This chapter is dedicated to the memory of Becuzitswrong, an excellent fellow author who sadly passed away far too young on the 19th of September, 2016
"Who's that?" Dennis asked, peering up at the overcast sky. Dean followed his eyes, then blinked a little. The be-suited and be-helmeted female figure passing overhead dressed in white with gold trimming clearly wasn't Amy, the size and proportions were wrong, but the suit other than that looked the same as the one Raptaur had gifted his girlfriend's sister with.
"I think it's Glory Girl," he sighed, shaking his head. This was getting silly. First Amy, now Vicky? Was Taylor intent on acquiring enough female capes to build her own team?
The thought made his lips curl a little, but inside he shivered. The thought, considering who the three were and their probable combined abilities, was more than a little discomfiting.
"Hey, GG!" He looked around, startled, to see Dennis waving up, radiating curious amusement and interest. The flying figure slowed abruptly, looking around, then down, before waving back. She turned around and approached them, her emotional output becoming apparent when she was near enough. The girl had been flying quite low, only a few hundred feet, presumably because the clouds were so close to the ground today.
She felt mostly in a very good mood, although there was an undercurrent of… not quite anger, but definitely strong irritation, not directed at them but at someone else. Mixed with that was some worry.
The fog over the bay made seeing the Rig impossible, visibility being down to mere feet at water level, while the city itself was shrouded in a mist that even though light rapidly made things more than a couple of blocks away fade into the background. The dampening effect on sounds was quite apparent as well, the whole effect together with the damp clammy chill making things rather eerie. Both of them had jumped a little more than once when some odd sound, under normal circumstances probably easily identifiable, had come out of the mist. Even the direction of some of them was difficult to discern.
A couple of hours or so ago at the beginning of their patrol shift there had been a series of odd, faint howling sounds that had echoed around the downtown area, followed shortly afterwards by a deep rumble that lasted for several seconds. They'd radioed it in but so far heard nothing back suggesting any foul play, although both were curious about the source.
Flipping to a vertical standing position in mid-air, Vicky floated down and landed lightly next to them, smiling through the faceplate of her helmet, which did indeed appear to be a duplicate of the one Amy had been recorded wearing on a significant number of PHO posts, attracting a lot of comments. Weirdly enough, mostly positive. "Hi, guys," she said brightly.
"That's a new look," Dennis remarked, sounding both impressed and interested. "Any particular reason for it?"
Vicky looked down at herself, then grinned. "I was cold and wet," she replied.
"Ah." Dennis nodded with a tone of wise understanding in his voice. "Completely understandable in that case."
"No, it isn't," Dean sighed. "Can you give us more details?"
"I took Amy to see Raptaur who was helping the DWU today, and it started raining. I got soaked," the blonde explained, going on to relate her story as all three of them resumed walking slowly along, or floating a couple of inches off the ground in her case. They listened with interest. Dean was wondering if the Director was aware of any of the goings-on down at the docks.
"Oh, that's what that weird noise was," Dennis exclaimed, sounding relieved. "One of the warehouses coming down."
"Probably," Vicky replied. "It was pretty loud. So was the air horn they were using. But it was a lot of fun."
"Where's your normal costume?" Dean asked. She hefted the backpack she was holding over one shoulder, an unadorned black nylon thing that looked like it was based on a military tactical dress pattern.
"In here," she said, smiling. "It's still damp, it needs a good cleaning as well." She flipped the bag off her shoulder and unzipped it, pulling out a painfully bright international orange high visibility jacket that she held up. "Raptaur also gave me this as a souvenir."
Clockblocker took it from her, holding it up with both hands, then turning it around to look at the back and the writing on it. Dean moved to the side so he could see it too.
There was a pause, which was broken by raucous laughter from his team-mate, who stopped and leaned on a wall to stop himself falling over. Vicky grinned again, while Dean sighed and shook his head.
"Oh, my god!" Dennis chortled, holding the thing up again to inspect it, before handing it back. "That's fantastic. You should wear that the next time you fight the E88 or something."
Folding the jacket and putting it away carefully, Vicky shook her head. "I don't want it getting damaged. That's a reminder of a very good morning that was a hell of a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it. Doing something useful, and having someone who actually valued my abilities. Raptaur was very easy to work with. So were the DWU guys. Mr Hebert is nice and I really like Zephron."
"What's your mother going to say when she sees you in that costume?" Dean queried, a little worried. Her emotions changed abruptly from the amusement and generally positive feelings to incorporate more of the irritation and worry. It would seem to be aimed at Carol Dallon.
"I don't really care," she sighed, slinging the backpack over her shoulder again. They resumed walking and floating once more. "She's not my favorite person right now. Not after..." She trailed off, looking at them, then around at the otherwise pretty much entirely empty street, only the occasional vehicle passing with its headlights on disturbing the eerie calm. They also looked around, then back to her. "I don't want this getting around, OK, guys?" she said in a low voice. "I'll tell you but you need to promise not to tell anyone else. Especially not Piggot."
"It's not something we'll have to tell her?" Dennis asked slowly.
"No, just sort of private business that she doesn't need to hear about. It would only give her something else to look down on us for," Vicky muttered. "Especially Mom."
"I guess we can keep a secret, right, Dean?" Dennis told her, his mask moving to point at his colleague. Somewhat reluctantly Dean nodded.
"OK." Vicky emitted another sigh, now to him feeling somewhat melancholy. "This morning Mom went off on Amy in a really nasty way, which pissed both of us off a lot..." She told them another story, one which made Dennis mutter something rude about Carol Dallon and Dean shake his head.
"With all due respect, Vicky, sometimes your Mom is a bit of a bitch," Dennis said quietly.
"You don't have to tell me that," she muttered. "I love her, but right now I don't like her very much. There was no call to do what she did or say all those things. If she had a problem with Amy she could have brought it up in a much more polite and reasonable way. You know, asking and making suggestions not demanding everything like that. It wasn't very constructive."
"Your mother has a… direct… way of dealing with problems," Dean noted.
"One way to put it," the girl replied. "I can see where I get it from."
They exchanged glances, then looked at the blonde, who was floating along in a small cloud of depression, most of her earlier good cheer gone. "Meaning?" he said carefully.
"You might have noticed I can be a bit impulsive," she explained, looking at him. He looked back, not sure whether to be honest, and feeling slightly apprehensive. Some of this must have come out in his expression since she smiled a little.
