3.37am. Two minutes since the last time Chester checked his watch. And six minutes since the time before that. It wasn't that he minded the graveyard shift so much. He really didn't. It was less busy, there were sometimes uncollected pizzas to scoff and less potential scoffees to compete with, and the penalty rates were pretty good. Chester tried hard to be a positive guy and the positives were there, no question. In fact, he might even go so far as to say he liked the graveyard shift.

Except for the last hour. That's what got him every time. The last hour was a killer. The melatonin levels in his brain were rising, his regular sleep-cycle was trying to reassert its authority, the last dregs of caffeine from his afternoon espresso were long gone, his cheery tones and plastic smile were becoming just that little frayed—and time would misbehave. Molasses-like, the turgid seconds would barely drip languidly by, minutes would stretch and elongate beyond all logic and reason, and the hour itself seemed to equate to eternity. Chester sometime wondered if the secret to immortality itself was perhaps linked to working the late-night shift at the Blenheim branch of Hell Pizza.

And then, of course, there were the weirdos. A nondescript regional New Zealand city of some 30,000 souls really shouldn't have all that many crackpots, loonies and/or people of a distinctly less conventional bent, yet at 3-4 am, night after night, the Blenheim Hell Pizza drive-through managed to provide a regular and steady supply. Or maybe, Chester speculated, it was the time itself that was the issue. Perhaps at 3am some sort of strange mental metamorphosis occurred in the psyche of those unfortunate enough to still be upright and conscious at that late hour, transforming the non-weird into the weird, the mainstream into the fringe, and putting the ab emphatically into the abnormal.

Whatever the reason, when the pitch-black van appeared on the screen of his little security camera, and the tinted driver's window wound down to reveal a hooded figure wearing sunglasses—at 3.42am—Chester was not particularly surprised. Even the motley selection of what looked very much like battle-axes and swords strapped to the roof-rack barely caused his weird-o-meter to so much as twitch. After all, he liked a bit of cosplay as much as the next guy.

"Welcome to Hell Pizza, the best damned pizza in New Zealand. May I take your order?"

With slow deliberation, a long black-clad arm emerged from the van. A thin finger gave the post containing the speaker and microphone an experimental poke. Just as slowly, the arm withdrew.

"There's no need to press anything, sir," said Chester. "You just talk. Now, what's your order?"

"Order?" The sepulchral tones that emerged from the speaker were somewhere between a whisper and a growl. Chester wondered if something had gone wrong with the wiring. "I order...pizza."

"Well, you've come to the right place, sir. What sort of pizza would you like?"

Features indistinct in the shadows of its hood, the figure appeared to give this some thought.

"All," it replied, at length.

"Um...do you mean a pizza with the lot, sir? Because in that case I can heartily recommend our double-size Gluttony option or—"

"No. Not lot. All."

"All ingredients?"

"All pizza."

Chester glanced longingly at his watch. So close. So very close. Just another quarter of an hour or so and this would have been somebody else's problem. But there was no point moaning. He was, after all, a trained pizza professional.

"Sir, just to be clear, are you saying you'd like to order one of every pizza on our menu?"

"No."

"Ha-ha, no, of course not. That would be silly. Right, so—"

"All."

Chester's cheery tones were barely hanging on. "I'm sorry, sir, I—"

"All of all pizza. Bring me all of all pizza. I order that. I order you bring now."

"I...but..." Chester was genuinely nonplussed. It wasn't that he hadn't taken some pretty hefty orders in the past. The local rugby team were regulars, after all. But every pizza in the place? He didn't even know where to start. "Sir, do you have any idea how expensive that would be?"

"Expensive?"

"Yes. How much it would cost. You know, the price?"

"Ah, yes." Understanding evidently dawning, the hooded head gave a single nod. "The price. Yes, I tell you price."

"Er, no, I'm afraid that's not how it works, sir." Shock fading, the welcome phrase 'shift bonus' was just starting to form in Chester's mind. "If you'll give me a moment to fetch my calculator, I'll—"

"Here is price. You bring me all pizza—"

"Yes sir, we've established that, I just need to...just need to..."

Cheeriness extinguished entirely, Chester's voice trailed away. On the screen, the figure had removed its sunglasses. And within the depths of the dark hood, two pinpricks of yellow glowed. Two pinpricks that burst into orbs of yellow fire, illuminating the unearthly pale face in which they nestled, a glistening death's head visage of gristle and bone.

"—and I not make you insides outsides. Good price? We have deal?"

Chester's mouth worked itself open and shut, on the presumption that at some point his brain would provide it with some words. At length, it managed a wavering, "Eep."

The brow ridges of the creature (it didn't appear to have eyebrows) drew together. "No deal?" The driver's door of the van began to open. "Shame."

"No!" squeaked Chester. "I mean, yes, yes! We have deal, we have deal!" Flicking off the microphone, he took a deep breath to steel himself and turned towards the interior of the restaurant. "Alright, you sons-of-bitches," he bellowed, "listen up. We got the need—the need to knead! So, lock the doors, fire up the ovens and grab hold of your butts, boys and girls. We're gonna cook us some damned pizza!"

Eyes wide, hand shaking, he flicked the microphone back on. "That'll be t-t-ten minutes or s-s-so, sir. Please pull into bay 2 and we'll b-bring your pizzas out as soon as they're r-r-ready." Before he had a chance to stop himself, years of long ingrained habit kicked in . "Would you like any sides with your order?"

"Yes."

"Er." Chester gulped, as the abyss yawning before him yawned just that little bit wider. "Okay, which—?"

"All."

