Sunday, February 27, 2011

Reaching over to the side table next to his chair, Danny picked up his phone as it rattled around on the wooden surface, making a determined bid to escape. He muted the morning news with the other hand via the remote, before hitting the call accept button after a look at the display. "Hello, Roy," he said. "Pretty early in the morning. Is anything wrong?"

"No, nothing like that, Danny," the Mayor's voice said calmly. "I was just phoning to see if you were still interested in coming for a meal at my house with your daughter. We spoke about it a while ago, but we were both busy. Now things seem to be running smoothly, I thought I'd check with you."

"Oh, I see," Danny replied, smiling a little to himself. "I've got no objections to that myself. Actually, I was planning on calling you about it yesterday, but circumstances rather got ahead of me. When were you thinking about this happening?"

"Well, the next free evening I have is on Wednesday," Roy said. Danny could hear pages turning, probably some sort of calendar. "Would that suit you? Around seven PM?"

He thought for a moment, then replied, "I think that would be fine. Let me just check to make sure Taylor doesn't have any plans."

"Sure, Danny."

Covering the microphone with his thumb, he looked over at the doorway where the young woman in question had made an appearance as he was talking, the girl leaning on the doorway and watching him, her tail tip flicking around and showing her good spirits. "Well?"

"Seven on Wednesday would be fine, Dad."

"Not many secrets from Varga hearing, is there?"

"Not really," she giggled.

Removing his thumb, smiling again, he said, "Taylor's fine with that too, Roy. Seven PM on the second."

"Great. I'll let Barb know." Roy sounded pleased.

"Will anyone else be there?"

"My son Rory will be home, he's away a lot of the time with his job. I was also toying with the idea of inviting Amy and Vicky Dallon, to thank both of them for their help in the entire project. I'd like to invite their entire family but my dining room isn't large enough."

Danny chuckled. "I'm sure both young women would be happy to accept the invitation. Would you like me to ask Taylor to ask them for you?" He glanced at his daughter who nodded.

"Thank you, but I think I should call their house myself. Politics, you understand."

"I do."

"My sister and my niece will be there as well, she expressed an interest in meeting both of you. Although she did mention that she'd met Taylor once before, briefly. Something about a handbag?"

Danny looked at Taylor, mildly puzzled, to see her grinning. She shrugged slightly.

"I'm afraid I don't know the details to that story, Roy," he laughed. "Although I should find out. OK, that all sounds very nice. We'll see you then."

"Wonderful." The other man paused, then asked, "Everything still going well at the Yard? I heard there has been some… potential unpleasantness… with the Merchants."

Now he sounded a little worried.

"Nothing too bad, yet anyway, but we've had a few reports about that pain Skidmark making a larger fool of himself than usual, apparently he's rather incensed about the current situation. Not entirely surprising, but annoying. We're taking precautions and the Family have been installing some anti-Merchant security systems."

"All right. If you need anything I can provide, let me know. That man is a damn nuisance on a good day, I hate to consider what he could get up to with some time to think. If you call what he does 'thinking', that is."

"It's a little worrying, I admit, but I have confidence in our people. I think we can probably deal with it, one way or another. Although I hope it doesn't come to that."

"You're not the only one." Roy sighed. "I suppose it was pretty much inevitable that they'd stick their noses in sooner or later."

"Pretty much, I'd have to agree. But there isn't a huge amount we can do about it right this instant."

"No. Oh well. Keep me informed, whatever happens."

"Sure, no problem."

"In that case, I'll let you get back to your Sunday. Nice to talk, Danny."

"Likewise, Roy. See you on Wednesday."

The other end went quiet, so he put the phone back down and turned to Taylor, who was now sitting on the sofa. She had a definite smirk on her face.

Staring suspiciously at her, he slowly asked, "What did you do?"

"Do?"

"You're looking like Lisa after a particularly cunning plan has struck her. I know that look already, even after only a few weeks. And it's catching, clearly. Spill it." He stared hard at her, one eyebrow up.

She cackled with amusement, flopping back onto the sofa and putting her feet and tail over the other end. "We ran a little hit and run mission against the Merchants last night. Amy's idea, actually. With some help from our cloaked friend and a very large hand."

