, try to see if one of the other agencies will pick me up even with a little shit on my shoes. My babysitter mentioned that my special skills would be useful to the secret service, but after getting a few more details about what those guys have to overlook, I am not sure it would be any better than the DMA, plus she might have been right about the blacklisting thing.”

He chuckled, “Nope, that is exactly what I am not recommending. You know I hate the idea of you being in the line of fire, but you are in the unique position of being a lot less susceptible than most. You are on the DMA’s radar, in radioactive soup, and you won’t give it up to be a happy homemaker. You mentioned the V teams. They are paid well, right? And even though they have DMA oversight, they are handled on a state level?”

“Yes, they are kind of trying to handle them with kid gloves right now. I cannot give any details, but big bad Proteus is in kind of desperate need of serious power right now, and they are hoping that not only can the V-teams build up public support and funding by playing the game by the rules, but that the training and structure could help some of them boost their power level to help with the international supervillain problem.”

He said, “In that case, I recommend resignation for ethical reasons. You don’t have to give any details, it’s on your record if the bomb goes off, and you could go and play advisor to the V-teams. That way you are still doing what you feel you need to, you won’t have to put yourself in the crosshairs if the fans start expelling feces for cleanup if they pull a CIA, and if you are called on to talk you have, literally, the best excuse in the book. It was your dissertation that got the ball rolling, so you felt the need to take a personal hand in it.”

He chuckled, “And working for the state instead of the Fed means there are fewer layers of corruption to plow through. Yeah, there’s always someone dirty in the chain of command, but you are off the radar and still doing the good work. I’d also sleep a lot easier knowing you aren’t on someone’s hit list beyond maybe a stalker or something.”

“I really have to get going though. Seriously, once you get splashed with the shit it’s better to get out of the sewer for a while. Most of your training will be just as useful in helping one of the new teams do their detective work and stay inside the law as it would be playing department enforcer, or maybe even more so, and an on-site contractor working for the state can do a whole lot of good keeping the V-teams on their toes. I am already late, though, call me in… four hours if you need to talk more, or stop by for dinner if you are in the neighborhood, we can talk more. Love you skippy, bye!” and he hung up the phone.

He knew as well as I did that cellphone conversations could be monitored, so we had both been careful to keep details out of the talk, but he was inviting me to come down and unload real details on him in person and away from prying ears. It was weird, though, that he had made exactly the same recommendation as Baldwin. They probably would have been buddies if they’d ever met.

He’d basically told me I had his blessing to join a team. I was only a class E, but my kinetic reflection ability made me damned near invulnerable. Obviously, I wasn’t fireproof or able to keep my throat from getting slit, but against the bad guys the V-teams were expected to face I would be as safe as any law enforcement officer. And he was right, about the state thing. Senators might be damned near untouchable, but state officials had to keep their dirty deals a lot more on the down-low, and uncovering a dirty state official or even a dirty governor was a lot more likely to boost your career than end it with a bag over your head.

I hated the idea of giving up. My awakening hadn’t exactly been a big secret. Some dipshit at the mall, while trying to escape after robbing a Kay jeweler, had decided that my car was the perfect getaway vehicle, and the hostage inside of it was even better. He’d been right, except that instead of exiting the parking garage at speed with his gun pointed at my head, I’d plowed at nearly 40 right into the concrete wall next to the exit, counting on the fact that I was wearing a safety belt and he wasn’t.

It would have worked, too, if I hadn’t forgotten about the cases of supplies for Dad’s cabin I’d had in the trunk. They came blowing through the back seat and shattered against the back of my own seat, and me. There were a half a dozen cops that watched the shredded remains of cans and glass bottles, a bent golf club, and the entire back window hover around me for several seconds before falling, and I stepped out of the car’s wrecked door, wrenching it open easily in an attempt to get away from the wreckage, pushing away the airbag without a single scratch.

Now the dipshit was living in a wheelchair in a federal penitentiary, a double downer. I had little sympathy, even if he didn’t realize that adding kidnapping to assault with a deadly weapon and robbery turned it into a federal case. Not to mention while I was thrilled to have powers, it also meant I’d been outed spectacularly. I felt a little more sympathetic towards folks who’d been caught in the wrong place with the wrong people, but not enough to forgive monsters like the senator who’d been caught with his hands inside a kid’s pants.

My car had been totaled, but it was amazing how forgiving insurance companies were when they had someone to pin the blame on. If dipshit ever got out of prison, he’d have a nice, hefty bill waiting for him to pay. Due to the police report, they’d made noises about wanting to tack a meta insurance onto it, but I was able to finish college and get my law enforcement degree while using my Dad’s spare truck.

The DMA had approached me after I’d written my senior thesis on the new public approval for vigilantes in the wake of the Moonstryker incident and my suggestions for legalizing them while appealing to their independent psychology. The DMA didn’t run their own academies, but a year in FBI training qualified me, and 6 months later they were offering to let me oversee a potential new prospect for increasing their utility and possibly creating a route for ‘graduates’ to move into the defenders, the fully-funded federal teams that worked as both a limiting factor on Proteus-sponsored superheroes as well as meta law enforcement and disaster relief.

How could I say no? Why did I wish I’d said no?

***

I’d had to return to the Bethesda, Maryland DMA offices in order to do the paperwork. I still intended to apologize to Baldwin and Louis for ditching them, but I had been extraordinarily busy, and after I’d spoken to the director about my ethical issues, he immediately told me that I was being replaced with another, more qualified, agent. Unspoken was the assumption that I’d been letting my charge walk all over me with funding demands and refusal to control my charge. The exit interview had been rather spectacular.

I had barely held onto my temper as he implied that I’d been fucking my charge, that both my first field assignment and appointment as an agent was a PR stunt by the prior director, and that he expected nothing more from a female agent with my lack of experience and was glad to see me go. Only the shameful knowledge that he was damned close to right on all counts kept me from turning his desk into a paperweight.

Baldwin must have put in a good word for me, though, or someone had had an eye on my file, because two weeks later, while I was nursing my mental wounds with hard exercise and a search for a good V-team fit, remembering Louis’ insistence on staying in shape, I received two emails. One was from the director of the secret service, offering me an interview, and the other was from Baldwin.

Baldwin’s message was very simple. It contained an address to some place near Fairfax and three lines.

“I’ve been reassigned.”

“Louis has been taken, again. Talk to Alison.”

I started swearing and ran to my truck. If he kept this shit up, I was going to change his name to Lois. Who the hell gets kidnapped twice in one month?