As usual, the embedded music links don't work. They're underlined and bolded in the test, and in order are:
www dot youtube dot com slash watch?v=GXFSK0ogeg4
www dot youtube dot com slash watch?v=81ZtmBAA_NE&feature=youtu . be&t=6
Just replace the dot and slash words with the relevant symbols and remove the extraneous spaces. Pity this is so difficult to do, but blame !#this site!
Amy looked thoughtful. "So, basically, you still can't run more than two bodies at once?" she asked.
Taylor shook her head. "No, or more accurately, four at once. Sort of. One each for me and Varga, plus the duplicate for the teleporting trick. But only one of them is… active? I guess. We create one where we want to go, and then drop the one where we are now."
She vanished from the chair and reappeared on the other side of the room. "Like that. If I try making two..." Another copy of Taylor's base form appeared next to her and waved at Amy. "That's simple enough. I can run both of them at once, we're both getting pretty good at that." Amy watched with amusement as the Taylor on the left did a little jig while the other one juggled half a dozen balls that materialized from nowhere. "You'd think it would be possible for Varga to do the same with two more, but it doesn't seem to work like that."
"Which is because ultimately, all of this is going through Taylor's mind," the demon said, taking control of the juggling copy and turning the balls into knives, which he managed with aplomb. Amy clapped, causing him to smile. "One day I expect many of these limitations to be something she can overcome but it will take time. We have to go slowly or risk damaging her, a Varga's mind is… considerably larger… than most other beings can manage. Even now I can't risk connecting us more deeply than we already are." He added three more knives, and Taylor joined in, the juggling going back and forth between them. "I have no wish to harm my best friend and Brain."
"Nor does she wish it either," Taylor grinned, adding a flaming torch to the collection of knives looping back and forth between them.
"No, I can understand that," Amy replied thoughtfully. "But what actually happens if you try making more bodies? I mean, you have enough mass available to carpet half the city in Taylors, as horrifying a thought as that is." She smirked as Taylor looked at her then rolled her eyes, although she was smiling.
"Don't know, really, we haven't tried past a couple of experiments early on," the other girl said, catching each item as her demon tossed them to her and making them vanish. "Last time we played with it, it was sort of confusing. I can see out of all of them, and weirdly enough that's not too hard to deal with, but moving them independently doesn't work properly at all."
Amy sat up in her chair, staring at the two, her expression slowly turning both fascinated and evil.
"Moving them… independently?" she asked with a tone of great interest. Taylor nodded, then stopped dead. Beside her, her identical twin gradually began to smirk.
"Yeeesss..." Taylor drawled. "Independently… I like the way you're thinking."
"As do I. An experiment is in order, perhaps?" The Varga turned his grin to his body-mate. She nodded.
Amy watched with her hands folded in front of her as a third Taylor appeared, then a fourth. Three of them moved in weird synchronicity to lift their left hands and scratch their noses. "Nope, can't do it with each of them separately, unless I sort of time share it," the one in the middle said, the other two freezing. Then the one on the left end waved at Amy, the middle one stopping. After that all of them jumped up and down, again perfectly synced. "But this works."
"Excellent," Amy hissed in her best Monty Burns manner, rubbing her hands together. "And it's March thirtieth today, you realize?"
The two spare Taylors vanished, while the remaining ones nodded. "We'll need to talk to Roy, and we'll need Brian, Lisa... Kevin and Randall will kill us if we don't involve them, Linda and her mech, plus a really good sound system," Taylor said happily, while the Varga turned into Raptaur and headed for the computers.
"And a suitable sound track, I think," he put in, already looking for something on the web. He clicked a link, music filling the large room. "That one."
"Ooooh, perfect," Amy and Taylor both chorused. "Nothing like a good piece of classical music to start off the day," Taylor commented. All three looked at each other and laughed, then started making plans.
Hannah glared at Dennis, who was looking so innocent he was very obviously guilty of something. "It wasn't me, I didn't do it, you can't prove anything," he said rapidly.
"Dennis, it's always you, of course you did it, and if I could prove it we'd be talking to the Director right now," she snapped. "How the hell did you..."
"Um, Miss Militia?" Dean said a little tentatively, looking out the window at the street below, his shoulders tensed and betraying a certain level of worry.
"What, Dean?" she asked, not taking her eyes off the red-headed boy, who didn't even have the decency to look worried. Beside him, Missy was snickering under her breath, a slightly unusual thing, but since Sophia had gone AWOL the young girl seemed to be enjoying life a lot more.
"Something's happening outside," the other boy said uncertainly.
"Define something."
"Ah… It's getting dark? Sort of?"
She looked at him, then the clock on the wall. It was only four in the afternoon, it should still be light for a while yet, and it had been a spectacularly good day for April anyway so there wasn't a cloud in the sky.
"What do you mean?" she asked, turning away from Clockblocker, having given him the evil eye again to keep him honest for a moment. She joined Dean at the window, as did Missy and Dennis a moment later. He pointed down at the large open area that the PRT building was on one side of. Pedestrians were stopping and staring and the light traffic had also come to a halt.
What they were looking at was the steadily thickening clouds of black smoke, or what looked like it, that was pouring down the side of the city hall on the other side of the square and flowing like water across the ground. It pooled and eddied like water, filling the side streets and slowly encroaching across the area towards them.
