Missy looked up from her sketches to watch Saurial and Über dancing around in the middle of the floor with collapsible batons in both their hands, doing some sort of stick-fighting she'd never seen before. Putting her pencil down, she followed them with her eyes, impressed at the sheer speed. She could tell from her own Wards close quarters combat training that Saurial was vastly better than the man was, as well as much stronger and quicker, but he was holding his own far more effectively than almost anyone else could have done.
He'd certainly have given her PRT instructors a real run for their money, she pondered. It was doubtful that there were more than two or three people in the PRT, even if you included Miss Militia, who were as good as that. Saurial was way past him, even if she restricted herself to human speeds she'd wipe the floor with anyone else she'd ever met.
The reptilian girl wasn't using her tail, except as a counterbalance, but she could obviously have smacked him clear across the room with it any time she wanted to. Instead, she was relying on the batons, one parrying blows while the other one struck out. Missy winced as she caught Über across the right shoulder with an audible crack, the man yelping in pain and skittering out of the way, then spinning around to parry another incoming blow with both his batons crossed in front of him. Having trapped one of hers, he somehow twisted his arm around it, his own baton leading, then snapped the one in his other hand out to slice the tip across her throat. The blow would have disabled or possibly killed any normal person.
Saurial, of course, just smiled, then stepped back and bowed to him. He returned it, before transferring both batons to one hand and massaging his shoulder with the other. "That really hurt," he complained.
"No pain, no amusement for the audience," Saurial replied, indicating her cousins, Leet, and Missy, all of whom were watching with interest.
"That's not how that saying goes and you know it, you scaly menace," Über grumbled, but he was smiling a little in the process. "Thanks for the workout. I've never seen some of those moves."
"You're welcome, it was fun. You have a few tricks I've never come across either. We need to do this more often, we can teach each other quite a lot, I think," she said. Both her batons disappeared. He offered her the ones he was holding, but she shook her head. "Keep them."
"Thanks. They're really nice," the man smiled. Collapsing both of them he dropped them into his pockets.
"That was amazing," Missy said honestly, impressed with both of them.
"Thanks," he smiled, coming back over to the table and sitting down. "I enjoy martial arts, even with overpowered lizards who don't know their own strength."
"I know my strength pretty well," Saurial grinned. "Which is why you're alive."
He nodded grandly, also grinning. "I appreciate the consideration."
Laughing, Saurial wandered over and looked over Missy's shoulder at her notebook, reaching down and flipping back a few pages. She hmm'd in a reflective manner. "You're really coming along there, Vista. I'm impressed. You'll have to think of some concrete examples for some of these, but it's a very good first step."
Looking at the drawings as well, Missy nodded. "At the moment they're just really pretty," she said. "But I can see all sorts of new ideas from them." Glancing up at her spatial distortion, which was still hanging above the table, she added, "I'm wondering how long that will stick around for if I leave it."
Studying it, Saurial looked at it from different angles, then poked it a couple of times. "Days, probably. The math suggests that the duration is at least partly based on external size of the distortion. How much space is folded into it doesn't really matter, it's the… outside, although that's not the right word… that counts. Sort of the bit the universe can pay attention to. There are ways around it, but they start getting a little complicated for this early in your learning."
"I can hardly understand any of that math," Missy said, waving at the series of glass writing boards running down the wall.
"Don't worry, practically no one could," Leet commented, following her gaze. "I can get about twenty percent of it at the moment."
"It's very interesting," Metis added, walking over and examining one of the equations. "The old Family ways are always fascinating even to us, if you haven't studied them as much as Saurial has." She looked over her shoulder at the lizard-girl, who was smiling. "I think Raptaur is even better at it."
Leet was looking at her with an expression that Missy thought was probably skeptical amusement under the balaclava, but only made a faint exasperated sigh. The reptile smirked at him, then turned to her. "So, 'Cloak', what are your plans for your new cape persona?"
Missy flushed a little. She'd been pretty embarrassed when Saurial pointed out a little while ago that her little run in with the Merchant muggers and that poor woman had already hit PHO, in fact had hit it within about an hour of the event, but also amused and a little proud. "I'm not sure," she replied. "I didn't intend to have a new persona, not really. I just liked the cloak and didn't want to have the Director find out about coming here." She sighed slightly. "Not allowed to have any fun at all," she added in a disconsolate mutter.
Ianthe patted her on the shoulder comfortingly. "I know what that's like, believe me. Before I was allowed to come here, I didn't have as much fun at home as I wanted to. Too many responsibilities, you understand."
Missy nodded, knowing full well what she meant. "But even with responsibilities, you should be allowed to enjoy yourself, right? I mean, I like being a Ward, I like helping out, and I like my team mates." She thought for a moment, then added, "Well, most of them," thinking of Sophia. "But it's so… so… limiting. I've learned more in the last two or three hours about my powers than in all the time I've been a Ward just by talking to someone who listened and helped. The PRT is so stuck on not being seen as bad they end up holding us back a lot of the time."
