Standing on top of a warehouse near the DWU yard, Taylor, currently Saurial, watched the lights of Amy's truck disappear into the distance. It was just after midnight now, and they'd had a productive day, all things considered. The issue of Dinah Alcott was stabilized for the moment, the girl herself had gone away happy, as had her family, and they'd had quite a lot of fun with that. Subsequently she and Amy, with Lisa's input, had made three more bioguns, incorporating a few modifications that Amy and her friends had thought of to make the things more useful. Amy had upgraded her prototype to the same specification, giving them four, enough for some sensible testing. They needed to think who they'd trust with them, aside from Mark. Zephron was an obvious candidate, the huge man was calm, skilled, and apparently a very good shot.
She'd mentioned giving one to Alec to try and the expression that Lisa had developed had caused both her and Amy to laugh for some time. Their friend wasn't of the opinion that a new, largely untested, Biotinkered weapon and the slightly amoral young man were a wildly good fit, at least not without some close supervision.
Taylor could see her point, thinking about it.
Oh, well, they'd work it out in the end. Amy was planning on making a dozen of the things over the next few days, but four would do for right now. The 'docking station' for them was next on the list and something she'd make tomorrow, since she was still designing it.
After making the weapons, she'd manufactured a pile of the one shot healing symbiotes, a box of which Taylor had in her pocket. They'd talked one of the DWU people in the cafeteria into testing one, with less effort than Taylor had expected, after requesting and getting a promise of silence about it. His cut arm, the victim of a piece of sharp scrap that afternoon, had healed without trace in seconds, only slightly more slowly than the standard symbiote did the job. Amy wasn't quite satisfied, sure she could speed it up, but Lisa and Taylor were both of the opinion that it was good enough for now and much better than nothing.
Again, next time the healer would tweak the design and they'd do some testing. In the meantime, Taylor intended to keep some on her just in case they came in handy, since she implicitly trusted her friend's work and lacked her healing abilities.
Lisa had, while they were working, filled them in on the talk she'd had with Armsmaster, and all the inferences she'd drawn from it and some later work on the internet. The plan seemed sound and she gave it a very high probability of working correctly, which Taylor's new talents would certainly increase.
She grinned. Coil wasn't going to know what hit him.
They still weren't totally sure what the villain's powers were exactly but Lisa had decided that it was a variant on precognition that most likely used some form of short to medium term reality modeling to give him a picture of how events would play out from initially set starting conditions. She also thought it possible it might allow him to run more than one model at once, something that had come to her when she'd seen Taylor's dual aspect technique, but wasn't certain of that yet. It would, however, fit a number of things she'd puzzled over when she'd seen the man at work and her power seemed to be telling her it was probably working in the right direction.
They all hoped that with some more thought the blonde could nail the threat down properly, since even that theory suggested Coil could be somewhat tricky to deal with if they weren't careful, but her deductions were still helpful and gave them some ideas on how to counter him. When the Protectorate capes turned up they could discuss the concept and see if anyone could add to it, or come up with a plausible alternative.
Given the problem of the explosives Amy had considered the issue for some minutes, then said she had an idea but would have to sleep on it. They'd left her to it, while Taylor and the Varga came up with some alternatives should they be needed. Between them, the stuff wasn't going to be too difficult to handle, although they'd have to be careful since no one would thank them even a little if they managed to collapse one of the larger buildings in the city.
'Whoops' wouldn't really cut it at that point…
Taylor grinned to herself. She'd never live that down, so it was probably best to avoid it. Still, that was for later. Now, she intended to go and play with her 'teleporting' ability and hop around for a while, see what was going on, possibly upset some criminals, and generally have some fun before going home.
Making a small EDM package containing her valuables and equipment she carefully hid it in the brickwork, since they still hadn't quite worked out the best way to take the stuff with them when they jumped, then looked around.
Taking aim at another building about a quarter mile away she went through the internal mental gymnastics of the jump, before smiling as the world flickered around her. While complicated, it was becoming quite easy with practice. Turning on the spot, she shook her head in pleased wonder.
