"Isn't that your sister?" Dennis asked, glancing sideways and stopping dead. Vicky, who had her arm around Dean's waist and was floating about half an inch off the ground allowing him to tow her along, followed his eyes. The back of someone who was obviously Amy was just visible, standing in the entrance to one of the smaller covered markets that opened off this end of the Boardwalk, fairly close to the multi-level car park they'd parked in. She appeared to be talking to someone but none of them could see who.

"Yes, it is," she confirmed with a smile. "Told you that was her truck on the bottom level."

"I couldn't see the license plate, Vicky, so all I knew was it was a shiny blue one," he replied. "Lots of shiny blue trucks exist."

Next to him, Chris snickered, but said nothing.

"Let's go and say hi," Vicky said, then got a cunning look. "Or..." she said slowly. Dennis looked at her with his eyebrows up.

"Or…?" he repeated with a questioning lilt to his voice.

"Or let's not say hi. Let's say something else." Vicky grinned, let go of Dean, then floated towards her sister very slowly, keeping to the side of the pedestrian area behind cover, a smirk on her face. Dennis watched with a grin of his own, then followed. Chris went with him, Dean bringing up the rear with a tiny sigh.

The quartet moved closer and closer, until they were only a couple of feet behind Amy, who was still apparently oblivious to their presence as she chatted to one of the stallholders, who spotted them but said nothing. Vicky held up a hand, counting down on her fingers. Around them, a number of pedestrians were watching with a certain level of tolerant amusement, no one interfering. Several of them were apparently laughing a little at the ongoing prank.

Reaching 'one', they all, even Dean, took a deep breath, opened their mouths…

"Hi There!"

All four screeched in shock at the loud deep voice which sounded without warning from right behind them, whirling around and stumbling back. Amy, now at their rear, started laughing like a fool, while they gaped at the huge violet lizard which was smirking at them.

"I told you that someone was stalking you, Amy," the thing said, watching their reaction with satisfaction. "Not very well, though, I could hear them talking about it from all the way over here." She leaned down and sniffed, Vicky looking up over a foot at the green eyes radiating amusement and staring, motionless. "This one was the ringleader."

"My sister, Victoria," Amy giggled. "Vicky, meet Ianthe, a new friend of mine. Ianthe, that's Dean, her boyfriend, Dennis, and Chris. They all go to school with me."

"School. Where you get formally taught specific skills, right?"

"That's it."

"OK. Sounds like a good idea. Obviously they don't teach hunting skills, or else these guys missed some classes." Ianthe grinned down at them. "Joking of course, I'm pleased to meet friends of Amy's."

"I've seen you on PHO," Dennis suddenly said, smiling widely, as his heartbeat returned to normal. "Some of the things you were posting were hilarious."

"Thank you very much, Dennis," Ianthe replied with a pleased look. "I find your interactive community interesting, there's a lot of useful information available on these Parahumans you seem to have so many of." She looked thoughtful for a moment. "However, there are some oddly disturbed individuals making remarks that are clearly erroneous, simple logic would tell them that. It's somewhat puzzling. I saw a number of posts from someone called 'XXVoidCowboyXX' that were more than a little paranoid, for example."

Dennis and Chris exchanged a look, then snickered.

"You can safely ignore VoidCowboy, he's an idiot," Chris chuckled. "It's a running joke on the Brockton Bay forums, he always comes up with the craziest theories you could imagine, then gets really angry when people tell him he's talking crap. There's a sort of initiation rite for new posters to see how many posts it takes replying to him to make him say something that gets him a tempban. I think the record at the moment is three."

Ianthe looked at them, then Amy, before grinning. "How odd. Well, local customs are always good to learn." She looked around at the crowd watching them from a safe distance, a number of people taking pictures. "And everyone here is so friendly and interested. It's nice."

"We'd better be getting on, Ianthe," Amy interrupted after checking her watch. "I need to go home to drop some things off, then I wanted to stop by the hospital to see if anything there needs doing. Do you want to come? I can see if they'll let you do some healing if it's needed."

The lizard-creature looked very happy. "Could I? I love learning more about you humans. It's fascinating that such simple biology creates so many variations and such a high intelligence. You've certainly evolved a lot over the last little while."

She looked around again, scratching her chin. "You know, this whole area was under really thick ice only a relatively short time ago, and now look at it! You'd never guess. Good work, by the way."