He put his hand over his eyes. "Oh, god, I can feel the migraine starting."

"No, you can't, you don't get them. And couldn't, now, anyway."

Moving his fingers apart he gave her smiling face another hard look, then sighed once more, lowering his hand. "Fine, spoil a perfectly good melodramatic moment."

She giggled.

"So what did you do?"

"Made a withdrawal from a Merchant Bank," his daughter said cryptically, grinning a reptilian grin in which he could see Varga coming through very strongly.

Thinking hard, he finally worked it out, his eyes widening a little. "You stole Skidmark's money?"

"Got it in one."

"How much of it?"

"All of it, I think," she laughed. "Lisa says it's the whole stash."

"How the hell much was that?" He gaped at her.

"Seven hundred and eighteen thousand, six hundred and thirty nine dollars," she replied in triumphant tones. "And fifty-two cents. Mostly in small bills."

"Holy crap." Danny stared in shock. "That must have been an enormous pile of cash."

"It came neatly packaged in a safe," she told him, looking very pleased with herself. "Speaking of which, do you want a safe? One careless owner, the door is a little bent but I can fix that."

"You… took the entire safe?" he mumbled, shaking his head.

"Of course, it was much easier to carry like that," Taylor told him earnestly, the corners of her mouth twitching. "Someone had stuck it to the floor which was a bit annoying, but I only pulled a little and it came right out."

"I suppose you just stuck your hand through the wall?"

She shook her head, looking very pleased with herself. "Nope. Didn't need to, and it might have hurt someone. Cloak just sort of… moved… everything out of the way. Stuck my hand in, grabbed it, and pulled. Took about six seconds in all. We were half-way back to the office before they started yelling."

Danny shook his head in admiration and resignation. "Christ. You and your friends are a force to be reckoned with. Heaven help us if you ever turn to crime." Thinking about the story, he shrugged, smiling a little. "An elegantly simple if ridiculously bizarre accomplishment. I suppose that depriving him of his operating capital is an entirely valid approach to the problem."

"Lisa thought so, she predicted that probably thirty to thirty-five percent of his gang will probably quietly disappear as a result. Some of them because there's no money left, some because we proved we can attack them right in the middle of their base without being stopped, with all that implies, and some because we'll have scared the shit out of them." Taylor sat up again. "It seemed like it was worth a try, and no one got hurt. I really don't want to have to do anything serious, even to Merchants."

He nodded slowly, watching her. "I can understand that, and I'm glad you still feel that way. It's a terrible thing to take a life, and should never be done if there are alternatives. But..." He sighed. "Sometimes there aren't. I hope it doesn't come to that, though."

"Me too," she replied quietly. "But if it does, I'll do what needs to be done."

"Heberts tend to, eventually," he told her with a somewhat proud look. "Although in some cases we need too much pushing and let things get very bad before we do it."

"We both made mistakes," his daughter muttered. "Not going to happen like that again."

"Don't overreact in the other direction, though."

She nodded, looking mildly depressed for a moment. "Keep me honest, Dad," she finally said.

"I will, dear. As much as I can." He smiled at her. "What are you going to do with the money?"

"We counted it, bundled it up, and stashed it with Lisa's team's take. We've got over a million and a half dollars on top of Amy's workroom now," Taylor grinned, snapping out of the momentary dark place she'd been. "Plenty to pay for both Rachel's legal case and helping… Linda."

"Our latest guest. Yes." Danny got up and headed into the kitchen, putting the kettle on, while Taylor followed him. "That was somewhat unexpected, I have to admit."

"Even Lisa was a little surprised about how quickly things changed," the girl said, retrieving a bottle of orange juice from the fridge, pouring herself a glass full, then returning it. Sitting on her tail at the table, she watched him preparing some coffee. "But I think it will work out. Might take some careful work, though. And it depends on what she wants to do, of course."

"What does Lisa think?"

He poured the coffee into his cup, added milk, then sat opposite her.

Taylor looked thoughtful. "She says it's a little difficult to say for sure since Linda herself doesn't know yet, but she thinks it's most likely that she'll end up wanting to stick around. Amy's plan is probably going to be the one we use, one way or another."

"Hmm." He sipped the drink, then put the cup down. "It will take some very delicate work to make everything line up with a new identity, but it's doable, definitely. I know some people..."

