“He’s got fins on his head!” Sera shouted, pointing at one of Dave’s thugs reclining against the red-brick wall of Funkytown. The fin-headed hired muscle stuck out a forked tongue at Sera.

“Yes he does, sweety, but you don’t have to shout and point. That’s rude,” Perry said for the umpteenth time as he glanced up at the sign.

DAVE’S MAGICAL EMPORIUM

“I just hope he hasn’t gone into High-Tide mode yet,” Perry muttered, guiding his progeny through the door.

“EEYY, is that little Perry I see?!” Dave emerged from behind the counter, the wide grin on his face framed by his oversized black mutton chops. “Not so little anymore, I guess. And with two…outstanding smelling kids of your own.”

The unicorn inhaled deeply, shuddering in delight.

“I haven’t seen you in years!” he exclaimed.

“And you wonder why.” Perry replied dryly.

“He’s weird, daddy.” Sera said, subdued by the unicorn’s strange behavior. Gareth nodded silently.

Perry glanced up at the burn mark on Dave’s forehead. He’d never really asked about it.

“What brings you to my humble establishment?” Dave asked. “Buy something? Selling something? I hear you’ve got a dragon over there in San Francisco. I’d be happy to distribute for you in Franklin. You know you can use their hearts to make-

“Eh, no,” Perry said, forestalling any further offers. “I came across this today and was concerned for your safety.” Perry said, pulling out the tiny sample tube full of white powder.

Dave frowned, eyeballing the plastic tube in Perry’s hand.

“I don’t follow.”

“Well, I did an analysis of the material and it turned out to be your ho-“

Dave lunged across the countertop and attempted to slap a gloved hand across Perry’s mouth. The glove was grimy, covered in traces of motor oil and blood, so he caught Dave’s wrist before it reached him.

Dave let out a grunt of air as he pulled his torso off the counter and backed off.

“Don’t say anything.”

“Understood,” Perry nodded. He got that via context.

“Let’s talk about this somewhere more private.”

Perry glanced at Sera and Gareth.

“Can you guys stay here and…” Perry glanced at the Eluvian Oozing Curse on one of the tables. “Actually, go play with that fishman.”

“It’s a display model,” Dave said, waving it off. “They can stay in the shop, I don’t leave any of the dangerous stuff out…”

Dave glanced over at Sera, his eyes widening as she immediately began climbing on the counter, reaching for the drawers with the good stuff in them.

“Actually – hold on,” Dave plucked her off the counter and ducked his head out the door.

“Sam, come watch these brats!”

The fishman shrugged and entered the shop.

“Just keep ‘em from killing themselves,” Dave said before motioning Perry to follow.

Perry cast a glance at Sam the Fishman. The hulking muscle could be trusted. Not only did Dave have some of the most loyal employees, they also knew who Perry was.

People treated him a little different after Uncle Charles.

“Gareth,” Perry said, kneeling down in front of his son. “Make sure your sister doesn’t misbehave too badly okay? If she does anything dangerous, tell Sam.”

Gareth nodded.

“Awww!” Sera groaned. “Narc!”

“You’re three years old,” Perry said, frowning at Sera. “Who taught you that word?”

“Grampa!”

Seriously, dad?

“…of course he did. Be good, okay?”

“Kay!” Sera said, proceeding to ignore him and climb on things. Gareth delicately took a shrunken skeleton off the shelf and sat down to study it.

Perry followed Dave into the backroom, where the wall sealed shut behind them, zipping together as if there had never been an entryway, responding to a single motion on Dave’s part.

Perry cocked his head, studying the flow of Essence.

It had a stilted, unnatural look to it.

It occurred to Perry that he’d never studied Dave with his enhanced senses, not seeing much of the unicorn or his magic since he’d hit level ten.

“Alright, where’d you get that?” Dave asked, nodding at the vial of horn dust in Perry’s hand once the room was completely shut off from the outside world.

“The dragon.”

“Where’d he get it?” Dave asked, scowling.

“He’s not gonna tell me.” Perry said. They shared breakthroughs, sure, but their sources were under a bit tighter wraps.

