A follow-up to "The Agency" ( http://shifti.org/wiki/The_Agency )

# 1. #

Ty tried not to whimper as he stomped on the mansion. He kept telling
himself that tearing old buildings down was a part of the construction
process, but it was a shame to see this one go since it was still in
good shape. Some baseball star here in Florida had bought three
beachfront lots so that he could build one super-mega-mansion. So, the
guy had done the logical thing: call in a fifty-foot-tall foxtaur to
crush the existing houses, and let a filmmaker pay him to record it.

"More shouting!" said the man by the camera. So Ty gave his best
Godzilla roar and punched his way through a bedroom. He was going to
enjoy helping to build the replacement house more than this, and didn't
really want the monster reputation, but Emily had insisted they needed
the extra cash. Ty rampaged his way slowly through the mansion, took a
break, then started in on the other one while actors shot at him with
prop guns.

Ty winced, hurting his fist on a gratuitous brick chimney. He'd only
been free for a few months and still wasn't used to having a real job,
let alone such a strange one. He concentrated and tried to shrink a few
feet so that he could get in there and pull out some pipes better.
Almost there...

Something in the mansion snapped loose. At the same moment the actors
outside shouted something. The distraction broke his concentration and
he found himself shrinking too much, from fifty feet high to forty,
twenty. He stumbled forward and the chimney came down on him, exactly
like a ton of bricks. The edges thudded against his long back and made
him yelp in pain. Too many came down on his head, too. He was flat on
his face inside the half-broken building just as the rest of it crashed
inward onto him. It was suddenly dark.

# 2. #

Ty groaned. The light made his head throb. He heard someone distantly
saying, "Mister Vulpine? Glad to see you're awake."

He was in a hospital with buzzing bulbs overhead. "What happened?"

The doctor frowned at him over a clipboard. "The house always wins.
You're lucky to have that extra durability in your bones. Meant to be
bulletproof as well as able to handle you stomping around while fifty
feet tall, right?"

Ty nodded, which just made the headache worse. "Is everyone else okay?"

The doctor pointed to a vase of flowers and a card signed by his
co-workers. Ty grinned. Emily had kept even her signature hidden in a
corner, by the construction crew's and the architect's. "We should have
you out of here within a few days." A cough. "I'll have the nurses bring
you the insurance form."

Ty groaned. Ever since he and Emily had escaped from the Agency that had
raised them -- after it made them orphans! -- the two of them had
suddenly had to deal with real-world stuff. It turned out that being
trained as some kind of super-soldiers didn't automatically mean good
pay as a civilian. Not in the Free States, anyway. They'd fled south
from the US proper to the part that had recently broken away, and gotten
asylum. But neither of them had been eager to fight "terrorists" after
all, they'd decided, which meant no government jobs.

"I'll deal with it later," Ty said, and slept.

Days later, he was troubled. He still hadn't had more visitors. He
called up Emily but got no answer, twice. The construction crew didn't
know where she'd gone either. What really got Ty's fur on end (and
nearly made him lose control and grow too big for the hospital bed) was
the report that his bill had just been paid without explanation.

The nice thing about his past was that he knew Tren. Ty called up the
"dragon" -- really a lizard who'd gotten wings as part of the same kind
of experiments that made Ty a taur -- through a couple of layers of
security.

"Your sister's missing?" said Tren. He cursed. "And you've heard nothing
from her, encrypted or otherwise? Well, she didn't take me up on my
offer." Tren had been lying low in Occupied Mexico and trying not to get
any Hellfire missiles delivered to his door. He'd suggested that Emily
spend some time doing "odd jobs" with him. Ty suspected he liked her.

"Then what do I do? It's not like her to be this sneaky. And somebody
just paid my hospital bill."

"Sounds like your sister got another job. Now, who'd want to pay some
minor celebrity a lot of money up front on short notice, in a way that'd
make her vanish without talking to you first, when she'd normally at
least leave a note?"

Ty thought about it, and didn't like the idea he was getting. He found
himself arguing against it. "You don't seriously think she's in trouble,
do you? We're _done_ with the Agency and all that. We reached an
understanding."

"Might not be them, necessarily. There's some neat technology in the
three of us. Worth studying."

