The outside patrol announced that they saw what looked to be the social worker standing outside the gate around nine o’clock the next morning. Though according to them, it was hard to tell until she flashed her ID. Unlike the documents that had started the whole mess, they knew it was real. And the fact that there was a sulking teenager in the passenger side seat was a hint too.

Lady Bird didn’t understand the patrol’s confusion until the woman walked to the building. To her, social workers were people who looked like they sat behind a desk for a living and might have been teachers at one time. But this one looked more like a former female pro-wrestler or an Olympic weightlifter. Even Wayne had to do a double take.

“I assume you two are the prospective parents. I am Ms. Hoffman.” She stated as she looked down at them. “I will inspect the set up you have for her before I bring her in. If it meets the standards, then we are good to go. If not, then you will have a little time to improve things. Failing that, your application will be withdrawn and you will be fined for wasting my time and causing a ward of the state unnecessary emotional distress. And if you purposefully falter, we will find out and charges will be brought against you accordingly.” She snapped the clip on her clipboard, causing Wayne to jump. “Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes Ma’am.” Lady Bird found herself replying out of instinct. She hadn’t called anyone ma’am in years, but it just felt natural to call the social worker that. “If you would follow us, Ms. Hoffman.”

Hoffman paused a moment outside to look at the wall, which still needed a few repairs but would be ready for paint soon. She jotted something down on the clipboard and picked up a piece of rubble that had been missed.

“Hero activity, I assume.” She tossed the rubble over the fence. A cat yowled somewhere in the bushes. “Do things like this happen often?”

“I wouldn’t call the Gentlemen heroes, more like spies that hire themselves out to gather intelligence for heroes. But yes, hero related activity.” Lady Bird collected herself from her initial shock. “Most of the time, the walls stay intact during an incursion. They just drove their vehicle through it this time.”

“Though where we’re housing Terri will be away from the center of activity.” Wayne quickly added. “Even if someone takes the whole wall down, it won’t be anywhere near her.”

Hoffman nodded. “Good. If she were younger, I’d be more concerned about such things, but since she has experience with this, I’m not as worried.” She put her pen behind her ear. “Speaking of her age, being sixteen means she’s taking driving lessons to obtain her license. Someone will have to take her to those lessons.”

“Of course. There’ll always be someone around that can take her.” That was one advantage of having minions. They could do some of the legwork for her and Terri knew most of them anyways. Or at least knew of them. "Though I have questions about the school situation…”

"As long as you fill out the proper paperwork, you can handle it anyway you want. It would be nice if you asked her for her input too.” Hoffman, despite her figure, acted like a social worker through and through. But Lady Bird couldn’t shake the feeling that she knew her from somewhere.

That was good to know about schooling, because Lady Bird was favoring the private tutor route. Public schools were too exposed and private schools weren't an option this late in the year. Though like Hoffman said, she should include Terri in the decision. Something told her the kid wouldn't mind missing school. She didn't seem like the type that enjoyed it too much, but she might miss her friends. As far as she knew, she had a couple at least. Lady Bird didn’t know their names, but she did seem to hang around a couple of kids on a semi-regular basis from what she heard. When they got to the shipping container, Hoffman walked around it, looking it over with a critical eye.

“It smells like paint.” She stated once she made a circuit. “I trust that it locks from the inside and not the outside.”

“Yes, we fitted it to lock on the inside.” Lady Bird opened the door to show her the locks. “See? If she doesn’t want anybody getting in, they won’t be able to without a welding torch or super strength.”

Hoffman nodded, though Lady Bird wasn’t sure if it was in approval or she was just noting things. She examined the inside of the container, passing by the clothes rack and the portable AC unit. Wayne had to step in and stop the rack from falling apart. If Hoffman noticed, she elected to ignore it.

“Good, you thought about that.” She commented as she eyed the unit. “If this weren’t already indoors, I would insist on the walls being insulated. But good idea taping the wires for the lights. Prevents any tripping accidents in the middle of the night. It could do with some more decor, but it’ll do and it gives her plenty of options for personalization.”

At least the bedroom had her approval. That was the part that she had been worried about the most, seeing that they had only had a little over twelve hours to put it together. There were a few more things they could do to make it more homey, but a lot of that would be up to the kid to decide. As quiet as the kid was during her occasional abduction, she probably wouldn’t be in the mood to talk to her now that she had been legally placed in her custody.