"Don't worry, I won't get mad if you agree. I know it's a problem. I ended up being very unpleasant to one of the worst possible people to talk like that to, remember? I was fucking lucky that Saurial is such a calm person. Most other people wouldn't have forgiven me like that." She smiled more widely for a moment. "If I'd called Lung an overgrown newt and poked him in the chest, for example?"
Dennis coughed violently in surprise, having been on the verge of saying something, then stopped dead and looked at her. "You did what?"
"Oh, right, I didn't tell the rest of you about that, did I," she said, looking embarrassed. Glancing at Dean she raised her eyebrows inquisitively. He shook his head.
"I wasn't going to say anything about it if you didn't," he answered the implied question.
"OK," she sighed. Then began yet another story, which had Dennis alternately snickering and sounding worried.
"Fuck, Vicky, you like living dangerously, don't you?" he said when she finished. They'd completed a long loop through the commercial district and were heading back in the general direction of the waterfront, with half their patrol done. "The only one worse to say that sort of thing to would be Raptaur. Even Lung would be less dangerous if he wasn't ramped up, you could at least fly away. I'm not sure you're fast enough to get away from her in time."
"I know, trust me," the blonde said, shaking her head ruefully. "And you haven't even seen the things I have. But luckily it turned out that she was very understanding about it when I went to apologize. Almost too understanding. It took me a while to believe that she really didn't care and was actually worried about me. I was still terrified of her, though."
"And now?" Dean couldn't help asking.
She shrugged. "I haven't really spent any time with her. But her sister says she's completely fine and doesn't hold a grudge, which is good, while Raptaur herself is a decent person. Oh, yes, scary as shit, but not in an aggressive way unless you provoke her. There's no way I'd go up against either of them without a lot of backup, though. And a damn good reason." The girl smiled for a moment. "Aside from anything else, I think Raptaur is a friend. I know she's a friend of Amy's, and so is Saurial. Probably close ones based on a few things I saw. She's opened up to them more than anyone except Taylor Hebert, who seems to have started pulling her out of her shell pretty effectively."
"The girl does seem to be friendly and helpful," Dennis remarked, while Dean masked a sigh. He found it almost stupid the way they were talking about three people, all of whom were the same fifteen year old girl. And only he knew it. Or, more accurately, he and Amy.
He was certain that the healer knew a lot more about the entire situation than anyone other than Taylor, in fact. But he was also completely certain that there was no way she was ever going to tell anyone. That girl could keep her mouth shut like no one he'd ever met. While he was pleased to see that she seemed to have relaxed and opened up recently, he was desperately curious as to why. And a little worried, for a number of reasons.
'Maybe I should talk to Taylor,' he mused, while Dennis and Vicky got into a small argument about which of the two reptilian girls was the most terrifying. 'Try to find out what's going on.' He shook his head a little. He was curious, yes, but not quite to the point that he wanted to push any buttons. Ones they'd had extremely vivid and transparent warnings about the very first time they'd met her in her Saurial aspect.
If she got the impression that his interest in some way threatened her father he had little doubt that no one would ever find his body. Shivering briefly, he decided that it was probably better to leave it alone for now.
Glancing at Vicky, he wondered if the Hebert girl would react the same way now to anyone who threatened the blonde girl's sister. He had a pretty good idea the answer was yes. She seemed to value her friends, which was a good trait on the whole, but could possibly cause problems at some point in the future. But at least Amy was safe as long as she was with Taylor in any of her various incarnations. Probably from practically anything.
"Why are they clearing the docks?" he asked, as the argument ended without a clear winner. Vicky looked at him, then shrugged a little.
"Some sort of big project for the city, that's all I know right now. The Mayor is backing it, he turned up to look around near the end, and apparently it passed a near-unanimous vote of the city council last night. But I have no idea what's going on other than there's going to be something happening on Tuesday. Probably something fairly spectacular from what I heard."
"Weird," Dennis commented curiously. "I wonder what?"
"We'll have to wait," she replied. "It's annoying, Amy knows, but she won't tell me anything."
Yet more proof that the other Dallon sister was in pretty deep with the Heberts, Dean thought as he listened. And more proof that he should keep his mouth shut, at least for now. Director Piggot probably didn't know anything about this bearing in mind the way she and the Mayor didn't seem to get on particularly well, so he probably hadn't said anything yet. He had no wish to get involved in city or PRT politics, and even less to get between those two factions, the DWU, and Taylor.
That would be a bad place to be, of this he had no doubt.
Director Piggot could make his life a misery. The city could cause his family problems. God only knew what the DWU could do but he was pretty sure that pissing off the unions wouldn't be a smart thing to do.
But of them all, the worst one to make angry would be the one that could, and very well might given enough provocation, actually eat him.
Dean shuddered and tried not to think about it. Or the way Taylor had looked at him when he'd realized who she was...
The trio spent another ten minutes together, then Vicky made her excuses and left. Watching her as she rose into the air and headed off across the rooftops only about four hundred feet up, Dennis shook his head a little.
"Carol is going to go nuts when she sees that both her daughters are wearing Raptaur's suits," he laughed. "I almost wish I could see it."
"I think we should both be very glad we'll be a long way away," Dean said firmly. "That's one family argument I don't want to get involved in."
"I suppose," his companion replied, turning back to him, then resuming walking. "But it's going to be epic."
"That's what I'm afraid of," Dean sighed, falling silent as he walked.
Taylor watched her visitors as she flipped the switch that lowered the roller door. Dragon's power suit was interesting, she liked the reptilian aspect of it. Somehow it fitted. Sniffing a little, she frowned very slightly, as she could only smell one new human, that being Armsmaster. There was no scent coming from the power suit other than mechanical lubricants, metals and plastics, and electronics. A lot of electronics.
Some of those scents were the same, or very similar to the ones Armsmaster was emitting, while others were different. All together it was a unique bouquet which identified that particular source beyond doubt. It also shared a lot with the robot sub she'd swallowed, confirming the source.
'There's no one inside that suit,' she said to the Varga, who was watching with interest.
"It would appear not, I agree. No living thing at all. How… fascinating. Some form of remotely operated device?"
'I suppose it could be,' she replied doubtfully, still studying the Cape, who with her companion was looking around the room curiously. 'But… It moves completely smoothly and naturally. Also I can smell a lot more electronics there than in Armsmaster's suit and we know his is completely stuffed with gadgets. What on earth does all that do?'
After a second or two, she added slowly, 'I think it's power supplies and batteries and things like that, with an awful lot of computer processing ability as well. I have a funny feeling about this...'