"Then who?"

"That, I don't know. Let me do some digging. Try not to worry yourself
too much. Your sister can take care of herself."

Ty wished he were sure of that.

# 3. #

Ty and Emily lived in a cheap apartment not just out of poverty, but for
exactly the reason that Ty met KC. The construction company had gotten a
weird call to come out someplace on short notice to do a "damage
assessment", not normally in their line of work. Seemed urgent though,
and Ty's boss said the customer had insisted on hiring him specifically.

It became pretty obvious why, right away. Police had cordoned off the
neighborhood. Ty saw a giant blue foot sticking out of a collapsed house
down the street. Ty got out of the truck, showed an officer his ID, and
grew a few inches taller by way of explanation. "I have some experience
in this kind of thing." The cop blinked a couple of times and let the
crew through.

The foot belonged to a giant with blue dreadlocks... no, spines. "Ooh,
an echidna!" said one of the younger guys on the truck. Ty and the
others looked at him strangely. "What?"

Ty approached. "Ty Vulpine here! What the heck happened to you?" He
could see the giant laying in the rubble of half of the house, afraid to
move without bringing the rest of it down on him. His arm was stuck
through a second-floor bathroom wall. A shower was raining on his
shoulder, and threatening to fall from the pipes that held it up.
Considering the bits of shredded clothing on him, Ty added, "I'm
guessing you weren't planning to redecorate like this. How'd this happen?"

"Just get me out of here! I don't want to lose the bedroom, man." An
expensive four-poster bed up on the third floor dangled over the man's
head. A seagull perched on it, looking dubious. "Don't want to do more
damage than I already did."

Ty conferred with his co-workers. "Sorry, but that place is pretty much
totaled. You kicked out half the structural support and the attic is
mainly held up by your spine. Why do you even _have_ an attic in this
climate?" The customer glared at him. "Okay, never mind. But your house
is already split, so you're not going to escape if you're afraid of the
rest coming down."

The giant echidna swore. "Can you at least get the bed and the stereo?"

Ty nodded, stepped away from everyone, and unbuttoned his already tight
shirt. He'd more or less given up on pants since becoming a taur, and
few people complained. He kicked off two pairs of sneakers (one
custom-made for his more digitigrade hindlegs) and willed himself to
grow. It was a power he'd never fully learned to control, hence his own
cheap taste in housing and furniture. He could sympathize with the blue
guy. He gradually felt massive and powerful, seeing the world from the
height of the roofs around him.

Ty now had hands big enough to grab the entire bed that perched on the
broken upper floor, then the fancy stereo system, and set them down by
the truck. He had to snap some wires off the stereo, but those should be
fixable, he figured. "Okay. So, let me just hold up this bit of the
ceiling so it doesn't bean you, and --"

The echidna lunged up from the rubble. "You jerk! I'm out half a million
dollars!" He came up swinging a fist that must've weighed as much as a
refrigerator. It caught Ty in the side of his lower torso and made him
stagger. Ow, those knuckles! The building crumbled around him and
crashed in a pile of dust and jagged lumber.

Ty raised his arms in defense. "What are you talking about?"

The blue giant grabbed some cinder blocks and chucked them at Ty,
saying, "This is all your fault!"

Ty's fur bristled. Years of combat training kicked in. He swatted aside
the blocks, yanked the echidna's arm, and swung him around to slam him
face-first into his own broken house. His former boss would've approved;
no extra property damage. "No." Ty put a heavy forefoot down on his back
and said, "Whatever crazy ideas you've got about me, take our your
frustration someplace where we won't kill anybody! Are you done for now?"

"I give! I give." Ty stepped off of him and let him awkwardly turn
around. He clutched at some nasty cuts on his muzzle. "Not in the face,
man! So did you _not_ ask Alyssa to send me some kind of crazy
turn-you-huge potion? You broke my house!"

"I did _not_," said Ty. "And who's Alyssa?"

The man sighed and sat up, making broken planks and a chair slide off of
him. "Name's KC. AM 970 WFLA, voice of the Rays?" Ty blinked, not
recognizing the face, but maybe the voice from local radio. KC said,
"Whatever. Look, I got this weird package in the mail today with a note
from a friend. Let me grab it from my desk." He glanced back over his
shoulder.

