"That should do it," Lisa said in satisfied tones, looking around with her hands on her hips. "Everything's wired up, all the software is installed, all the cables are nearly bundled up and out of the way, internet and phone systems are all working, the fileserver is backing up all the computers… A job well done, I think."

Taylor looked around as well, smiling. "It's really starting to become a proper workshop now," she replied admiringly. "Fantastic job, guys."

"Why are we backing up onto tape, Lisa?" Amy said from above them. Both the other girls looked up to see her peering down at them from the upper level, holding a bright green tape cartridge in her hand. "Isn't that sort of old technology?"

"It's old, but it's incredibly reliable and fairly inexpensive," Lisa responded. "Those tapes hold over one and a half terabytes each, but they're only around thirty bucks apiece and are close to indestructible without using a hammer. The fileserver backs everything up onto RAID drives, then dumps them onto tape. We just have to change tapes every now and then." She shrugged. "There's enough cartridges in stock to do a separate backup every day for a year. I've got a small fire safe on order as well, rated for media. That should be here for Tuesday or Wednesday. This is basically a small business level storage system, at the better end of reliable. Unless someone steals the entire thing we're safe from almost any type of data loss."

Amy nodded, looking at the cartridge in her hand with some respect, then disappeared again for a moment, shortly reappearing coming down the stairs. "You did your homework."

"I did." The blonde looked pleased. "I made sure that nothing non-trivial was going to make you guys lose any data. I'll print up a short instruction document to explain how it all works."

"Printer!" Taylor looked at them, smacking her forehead with the heel of one hand. "I completely forgot about a printer."

"Comes on Monday," Lisa snickered, a superior expression crossing her face. "Nice color large-format laser printer with lots of consumables. I got a really good deal on it."

"I don't know whether to be awestruck or annoyed at how efficient you are," Amy laughed.

"Awestruck is the correct choice when presented with my brilliance," Lisa chuckled. "I'm pretty sure I thought of everything that's needed for now." She looked at her watch. "Another thought is that I'm hungry, and it's half past noon. Lunch?"

"Sounds like a good idea," Taylor smiled. "After that, we can get to the really interesting work."

All three girls looked at Amy's workroom, then each other, before grinning widely. They headed for the door, Taylor changing into Saurial on the way. Soon the building was empty and quiet except for a low humming sound coming from a number of running computers.

Colin picked up his PRT issue phone and scrolled through the contact list, stopping on a number. "I'll call her, then," he said, turning to Dragon and Legend, who were looking at a set of large printed blueprints stretched across his table, the latest version of the fusion-powered shotgun documented on the paper in fine detail. "I think we've talked it out to the point that another viewpoint is required."

"I'd agree," Legend said, leaning on both hands and inspecting the paperwork, without looking up. "This thing is absolutely terrifying. Will it really work? I mean, the walls of the barrel are less than a quarter of an inch thick and you're proposing to detonate a five kiloton nuke in it!"

"The EDM is vastly tougher than required for a mere five kilotons," Dragon responded. "Having done more tests on the sample Leet gave Colin, neither one of us is sure what actually can damage it. Six millimeters is more than enough to contain a fusion blast many times more powerful than the charge this is designed to take."

The Protectorate leader nodded thoughtfully, standing erect and looking down at the plans. "I suspect it will be somewhat impressive to see fired."

"You'll see it from orbit," she chuckled. "And probably hear it a thousand miles away. It's not the sort of thing anyone is going to miss."

Listening to them talk, Colin couldn't help agreeing. The simulations suggested the visual effects of the weapon firing would be rather memorable. Prodding the relevant on-screen control he listened to the phone ring at the other end, being answered half a dozen rings later.

"Hello, Armsmaster," Raptaur's voice said, sounding pleased to hear from him. "How are you?"

"Well, thank you," he replied. "I was hoping we might meet again, to discuss developments on the plan we talked about the last time."

She snickered a little. "In light of recent events? I assume you've redesigned certain aspects appropriately?"

"We have." A very small smile came and went. "Both Dragon and I had something of an epiphany on Tuesday, and realized what you meant when we met."