"Which is probably the entire point, of course," Über commented. "Not entirely unreasonably, the public perception is something you have to consider, no matter how powerful you are. If people end up scared enough of you power may not matter. Look at what happened to the S9."
She nodded thoughtfully, thinking he had a point. And that she was so glad that poor Mr. Petty man had finally taken those horrible people out, so no one here would ever have to face them. "I guess. But even so, there must be something between 'oh god the horrible capes' and 'god I'm bored,' right?"
"Of course," Saurial chuckled. "That's us. We try to have fun while also not going too far overboard, and also help people wherever we can. We have problems with the PRT too, all of us. In some ways they mean well, definitely, but there are also people in charge who are probably only in it for themselves. Like in all big organizations, especially ones with real authority. I respect Director Piggot, and what the PRT stands for, to a point. But I'm not going to let them dictate how I run my life any more than I have to, which luckily isn't very much."
"At the same time, we have to be careful not to do anything too outrageous," Metis put in. "We have to listen to our own advisers and not get carried away. It takes time to fix some things, even if you have the ability and power to just smash through the obstacles in the way. Sometimes you can't do everything you want to. You have to think at least a little about how it affects other people."
"Which is why we don't just charge in and take out every villain on sight," Saurial continued the thread. "Sure, we probably could. But there's always the possibility of running up against someone you actually can't deal with if you do that, or triggering someone into doing something extreme in retaliation. That's probably the argument the PRT and Protectorate uses as why they don't do more about villains in general, especially around here, but they've taken it too far. We don't want to get sucked into that whole mess if we don't have to, especially when there are entire government departments whose entire reason for existence is dealing with it. So we don't go looking for trouble like that. We'll deal with it if it comes looking for us, though."
"And low level criminals are fair game," Ianthe grinned. "Hunting them is fun."
"Not that we actually hunt them, of course," Saurial said severely, staring at her cousin, who shrugged, the grin not diminishing. "But they're the ones who do the most day to day harm and grabbing them has a disproportionate effect on overall crime levels. Without their foot soldiers, the cape gangs are much less dangerous."
"Not to mention that some villains are actually just misunderstood people who deserve a second chance," Über remarked, smiling. All three lizards laughed, as did Missy. "I for one am very pleased about the Family 'don't just smash villains, talk to them first' approach."
Missy giggled at his comment. "But will that always work?" she asked more seriously. "What happens if you find someone who talks a good line of reforming, then doesn't? Not everyone is actually trustworthy, even if they're a hero. It must be worse with people who aren't."
She was again thinking of Sophia, who certainly wasn't the sort of person where just talking rationally to them would necessarily help you much.
Saurial looked at her cousins, then Über and Leet, before sighing, leaning forward in the chair she'd sat in and putting her arms on the table. "True, definitely. So far, I guess we've been lucky, although I like to think that we're fairly good judges of character. Some people you could never trust. I know that, but so far, I haven't really run into any of them. Hookwolf was certainly a person no one in their right mind would trust to keep their word without a serious threat of violence added. My sister was able to do that and so far he's stayed well away. I heard he got out of jail, but we haven't seen anything of him at all."
"What about Lung?" she asked. "And Kaiser? Or any of the other serious cape villains?"
"Lung is no fool, and a man with his own version of honor," Saurial replied after a little thought. "Kaiju made a bargain with him, which I think he'll stick to. It's not quite the same as trusting him, though. Kaiser… None of us have met him, but from what I've heard, he's pretty smart and isn't going to do anything without thinking it through first. He doesn't like surprises, from what I've been told, so he probably wouldn't try anything against us without a lot of very careful thought and some edge. Skidmark… everyone says he's an idiot with some cunning and no idea of what the word 'restraint' means. On the other hand, he must realize he's seriously outgunned. Hopefully that will keep him honest."
Giggling a little at the concept of Skidmark ever being thought of as honest in any way at all, Missy nodded thoughtfully. It all sounded fairly plausible. And it was a lot more information than the PRT had seen fit to tell her. Deciding that the trust shown meant she'd keep her mouth shut about what she'd learned here, she said, "So that's why you're so in with the DWU? Because it lets you help people?"
"They're friends. Danny Hebert is a good man, and all the people here are nice. They have the same sort of feelings about their own people that we do about our Family, we respect that. And they seem to respect us. It works really well." Saurial smiled at her. "My side of the Family loves making things and learning things. This lets us do both and help you humans a lot. We're very pleased that the Mayor was open to the idea of letting us help out. There are a lot more things we want to try which should be useful, and of course, fun to do."
"That's so cool," Missy sighed. "I wish I could do something like that, instead of just walking around all the time, or going on photo shoots and opening malls and that sort of thing. It gets a bit tedious after a while."
"Well, at risk of being accused of corrupting a minor, perhaps Cloak should go out occasionally and make life hard for muggers," Über grinned. "Possibly not quite so violently, although I can't say they didn't deserve it."
"Hey, most of that was them," she protested a little weakly. "I only did the nose. And his ass. And some of the lumps on his head. And sort of got them to fight each..." She trailed off as he started laughing. "OK, I get the point. But it was really funny as well."