She grinned at him, in a rather admiring manner. "I'll bet you do. I've learned a lot about… 'The Boss'… recently. Things neither you or Mom ever mentioned to me." Cocking her head to the side, she smirked as he sighed. "All sorts of things. There are reasons your gang respects you."

"Not a gang," he growled. "A union. And not mine."

The girl raised both eyebrows. "OK. Whatever you say, Dad."

Drinking her juice she hid a grin behind the glass as he rolled his eyes. "God, you're actually worse than your mother, sometimes," he mumbled, although he couldn't help smiling slightly. "Go and play with your weird friends and let me enjoy a morning of peace and quiet sans the unnatural and eldritch."

"As you command," she giggled, finishing the juice and getting up. Putting the glass in the sink, she bent down and put her arms around his neck for a moment in a quick hug, then headed for the door. "See you later."

"Later, dear." He listened to the back door close, feeling amused and oddly happy.

Sitting there for a few minutes, he drank the rest of his coffee while pondering the recent events, before getting up, washing the cup and Taylor's glass, then heading into his office to check his email.

One in particular made him stop for a long moment, then somewhat reluctantly click on it. Having read it, he stared blankly at the screen for some time before slowly beginning to type a reply.

Chris picked up his notebook again and leafed through it, puzzling out his own notes from the night before. He'd stayed up late scribbling down all manner of things resulting from his one-man brainstorming session provoked by seeing Saurial zooming around on her flying whatsit, drinking far more energy drinks than were probably good for him. Even when Dennis had turned up and tried to pull him into an online game against some guy called 'Protomancer' he apparently had a beef with, he'd kept working.

His friend's shouts of irritation as he was comprehensively slaughtered several times in a row barely disturbed him. Neither did the later exclamations of amusement as the other boy trolled PHO for a while. Eventually he went to bed, no one else turning up to bother him, which let him keep going.

Around four in the morning he finally staggered to his quarters, way too tired to go home, clutching the notebook in one hand and his head in the other. He was barely able to get undressed before he fell asleep. It proved beyond his ability to turn the light out first.

Waking to the itchy eyes and slightly sweaty skin of someone who'd stayed up way too late, he'd licked dry lips and stared at the light suspended above his bed for a while until his brain finally kicked in and admitted he was actually no longer sleeping. It had still taken another five minutes before he'd stopped yawning long enough to remember the notebook. Leaning over and scrabbling around on the floor he'd unearthed it under his shirt, grabbing it and beginning to read back the things he'd barely been able to remember writing in it.

Very slowly, a conclusion had begun to rise in him. In the end he'd had to stop, repressed excitement causing him to tremble.

Lying back he'd spent a few minutes breathing heavily with his eyes closed, until he'd calmed down, then went back to the book.

Now, reaching the end, he dropped it to the covers and put his hands over his eyes, pressing hard enough that he saw spots when he removed them. Shaking his head violently, he tried to force himself to full wakefulness.

It took some time, but eventually he felt able to sit up and swivel his legs around, putting his feet on the floor. Retrieving the book he turned to the last page he'd written in, read the last paragraph, then very carefully closed it again and put the thing reverently on his bedside table.

Breathing slowly and deeply, he counted to ten.

His yell of happy triumph woke Dennis in the next room, who complained bitterly, but it didn't change his smile.

He finally knew what his specialty was, and it was glorious.

'I owe Saurial thanks,' he thought with a broad grin. 'Somehow, she set me on the right path. I'd never have worked it out otherwise.'

Flopping back onto the bed he stared at the ceiling for a while, before jumping to his feet and rushing off to have a shower. He needed a change of clothes and breakfast, stat.

There was Tinkering to be done...

Emily paged through the local PHO forum, looking for anything that might give early warning of events that she should be aware of. While most of it was wild speculation at best, there was often a nugget of truth lurking somewhere in the various threads discussing Parahuman activities. Occasionally this nugget was more accurate or timely than the PRT themselves could manage.

It still meant she had to put up with some right idiots, though.

Sighing at the most recent stupidity from a number of familiar names, one of which started with 'Void' and ended with 'Cowboy', she wondered if she could get away with tracking the idiot down and threatening him at gunpoint until he promised not to post any more.