"I thought you would," she laughed. "Sorry, I didn't want to ruin the surprise. Sure, we can meet up. Tomorrow would be best, if that's all right with you guys. I'm pretty busy today, although if it's really urgent I could reschedule some other things."

"Tomorrow would be acceptable," he hastened to assure her. "There's no immediate threat although obviously we're coming up on the next likely visit from an Endbringer and we'd like to be ready." He hesitated for a moment, then added, "Additionally, I would like to talk about some technology we hope may assist in the deploying of the weapon and its user, which otherwise could be somewhat awkward. It's actually an old invention of Leet's."

"Really." She sounded intrigued now. "What is it?"

"Essentially a teleportation device, although there are a number of problems with it which preclude using it for most purposes. I don't want to go into details even on a secure phone line, though."

"Fair enough."

"Leet is willing to aid us both on the weapon and the device, are you willing to let him?"

"Sure, I like him. Bring him along. We should also get Über involved, his abilities could be very useful as well."

Colin thought for a moment, then nodded slowly. She was right. "I agree. I'll contact them and arrange to have them meet us at BBFO. When should we come?"

"I'll be there from about half past nine onward, so any time after that is fine."

Glancing at his two companions, who were listening to his end of the conversation with interest, he asked, "Would you mind if Legend also attended?"

There was a short pause, then she replied, "No, not at all. Kaiju thinks highly of him and I'd like to meet him. Bring him along."

"Thank you. We'll be there at approximately ten tomorrow morning."

"I'll see you all then," she said politely. "Until then."

"Goodbye," he responded, before pressing the disconnect button. He moved to join the other two. "She sounded interested and in a good mood." Colin reported. "Hopefully we can finalize the weapon and make some progress on the wormhole generator. I've had it checked out of secure storage and sealed into a shielded container ready for transport."

"How radioactive is it?" Legend asked.

"Not excessively, now. The gamma-activated isotopes that its operation produced luckily mostly had very short half-lives," he told the man. "It's still hot enough that it would be unwise to remain in immediate proximity for days, but a few hours is well within safe limits of exposure. We will need to wear protective gloves to handle it even so."

"I assume you're also bringing suitable monitoring equipment for radiation and so on?"

"Yes, it's unlikely that Raptaur will possess such equipment, although I expect Leet does," he replied. "We'll have to take one of the PRT patrol vans to carry everything. I'll arrange to have it all loaded this afternoon, it will be ready for tomorrow."

"Excellent." The other man looked pleased. "While I can't say I'm entirely happy about this horrendous thing, you're both probably right about it being worth trying." He checked the time, then nodded. "I need to talk to Alexandria in an hour and I need something to eat first. I'll see you both later."

Colin and Dragon watched him go, then turned back to the plans on the table.

"Do you think we can repair and reverse-engineer the wormhole device?" he asked his friend.

"Based on the initial scans you showed me..." She thought for a moment, then shrugged a little. "I'm not certain, but I'm hopeful. With Leet's help, it will be much more likely to be doable than otherwise. His design notes will be a massive help. But until we try, we won't know."

"I suppose not," he noted with a nod, taking a seat at the table and starting to roll the fifteen foot by four foot printouts up. "It will be interesting finding out."

Neither one of them talked about the unnerving issue with Leviathan that they'd noticed the day before, but both of them were still musing on what it all meant.

Putting her Raptaur phone away, Taylor closed the door to the office and locked it. The thing had rung just as they'd entered, by good timing. Another ten seconds and the door would have blocked the phone signal. She'd switched to Raptaur to talk to Armsmaster, but now she reverted to her base form and locked eyes with Amy, who was standing in the doorway to her workroom. The other brunette looked simultaneously nervous and excited.

"Ready to test it?" she asked.

"I think so," Amy giggled a little unevenly. She glanced at Lisa who was sitting at the table, also looking excited.

"OK." Taylor came over, as did Lisa. All three of them went into the workroom. "I called Dad and told him we'd be busy all afternoon and didn't want to be interrupted, ideally," she added. "Also that if weird things happened, to ignore them."

