Shade 4.4

 is the fifth chapter of Shade. Victoria and Tristan give Ashley an impromptu lesson on Public Relations. Houndstooth reveals that Kenzie is even more awesome and caring then she first appears, and why that is especially worrying.

Plot
Victoria meets up with Ashley on a train, they are lightly accosted by a fan, Presley. While Presley has a nice chat with Victoria Ashley is unnecessarily prickly. Worried that Ashley made a bad impression Victoria follows after Presley, after having Tristan watch Ashley, to have the fan-girl give her her email. She flies back to the train and along with Tristan sends a team pic to Presley to keep the girls spirits up. This looks like it convinces Ashley of the benefits of being a Hero.

Throughout this little play Kenzie insistently texts all of them. When she is supposed to be in class. They decide to ignore her for now.

Arriving at their destination The three then meet with Houndstooth on a hill. Houndstooth covers the problems that Kenzie had to deal with growing up and how people around her tried to deal with this. Tristan stresses that Kenzie is doing much better then she did when with the Baltimore Wards but Houndstooth still thinks it is important to cover everything that can go wrong with Kenzie. Ashley thinks Houndstooth is being demeaning to Kenzie but is able to stop herself from doing something violent.

They arrive back in the hideout and Victoria touches base with Kenzie telling her it wasn't as bad as she thought and Houndstooth doesn't hate. Eventually they turn towards the next phase of the plan for Ceder point and move on. But with her last line Kenzie hints she may not have moved on as well as she should have.

Major Events

 * The still unnamed team meets with Houndstooth to learn about Kenzie.
 * The team has secured the Kings of the Hill's cooperation.

Characters
{|class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed wikitable" ! scope="col" |

Super Misfits

 * Victoria Dallon
 * Ashley
 * Tristan
 * Kenzie Martin (Topic of Discussion)
 * Sveta Karelia
 * Chris
 * Rain

Innocent Civilians

 * Presley

Kings of the Hill

 * Houndstooth

Mentioned

 * "bad Maggie Holt movies"
 * }

Trivia

 * Again the Maggie Holt books are referenced, having been made into movies. Specifically how Pact Vampires deconstruct the "sex gods" depicted in modern media. So Maggie will eventually meet a vampire it seems.
 * A Text map of how the train is arranged.
 * [__, ,__.....E Ǝ E ƎE Ǝ E ƎE Ǝ E ƎE Ǝ E Ǝ.....__, ,__]


 * Kenzie displays behavior symptomatic of an attachment disorder known as Disinhibited Social Engagement Disorder or DSED. Depending on when her behavior started (i.e before the age of five), she could be reasonably diagnosed, and she could have been given appointments with Dr. Yamada. As a corollary, given Tristan and Ashley defense of Kenzie's behavior and improvement to Houndstooth Kenzie may actually be fine. This could only be their opinion though and the improvement is due to treatment from therapy with Yamada and similar.