Coming downstairs, wiping a little stray shaving foam from his ear, Danny looked into the living room on his way past to see his daughter curled up on the sofa studying a large book, the end of her tail resting on her legs and twitching around showing that she was in a good mood and thinking hard. "You're up early. What are you looking at?" he asked, coming in.
"One of Mom's books," she replied absently, turning the page. "I remembered it was here somewhere and came down to find it."
Walking around the back of the sofa, he looked over her shoulder at the large-format book, recognizing it instantly. It was one his wife had bought years ago, some time before Taylor was born. A very nice series of reproductions of M. C. Escher's drawings ranging from his earliest works right up to his most famous ones of impossible architecture and optical illusions were interspersed with a lot of information on the artist himself. She was currently inspecting a famous one of a staircase that went upwards indefinitely.
The slightly deranged giggle she produced made him sigh slightly. "Taylor, dear, you do understand that these are optical illusions? Not architectural plans? I desperately hope you do at any rate."
Her snicker didn't make him entirely sure she agreed with his point. Putting his hand on her head he stroked her hair, shook his own head, then went to make breakfast. He had a feeling that the weirdness was only now starting to kick off and needed some calories in him to face it.
He couldn't say with any degree of surety what was actually impossible now for the Varga/Taylor/Amy/Lisa team. It was a little worrying, although certainly livened things up.
"We all had a lot of fun last night, Taylor," Mandy smiled as she greeted her friend, who slid into her seat next to her. Lucy came in moments later and did the same on the other side. "It was a really nice meal, and meeting all those people was wonderful. And even Ianthe's… um… thing…? That was sort of interesting." She shook her head a little. "Although I had the weirdest dream you could imagine last night. Not really a nightmare, it was way too surreal to be scary."
She thought for a moment, then shrugged. "I can't explain it. But if your dad really puts that freaky thing on his desk he's braver than I am."
Taylor chuckled, while Lucy nodded wisely at her friend's words. "I asked him and he's not going to. He seems to think it would put visitors off too much. I think it's sort of cool, though."
"You would, you're a very weird girl sometimes," Lucy giggled. "But we like you anyway."
"I could ask Saurial if they could make something like that for you guys if you want," Taylor offered with a smirk. Both of her friends shuddered.
"No, thank you very much, I think I can do without a desk ornament that makes my eyes cross when I look at it," Lucy replied softly. "That thing was… very strange."
"I wonder what the full size version looks like?" Mandy mused, then went a slightly odd color. "Never mind, actually. I don't think I really want to know."
Amused at their comments, Taylor wondered for a moment why it didn't affect her that way, or for that matter Amy or Lisa. She herself thought the weird spacial distortions were sort of interesting to look at. Amy appeared to agree for various reasons, and after an initial period of gaping and drooling a little, Lisa had found the things she came up with apparently fascinating. But most people reacted a bit strangely as far as she was concerned.
Putting it down as one of the oddities about people in general that she'd probably never get to the bottom of, in the same way that she couldn't understand why some people drank until they fell over, she mentally shrugged and got her books out for the first lesson. The rest of the class arrived over the next few minutes, everyone being present after the bell rang. She was soon concentrating on her lesson, as usual finding it interesting and so much more pleasurable now that Winslow was a rapidly fading bad memory, far behind her.
Danny called, "Come in," at the knock on the door, finishing the report he was writing and looking up to see Lisa watching him. "Hi," he smiled.
"You have visitors, Danny," she said. There was a look in her eye that he knew meant she was amused.
"Who?" he asked.
"Armsmaster and Dragon."
"Ah." A little surprised, as he didn't know exactly what the two Tinkers would need with him, he nodded. "Send them in, then," he replied, turning away from the computer. He stood as the two Parahumans entered, Mark behind them obviously having accompanied them up nodding to him, then moving away to some point near the door. Lisa pulled it shut, having inspected both of the visitors for a moment. He made a mental note to ask her what she'd got from them later.
"Good morning, Mr Hebert," Armsmaster said politely, as Danny came around from behind his desk, holding out his hand. Both Tinkers shook it.. "I'm sorry to arrive unannounced like this but we have a small problem. It occurred to us that you would be the most likely source of information that could help us with it."