"Ah. I understand what you're getting at, I think, Brain," he said thoughtfully. "Now that is interesting. I wonder if Armsmaster knows?"
'No idea,' she told her friend. She walked past the two visitors to the table, indicating it with one hand. "Please take a seat," she said politely.
Both of them looked dubiously at the chairs, which were large enough but looked fairly slender and modern. "I'm not sure your furniture is up to the weight..." Dragon began, only to stop when Taylor hopped up onto the seat of one and stood on it. She grinned at them.
"I weigh over a ton, and it holds me just fine," she commented, getting off again. "They're a lot stronger than they look."
"Ah. You have used EDM in the construction," Armsmaster said with an approving tone, going over to inspect one carefully. He knelt down and looked under it, then nodded, standing up. "Very efficient."
"Thank you. When you have access to something like that, you find all sorts of uses for it," she smiled. "Please, sit."
The sound of the door to the separate workshop opening made all three of them look, to see Amy standing there holding a large roll of paper on her hand. "Oh. Panacea," Dragon said with a slightly confused tone to her voice. "We didn't know you were here."
"Hello Dragon," Amy said with a smile, "and Armsmaster. I hope you're both doing all right?"
"We are," the Canadian cape said pleasantly. Armsmaster merely nodded slightly.
"I was just visiting, I can go if you want," she said. Turning to Taylor, she added, holding up the roll of paper, "Did you decide where you want this?"
"On the wall over the table, I think," Taylor replied with an inner smirk. Glancing at the two visitors, she said apologetically, "Amy is helping decorate this place. As you can see it's a little bare at the moment. Just the workshop there, some storage, and this furniture. We need to add more facilities as time goes on but we haven't quite decided what yet. Danny suggested some posters and things to brighten it up until then."
"That sounds like a good idea," Dragon replied.
"I thought so. So did my sisters."
"Sisters… plural?" Armsmaster asked slowly. She nodded with a smile that made him twitch again, something she was amused by. He seemed to do it every time.
"Oh, yes, Saurial is the only one who's been in here other than me but everyone is really interested in this business. We have so many ideas, you see, and this is a good start." She grinned more widely. Amy made a very slight muffled snicker at the twitch the man couldn't quite suppress, softly enough that she was probably the only one that heard it. "Helping out the city is a good start, though. It's important to have civic pride, don't you agree?"
Her voice was bright and happy by now. Dragon and Armsmaster exchanged a glance. "For instance, you wouldn't believe how many old ships and things are lying around all over the place in the bay. It's very untidy. Someone should do something about it. The shipping channel was in a shocking state as well, but we fixed that." Smiling, she motioned to Amy, who moved over to the table and unrolled the posters she was holding, ones that she, Taylor, and the Varga had designed between them, using images from the internet, copious amounts of imagination, and the Varga's ability to make things out of nothing. It was something they were finding more and more entertaining uses for as time went by.
"There's stuff you humans made all over the bottom of the sea as well," she sighed, glancing up at them having handed Amy a handful of small weights, which the other girl was using to hold the posters flat. "It's very irresponsible, you know. You should clean up after yourselves better." Shrugging, she smiled yet again. "Anyway, we'll sort all that out for you. One of my sisters even got rid of some little annoying machine that was buzzing around out there getting in the way. She said it was nice and crunchy but a little bitter, titanium is like that. But the batteries gave it a lovely tingle on the tongue."
This time Dragon twitched. She tried not to show her amusement. Amy smelled like she was trying not to laugh.
"Is this sister of yours… rather large?" Armsmaster asked rather reluctantly.
Taylor nodded happily. "She's quite big, yes. Too big to fit in here easily, I guess." She studied the roller door for a moment. "She might fit through that," she added a little doubtfully. "But it's sort of cramped in here even so. Not that it really matters, she doesn't come on shore very often. Too many things that break when you lean on them, she said."
Turning to Amy, who was clearly trying not to break out in giggles, she looked over the four posters. "OK, let's put that one just inside the door over there, those two over the table, and this other one down on the wall there on the other side."
Handing her friend a roll of tape that she generated, she watched as Amy began putting the posters up. Dragon and Armsmaster watched, silently, and intermittently looking at each other. Inwardly she was laughing her head off.
Finally escaping to her room, Vicky closed the door and leaned on it, letting out a long breath.
"That was… very weird," she muttered under her breath, tossing the backpack with her costume in onto the bed, then following it with her helmet. She flipped the light on and began taking the new costume off, hanging it over the back of the chair at her dresser. Sitting down to removed the boots she rubbed a little dirt from the toe of the right one, finding it came off easily without leaving a trace. "What the hell did Aunt Sarah say to Mom? And how much wine did they drink, for fuck's sake?"
Both sisters had been singing a song, one she recognized from her childhood although she couldn't put a name to it, and laughing when she came in a while earlier. They were clearly far past the point of merely inebriated and well into extremely drunk territory, not something she was used to. Both her mother and Aunt enjoyed a little wine now and then but the only other time she'd seen them both falling-down plastered was after Fleur was killed.
Unlike that horrible event, though, this time both women were in almost offensively good moods. Her mother had taken one look at her standing in the doorway holding her helmet in her hands and fallen over giggling, pointing at her while shouting, "Shesh got one too now! Look!"
Aunt Sarah had got up, wobbled over, inspected her very closely with bloodshot eyes, then nodded carefully like she wasn't sure if her head would fall off or not. "So she has. Where did you get that wonderful costume from, dear?"
"Raptaur gave it to me."
"Thatsh nice, Vocky. I meansh, Vucky." Carol had frowned, looking confused. "No. Amy? No, thatsh not right." She'd been slurring her words badly. Suddenly she'd brightened. "Vicky! Thatsh it!"
"You forgot my name?" Vicky had asked, stunned.
Carol had shaken her head violently, nearly tipping over on the sofa. "I'd never forgetsh my daughtersh names, Vocky." Looking from side to side suspiciously, she'd leaned forward. "I have two daughtersh, you know."
"I know, Mom," Vicky had sighed.
"Come here to Mommy, Vecky," Carol sang, holding her arms wide. The half empty wine glass she'd been holding in one hand had become a completely empty one, the contents ending up on the floor. Vicky had stared, then shaken her head.
"I think you might have had enough to drink, both of you," she'd remarked. Carol had immediately grabbed the nearly empty wine bottle on the coffee table in front of her and held it protectively.