****

"Why Bundaberg?"

Peregrine gave Fields a knowing wink. "Exactly."

Fields gave her an unknowing look. "Huh?"

"Why Bundaberg, Fields? Exactly."

"Exactly what?"

"Exactly that."

"What, Bundaberg?"

"No, not what Bundaberg. Why Bundaberg?"

Fields couldn't help but feel he should be better at these conversations by now. Evidently, he was either a slow learner or Peregrine kept shifting the goal posts of comprehension. He chose to believe it was the latter, but was painfully aware this might just be wishful thinking on the part of his battered ego. Fortunately, at this point Regina decided to step in.

"I suspect, Agent Fields, what Agent Peregrine means is that your surprise at our selection of Bundaberg as the site of our Australian base serves to reinforce the wisdom of our choice. 'Why Bundaberg?' indeed. While a perfectly respectable regional city, with rather pleasant weather and an excellent rum distillery, it hardly occupies a place at the beating heart of world affairs. We wish to keep our operations anonymous for the moment, and although large enough to offer the facilities we require, Bundaberg is also sufficiently...nondescript to provide the anonymity we desire. In short, it's the last place anybody would think to find the HQ of a new collection of superheroes."

Having just departed the rather sleepy airport, Fields could see what she meant. He glanced down at the town basking beneath them in the late afternoon sun, a languid river serpentining through its centre and cane-fields all around. A bustling metropolis, Bundaberg was not.

"Was the helicopter really necessary? I mean, it doesn't look like traffic is much of an issue."

"Sorry, Agent Fields? I'm not quite with you."

"This." He gestured around the gleaming high-tech interior of their current ride. "Seems a little excessive, is all. Judging by the size of the place, nowhere down there is more than about a twenty minute drive away. We could have pretty much caught an Uber."

"Where's my damn wine?" Although still apparently unconscious, the Archduke was becoming restive. "More to the point," he mumbled, "where's my damn wench?" The whiskered features formed into a dreamy smile. "Seems like forever since I've had a really good—"

Without bothering to look, Peregrine reached back to the rear seat in which their first recruit was secured and gave him a thorough tasing in the neck. Smile erased, he twitched and again fell silent.

"Okay," said Fields, "so, maybe not an Uber. But what about a hire car?"

"No, still not following you, I'm afraid."

Peregrine elbowed Fields in the ribs. "The problem here, Fields, is that you're still thinking in Agency terms. Well, Agency budget terms, anyway. These guys don't play that way. The way they see it, if money can get you a helicopter and there's a helicopter available, well then, you're taking the damn chopper. They're cashed up to the wazoo and behave like the fate of the world is at stake, because I assume a fair chunk of the time it actually is. You're gonna have to start thinking in SHAP terms, like Reggie here."

"SHAP?"

"Yeah. We can't very well keep on calling our new bosses 'our new bosses' can we? So, given they're all secretive and stuff and don't see fit to grant us the privilege of knowing their actual name—which is probably some boring-arse, reverse-engineered acronym anyway—I figured we'd christen 'em with an acronym of our own. Hence, SHAP."

Fields frowned in concentration. "Um...Society for Helping and...Protecting?"

"Ha, nice try, partner. Nah. It's just Superhuman Admin Peeps. I was gonna go with Team but thought Peeps might be a little more family friendly. Anyways, it seems to me SHAP's operating policy is that if you pinch a penny then you're not doing your job properly. Sound about right, Reggie?"

"Well, I don't know that I'd go quite so far as that, Agent Peregrine. However, it is true that what might be termed budgetary considerations are not a primary focus of our organisation. We are in the fortunate position of being rather well funded."

Fields nodded, as he gave his chin a speculative rub. Nothing he'd seen on this assignment so far gave him any cause to doubt Regina's assertion, which meant he couldn't help but wonder—the half-hearted protests of his battered ego notwithstanding—if these guys were as well-resourced as they seemed, what they hell were they doing outsourcing work to a couple of Agency grunts? Admittedly, agency grunts with pretty interesting and unique CVs, but still.

"In any case, we are almost there. Our new headquarters is just ahead."

Fields peered past the pilot and out through the front windscreen of the helicopter. "What, behind the big building? The one with the whale mural on the side?"

"No, Agent Fields. It is the one with the whale mural on the side."

"But...but...that's the biggest building in the whole town. And it's got whales on it!"

"Indeed it does, Agent Fields. I see Agent Peregrine was right to commend your perspicacity."

"But you said you wanted to be low-key!"

"No, Agent Fields, I didn't. I said we require anonymity. That is something altogether different. Concealing our comings and goings and assorted activities as this enterprise progresses would be quite impractical, so the Bundaberg authorities have been provided with the cover story that we are a movie production studio, looking to establish a presence in the area. And as the building in question has been something of a white elephant for many years, the previous owners were all too happy to sell the entire place to us, no questions asked. Needless to say, it has been subject to extensive renovations since its purchase."

"Extensive renovations?" Fields stared down at the building, now directly below them. Despite the whales, it looked like a dump. "It's only been a few weeks since the Milwaukee thing. How extensive could they be?"

As he watched, the rooftop of the building—which was disturbingly lacking in helipads—split open to reveal a dark cavernous space from which, in a smooth ballet of precision, a multitude of gleaming metal plates rose to assemble themselves into a silver platform. A platform emblazoned with a large and cheery yellow H.

"Oh, quite extensive," replied Regina, as the helicopter landed with a gentle bump. The platform began to descend. "As you may have gathered by now, 'no expenses spared' is a phrase of which we are quite fond."