"I'm sure it was. Poor guy probably needed a tetanus shot afterwards."
She half-grinned, half-winced at his comment.
"Of course, there are some problems with Cloak," Saurial said in a contemplative voice, studying her. "Your voice is good, and pretty funny considering who's behind it, but I don't think it would fool anyone who really knew you."
"You knew who I was as soon as I came in, didn't you?" Missy realized.
"Yep." The lizard girl grinned. "But I doubt anyone who met you for the first time would. No one on PHO seems to have the faintest idea. Most of them think you're a tiny little lizard under that cloak."
Missy started giggling furiously at the idea. "I don't have scales, or a tail, or claws… That's hilarious."
"I can fix that if you want," Ianthe offered with a smile. Missy gaped at her, the laughter stopping suddenly.
"Really?" she asked, more surprised than anything.
"Oh, yes, humans are easy to modify," the large reptile nodded. "But none of them ever take me up on it."
Astonished, and deep down not entirely untempted despite her original thoughts when meeting Saurial about how having a tail might be difficult, Missy eventually shook her head. It was pretty obvious from watching the lizard-girl fight that her tail was if anything a net benefit, and the built in chair aspect was something she thought interesting and useful, but it would be a little difficult to explain. Not only to her family, but to the public at large, and definitely to Director Piggot, who would be unlikely to see the funny side.
Although, she was somewhat curious to see just how purple the woman would go…
"No," she finally said, as much to herself as to Ianthe. "That's probably too much. I can see a lot of problems with it. Thanks for the offer."
"Bear it in mind if you decide otherwise," Ianthe smiled, not offended. "But probably best to keep it to yourself for now."
"OK. So you're some sort of Biotinker, then?"
"Hmm… that description is a little… restricted," Ianthe replied. "The human concept isn't quite right, but it's heading in the correct direction. I'm what we call a life shaper or sculptor. It's more involved than something like that idiot Blasto does, or that horrible little person Nilbog. I'm not surprised your PRT has such a problem with Biotinkers with those examples, but it does portray the life arts in a negative manner." She shrugged a little. "We're hoping to change it back to something positive, but it will take time and careful work. We have a lot to offer in that field."
Missy listened, wondering if that was what Leet and Über were helping with. She looked at the two men, but didn't ask, as it seemed a bit private and wasn't really her business. "I think I get it. Thanks for telling me. I won't pass it on."
"Thank you." Ianthe smiled again. Then she looked thoughtful for a moment. "Although… perhaps there is something I can help you with that doesn't show." She inspected Missy carefully, thinking, before nodding slowly. "Ah, I think I see a way. Do you mind if I touch you? I'm just looking at this point."
Considering the request, Missy shrugged. She couldn't see the harm, as they were all pretty obviously good people. She held out her hand, the cloak falling away from her sleeve. Ianthe grasped it, concentrating for a moment, then letting go again.
"Yes. I can do that easily. OK, here's a suggestion. I can make a small modification to you which will allow you to have a totally different voice at will. Sort of a built in voice changer. You'd be able to have a proper 'Cloak' voice without straining yourself or risking any of your friends and acquaintances recognizing it, and it would even have a completely different voice print for security systems. Interested?"
Taken aback, Missy stared at her, then looked around at the others. She thought about the idea for a little while. Eventually she started to grin, then nodded. "Yes, please, I think I would like that."
Saurial was smiling slightly, looking very pleased, while Metis was definitely smirking smugly. Über and Leet exchanged glances.
"She's one of us now," Leet whispered loudly. "They've got to her."
Giggling, Missy held out her hand again. Ianthe, appearing amused, held it. She felt something in her throat change slightly in a weird way.
"I'll turn it on as a default for the moment. Say something while I adjust it. We can tweak it until you're happy, then I can show you how to switch it on and off."
"This is me talking," Missy said, shocked at the deep tones her voice took. Her eyes widened in amazement. "Wow. I sound really different."
"Too deep, she sounds like Barry White," Leet commented, grinning widely.
"Try this."
"Hello, I'm Vista," she said, the voice now ridiculously squeaky and faint.
"Oops. Too far the other way," Ianthe snickered. "Again?"
I AM CLOAK, MISCREANTS! she announced, the leaden tones of the grave issuing from her mouth. PREPARE TO FACE THE WRATH OF THE LAW.
"Huh. That's pretty damn disturbing," Über remarked, staring at her with wide eyes.
I SORT OF LIKE IT, she laughed. I BET IT WOULD MAKE PEOPLE STOP DOING WHATEVER THEY WERE DOING.
"Then piss themselves and run away," he replied, still staring. "It's incredibly disturbing to watch someone who looks like a nice young girl sound like that. If you were all hidden in that cloak, it would be much worse."
"I think he's got a point," Saurial added, shaking her head. "I like the voice, but… Not quite the sort of effect we're going for, I think. Although with the scythe as well it would be impressive. Probably for the wrong reasons, though."