"Under your left elbow," said Ty.

KC rummaged and tried to grab a tiny slip of paper between his fingers,
but just didn't have the coordination yet at this size. Ty caught it
carefully and gave it to one of the construction guys to read. KC said,
"She told me, 'Take care of this. It's a secret.' And to find you. I
figured this was some stupid spy thing she'd gotten me mixed up in, and
that you had put her up to it. And when the damn glass vial in the
package leaked on me, I was all Alice In Wonderland with my house. I
just put in five thousand bucks worth of hardwood!"

Ty's ears perked in surprise. "I think we need to have a talk. Can you,
you know, shrink? It's a mental trick. You have to calm down enough for it."

"Easy for you to say," KC groused. But after a few minutes of Ty talking
him through it, the echnidna relaxed enough that he was able to control
his own size, and slowly reverted to about six feet tall. He stared at
his hands, then farther down. "Oh, right. Think you can dig my dresser
out from the rubble?"

# 4. #

"If you've got the same kind of 'matter storage field' as I do, then
that friend of yours has access to the same kind of tech." Ty stuffed
himself with chicken as they lounged in a hotel room. He'd heard the
media rushing to the scene of KC's big problem, and figured that it'd be
best not to head right home. Some reporter was probably already lurking
there.

KC leaned back in a chair. "How are you eating that much?"

Ty grinned. "Taur body. Size shifting. You're lucky you didn't sprout
extra legs."

"Whatever." The echidna picked at the chicken and rice. "Having this
done to me feels like cheating. I _earned_ these muscles." He showed off
some biceps.

Nowadays, ever since Ty and Emily escaped from the Agency, you could buy
ones just as good. The official word from the US government was that the
Agency was a medical research lab, abused by a couple of rogue
scientists. To make the story stick, they'd had to release some of their
discoveries to the public. Super-steroids, basically, some
nanotech-based medical stuff, and weirder things. So, Ty and Emily
weren't the only taurs in the city, but they still certainly stood out.
And the technique for doing the size thing was still classified,
supposedly only usable on very specific genomes. That one seemed to bend
physics enough that even Ty didn't blame the government for being wary
about explaining it. It could probably be used for making matter/energy
bombs or something.

Ty said, "Tell me about this friend of yours. She sent you a nanite vial?"

KC looked around suspiciously. "She was always traveling a lot. Wouldn't
tell me what it was all about, but from some hints I gathered it was spy
stuff, not just her 'business' across the border in the US and out in
Asia. Anyway, yeah, out of the blue I got that package. She wouldn't
have done anything like that unless it was urgent. What's it all mean?"

"Hmm... If she was trying to get you to contact me, and it was about the
size-shifting tech, then... Agency stuff. Where was it sent from?"

The echidna had retrieved a scrap of paper with some nasty cologne on
it. "China, but that doesn't really narrow it down."

"Why's it doused with that stuff?" Ty's nose wrinkled but he sniffed
again. "Ugh."

His phone rang. Tren. "Ty? Bad news. No word from your sister at all,
and there's some government chatter mentioning her. Can't read much of
it though."

Ty threatened to crush the phone. "Any of it from China? And on a
related note, have you got some kind of chemical sniffer?"

# 5. #

They had more of a clue than "China". It took most of his savings, but
Ty got two plane tickets (both for himself) to head that way. KC had the
third seat in their part of the row, trying not to lean on Ty. "So, what
happens if this size stuff acts up on us in mid-flight?"

Ty started to speak, then scribbled a note to him instead. "Then the
plane shatters. Try to keep calm."

Tren had met them in Seattle, with some scientific equipment and an
alarming number of computers. Turned out that that nasty cologne came
from a factory in the middle of nowhere, in western China. Worth
checking out even though it meant an even longer trip. Would've been too
much of a wild goose chase even for KC's heftier bank account, but for a
bit more information Tren had been able to dig up.

He sat there now in the seat across the aisle, wearing a heavy
trenchcoat to hide his wings. The airport security people had certainly
noticed something odd about him, but took him for some rich eccentric
who'd bought some of the Agency's released body-mod technology. He had a
couple of his computers out and looked intent on something. "Hey, Ty?
Did you look this city up before you left?"