Or perhaps just shooting him.

She suspected that most of the less crazy people on PHO at least would pay for her legal defense fund…

Shaking her head, she let the fantasy go and kept looking for anything useful, sipping a mug of tea with her free hand. She'd had a good breakfast and was feeling, for her, fairly mellow. After all, she'd only thought about shooting one person today and it was nearly ten AM.

A thread title caught her eye, making her tap it, then start reading. After a moment she looked more carefully, scrolling up to the beginning again and starting over, her tea forgotten in her hand. A couple of pages later, she sat back and thought, before producing a vicious grin.

'Well done, you crazy lizards. I don't know how you did it, but damn that was inspired...'

She reread the entries, which discussed the rumor that the Merchants had very sadly tragically managed to lose their entire cash reserves to some mysterious giant hand that picked up their safe and absconded with it. She was totally certain this was the result of Kaiju doing a spot of asset confiscation, although how the vast lizard had pulled it off she had no idea. There were no reports anywhere else that anyone had seen anything, but several people who were obviously connected with the Merchants had basically confirmed it. Mostly by denying it in a very unconvincing manner.

They'd have done better to keep their mouths shut, in fact. A poster she'd come across several times before, who she suspected was actually a fairly powerful Thinker based on the insight their posts often brought to a discussion, had torn the statements to pieces and shown logically and clearly that the rumor was almost certainly true.

'Whoever AllSeeingEye is, he or she is pretty good,' she mused. 'I wonder if it's one of our guys? Whatever, if this really is true, it's going to fuck up Skidmark and his friends fairly seriously.'

She thought some more, then grinned again, even more darkly than before. 'Oh, dear, poor guy. I wonder if he managed to pay for whatever it is he's aiming for, before his safe got up and left the building...'

That thought had her chuckling for some time.

She was still snickering when she left her apartment to go to the office. It sounded like she needed to discuss this with Hannah, to see if they could capitalize on the situation.

Taylor unlocked the office door, slipping inside and closing it again. She was in the form of Raptaur this time, having decided she was in a slightly larger reptilian mood at the moment considering she'd spent a lot of the last couple of days as Saurial.

She thoroughly enjoyed that form, of course, but she also liked this one, and all her others as well. "We really need to bring some more relatives to the city soon," she said out loud to the Varga, smiling to herself.

"I agree," he replied, sounding thoughtful. "Perhaps Umihebi should visit?"

Chuckling, she shook her head. "Probably not just yet. She's a little… large. Although I want to get out for a good fast swim soon, we haven't done that for a while."

"If you think Umihebi is a bit big, that wildly excessive dragon you showed Amy and Lisa yesterday is possibly over the top," he laughed. "Even to me, that seems impressive."

"Feasible?"

"Oh, most certainly. It's entirely possible, but I think we would need to practice somewhere a very long way from any people. We already attract a certain amount of puzzled attention, so I suspect that a flying reptile large enough to double as a protective shield for a significant proportion of the city would be looked on with some confusion."

"I can't argue with that," she snickered. "We really have to try a smaller one, though. I'm sure it would work after all the designing you did. Maybe even Kevin's one, although it's not the most aerodynamic form."

"Personally I rather liked that night fury dragon from that amusing animation you saw with your friends before our trip to Canada," he replied with a grin in his voice. "It looked good, was approximately the right size to be a plausible creature, and the wings were in proportion unlike a lot of the mythological forms in the literature of both our worlds."

"Might be worth a shot when we have a free moment," Taylor smiled. Walking over to the Merchant's safe, which was sitting in the middle of the floor with the door lying next to it where she'd dropped it after simply pulling it off the hinges, she inspected the thing. "Right now, we need to get rid of this, it's in the way."

"You could throw it into the bay," he suggested.

"I'm trying to clean the bay, not fill it with old steel," she pointed out.

"Eat it?"

"Had a big breakfast." Studying the safe, she reached out and snapped off one of the hinges, chewing it reflectively. Swallowing, she shrugged. "It's OK, I guess, but the steel isn't very high grade. Not enough chromium for a good taste."

He was snickering to himself now, making her grin. "In that case, I suggest putting it with the scrap metal from the tanker," he said. "We can get a little money for it, it's several tons of steel."

