Wait, are intro posts supposed to make sense? Hang on.

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“Okay.  What do you want?”

“Anything with meat.”

“I’ll be back,” I told her.

Heh, of course she wants meat.

She didn’t reply, leaving me to make my way through the crowd of dogs to the front door.  I stuck my shaking hands into my pockets and headed off to grab our lunch, leaving Bitch with the monster in chains.

See you soon!

I waited a minute, watching as Sirius got the strength to struggle again, nearly standing up, before the weight of the other two dogs pressed him down again.

“Bitch- Rachel.  I’m getting the impression you might be here a while, to keep an eye on Sirius, give him some attention after he’s back to normal so he knows everything’s okay?”

Makes sense.

“What about it?”  Her voice was hard, and she didn’t look my way.

“Do you want me to pick up something for lunch, so you can stay here with him?”

“…Fine.”

And thus, Taylor ended up finding a non-degrading way to help.

“You know this area better than I do.  Where-” I stopped.  I needed to convey more self confidence than simply asking her for the info.  She might even see it as begging.  I told her, “Tell me where to go.”

Small changes can make a world of difference to how you come across.

I was crossing my fingers she wouldn’t go nuts over me giving her an order.

She was too preoccupied with watching Sirius to argue with me.  “There’s a Greek food stand if you walk in the direction of the Boardwalk.  You’ll smell it before you see it.”

Headcanon: Despite the Protectorate HQ providing excellent food (made by a parahumanly skilled chef or five, with tinkertech kitchen equipment), and there otherwise being plenty of good restaurants in Brockton Bay, Dauntless likes to go to this food stand in the Docks for lunch from time to time.

“We’ll give it fifteen minutes,” she reached for the chain and held it.  “Takes about that long for it to wear off.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t need you here.  If you want to be useful, there’s a shovel by the door.  You can go pick up the shit in the short grass over there.”

I guess it’s something to do while waiting for a huge dog to get smaller.

“Fuck you,” the words spilled out of my mouth before I could censor them.  I wasn’t positive I wanted to censor them, but it bugged me that I’d done it without thinking it through.

Hehe.

Honestly, I think there’s a decent chance Rachel isn’t going to take offense here. This is Taylor not showing weakness – Rachel might appreciate that.

“What?” she growled at me.

“Fuck you,” I repeated myself, “I came to help.  Thought maybe I was helping, by pointing out what was wrong with Sirius.  That doesn’t mean I’m going to be your slave, or that it’s an excuse to give me the worst jobs.  You want me to pick up the poop?  Cool, but I’ll do it when you’ve got a shovel in your hand too, and you’re working beside me.”

Ehh, fair enough.

“You told me I could hit you, free and clear, if you pissed me off,” she threatened me.

I think Taylor’s cool with that, Rachel.

“Yeah, but if you do it here, for this reason, I’m hitting back,”

Heh, nice.

I didn’t move my eyes away from hers, even as every awkward part of me twitched to look away and leave.  If she really did default to interpreting social interactions in dog terms, then eye contact was important.

Yes, keep doing this. Standing up to her might actually get her to respect you more.

I didn’t know much about animals, about dogs, but I did know that it was the submissive dog, the dog lower on the totem pole, that backed down.

“I’ve got Brutus, you wouldn’t win the fight,” she told me.

Can she actually assign Brutus to a different task right now? He might be stuck keeping the other dogs at bay.

Almost definitely true, I thought.  But I couldn’t give in.  I resisted the urge to look at Brutus and told her, my voice low, “You want to go there?  Try it.”

Man, I hope this ends in Rachel laughing, to Taylor’s surprise.

She set her jaw, stared at me for several long moments.  Then Sirius made a noise, a smaller version of that whimpering howl he’d made earlier, and she turned her head.

Ah, or she can get distracted. Fair enough.

Sirius let out a long, mournful noise, somewhere between a whine and a howl, loud enough that I had to turn my face away and cover my ears.

When I was sure he wasn’t about to do it again, I dropped my hands.  I asked Bitch, “Have you done this before?”

She shook her head.

Hm… but she also said this was the second dog that came with this from that shelter. Did she treat the other one via the mundane means, without thinking of the possibility of using her power to do it? Or did she… find out too late?

“I’ve used my power on most of them, but only a little, to keep them healthy.  Sirius is the only one I’ve made this big since Angelica, Brutus, Judas and Rollo.”

…there’s one name that sticks out here. Was Rollo the dog she empowered when she first found out about the power, the one who killed someone?

I almost asked who Rollo was, but I kept my mouth shut.  It was a habit of mine, I found, that I usually pushed a conversation with Bitch too far, gave her an excuse to get pissed at me.  I could prioritize other things over my curiosity.

Guess we’re not finding out right now, unless Rachel herself decides to elaborate. But she’s not exactly the elaborating type.

Besides, as I thought on it, I realized Rollo might’ve been the first dog she used her power on.  The one with the body count.

Yeah, that’s my theory too, Taylor.

“Time?” She asked.

I found my cell phone, fumbled with it to press a button and display the time.  “Nine minutes past eleven.”

As it happens, it’s currently about five minutes past eleven here. Although that’s PM for me, and AM for Taylor and Rachel.