"No. Shtill shome left."
"Vicky," Aunt Sarah said in a low voice, leaning in and nearly falling over. Vicky caught her and steadied her. "Your mother is a little drunk," she'd hissed, then wobbled again. "It's not impossible that I might be as well," she'd admitted. Somehow she'd sounded more or less normal. Helping her aunt back to the sofa, the blonde had lowered her into place, then gone into the kitchen to get a damp cloth for the spilled wine. While she'd been out there she'd heard a cork come out of a bottle.
"Oh, for fuck's sake, this is ridiculous," she'd grumbled, heading back in to take care of the two adults. All the while wondering where her father was.
They'd trapped her somehow into singing a song that didn't seem to have a way out for over half an hour, then started telling admittedly hilarious stories of their childhood. She'd eventually managed to get away, looking for Mark and finding him in her parent's bedroom, lying on the bed reading one of Amy's books. He'd looked up at her as she came in and smiled.
"Hello, Vicky," he'd said. "You're back. Where's Amy?"
"Still out with Raptaur, I think," she'd replied, sitting on the edge of the bed and sighing a little. "What the hell is wrong with Mom? And Aunt Sarah? Aside from them both being drunk as skunks, of course."
"Sarah came around this morning after you girls left and had a very long and… impassioned… talk with your mother," he'd explained. He'd seemed mildly amused by this. "Carol didn't take it well, at first. Sarah didn't let up and your mother eventually was forced to confront some things she didn't want to. I don't know if it will make a long term change but I'd expect that when she sobers up she'll apologize to both of you." He'd put his hand on hers, squeezing it for a moment. "She knows that what she did and said were out of order. But don't expect miracles. She's a stubborn woman."
"I know how that goes," Vicky had sighed, then smiled. "Thanks, Dad."
"You're welcome, Vicky." Mark had looked at her for a moment. "I like the costume."
"So do I," she'd told him, before getting up and heading for her room, stopping at the top of the stairs to listen to the singing that had started up again, before shaking her head sadly.
Now, in her room, she sat and brushed her hair, while thinking about the events of the day. She could still hear her mother and Aunt carrying on downstairs, Sarah saying something rather loudly about wanting a pizza and where were her car keys. Luckily, she'd found them put away in the kitchen in a drawer while looking for a cloth and had moved them to a better hiding place, while thanking her father's thinking ahead.
He was pretty vague a lot of the time, but the father she remembered came to the surface at odd times, often at the right moment to stop something awkward happening. She still hoped that one day he could be cured of his depression.
Shaking her head a little as she heard her mother talking too loudly and very drunkenly to what appeared to be a pizza delivery service, she decided that wherever Amy was she was probably better off out of this current weirdness, while she headed off to the bathroom for a shower.
Still, despite everything, the day had gone pretty well after the initial rocky start. She wouldn't mind doing something like that again.
Dragon watched as Panacea, still wearing the new costume that Raptaur had apparently made for her, stood on the table and put two posters up. She studied them.
The first one had a picture of something she recognized with a certain amount of disquiet, a very familiar looking head shown against a black background, mouth open and glowing eyes staring out at them in an almost three dimensional manner. Hundreds of glittering needle-sharp teeth big enough to impale a man from top to bottom were visible in the mouth.
Under the image was the slogan, "Almost nothing is too big to eat. Anything that is can be cut into smaller pieces."
She stared at the thing for a long few seconds, wondering how literally she was supposed to take it, then looked at the other one. This had a photo of Saurial in a crouched pose, her tail lifted and held ready, the end of it fitted with a set of four obviously razor sharp blades, two out both sides. In each hand was a four foot long sword. She seemed to be smiling rather viciously, ready for battle in a way that if Dragon had possessed a stomach would have set it to churning.
The slogan for this one was "Try me."
Just that.
The implications were somewhat sobering.
Finishing with those two, Panacea jumped off the table, then moved over to the door to put up the third one. Both she and Armsmaster trailed along to watch, while Raptaur stayed at the table, appearing slightly amused.
The third poster was an image of a war hammer, the same design as the one both Raptaur and Saurial had been seen with, against a white background which give no indication of scale. Under it was written in a nice font, "KE=1/2 m v2"
The formula for kinetic energy was very familiar, of course, but the point of it in this case was a little unclear. She turned her head to see Raptaur's glowing eyes fixed on them with a definite air of someone enjoying a joke in them.
Putting the last poster up, Panacea stepped back and looked at it critically, hands on hips, then nodded. "That makes the place look a little more lived in," she stated, casting her eyes around the room.
Dragon studied the last image. It was merely a nice shot of the ocean taken from somewhere fairly high, into either a sunrise or sunset, the vast expanse of water disappearing over the horizon, still and calm, tinted orange. Artistically it was rather good.
The writing under it said, "Home is wherever your Family is."
"Interesting posters," she said in the end, turning back to Raptaur, who nodded, looking pleased.
"They're not bad. Amy helped with them."
She looked around one last time, then turned to both of them again. "Sorry for the interruption. We thought we'd have these done before you turned up, but got a little delayed. So, how can I help you both?"
Colin stopped staring at the first poster, sitting down in a chair that put it out of his direct line of sight. "This is a somewhat delicate matter and I would prefer not to let it become known to anyone other than the bare minimum number of people right now," he stated, glancing at Panacea. Raptaur followed his gaze, then smiled. She seemed to be doing a lot of that, Dragon fairly sure she was amused by the way the poor man seemed to twitch every time those fangs were exposed.
"Anything that you can tell me you can say to Panacea, I trust her implicitly."
And wasn't that interesting…
"Still, with all due respect I would prefer to keep it between the three of us for now," he said. "There are political implications to the information that it would be best not to embroil a member of New Wave in."
Raptaur looked hard at him, then nodded. "Truth. OK." She turned to Panacea, who seemed to be smiling a little, while Dragon looked at Colin. He was staring at the lizard-woman with what she could recognize as slight confusion.
"Do you mind, Amy?"
"Of course not. I'll go and see Danny, I'll talk to you later." Disappearing into the small block of rooms to the side of the large area, she reappeared carrying her helmet. Colin looked at it curiously.
"One question," he said, motioning to it. "What is that faceplate made of?"
"It's a single perfect crystal of pure aluminum oxide with a very fine mesh of what you're calling EDM fused into it on each side," Raptaur replied. "About half an inch thick. It should be tough enough to handle a high velocity bullet fairly easily a few times at least."
