He nodded proudly. "She's up there, y'know. This is level four variant? Level five? I can't remember."
    "I don't believe she's ever been tested," I reminded him.
    "Well maybe we should do that," he agreed.
    "You are her legal guardian, or whatnot. I'm kind of worried about this."
    "Why?" Scott asked.
    "I just like to know how things work."
    "So how come you can manipulate people's bioauras directly while Tempest can throw around cars?" he shrugged. "If you want to know, ask her. She'll run a diagnostic or something."
    Or something. "It's not so much that I'm worried, I'm wondering if other people might become worried," I hedged.
    The fact of it is that it's been awfully easy to take her presence for granted. Dawn is a lovely person and she seems to have developed a firm sense of responsibility (god knows where she got it), but the ability to create permanent solid objects out of nothing is rare if not actually unique. And she seems to be scaling up to larger and larger things all the time. When she first awoke, as I recall, she had to rest a while between making even relatively small things. Obviously, that's no longer the case.
    "Like who?" Phoenix asked.
    "The city, people in general." What if somebody takes her hostage someday? Or asks her for something she thinks is innocuous, but turns out not to be?
    "Rogue construction companies worried about being put out of business?" Scott asked lightly.
    "Yes, the unions are going to be really pissed." I was only half taking up his joke. She could wreck the world economy if she wanted to.
    "Yeah, you gotta watch, a lot of those guys are all mobbed up. Contractors, too," Talon noted. "Yeah, Dawn might have to watch out for that. I'll go call my old advisor down at University of Houston, maybe we'll go down there, have him take a look at her."
    That seemed to be the end of it, at least for now. With the fruit basket mystery resolved, the rest of the mail held nothing of interest, and the rest of the day nothing of import. Best kind, in my opinion.
    My recent research has been going well, and I've checked over all the newspapers from the day of the Godzilla attack for anything significant that we might have been distracted from, and found nothing. It seems the attack was only what it was. Whatever that was.

[Aside: July 25]

[Aside: July 27]

[Aside: July 30]

July 30, 1987

Another one!
    The emergency light was flashing. Scott and I checked to see what was going on. The park cameras were tracking a man calling himself "the Babe" as he strode across the field.
    "I wouldn't stand up and run, Bostonians! I used the opportunity during your recent reconstruction of this pathetic venue to plant a few surprises of my own. By the time you get up for the seventh inning stretch, some of the bleachers will explode. So don't move any too quickly, other than to start emptying your wallets and handing them to the men who are passing out beer right now. They'll be coming down to drop it off to me." He tossed the bat up and caught it. "If they know what's good for them."
    The shortstop rolled his eyes. "Oh, come on! You have got to be kidding me!"
    "You find this amusing?" The Bambino pulled a baseball out of a bag at his hip, tossed it up and swung his bat. The ball hit the man squarely, ricocheted over to hit the third baseman and bounced again to take out the catcher and the pitcher, both of whom had just been getting up. "Still think I'm funny?"
    At base, Scott and I exchanged a disbelieving glance and got moving. We didn't even discuss calling Phoenix Talon or Thunderbolt. Let the former enjoy his date, the latter his night off.
    "Why us? Why Boston?" I bemoaned our fate. "There's lots of other cities they could have opened a branch in...."
    When we got there, the beer guys were still collecting wallets as the Babe ranted down on the field.
    "They mocked me! For years, I told them that my inventions would make the sport better, more exciting! But those damn traditionalists, they won't even use aluminum bats! I'll show them!"
    "I'm detecting disgruntled," Scott remarked. There was no way to get the people out with any speed, in case the bombs were really there, so after a hasty conference we decided to just try to take the Babe out quickly. I dropped down into the park and tripped a few inner switches.
    "Ah! Revolution! So the true game begins!" he gasped, straightening defiantly.
    "Excuse me, Mr. The Babe?" Scott poured down on his head in liquid form.
    The Babe rolled agilely aside, reached into his bag and grabbed another ball. "So? Catch!"
    I repressed a snicker at the way people keep trying to hit Scott with projectiles. My jaw dropped when it actually seemed to hit him; the gravity field on the ball carried him across the field. He smashed into one of the light banks in a shower of sparks.
    The Babe laughed. "Ha! First run to me!"
    "Have you considered professional help, sir?" I inquired.
    "I am a professional! What, did they tell you that I was only in AAA? That's a damn lie! I made those tryouts, I made them!"
    "Cool. Miniaturized gravity generators," Scott remarked, getting himself back together. "Neat! Not very effective, but neat."

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