Daughter of Dockworkers, Child of a Disciple of Lustrum

What did they think she would do?

Danny watched as Taylor went through the routine again. Then he shook himself and took the first position. A combination of the LINE system along with both older and more recent techniques, all aimed at killing or maiming, it was how the docks stayed clear of parahuman lead gangs. Well, all the dock workers knowing it and practicing it. Some more diligently than others to be sure but the occasional reminders of run in with Merchants kept people practicing enough to survive the Empire Eighty-Eight and Azian Bad Boyz.

Danny snorted. The ABB, an aberration. The conglomeration of all the East Asian gangs under one leader. One caused by the Archers Bridge Merchants on one side and the Empire Eighty-Eight, a neo Nazi gang on the other.

As he had grown up there were the five families of organized crime. His father and the dock workers of his youth had kept them out in the same way. Bare knuckle brawling and weapons that appeared, were used and disappeared again before the cops showed up. It was a system by now. One he had been hopeful was on the way out when he was a young and foolish man. One he had tried to make go away his whole life as first a new father and husband, then as a single parent after Annette, his wife, was killed.

He had always had a reputation. A furious temper. The years had mellowed it, no that wasn't right, they had channeled it to where it would do the most good. He had gotten a lawyer to take the cases against everyone he could imagine on a ten percent contingency and used some of the insurance settlement from Annette to pay Thy Bui, the lawyer, a retainer. She was the perfect instrument of his rage and he thought everything would be fine.

Then Taylor had come back from summer camp and Emma Barnes, her best friend, since first grade, had turned on her. Taylor had come home crying the day she got back. Danny had called Alan Barnes, who had thought was a friend, and the bastard had turned on him like his daughter did Taylor.

Alan had always been a bit of a superior prick but this was uncalled for. He couldn't get to why though. Mark Hausen, the security chief for the DWU dock yard and former Marine Gunnery Sergeant had commiserated and shrugged "People change." Danny snorted. Yes, they did Gunny.

Danny worked over the dummy with the sap. It was muscle memory for him so he could watch the workboats hauling lines to the next wreck. The cables would be run back to the winches and they would have another one pulled up tight to the docks where they could begin cutting it up soon.

The president of the union being in Florida and Taylor having money in her trust fund Danny had bought the salvage rights to all the wrecks. It was a balancing act keeping the money flowing but it was slowly but surely generating jobs and profits.

The more people they had the more territory they could take over including the industrial facilities in the boat graveyard.

Taylor would never be wealthy but she would be able to retire and leave something to her kids. That was how true riches worked, you built them slowly, a little at a time. That way it was real wealth not wealth on paper that the next turn of the markets could wipe out.

Meanwhile Brockton Bay would slowly be improved again. Slowly because you didn't splash out money even if you had it. If you did the tax assessor bit you in the ass. So, all these facilities would be made functional and people put back to work. Never making a big public splash like Medhall and its Biotech and medical research and development did downtown and to the west. Let Medhall and its brothers and sisters pay the lion's share of the tax.

Danny nodded and blinked as he was standing having slipped the sap back into the sleeve sewn into his right pocket for it. Taylor bounced up with her sap still in her hand. Danny frowned "There are some midgets in the supply room. How are you going to hide a nine-inch sap?"

Taylor rolled her eyes like only a teenage girl can. "Backpack, side pocket Dad. I've even practiced reaching back for it. Plus, on the bus or at the stop is the only place I think I will need it. Arcadia isn't Winslow."

Danny smiled. "Your mother would be very proud, and I am too. A scholarship. You knocked the top off the placement test."

Taylor smiled gently and blushed a little "OK, going to check the girls."

Danny snorted "Where are you planning on putting all that stuff? Spider silk and limpet plate armor. I can't believe you got it fifty caliber proof and lighter than issue equipment. Still you have what a billion spiders? We only have three hundred workers."

Taylor shrugged "A new one every day on average you said. The girls only make four or five suits a day and the limpets aren't any faster yet. We are still doing the selective breeding. As it is we barely have plate carriers for the Security folks. Everyone else will have the suits but no plates by the time school starts. Then there are the jackets, my clothes, your clothes, it's a lot for the girls to do."

Danny grunted "They have six hundred babies apiece every eight months Taylor. Well the spiders. The limpets lay eggs continuously." Danny looked at Taylor "I'm so sor-"

"Dad! We talked about this. It wasn't all your fault, it was some Emma's and some mine as well. I just didn't deal. Like father like daughter. We are over it now. Or getting over it."

Danny nodded and sighed "At least the master covers up the tinker."

Taylor snorted "And I have a giant parts bin to play in." She waved around at the bay and the dockyards. "Oh, that reminds me, I got a plan for a thing."

Danny laughed "Taylor we have five thousand plans for things. The guys in your shop are running three shifts turning out assemblies for you to do your thing to. Plus, Martha and the seamstresses are adding cutters and seamstresses."

Taylor grinned "I built a metal finding crab and did the super coons. So, I got some purely mechanical tinks. One of them for the refinery and one of them for a thing to find oil for it."

Danny blinked "Well that will be useful, as soon as we buy the refinery. That is still up in the air. They receivers who own it think we want it for the scrap. Same with the steel mill."