'This is so fucking cool,' she thought.
"It's certainly an unexpected benefit of the technique you invented, Brain," the Varga commented, pleasure in his voice. "I've been working on the math and I think, with some work, it just might be possible to extend it to allow both 'aspects' as you call them to use a variant of this method to simultaneously perform the same trick."
'You mean we could both be out and both teleport separately?' she asked, surprised.
"Yes, I think so."
'But we can only do two bodies. Or one, technically, with two aspects.'
"That's not quite correct, as it happens. Yes, we can only correctly control two copies at the same time, for the moment. Although it's not beyond the realms of possibility we might be able to slightly improve on that with time and a lot of practice. However, 'control' and 'manifest' are not directly synonymous, I believe." He was definitely thoughtful, and now so was she.
"My thought is that, given a fast enough switch between the local and remote manifestation, it should be possible to effectively use the 'teleport' ability with two simultaneous aspects. Each one creates a remote copy, takes control of it immediately, and dissipates the other one. It's still only one body, but we're dividing it into four aspects, only two of which are controlled at any given time. The other two will be manifested for so short a period it's irrelevant that we can't, yet, drive them independently from each other."
Considering his suggestion, she slowly nodded. 'I get it, I think. It sounds plausible. Running two different spacial folds at once is more difficult, but if you do one and I do the other, it shouldn't be too hard."
"Precisely. I have been thinking about parts of this ever since you came up with the technique, although I did miss what Lisa spotted immediately, which is slightly embarrassing." He chuckled quietly. "She is very good. But based on that, I feel we still haven't fully plumbed the depths of the different things we can come up with from your original breakthrough. Mental processing power on your side is the main limitation. Eventually that may not be as much of a problem, but it will take a considerable amount of time to increase your capacity. I don't think that we'll be able to practically control more than a fairly small number of simultaneous aspects as distinct individuals for some time, if ever. Three might be practical in the end, more than that is definitely pushing it. But even so, there are several other possibilities that wouldn't require full control of that nature."
'Huh.' She shook her head in wonder. 'I can't really imagine what it would be like with more than two aspects at once. Two is weirdly normal now, but I guess that's because of our own nature. Three seems strange even to think about.'
"It won't be a problem you need to deal with soon," he replied. "I would suggest that it would be more useful to concentrate on increasing range and duration than number, and much easier."
'Agreed,' she nodded. 'So, shall we see if we can do the dual teleport thing?'
"I am still modifying the technique to allow for it, but that shouldn't take too much longer."
'In that case, I'm going to practice this for a while.' Peering into the distance, she jumped to the next target, half a mile further away toward the city center. In only four more jumps she was standing back on top of the Medhall building, cloaked and pleased. 'This is sure a quick way of getting around.'
"It's gratifyingly efficient," he replied. "Once we can take physical objects with us, it will be a very useful talent indeed, but it's already helpful. And rather fun."
With a laugh, she dived over the edge of the roof, then blinked out half-way to the ground, reappearing back where she'd started from. 'Momentum isn't conserved, of course,' she commented, repeating the exercise.
"Of course. You're not, as Lisa pointed out, physically moving one body from place to place as such, you're moving part of that body. As soon as you dissipate the aspect, any kinetic energy involved with it goes away."
'We really are making the universe whimper a little, aren't we?' she giggled on the way down yet again, this time waiting until she was only six feet from the ground to hop back to the roof. Barely pausing, she jumped from there to a point a mile away, then back to street level a few blocks over.
"That is what demons do, Brain," he snickered. "It's a gift."
Smiling, she walked along the street, looking around, dropping the cloak when she found a suitable spot in an alley. Going back onto the main road she strolled along nodding to the occasional pedestrian, waving once to a BBPD patrol car that passed. The cop driving slowed to wave back, then sped up again.
