2.6
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On my way home to deliver the forms to my dad, I was deep in thought.

Come Monday, I was pretty sure my window for making use of the Grandfathering clause was closing, so my new priority for the weekend is making something new.

I could always use more runners, and a second planter would help me expand faster, but if I really want to make the use of that loophole, I need to produce something that I wouldn't mind using in public, that I can finish before I need to sign any paperwork on Monday evening. Since I would like to keep using the light-spectrum camouflage on everything public and that takes longer to grow, I'm limited to what I can grow in about three days. Runners take about four days. That limits me to something pretty small as far as creatures go.

I'm definitely not making use of the smallest template, which are basically little mobile stomachs with mouths, the size of chihuahuas, useful for nothing other than consuming. The smallest dedicated flying templates hold promise though. They would be about 200 pounds and because of the incredible muscle density of my creatures, were capable of flying with more than double their body weight, making them unbelievably maneuverable. They were much more awkward on the ground, only having their wings, tail, arms, and two hook-like legs more designed for latching on to things than running. The design sacrificed almost all of their ground mobility for even more aerial speed and maneuverability.

If I slightly elongated the legs to the point that they could encircle a waist, and changed the talons out for grippers that could latch on to the opposing leg, I would have a flying creature capable of comfortably carrying someone with a sort of seatbelt while still having its arms free. They would even be strong enough to pick me up with my armour, taking me on short flights.

They were kind of ugly though. If I enhanced the dragon-like look a little bit, and let the leathery wings display brilliant colours instead of a fleshy tone, I'm sure that I could get away with fielding them. Hell, people who like dragons would probably even find the cute, and who didn't like dragons?

Arming them with net-launchers was a no-brainer, but I was really starting to miss having something that could stop someone from firing a gun, such as a taser or fast acting sedative. Unfortunately I couldn't make either one safely right now.

While I could produce bio-electricity and toxins more effectively than anything on earth, I didn't yet have a way of moderating them to safe levels, and human experimentation was icky. I think it will be nice to collaborate with Armsmaster. I'm certain that he will know just how to safely apply voltage without serious risk of harming someone. I've looked it up online, but there are contradictory answers and it's something that I certainly don't want to get wrong.

The sedatives were even more perilous. I had a decent mix of sedatives, muscle relaxants, and tranquilizers that would take someone down in seconds. Unfortunately, it would also probably stop their diaphragm, and possibly even their heart. Maybe I could consult with Panacea or something?

Anyway, I set my newly minted swoopers to bake, one in the the garden supply base and two in the already larger boat base. They should be ready some time before school lets out on Monday.

With that set, I decided to try an idea that my discussion about infrasonic echolocation with Armsmaster had given me. Excavating enough area to make a decent base underground would definitely be noticed, but if there were any voids already there underground waiting to be filled up, I could extend a trunk between the nearest abandoned rooftop on the surface and the space below ground. I could even make whatever building was below the abandoned rooftop in to a second base so that anyone who found it or destroyed it wouldn't think to check where all the energy was actually going to. The problem with me doing that previously was that I didn't have any way of finding the voids.

With my ability to detect infrasonic pulses, I just needed to create a tiny seismic tremor at a known time, then combine the fine senses of my runners with more triangulation provided by my nodes and I could do a decent job of ground penetrating radar.

I found a four story apartment building that was scheduled for demolition and climbed to the top with one of my runners. I tackled the rooftop air conditioning unit, shearing it off the base, then carefully dragged it to the edge of the roof on the side facing the back alley. When I was sure no one was in the area, and no one close enough to get a good view was watching, I shoved the unit off the roof while putting my other two runner's heads on the ground to improve their senses. With an ominous whistling sound followed by an almighty crash, the air conditioner crunched in to the ground.

I was fortunate that the instinctual knowledge of echolocation extended into determining what was through solids as well, because sound definitely didn't behave the same way as it did in the air and I didn't think I would get to keep doing this without drawing attention to myself.

Lets see. There were a lot of parking garages, unsurprisingly, and a couple of small air pockets in the rock, but the real find was the huge aquifer beneath the city. It would be my civic duty to make sure it never turned in to a sinkhole. I'll just have to fill the whole thing in.

My planter worked its way over to that area of town in order to look for convenient rooftops. The space below ground was large enough that it would be a weeks long project to fill the entire thing, and provide enough energy from above ground. The upside of course was that it had enough room to grow all but my largest ground based creatures, I would just have to dig a small tunnel to somewhere near Captain's hill, the nearby park area, so that my creatures could exit once they were grown.

My planter wouldn't be working on expanding my network in the meantime, but my range already covered the entire city, and I got diminishing returns from covering the area outside of the city since it was a lot less likely I would need to go there.

I was almost home so I sped up a bit, eager to let my dad know how my very busy day had gone.

Entering through the back door while invisible, I left the suit in the basement then emerged in to the living room where dad was looking over some sort of budget report.

"Hey kiddo, I would ask how your day went since I know you were going to go down to the police station, but I saw you on the news. That was well played." He grinned at me.

"Thanks dad, but you don't know the half of it. The meeting with the police went alright but right as I was exiting the station I ran in to Armsmaster, who wanted to take me over to the PRT building. I ran beside him on his motorcycle and we were talking about tinkering the whole way there, it was pretty fun. He ran off as soon as we got to the PRT building even though he was supposed to stick around. I think it was because he wanted to go test some of the stuff we talked about."