"What did he say?" Lisa smiled.

"That I'd have to be more specific than 'weird' if I wanted to get across the idea of something out of the ordinary," she snickered. "Weird simply describes business as usual nowadays."

"Man's got a point," the blonde girl grinned, making the other two nod.

They all looked at the contents of the bench, before Lisa opened the door to the next room and peered in for a moment. "What's the first step?" she asked.

"This," Amy replied, stroking the largest item on the bench. "This is the proof of concept, and also tests all the neural connections and modifications needed to make that work," she added, indicating the next room with a thumb over her shoulder. "But I want to take it in steps. Slowly and carefully."

"Sounds like a good idea," the other girl commented. Returning to the bench she reached out and felt the thing. "Weird. Cool, but weird."

"I know, right?" Amy laughed. "Come on, we need some more room. Taylor, I need a bench about six feet by two, three feet off the floor."

"Sure," Taylor replied, going out into the main room. Walking to the middle of it she quickly generated the relevant construction. "How about this?"

"Can you make it tiltable?" Amy asked from the door to her workshop.

"Yep." A little more work and the modifications were made.

Lisa moved to inspect it. "Very Frankenstein," she grinned. "All we need is a lot of widgets around the place making sparks and ozone."

Taylor tapped her chin with a finger, looking around thoughtfully. "Hmm."

"Next time," Amy laughed. "Make some trolleys on wheels, will you? Like those ones the guys in the garage use for their tools."

"OK," she said cheerfully, quickly producing a couple of the requested item. "Anything else?"

"Not for now." Grabbing the handle of one of the trolleys, Amy pushed it into the workroom, re-emerging shortly with most of the contents of her bench on it. "OK. I'm going to need some help for this. I'll be monitoring the integration and if anything goes wrong I can abort it, but I don't think it will."

She pointed at a small tray full of suspension goo with a symbiote floating in it. This one was a pale blue color. "However, if it does, stick that on me and activate it. It's an emergency reset version, it will undo anything that's gone bad. My normal one should handle everything if there is a problem, but that's a last resort backup."

"Sure," Taylor said, while Lisa watched everything with intense curiosity. "Chances of failure?"

Amy considered the question for a few seconds. "My powers tell me way under a tenth of a percent worst case," she finally replied. "But that's not zero, hence the precautions. If this works, everything else will as well and there's no further risk. But some of this is really stretching the normal parameters of what life is, so I need to check it out step by step." She grinned at her friend. "I mean, it's not as weird as you are by a massive amount, but I doubt than anyone else would be able to work it out at all. I was really inspired by your biology, if you can even call it that. It gave me so many cool ideas..."

She trailed off with a smile, then shook her head. "All right, let's get on with it."

"Does that thing have to go anywhere particular?" Lisa asked, indicating the symbiote, which she was inspecting with great interest from a couple of feet away.

"No. You can put them anywhere, once they're integrated into the body they're all through it as a non-centralized subsystem. So if you put it on a hand, for example, cutting your hand off after full integration doesn't remove it. You just grow a new hand."

"That's… one of the coolest things I've ever heard of," Lisa noted. "Also one of the most disturbing." After a second or two, she asked curiously, "What happens if you get cut in two? Do we end up with two Amy's?"

"Nope," the single Amy they were looking at giggled. "It would repair the part with the brain. I'm not a worm, you can't clone me that easily."

An expression of determination crossed her face. "Enough talk. Time for crossing into the realms that nature dares not enter."

Taylor and Lisa both looked amused as the girl pulled her shirt over her head, then took off her jeans. "Make me a towel or something, will you please?" she asked. Taylor handed her friend a bright blue beach towel before she finished speaking. "Thanks."

"You should always know where your towel is."

"I do, I'm wrapping it around my waist," Amy snickered. Reaching under it she removed her underwear, then lay on the table face down. "OK. The patient is prepared. Nurse, please begin the procedure."

"Yeth, mathter," Taylor lisped, tilting into a parody of a hunchback, which made Amy and Lisa both grin and chuckle. "Your command ith my with."