AWWW. OK, I GUESS YOU'RE RIGHT.
Ianthe, who was trying not to laugh, made some more adjustments. "Try again."
"I am Cloak and I'm here to chew gum and stick nails in your ass. And I'm all out of gum," she hissed, the sound like an annoyed kettle mixed with an angry snake. "Hey, that's pretty good." Leet started giggling like a little kid, as Über grinned madly.
"A little deeper," Saurial suggested. Ianthe nodded.
"OK, how about now?"
"Fear the wrath of The Cloak!" she hissed again, the tone raspier than before.
"Not bad at all. I think we have a winner," Metis commented, nodding in satisfaction. "It's definitely female, but doesn't sound human at all. That should throw people off the trail."
"Cool," Missy hissed. "This is so amazing!"
"It's still pretty disturbing," Über said as he watched. "That other one was scary, this one make you sound like you're going to go for someone's throat if they look at you wrong."
"Do not mock Cloak, human villain," she whispered, fixing him with a stern gaze. He gaped, then began laughing, something Leet was still doing.
"Yes, you'd fit in around here perfectly," he gasped. "How did you end up in the Wards? You're wasted there."
She shrugged a little. "Things happened. It's OK most of the time, I just want to get out more. I can take care of myself but they treat me like a little kid a lot of the time. I've been in the Wards longer than any of the others and have more experience than any two of them, except Shadow Stalker, but I still get treated like I'm made of glass."
"I understand, I think," Über replied. "Can you turn that voice off, it's giving me the creeps," he added to Ianthe, who grinned, then did something. Missy felt the change in her throat again. When she tried speaking once more it was her normal voice that came out.
"That was cool," she grinned. "How do I turn it on and off?"
"I've added some extra muscles and modified your vocal cords, with a suitable neural connection to the mods," Ianthe explained. "Feel this?" Missy concentrated, feeling something inside twitch a little, although that wasn't really an accurate description. It was certainly nothing she'd ever felt before. "This way is normal voice, this way is CloakSpeak."
Giggling, she practiced for a while, the big lizard guiding her, until she could turn the modification on and off without any problems. "Wow. Thanks so much. That's really neat."
"Glad to help." Ianthe smiled at her.
"What about the disguise?" Metis asked, studying her. She glanced at Saurial, who was also inspecting Missy's cloak. "Anything you can do about it?"
"Hmm. Yep, I think so. Vista, can I have it for a minute?"
"Sure," the girl said, standing up and pulling the garment off, then handing it over. Saurial held the cloak up, then spread it out over the table, the inside uppermost.
"Very nice material, this cost someone a lot of money once," she commented, smoothing the lining down. "It's well over a hundred years old as well, from looking at it. A genuine antique." Leaning over the cloth, she added, "It would be a shame to ruin it, but I can upgrade it a bit. Let's see..." The reptilian cape slowly ran her hands over the cloth, pausing around the pockets for a minute or so, then moving on. Having done that side, she carefully flipped the cloak over and repeated the process on the other side. All in all it took about five minutes until she appeared satisfied.
"That should do it. I've added a very thin layer of EDM armor weave in between the layers, along with some thermal insulation, the same sort of thing I did for the costumes I made for New Wave. It's completely bullet and stab proof now, and will protect against a very considerable impact. It will also keep you warm or cool due to the insulation. The original linen and cotton cloth isn't fireproof, but I've added a treatment that should stop it burning unless you get soaked in gasoline, which you should probably avoid on general principals anyway."
Missy giggled at the advice, which seemed pretty good.
"It'll be a little heavier, but not enough to worry about, I think. I also added a folded space upgrade to the pockets, and made a new one here in the middle of the back on the inside. I have an idea for that. First, see if it feels OK."
Picking it up she handed it back. Missy took it from her, easily able to feel how it was definitely heavier, although it wasn't annoyingly so. The cloth itself felt exactly the same. Putting it on again, she wrapped it around herself, pulling the hood over her head, then activated her 'Cloak' voice. "How do I look?" she asked.
"Very scary. I'm terrified and wish to confess all my crimes," Saurial recited emotionlessly, making her laugh. "Not bad. Now, the idea I had was something to make sure no one can see your face. Here, watch what I'm doing, you should be able to duplicate it easily, and you'll want to be able to turn it on and off." Reaching out she put her hands near the hood, Missy feeling the space between her and the room around the edges of the cloth twist. Getting the idea instantly, she grinned, then concentrated. "See?"
"I do. That's brilliant. How does it look?"
"Fucking surreal," Leet said, awestruck. He got up and came over, peering into her hood, then pulled a flashlight from his pocket and pointed it at her face. "Shit, that's the freakiest thing I've ever seen," he muttered.
"What did you do?" Ianthe asked.
"She made a spatial fold inside the hood and linked it to the pocket she added, which is otherwise inaccessible," Metis put in, looking fascinated. Saurial nodded with a smile.