"Yep. Seems like a plan."

She turned to look at the other things that had come out of the safe as well as the cash. Three handguns, half a dozen boxes of ammunition, and about a kilo of what seemed to be extremely high grade cocaine. "We don't really need that lying around either," she commented as she went over to the table and looked more closely at the weapons. Picking one up, she sniffed it. "This has been used several times," she added. "I'd be tempted to put it in the armory, but who knows what crimes have been committed with the thing? We don't want it tying them to us."

"That's a valid point," he agreed. "Perhaps you should arrange to get them to the police. Or just eat them as well."

"Police, I think," she nodded, making a thick-walled steel box and dropping the three weapons and the drugs in, then sealing it into an impenetrable cube. "I'll take it over tomorrow. Right, then, let's get this thing over to the rail car."

Moving over to the roller door, she flipped the switch to open it, then went back and shoved the safe door into the safe itself, bending it until it wedged in place. Picking the safe up, she balanced it carefully, then headed back to the now-open door, tapping the switch on the way out with the end of her tail. The motor whined into life behind her.

Heading across the yard, she nodded to a couple of passing workers, who stared at the five tons or so of metal she was carrying, looked at each other, shrugged, and kept going. Reaching the nearest empty car of the dozen coupled together next to the now much smaller piles of cut up tanker, she peered into it, then looked dubiously at the safe she was holding. It was just a little too big to fit properly and safely. The shift of workers who were separating the tanker wreck into different metals watched her from a safe distance, calling a greeting as she stopped.

Putting the safe down, she waved to them, then made an EDM blade and cut the thing into quarters, tossing each piece into the rail car when she was done. Finished, Taylor made the blade go away, before heading over to chat to the people doing the work, manifesting a safety vest and helmet as she did.

Pulling up beside a familiar figure, Amy rolled the window down and smiled. "Hi, Lisa," she said cheerfully.

"Hey, Amy," her friend said, grinning at her. "I was just going over to the office. Taylor got here a while ago but I haven't seen Danny yet. And our friend Linda is still asleep."

"She will be for hours," Amy replied, driving at a walking pace next to the blonde girl with one hand on the wheel. "Ianthe gave her a little extra last night, which would kick in when she fell asleep. She needed the rest, if only psychologically. She should be feeling a lot better when she wakes up, around half past three or so."

"Sneaky, that purple lizard," Lisa laughed. "Very sneaky."

Amy smiled a little. "She does what she can for her patients."

They'd arrived at the side yard, the other girl dashing ahead and going inside, then opening the main door. Amy drove her truck in and parked, turning it off and jumping out as Lisa closed the door again.

"I realized something on the way over," she commented when the door was closed again.

"You and Taylor should have made those tail holes using her fractal dimensional technique so your tails don't stick out into the rear?" Lisa asked knowingly.

Amy stared at her. She shrugged, grinning. "Thinker, remember?"

"Why didn't you say anything at the time, then?" Amy demanded with her hands on her hips.

"It was funnier to see how long it took you both to work out you missed something," Lisa smirked.

Sighing, the healer shook her head. "She's contagious. That's exactly the sort of thing Taylor would do."

"I learned from the best, but to be honest I'd have done it anyway," her friend giggled.

"Done what?" Taylor, currently Raptaur, asked, appearing out of nowhere next to the blonde, who shrieked in shock and nearly jumped into Amy's arms.

"Fucking hell you scaly lunatic don't do that!" she yelled when she recovered.

Amy, who had definitely jumped despite herself, had still recovered much faster as she'd been watching when Taylor had dropped the cloaking spell behind the other girl. Now she was creased up, howling with laughter at the outraged expression on their friend, who was standing with her arms crossed and a definite smell of irritation wafting from her.

This didn't last too long, Lisa recovering quickly and just sighing. Taylor was grinning widely.

"How long were you waiting for that moment?" she asked with resignation.

"Since you met Amy in her truck," Taylor snickered. "I followed you guys in."

"You are… demonic."

"Thanks."

"You think that was a compliment?"