She picked up the long heavy piece of biotechnology, while Lisa unfolded the towel from the prone Dallon girl. "Latht chanthe to call it off."

"Get on with it, I've been wanting to try this for nearly a week," Amy sighed. "And knock off the Igor act."

"By your command," Taylor intoned.

"Idiot."

"Perverter of Nature."

"Demon."

"Yep."

Lisa watched and listened, grinning. "You two really are made for each other, aren't you?" she said.

Both brunette girls exchanged a glance, nodded, then smiled.

"Here we go," Taylor warned her friend. "Ready?"

Amy closed her eyes and got a look of concentration. A moment later, she nodded firmly. "Ready."

Feeling a little worried, but also confident that her friend knew her stuff, Taylor gently applied the end of the thing she was holding to the relevant spot. Amy squeaked a little and twitched. "Whoa. Weird. Hold on… OK, integration is working… Neural connection starting… Vascularization in progress… Wow, that feels really peculiar."

"I'm not surprised," Lisa commented, watching with fascination. "If it's any help, my power tells me it's working as well."

"I can feel it. OK, that's the bone reconstruction starting." The healer winced a little. "Bit uncomfortable, I need some endorphins." Her face immediately relaxed. "Woo. Good shit."

Both her companions looked amused. "It's getting warm," Taylor noted. "I can see blood flow, it looks normal."

"Can you grab some onions, I need biomass to make up the extra blood volume," Amy requested.

"Sure, give me a second." Taylor went over to the storage crate she'd made some time ago and made the side vanish, revealing most of the better than a ton of onions they'd had delivered. Grabbing one of the twenty-five pound bags she brought it back to the table on which Amy was lying and slit the top open with a claw, handing her friend a couple of them. Both slumped into goo and disappeared from Amy's hands in seconds.

"Couple more."

"Here you go."

"Thanks." There was a pause, then Amy smiled widely. "It worked. Everything is connected and completely functional."

"Stage One, complete," Taylor said in a deep voice, waving her arms wildly. "Begin Stage Two!"

Rolling over on the table having reached back and grabbed the towel, Amy peered up at her. "You really are very odd," she commented mildly.

Taylor grinned at her friend, then she and Lisa moved to help her up.

"I like it," the Varga said with an impression of amused approval. "It suits her."

Taylor watched her friend walking around with a smile on her face overlaid on an expression of concentration. 'It does, I agree, but I think both of us are biased. It's possible you've had some sort of effect on the way I think.'

"Only in a positive manner, I assure you," he chuckled. "The effect you have on your friends is mostly your fault."

'Probably. At least they're having fun,' she agreed happily. Out loud she said, "Varga says it suits you."

Amy looked over and grinned, while Lisa walked around her, studying her closely.

"Thanks, Varga," the healer replied. "It's very strange, but doesn't actually feel too bad. All the neural linkages seem sound, the blood flow is normal, it's completely integrated exactly as my power said it would. I can use this as the basis for the next modification stage."

"Impressive bit of work, Amy," Lisa finally said, stepping back and rubbing her forehead. "My abilities are telling me all sorts of interesting things, but I have to stop or I'm going to have one hell of a migraine."

"Thinker headache?" the healer asked, looking at the blonde girl, who nodded, wincing a little.

"Yes, they're a bitch. I get them pretty badly sometimes."

"I'll have to look at that soon, see if I can figure out a fix for you," Amy commented. "Luckily I don't get them. Well, unless I try to work her out." She indicated Taylor with a jerk of her head.

"I suspect most people suffer from that," Lisa snickered, making Amy grin and Taylor fold her arms and fix her with a hard look, although inwardly she was amused.

"Hey!" she mumbled. "I'm not that bad."

"Want to bet?" both the others said at once, before exchanging a look of hilarity.

"Why a lizard tail?" Lisa asked, watching Amy walk back and forth getting used to the new appendage she now sported coming out of the base of her spine. It was a deep violet color, proportionally very similar in size to Taylor's Varga-gifted tail. "And why purple?"