"Very impressive," her friend noted, a tone of approval in his voice. "I may well be interested in discussing such things with you at some point. Your abilities are fascinating and I can see some interesting applications for them."
"Of course," Raptaur smiled. He almost managed to stop the twitch this time. Panacea put her helmet on, waved to her friend and them, then left, closing the door behind her. When she was gone, the giant lizard turned back to them, dropping to all fours then lying down like a cat on her belly, her upper arms folded on the table. "OK. You want to talk about anti-Endbringer weapons. You have a design?"
Noting that she was now entirely businesslike in attitude, the earlier somewhat entertained manner entirely absent, Dragon sat next to Colin, finding that the chair bore the weight of her suit without even a squeak. "Yes. Leet suggested it, Armsmaster and I have been working on it since the evening of the day you gave him that piece of EDM. Armsmaster was referring to it as SaurialSteel then, by the way."
Raptaur looked amused. "She'd like that. We have a different name for it. To be honest, until Leet told us what it actually was we merely thought of it as the good stuff. Something you could use when you didn't want it broken. It's very useful."
"I can imagine," Dragon chuckled.
"How did you meet Leet and Über in the first place?" Colin asked, apparently getting distracted from business for a moment.
She shrugged. "I was in the Ships Graveyard practicing my aim, they came to see what the noise was, we got to talking. He was interested in the stuff so we talked about it for a while, then I gave him that piece."
"And you weren't worried that those two are villains?" he asked, sounding a little surprised.
"Not really. They've never done anything to my family or my friends, or nothing that needs me to look into it, and as long as they don't break the law right in front of me in any serious way, I've got no problems with them. They're actually pretty interesting people," she replied. Smiling again, she added, "Being a villain doesn't make you a bad person."
"That is more or less the popular concept," Dragon commented.
"I'm not one to follow convention."
"Why doesn't that surprise me?"
"No idea." Raptaur was back to looking amused now.
"Is there any reason you haven't taken the opportunity to register with the PRT?" Armsmaster asked. Dragon gave him a look but he didn't seem to notice.
Raptaur inspected them both for a moment, not showing any emotion now. Her reptilian face was impossible for even Dragon to read. "We don't entirely trust the PRT," she finally replied. "Not specific individuals, the organization as a whole. There are… inconsistencies between the public information and the realities of it. I'm not making any accusations, but until we resolve those inconsistencies, we're disinclined to seek closer relations with them, or the Protectorate. I hope you understand. It's nothing personal."
Glancing at Dragon, she added, "We have no real issues with the Guild, aside from their close association with the PRT."
Dragon nodded, thinking furiously. It was obvious that Raptaur and her family had done their homework. Some of the internal policies of the PRT were certainly something that if someone had any choice about they'd probably try to avoid. Most capes didn't have that luxury. These ones did, since there was little likelihood of anyone trying to strong-arm them into anything they didn't want to do until or unless some means of applying pressure they couldn't avoid turned up. She was certain that Director Piggot was deliberately keeping out of it as much as possible for whatever reason she had, and it wasn't impossible that the higher ranks of the PRT weren't yet paying too much attention.
Sometimes, bearing in mind all the strange things that had happened recently, it was hard to remember it had all taken place in less than a month.
Sooner or later, though, that was bound to change. She just hoped that whoever turned up from the top people was smart enough not to just jump in and start making demands. That didn't seem likely to end at all well.
"I presume the same reason is why you and your sister declined formal power testing?" Colin pressed. He didn't seem insulted by the comment the cape had made.
She nodded. "We know what we can do. Why let everyone else? That's not a good idea tactically, after all."
Slowly, he nodded as well. "I understand," he replied. "Oddly enough, I agree."
"Thank you." She studied them again for a second or two. "We're not your enemies, either of you," she went on in the end. "We're on the same side more or less. We protect our friends, we help out where we can, and we'll stop crimes that we see happening. But we're not here to look for fights."
Grinning, she leaned forward, both of them staring at the gleaming fangs. "But like Hookwolf found out, if someone starts one, we'll end it. For good, if necessary."
Dragon distinctly heard Colin swallow from beside her. "Noted," he replied after a few seconds.
"Great." She leaned back, clapping her hands together and rubbing them. "Let's see what you have. What does it do, this weapon?"
Colin produced a large printout that was tightly rolled and clipped into his spare halberd holster, unrolling it on the table. He'd not wanted to carry any electronic version of the data for the weapon around as it was too easily copied or stolen, saying the hard copy was easier to keep track of. Raptaur dropped some weights on it in the corners, then leaned over to study it as he and Dragon took turns explaining the design to her.
When they finished, she stared at them for nearly thirty seconds. "A nuclear powered shotgun forty feet long."
"Twelve point one two meters, to be exact," Colin corrected her. "Which is just under forty feet. With a bore of sixty-seven point two centimeters, or twenty-six point four six inches. Those dimensions proved in simulation to be optimal."
"I see." She stared some more. Eventually she nodded. "OK. It's going to have a bitch of a recoil, isn't it? How are you going to hold it down?"
"We have several options for that. The functionally best one is to use Clockblocker's temporal powers to freeze a bracket or stand in position, fix the weapon to it to allow it to be trained on the Endbringer and track it, then use it. It would definitely solve the recoil issue neatly, as the EDM is more than strong enough to absorb the energy release given an immovable reference point."
"The downside is that Clockblocker's power is rather random, so we'd get anywhere from thirty seconds or so at worst to ten minutes or so at best," Dragon put it. "Not to mention it puts Clockblocker in very close proximity to a small fusion explosion, an Endbringer, and whatever blow-back effects there are from firing the weapon in the first place. There are solutions to all of these but each one adds yet another layer of complexity and adds another possible failure point. Not to mention taking time and putting lives at risk."
"If the EDM was able to be made at its true mass that might be a suitable solution as well," Colin mused. "We could substitute sheer mass for temporally fixed."
"I can do that," Raptaur said idly, still studying the plans. "But if you make it very large you'll lose it into the ground."
Dragon exchanged a glance with Colin. "You can make it without the mass cancellation effect?" she asked carefully. Raptaur looked up.
"Sure. Didn't Leet mention that?"
Colin shook his head. "No, he did not."
"Oh." She shrugged. "I guess he probably thought it was private information and I'd tell you if I wanted to. Like I said, he's not a bad guy in many ways." She smiled. "He looked really surprised when he told me what the stuff actually was and I worked out how to turn the mass cancellation off. It was pretty cool, it made a javelin fall into solid rock like it was air."