Amy nodded mildly, while the other four stared at each other. Dennis was frantically wondering if she actually meant what that sounded like she meant.

"Nice to meet you all," Ianthe added, looking at them with a smile. "I'm sure we'll see each other again at some point. My cousins say this city is really cool, and I'm going to be around for a while. It's a lot of fun so far. Bye, then."

She walked off with the other Dallon sister, talking animatedly and pointing at interesting things, a small crowd following with many phones taking images and video. All four teenagers watched until the pair were out of sight.

"That was..." Chris very slowly said. He stopped, then looked bewildered. "I have no idea what that was."

"Did she really just imply that she could remember this area being under ice? As in, the last ice age?" Vicky asked faintly.

"Can't be true, surely?" Dennis muttered. He looked up at his friends, who were all appearing more than a little stunned. Dean was still gaping after the odd pair, his expression undecipherable even to someone who'd worked next to him for a couple of years.

Eventually, by unspoken but mutual agreement, they decided to ignore the less understandable parts of the recent encounter because it made their heads hurt, and headed for the pizza house that was the reason for their trip.

It was a fairly quiet meal, considering.

Safely driving towards the Dallon household, Amy looked in the rear-view mirror and met a pair of green reptilian eyes which were silently expressing great glee. "You're a total menace," she giggled. "Letting you do this was probably a bad idea."

Lisa shrugged, smiling to herself. "They seemed nice."

"They are. They also seemed very, very confused."

"But I can guarantee not one of them thinks that Ianthe is Amy Dallon," Lisa chuckled.

"No, I expect they don't. Don't make 'Ianthe's' backstory too complicated, I have to remember all this in case anyone asks."

Lisa nodded, still smiling. "I just ran with the idea."

"Run a little more slowly, I can't keep up." Amy grinned at her friend. "Under ice? Really?"

"Well, it was, you know. Ice age and all that. I didn't actually say I had personal knowledge of it, I was merely stating a known fact." Lisa looked smug. "If, somehow, they chose to read more into it than I intended, that's hardly my fault, is it?"

"Clearly not. One should never jump to conclusions from limited data," Amy laughed. "I bet they're having a very strange conversation right now."

They shared another look, then laughed a little more. On the spur of the moment Amy decided that as long as they were doing this they might as well do it right and headed for Aunt Sarah's house, wondering if Crystal and Eric were home at the moment.

"Wormhole generator?" Taylor looked at Armsmaster, then Leet. "Really? Wow, that's pretty impressive."

"And unfortunately not currently functional," Armsmaster replied. "However, I'm hopeful that it can be repaired. Possibly duplicated as well. If you can give me some help, we can bring it in, along with the other equipment I brought. I'd like to look at it before we go any further, whether or not it can be made functional will determine the final form of the weapon."

"If we can make it work we should be able to use it to eliminate the recoil," Leet explained.

She thought about his comment, then nodded her understanding. "By firing a mass in both directions, then having the rearwards one go through a portal?"

"Exactly. It could be redirected to somewhere where it wouldn't matter, but it would absorb the recoil energy completely."

After a moment, she asked tentatively, "Couldn't we redirect it forwards as well? If we fired identical projectiles in two directions then made both sets come out the front, assuming that's possible, it would seem to me it would eliminate the recoil and double the firepower in one operation."

All three Tinkers suddenly looked very thoughtful. "That..." Leet began.

"...is a very interesting idea," Dragon completed for him. They exchanged a look.

"Think it would work?"

"It's your wormhole generator. But I can't immediately see why it wouldn't, assuming it conserves momentum on anything that passes through it."

"Which it does."

Armsmaster was making sketches on a large stack of paper she'd produced for notes. "Yes, that makes a number of things easier," he muttered. "Assuming we can duplicate the device, we'd need at least two of them, one for transportation and one for the weapon. I don't think it would be easy to use the same unit for both purposes." He looked up from his drawings, tapping the pen in his hand on the paper. "Excellent suggestion, Raptaur."

"Thank you. It seemed obvious when I thought it through."

"It is obvious, assuming you see it," he agreed. "Obvious ideas are surprisingly difficult to come up with sometimes. Let's get the device in here and see what we have to work with. I have radiation shielding suits for myself, Legend, Leet, and Über. Dragon's power armor is already heavily shielded. Can you provide your own?"