Amy glanced at her, then looked back at her new tail. "Partly because it was the easiest thing while I was being inspired by Taylor and the Varga biology, which is very reptile-like even if not actually a reptile, partly because it was a good test, and partly because I kind of like the look," she replied after a moment. "Plus there's a theme going on here, after all. And I like the color."

She turned to look at Taylor who was watching with a smile. "I have a sudden deep understanding of how you must have felt," she continued. "I don't have a demon in my head, but suddenly finding yourself with something like this out of nowhere must have been fucking strange."

"To put it mildly," Taylor agreed. She walked over and knelt down, gently feeling the familiar scaled surface. It looked and felt almost exactly like her own tail, not surprisingly considering how Amy had been influenced by her biology. "It sure feels real," she added, standing up again.

"It is real," her friend replied. "Now."

"So talk me through it again, I want to be sure I understand what I'm looking at," Lisa remarked. "That was made from onions?"

"Pretty much, yes. At least the organic parts were," Amy replied, experimentally moving the end of her tail around, while peering over her shoulder at it. "Taylor made the skeletal parts, they're a bone analog combined with EDM foam for strength. I used the plant biomass to construct the biological systems around that. The biology is extremely odd, not even close to human or anything else living, but it's still biology, not demon life, whatever the hell that really is. But the DNA is patterned on Taylor's quad-helix systems, just vastly less complex and using the normal amino acids with some extra ones I added. The big trick was making it compatible with human systems."

"But you managed, obviously."

"I did. It took a hell of a lot of thought and some false starts. The end result is actually more compatible than some human DNA would be, it adapts to the person it's integrated with and links in without any issue. Plus the bone structure is damn near unbreakable, the muscle tissue is much stronger than any normal living system, and the skin, or scales, are also laced with EDM fibers, as are the tendons and ligaments. Makes them almost impossible to cut."

Lisa whistled in impressed awe. "So that part of you is basically Brute level tough and strong?"

"Oh, yes. Brute six or seven at least," Amy smiled. "A bullet would just bounce off. Might sting a bit, though."

Manifesting a steel sword, Taylor experimentally poked her friend's new appendage with the extremely pointy end, making Amy twitch it out of reach, then glare at her. "We need to check if it works," she said mildly.

"Not like that," Amy sighed.

"How, then? Shoot it?"

After another look, Amy moved her tail back into range again, shaking her head. "Good point. Poke away."

Taylor did, putting more and more force behind it. "Impressive," she said after the sixth poke, which was hard enough to draw blood and make Amy yelp, but snapped the sword. All three of them watched the tiny puncture heal in under two seconds. "Very impressive. That was hard enough to have caused Lung some irritation. A lot more force than a rifle bullet would produce. I'd say it works pretty well."

"It's still pretty weird, but it's getting less so fast as I practice," Amy commented, walking around in a circle, then waving and flexing the tail. "A very successful test."

"Can you extend the same skeletal and musculature upgrades to the rest of your body?" Lisa asked curiously.

"The latest symbiote adds a lot of the mods, except for the major structural parts," Amy replied. "When I turn it on, in theory I should be a lot stronger, but to get the best results I'll need to upgrade my skeleton, ligaments, muscles, all that sort of thing, to handle the strains. Whatever normal Brute powers do to get around that I haven't worked out yet. I've reinforced it quite a bit but there are limits with normal human biology. I need to keep experimenting, I've got a lot of data from healing Parahumans over the years but I've never really though about that aspect of it until recently. But I've upgraded my neural conduction speed to decrease my reflex time, improved my vision a lot, and my hearing, things like that. I'm more than a little hesitant to poke around in my brain, so I'm not going to unless I can work out a way to do it safely."

"I'm not surprised," Lisa said with wide eyes. "Your brain is pretty important."

"It's where I live," Amy laughed. "Don't worry, I'm not doing anything that I can't undo. All this is done through my symbiote anyway, and it won't do anything that will harm me unless I override it, which I have no intention of doing."

"Are you going to do the structural modifications?" the blonde asked.

"Not yet, I'm still working out the best method to do it, and how to make it look normal. I don't want anyone to work it out, obviously." Amy shrugged. "A work in progress, I guess. But this test is good, everything worked to design."