Colin stared at her in horror. Dragon nearly locked up.
"Don't worry, I only made it last for about sixty seconds. It didn't fall more than about eleven miles at the most."
The reptilian woman seemed to be thinking. "It would take it about… oh, at least seventeen minutes to reach the core of the planet. That could be dangerous, so I'm not going to do that."
"Please don't," Dragon said weakly, trying not to think about it.
"But yes, I could make a stand that was as heavy as you wanted," she went on, apparently oblivious to their shock. "Whether it's actually practical is another matter entirely. You'd never be able to move it anyway, if it was heavy enough to absorb the recoil it would either be huge, or small but with a high enough mass that it would sink into rock. I don't think it would work very well. You need something you can move quickly, I don't think an Endbringer is just going to stand there and wait to be shot."
"No, that's the problem," Colin agreed, shaking his head then seeming to rejoin the conversation. "We have a number of options for inertial cancellation devices that would relieve a significant fraction of the recoil, but not enough of it to make it practical. Most of them are mutually exclusive due to the technologies involved so they can't be stacked either."
"We've asked Leet whether he has any ideas, but so far haven't heard back from him," Dragon commented.
"OK. I understand. I might have a solution, but it'll have to wait until after Tuesday," Raptaur said slowly, scratching her muzzle as she seemed to think. "I'll get back to you on that. In the mean time, why don't we try making one of these things to see how it all goes together." She stood up, picking up the plans and walked off with them. Dragon exchanged a glance with Colin, then they followed.
Reaching the middle of the room, the lizard-woman inspected the document in her hands closely, nodding to herself, then handed them back to Colin, before turning away from them. She held out her hands, a table with very heavy legs growing from beneath them and expanding both ways until it was some fifty feet long, six feet wide, and four feet off the ground. Dragon stared, as did her friend. That was more than a little impressive.
"OK, that should be about right," Raptaur muttered to herself. Plucking the paperwork from Colin's grip again, she read the dimensions of the main barrel assembly then handed it back. The familiar gray color of EDM began to form a huge tube on the table as she walked along it, running her hand down the length as it grew from nowhere. There was a cradle that it was sitting in forming at the same time.
Reaching the muzzle end, the cape bend down and peered into the barrel, before looking pleased. "That looks pretty close to your drawing." Moving back to the breech end, she reacquired the plans and studied them, while making the rear section of the weapon. It shifted shape under her hands for a few seconds until she stepped back. "How's that?" she asked.
Colin made a small noise in his throat. Dragon sympathized. In under three minutes this bizarre cape had realized the physical form of something they'd been working on for over a week solid, using innumerable processing cycles to simulate. Seeing it form out of nothing like that was… weird.
She moved closer and tapped the barrel, hearing a dull thud. It didn't move at all when she tried pushing harder.
"Twelve point one two meters long, sixty-seven point two centimeter bore, six millimeter wall thickness. The barrel should weigh about six tons, plus this breech mechanism." Raptaur reached out and picked the thing up by the breech end, not showing much effort, then put it down again. "Seems about right. Heavy, but more unwieldy than anything else."
Colin was moving around the device on the table carefully checking it with a number of instruments. Now that it was sitting in front of him he seemed more interested in the thing itself than how it had got there. Dragon joined him on inspecting it. For a first attempt, basically freehand, it was amazingly close.
Her friend made copious notes, then started making requests. Raptaur carried out the modifications until both he and Dragon were satisfied. Eventually all three of them stepped back. "That's one very big gun," she commented.
"Hopefully big enough," Colin replied absently, checking his notes. "All right, that certainly seems to match. Now, the projectiles." He retrieved the case he'd had clipped to the back of his armor and had put on the table some time ago, opening it and removing a metal rod about eighteen inches long, with a carefully machined shape that put most of the mass towards the needle-pointed tip as a bulge perhaps a third of the way back. From there it tapered down to a slender neck, then formed into a conical stabilizer section which was hollow.
"This is the shape the simulations finally arrived on as the most stable and likely to penetrate," he said, handing the steel replica to her. Raptaur studied it with interest, turning it over in her hands. "It may well not fly straight for very long but at more than a hundred and twenty kilometers per second, the flight time will be milliseconds at most. The mass per projectile is calculated to be just over two point three kilograms or approximately five pounds and we should be able to pack close to five hundred of them into the weapon load. At a range of no more than half a mile the grouping is tight enough that they will have spread to encompass an area of approximately forty feet in diameter. That encompasses the entire body area of the Simurgh, and most of that of Leviathan."
"We increased the yield of Leet's suggested fusion core to slightly under five and a half kilotons," Dragon added. "The barrel would take vastly more than that, but that's probably the most we can get away with without the recoil becoming entirely unmanageable."
"The conversion efficiency of energy released as X-rays into kinetic energy is better than eighty percent, but the remainder will be radiated as heat," Colin said after Raptaur had looked the prototype flechette over. "This is a sample of a ceramic polymer ablative insulator that Dragon invented, which should deal with the heat pulse for one or two shots at most."
The reptilian woman took the small cube of dull blue-white material in her other hand and inspected it. "If you need more than two shots you've probably got an angry Endbringer to deal with," she commented. "Running away is probably the best idea at that point."
"That may well be true," he sighed. "Can you duplicate those two items?"
"The projectile is easy," she said, handing him back the original, then a duplicate in EDM, which he took and examined carefully. She handed Dragon one as well. "This stuff will take a little more."
They both stared as she then put the cube in her mouth, bit down on the near-diamond-level-hard material, crunched it up like a breath mint, and swallowed. "Hey, that's not bad," she said, sounding pleased. "Sort of… Aluminumy." Tipping her head to the side she thought for a moment, licking her lips. "Beryllium?" she said tentatively. "I'm getting notes of some rare earth as well… Ah, Hafnium, I think."
Dragon couldn't think of anything useful to say at that point. She wondered what the hell the woman's teeth were made of, though. With her processors close to an exception, she just stared blankly.
"OK, I think I've got it," Raptaur announced, holding up a much larger block of what looked like the same material. Colin took it from her.
"Density seems correct," he said, weighing it in his hand experimentally. "Without testing it properly."
"Take that chunk and analyze it to see if I have it right," she said. "Coating the outside of the barrel is easy, though."
Another half hour's work and they had a prototype shaped charge minus the actual fusion core. Colin had brought a dummy unit, to indicate size and dimensions. They weren't planning on making a live unit until right before it was needed.