"Yes, but I won't need it," she smiled. "I'm very radiation resistant." The Varga had assured her that no mere gamma radiation was going to cause problems and she trusted him.

"Excellent. That simplifies things." He got up and headed for the main entrance. She poked the switch that operated the large roller door, which rumbled up into the ceiling.

Inspecting the PRT truck, she looked at the opening. "You may as well back the entire truck in, it will be quicker," she remarked. The man nodded, already heading for the cab. Shortly she was closing the door again with the vehicle inside the building. He opened the back doors, then pointed at a four foot cubed crate with a number of radiation warning signs in bright yellow and black on it. "If you can retrieve that and take it to a free area, then make an EDM enclosure around it, I will distribute the radiation suits."

"Sure." It only took her a few minutes to do as requested. She made a twenty foot square, ten foot high block with a door in it, much like a smaller version of Amy's workroom, the crate in the middle of it. Armsmaster brought in a number of work lamps on stands which he'd had in the truck, the extension cords providing power running through the wall where she'd made a small hole, then closed it up around the cabling. When they were all inside and the lights were on, she closed the door. "Now what?"

"We open the crate and check the radiation level," Armsmaster said, pulling a small device from a slot in his armor and turning it on. She watched as Über and Leet each took one side of the crate and under his instruction lifted the top after he punched a quick series of numbers into the electronic lock on the top, which beeped at them. As soon as they lifted it a little his device started making a clicking sound. She could see an interesting and oddly colored glow coming out of the box, which she realized was the low level gamma radiation, visible to her Varga vision.

"Not too bad," he stated. "Not safe for long term exposure, but it's not a serious hazard. Remove the lid entirely and put it over there in the corner."

The two young men did as requested, then came back. "Looks more or less intact," Leet commented, studying his invention. He was holding his tricorder, which he used to scan the thing. "Actually it's almost completely intact. As far as I can see, the main problem is that the gamma emission seriously damaged some of the structural parts around the singularity guide frame, which has warped. It relies on a very tight tolerance, even a few microns out of alignment would make it stop working." He looked slightly dubious. "I think."

"Singularity?" Armsmaster echoed, looking appalled.

"Of course. That's how you make a wormhole, you need a hollow singularity rotating at a very high speed. This thing makes one as a toroid and spins it up. It's a generated gravity field, not a real black hole, the mass is mostly virtual."

"Virtual mass." The Protectorate Tinker looked like he was in physical pain at the concept.

"Virtual negative mass, actually," Leet mumbled, on his hands and knees staring into the innards of the complex device. Dragon met her friend's eyes, both of them shaking their heads.

"How are you not running the world if you can do this sort of thing, Leet?" she asked wryly. He looked up at her, frowning a little.

"Mostly because they tend to fail pretty fast, and for some reason I can never make them work right again. Usually because they blow up if I try."

"Perhaps you shouldn't try in this case," Legend, who was watching with interest from near the door, suggested. "I can't help but think the words 'singularity' and 'blow up' shouldn't really be used together."

Über chuckled, slapping his friend on the back. "Man has a point," he said.

"He does," Leet sighed. Standing up he pointed. "That all needs to be replaced with something stronger. Let's look over my notes, maybe you can see how it's meant to work. Raptaur can probably make a new part, assuming that's the only problem." He glanced at Taylor who nodded slowly, studying the machine. It was horrendously complicated and she could barely follow any of it, not having even a fraction of the background necessary. Even so, she was more than willing to give it a try if the Tinkers could work it out.

Between them, they could probably design practically anything. If they could explain it and break it down into simple structures, she and the Varga could probably make them. It seemed worth a try.

Two hours later there were large printouts all over the table, the floor, and taped to the walls. Dragon and Leet were deep in a discussion of one section of stupidly complicated electronics, apparently having fun, while she was staring at an oddly formed piece of metal in her hand. "Nearly there," Armsmaster said, scanning it with yet another device he'd produced from a huge bag of equipment. "This section is twenty-three microns too thick. The aperture needs to be half a millimeter larger on the x axis as well."

"OK," she replied, making the part change a little. Both she and the Varga were concentrating ferociously, the details needed were extremely small and complicated. Despite that, they were having a lot of fun and learning a lot.