"A bit. Sounded like a ghost town besides a chemical plant and the
perfume place."

"Worse." Tren handed Ty a tablet showing empty streets, empty buildings.
"Practically nobody lives there but a few Party members, some Muslims
the Chinese are trying to wipe out, and some factory workers. The thing
is, the chem plant isn't really interesting. I'd rather go shopping."

Tren wouldn't explain, but grinned wider as he continued whatever
searching and analysis he had going through his satellite link. Ty felt
outclassed on the computer front; he'd learned about the Agency's crimes
basically because somebody there used bad database security. By the time
they'd all slept and landed, Tren was ready to lay out more of a plan.

# 6. #

There was a model of it just outside the airport restaurant. "Shenyu
Glory Mall?" said Ty, eyeing the dollhouse-sized building complex.

Tren said, "Biggest mall in the world. Occupancy hit two percent in its
heyday. And that was before the Crash. So, basically a giant shell
that's slowly falling apart."

KC was peering through the window at it. "Is that a rollercoaster?"

Ty was still skeptical. "Cool, but what proof have we got about Emily?
Or this Alyssa lady?"

"Because," said Tren with a look of triumph, "whoever's there didn't do
much to hide the fact that they were getting shipments of _something_
from the factory despite having no reason for it. Something that Alyssa
wanted to lead you to."

Despite trying to dress like businessmen, the three of them stood out
when they left the airport. Not a lot of people in town at all, and
exactly one taur. Ty stared at highways with hardly a car on them,
apartment buildings with barely a sign of life. The air shimmered with
hazy heat.

In the distance, Ty could see glass towers similar to the model. "Well,
let's check it out."

Tren was still busy thumbing through info on a phone, so he didn't see
Ty removing his shirt. "I'll get us a taxi or -- wha!"

Ty was already fifteen feet tall when he grabbed the dragon, grinning.
He felt Tren getting lighter and lighter in his one-handed grip. As
usual, the ground seemed to fall away, frightening him for a moment as
though he'd been launched into the air. The changing perspective started
to feel more familiar. Ty said, "Want a ride, KC, or will you go 'kaiju'
too?"

The echidna looked down at himself. "Haven't really practiced. I'll
ride." Ty grabbed him and ran off.

The mega-mall looked like a city unto itself. Except for the emptiness!
Ty jogged along a vacant highway and some wind-blown sandlots until he
reached an empty parking lot for thousands of cars, with a train
terminal. Heat rippled up from the pavement and made him pant just to
see it.

He felt his fur bristle. There, unlit, was a neon sign showing that
"Hello Foxie" cartoon character. Ill-maintained as it was, it seemed to
have broken teeth. "I feel welcomed."

"Not going to crash on in, are you?" said KC.

"Probably a bad idea." Ty set the others down and began shrinking again.
The doors weren't locked. Inside, the place looked like pretty much any
other shopping mall, but with cheerful music playing to no one. The
halls were plenty big for Ty at any size. "What exactly are we looking
for, if this is someplace Alyssa thought was worth investigating?"

Tren walked. "You know how China's pollution laws make the Free States
look strict? Turns out that the whole country's been willing to turn a
blind eye to a lot of things so long as the right Party members get
bribed or show 'growth' for the areas they control. I think what with
someone offering your sister a job, and --"

Gunfire split the air. Ty made himself a big target, quickly doubling in
size to pounce KC and get him away. They rolled to one side of the hall,
hearing echoes of more shots. Tren leaped into the air. His coat fell
away and his leathery wings unfurled. Ty tried to shelter KC while the
dragon-man sighted an automated turret perched in an "under
construction" display overhead. He smashed the thing with one clawed
hand, then landed, much bigger than he'd been.

Ty shouted, "Any more?" He was starting to feel the sting of several
shots that'd thudded into his tough hide.

"That's all I see," said Tren. He crouched on all fours, the size of a
truck. His wings barely brushed against the empty storefronts to either
side. It was suddenly quiet again.