She found the entire thing enjoyable. In the last few weeks she hadn't been out on the street nearly as much as when she'd first started going out as Saurial, which sometimes she found herself surprised to think was only a couple of months ago. The recent work at the yard had become her main time sink outside school, which she wasn't upset about at all, since it was both useful and fun, but sometimes she missed just wandering around jumping gang members.
Taylor grinned internally. It was a slightly odd hobby but one that wasn't as unusual in these parts as it might be somewhere else.
Hearing shouting coming from up ahead, she started jogging. It was coming from a familiar shop, sounding like a serious argument, but not quite at the point of violence. Pulling the door of the convenience shop open she went inside. The man behind the counter spotted her, looking relieved, which was quite a change from the first time she'd been there when he'd just seemed confused.
Standing on her side of the counter were two young men, in their late teens, who were engaged in a tug of war with the clerk over a six-pack of beer. "I can't sell it to you without valid ID," the clerk said, returning his attention to the blond one, who was tugging on the alcohol while wearing a truculent expression. His friend, a taller dark-haired youth who looked more than slightly drunk already, was leaning over the counter waving a laminated card at the shopkeeper. "And that is not valid ID. It is, in fact, the least convincing fake ID I've ever seen. Did you get it in a vending machine or something?"
He sounded vexed and more than a little annoyed. Taylor got the impression that this standoff had been going on for a while. Standing behind the two, who hadn't apparently noticed her entry, she gave the clerk a sympathetic smile. He rolled his eyes and pulled the beer back towards him.
"Come on, man, give us the damn beer, will you?" the blond grumbled. "Look, I'll give you an extra twenty bucks."
He nudged his friend who picked up his wallet, which was on the counter-top, and pulled out some more cash, waving it at the man on the other side.
"No, I told you, no ID, no sale. Let go of the fucking beer."
"We want it!"
"You can't have it!"
"Bastard. What's your problem?"
Milo, the clerk, sighed heavily. "My problem is that it's illegal to sell a minor alcohol. Not to mention a fake ID is also illegal. Let go."
The taller one now also put his hand on the beer. Taylor watched with amusement, wondering why people were that invested in the stuff. After a few more pulls back and forth, she walked closer. "Hi, Milo. Problem?"
At the sound of her voice, both teenagers froze, then very slowly looked over their shoulders in a nicely synchronized manner. Milo shrugged as they paled slightly.
"I hope not. I was just explaining to my friends here how the alcohol laws work."
Both men quickly let go of the six-pack. Milo immediately confiscated it.
Reaching out, Taylor plucked the ID the brown-haired teenager was still holding up, apparently having forgotten about it. She inspected it with interest. "Hmm. Mr John Smith?" The guy nodded spastically. "Born in 1968, I see." He nodded again, a worried expression on his face.
"I have to admit you don't look forty-three. Normally humans don't age that well. What's your secret?" She smiled sweetly at him. He swallowed audibly and looked helplessly at his friend, who was staring fixedly at her.
"Um..." He desperately glanced around for help, swaying slightly and reeking of beer. "I… I moisturize?"
She started laughing, as did Milo. "Wonderful. I like that. But for some reason I don't think this is a real ID." Holding it up towards him, she pointed with her other hand. "Not that I'm an expert, but whoever made this spelled 'Massachusetts' with one 'T' for a start. Not to mention the photo is of someone who doesn't look like you, you're certainly more than five feet tall, and your eyes are blue and not gray."
"The font's all wrong too," Milo added. "And the photo is crooked. You need to get your money back."
Smiling widely, she gave the fake ID back. "Better luck next time, guys."
Stepping to the side, she waved towards the door meaningfully. "See you."
They exchanged another glance, then reclaimed their cash and the taller one's wallet and left, giving her a wide berth. She and Milo watched through the window as they walked off, arguing with each other and looking annoyed. He chuckled, turning back to her went they were out of sight. "Thanks, Saurial, that was getting annoying. They just wouldn't give up."
"How long was that going on for?"