"Are you going to wear it home?" Taylor asked with a grin.

Putting her hands on her hips, Amy stared at her, the tail resting on the floor behind her. "You don't think it's possible that Mom might wonder why I now have three and a half feet of lizard's tail coming out my ass?" she asked with asperity. "The woman is not unobservant."

"How are you going to get properly used to it if you don't live with it for a while?" she asked in a reasonable tone.

"Again, not entirely unnoticeable," Amy sighed. "People will talk. And point. And run in circles like headless chickens."

"There is a way around that, Amy," the Varga said with amusement through Taylor. "As you are aware of if you consider the matter."

Amy looked at her friend, then Lisa, then her eyes widened. "Shit. Would that work?"

"Certainly. I am uncertain if I can teach anyone other than Taylor demon magic, or any form of magic for that matter, although it is an intriguing possibility that deserves future experimentation, but applying the same spell to your current extra feature that Taylor enjoys on her own tail is entirely possible." The demon smiled with Taylor's mouth. "The spell is stable once active, it will continue to function for a considerable time without further energy input. There are limits to it, but the application to living beings is fairly straightforward. If you'd like me to do it, I am happy to."

Taylor, the Varga, and Lisa all waited for Amy to answer. She was scratching her nose and thinking hard. "You're certain it won't suddenly… wear off, or run down, or whatever the hell magic actually does?"

"None of those things will happen," he assured her. "I can link it to your own… life force, is the closest I can come to it in English… which in addition to the magic I will put into it, should suffice to keep it active for several months at a minimum. I will reinforce it whenever necessary so it should work for arbitrarily long periods of time."

"It would be an interesting experiment," Amy mused. "A long term test, and it would allow me to continue tweaking the systems… Hell, why not? If she can get used to it, I can." The girl waved at her friend, who grinned.

"Is this going to be a new fashion?" Lisa asked with a giggle.

"Who knows?" Taylor asked, shrugging. "It makes more sense than some fashions I've seen. It's at least useful."

"I will exclude Taylor and Lisa from the spell," the Varga told them. "Hold still. You may feel a slight tingle."

Taylor sensed the magic in action. Amy twitched, then muttered, "That was really strange." She looked down at herself for a moment. "It doesn't look any different."

"It won't to you," he assured her. "But no one else other than Taylor or Lisa will notice it, the Assassin's Cloak will prevent any discovery. Or photographs."

"Except from Leet's Snitch," Taylor added, making them look at her. She smiled. "He told me about it, it's what gave him and Über the clue that led them to working me out. But he won't tell anyone, even if he happens to notice."

"Good enough." Amy wandered around some more, then jumped up and down a little, before doing a neat cartwheel which made Lisa stare, then clap. "It's affecting my balance but not so much I can't compensate."

"I tripped over my own tail and fell down the stairs the next day," Taylor giggled. "I kept getting it stuck under things as well. It was sort of embarrassing, but Dad thought it was hilarious."

Both girls laughed. "I can imagine," Lisa snickered. "He's got a real sense of humor, your father."

"You really are going to need to get seats with tail-holes now if you keep that for a while," Taylor pointed out to her friend. "Your first upgrade for your truck."

Amy looked thoughtful, then nodded. "You're right. Oh well, I can deal with it for now. This worked perfectly, let's try the real experiment."

"You'll need to modify it a little," Taylor said.

"I know, but that won't take long. Actually, this might even make it easier." Amy considered the matter, before heading for her workroom. "OK, you two, we need about half a ton of onions to finish it off. Get to work."

"Proper slave-driver isn't she?" Lisa asked in a loud whisper as she moved to help Taylor start carrying bags of onions into the workroom.

"The Amy orders, we merely follow those orders," Taylor replied calmly.

"Follow them faster, minions," Amy shouted from inside the workroom. "The Amy commands you!"

"All hail The Amy," Lisa chuckled, picking up a bag and following Taylor, who was laughing to herself. "You created a monster."

"Nope. Amy created a monster. I merely am one."

Taylor looked over her shoulder with a smirk on her face, then both of them entered the workroom, from which odd sounds were now coming.