Stepping back from the oil drum sized cylindrical assembly on the end of the table, a forest of needles sticking out of the upper end, Raptaur smiled. "That looks like your drawing. Core in there, trigger connection there, detonator there. Tungsten plate with the flechettes embedded at the top." Moving to the gun mechanism, she turned the breech end half a turn and removed it, placing it on the floor, then picked up the nearly two tons of load and carefully inserted it into the exposed breech. Replacing the breech plug she locked it into place. "It fits, too."
"Excellent. Very good work indeed, Raptaur. Your manufacturing methods are efficient and fast." Colin looked genuinely pleased. "I will definitely want to talk to you further about contract work."
Removing the round, Raptaur put it back on the table and reassembled the gun. "What about the real explosive?" she asked. "And actually testing this thing? I assume you don't want to try it for the first time on the Simurgh."
"We may have no choice," he said. "There are massive political implications over detonating a fusion device anywhere, never mind above ground. We still need to work out the best way to approach that, which is something Dragon and I are trying to find a solution to. But having the weapon available should allow more latitude. The simulations show it will work, at least as far as operating to design goes, although whether it will actually damage an Endbringer enough to kill it is highly doubtful. Driving it off is more likely, and would be an acceptable outcome. If you can produce the components of the device that will be irradiated by the blast out of material with a very short lifetime, that should in theory reduce the fallout to near-zero, but even so, people will be… nervous… about such a weapon."
"Nuclear bombs do tend to make people worried," she replied dryly.
He nodded soberly. "Indeed," he said, clearly missing the tone completely. Dragon made a little internal sigh. She loved the man but he was completely oblivious to things that she, a machine, picked up on instantly. If she thought about it she tended to find it proof the universe was an odd place. "It is somewhat annoying in this case although understandable. However, that's our problem, not yours. You've done some exceptional work here, thank you."
"You're welcome," she replied. "We don't like Endbringers any more than you do. We'll do what we can to help."
"That's good to hear," Dragon commented.
"What do you want to do about this thing, then?" she asked, waving at the gun and prototype round. "It's currently set to time out in an hour or so."
Colin studied the device on the table. Dragon heard him subvocalize into his throat mike on their private channel. "What do you think about the fusion core itself?" he asked basically silently. "I'm not particularly sure we should show her how to make one, it's giving a very powerful weapon to a cape, or capes, that while apparently friendly we know very little about."
He kept moving around the gun on the table inspecting it without looking at Raptaur, who was watching him.
"If we want to make the fallout as near zero as possible we have little choice, most of the more dangerous although shorter lived isotopes would be a result of the detonation of the core. The remaining components are less of a problem especially as they will apparently vanish after a short period of time. Also, to be honest, I'm becoming more and more convinced that 'The Family' have much more dangerous abilities than a mere five and a half kiloton fusion bomb. And that I doubt that they would ever use such a thing anyway."
She glanced at Raptaur, who was now watching her with an intent look. There seemed to be a small smile around her muzzle, which led Dragon to a sudden conclusion that both worried her and very slightly amused her.
"And, the final thing is, I'm pretty sure she can hear the communicator in your suit," she sighed. Raptaur's smile widened, exposing some teeth, while Colin jerked up from where he was peering at the prototype round.
"We have very good hearing," the other woman said. "Don't worry, none of us have the slightest interest in nuclear bombs, even little ones. If we wanted someone dead there are much more direct ways that cause far less problems to everyone else." There was silence in the room for a moment. "Not that any of us have any particular interest in seeing anyone dead either. Unless our family is threatened. But you already know that, Saurial made it very clear the first time she met Gallant and Vista."
Looking at the weapon on the table, she added, "I don't mind if you want to take this with you, I can make it permanent. Use it on anything other than an Endbringer and we'll be having words, though. Short and to the point ones."
"Understood," Colin managed to say.
"Calm down, I didn't hear anything that would compromise you," she smiled. "I can't help it. And your heartbeat is way too quick."
"You can hear that from twenty feet away?" Dragon asked, curious and impressed.
"I can hear it from much further than that," Raptaur grinned. "You already knew we had good senses."
"Not that good," Colin muttered. After some thought, he finally shook his head. "Thank you for the offer, but I don't think there's any reason to take this for now. We now know, thanks to your efforts, that it is both possible to make and appears to mechanically work. I will test the sample of ablative insulator and let you know if your duplicate is correct. I assume that you have no objection to repeating this work again and incorporating any required changes?"
"Sure, that's not a problem. Ideally if you can give me some notice, I may be away some of the time, but you can always call Saurial if you can't get me. Or leave a message with the DWU. We're still waiting for the phones to be installed here, that won't happen until after the weekend, but there's an answering service on the number and we can receive emails as well, so that's another method of contacting us."
He nodded, rolling up the plans and putting them away. Raptaur moved over to the weapon, which almost immediately simply disappeared. The table went away with it. Seconds later nothing was left.
"An efficient use of workspace," Colin remarked, sounding pleased. She nodded.
"It's helpful. This place is pretty large but it would soon get cluttered up if we just kept making things that size. I can reproduce it pretty easily, when you want it."
Dragon looked around again, wondering for a moment what was inside the enclosed area and the smaller cube behind it, but feeling like it would be rude to ask. It was like being in another Tinker's lab, there were certain proprieties to observe.
Not to mention that since it was clearly EDM as well, her scans didn't penetrate.
"If you don't mind me asking, what does BBFO do?" she asked curiously.
"Whatever is needed," Raptaur smiled. "We have a wide talent pool to draw from. Today before you arrived we were helping the DWU demolish a number of warehouses for a big project, we've got a contract for quite a lot of work on that one. We're donating our time for it as it's important. Unfortunately I can't go into details, it's confidential I'm afraid. You understand."
Dragon nodded, while not entirely sure she really did.
"Other than that, we have a lot of ideas for other things as well. Some interesting possibilities that could be very helpful to the public at large, but they're only in the prototype stage. Then there's things like security work, demolition, construction, protection of VIPs, that sort of job. We're not members of the DWU for nothing, you know."
"You really are a DWU member?" Colin asked, sounding a little surprised.
"Of course," she replied, producing an ID card and holding it up. Sure enough, it was an official Dock Worker's Union ID, with a picture of her scaly face on it along with various other relevant details. "We wouldn't be working on DWU projects unless we were Union members. None of us are going to take jobs away from other people, especially in the current economic climate. The company isn't owned by them but they have first call on our services."