“She’ll be using the bathroom we have reserved for lady minions.” Wayne added as Hoffman started to glance around, probably for that very thing. “It locks on the inside and there aren’t any lady minions currently under my wife’s employ, so…”

Hoffman’s eyes narrowed and Lady Bird thought that the temperature of the room fell a couple degrees. “You have all male minions?”

Lady Bird sighed. “It’s not on purpose, I assure you. I just can’t seem to keep a hold of any female ones. They all either go into another industry or to another villain that can afford to pay them a lot more. And before you worry about her safety around all these guys, know that I’ve never heard a complaint lodged against them by a lady minion regarding anything like abuse or harassment.” Seeing that Hoffman was still glaring, she added a little bit more. “And the kid knows them, sort of, and they’re familiar with her. In fact, they’re very happy for us to be taking this step.”

Hoffman’s face relaxed a little bit. At least the room’s temperature went back to normal. “That’s good. Despite this being a villain base, it sounds like this place has a positive atmosphere.” The social worker jotted something in her notes. “Show me this bathroom. I want to see for myself how secure it is.”

As they led her there, Lady Bird noticed the swarm of minions following them at a distance. She shooed them away. They scattered and pretended to be doing other things when Ms. Hoffman looked back. Most of them pretended very badly. One who was supposedly drinking a glass of water spilled water all over his shirt and the one reading over something ripped the page of what he was reading.

“You are B-list, correct?” Hoffman asked as they arrived to the bathroom. “You must be a very high B-list. A lot of them only have a few minions and work out of abandoned warehouses. From what I understand, you actually own not only this one, but a few others, under various aliases of course.”

“Sh, we don’t advertise that last fact around. We want the heroes to have to do some work.” Lady Bird stopped when Hoffman looked not so amused at her joke. Maybe she had been a former hero once. Or she just didn’t have a sense of humor.

She checked over the bathroom and it was up to her standards or at least the minimal standards. Hoffman wasn’t very specific in that respect. To Lady Bird, it was hard to fail on a bathroom as long as it had a toilet, a sink, and a shower. And thanks to Number One, it had been restocked with soap and shampoo.

“And if you do get a lady minion, will she have to share the bathroom with her?” She questioned as she tested how good the lock was by locking the door and then slamming against it. The door shook, but didn’t give.

“If she doesn’t want to shower in here, she could always use ours. We have one off our private suite.” Wayne replied. Lady Bird had to admire his quick thinking. “We probably take showers at different times anyways. I take mine in the morning and Lady Bird takes it before bed and she has a tendency to go to bed quite late.”

“I’ll leave the details up to you three then.” Hoffman unlocked the door and stepped out of the bathroom. She flipped a page on her pad. “In regards to family and close friends, who is this Number One you listed, Mrs. Lady Bird? And you also listed a Count Reeser. If I remember right, he was declared dead after his trans-dimensional vortex creator blew up.”

“Number One is my right hand henchman. He’s practically family. In fact, he was instrumental in setting all of this up. As for Count Reeser, I put him there just in case he’s not dead. They never found a body after all.” Lady Bird had debated on putting him there at all, but since Wayne had jotted down his parents, she decided she needed to put a couple down too. Granted, that was back when this was still a bluff and not actually happening.

If Hoffman had been bothered to go into the breakroom, she would’ve found a board stating the odds for the current status of Count Reeser and the current payout of the betting pool for each of the odds. Currently, the “he’s dead, Jim” odds were the greatest with most others siding with the “Got transported to another dimension and will return with other dimensional tech or doesn’t want to return” or the “He faked his own death and secretly went into retirement.” There was one last category labeled as “Got flung into a different time period”, but only a few people had invested any money into that one. Lady Bird was one of them.

“I’ll just mark him as “status unknown”.” The pen scratched against the paper as Hoffman recorded yet another thing. How much could she fit on one sheet? “Can I meet this Number One briefly? We could never get ahold of him for an interview.”

“Sure. Let me send someone to go…”

“I’m right here.” Number One stepped from around the corner, as if he had just been waiting for his name to be mentioned to make his entrance. Despite his calm personality, he did seem to enjoy theatrics from time to time. “I had a feeling that you would need me, so I came.”

