Chapter 17
Saturday 29 May 2010
An hour later, when Clockblocker and Gallant had returned from a public relations event in a local mall, it was almost time for the tour to come in. While Cameron and Tia, after Lauren had managed to console them, had opted to accompany Vista to the console, Lauren herself decided to follow her father's first suggestion and do some powers testing. After all, Lauren still felt a bit awkward in the company of the young ward after her outburst and preferred some time alone. She felt also a lot less angry at her powers now that she knew what power they had given Tia.
As Lauren entered the room, she again heard the familiar voice of doctor Gibson. However, this time, he didn't require her to list all her powers or explain them, as he was just watching out of interest. Lauren still promised to tell him about the powers though, as she didn't have anything better to do and he had been helpful finding a way to use her weird future hitting power.
Power type:Trump/Shaker
Threat level: 2
Duration: 12 minutes
Synchronization: 34%
Wiki article: Tom Hatton (motorcyclist)
Power: Host is able to imbue vehicles within a 30 foot radius with powers. They can do things like fly, drive faster than they should, turn invisible and be way more sturdy than they should, although only one thing at a time. They lose their power whenever they leave Hosts radius.
Power type:Thinker
Threat level: 0
Duration: 1 hour
Synchronization: 39%
Wiki article: The Soup Dragons
Power: Lauren has an instinctual understanding of sheet music. She can easily hear the resulting song in her head, sing said song, or play the song on a music instrument. Host does not get singing or instrument skills with this power though. Additionally, host can easily write down the tones of a song she is hearing.
Power type:Shaker
Threat level: 4
Duration: 48 minutes
Synchronization: 68%
Wiki article: Here's Berlin
Power: Host can reshape the ground within a 60 feet radius however she wants. She can make trenches, fill holes in the ground or even build structures. She however cannot raise or lower the ground right beneath another person. (Yes, I get a French-German love comedy from 1932 as wiki article and the first power that comes to mind is trench warfare …)
Hmm, these powers aren't too bad. Just a pity that she couldn't really test them out here. Lauren proceeded to tell doctor Gibson about them, who immediately came with a solution for one of them:
"If you want me to, I can print some sheet music. That will at least allow you to test one of your powers."
Lauren, not having any better ideas, agreed and a few minutes later, Lauren saw doctor Gibson in real life for the first time. She had expected him to be a graying old men in either a lab coat or a suit. She got the graying old men part right, but his choice of clothing was extremely casual with shorts and a colorful button-up-shirt. That was very much in contrast to the PR people she met earlier today who were wearing business formal clothes. Maybe her ideas of how scientists dressed needed an update? Or was it doctor Gibson who was the outlier?
"Here you go, Fortuna. I printed a few classical songs from Mozart and Bach for you to read, I don't think you would mind those songs being stuck in your head. I'll be going now, so that you actually have some time left to read them."
And as suddenly as he appeared, he left. Lauren decided to just do what he said and read the sheets of music. As the power ended, she had to admit that doctor Gibson had chosen his music well. She absolutely didn't mind hearing those relaxing classical songs in her head. However, now that she had a free slot, she drew another power.
Power type:Shaker
Threat level: 1
Duration: 6 minutes
Synchronization: 49%
Wiki article: Siberian Mathematical Journal
Power: Host can summon a small blizzard around themselves (radius 30 feet). Host herself is immune to the cold it brings with it, but her vision is as impaired as the others.
That power also seemed useful, and she could even test it here! Lauren activated it and saw how a snowstorm appeared around her. As she couldn't see anything anymore, she summoned a clone on the outside to see how the storm looked.
Well, it was looked exactly like a normal snowstorm, but now contained in a small area inside a building. There was also a small layer of snow on the floor that was slowly growing over time. Realizing it was probably not a good idea to bury the testing room in a thick pack of melting snow, Lauren stopped the power after a few minutes. Like she expected, the whole room was now buried under a small layer of snow.
"Fortuna, while I appreciate you showing off your powers, I don't think the janitors will like the fact that the whole testing chamber is covered in snow. Do you have a power that can clean this up? Otherwise, I'm afraid we have to cut this session short."
Lauren didn't really have a power that could help her here. Maybe she could try and grab a new power and hope it was something like hydrokinesis? Her blizzard power had just worn off anyway.
