Last time on the Law of Averages...

A/N: The summary, as promised. Next chapter out tonight.

Dan is investigating a United States senator named Meriwether Madison, at the behest of Anastasia Summers. He's an incredibly old and entrenched politician whose policies align closely to the People's. He's also a Natural who exhibits control over plant life.

In the course of his investigation Dan follows the senator to a private meeting at the Church of Infinite Evolution, a literal cult which essentially worships cosmic energy. Dan witnesses a hidden cosmic generator below the church. Madison himself is gifted a strange orb infused with cosmic energy.

Inside the church, Dan also encounters an old enemy named Edict, who used a banned mind-control upgrade to interrupt Dan's ride-along with Gregoir and Connor in his very first year in Dimension A. Edict appears to be in a comatose state, but certain Evo Church members are able to trigger him with specific code phrases. They use him to give speeches and sermons to their congregants. This is obviously worrying, because Edict's mind-control upgrade is applied via voice.

While Dan deliberates on what to do about Edict, Madison drops off his orb to Peter and Nikolos Andeno, a pair of cultists old and young, who appear to be on friendly terms with the Senator. Nikolos, who is a teenager, is given the orb and appears to incarnate into a Natural. His specific powers are unknown, though his practice with them involves a lot of meditation.

Dan and Anastasia conclude that Nikolos, under orders from the Evo Church, will attempt to become a vigilante in D.C. in order to make contact with the People, whom they wish to either work with or exploit. Anastasia orders Dan to leave him be, in the hopes that his activities will indeed lead to the People making an appearance. Dan disagrees, and decides he'll intervene if the situation gets too dangerous.

In the meantime, Dan makes a decision about Edict. He works together with the DCPD and the FBI to execute a raid on the Evo Church premises, led by Agent Emily Carver. During the course of the attack, one of the church's priests uses a trigger phrase on Edict which hypnotized the majority of the cult's members to violently defend the area. This distraction allowed the majority of cult's higher-ups to escape via underground tunnels and a concealed teleporter pad, which was destroyed in the aftermath. Carver is forced to strike a deal with one of the last church elders, to deactivate Edict's hold on the congregants. The elder takes the blame for the incident, but the Evo Church itself catches a huge amount of bad press and is shut down. Nevertheless, the cult keeps its religious tax-exemption status, even if it is driven temporarily out of D.C.

With the local cult in relative disarray, the Andenos appear to bunker down and put their plans on hold. Dan still keeps an eye on young Nikolos, but assumes he's fallen back to a safe routine. Suddenly, a new vigilante appears in D.C. Dan is almost positive it isn't Nikolos, but he wants to track down the vigilante just to be sure. He also worries they will attract the attention of the People in the same way the Andenos hoped to deliberately engineer. Dan wants to be there if and when this happens, so he needs to find the vigilante.

He enlists the help of Agent Carver, who owes him a favor from helping oust the Evo Church. When a video of the D.C. vigilante surfaces on the internet they work together to find the location where it was taken. Upon arrival, Dan encounters the Vigi-Busters, two brothers who host a television show dedicated to hunting down vigilantes across the country. They've yet to have any major successes, and are hungry for victory.

Dan and Carver deduce the vigilante is using the D.C. Metro Rail as a landmark for their patrol routes. The pair travel to a rail station and discover footage of the vigilante leaving the scene. When they check the expected destination, they find the VIgi-Busters have beaten them there. The Metro attendant is a fan of the show, and hands over the footage. Dan steals it to stall their investigation, though he doesn't expect it to last.

Dan and Carver come up with a rough estimate of the vigilante's age, physical characteristics, and powerset. They believe she is a teenage girl in high school, whose common hair upgrade mutated in a particularly powerful way. With this data and a whole variety of online sightings to compare against, they set about trying to find a pattern.