Another hour passed slowly, but in the end they had a pile of parts on the table which she'd made, the last of which Dragon and Armsmaster were carefully checking. "It looks like it matches the design and the damaged unit perfectly," Dragon finally announced. "Assuming that this is the only fault, I believe it will restore it to functionality. I also have a good understanding of the control system and electronics, I can easily manufacture new units. I'd suggest we put it back together and see if it works. If it does, the next stage would be to try making a duplicate and transfer the control system over to it. If that one also works, we can make a new set of electronics in your lab, Armsmaster, and fit that to the first system."

"Which would allow you to duplicate the entire unit," the other Tinker said.

"Yes. I'll need to run tests on it for a couple of days, but if we get that far, I'm probably going to be able to understand how it works and make other versions of it. Bigger or smaller. The design is actually extremely clean and modular, I'm impressed." Leet looked pleased at her words.

"If you really can make more, I'll be more than impressed, believe me," he said. "I knew you were good, but I had no idea you were this good."

"I always thought Tinker tech was really difficult if not impossible to copy or reproduce, except either by the original Tinker or in rare cases," Über said, watching and listening with interest. He'd been using his own abilities to rapidly learn enough about electronics and physics to help them, to significant effect.

"It has that reputation for good reasons, Über," Armsmaster remarked, most of his attention engaged on minutely examining the last of the larger pieces under a complicated electronic microscope he'd dug out of the truck and set up on the table. "In the majority of cases, duplicating Tinker work is extremely difficult, tending towards implausibly so. The phenomenon was intensively studied in the initial years after Parahumans first appeared. There are several theories as to why this is so, none of which fully explain it."

He gently rotated the part a couple of degrees, his face half buried in the viewing hood, then without looking made a note on the pad next to him. "At the time, there was little success in duplicating Tinker designs, except when the original Tinker did it. In some cases even they can't repeat the feat, as with Leet, although generally neither having the sheer breadth of his talents, or the apparent inability to make more than one of any specific design." Taylor noticed Leet nodded, but looked disgruntled about this. She could sympathize, it must have been enormously frustrating for the poor guy.

"Tinkers specializing in chemistry are the easiest to copy the work of, although even there it's often very complicated. But a chemical, no matter how complicated, is eventually only made from elements we have a very good understanding of from hundreds of years of research. The method by which such a Tinker might produce the chemical may be difficult or technically impossible for someone else to reproduce, but the chemical itself is amenable to analysis and duplication, given enough time and effort. And money, of course. For example some Tinker drugs are so complicated that it's simply not worth the cost of attempting to make them by conventional methods, it's cheaper to pay the Tinker to do so. Sometimes they are fairly straightforward and get licensed to a manufacturer. Medhall Pharmaceuticals here in the city holds several such licenses."

Again he made a minute adjustment to the part, then tweaked one of the dials on the microscope a little. The light projected onto it changed color slightly.

"When it comes to technology of this type, though, the situation is more difficult. Often the devices are built from common parts and materials that according to conventional knowledge simply can't do what they demonstrably can do. When faced with evidence of something apparently breaking physical laws, repeatedly and controllably, the only two rational explanations are that either your knowledge of those laws is deficient or it is a hoax. Tinker tech isn't a hoax. So the conclusion is that it is drawing on a deeper understanding of how the universe works than we currently possess. Somehow, the Tinker ability confers what amounts to a near-instinctive understanding at a level far beyond normal knowledge."

Sitting back, he nodded, removing the part and putting it on the table with the others. "It would appear to be a perfect duplicate, well done, Raptaur."

"Thanks."

Turning to look at Über who was looking very interested, he continued his mini lecture, clearly invested in the explanation. "It's very noticeable that in most cases a Tinker has no formal training in any form of technological capacity, often due simply to age. But they still perform what could almost be called miracles. Normally they have a specialty, which can take some time to develop, and education in the relevant field often aids them in their work, but it's not required. They also usually start off fairly small and as they develop their skills, produce more and more complex designs. It would appear that Tinkering is as amenable to practice as any other skill."

He looked at Leet who was also listening from next to Dragon. "Your colleague is a very unusual case, he appears to have no specialty, aside from being able to make one of more or less anything. Often things which are even in Tinker terms somewhat unexpected." Waving at the disassembled parts of what was hopefully a wormhole generator, he added wryly, "Case in point."

Über nodded thoughtfully.