"Exactly. It will dissipate as soon as Vista takes the hood off, which is why she needs to be able to recreate it. With the hood down, the pocket is inaccessible, with the hood up and the space fold in place, she can access it. And since there's no light in there, the inside of the hood looks dark and empty. Even if you shine a light inside, all you do is illuminate the pocket. In fact, if I do this..." She made a few changes that Missy watched and memorized. "That should stop the light penetrating all the way. So it looks like there's no one in the cloak at all."
"How does she see if the light doesn't penetrate?" Über asked curiously.
"There are tiny gaps surrounding her pupils to allow light in," Saurial explained. "They're linked to her eyes so they follow them. Anything physical will get diverted into the pocket. Watch." She picked up one of the little demo multidimensional objects and accurately tossed it into Missy's hood, right at her face. The girl flinched a little but before she could do more the object vanished, while she could feel a distortion travel through the warped space filling her hood and end up in the much larger piece of it across her back.
"Unbelievable," Leet grinned. "How large is the pocket, and how does she get things back out?"
"It's about three cubic yards of space, which should be enough," Saurial replied. "It could go a lot bigger but I can't see much need for that right now. As for getting things out... Vista? You know how?"
"I think so," Missy said thoughtfully. "I need to do this..." She put her hand into her hood, using her power to create another warped spatial effect inside the first one, which made the bottom of the pocket accessible. After a couple of attempts, she triumphantly pulled the little five-dimensional object out, holding it up. Saurial clapped, grinning widely.
"Great. Really well done, Vista. I mean, Cloak."
"Of course you do, Scaly Sensei. There is no Vista, only Cloak." She ruined the effect by giggling again, which sounded really weird in that strange voice.
"The idea that you can do all of that pretty much on the fly, with no technology worth mentioning, is… extremely bizarre," Leet said after staring at them both. "Just like that, you've created a new Parahuman. Although her powers sort of give her away."
"It's still technology, it's just based on something entirely different than electronics and that type of thing," Metis noted, examining Missy from a couple of feet away. She stuck her head into the hood, then pulled it out again, grinning. "Although I have to admit even to me that's pretty impressive."
"These old Family techniques have all sorts of uses," Ianthe snickered. Leet and Über exchanged a glance then laughed.
"Apparently so. Well, that's most of the things that will keep people from thinking 'Vista in a big cloak' when they see her. But I can see some other problems. My man here is right about the powers, for one, and what about her hands? If she's going to wear her Vista costume under that her sleeves are a dead giveaway, and if she doesn't, she still has perfectly ordinary looking human hands and arms," Über said after he calmed down.
"That's several good points," Saurial replied with a small nod. "The hands are easy, that just needs gloves. The powers are more problematic." They all sat down and thought about things for a while.
"I have an idea that might work, I think," Leet finally said slowly, turning to look at Missy. "If I have the right idea about how your powers work. Although I suspect it will take a lot of practice to do it right."
"What is it?" she asked curiously, and somewhat eagerly. She was having one hell of a lot of fun, learning all sorts of new things.
"You can create a spatial warp compressing the distance between things, right? As a simplistic explanation."
"Yes. Although I can do a lot more now. But that's the basic idea I've always used."
"OK. Can you do it anywhere around you?"
"Yep."
"Like under your feet?"
She looked at him, puzzled, but nodded. "Sure. Why?"
"As an example, say you created a warp in front of you between the ground and a point say a foot above it. If you made it big enough, couldn't you basically stand on the ground even if from the outside it looked like you were standing on nothing?" He raised his eyebrows inquiringly as she stared at him, then looked at Saurial, who seemed intrigued.
"Worth a try," the latter said.
"It sure is," she grinned. Pushing her hood back and turning the weird voice off, she got up, then looked at the ground. It was more or less what she'd done to the mugger, making him slam his face into the ground when it was a couple of feet away, but she'd never thought of using it like this for her own benefit. With a tiny gesture, which helped her focus, she made a spot about two feet square in front of her, a foot up, be the same space as the floor under it, then gingerly lifted her right foot and put it into the center of the barely visible distortion. It held her weight, so she leaned forward and stepped fully onto her warp.
Everyone looked at her with varying expressions. She looked down, then up at them. "Holy shit," she said in a conversational tone, too shocked to even jump up and down. "I'm flying."
"You're just standing on the ground, it's more like the ground is following you around," Saurial chuckled. "But from here, yes, it looks exactly like you're flying."
Now the jumping up and down part happened. "Oh. My. God." she squealed, hopping about and nearly falling off her invisible platform. "This is great." She tried making the distortion rise, finding it was possible, but took more effort than she expected. After some experimentation, it turned out to be much easier just to make a new one at a different height in front of her, then hop from one to the other, like she was climbing invisible stairs.
"That is… very weird indeed to watch," Über said after a couple of minutes of watching her walk around the room ten feet off the ground, or, depending on your viewpoint, solidly on it. "And not even slightly like the way Vista is known to move."