KC stepped away from Ty and stared at the turret wreckage. "What the
hell? Is someone trying to kill us specifically, or just anyone who
walks in the door?"

Ty looked around for more danger and saw none. He examined the scrap
metal and the wooden housing that'd hidden it. "I see a camera in there.
Someone probably knows we're here even if they didn't hear that, and
they'd kept the gun disguised in that box. So... yeah, probably us
specifically." He glanced over to KC. "Tren and I are more bulletproof
than you. Experimental military dermal armor. It might be a good idea
for you to wait outside."

KC scowled. "I came this far with you. Besides, there's probably someone
waiting to pick me off outside if I leave you. How about if I'm bigger?"

"It'd mean any hits would knock relatively small holes in you, but still..."

KC seemed not to care. He beat his chest and grew, giving a King Kong
roar. He grabbed a tattered red banner and wound it around his waist.
"Come on, then!"

The three of them marched through the deserted mall: KC as a spiky
giant, Ty padding along on four feet, and Tren stalking along on all
fours as a dragon.

Cheerful Chinese music boomed from the mall's long-silent PA system.
Ty's ears perked and he looked around, finding only a dark store full of
mannequins in creepy poses. Then came the voice. "Good work, Agent."

The three of them froze. Ty recognized it in three words, and answered
through gritted teeth: "Colonel Salt. How nice to hear from you again."
His tail bristled.

"And thanks for dropping in. Sorry for the rude greeting; just wanted to
see if you were on your toes. I assume you're here about your sister?"

"What have you done with her?"

"Use your imagination, boy! I can collect all sorts of interesting data
on you while you romp around. The echidna is a nice bonus. How would you
like to volunteer for closer study, sir? I can make it worth your while."

Ty grabbed a bench in one hand, raising a dust cloud. "Show yourself."

"Where's the fun in that? Relax; we practically have the whole place to
ourselves. How have you been, out in the cold, cruel world? It's been
tough for me ever since you ruined my research and threw away your new
family."

Tren put a wing over Ty's lower back to stop him from pointlessly
charging at the nearest speaker. Ty fumed but said nothing to the voice
-- to his former boss. To the man responsible for making him an orphan.
He looked to the dragon and said, "Help me find him."

Tren nodded. "Can't use most of my gear at this size," he said. "Keep an
eye out for recent construction of any kind. Move!" He dashed ahead, and
Ty and KC hurried after him.

Signs advertising store brands flashed by. Ty recognized some, and had
to duck under a fast-food logo, but a lot of it was Chinese stuff he'd
never seen before, and that customers apparently never saw either. His
feet kicked up dust all the way down the huge storefront-lined hall.
What a huge waste of resources this place was! He stared at the
rollercoaster in the distance.

Tren ran into the trap first. Potted fake plants hid the black boxes of
machinery on either side.

Tren tripped and crashed forward, impressive for a quadruped. Ty skidded
and only knocked him farther into the sudden crackle of energy between
the hidden gadgets. The blast's edge caught him too, leaving him dizzy
and lying on a patch of carpet. Everything looked bigger... Ty cursed
and got up, finding he'd lost a few feet of height. He tried to get back
to his full, giant size, and felt as though something were squeezing him
back down instead.

Tren hissed. "KC, stop!" But the echidna had already leaped over
whatever it was that hit them, and was pointing at the ceiling. Tren
said, "Yes, I know; something's blocking my size shift." He was
obviously smaller now, though still on all fours and accidentally
whapping Ty with a wing as he recovered his balance.

KC yanked at one of Ty's forepaws. "Move, quick!" Ty's ears rang and he
could hardly hear. But there was a sound like something breaking...

Ty glanced up and went wide-eyed. The whole section of ceiling overhead
was falling in, with the contents of a car dealership on top of it. He
shoved KC along with him in a rolling dive to the left. Tons of metal
crashed from at least five stories up. Fine -- there was a little room
to spare -- but Tren was about to win a brand new car to the face! Ty
came up and swatted the thing with both hands on its way down. Trucks
and cars rained down and crashed onto linoleum and carpet, making a
horrible metal-rending shriek. When it was over, Ty found he'd been
gashed along one side by a fender, Tren had a broken wing, and KC
somehow hadn't even mussed his spiky hair. Tren glared at him.

