“Understood,” Aunt Carol told her. “As to the last part of our deal?”

“We made no deal.”

“Your aide agreed that you’d tell us a good place to get lunch, when this was over.”

Carol’s tone was light, easy, but her posture was rigid. This was a power play.

“A joke, nothing more. We wish you safe travels on your way out.”

The stiff conversation was apparently over. Carol smiled and turned. She gestured, and slowly, the rest of Erring Right followed.

The team had parked a collection of vehicles at one end of the town, but as they left the civilians behind and reached the cars and trucks, the team gathered together.

“What happened?” Longhorn asked.

“She’s in league with Pill?” Spindle asked.

“Anti-parahuman,” Aunt Carol said. “The cameras we invested in are paying for themselves. She needed our help but wanted to claim she didn’t ask for it. When she was cornered, she let us make our move and take our win, but she doesn’t want us sticking around to claim it.”

“The lunch?” Uncle Mark asked.

“I thought it’d be points for us, if we stuck around, invited people to eat with us. Making ourselves seem more approachable.”

He nodded.

“It’s not worth the fight. She’ll use her police and conscripted citizens to try to take on Bitter Pill. If we stay, we’ll end up fighting Madewell every step of the way, and we’ll be labeled tyrants.”

“There are people here who’ll get hurt,” Ore spoke through his helmet, his voice muffled.

“I told her I’d send our information to her and her aides. The aides can call us if they need us. That’s all we can do, as frustrating as it is.”

Aunt Carol’s words were so carefully chosen. The word ‘frustrating’. That she seemed to anticipate every question and have something prepared for it.

“We’ll debrief when we get back to Fairhope,” Aunt Carol said. “We’ll discuss with Flummox, and figure out our next steps.”

That, too, was a carefully chosen statement.

“I’m going to stop in the gas station,” Crystal said. “I’m parched.”

A few people seemed interested in that.

There were twenty of them present, and the group split apart, people going to cars to get things, to fix up gear, to go take a whiz in a ditch.

Others went to the gas station. Crystal used flight to get there first, got a far-too-expensive bag of chips, a drink, and paid by the time the first people arrived.

The weeds that were spread around the settlement were there by design, to get nitrogen into the Earth, and lay the groundwork for future plant growth. When the wind came in certain directions, the petals and dust flew off, stirring into the air.