Power type:Tinker
Threat level: 4
Duration: 8 hours
Synchronization: 66%
Wiki article: Gallizien
Power: Tinker specialty: architecture. Host is able to make basically any tinkertech that is related to construction.
"Doctor Gibson, I have a power that lets me fix this mess and so much more! Could you maybe bring me some gloves so my forcefields can help me tinker?"
This power was awesome! Lauren immediately knew how to build a device that would such all water, ice and snow out of a room. It's main focus was to help drain flooded basements, but removing power-generated snow was certainly within its capabilities. It would store the water in compressed space inside the device until she could release it in a nearby body of water.
After a few minutes of tinkering and letting forcefield clones remove snow from the tinkering supplies, Lauren absentmindedly noticed that doctor Gibson entered the room again with some gloves. She quickly summoned a forcefield clone to thank him and bring the gloves back to her.
Now that she had all the manpower she needed, Lauren decided to do some other projects at the same time. Her main body thought for a moment about a device that would help her in the long run, and quickly settled on a fabricator. It would allow her to store blueprints of both tinkertech and non-tinkertech items and, more importantly, to quickly build those items as long as the machine had enough materials in it.
To help the fabricator gain said materials, as the input hatch would be rather small, she made a group of clones work on a combined scanner and disintegration gun. It would be able to scan an object, pile of materials or even something like a wall and then disintegrate the whole thing at once. The materials would then immediately be transferred to the compressed space inside the fabricator.
Time quickly flew by after that. The water absorbing device was quickly finished and used to finally get a clean workspace. A few hours later, Lauren noticed that the materials wouldn't be enough to build the stuff she wanted. Luckily, there was a nice tinkertech treadmill in the room that would be much more useful as part of her almost person-sized fabricator. The camera's in the room were also repurposed into useful parts of the scanning/disintegration gun. A few times, people came into the room and said things like "Please don't disassemble the tinkertech power testing devices! We have a tight budget in this department!", or "Lauren, it's already 18:00, it's time for your siblings to leave and you should eat something!". However, finishing the devices was way more important than things like food or a budget.
It was 20:00, at least according to her father who was begging for her to eat something and come home, when Lauren finally finished the person-sized fabricator. Knowing that she wouldn't have time to build anything large anyway, Lauren settled on uploading blueprints of tinkertech power tools, construction robots, furniture, parts of easily buildable disaster homes, and the other devices she build to the fabricator. She was even able to upload the microphone design she remembered from an earlier tinker fugue! However, frustratingly, she was unable to upload the blueprint of a new fabricator to the fabricator.
With less than two hours of her power left, and all blueprints uploaded, Lauren decided she had tinkered enough for today and that she should probably listen to her father and go home. She also realized that she was starving, and needed to eat something soon to not pass out from her partially power-induced hunger.
"Okay dad, I'm finished! Could we please eat something now? I'm starving."
Lauren then realized it her father wasn't the only person in the room. Doctor Gibson had also come in at some point, probably when she disabled the camera's, and some other PRT troopers were waiting at the entrance. However, unlike their normal friendly attitude, this time they looked wary at her and her inventions.
"Thank god, you're back! Sweetheart, could you please quickly tell my colleagues what your devices here are supposed to do and whether they are dangerous? Then we can immediately grab some dinner from the cafeteria."
Lauren was tempted to give a very detailed explanation of her inventions, but her hunger changed her mind. Instead, she just called them a water-absorber, fabricator and scanning-disintegration gun and left it at that, although she did mention that the scanning-disintegration gun didn't work on anything organic and that the fabricator couldn't make anything biological or another fabricator. She wouldn't want her construction devices to be mistaken for weapons after all.
The sun was setting when Lauren and her family finally went home. While her father was watching her tinker, her siblings had remained in the wards room under the 'watch' of Vista and Kid Win, neither of whom minded staying over at wards HQ for a few more hours. As her father wanted to get home as soon as possible, he decided to take a shortcut through a less populated part of the city. Predictably, that backfired.
It was when their car approached a crossing, with seemingly no traffic coming from either side, when Lauren's weird danger sensing power flared. Something huge was coming from the right and going to crash into the car!
"Dad, stop the car now! Something giant and invisible is coming from the right!"
After a second of hesitation, her father put his foot firmly on the breaks. However, it wasn't going to help, as her danger sense was still screaming at her. However, as Lauren's siblings were looking fearful to the right and Lauren started to summon forcefield clones at the future impact site in the hope to cushion the impact, the danger suddenly and completely disappeared.