"Of course, if I can help I'd be glad to," he replied. "What do you need?"
"You may be aware that we've been working with BBFO on a project recently," Dragon said. He looked at her and nodded.
"I am. I'm not privy to all the details, though." Which was essentially true as Taylor hadn't told him everything. Armsmaster looked at him then nodded very slightly, which made him wonder why, but the man seemed happy enough.
"It's of some importance, in fact, regarding a possibly effective method to help with Endbringer attacks," she went on. Her companion glanced at her, a little uncertainly if he was any judge, but didn't comment. "We need to find a space large enough to install a piece of equipment, somewhere that is close to the water and the BBFO facility, but not in the way of any current operations going on here, and ideally not on the same side that the Merchants tend to be active in. We were thinking you might know of an old warehouse that might meet our requirements."
"It needs to be large enough to allow Kaiju access," Armsmaster added. "Or decrepit enough that it can be demolished if necessary."
"I see," Danny replied, wondering what they were up to. Moving to the huge map on the wall, he studied it, the pair following him. "Let's think about this…" Pondering their list of requirements, he finally pointed to one building very close to the water, a couple of blocks to the north of the DWU yard. "OK, over here is a very large building that used to be a fish smoking plant. It's filthy inside from what I remember from checking it out years ago, and it stinks, but that's mostly kept the junkies out since there are better ones for them more easily accessible."
Armsmaster leaned closer to the map, inspecting the symbol denoting the building. "It appears to have doors facing the water," he commented.
"Yes, the place is about three stories high, and pretty much just one huge room. The doors at the waterside end were where the fish were unloaded into it. The other end has the loading bay for trucks. Underneath the floor are the pits the fires were lit in and the smoke was produced from. Fish were hung in strings from catwalks along the roof." Danny tapped the symbol. "This is one of your best choices, I think. It hasn't been used for, oh, a good fifty years, but it's a very solid building, all brick construction because of the fire risk. This other one over here a little further away is slightly smaller, it was a boat shed, but it's also one large space with some workshops around the sides. It's in worse condition. If you don't mind the smell, the fish factory would be the better bet."
Dragon looked at her colleague. "It sounds reasonable."
He nodded thoughtfully. "I doubt that the Family would have any difficulty lining it with EDM, which would render the smell irrelevant. We could easily install one of your bigger power units there as well. Close to the water like that… Easy access for Kaiju, if the doors are large enough."
"Making them larger is a simple matter," Danny pointed out, returning to his desk. "Kaiju is very good at making things."
"Do you know who owns this building?" Armsmaster asked.
"The city. Almost all the buildings around here reverted to city control many years ago, mainly due to unpaid taxes when the relevant companies collapsed." Danny shrugged. "The DWU actually owns a fair number of them as well, but not that one."
"Who would we contact to get the use of it?" the Tinker mused, staring at the map.
"Hold on, let me make a call," he replied, picking his phone up and dialing. Shortly a familiar voice greeted him. "Hi, Roy, it's Danny."
The two Parahumans exchanged glances. "Fine, thanks. Yes, she's doing very well too, school is treating her much better than that horrible Winslow place. We'd love to have a meal at your house, thanks, perhaps next week? Great. Listen, I need a small favor."
He smiled at the response. "That's good of you to say. OK, there's an old fish factory on Chandler avenue, number twenty-nine. The old Brockton Smokehouse and Cannery place."
He listened to faint muttering and the sound of keys clicking, then Roy got back to him. "That's it. It's one of yours from years back as far as I can remember from the last time I checked the records. Can we have it?"
Laughing at the response, he replied, "No, it's a favor for some friends. They need somewhere big and secure. The smell isn't a problem."
"Thanks, Roy. I'll have legal contact your guys for the paperwork. Talk later." Putting the phone down, he smiled at the pair of capes who were watching him with interest. "Problem solved. The city will transfer the building to the DWU. We'll transfer it to BBFO control. They can do what they want with it."
"I'm impressed, Mr Hebert," Armsmaster said after a moment. "Very efficient."