"You could combine them, of course, but this is probably a good way to make it look like Cloak and Vista are separate people with slightly similar powers," Metis suggested. Missy was now experimenting with seeing if she could move her supporting spatial peculiarity around sideways. This proved to be even less satisfactory, which was disappointing. She'd had momentary thoughts of gliding around the place without moving her legs, which would have looked really cool. She resolved to keep trying, sure there was some way to achieve the effect, but for now, the invisible staircase technique seemed like a winner.
"You'll need to learn to do it quickly and automatically, without the gestures," Saurial said.
"I know, they seem to help, but I don't really need them," Missy replied, walking down a spiral staircase that wasn't there to the ground.
"In that case, learn to do the Cloak tricks without gestures, and keep using them for the Vista ones. That should keep people guessing."
"OK. I think I can do that," she said, very pleased with herself.
"I have an idea as well," Metis suggested. Missy eagerly turned to her. "You know that thing you do to let you see something far away up close?"
"Yes..." she replied slowly.
"Can you do it so one end is on one side of you, and the other end is on the other?"
Missy stared, then started to grin, instantly seeing her point. She nodded firmly. "I can, I think. Let's see…" Concentrating, she worked out the right application of her powers, then carefully wrapped herself in a special arrangement of warped space, going one better than the reptile's suggestion. When she felt it was right, she extremely cautiously used the techniques Saurial had taught her to stabilize the effect and lock it on herself as the center. Releasing her grip on it, she held her breath, then let it out with a wild shout of happiness. The much larger effect stayed put.
She'd set it up it as a cylindrical arrangement with a domed top, the goal being that any light from one side would end up going out the opposite side, skipping the part she was concealed inside. Half-way through she'd realized that with some work this would probably also make it possible to completely ignore bullets and things like that, since they'd just go around her as well. It didn't go through the middle, since the Manton effect meant that her own body in the way prevented this, but wrapped around her in a very complex knot of twisted space.
She could almost hear the universe crying.
The only problem was that she was now in complete darkness, since all the light was missing her completely. She'd expected that, and now very cautiously tried adding an exception to the warp where she was looking. With some experimentation she managed to do it. "How does it look?" she asked, then frowned when no one responded. Checking, she found she'd been a little overenthusiastic, managing to divert sound as well. It was pretty quiet in here.
Since it was a much more powerful variant of the technique she'd come up with as a sound cloak, which had worked remarkably well during her infiltration of the DWU, she was quickly able to work out how to modify the light shield to only affect light and let sound through both ways. It occurred to her that she could tweak it to block outgoing sound only with some effort, which would add a significant sneakiness boost, but still let her hear things.
She asked the question again. Über got up and walked around her, then grinned. "Pretty good. There's a barely visible ripple in the background when you move, or I move around you. It's like there's a cylinder of something almost perfectly transparent in the middle of the room."
"If you could make it follow your body outline better it would look almost exactly like the invisibility effects in Predator," Leet said with an approving nod.
"I've never seen that movie," she said with interest.
"You probably shouldn't, it's not really suitable for a girl your age," he smiled.
"At least partly because it would probably give her ideas," Über cackled.
His friend shrugged. "I have a feeling you're not wrong."
Thinking that if she wasn't supposed to see it, she probably should, Missy giggled. "Cool. I wish I had a mirror."
"Here you go," Saurial said, waving a hand at the large reflective surface that appeared in front of her.
Studying the image in the mirror, Missy grinned like a lunatic. All that was visible was the faint distortion that Über had mentioned, which in anything other than very good lighting would probably go unnoticed. In the dark it would be completely invisible. There were two tiny spots at eye level when she looked carefully, but without knowing they were there they'd be very hard to spot.
Thinking about Leet's suggestion, she played with the distortion, managing after nearly a quarter of an hour of very careful work to bring it into contact with her cloak and anchor it there. The effect was everything she'd ever hoped for.
"That is seriously amazing," Leet finally said when she'd tweaked it about as far as she could.
"Thanks. Hey, look at this," she replied, trying something she'd thought of while fine tuning it. She modified the space folding so instead of making things go around and come out somewhere else, they went right back where they'd come from. The end result was her invisible cloak suddenly became completely reflective, like a near-perfect mirror.
"Wow." The Tinker stared. "That's even harder to look at in some ways than the invisible one is."
"I'm very impressed," Metis commented, looking it. "In one evening, you've added a pretty impressive Stranger rating, radically changed your Mover rating, probably upped your Shaker rating by a couple of levels, and I suspect also added a sort of Brute rating. Since you must realize that you can use that trick to add a certain amount of invulnerability if you make it effect mass as well as photons."
"Yep, I thought of that," Missy grinned inside her reflective cocoon. "It's more complicated, though. It's hard to explain. I'll have to practice quite a bit."
"And it won't let you walk through walls or anything like that," Saurial pointed out, "At least without leaving a hole. If the mass is small enough to be entirely encompassed by the effect it should pass through, but something that overlaps it is going to react very oddly. And probably badly."
"That was something I thought of," she admitted.
Über, who was walking around her, looking at the reflections in her cloak, said, "It's a very useful defense. Almost a force-field in a way. If you can make it work you should be transparent to bullets and most other things."