"However, while in many, if not most, cases of advanced Tinker tech the devices are often a very unpleasant mess of improvisations upon improvisations, which has been suggested to be due to requiring things that simply don't exist at our current technology level, Leet's designs, this once being a good example, are far more cleanly laid out. I have no idea at the moment exactly what the operating principals of the wormhole generator are, but I can follow what it does more easily than I expected."

He sounded very pleased, and also a little surprised. "It's basically a very carefully made R&D prototype, as if it was the end result of an entire design phase where he skipped over all the intervening stages and arrived at the unit that would be used to develop a mass-producible device. Most Tinkers, myself included, require those missing stages to refine our abilities. The end result is normally very touchy and needs constant adjustment by the originating Tinker. Dragon is one of a very small number of people who can actually make devices that can be maintained to a degree by a good technician with the right tools and knowledge. That's extremely unusual."

"What it all sums up to, in far fewer words than my friend here used," Dragon put in with a smile in her voice, "is that Leet's technology is much more likely to be something I can reverse-engineer and duplicate than most Tinkers produce, for some unknown reason. This device is a good test, and I'm very hopeful. Armsmaster's technology is an absolute bitch to figure out."

Taylor, Leet, and Über all snorted with laughter at her comment, while Legend smiled. He'd been listening quietly for some time, watching what was going on with great interest. Armsmaster sighed, but there was the tiniest hint of a smile around his mouth for a moment.

"Kid Win's is worse, from what you said," he remarked.

She nodded. "It is, but that may be at least partly because he hasn't worked out what, if anything, his specialty is. All his designs are solid, but they're also very… over-designed… at the moment. There seem to be way too many parts needed for the job for some reason. I suspect when he's got more experience it will settle down to something a little more consistent."

"That would be ideal," the power-armored man noted with a certain amount of mild irritation in his voice. "The boy is talented and driven but also annoyingly inefficient in his work. Hopefully that will resolve itself sooner rather than later."

"You know you actually like him," Dragon chuckled.

The man looked embarrassed for a moment, but shrugged. "He's not unwelcome company much of the time. Despite his association with Clockblocker, he can be serious when it's required."

"Ah, dirt on the inner workings of the Wards," Über snickered. Armsmaster glanced at him as if he'd suddenly realized for the first time that he'd been talking to a pair of minor villains, looking embarrassed again.

"Don't worry, we're all friends inside this building," Leet hastily said. "We're not going to use anything we learn here against anyone. Promise."

"If nothing else we have no wish to annoy the Family," Über added, motioning at Taylor, who smiled at them. Everyone looked at her for a moment.

"Thank you," Armsmaster said, looking somewhat relieved. "In that case I believe we should reassemble the new parts and the functional components of the original device and test it."

"Sounds like a plan," Dragon agreed, moving to the end of the table which was covered in neatly laid out circuit boards and other electronics. Soon she and Leet, assisted by Über, were busy putting it all back together.

Taylor and Armsmaster reassembled the mechanical subsystems, her mostly holding things in the right place with all four hands, while he screwed and bolted components together. It took nearly an hour but in the end they had a finished piece of equipment which looked just like the old one. Unlike the original parts, which were now safely stowed away in the shielded case, none of these glowed with gamma light.

"So how do we test it?" she asked curiously. "If it emits hard radiation, will your suits be enough to protect you?"

"I'll be fine for an hour or so, my armor is hardened against radiation," Dragon commented. She looked at Taylor for a moment. "From what you said you won't have any problems either. I would suggest you and I take it into the shielded enclosure and test it there. Once we know it works, assuming it does, we can proceed with the next stage."

"OK."

"I have a series of radiation-hardened cameras I'll install with the lights, if you can make another shielded opening for the cables," Armsmaster added, motioning to Über who went with him to the truck. A few minutes later they'd extracted a pair of monitors even bigger than the ones Lisa had acquired and set them up on the table, cabling running from them through the wall of their test chamber to the camera which he'd clamped to a pair of the light stands, giving two views of the middle of the room via wide angle lenses.

She picked the generator up very carefully and carried it inside. Dragon followed her with a bag of equipment and a stack of notes that she'd made while talking to Leet. Closing the door, she turned to the generator and inspected it closely, nodded, and connected a cable between a port on her power armor and the machine. "This should provide enough energy to run it according to Leet's specs," the Tinker woman said.

