When people thought of the Parahuman Response Team, they thought of the troopers. The ones that ran around in heavy armor and heavy weapons, who fought villainous parahumans, who risked their lives on a weekly basis in the mediocre action dramas Karrin liked to binge whenever construction work dried up and she had too much time on her hands. Mary bore the indignity and the jokes with a stoicism born of more than a decade of the married life, and in return Karrin restrained her inner handywoman to only the deck in the back, and then only on weekends.

Even with all that, they still had four swing benches for three people.

Karrin banished thoughts of her wife from her head and knocked three times on the worn wooden door in front of her while Jared adjusted his tie next to her. As police liaisons to the PRT went he was one of the more reasonable ones, for which she was grateful. A fifty year old that looked sixty, he was here in the off chance that Taylor Hebert turned out to not be a parahuman. Wards testimony generally constituted enough for a classification, but Probationary Wards testimony was not.

Officially, Jared was here to cover bases. Officially, he didn't know anything about the politics of the PRT or Protectorate. Officially everyone was on the same side, and any watchwolfing was the jurisdiction of each branch's respective Internal Affairs offices.

Unofficially, Jared had offered her a fast track to detective if she wanted to whistleblow on anything. She'd told him to keep the door open.

A tall, thin man opened the door. His hair had started to go, with large green eyes that dwarfed the glasses in front of them. Even though he must have had six inches and twenty pounds on her there was a wispiness to him, like a fire just about to go out. Dark bags hung under his eyes, and his free hand was braced against the door frame, fingers tensed with anticipation.

"Do you have news about Taylor?" he blurted out.

Karrin nodded once. This was going to be rough. "May we come in, Mr. Hebert?"

"Of course, of course," he said, stepping aside and motioning into his house with one hand. As she and Jared step through a small coat room, Karrin took in the little details. She'd worked with more domestic abuse-related triggers than she cared to remember, and filing a missing persons report for his daughter in no way disqualified him from being the cause.

What she saw was a simple, if sparsely-furnished, living room, with a tiled kitchen on one side. A few dirty plates sat in the sink, which was still running, and as her eyes flicked over it Mr. Hebert walked over and shut the water off.

"Sorry, I was just trying to keep busy," he said, drying his hands quickly and motioning to the dining table. "Can I get you anything? Coffee, water?"

"I'd take a cup of joe," Jared said, slowly sitting down on one side of the table. Karrin nodded in assent, taking the seat to the left of him. Once the drinks were in hand, Karrin started talking.

"How much do you know about Taylor's school life?" she asked, drumming her fingers on the nearly uncomfortably hot mug.

Mr. Hebert shook his head. "I know she's being bullied. Is it something worse?" He paused, staring into his coffee, then looked up. "Is it a gang?"

"Not yet," Jared answered carefully, holding his mug under his nose. This one had some chipping around the rim, and when he went to take a sip Karrin winced in anticipation of a cut lip. "We have reason to suspect your daughter is holding a grudge against a parahuman."

Mr. Hebert stared at Jared blankly. "What?"

Karrin explained the situation as best she could. How a Ward, in their civilian identity, caught Taylor spying on them changing out of costume. She explained how Taylor had fled the scene without hurting anyone, evaded the Ward's pursuit, and how the police were currently in the process of transferring the investigation over to the PRT. Jared gave Mr. Hebert the statistics about runaways and missing persons, then Karrin the potential legal and social issues of what Taylor could know.

For a long time, the table was silent.

"As bad as things are, no one's been hurt," Karrin said quietly. "Odds are she'll come back home at least once, and there's precedence for her situation. Talk to her, explain that we can work things out, and everything will turn out alright."

Mr. Hebert nodded, not really looking at either of them. "Thank you for your time, officers."

Karrin and Jared took the hint and departed, a pair of business cards left behind just in case things went well when he tried to talk down his daughter.

About halfway back to the station, Jared asked, "Do you think he had anything to do with it?"

Karrin shook her head. "He was afraid for her, not of her. I didn't see any rage that was out of line with a parent learning their kid had been bullied, and while he could be faking it I'm usually pretty good at spotting when someone's putting on an act. What do you think?"

A few raindrops smacked into the windshield. Not enough to start the wipers, but Jared rolled up his window anyway. "I think a girl decided to run away from a Ward, and that deserves a think."