Lauren's confusion lasted a bit more than a second before she heard an enormous crash. When she looked to the source of the sound, she saw a giant hole in the wall of a home, and got a glimpse of a fearful family before there was another crashing sound and out of nothing the backside of an enormous and ugly truck appeared in the hole.
Lauren then realized what had happened, as there was only one tinker in town who made giant ugly vehicles. Squealer had almost run them over with her freaking monstrosity! However, Lauren didn't understand why she would have changed directions at the last second. This would not be the first time Squealer had run over a car with one of her invisible monstrosities after all, at least according to her father's rants at dinner.
Well she shouldn't worry about that now. Lauren should make sure the family she saw were all right and try and capture the villain before she ran away or got her vehicle working again!
"Dad, I'm going to check whether there are people hurt and see if I can capture that bitch Squealer!"
Before her father, who had just parked the car on the side of the road and was now typing the number of the PRT dispatch, could answer, Lauren put on her domino mask, transformed into her ice form and left the car. However, she did leave a forcefield clone behind in the back of the car to comfort her young siblings who were now in a state of shock.
Lauren only needed to walk a few feet before the crash site became in range of her forcefield clones. She immediately abused this by summoning forcefield clones both inside Squealer's truck and inside the family's home.
The clone inside the truck appeared in the middle of a surprising amount of cargo. One of the bags had opened during the crash to reveal some kind of white powder. However, Lauren ignored the cargo in order to check on the people in the front of the truck. Summoning a clone there revealed a cursing merchant with a clearly broken leg and Squealer, who was suspiciously quiet.
The clone inside the house saw the ravage which had been a nice family home only one minute ago. Parts of the wall had flown everywhere, furniture had been destroyed, and half of the family room was now occupied by Squealer's truck. A mother was crying and kept two children, a girl of Kyla's apparent age and a boy of Cameron's age, with their faces pressed again her body. As Lauren wondered where the father was, as she had gotten a glimpse of an adult man during the incident, the girl tearfully screamed "Daddy!". Fearful for what she would see, Lauren turned towards the place where the truck impacted the inner wall.
Lauren screamed with all her bodies.
Power type: Breaker/Stranger
Threat level: 0 + 1 (trigger) + 1 (ping [Social Flawfinder, Modularity, Transportation]) = 2
Duration: 6 hours
Synchronization: 66%
Wiki article: Welcome Back Gandhi
Power: Host is able to change into 5 different forms. These can be other persons, breaker states, or even Lauren's forcefield clone, but they have to be exactly the same as something real. If Host wants to transform into a new form but has all 5 slots filled, she has to let go of one form. Making a new form requires time (half an hour or so), concentration, and that Host has seen the new form either with her own eyes or on good quality video. If the form has superhuman strength, durability or speed, it is reduced to peak human. When gaining this power, Host can transform into the last 5 acceptable forms observed before gaining this power. Ping [Social Flawfinder]: When in a form, host has instinctive knowledge about how said form normally acts. However, she doesn't get its memories. Ping [Modularity, Transportation]: Host is also able to transform into robots or armored suits. In this case, strength, durability and speed can be above peak human. Build in weaponry cannot be copied however.
As Squealer was unconsciously bleeding out and Lauren's father was frantically calling the PRT, 4 children and multiple forcefield clones all fell unconscious.
AN: Here, we have yet another rollercoaster chapter thanks to a series of bad rolls at the end. We also see one of the as of yet unexplained parts of Lauren's power for the first time.
Whenever Lauren grabs a power nearby someone with a corona pollentia (10% of the population with ages 7-30) who is having a bad time (It doesn't necessarily have to be trigger-event bad, as Lauren's shards aren't picky), there is a 50% chance for that person to trigger and establish a permanent connection with said power (I also give a 10% chance for a normal trigger if it is trigger event bad, which happened with Cameron).
Additionally, the threat level is increased by 1 (or 2 with pings) for a few reasons. 1: The shard who designed the power wants to encourage Lauren to let people trigger with junkshards, 2: The smarter/stronger shards are more likely to realize this loophole, 3: RNG likes to screw over children, and I rather don't want to see elementary school children trigger with horrible -1 powers due to Lauren.
Also, please note that I have changed Lauren's cape name from Hit-or-Miss to Fortuna, as the majority of people seem to prefer that.