"Who _is_ this guy?" said KC. He stared at the expensive pile of scrap
metal.

Ty winced at the cut. It wasn't deep, anyway. "He's probably listening.
Keep your voice down. Sounds like he got kicked out of the US so they
could claim he was acting on his own -- and now he's either playing mad
scientist by himself, or the Chinese have him." Like an old German
rocket scientist or "doctor" working for the US, actually.

The echidna stared right back at Tren. "The guy said 'Well done, Agent.'
Like someone had led us here."

Tren hissed. "If you're accusing me of anything, feel free to walk away!"

"Quit it," said Ty, getting between them. "The Agency liked to mess with
people's heads, and Salt was behind it all. Besides, Tren was the one
who helped me get away in the first place. Tren, how hurt are you?"

"Can't glide with my wing like this. And I can't seem to get back to
full size; can you?" Ty tried it and shook his head; he was stuck a bit
shorter than his usual maximum. Tren said, "The Colonel's got some kind
of draining tech, then. Let's have a look at those black boxes -- after
we find him." There wasn't much of the trap left to see, anyway, after
several tons of automotive damage. The dragon shrank back to human-size
and went to work with a computer tablet.

Ty explored farther ahead, more careful this time. Tren tapped his tail
and pointed to another turret, this one larger, mounted on an upper
walkway. Then, KC spotted a less obvious second one behind a dark glass
storefront. Ty scowled. The hidden one would be the more dangerous,
given how this trip was going. Ty gave a mighty hindleg kick through a
metal chain door, and then Tren hopped in to sneak up behind the turret
and help himself to the gun it held. Tren came back checking the ammo.
"Nasty; he put armor-piercing rounds in this one just for our hides.
Figure he's done playing."

Ty looked up at the more obvious turret. "Yeah. Now this one..."

He gave a giant foxy pounce that tore a chunk out of the upper walkway
and yanked the trap down with him. A few shots went off and shattered a
window somewhere. Ty saw the motors twitching and sparking, so he
stepped on the thing and snapped it. "Want the gun, KC? Might have to
shrink to use it as more than a toothpick."

"Nah. I'd rather have the size advantage."

They came to one of the mall's great plazas. It towered fifteen levels
high with empty walls of windows where a hotel should have been, and a
miniature theme park. Cheerful, actually, with the skylight ceilings. Ty
stomped warily past the rollercoaster. His foot stomped a sign showing a
cheerful panda and the words, "You Must Be At Least This Tall To Ride".

"That's far enough!" said an amplified voice. Salt again.

# 7. #

"Watch out! He can --" A woman tried to make herself heard over the
speaker, but there was a sound of a scuffle and she went quiet.

KC started forward. "Alyssa?"

Ty held him back. "Now what?"

"That's her! Where are they?"

Ty looked around for more threats. The closest thing to an open store
here was the anchor-store slot. It had no sign, no open windows, but the
barbed wire and sandbags made it pretty obvious it wasn't just a men's
clothing store opening next month. A couple of terrified-looking men in
lab coats crouched behind riot shields, holding rifles. He shouted, "You
guys down there! You don't look like soldiers. I figure your boss has
told you he's got secret weapons for beating me, but I've got friends
along and I've gotten this far. I just want --"

Shots rang out and gunfire stabbed along his long body from a
third-floor railing. He winced. That one hurt! He tried not to show it.
"Tren, go!" Ty ducked behind the rollercoaster while KC took cover and
Tren got into a duel with the man overhead. One of the little fort's
scientist-guards took potshots at Ty, but not with enough aim or
firepower to make it count.

Ty pulled the rollercoaster's cars off of their track and held them up.
He pointed behind himself with the other hand. "You can't win." He got
interrupted by the man on the upper balcony falling off of it with a
scream, into a swimming pool. "See? Get out of here while you can!" He
gave his best angry yip/growl/roar. (No one had even come up with a good
way to transcribe what it sounded like. It was a fox thing.)

The scientists fled their barricade, shouting in English and Chinese. Ty
grinned and waved to them as they ran the other way past him down one of
the mall's other huge halls. Then he called out, "There go your friends,
Colonel! How about you, now? KC here is looking for Alyssa, and I know
you've got Emily in there. You can walk away from this too."