"I choose to take it as such." They smirked at each other, then Taylor bent over and heaved Amy, who was still giggling, to her feet. "Come on, dear cousin, we have work to do. Let's see about getting your little toys sorted, then try some of the things I've come up with before Linda wakes up. We need to think about how we're going to handle that particular worm-can as well."

"Yeah." Amy looked hard at Lisa, who had the grace to blush a little. "Thanks for the head's-up on that, by the way."

"Hey, I was surprised as well," Lisa protested a little guiltily. "What else could I do, though?"

"Nothing." Taylor retook her base form, putting her arm around the blonde's shoulders for a moment. "You did the right thing. We all know it. So does Dad. All we need to do now is work out how to proceed from here."

"If nothing else we've taken two things away from Skidmark that he valued, his Tinker and his money," Amy giggled. "We have much better uses for both of them than he does."

Lisa started smirking, causing them both to look at her, then each other. "We took three things from him," she said happily, holding up three fingers.

"Three?"

"Damn right. His Tinker, his money, and his reputation." Lisa looked very smug. "No one who hears about it is going to be impressed about his ability to run a gang," she added.

"And how will they hear about it?" Taylor asked, giving her friend a narrow-eyed look.

"Because they were stupid enough to deny the rumor that someone not a million miles from here may have had some responsibility for starting," Lisa giggled. "And in a way that someone else, who is also quite close and may in fact be the same person, could then carefully deconstruct in a manner calculated to get them really worked up to the point they basically confirmed everything they were denying."

Taylor looked impressed and amused. Amy was laughing helplessly again. "God, that's hilarious. So now everyone on PHO knows from the Merchants themselves that all their money walked out of their own damn base in the middle of the night and there wasn't a thing they could do about it?"

"Basically."

"Wonderful." She thought, then grinned. "I wonder if he'll get so pissed off he has a heart attack?"

"That would solve a few things," Taylor nodded. "Somehow I doubt we'll get that lucky, though."

"Maybe not. But I'll think positively." Lisa seemed pleased with herself. They shared a grin then headed for Amy's workroom. Shortly they were gathered around the workbench looking at the latest construction that was sitting on it. She stroked it gently, checking the operation of the thing. All the readings were fine.

"It looks sort of… weird," Lisa said, peering at the biodevice closely. "Not in a bad way, just… alien."

"Not alien," Amy corrected her. "Family. It's very Family."

"I can see the resemblance," Lisa grinned. "All scaly like that."

"We just need to work out the best way to hold the relevant chemicals," the healer said thoughtfully, stepping back and tapping her chin with a finger. "I was thinking about a dimensionally peculiar set of reservoirs. Possible?" She and Lisa both looked at Taylor, who was communing with her giant invisible friend.

"Should be easy enough. How much internal volume do you need?"

"Ah… about two cubic feet or so? That would let me build all the systems in along with a pretty big chemical reserve. Thousands of operations worth at least."

"Sure."

They discussed the design for half an hour, then Taylor started making parts, which Amy wove into the structure of the partly living device while Lisa watched carefully and made suggestions. Between the three of them, they had a pretty impressive capability to manufacture and essentially simulate some very complex systems without too much effort.

Eventually they finished, Amy issuing instructions as Taylor made the last few adjustments to the inorganic parts, both of them smiling triumphantly when the final component disappeared into the innards of the thing with an eye-twisting effect and a faint pop. Lisa nodded, looking pleased. "That's perfect," she announced. "Everything folded away properly. How is it?"

Reaching out, Amy picked the synthetic semi-life off the bench and cuddled it to her chest.

"Fine," she said in a contented voice. "Exactly the way it was supposed to come out. Let's test it."

They went into the main room, Taylor going down to the other end and making some targets on stands before returning. She waved at them. "Ready when you are," she announced.

Amy looked down at the second most complex bioconstruct she'd ever made, grinned, and carefully put it on her right arm. The device was a flattened half-cylinder about the length of her forearm and roughly an inch thick, with a series of short tentacle-like protrusions coming from the flatter side. The far end of it had a familiar looking small orifice on it, something identical to the one in the palms of her 'Ianthe' hands, for much the same reason.

As she applied the thing to her arm, having pulled her sleeve up, the tentacles wrapped themselves firmly but gently around her arm, pulling the warm and finely-scaled near-creature to her skin in a very solid grip. She let go of it with her other hand, then shook her arm experimentally. "That's not going to come off," she said with satisfaction. "Good and tight, but not too tight. The weight's not too bad either."