Danny spread his hands. "It's the sort of thing I do all the time. Believe me, the city would love to get rid of some of the places around here, they're death traps. The legal liability is a nuisance for them if nothing else. In a couple of years or so when the reclamation project gets going a lot of land here will be worth a hell of a lot but at the moment it's barely worth the cost of the paperwork to deal with it. Not to mention a lot of the buildings are beyond economic repair. We could probably get half the docks just for the asking, but we have no use for it. If it helps you guys and the Family, and can in any way help against Endbringer attacks, I'm happy to do my part."
"Thank you, Mr Hebert," Dragon said pleasantly. "This will be very useful for us."
"It was no problem," he smiled. "And call me Danny, please." She nodded, emoting a sense of a smile as well even through the armor. He was impressed how well she got emotions across. Better than her friend did, which was amusing considering that he could actually see part of Armsmaster's face and none of her body at all.
About to say something else, Armsmaster happened to look at his desk, his gaze stopping abruptly. He stared for several seconds. "Mr Hebert?" he asked slowly. Dragon nudged him in the side. "Danny?"
"Yes?"
"What… is that?" The Tinker pointed with one armored finger at Taylor's paperweight. Danny had put it on his desk despite the weird effect it produced on him when he looked at the thing as a method of getting used to the bizarre objects his daughter was making. The little 'gift' from the day before was way too much in that area, it was safely in its box at home, under his desk there where he didn't have to look at it.
"A paperweight, actually," he said, picking it up. He was getting better at actually putting his hand on it, despite the way the damn thing tried to pretend it was several inches away from where it really was. "A little present from the Family. I was told they've been making things using this technique for a long time, and that this was very old. I'm not sure what it's actually meant to be but it holds paper down fine." All of which was true yet wildly misleading. He was beginning to enjoy the sheer surreality of Taylor's weird plan. It was certainly rather fun watching the effect the thing had on other people.
Dragon was also staring at the almost-cube in his hands. As long as he didn't look at it, it mostly felt like a lump of smooth rock, although he couldn't have said for the life of him exactly how many sides it had as the count was always different. "It looks… a little odd," she noted in a fascinated voice.
"It does at that," he smiled. "Mind you, nothing like as weird as the strange ornament Ianthe gave me for my birthday last night. That was just disturbing on several levels. This thing is weird but much less so."
"May I see it?" she asked.
"Sure," he said, holding it out. She took a few attempts to get her hand in the right position, but finally succeeded, lifting it from his palm.
Both the visitors examined it closely, Armsmaster making a pained sound after a moment and looking away for a second or two. "If I had to guess, I'd say it was a four dimensional cube," Dragon finally said, sounding very doubtful. "Which should simply be impossible in three dimensions. I can't get a good count of the number of edges or faces."
"Neither can I," Armsmaster grunted, poking the thing. "How could this even exist? It's worse than some of Vista's experiments, but it's stable and fixed."
"Family secret, apparently," Danny said, sitting down and watching them puzzle over it with enjoyment. "I have absolutely no idea how it works. You'd have to ask them."
"I'm not entirely sure I want to know the answer," the other man finally sighed. "I have enough trouble with the parts of their existence I can already work out."
Chuckling, Dragon nodded, then put the cuboid back on Danny's desk. "I would tend to agree. Let's get the current project finished before we delve too deeply into the peculiarities of our reptilian friends. Although I'd like to come back to this thing at some point."
"Agreed." Armsmaster deliberately looked away from the dimensionally-confused block. "Would anyone mind if we investigated the warehouse?"
"Of course not, help yourselves. You'll probably have to cut the locks off the door, they'll be rusted solid by now what with the sea air and the years. I'd think the keys are long since lost as well." Danny motioned to his phone. "I'll get onto our legal department and get the paperwork sorted out. BBFO will have legal ownership of the building by the end of business today, but the city won't mind if you poke around."
"Thank you for your help, Danny," Dragon told him, a smile in her voice. "It was nice meeting you again."
"Likewise. Mark will show you out." He watched as they left, Armsmaster giving his desk one last apparently-curious look, before shaking his head slightly and turning away. Lisa came in and shut the door, grinning a little to herself.