Dad's eyes were getting bigger and bigger as I went on. When I was done talking for the moment he mentioned in a slightly stunned voice "Well, you don't do things by half that's for sure. How did it go with the PRT?"

"Pretty good, but the interview was kind of weird. I think the guy interviewing me had a pretty killer headache, he was wincing at every little sound by the end of our chat." I considered for a moment.

"I signed the preliminary paperwork for agreeing to a probationary period with them. The paperwork was all the normal wards stuff, other than him grabbing the wrong paper for the probationary period itself. Oh, that reminds me." I brandished the paperwork I had been given to take home.

"Here's a copy of what I signed and the parental consent form, although I think you'll need to come in on Monday for when I sign the rest of it. Most of that stuff will be about my tinkering specifically, so it will be more involved than the stuff from today." He took the papers from me and started looking them over carefully.

"Do I need to have a lawyer look this stuff over? It looks pretty complex." He was frowning at one of the lines on the salary documentation. "And they really pay this amount in to your trust fund? No wonder police budgets were slashed so much. It's not huge, but there are a fair number of heroes in the city"

"You can if you want, but it's all standard Wards paperwork and it's already been picked apart online. I wouldn't bother. Now, Monday's paperwork is going to be a lot more important to me, but that mostly just consists of making sure they supply me with the right forms. I've been looking them over since I found out about them, and found a reliable source online for the accurate forms."

"If you're sure kiddo. I just don't want it coming back to bite us later." He was most of the way through the paperwork by now.

"Yeah. The more dangerous restrictions are the ones that come straight from the laws themselves and you never sign paperwork over. The most serious one that could apply to me is the 1997 ruling on the proscription of self-replicating technologies. That's the one that can get you a kill order just for breaking once." Dad looked shocked by my statement.

"Have they ever actually killed anyone over it?" He asked in a strained voice.

"The ruling has only ever been enacted once, the villain Dr. Recursion was sentenced in absentia and executed for creating a self-replicating nanobot weapon. But I know that several villains have pre-approved kill orders if they create self-replicating technologies. The closest one would be Blasto up in Boston, he's the other bio-tinker nearby."

Dad was very pale. "You're not making me feel any better here, Taylor. Are you sure that it can't apply to you?"

I nodded. "Yeah. I just have to ensure that my stuff doesn't even have the ability for reproduction and it shouldn't be an issue. Worst comes to worst, I would just have to prove in court that my stuff can't self-replicate."

Dad was still looking queasy. "But you said the the villain was tried in absentia?"

"Yeah, they only do that if you won't come in to court, or are proven to be a 'real and immediate threat' to the people in the judicial system that would try you. Neither of which applies to me."

"Well, I'll want to have someone professional look over the laws for you anyway, those threats are just too serious to ignore." He had finally got a hold of himself, now that he had something concrete to contribute.

"No problem. We might even be able to get the PRT to pay for an independent cape law expert to go over the relevant laws for us, since it will affect them as well."

"We could, but I would trust someone we hired ourselves more. It would be worth it to pay out of pocket just to ensure that can't happen to you." He was taking this pretty seriously, but I didn't mind. It was a lot better than the time after mom died when he was just acting like a zombie. I'll take overprotective to braindead any day.

"Sure, we can even pay for it out of my equipment advance as a tinker. Since I won't be using much money on equipment, it'll mostly just be a signing bonus for me."

I was pretty pleased about that actually. Just for being classified a tinker, I was going to get a minimum starting budget for tinkering materials as well as an allotted number of designated tinkering hours when they couldn't tell me what to do with my time. A tinker designation was probably the single best influence on how sweet your sign on package was for the Wards or the Protectorate.

As he handed my paperwork back to me, I broached another topic. "Hey dad, we need to decide how to handle Monday. They just said that they want me to come in, and if we want to get everything done on Monday then you'll need to come in as well but how we do that is mostly up to you."

He thought about it for a moment. "I get off of work after you finish with school, so if you want I could just meet you there. We wouldn't need to go in at the same time, so there wouldn't be anything linking us together if you decided to go in costume. Do you need to bring it?"

"Technically no, but if I want to get any of my stuff grandfathered in when I join, I need to bring it in to the paperwork session when we go over all the tinkering rules and limitations. So I'll definitely be bringing it. I'll also make sure to bring one of each of the creatures I'll have ready by then, as well as a net-launcher."

Dad was nodding, until what I said sunk in for him. "Wait, two? I thought you just had those runners?"

I was grinning ear to ear. "Well I did. But I realized that with the grandfathering window coming to a close I would have time for one more creature, I decided to make a flying one. You'll get to see my swoopers on Monday."

He joined me in my grinning. "I'm glad you're making the most of your research. So many people would have just rushed in and regretted it later. You've become a very mature young woman."

Despite the fact that it was probably required dad speak for the fact that I was no longer thirteen years old, I still blushed at his comment. I was pretty proud of all I'd done with my power since I got it, and it was nice to have someone else recognize the thought that had gone in to it. Even if it was just my dad.

"Thanks dad. Anyway, I'm going to go get my homework done for the weekend. See you in the morning."

"Yeah, I'll stay up and putter for a while, I still have to figure out where an extra two thousand dollars of union funds went, but I'll see you in the morning."

With that I smiled and headed up to my bedroom, thinking about what it would be like to meet the Wards on Monday.