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She's a four-year-old girl, and people (especially her Dad) insist she's a boy.
Not that she isn't sometimes. She is. But not today! Today she's a girl. And Dad keeps saying that's not true, that God made her body perfect and she shouldn't second-guess God's plan for her. God made her a boy, so she's supposed to be a boy. And on the one hand that kinda makes sense. God doesn't make mistakes, right? So if she were really a girl sometimes, then she'd... what? Her body would change, she guesses. But on the other hand, she knows she's a girl. She's a girl with a peepee, that's obvious. She'd prefer not having a peepee when she's a girl, but it's not the worst thing ever. And if God doesn't make mistakes, God also didn't make her feel like a girl sometimes on accident, right? It must be part of His (because God is always a He, even though God made everyone, boys and girls, in His image, he's always a He, Dad says) plan.
She tells Dad that, today, and Dad gets angry, and yells at her, and she doesn't know why he's yelling. It makes sense to her! But he won't explain why she's wrong, he's just yelling, Dad's so mean, she hates him, and she's not crying, shut up, you're crying!
And now Mum's coming and she's talking to Dad, and that usually makes Dad stop yelling and go away but he won't stop now and Sadde's angry and afraid and hurt and she's running away. A part of her thinks that it doesn't make much sense to run away, the park is pretty open and she can't really hide anywhere, and she'll have to go back because she'll get hungry (not now, though, she just ate a sandwich).
So she runs until she finds some bushes where she can hide, and she hides there, and she doesn't cry, and she spends a long time not crying. Mum and Dad don't come after her, though, and after she's done not crying she doesn't wipe her eyes and her nose, and she comes out the other way of the bushes she was hiding in.
And she's pretty sure that's not the park.
"Sometimes he works very fast. You should be prepared for the possibility that even acting freely your mother winds up on his side."
"Yes. Because he will ask, and when the answer is 'no, I hate you', then the result is unpleasant, and lying is not an option."
He nods curtly. "We will worry about that later. He needs to be stopped whether he has my mother or not."
"Anyway, resources... It's kinda difficult to come up with things fairyland doesn't have which might be useful, I'm used to them. Anything related to spying people or detecting undetectable things is possible, I suppose. I mentioned motion detectors, there are heat detectors, and radars which work by emitting a very high frequency sound and analysing the sound that comes back. Radiation detectors exist but are probably not as useful."
"Right. Er, it's this invisible thing that causes general damage and basically makes places unlivable. That bomb I mentioned that could obliterate a very large area also turns it inhabitable because of the high quantities of radiation released."
"Because of the general damage. Might not be the case with fairies because you're all immortal and regenerate from anything, but radiation damages mortals' DNA, which is the thing inside our bodies that tells them how they should function, so they end up not functioning very well, with uncontrollable growth and internal tissue damage and stuff."
"No, probably not, and in any case it'd kill my mother, and even more than that I don't want to hurt all those fairies and then possibly make Thorn respawn somewhere far away, I want to get him to stop doing the things he does and help his prisoners."
"Your mother is presumably in only one court site. But if it's that hard to control even more reason not to use it."
"It's impossible to control, like I said, mortals can do selective damage but not selective nondamage, the bomb will affect everyone within its radius."
"I'm not sure what distinction you're drawing between selective damage and selective nondamage."
"I can use something like a sniper rifle to pick out a single individual from a crowd, I cannot easily hurt everyone in a crowd with the exception of a single individual."
"...it was a generalised 'I,' I meant 'humans.' I'm a good enough shot with a handgun or a regular hunting rifle, Mum made sure I got training as soon as I turned eighteen, but I never used a sniper. And they're illegal."
"It's the arbitrary age past which according to the law you are an adult and therefore allowed to make choices."
"Oh. Anyway, it would be conspicuous if someone fell over with a gunshot wound suddenly, people are seldom alone outside in the court."
"Yeah. I'm definitely not a good enough shot to take multiple fairies down after the first one warned them."
"Need to aim, after taking one down I'd need to get the second one and they'd be moving about really fast, probably."