"You confused the poor bastards again, Danny," she said when the heavy footsteps of the two armored Parahumans had faded away. "Although I bet that thing helped." She motioned to his paperweight.
Smiling, he picked it up and spun it in his fingers. "Probably. It confuses me as well. Were they happy?"
"Yes. Armsmaster is impressed with how effectively you solved their problem, and pleased. He considers you very competent. Dragon was amused by his reaction to everything, but also pleased and satisfied. They're both worried about time, though. If it's this next Endbringer attack they're thinking about, I can understand that, it'll probably happen any time now."
He sighed a little, putting the disturbing little memento down again and standing to look out the window. "It worries me a lot. Knowing that people I care about could be going into battle against something like that."
She came to stand beside him. "I'm not happy about it either, but that's life. Unfortunately." Turning to him, she grinned a little. "Did you have a nice dinner last night? I was told it got a little weird."
Giving her a hard look, he simply sighed faintly when she burst out laughing.
"You, Amy, and Taylor together. Heaven help us all."
Sitting behind her school desk listening to her English teacher droning on about verbs and adverbs, Missy propped her head on her left hand while she idly sketched in the margins of her notebook. Patterns and drawings took shape under her pencil, making her smile a little, then frown. They just wouldn't come out right.
She could see what she wanted to do in her head, but drawing it was proving to be an exercise in frustration. There was something missing that she couldn't quite work out. At the back of her head, she had some weird mathematics bubbling away but she didn't know enough of the subject to be sure if they made sense.
Writing out one of the equations that came to her, she puzzled over it for a while. As best she could work out the answer was forty-two. Which seemed odd considering there were no actual numbers in the damn thing.
Deciding that she didn't really know what the question was that she was trying to answer in the first place, she went back to drawing, absently answering a question the teacher posed without really looking up. He stopped talking, looked at her, then frowned, walking over and whipping her notebook away from her desk and making her jump.
"Miss Biron, this is English, not Art. What are you drawing, anywa..." His voice trailed off oddly, making her guilty expression turn into a curious, guilty expression. She watched along with her classmates as he went a slightly funny color, exchanging puzzled glances with them. Shrugging wordlessly, she turned back in time to slap a hand down on her notebook as he dropped it half on, half off the desk and turned away, staring out the window while breathing heavily.
"Mr Morrison?" she asked tentatively. "Are you all right?"
"Fine, Miss Biron," he said in a tone of voice that suggested to her he'd probably had something that disagreed with him for breakfast. "Please concentrate on the lesson." Moving back to the front of the classroom he picked up the eraser and wiped away some of the things he'd written on the whiteboard, before leaning his head against it for a moment. A few seconds passed during which the entire class watched, confused, then he straightened up and jotted down the next part of the lesson, resting his head on the board twice more during this process.
When he finished and turned around, Missy's eyes widened a little and she glanced at a couple of her friends, all of whom were clearly trying not to laugh.
Mr Morrison spend the rest of the lesson teaching, not one of the students pointing out that he had 'noun' written backwards across his forehead in green marker.
They felt it was much funnier to let him find out later.
"How about this one?" the PR adviser asked, showing the next slide in the presentation. Roy read it dubiously, then looked around the table at the other councilors.
"Anyone think that's a good idea?"
There was a round of head shaking. "The slogan doesn't make any sense, although I'll admit it's catchy," Councilor Troy remarked. "'Let's Make Brockton Bay Great Again?' What does that even mean?"
The PR person looked puzzled, glancing at the projection screen as if he couldn't remember his own work. "Well… It's meant to remind everyone of the way the city was once an economic powerhouse, and persuade them that it can be again, with the redevelopment plan and all."
"But was the city ever 'Great' in any real terms?" another councilor queried, frowning a little. "We've always been a fairly small city, after all, even if we had one of the busiest ports in the country for our size. The population was a maximum of something like six hundred thousand, which is fairly big, true, but not enormous. It's only two thirds of that now, but even if it went back, it's nothing compared to New York, or even Boston." She waved a hand slightly quizzically. "I couldn't honestly call this place 'Great'. Even with the Family here."
"Not too bad in its heyday would probably be more accurate," a third councilor commented, smiling a little.