Taylor watched as she started flipping switches on a panel, a sharp click sounding, followed by a rising hum. This settled down at a pitch and volume that was slightly worrying, but it seemed to be what she was expecting. "So far, so good," the Canadian cape commented. "If the singularity comes online, we're probably in with a chance."

Reaching out she prodded a button. There was a series of loud pops and a smell of ozone, then the hum wound up to a deafening screech, which abruptly stopped, resuming the previous sound without anything visible happening.

"Did it work?" Taylor asked curiously.

Dragon pointed a scanning device at the machine, manipulating it for a few seconds. "I believe it did," she replied with a tone of triumph. "The power draw is right and I'm reading low level gamma emission, which I think is the singularity idling."

Indeed, Taylor could see the almost indescribable color of gamma light leaking out around some of the panels comprising the outer casing of the device. "What's the next stage?"

"Give it some exit coordinates, then start the wormhole," the Tinker said absently, already working on the interface panel connected to the generator. "I'll program it to put the exit twelve feet away in a northbound direction at the same height."

Looking in that direction, Taylor nodded, it was just inside the enclosed area. The final command was entered and Dragon pressed the last control. Without any particular fuss or sound, a circular aperture with a glowing orange border appeared in the specified place. Taylor stared at it, then looked back to the generator, over which an identical hole in space was hanging, only with a blue border. She could see a large amount of gamma radiation coming from this one, while only a small amount was leaking from the far end.

"Holy shit," she muttered, astounded. "It works."

"Looks like it," Dragon said triumphantly. Hearing an odd faint sound from outside the shielded zone Taylor cocked her head and listened, smiling when she worked out it was Über and Leet yelling in triumph.

"Cool as fuck," she breathed, moving over to look at the blue-bordered wormhole. "Can we put something through it?"

"We need to test it, go ahead," her companion said.

Generating a small ball of steel she tossed it at the circular violation of reality, watching with amazement as it passed through without any effort and popped out the other one, dropping to the floor and rolling to the wall. After staring for a moment, she manifested a yard long rod of the same material and cautiously poked it in the near end, watching as half of it waved around twelve feet away.

"That's incredible," she snickered.

"The gamma flux is pretty bad, but oddly enough only at the generator end," Dragon noted, checking another hand-held device which was clicking so quickly it sounded like rushing water. "The other end is radiating at a fairly safe level, it would take hours of exposure to become a hazard. This rate at this end is far higher, it's not lethal instantly, but an unshielded human would reach their lifetime dose rate in a few minutes. Are you sure you're OK with it?"

"Yep, it's no problem for me," Taylor replied, still waving the rod through the open wormhole, experimenting with what happened when it hit the side, which was simply that it stopped like it was encountering a solid obstruction. After a few more waves, she got rid of it then tentatively stuck a finger across the threshold. There was a faint tingling sensation but that was it.

"This is fascinating, Brain," the Varga commented, examining the wormhole. "It is vaguely reminiscent of a portal spell, but using a somewhat different technique. Magic does it without the extraneous radiation, but such spells are very complex to perform. Hopefully one day I can teach you. But the main drawback of that sort of magic is that it's far easier to create such portals between worlds rather than different places in the same one. This device would appear not to have that limitation."

'The radiation is definitely safe for me?' she queried. To be honest, it felt oddly refreshing to her, rather than dangerous.

"Certainly. Such emissions can be used as a source of energy for a demon, in fact. We will come to no harm at all with such trifling amounts. It would require several orders of magnitude increase to become awkward and then only because you might get indigestion." He was laughing a little as he spoke, making her smile inside.

'Great. So I can do this.' She stuck her head through the wormhole and looked around. Craning her neck she could look back around the edge of the thing at her own body, which was very weird. Dragon was staring at her. "Cool," she snickered. "Can you make it bigger?"

"Ah..." The tinker seemed lost for words for a moment, then shook her head and looked at her notes. "Yes, get your head out of the way and I'll reprogram it."

A minute or so later the opening was some seven feet across, the bottom edge a couple of inches over the floor. Dragon had shut it down, then restarted it, having moved the blue end to one side and left the orange one in the same position as before. "Hey, idea," Taylor said excitedly. "Can you change the direction of the other end? I mean, like at the moment something goes in here and comes out there going in the same direction. Can you make it so it exits towards us rather than away?"