It was a rumor around the Nest that Number One had some kind of foresight power. Lady Bird was inclined to believe the rumor, but she had never asked the man about it outright. If he wanted to tell her, he could. But obviously, it wasn’t important enough for him to mention so she never pressed the issue. In this industry, everybody had their secrets. One had to respect that.

“Good. If you would follow me, please. This won’t take very long.” Number One inclined his head and allowed Hoffman to go ahead of him.

That left Lady Bird and Wayne together while they went off. He offered her a reassuring smile. “It seems to be going well, especially considering the fact that we didn’t even have a full day to prepare.”

She nodded. “Yes, but this will be the easy part. It won’t be long before word gets around that we’re possibly going to adopt in both the hero and villain community.” Lady Bird crossed her arms. “Some of the heroes probably won’t be happy about it, especially seeing that the papers were fraudulent, and there’s no doubt certain villains will try to take advantage of it.”

“It can’t be any worse than our wedding. Or at least what happened after the ceremony.” He still had a scar from the brawl that had ensued after she tossed the bouquet and bad memories of spending the first day of his honeymoon kidnapped. He shuddered a bit. “Besides, Beretta won’t let anyone hurt her even if she’s living with us. She did promise her mom that she would look after her, no matter where she ended up.”

While that was true, Lady Bird wasn’t looking forward to the fact that her arch-nemesis would be on her speed dial. They were arch-nemesis for a reason. They weren’t an on the clock rivalry, mostly because they were always on the clock.

“Yes, but she’ll be insufferable about it if it happens.” But it didn’t do much good to dwell on what ifs at this point in time. “Who knows? Nothing might happen. Maybe someone else will have something big going on this quarter that will distract everybody.”

It wasn’t long until Number One and Hoffman came back. The social worker held her clipboard under her arm. She handed a piece of paper to Lady Bird. There was lots of legal jargon on it, so she’d need a lawyer to look over it.

“Here is my approval for Terri Shaw to stay with you. I gave Number One here a few suggestions on improvements to her current living quarters, but they’re nothing major. Just something to make it a bit more comfortable. If you would both come out to the car to meet her…”

Hoffman took them to the car. Part of Lady Bird was surprised to see Terri still sitting in the front seat, but then again, she didn’t have anywhere to go. If the police caught up to her, they’d just return her to the office then the office would give her back to her. Besides, she wasn’t the type to run away. Hoffman opened the passenger door.

“All right Terri, it looks like this place is safe enough for you to stay. Remember, if at any time you feel unsafe, give me a call.” She patted her shoulder. “Why don’t you get your stuff and follow Mr. Bird to where you’ll be staying? I need to speak with Mrs. Bird for a moment.”

Terri nodded as she got out and pulled a suitcase out of the back seat. She also had a box with her, which Wayne got. It didn’t seem too heavy, so not much would be in it. Lady Bird figured the suitcase was full of clothes.

“Here, this way.” He told her. “You hungry or anything?”

The kid shook her head and started forward. By now, she knew the layout of the base pretty well. Wayne followed her with the box. Lady Bird and Hoffman were left alone.

“She’s not going to want to stay, you know.” Lady Bird started. Maybe it wasn’t too late to fix things before they got out of hand. “Even if things don’t go badly, she’ll want to go back to Beretta.”

“I know. And I know that the application was a forgery.” Hoffman put her clipboard in the car. “Everyone knows, but it was so good that no one can prove it. So, you better make sure that you take good care of Terri because I will not hesitate to call Beretta, have her get temporary arresting authority, and let her drag you to jail.”

“But shouldn’t we stop this whole thing before it gets started since we know it’s not going to work out?”

“If you want to lawyer up and try to stop it, you can. But by the time a trial comes up, six months will already be up.” Hoffman got into her car. “Think of this as a punishment for your crime. Maybe other villains will think twice before they try something like this. And who knows? It might work out better than you think.”

The social worker drove away and the gate closed. Lady Bird shook her head. So they want to use her as an example? Fine. But if something happened, she wouldn’t hesitate to tell them that they were the ones that decided to go through with this without a fuss. She just hoped it wouldn’t cost any of them too much.