"About five fucking minutes. How the hell they thought anyone would take that ID I don't know, it was awful. He got ripped off."
They talked for a little longer, then she left again, going back to basically just wandering aimlessly for a while. Half an hour of enjoyably random motion later, the Varga announced, "I have, I think, worked out the details of this variant technique, and simplified it as much as I can for speed."
'Sounds good,' she told him, pleased. 'Let's find somewhere private and try it.'
Going into an alley, she headed to the far end, checking for cameras or witnesses. Not finding anything but an unpleasant smell, she cloaked, looked up, and teleported to the roof. Five jumps later she was back at the place she'd left her belongings near the DWU. Lying down on the slanting roof she relaxed. 'OK, show me' she said.
"All right. This is your original version, this is the new one, and this is how I propose to use it...," he started. They explored the implications of the variant technique, Taylor quickly learning the intricacies of it.
'Cool. OK, I get it. Looks easy enough, actually.'
"It's not too much more difficult than the previous version, and if we each take charge of an aspect, it shouldn't cause any issues," he agreed. "Shall we try it?"
'We shall.' She got up, as 'Raptaur' appeared next to her. They exchanged a grin, then each looked around.
"Other side of the DWU for me," she said.
"I will take the opposite direction, then." Both of them concentrated.
Seconds later, Taylor hopped up and down with excitement, as pleased as she could possibly be. Her Saurial aspect was standing where she'd aimed for, and her Raptaur aspect was a mile away, also on target. The process had worked perfectly, a second copy of each type being formed, then the first one being dropped within a fraction of a second as they both switched control to the new one. For a moment she'd seen four different scenes at the same time, which was more than a little disorientating, but not so much that it interfered with either of them.
'Fantastic,' she smiled.
"Very gratifying indeed," he said in her head. That was another incredibly useful thing, since they were still only one body, however many physical parts in normal terms it was spread across, their internal communications was completely unaffected by the separation of the aspects. To an outsider who didn't know the truth it would seem like some form of telepathy, no doubt. It was, in a way, she mused.
Looking at the distant figure of her other aspect she waved, laughing. The vocabulary of the whole thing was a little confusing even to her but the effect was so much fun and would definitely be extremely useful. The Varga waved back, feeling more than a little pleased with himself.
She jumped to stand next to him. With a shared glance, they started zipping across the city, covering a dozen or more blocks with each hop. It didn't take long before they could perform the action with almost no effort, the skill becoming practically instinctive. When they hit the city limits, they kept going, jumping to the maximum range they currently had, the world flickering past in mile plus intervals. Eventually they stopped nearly thirty miles away from the city to the north, having got there in under a minute.
"Well, that works," Taylor said with satisfaction. They were in a field with a couple of cows three hundred yards away in a shed, the thermal output of the animals the only source for some distance. The Varga, next to her, nodded.
"Better than I could have hoped," he replied. Turning to her, he switched to the same Saurial body she was in and smiled. "Thank you, Taylor. This is the best gift I've ever received. I am more free in many ways now than I have been in longer than your species has existed. Well, your original species, if we're being accurate."
She laughed quietly, putting an arm around her current twin's shoulder. "I'm glad you like it. I love having you as a best friend, and I'm happy to spend the rest of however long it will be with you, but I'm also happy that you can get out and enjoy things, rather than just watching. I hope that the Power involved is happy too."
"I rather suspect it is. If not, we may well have found this simply wasn't something we could do. It did, after all, unlock my abilities enough to make this possible, although without your own native wit and talents we'd never have found out how to do it." He shook his head in wonder. "Even if we can only do this on occasion and for relatively short periods, it is a joyous thing to experience. You are a very good Brain."
"And you are a truly excellent friend," she told him with complete honesty. "I am luckier than I can say that we came together." Taylor hugged her friend, who returned it. "Now, what I really want to do is go for a fly before going home." She stepped back and took on the dragon form. He studied her, grinned, and duplicated it.