The speakers behind the sandbags boomed. "I'm a reasonable man, kid.
I'll return my guests, once I'm done with them. Or you can come on in
after me, but you'll have to shrink unless you're looking to bring down
the building on poor, non-bulletproof Alyssa. I don't think even Emily
can withstand having the place fall on her, in her condition."

Tren hissed in surprise as he picked through the abandoned fort in front
of the department store. "Ty, this isn't just Chinese stuff he's
outfitted with. I see US military markings on some of this gear."

KC came back into view. "What's that mean? He's still working for the
Agency?"

"Some version of it, apparently, even though the official one's gone
white-hat." Louder, Tren said, "I bet the local authorities would like
to know what you're doing here."

The Colonel scoffed. "Please. They helped fund this place. The chemical
plant next door, remember? It's a joint research project. Hang around
long enough and you'll get to meet them. Careful; they might mistake you
for terrorists, smashing up their mall and everything."

Ty and Tren exchanged a look. Salt was right that they'd probably
already attracted some bad attention. But that just meant it was time to
settle the matter, before any reinforcements came. Ty pointed to Tren's
bags and whispered, "Record everything."

"Already doing it," said Tren. Ty tilted his head, then recalled that
the dragon had some minor cyber-ware in with his other upgrades. "What now?"

"We go in." Ty shrank, down to nearly normal size. "KC, you're in back."
He took a moment to whisper a bit more to the others.

The department store slot wasn't empty inside, after all. Behind the
barricade and the locked doors (one good dragon punch did those in), Ty
found a dingy concrete lab three stories high. Lots of card tables with
computers, lots of electrical cables snaking across the floor, and at
the far end of what was meant to be the shoe department, an armed
Colonel Salt with two prisoners strapped to examining tables.

"That's close enough," Salt said.

"A hostage situation?" said Tren. "If you thought that'd actually work,
you'd be heading for the door with one of them right now. We might even
let you get away with it, right Ty?" He got an uncertain nod from the
foxtaur.

KC said, "Alyssa! I came all the way here to visit! You have terrible
taste in perfume." The woman was a kangaroo, bound and gagged and
glaring daggers at Salt.

The Colonel gestured to another pair of the devices that'd zapped Tren
and Ty earlier. "Did you know that back then, we tried to give your
sister the same matter-storage field as you, but it just didn't take? I
never did figure out the whole technique, even from doing a little
testing on her. Some of my own researchers kept things from me. Luckily,
I've had an ally bring me a better test subject. Tren, how about if --"

"Yeah, we're not buying that one," said Ty. And he pounced. Salt
naturally swung his gun up to go after Ty, but that left him not paying
attention to his hostages, or to Tren's own weapon.

The move was perfect. Ty used his own unusual body weight to flip around
and change direction in mid-leap, dodging Salt's shots. He landed,
grabbed the man's leg, and kept his head down while Tren took a single
careful shot. Ty felt his former boss shudder from a hit to the chest.
Ty said, "I've been practicing those fighting moves your guys taught me
once!"

Salt's hands dug into Ty's fur like vices. Ty found himself tumbling
through the air into an escalator, with a crash. "As I was saying," said
the mad scientist, suddenly ten feet tall and growing, "My research
didn't pay off completely, but it had some benefits!"

KC, Tren and Ty stared up at him. "There's more room in here than you
let on," said Ty. He scrambled to his feet. He'd just pull the same trick...

"No," said Salt, moving to stomp him before Ty could match his size. Too
late, though! Ty grabbed his foot and slammed him over his backs,
face-first into the concrete. Both of them were growing, now, and a
second later Salt was up again despite his gunshot and plowing into Ty
with wild fists.

"I've got this!" said Ty. "Help Emily and Alyssa!"