Taylor shrugged "Lets the money from the power house build up a little. Plus, I will have time to study that engine and generator some more. Then I think I can make it meet tier four emissions requirements and squeeze more megawatts out of it."

Danny blinked "Those don't come in for another five years, and then don't go final for two more after that."

Taylor shrugged "It's all about efficiency. Apparently, I pinged off Armsmaster and Squealer. I do the autonomous mobile devices but they are as efficient as they can be. In heat conservation too. It helps running it on the bleeding edge of its heat tolerance."

Danny nodded slowly "And Panacea, because biotinker. It helps because you are cogenerating. Trigeneration even. James told me about it. Most excited I have seen him in years. How you two are storing the heat and cold still amazes me."

Taylor nodded "Blasto maybe but he had left town. Had to be her I guess. I will find out at school if she is really a healer or is a true biotinker. And thanks, although heating salt and freezing water isn't really that complicated. I have to check the dirt daubers as well. They had some more insulating to do."

Danny snorted "With the silk those orb spiders make. I though Mud Daubers preyed on spiders."

Taylor shrugged "Roaches work. For both. I get through a lot of roaches."

"For which we are all grateful." Danny shuddered. "Did your killer hornets get here?"

Taylor shook her head "Tomorrow. I have their habitat ready though. Warehouse Three ninety three. The signs are up and everything."

"Like that will keep the merchants out. Remember the high security locks. That's why we put those expensive navy hasp on the doors. OK see you at five or so." Danny hugged Taylor and headed for the Union building.

HPC

Taylor moved through the warehouses she now owned. Giant, six story, masonry structures from another age, like the Roman conquest, the height of the empire. Groin vaults everywhere, few small windows on the lower floors, really for air circulation more than anything else. One for her spinners, the other five for something. They hadn't gotten there yet. The airy top floors could be studios or work spaces. In the past they had apparently been spaces for clerks. In the age before one computer replaced twenty of those clerks. Now with business software, even cheap kludgey business software whole legions of clerks had been replaced. And people worried about Skynet. Ha! That time had come and gone. Industrial robots and now tinker tech robots were the end of that chain not the beginning. Manufacturers working on driverless cars terrified people. Aircraft hurled themselves from carrier decks and landed themselves. Trains ran with the engineers monitoring the system and holding a switch closed. Passenger aircraft landed themselves in bad conditions. They weren't working on driverless cars, they were working to make them cheap enough for mass production. Once they did that, how long would it take before any non-skilled job was cheaper for a machine to do than it was to hire people for. Machines didn't complain, strike, whine about working conditions, none of that. Fast food places were trying to automate their production for gods sake.

Taylor sighed "Not everyone is going to make it to Utopia." As it turned out her father was right. They had had some long conversations after she modified Jenny the raccoon. Dad had a whole philosophy canned up and fully developed. It had been amazing. A bit brutal and dark but amazing. Taylor chuckled to herself "Of course we didn't think so did we Jenny?"

The raccoon stopped on a ledge ahead of her and looked at her with her head tilted. "No, we didn't. Still though we realized he was right. So, school, thinking our way out of it is really the only way. Dad is a big softy though. He is bringing everyone with him. That's why it's all trades and no fast food workers or laborers locals. And all the training all the time. Now if we could just get the capes to realize very few of their abilities are really useful." Jenny turned and scuttled on. "Or how to monetize them. Hey are you listening? No, you are hunting bugs. I need some friends I didn't make."

HPC

Danny was in his office advancing his plan. He just needed a few years of flying under the radar and it would be nearly unstoppable. Taylor being a biotinker made it possible really. This plan he found from this Accord guy had legs. Like most plans by parahumans though it lacked a certain understanding. "I can see why, they think they are the next step in evolution. It colors their view."

Mark Hauser flopped into the chair in front of his desk "It does. Red normally. Or a pink mist eventually, in all but a few cases. Ninety nine percent of them aren't bullet proof. Tinkers got to tink too, even the ones in prison. Federal prison. You can control their output by controlling what you give them to play with. Leavenworth has a whole wing of tinkers. When they aren't improving their own methods of imprisonment they are working on weapons to take out other parahumans. Guided by a whole wing of thinkers. Those psychological operations bastards came into their own finally. The Army and the Corp's."

Danny arched a brow "It's not your Corps anymore, got it. So, what is on your mind Gunny? I know you didn't wander up here from your fortress just to drop that gem on me."

Mark laughed "My gate house is not up to fortress of solitude standards. Heard about a cape. Did some snooping. She controls dogs."

Danny nodded "Yet, so you had your contacts in the Corp hunt up any information on Hellhound. The one with the murder charges."

Mark shrugged "Mother was a drug addict. Kid went in the system. One of her foster mothers triggered her. Paid the price. Collateral was the other foster kids. Bad scene. Your girlfriend should be able to sink her teeth in the Philly police and Child services, maybe the PRT. Meanwhile if what they say about her and dogs is real she is a millionaire waiting to happen and we can hire people to help her and run animal control."

Danny nodded "I'll call Thy and she will take a look at what you got. So, dogs. How many could people want?"

Mark smiled "Millions. Top flight dogs for the military and law enforcement and it's not like the owners can't be trained too. Hell, they pay for obedience school. It's mainly for training them. White people are crazy." Danny laughed. Mark was blond haired and blue eyed.

"Let me call Thy." Danny said.

HPC