Ianthe said, "And, of course, you can presumably hit anything you can see."
"Yes, I've used that before," she said, letting the distortion around her dissipate, then sitting down again. "I'm not strong enough to really hit hard, though. Like with those muggers, it's normally better to let them hit themselves."
"You'd be a damn nightmare in a fight," Über said, sitting next to her. She smiled at him, still loving the voice.
"Thanks."
"Well, strength comes with growing up," Saurial told her. "You're still young. But these might help." She slid a couple of collapsible batons across the table to Missy. "We can show you how to use them properly, with some practice, but even without, you can probably think of interesting things to do with them."
"I sure can," Missy giggled, picking one up and looking at it. The name embossed on the side made her laugh again. "Tac-Smak? Really?"
"Ianthe had a weird dream and it came to her," Saurial smiled, waving at her cousin. "I thought it fitted pretty well. We might start selling them at some point. It will never break or wear out. I don't know what the PRT's stance on weapons like that is, although I can guess they wouldn't be entirely happy about it, so it's probably best not to show them. I won't push it by giving you any bladed weapons, aside from anything else unless you know how to use them properly they're more dangerous to you than other people. Plus I don't think you want to slice someone into chunks."
"Not really," she said with an expression of distaste. "If I can't take them down with these and my abilities, I can run away. Or hide."
"Good and sensible strategy," Saurial said approvingly. "Pick your battles and don't get in over your head if you have any choice."
"Miss Militia says the same thing."
"She knows her stuff," her teacher nodded.
Missy experimented with the wrist flick needed to open the baton, getting it after a couple of tries. The solid-sounding click it made as it locked open was fairly intimidating. "Try not to hit anyone in the head if you can," Ianthe pointed out. "If you don't have a very good idea about human anatomy and some healing abilities you can really cause some serious damage a lot more easily than you'd expect. Stick to body or limb blows."
"OK. Thanks." Carefully noting the advice, she closed the thing, then flicked it open again, until she was sure she knew how to and could do it reliably. "This has been so much fun. Thanks, all of you."
"We had fun as well, Vista," Saurial assured her, looking around at her family and friends, all of whom nodded. "Here, try these on, and I think your Cloak persona is ready for use. You're just going to have to be very careful about only being seen as Cloak when Vista is known not to be on duty. Try to thrown in a few appearances when everyone knows where she is, as an alibi. It's not perfect but it should help for the time being."
Missy took the pair of elbow-length gloves that the lizard-girl had handed her, inspecting them closely. They were made of a fine soft leather-like substance, with short claws coming out the ends. Pulling one on, she held up her hand and rotated it. The material stretched over her hand and forearm, fitting like a second skin, without any wrinkles or indications it was a glove. The end result, combined with the other special effects, would probably convince anyone that whatever was inside the Cloak, it wasn't very human.
Grinning madly, she pulled the other one on as well, flipped her hood up, recreated the warp inside it, then switched on her eerie voice. Taking a step backwards onto an invisible platform a foot off the ground, she flicked both batons out to full extension.
"Cloak is here. Surrender, miscreants, or suffer the nail of ass-pain," she hissed, posing with the batons crossed in front of her.
Everyone stared, then clapped wildly. "Fantastic," Über chuckled. "I would never look at that and think Vista. I might think, 'Oh, fuck, run,' but not Vista."
Very satisfied with the entire evening, Missy stepped down, collapsed her batons and idly tossed them one after another into her hood, then pulled it down while going back to her normal voice. Leet watched with a grin, before saying, "To properly shit someone up, you should have a really big gun in there. In the comics the little person with the stuff space always pulls something insanely dangerous out of it without warning."
Giggling, Missy looked at Saurial, who seemed to be thinking. After a moment, the reptilian girl shook her head. "Probably a little too far," she said.
Leet and Missy both looked disappointed, but exchanged a glance then laughed again. "Maybe one day," the probably-not-a-villain-anymore said.
"One last little toy," Saurial said, holding out a hand. A fine silver bracelet appeared in it. She handed it over, Missy instantly feeling the weird folded fractional dimensions connected to it. "This has about a cubic yard of space in it. That should be enough for your cloak and tools. You can make the entrance yourself, you know how now."
"I do," Missy smiled. With a tiny gesture, and some concentrating, which was becoming much easier although she had to work at it, she formed a hole in space in front of her. The other end of the weird warp was linked to the entrance to the object she was holding. Picking her backpack off the floor where she'd put it when she came in, she pushed it through the faint wrinkle in the world in front of her, feeling it slide through the fracture in space into the enlarged volume linked to the bracelet. "Wow, thanks. That's really useful."
"With some practice you can probably work out how to make a proper anime storage pocket and not need the bracelet, but this is quick and easy," Saurial smiled. "It looks like silver but it's mostly EDM, so it won't break. The lock on it needs to be operated from the inside as well so once you put it on, you and me are probably the only people who can get it off again."