"'Let's Make Brockton Bay Not Too Bad Again?'" Troy snickered. "That's more plausible I'll grant you, but not nearly as catchy. I'm not sure that complete honesty in public relations really works."
The PR man, an agent from an outside consultancy firm based in Providence, turned to Roy, who was trying not to grin. He looked somewhat confused. "Mayor Christner?"
"I don't think that one will work, James. Let's have a look at the next one."
"All right." The man pushed the button on his remote, the computer flipping to the next slide. This one had an image of the city skyline taken from somewhere in the bay, with the Rig off to one side, early morning sunlight illuminating everything and making it look far cleaner that it ever really was. Even the water sparkled blue, which was certainly not a common sight. Dull gray and misty would be more convincing, Roy mused, although he didn't say it. The poor man was looking hopeful now, having gone through over a dozen attempts, all of which had been shot down by the council, most of whom seemed to be taking a perverse enjoyment in the process.
The slogan this time read 'Brockton Bay, a place for the entire Family.' Roy winced a little. It was just that tiny bit too accurate.
"We thought of a play on words," the PR man smiled. "Because of the Family, obviously. Humor in advertising is shown to work remarkably well, and we often find that subtle jokes are more..."
Raising a hand, Roy cut him off mid word. "I understand, James, and it is amusing. The problem is it's… how do I put this…?"
"We already have at least five of them here already," another council-member sighed. "I am grateful for them, and don't mind the ones we have, but… I'm not sure my mind will take the entire Family. Who knows how many of them there are?" He pointed at the screen. "That sounds a little too much like an open invitation. People are already joking about renaming the city to something from a Lovecraft book, I'm really not sure that giving them new ammunition in that area would be a wonderful idea."
Roy and almost all the councilors nodded slowly. "What he said," Roy commented.
"I see." James looked at his own slide for a few seconds, shuddered a little, and hit the button. "Moving quickly on..."
Settling back, Roy glanced unobtrusively at his watch.
This was going to take a while.
"It should be ideal." Dragon looked up, then around at the innards of the old building, hearing birds flying around in the roof space. The bright lights on her helmet were casting shadows around the place, although most of her sensory system didn't use visible light. "The floor is unstable, but that can be fixed easily enough. There's certainly room enough for Kaiju to stand up on all fours." The building was over sixty feet tall to the catwalks, enough space for the enormous cape if she was careful.
"The lower floor could be excavated, that would give another twelve feet," Colin pointed out, prowling around on the other side of the building. "I make it two hundred and forty feet long, ninety feet wide, and sixty-five feet to the lowest point in the roof space."
"That agrees with my measurements. Good. We have somewhere to use as a staging post. We'll need to get the Family to modify it and line it with very thin EDM. That should allow for the wormhole transit."
"If we block off the rear third as a control room, the remaining space is enough for Kaiju and the wormhole, plus any safe transit methods we use for other people." They'd discussed a number of ideas for achieving that goal, the simplest of which was an EDM-lined tunnel that could be extended a couple of feet, which would take it all the way through the wormhole and out the other side. It would take a little work but wasn't mechanically very difficult.
"What about the doors?" she asked, looking to the far end of the building, then carefully making her way there. She was pretty heavy in her current form and the floor was quite rickety. Debating unshipping her thrusters she decided against it as it would just make too much noise in an enclosed space.
"Too small. They don't open wide enough and aren't high enough, so they'll need to be replaced completely. Something similar to airship hangar doors would be ideal, I think." Colin was most of the way down the other side, being much lighter even with his own armor. On the other hand, he wasn't entirely full of batteries and processors, she thought with inner amusement. Reaching the door, he inspected it for a moment, then grabbed his halberd, using a short-range cutting beam device in it to remove the entire lock mechanism which was just a lump of rust and corrosion. As soon as it clattered to the concrete floor he put the weapon away, then grabbed the edges of the hole and pulled. Servomotors whined before the door very reluctantly opened a few feet, protesting loudly in the process.
