That wasn’t where or why, I thought, but I said, “Very briefly. My family had a team. Still does, kind of.”

Very kind of.

“Oh, wow, neat.”

I tried to find a diplomatic way to respond to that.

“Or not so neat?” Kenzie said.

“Ups and downs,” I said.

“I was with the PRT, but I wasn’t a Ward exactly,” she said. “They had trouble sticking me anywhere, and then I went into training, and got to do a lot of really neat camps and exercises and travel, because they had to wait until I was old enough before they could put me where they really wanted to put me.”

“Which was?”

“Watchdog, grrr,” she said. She’d made a pretty sad attempt at a growl, mischief in her eyes. “That other branch that worked under the PRT that you almost never hear about. Oversight and investigation, powers, money, and politics.”

“I know of Watchdog.”

“Cubicle superheroes.”

“They’re actually pretty badass from what I heard, and they do—did a lot of fieldwork and investigations, raiding offices, interrogations, talking to politicians, uncovering conspiracies.”

“That’s true.”

“There’s something about getting organized and going after that thinker or that tinker who’s been working behind the scenes, the guy that’s been subverting society for their own gain, when they’ve probably spent months or years making contingency plans and anticipating the day their world and their plans come crashing down around them. I think that dynamic is pretty damn cool, the approach and the complexity of it.”

“Hmm, that is cool,” she said. “Except there aren’t any awesome costumes or monster fighting.”

“Less monster fighting, I’m sure. I’m not sure about the costumes. There are probably masks, I guess?”

“And there’s some cublical—bleh. Cubicle jockeying.”

She spoke so fast she had tripped over the word.

I replied, “Probably a lot, yeah. But from my short stint in the Wards, there was a lot of paperwork there too.”

“That’s so true. I was kind of a Ward, so I had to do some. I think I was good at the paperwork.”

I was starting to feel like she’d been the one who had fussed with her appearance, rather than any parental figure. Someone so fussy would’ve somehow been mentioned in the life story to this point. It was very believable, too, to draw a connection between the fastidious appearance and her pride in the paperwork.

“I think I was too.”

She nodded, the conversation momentarily, almost mercifully pausing, then she found her place, enthusiasm returning. “So yeah. I was bouncing all over the place. The Youth Guard stepped in, I’m not sure if you’ve had to deal with them.”