Both dragons, utter black in the dark and basically invisible to any normal person, nodded to each other, crouched, and flapped hard, blasting into the air in a huge burst of wind. Climbing hard, they ascended rapidly, in no time at all leveling off a mile up.
Gliding side by side, they headed towards the coast, flapping every now and then with a sound like a leather coat being shaken out. As they flew they were discussing the other possibilities of this single new technique, which was turning out to be more versatile than she could ever have expected.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Linda slid into bed, pulling the covers up and lying back, then rolled over slightly to retrieve a pad and pen from the table next to her. She flipped through it, stopping on the last page with content, a sketch she studied for a while, tapping the end of the pen on her chin in a reflective manner. Eventually she made some careful changes to the drawing, along with half a page of notes. Satisfied that she'd got down the idea she'd suddenly had, she closed the pad and put it back, the pen as well, then turned out the light.
The last couple of days since her 'Vectura' upgrade had gone well in her opinion. She was becoming more and more used to the feline additions she could produce with an act of will, finding the increased flexibility and strength very useful and the wildly more effective senses interesting. The workshop was coming along well too. Quite a lot of machine tools had been taken in from around the place, spares and redundant equipment that Lisa had cleared through Danny for her to make use of. There was more on order as well. Quite a lot of Adam's cash had been used purchasing a number of very nice new toys over the internet, which would be turning up over the next few days.
In a couple of weeks she was going to be in the middle of an extremely well equipped workshop, something she'd have practically killed for as Squealer. Now it had been more or less just given to her, something she was still a little shocked about, but incredibly grateful for. The DWU, the Family, and Danny Hebert had done right by her, far more than she thought she deserved, and she was determined to pay them back for their generosity and kindness. Some of the things in that notebook and on the boards in her workshop would, she hoped, go some way towards doing that.
Meeting the Mayor and his sister had been unexpected but interesting. He seemed to trust Danny if she was reading between the lines correctly, and respect him as well. The man himself seemed intelligent, thoughtful, and in many ways not at all what she thought of when she thought 'politician.' On the face of it he really did want to do the right thing for the city. In her admittedly limited understanding of the administration she felt that was slightly unusual for a man in his position, since they normally seemed to be more about power and control than helping the citizenry, no matter what the job description was.
He'd certainly been polite and respectful to her, and seemed to genuinely find her and her workshop interesting. If nothing else he came across as a decent person. Linda thought that she could come to like him.
Her thoughts turned to the PRT, and the visit to them to introduce her new cape identity. She was rather nervous about that, considering her background. The PRT had, for close to six years, been the enemy as far as she was concerned. But Danny, Saurial, and Metis had all assured her that Director Piggot was a person who they could deal with and while she wasn't at all fond of Parahumans in general, she was respectful towards the Family at least. Hopefully that would translate out to being reasonable about Linda herself.
In some ways she was quite curious to find out what they'd make of her. She had no idea what form the power testing would take, guessing it was probably going to be some sort of question and answer session followed by some practical Tinkering tests, probably involving Armsmaster. She considered the other Tinker to be very good at his job, but on the other hand he'd been personally responsible for disabling or destroying a number of her own inventions over the years, which she was somewhat irked by. Sure, they were being used to commit crimes, but she'd put a lot of effort into them…
Leet, or Kevin, had mentioned that he'd salvaged and repurposed some of her stealth tech for the audio field inducer widget that Dragon was apparently trying to reverse engineer. He'd seemed worried that she'd be angry. At first she had been, but after only a moment she'd decided that it didn't actually matter. In some ways it was something of a compliment. If Dragon was indeed successful, he'd said that he was quite willing to come to a mutually satisfactory arrangement over sublicencing it, which was a little tricky due to the whole Squealer thing, but probably not insurmountable.
Talking to the other Tinker and examining his power armor had been a lot of fun, and also educational since it had sparked a number of ideas and solved a couple of problems she'd been having with her own designs. She suspected that being on good terms with him was going to be both useful and enjoyable. His friend was also a nice guy with some serious skills and an amusing sense of humor.