Outside, the water was only about fifteen feet away, there being just enough room to get a vehicle past the end of the building. It was similar to the BBFO one, a few hundred yards further towards the city down the coast. "That's convenient, though. There should be no problem getting Kaiju inside once the doors are replaced. I wonder how deep the water is right there?"
She picked up the lump he'd cut from the door and tossed it into the bay, listening to the sound of the splash and running the appropriate algorithm on it. "Approximately thirty feet," she replied. "It's half-tide, so about forty-four at full tide."
"Adequate for a reasonably large boat," he noted.
"Presumably the point."
Stepping back, he heaved the door shut again, then quickly welded the seam with a different tool on his halberd over a distance of a few inches to stop anyone getting in.
"I've seen enough. This is workable. We should go back and draw up some diagrams of what we need done, then contact Raptaur this evening."
"All right," she agreed, as they headed for the exit.
Dinah frowned at her reflection, then shook her head. "No. It looks silly. I'm twelve!"
Her mother looked at the PRT costume designer, both women exchanging a smile. "She has a point," her mother said.
"I agree, but this is one of the ones Mr Chambers approved." The woman looked somewhat resigned. "Between you and me I think he sometimes gets carried away."
"I'm not even going to be going out in public as a cape anyway, why do I need a costume?" Dinah pointed out in what she thought was a fairly reasonable tone. "I can just wear a mask if anyone comes here who shouldn't know who I am." Looking down distastefully at the odd, old looking tiny suit she was wearing, she sighed. "I look like something out of one of those old movies Dad likes."
She was already somewhat annoyed that the fat man who was apparently the one in charge of the appearance of Parahumans like her had tried to get her to accept being called 'Bookie'. He seemed oddly set on the name or something like it.
None of them were anything that she particularly liked.
After a lot of discussion, both with him, which had resulted in both of them sulking and glaring at the wall, and her parents, not to mention a lot of looking through dictionaries, she'd finally decided 'Prospect' was something she could live with. It was relevant to her power, but not so obvious that it instantly told everyone what she could do, and short enough that it was easy to say.
That part was fine.
This silly suit was just ridiculous, though. What was wrong with jeans and a t-shirt? Or if you wanted to get fancier, something like Vista's costume? While she wasn't really hugely girly, she quite liked that look. Although the colors left something to be desired.
Mind you, the fedora was sort of cool. Tilting it on her head to a rakish angle, she grinned. She could make this work. After all, Saurial did, and she was a lizard!
She definitely wanted to meet the tall blue reptile and see if she could figure out why all the Family members gave her that weird error whenever she tried her power on them. Dinah had spent hours in bed scribbling down questions to see if she could figure them out, but nothing she tried directly led her anywhere. At least it didn't seem to count against whatever limit made her head hurt, or not very much anyway.
Even her parents didn't know how many questions she'd asked herself about them. It was annoying her as much as it was piquing her curiosity.
The two new ones, Ianthe, which she thought was a nice name, and Metis, who she'd read about this morning, produced subtly different errors, but the effect was the same. It was like when her computer told her a web page was blocked.
Which also annoyed her. Although she'd found ways around that most of the time. Unfortunately this particular block was a lot less straightforward to circumvent than some crappy 'childproof' web blocker.
Honestly, how stupid did the teachers think she was? She was twelve, not an idiot.
Turning back to her mother, she shook her head again, firmly. "No. I'm not wearing this." Reaching up she patted the fedora. "Except this hat. I like this hat."
"You can keep the hat, dear," her mom smiled, looking at Ms Haroon, who nodded, looking amused. "What else do you have?" she asked the costumer.
"What's wrong with jeans?" Dinah asked, her hands on her hips. "Like these? I like these, they're comfortable."
Ms Haroon sighed faintly. "Glenn would be… a little upset… if you wander around in jeans and a mask. Sorry. He can be a bit..." She waved a hand slightly uncertainly.
"I think I understand," her mom chuckled. "OK. Let's see the rest of these suggestions and see if we can figure out some combination that would meet both children's standards."
"Mom!" Dinah snapped, while Ms Haroon broke down in gales of giggles, her mother following after a moment.
"Honestly," she sighed under her breath, waiting for the adults to stop making fools of themselves. "Sometimes I think I'm the only sensible one here..."