"Yes, that's just a rotation of the relevant vector equation," Dragon muttered thoughtfully, having started fiddling with the control tablet half-way through her question. There was no visible change to the wormhole but she nodded, satisfied. "There, that should do it."

Flipping another ball through the hole, Taylor smiled when it came out the far end towards her rather than the wall. Ducking her head, she jumped through after it, finding that she was suddenly on the other side of the room with no perceptible delay, facing Dragon. "This is the coolest toy ever," she laughed, going back, then leaning through it and waving at herself.

"Successful test, I'd say," Dragon chuckled. "Here, please carry this radiation monitor with you and do that again." She handed Taylor one of her devices, which the girl took before jumping through again and walking back. Returning the device she amused herself again with the wormhole.

"Hmm. Yes, that would be more of a problem," the woman said after a moment. "The radiation flux during a transit of the wormhole is very high. Even through a shielded suit most people would end up pretty toasted. Unless we can work out a way around that this isn't going to be very useful for normal transportation purposes." She sounded somewhat disappointed, but not entirely surprised. "Pity."

"It won't penetrate EDM, so I could make some properly shielded suits like the ones I did for Amy and New Wave," Taylor suggested from the other side of the room, motioning with her hands which were next to Dragon. She was still finding the thing endlessly amusing. "But I'd need to work out something better than the faceplate of the current design, it would probably leak."

"A periscope with a couple of mirrors would be the obvious approach," Dragon mused out loud. "That might work. But it would also be a lot of effort for you and your family to go to considering the number of people who turn up to Endbringer fights. Not to mention that some of them probably aren't people you want to give indestructible costumes to."

"No kidding. If nothing else, I'd make them with a fairly short duration to prevent misuse, although even that is open to abuse if they don't respect the Truce." Pulling her head out of the thing, she had a sudden thought and asked, "What happens if it turns off with something half-way through it like that?"

"According to Leet, it'll get ejected from whatever side has the most mass on it," the Tinker replied. "If it happened to be exactly balanced between the two ends it would come out randomly from one or the other. But he swears it's not dangerous like that. The danger is the radiation."

"Neat. OK, so we know it works. How do we make the other end go further away?"

Dragon looked around at the walls of the enclosed area. "It depends if the generator will penetrate EDM, but I can easily program it to put the output end over the water where no one is likely to be harmed from the radiation." She returned to the control interface, shutting the device down and entering in some new data. When it was activated it beeped mournfully at her, making her study it, then sigh.

"I was afraid of that. It can't establish a wormhole through the EDM."

"It might if it was very thin, Brain," the Varga suggested, obviously having been studying the whole thing with as much interest as Taylor herself was. "I can feel the energies being used, I suspect that if we make the wall towards the bay a few thousandths of an inch thick it may be able to sustain the wormhole. That is still more than enough to totally block the harmful radiation and also prevent all but the most serious of physical attacks from penetrating."

'Worth a try,' she replied, walking over to the wall in question. "I'm going to make this really thin," she remarked out loud to Dragon who was watching her curiously. "Maybe it will work through that."

"It's possible," the Tinker woman said slowly. She turned to the camera, speaking to the microphone on it. "Armsmaster, please open the main door at the rear of the building, if this works we'll need a free path to the outside. Knock on the door when you've done it and are out of the way."

Finished, Taylor went back to her, a sharp rap coming through the door a short while later, the sound heavily attenuated by the exotic material it was made of. "Good. Let's see what happens this time." Once again Dragon tried to initiate the wormhole. The machine protested a little with an error sound but after a couple of seconds, the blue-rimmed orifice formed as before. There was no sign of the other end. Glancing at Dragon, Taylor stuck her head through, finding that she was looking at the Dockyard from a point nearly a mile away straight out across the bay. Smiling very widely, she pulled her head back and reported on the results.

"Wonderful." The woman sounded extremely pleased. "Total success. Leet was right, the power draw for the greater distance is almost irrelevant. Increasing the size made the lion's share of the power increase. It will take a fairly substantial amount of power to make a wormhole big enough for your sister to go through but I can't see any reason why it won't work. We'll need to run more tests on range but for now I think that's enough data."

She shut the machine down completely, then scanned it, nodding to herself at the results. "Mildly radioactive in spots, but it's already diminishing, the new materials are less able to form unstable isotopes. We'll need to look into that to see if we can do better but I'm very pleased indeed."