"How about the linkage?" Lisa asked.

"Everything's linked in. All systems working to nominal capacity so far."

Amy raised her arm, pointing the thing at the target. The end of it overlapped her hand a little, in a way that left her own skin well out of the way of the orifice. She sighted carefully, then twitched a muscle in her arm. A familiar 'pop' sounded and the target sprouted a hole.

"Perfect," she crowed, grinning madly. "It works!"

"Never doubted it would," Taylor smiled. "Good shot, too."

"Thanks." Amy fired a dozen more darts from the device, which was an external version of her built-in Ianthe weapons, with some improvements. She was going to upgrade the originals in both her and Lisa's bioconstructs as a result of these tests. "The neural linkage works perfectly as well. Look, I'll hand over tracking to the thing. You go and walk around over there."

Taylor moved to the middle of the room, while Amy pointed her arm, then flipped the mental switch. As her friend danced around like an idiot, her arm moved to follow her center of mass without her direct input, although she could easily override it. Lisa watched with impressed awe.

"That's just freaky," the blonde girl laughed.

"I can set it for auto-fire as well, using several trigger patterns," Amy smiled. "The optical sensors here are nearly as sharp as our Family eyes. Let's try the various forms of ammunition."

Taylor didn't have time to duck when she opened fire. There were a number of sharp cracks, followed instantly by pretty loud bangs as the darts exploded on her friend, shredding her shirt on the spot.

"Hey!" Taylor shouted in indignation. "Warn someone before you use the explosive darts, Amy!"

"Sorry," she grinned, not sorry at all. Her friend reformed her shirt, patting herself down.

"This one is the electrical stun shot," she added, firing again. There was a flash of light on Taylor's chest, followed by a section of her new shirt crumbling to black powder. "Biological super capacitor charged to about eight thousand volts."

"Not bad," Lisa nodded.

Taylor put her hands on her hips and just stared at her for a moment. Her shirt reformed again. "Are you going to do much more of that?" she asked tartly.

"Well, I can't really use the acid shot inside, the fumes are toxic," Amy mused out loud. She grinned when both her friends gave her an odd look. "Kidding. I thought about it, but it's too dangerous. Even the explosives are a little over the top, they're reserved for serious problems. Mostly the ammo is non-lethal."

"What else do you have?" Lisa asked curiously.

"Sedative, paralytic, capsaicin shot, that one will hurt like a bastard but isn't too dangerous, a pretty neat emetic, and antidotes for them all. Not to mention the darts can do about mach three if you wind the power up all the way." She snapped off a couple of shots at the targets over Taylor's shoulder, the loud bang they made echoing around the room. "If lethal is really needed, that would do it even without the explosives."

All three of them looked at the target, which had a two inch hole in it just from the shockwave of the dart going through it. "It sure would," Taylor noted with a thoughtful look. "Best to reserve that for serious trouble."

"Overall, I think it works pretty well," Amy said, very pleased. Deactivating the literal bio-weapon, she raised her arm and felt the thing attached to it. "Doesn't add too much mass, it's tough enough to take a hell of a battering, and when it's taken off it goes into a standby mode that will keep it functional for a couple of years at least. I should be able to improve that, I've got a few ideas, but this is only the prototype."

"What about keying it into the operator?" Lisa asked. "It's using your symbiote at the moment."

"I've designed a much simpler one which is just an authentication system," she said. "If we don't want to give out a full symbiote. But I want to start getting them out to people soon, just in case."

Rejoining them having removed the targets, Taylor nodded. "I agree. I'll talk to Dad about it. We need to work out the best way to do it. The PRT might get involved when they find out, which I'd like to either avoid or have a solution for."

"OK." Amy looked at her construction. "I'll put this away, I need to let my power chew on the results for a while and see if it can come up with any improvements. Let's see what your ideas are."

"All right." Taylor sighed a little. "None of them really have a non-lethal mode though. The majority of the stuff I've come up with is meant for really serious problems. Mostly giving them to other people."

Returning her latest construct to her workroom, Amy joined Lisa at the table where Taylor was making something very weird.