Perry inspected Dave, who hadn’t changed a bit since the last time he saw him. “I thought Tyrannus might’ve killed you.”

Dave snorted.

“And piss off every other unicorn on Earth?” he asked. “Not likely. We watch each other’s backs.”

“So how did this get in here?” Perry asked, shaking the vial. “I don’t think Tyrannus knows it’s yours. Something he doesn’t know could give me the advantage I need when the chips are down.”

Dave squinted at him.

“I like you kid. Like your family. But a man’s horn is his most precious possession. What’s in it for me to tell you about the worst thing that ever happened to me? If word got out…”

“I could fix it for you,” Perry offered.

“HAHAHAHAHAHAH!” Dave rocked back and slapped his knee, guffawing with abandon for a full ten seconds before he read Perry’s expression and sobered up.

“Are you serious?” He asked, frowning.

It was a valid question. Most organs were easy enough to fix with magic, but trying to fix a unicorn’s horn was a bit like patching a nuclear reaction mid-meltdown. Tricky stuff.

“Over the last three years, I’ve been studying how Essence forms inside organic material, even making simple synthetic Symbiotes,” Perry said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out some synthetic Lunt bone. “What do you think that is?”

“Lunt bone,” Dave said, pulling it up to his nose and sniffing it before grabbing a microscope off his desk and peering at the ivory block.

“Wait, no…it’s fake. This pattern is…”

“Synthetic.” Perry said. “Printed it for a prototype a few months ago.”

“Printed it?” Dave asked, blinking up at him.

A complex emotion swept across Dave’s face before he yanked open his desk and pulled out a block of amber Sunstone and a knife.

“Do you mind?” he asked, holding the knife’s edge to Perry’s printed Lunt bone.

“Knock yourself out.”

Dave carved a few shavings off the ivory block, which burst into dazzling white light as they came into contact with the Sunstone.

“Colors a little off, but that’s the right reaction alright.” Dave muttered, scowling.

“It’s trace Essences in normal Lunt bone that add the color,” Perry offered. “I could add them back in but I prefer to work without contaminants.

“Could you…print a unicorn horn?” Dave asked, his voice choking up slightly.

“Maybe.” Perry said. “They’re a bit more complex than Lunt bone, and printing a living horn with blood vessels ready to be attached would be a hell of a feat…but with the right sample, I think I could do it.”

Perry shook the vial at the word ‘sample’.

“So here’s the deal, Dave. You give me a blood sample, a CAT scan of your horn, and tell me what happened to it, and I’ll do my best to fix it.”

“What do you get out of this?”

“Maybe nothing,” Perry said with a shrug. “Maybe just the experience with creating prosthetic magical organs, which is valuable enough in its own right…and maybe, just maybe…knowing something that Tyrannus doesn’t want me to know.”

“I’ve got no stake in your conflict with the dragon,” Dave said, teetering on the edge of agreeing.

“Name one person with a better shot at fixing it.”

“Marigold Zauberer.” Dave said.

Touche.

“She’s a snake. The only reason you’ve never gone to her is because she would own you afterwards. I’m telling you my price up front.”

“You won’t tell a soul?” Dave asked.

Got him.

“The only part of the information I care about is how I can use it against Tyrannus,” Perry said. “The rest will never spread past me.”

Dave gave him a long look before he heaved a sigh, deflating in front of Perry.

He reached up and drew a hand across his face.

The image of a mutton-chopped man with a burn scar on his forehead wavered for a moment before resolving into that of a black stallion.

The horn protruding from the center of Dave’s forehead was mangled. It was partially cut away at the base and seemingly suffering from a darkening necrosis stretching from the middle up the forward-facing half, where the blood vessels had failed to keep the bone supplying the keratin portion of the horn alive. In that area, the exterior seemed to flake away, exposing dead bone.

“Damn.” Perry muttered. It wasn’t a clean cut, but a gangrenous wound. That would make things difficult. “When did this happen?” Perry asked.

“Nineteen-sixty-nine,” Dave said as Perry took measurements.

Perry took a step back and frowned at Dave. “The dragon?”