Ty didn't have it. Salt was just frenzied at first, but at twenty feet
tall he still had plenty of strength, and was going for a wrestling hold
he couldn't quite get, yet. Ty couldn't beat him through sheer size in
here with the lower ceiling. He got knocked into a support column,
winced, then decided to take this outside. He hurled a couple of
computers at Salt's face, then body-slammed the man out through the
front entrance, onto the barbed wire. Salt snagged it around Ty's
forelegs, making both of them stagger together into the rollercoaster.
Ty yelped and tried to grow more, to get big enough that the falling
beams wouldn't hurt him or small enough to wriggle out of the way, but
it was all coming down on him too hard! He tried to at least cover his
head and neck...

Somebody leaped over him in a haze of rusty fur. Ty yipped as the
heaviest of the girders and rails splashed to either side of him,
blocked by... "Emily?!" She had her arms out, at least twenty feet long
from claws to shoulder.

She grinned down at him. "Like he said, the research wasn't a total
failure. The quick red foxtaur jumps over the lazy dog!"

Salt was under a pile of beams, hurt even worse then before. "Enough! I
give up! I can't feel my tail..."

The drone of helicopters approaching overhead helped settle the matter, too.

# 8. #

In the end, cover stories helped just as much as they had before. So did
transparency: Tren managed to get a satellite link and upload video of
the fight to a "dead drop" server before the Chinese military could say
hello. It turned out to be a good bargaining chip. After all, Colonel
Salt had been just a rogue United States spy conducting illicit
experiments in China, and definitely not someone the Chinese knew about
and subsidized for their own purposes, right?

"They're probably still listening," said Tren. He leaned against a wall
in the battered shopping mall plaza, where everything but a snowcone hut
had been crushed. The soldiers had left everyone alone for now. Tren was
the only one not busy fussing over someone: Ty with Emily, KC with
Alyssa. "Watch what you say until we're out of here."

Ty broke out of a giant hug with Emily, relieved even so. He'd kept up
his huge size the whole time they negotiated. "It's going to be fun
showing you the macro life! You can do construction stuff with me. And
KC, I guess, if he wants."

"No way," said KC. "No adventuring for me. I just want to go back to the
way things were." He took the roo-lady's hand. "With maybe one change in
my relationship status."

Alyssa smiled at him. "Sorry for putting you in harm's way. I guess it's
too late to hide exactly what I do for a living, and the nice soldiers
here know who I am now, so it's time to find a different job."

Ty shrank back down to a convenient travel size -- or tried to. He
seemed to be stuck at nearly the size he'd been while fighting Salt,
about thirty-five feet. "Um. I seem to be stuck." He stepped back and
fiddled with his own shifting ability, hoping to max out again and then
hope he could sort of reset himself. Back up to fifty feet, fifty-five,
sixty... Wait, what?

Tren stared at him. "What in Katamari's name are you doing now, Ty?"

"I can't get down!"

"Too much white fur," said KC.

Alyssa peered way up at him. "Salt was doing all kinds of research with
the follow-up to his work at the Agency. He had some kind of trap set up
for you to sap your matter storage field."

Tren said, "We ran into it. Seemed to knock a few feet off my upper size
limit. But it seems to have affected Ty differently. What's your upper
limit, then?"

Ty experimented, stepping even farther back until he was perched on the
rollercoaster rubble. He was level with the eighth floor, then felt his
ears brushing against the glass skylights up above the twelfth.
"How...?" He calmed himself down before he risked breaking through even
that.

Emily grinned and poked him on the foreleg. "I guess you're still my big
brother."

Ty worriedly braced himself against the mall's wall and slowly shrank
back down as much as he could, finding he couldn't get much below
thirty-five feet. "I can't fly like this! Or even take a train, maybe!"

Tren and KC looked at him. Tren said, "We need to get Alyssa and Emily
back to the Free States before there's too much of a scandal here."

"And I've got a job to go back to, I hope..." The echidna seemed
doubtful about that and his home insurance policy.

Ty gaped. "I have to _hike across China_ to get home, now? And then get
on a cargo ship!?"

"At least it'll be faster for you than most people," said Emily. "Once
the reporting dies down in a week or so, I'll fly back to visit you if I
can. And hey, maybe you can do some side jobs along the way!" She
grinned up at him. "Also, you don't get to criticize me now for agreeing
to go on a long foreign job."

Ty's ears drooped. Everybody was more or less safe now, but this was
going to be a long hike.