Looking at the camera, she said, "We're coming out, we'll have to leave this in here for a couple of hours, by which point it will be safe to handle. Stand away from the door."

Checking her tools and instruments, she handed Taylor the one that had gone through the wormhole which was glowing brightly to Varga senses. "Can you encase this in EDM with a life of forty-eight hours, please? It's pretty hot."

"Sure," Taylor replied, doing as asked. "There you go."

"Thanks." She dropped the thing into her bag, then followed Taylor out into the main room.

Once the door was shut again, the others came around from the other side of the shielded chamber, having closed the back roller door as well. Leet was grinning so widely he looked like he was also part demon. "Fucking fantastic," he laughed, obviously ecstatic about the results. "I can't believe that actually worked."

"It's certainly a very good result," Armsmaster said without quite as much emotion, but he looked very satisfied. "If nothing else that one unit can be used to eliminate the weapon recoil. An inability to penetrate more than a very thin sheet of EDM is somewhat irritating, but we can still use it." Moving to the table he grabbed a sheet of paper and a pen, sketching rapidly.

"Basically a U-shaped tube forming the barrels, with a chamber at the rear which would house the wormhole generator. An EDM membrane here, behind the round, just as a backup for residual radiation. We establish the wormhole entrance and exit here behind the round and over here in the equivalent place in the other barrel. Make the wormholes fill the barrel completely, possibly with the sides going into an over-caliber groove to eliminate edge effects..." He kept drawing, the others gathering around and watching. Eventually he stopped, staring at the sheet, then nodding. "I think that would work."

"You're relying on the wormhole catching all the rearward blast and redirecting it to protect the generator itself?" Legend asked. Armsmaster nodded.

"Yes, that's the idea. The EDM membrane is merely there in case some of the radiation manages to leak through. We'll need to run more tests but I believe we have the basis of a solid design."

"A fucking enormous double-barreled shotgun with a nuke in it," Über remarked with awe. "Extremely scary, but extremely cool. Will it be pump-action?" He laughed when Armsmaster gave him a long look. "It needs that special sound when the shell is loaded." He mimed the action, complete with sound effects. "And Kaiju needs a long leather coat and sunglasses. Ooh, and should talk in an Austrian accent."

"I fail to see where an eighty foot tall Terminator would actually help us," Armsmaster sighed.

"But you got the reference," Dragon snickered, slapping him on the back, her armored hand making a clunk on his own armor. "There's hope for you yet."

"I am not entirely unaware of popular culture," her friend replied with a slight frown.

Legend chuckled, making them look at him. "I seem to recall that when you were a Ward yourself that movie was one of your favorites," he said with a grin.

Armsmaster looked embarrassed. "I happen to admire the portrayal of a machine intelligence which was less unrealistic in that performance than commonly found," he replied a little stiffly. "Most of the technology was somewhat unbelievable and the plot left much to be desired in a number of areas, but overall it was surprisingly enjoyable."

Leaning sideways to look behind the other man, Legend winked at them, making Taylor hide a grin. Über and Leet exchanged glances, then quickly turned away and busied themselves with something else, muffled snickers coming from them.

Armsmaster sighed faintly.

"I propose we move onto the next stage of the tests, a complete duplication of the non-electronic systems and the transfer of the control system to it as Dragon suggested."

"Certainly," Taylor smiled. She didn't say anything else, merely moving to the table and starting work. The man seemed relieved, but she was amused by the little details of his life she was picking up. It made him much more like a person than just a Hero, which she thought was a good thing overall.

"Hi, Mom," her daughter's voice said brightly as the front door opened. "I'm just home for a little while, then off to the hospital to see what's up, but I wanted to grab a drink and drop some things off."

"That's fine, Amy," Carol replied, jotting down some notes on the case she was currently working on while she thought of them. "There's some cans of soda in the fridge, if you… want… any..."

The Dallon mother trailed off as she looked up, spotting who was standing behind her daughter, ducking her head to miss the doorway as they came into the living room.

There was a long pause.

"Your friend can have some as well if she wants," she finished weakly. "Hello."

"Hi!" the lizard-creature waved, smiling widely. "Amy's told me all about you, Mrs Dallon."

Sighing very gently, Carol wondered why and how life had gone so odd in the last few weeks.