"There is a need, even if you weren't offended he still meant to provoke you and that will not fly."

"Look at me not caring if I provoked or not, I wasn't trying," objects Boots.

"Then you should learn not to act as if you were. We're a team, dammit, we're supposed to work together and support each other, and you are supposed to care if you provoked them, because you shouldn't be doing it!"

Echo very pointedly stops paying attention and returns to her homework.

"I don't know why I even come here when I'm not on call," mutters Boots.

Dauntless has literally just explained why. He composes his write-up and sends it. "He's not always like this, Sadde," Dauntless supplies.

"It's fine. Is it okay if I turn the TV on? I'll keep it on mute and watch with closed captions."

"Go for it," says Windflower before Boots can say anything.

So they do.

A few minutes later Loen gets up and scoots over to Windflower. "Hey Betty?"

"What?"

"So I was thinking of some ways of making your power a bit safer? And more useful? If you wanted to talk about that."

"It's poison. Poison isn't safe," she murmurs.

"Not... wholly safe, no," he agrees. "But safer. I'd need some more info about how you work, but if what I'm thinking makes sense we could all but nullify the possibility of affecting bystanders and make it nonlethal."

"What're you thinking?"

"The basic idea is prepping darts with the poison in advance, or maybe using a tinker-made suit of sorts that could generate them in real time but that's probably harder to do and more of a hassle."

"Lorica doesn't make stuff for people besides her and her dad and asking Armsmaster would be even worse," says Betty. "Anyway I tried that. I didn't want to hurt the rats I really didn't but - they were okay anyway, nothing I make works injected."

"Why would asking Armsmaster be worse? And hmm, not working injected is annoying but not insurmountable. Do they only work inhaled?"

"Some of them work when they touch skin but most of them are inhaled. And have you ever tried asking Armsmaster for anything?"

"Can't say I've interacted much with him," he admits. "But touching skin is promising. If we patrol together, I—well, my Glam self could probably make you some form of contact dart." He looks over his shoulder at Glam. "Hey me, can you get me some contact darts?"

"I don't see how I'm supposed to get the poison into the darts. It has to go through the air."

"Hmm, where do you release the poison from?"

"Wherever. I can aim best if I breathe it out but that's still not very well."

He opens his mouth, closes it, looks over his shoulder and says, "This'd be easier if you were the one having this conversation."