'Those lizards have built up a pretty good group of people a lot faster than I would have expected,' she thought, rolling onto her side. 'Between us I think we can make some fucking amazing stuff.'
She was very much looking forward to working with Saurial to make the parts for her first project, and could hardly wait to see how well it worked.
Yes. Despite all the pain, fear, and confusion, she was very pleased how things had worked out so far. With any luck it was only going to get better.
Vaguely wondering where Adam was and what he was doing, while hoping she never found out, Linda drifted off to sleep, feeling pretty content.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Taylor retrieved her belongings, putting them away in her belt pouches, before turning towards home. They'd had a solid hour of flying practice, playing in the air under cloak and thoroughly enjoying themselves, until the strain of the duplication technique became too much and they dropped the second aspect. Some experiments had shown that they could teleport in the air as easily as on the ground, which had some interesting possibilities. They'd also spent some time working on a method to carry physical objects with them. There were a couple of possibilities which seemed promising and in theory not too hard, but there were also some subtleties to them which still needed a little careful thought. The Varga was pretty sure he'd have it worked out by morning.
Reaching her house after an easy jog from the DWU facility Taylor hopped the back fence and slipped in the rear door, locking it after herself. She could hear her father, asleep in his room and breathing steadily, so stayed cloaked to avoid waking him until she'd washed up and gotten into bed. Shortly she was asleep, smiling faintly and more than pleased with the day.
Two hours later her eyes opened and she sat up, a sudden idea having come to her in a dream.
'Hey, Varga?' she said slowly.
"Yes?" he replied.
'Would that work?'
He chuckled, having seen her thoughts.
"I believe it would, yes. It is a neat workaround for the current minimum mass limitation."
She grinned like an idiot. 'Let's find out.' Moments later she stared at the new aspect sitting on the bed, before reaching out and touching it. 'Holy crap. That's fantastic.' She started giggling. 'We're going to have fun with this.'
"That, my friend, goes without saying." He was as pleased and amused as she was. "There are still some practical limitations, but they're not ones that I can foresee being a problem."
Shaking her head, she lay down again, closing the eyes of her 'Taylor' aspect and practicing with the new one. It was definitely a weird experience but also one that was very entertaining. 'Oh, this is going to be good,' she snickered. 'So good.'
Friday, March 4, 2011
Drinking his coffee, Danny wondered where Taylor was. Normally she was down by now. Her breakfast was going to get cold at this rate. He'd tapped on her door ten minutes ago and told her it was ready, but there was no sign of her yet.
Picking up the paper he'd retrieved from the front porch, he opened it and started reading the headlines. Nothing particularly unusual stood out, or at least nothing unusual for Brockton Bay. Some of the things in it would have been considered a little odd in many other places, probably.
A minute later he heard a crunching sound. Lowering his paper he looked around, wondering what it was. Motion on the other side of the table caught his attention.
Danny stared.
The eighteen-inch-long matte black miniature dragon that was sitting on the table eating a piece of bacon turned its head to look at him with glowing yellow eyes. It still had half a strip sticking out of its mouth. Very slowly it sucked the remaining part in, chewed, and swallowed.
"This is good bacon," it said in a high-pitched voice, sounding pleased.
"Oh." He kept staring. "That's… nice."
It picked up another piece and ate it as well, looking thoughtful as it chewed. "Very good bacon."
He was still staring. The thing ate the remaining bit of bacon, grinned at him, and took off, zooming across the kitchen and out the door, banking hard like a model plane with its wings flapping rapidly, then disappeared up the stairs.
Danny looked at the empty doorway for a few seconds, then turned his head to stare at the baconless plate. Another few seconds passed in silence, until he called, "Taylor? A word, please?"
Laughter came from upstairs as he put the paper down and massaged his forehead.
Sometimes he really wondered what went through his daughter's mind. Did she work at coming up with this sort of thing, or was it something that just happened?