"So cool," the blonde girl grinned. Snapping the bracelet around her left wrist, which it fitted perfectly, she stuck her hand into the distortion and flicked the little catch she found there, then tugged the bracelet. It was firmly locked shut. "Wonderful, that means I can keep all my stuff with me all the time. That's incredibly useful."
"If anyone asks, you should probably tell them you worked out a new way to use a spatial fold," Saurial advised. "I wouldn't mention us for now. But it will most likely be best not to show it off too much at the moment."
"Don't worry, I'm not going to rub it into anyone's faces," Missy assured her. "I want to be able to come back and I can't do that if Piggot learns about this. She'll get all funny about it and shout at me."
"You're welcome any time you want to come," the lizard-girl told her. "Probably best to call first, as we're not always around, but I'll let the DWU know that Cloak can come and go without anyone getting worried. Get a cheap burner phone to call us, and make sure your PRT phone is off, and your normal one."
"I turned them off before I left school," Missy nodded. "I thought that far ahead."
"Good. You're pretty efficient at this sort of thing." The tall slender reptile, who she was completely sure was now a good friend, looked approvingly at her. "I've had a lot of fun as well with all this. I like teaching and your powers are very interesting. And very Family in a way." She grinned as Missy giggled. "But it's nearly midnight now and I expect you have school in the morning."
"Ooh, shit, I didn't realize it was so late," the girl yelped. Time had really gotten away from her. "I need to get home or my parents will go mental."
"Want me to ask Raptaur to give you a ride?" Ianthe asked, glancing at Saurial. Very tempted, Missy finally shook her head.
"Thanks, but I can probably do it faster. Next time, for sure."
"OK, I'll let her know," the life shaper said mildly. "Take care, have fun, and come back and visit some time."
"I sure will," the girl said firmly, standing up and flipping her hood over her head. Activating the special effects with less difficulty this time, practice definitely making it smoother, she bowed. "Cloak thanks the Family and their villainous minions for their aid. Farewell."
"Minions?" Leet whispered in mock outrage to Über, who patted him on the shoulder comfortingly.
"It's the girls against the boys, man. Totally unfair."
Snickering to herself, she followed Saurial to the rear door, which the scaly girl unlocked. "Until later, Oh Great Cloak," her teacher said, gesturing grandly to the opening. "It was an honor having you grace us with your presence."
"I'm sure it was," she hissed, before darting out into the dark, very pleased with the last few hours work. Wrapping herself in her invisibility distortion and forming invisible steps, she ascended to roof level and headed out across the emptiest part of the DWU yard, wondering if anyone would notice on the ground.
She was in a very good mood.
Half-way home, she realized that she'd gotten all the spy gadgets she could have wanted, the thought making her grin again.
Cloak was going to be fun.
Amy looked around as the door closed behind the petite and somewhat disturbing cloaked figure. "How do we keep doing that?" she asked the room at large. "We've broken another one and brought her over to the Family side."
"It's a gift, I think," Taylor giggled. "I didn't intend it to go that far, but the girl did at least half of it herself. Her power is fascinating. It fits into that," she gestured at the long series of equations on the boards, "better than I expected. And she learns very quickly."
"I can't wait to see what PHO makes of… Cloak," Randall grinned. "The next person to run into her is going to come away with some very odd ideas."
"I don't think that anyone is going to associate her with Vista, that's for sure," Lisa said. "As long as she's careful about it. Being a Ward is a bit of a problem, but if she only brings Cloak out every now and then and throws in a few misdirections she should be able to deal with it. She's pretty smart."
"And very bored, I think," Leet commented. He was studying the math again, looking pensive. "You realize you've effectively given her a huge power up, right? She's possibly one of the top five most dangerous capes in the city at the moment, you being the top three, then Amy, then her. There are all sorts of things I thought of that you could use her powers for that would be hideously dangerous. Sooner or later she'll probably work them out as well."
"I know that, believe me," Taylor replied. "But she'd have figured them out sooner or later herself, no matter what I did. Her power allows all these things, I didn't change or add to that, I just gave her the keys she was missing. This way, with some luck, maybe we can help her figure these things out before she gets into a fight and pulls out a last minute desperate trick that goes horribly wrong. Like with any weapon, you need to know how it works, even if you never use it."
He nodded slowly. "I guess you're probably right. I'm still a little worried, she's only about thirteen. It felt a little like handing my kid sister a loaded shotgun."
"You don't have a sister," Randall pointed out quite reasonably.
"Well, that's obviously true, but you know what I mean."
"Yep. But I think you're doing the kid a disservice. She's smart enough not to put the wrong end to her head. It's everyone else I'm worried about." He smirked as his friend chuckled. "And I can't help but wonder how long it's going to be before we have a miniature giant lizard running around terrifying everyone…"
They all looked at each other, then started laughing. Shortly, the last of the cold pizza had been eaten and Amy was showing the pair of new experimental subjects how to turn on the strength boosts, while Taylor was making a set of test weights.
Lisa just went to the computers and started trolling the PHO thread on Cloak, snickering under her breath at the response.