“No, humans. Me and some of the people living in our forest made a personal portal to Earth and arrived in a place they later named Site 14…”

Perry listened quietly as Dave went into detail about how he’d been captured by the United States military and subjected to brutal experiments for the better part of a year before he’d escaped. Perry absorbed every tiny detail, asking clarifications that varied wildly, from the angle of the sun to the maker’s mark on the saw used to carve into his horn…until Dave blew it up, along with everyone else present.

“How did they even get you to stay that long?” Perry asked at the end of the unicorn’s tale of woe and suffering. “I can’t imagine humans would have the means to prevent your escape.” Perry asked, using a handheld scanner he’d designed to stitch together an internal view of Dave’s horn.

“Well, the lieutenant in charge was this scrumptious little brunette with-“

“Nevermind,” Perry said, forestalling any further idiocy. “I got what I needed. I’ll just need a blood sample and I’ll get started on the fix.”

Perry saved the imaging to a thumb drive, then switched tools.

Multi-tool. A syringe appeared in his hand, and he slipped it into a large vein in Dave’s leg.

“You’re not gonna curse me are you?” Dave asked.

“Dave, despite how much of a creep you are, I still consider us friends,” Perry said, capping off the syringe full of blood.

“But if it’ll make you feel better, you can hold onto the blood and join me at my lab where I’ll put it to use. You’re gonna have to be there for when we fit the patch anyway.”

Dave’s form shimmered back into the leather-clad biker with mutton-chops, accepting the syringe.

“Did you get what you needed?”

“Sure did.” Perry said.

Tyrannus was raiding secret military bases in Utah containing goodies that’d been stolen from the first wave of Manitan immigrants.

And he didn’t know Perry knew where they were.

“Here’s the coordinates of my lab. Meet me there tomorrow morning bright and early. You can still teleport, right?”

“Not really. Most of my magic is just illusions and sleight of hand with a bit of…external assistance.”

“I’ll come get you, then. Keep that blood in the fridge until tomorrow.”

Dave scoffed.

“I know how to store magical blood, kiddo, this ain’t my first time,” Dave said, unzipping the wall and allowing Perry to climb back up the stairs and out of the basement, emerging into the shop to a wall of sound.

Sera was sobbing in front of a pile of shattered glass that Sam was hastily trying to sweep up, while Gareth was entertaining himself by playing pretend with a herd of tiny skeletons.

“Who wants dinner at Burger Joint?” Perry asked. He was pretty sure neither Heather nor Nat would be in the mood to cook when they got home. In fact, most of the time they foisted it off on him because his cooking was unnaturally better than it had any right to be.

“Burger Joint!” Sera shouted, leaping to her feet, crushing sadness forgotten.

Perry set about the task of convincing Gareth to let go of his new figurines, but Dave just gave them to him, and a few minutes later they were walking down the street toward the fast food restaurant on the west side of Funkytown, just a couple blocks away from Dave’s Magical Emporium.

As he was walking the twins, Perry noticed a pressure wave from the nearby building rolling over to them, and Perry’s hand flickered up just in time.

SHIELD.EXE

A bubble formed around the three of them, dampening the sound of the explosion from Ear-piercing to nearly sub-audible, only coming through the ground they were standing on.

BOOM!

The wall of the nearby building detonated into a wave of shrapnel bouncing off Perry’s shield as Dad punched Mom through a wall and out into the street. Dad’s millipede-looking robots poured out the hole, carrying hundreds of gallons of permethrin and pyrethrins, aiming for the sewers.

Hexen stabilized her flight mid-tumble, hovering thirty feet above the road as arm-thick bolts of lightning surrounded her spandex-clad form.

“Your time has come, Hexen!” Dad’s modified voice echoed through the street from his suit’s speakers as he clambered into the street after her. “The rest of your team is afflicted with weaponized crabs! They itch and burn, but their only relief will be the soothing lotion of DEATH!”

“Same shit, different day.” Perry muttered. He was starting to remember why he stayed in Chicago.

“That’s a bad word, Daddy,” Gareth whispered.

“GRAMPA! GRAMMA!” Sera shrieked, charging toward the dueling supers.