"I… see," he finally said as she put the card away again. "Are all your family members?"
"Saurial is," she told them, smiling. "Others might join at some point."
Dragon could see her friend was having some problems with all this. To be honest she was too. The contrast between the things they'd encountered in the Atlantic, the odd goings-on in the bay, which at least seemed to be partially explained by what they'd learned this afternoon, and the helpfully cheerful reptilian female standing in front of her, were somewhat difficult to resolve into one picture.
Not to mention the DWU link, which was just odd. One thing was clear, though, which was that the Union had somehow managed to end up with some very serious Cape support..
And where did Panacea fit into it all?
And how did this all tie into mysterious weapons tests in Quebec, internal knowledge of both the Guild and the PRT… The list was quite long. She didn't feel that right now was the correct time to ask, though. Raptaur might well have limits to her hospitality.
"Thank you for your time, Raptaur," she said politely, turning to her. "It's been a very useful few hours. Most informative. It's entirely possible that the Guild may well also wish to engage your company for work in the future."
"Let us know what you need and we can talk about it," the other cape replied.
"I will do. We're going to have to go now but it was good to finally meet you." She glanced at Colin who was staring at the poster on the wall with the very large, very familiar head on it. "If you don't mind me asking, what's the name of that, um, Family member?"
Raptaur followed their eyes. "That's Umihebi. She hasn't been around for a few days. Perhaps you'll meet her, though."
Dragon watched Colin, seeing with long practice the way he managed to avoid twitching yet again, manfully suppressing the reflex. She was pretty sure that Raptaur caught it even so.
"That might be… interesting," she managed to say evenly. Sometimes she cursed her synthetic emotions, they were way too accurately programmed.
"I'll mention you stopped by," Raptaur said cheerily. "It was fun meeting both of you. I've always admired your work. Call any time."
She led the way to the door, opening it for them. "Say hello to Gallant and the other Wards for me, will you, please? I haven't seen any of them for a couple of days."
"Of course I will pass on your regards," Colin said as he left the building, "We'll be in touch fairly soon."
"I'll let you know after Tuesday about that possible solution to the problem as well," she told them. "I can't do anything about it until then, though, we're rather busy from tonight onward."
"Hopefully there's no hurry," he replied, turning to her. "We still have, as I said, a number of logistical and political issues to resolve." Sighing faintly, he added, "Those may prove more difficult than the technical issues."
"Humans can be awkward sometimes," she stated with a smile. He nodded thoughtfully.
"They can. I prefer machines. They are more logical and predictable."
"I can understand that," Raptaur said, for some reason looking at Dragon as she did so. "Machines can be… better than people." There was a pause, then she stepped back inside the building. "I have to get back to other things. Bye."
"Good bye," Dragon said, thinking hard, while Colin nodded, turning without a word to his bike. He got on and started the engine, looking back for a moment at the sign above the door, then shook his head a little and moved off.
Dragon watched the door close behind the huge lizard-like woman, glanced up at the sign herself, then took off, following her best friend back to the Rig, still pondering the mystery that was Raptaur and her 'Family.'
'That was different,' Taylor commented to the Varga, leaning back on her tail and admiring the Saurial poster, which had been Amy's idea and execution. She had posed for it, Amy took a photo with her phone, then the Varga had duplicated the image on paper. He was better than a color printer. 'A nuclear shotgun?! They don't think small.'
"No, apparently not," the Varga chuckled in her head. "It will be interesting to see if it actually works. Not nearly as destructive as the blast voice, of course, but revealing that is revealing everything. I'm not sure they're ready for it yet."
'Neither are we,' she sighed slightly. 'We still have too many things to do to make sure Dad is safe before we really show off too much of what we can do. I'm surprised hardly anyone seems to have caught on that Saurial and Raptaur are the same person yet, to be honest.'
"As I told you a while ago, once humans get an idea into their heads, they do tend to run with it long after it would be a good idea to re-evaluate it in the face of new information," he commented. "I have no doubt that sooner or later people will work it out, but with luck they will, like Lisa, and most likely Über and Leet as well, have their own reasons not to pass the information on. And if we can make Amy's project work correctly that will add a certain amount of confusion to the mix."
She grinned, looking over at the cubical storage block on the other side of the room. 'I'm looking forward to that,' she snickered.
"So is Amy." He sounded like he was as well. "She has a very good mind and a lot of imagination. This is good for both of you. You need someone close to your own age you can relate to as a friend."
'I have the only friend I actually need,' she smiled. 'But I have no objection to making others. I like Amy very much. Her sister is pretty nice as well when she's not so worked up. She put in a lot of effort today to help us.'
"I suspect she'll be back," he laughed. "The girl seemed to be having fun."
'It was nice to be able to do all that for the DWU and the city,' she agreed, looking over as the door opened to reveal Amy, who smiled at her. "Hi," she said out loud.
"I saw Armsmaster's bike leave from Danny's office window," Amy told her as she closed the door. "Did you manage to help them out?"
"Yes, I think so," she replied, straightening up. "It was interesting. The biggest thing we've made so far. They still have some problems with it, but I have a feeling after Tuesday Armsmaster will probably be back with some questions. When he recovers."
She grinned as Amy laughed. "He seemed twitchy," her friend agreed. "More than normal. Usually he's pretty calm." Both of them looked at the posters, each other, then collapsed in laughter.
"That was hysterical, by the way," Taylor giggled. "Thanks for the idea."
"No problem," Amy gasped, wiping tears of hilarity from her face. "Any time."
"Want to do some more on the project?" Taylor asked.
"Yes. We're going to need a lot of onions, though."
"That will probably have to wait until tomorrow, now," she replied, pulling out her phone and checking the time. "It's half past seven. We could get a couple of bags from a convenience store but I don't think there will be anything open that can supply us a ton or so of them."
"That'll do for a start," Amy said, getting off the chair she'd fallen into. "Let's get them and see what we can do. Danny's gone home, he said to call him when we finished. There are still crews working on clearing the warehouses, though, people are all over the place out there under floodlights."
"Dad did say they were planning on working around the clock to get things finished," Taylor noted as she formed her armor into the riding form and dropped to all fours. Walking over to the door she opened it, then locked it behind them after setting the alarm. Amy swung herself aboard and they headed off in search of oniony biomass, which the healer had settled on as the cheapest and easiest thing to work with.
They were going to need a lot of onions...