That side of the square had been closed off the day before for some road repairs to be done. There were a number of serious potholes that had been causing issues for weeks, but the previous evening the road had been shut at both ends and a number of DWU people had been patching them most of today. At this point in time the work appeared finished but the barriers were still present, although the workers had gone for the day.
As a result there were hardly any people in the area of the 'smoke' or whatever it was, the few pedestrians who had been cutting through that area quickly retreating to a safe distance. In true Brockton Bay style, though, as soon as they were clear they started taking videos. Hannah shook her head as she watched, sometimes she thought that no one in this city had any survival instincts at all nowadays.
"That's got to be Grue," Dennis remarked. "I can't think of anything else that does that and looks like that."
"Grue?" Dean sounded puzzled. "No one's heard from him for months. Why would he be covering all that area in his smoke?"
"Dunno, but I bet that's who it is."
Hannah was forced to agree, it certainly looked like the result of the former minor villain's power. She wondered why he would be doing something like this. He and his entire team had been completely silent ever since Raptaur rescued them and gave them sanctuary at the DWU.
'DWU...' she thought, suddenly becoming suspicious. 'And the DWU has been working over there all day. Closing off the road...'
"Should we do anything?" Missy asked curiously, her face and hands pressed to the glass. Carlos and Chris came in moments later, none of the four at the window turning to look.
"There's something weird going on outside," the former said.
"We know," Dean, Dennis, and Missy all chorused at once.
"It looks like Grue's smo..."
"We know," they all said again, making Chris snap his mouth shut.
By now the entire side of the square was dark and completely impenetrable to vision, the 'smoke' rather improbably stopping forty or so feet out from the city hall and forming a wavering black cloud that was slowly billowing higher and higher. It soon covered the entire front of the city hall building, towering high above the square. Everyone in sight had stopped and was staring at it, most of them with cameras and phones out and active. Hannah sighed, shaking her head in disbelief. The way people around here just… accepted… the bizarre was quite unnerving.
"I'd better go and see what the hell is going on," she said, turning away from the window and heading towards the door. Five sets of footsteps followed. "Stay here," she added without looking, hitting the door open switch. Moments later she was gone.
"Are we going to stay here?" Dennis asked after a few seconds. He looked at his friends, then added, "Where's Missy?"
"Come on, then!" the girl in question called, leaning back in the exit and waving urgently to them. He grinned and followed.
"We really need to start following orders around here," Carlos sighed as the other two headed after the first two. Even so, he brought up the rear. "Wait for me!"
Emily stomped out of the front entrance of her building, a pair of armored troopers following, and joined Hannah at the side of the street. Passers-by, all of whom were now watching intently in case the huge black cloud did anything interesting, rather begrudgingly moved to the side to let her get a clear view. A couple of them muttered under their breaths but shut up when they caught her eye.
"Now what the hell is going on?" she queried with asperity. "That's Grue's power at work."
"I believe so," Hannah replied absently, studying the cloud with a hand on the riot gun she'd formed with her own power.
Emily looked at her, then the cloud, then sighed loudly. "It's them, isn't it?"
"Probably. Think about the date."
Emily did, then growled under her breath. "And Roy's in on it, or they wouldn't be using city hall for whatever the hell they're doing."
"I suspect so."
"But what are they doing?" She felt both reluctantly curious and quite peeved. Was it too much to ask that a single week went past without those crazy lizards doing something bizarre?
A figure stepped out of the black cloud and bowed to the by-now huge crowd. Straightening up, Metis looked around with a wide grin on her muzzle, teeth glinting in the sunlight. "Hello, People of Brockton Bay," she said, her words amplified and covering the entire area with perfect fidelity. "It has come to our attention that on this first day of the fourth month of the year, it's a traditional human pastime to play some form of prank or jape upon the unsuspecting. We felt that since we've had such a friendly welcome to Brockton Bay, it would be uncivilized to simply jump straight in with such a thing as there was the risk of alarm, but at the same time we should take the opportunity to entertain you all. So, after some careful thought and discussion, we came up with something that we feel should be fun."
Spreading her arms, she grinned widely. "Please welcome what we call… 'The Family Choir,' appearing for the first time anywhere, with an accompaniment by Vectura and her Dancing Mech Squad."
Metis jogged off to one side, Ianthe appearing from the smoke and moving to the other side of the area in a matching motion. Emily and Hannah exchanged looks that mixed apprehension and curiosity with a large helping of 'Oh, god, what now?'"
There was an anticipatory pause, with the entire crowd which had swelled to at least a couple of thousand, including lots of people hanging out of windows in the surrounding buildings, all watching with great interest. Then, without warning, the blue and orange mech that had been the subject of a lot of discussion on PHO and in the PRT literally pounced out of the opaque cloud like a giant cat, landing on all fours in the middle of the empty road, its 'tail' raised like a scorpion's. Emily, despite herself, flinched violently, while Hannah's riot gun instantly turned into an anti-tank weapon. The woman looked embarrassed as Emily stared at her and converted the imposing thing into a small knife which she put in her pocket.
Moments later, one after another, four more mechs in various colors, although all had orange stripes on them, did the same thing, arranging themselves in an arrowhead formation. Emily could see that the ones on either side of Vectura were being piloted by Über and Leet, while the other two seemed to have a couple of people she'd never seen before, all four of them wearing balaclavas. The mechs froze for a couple of seconds, then in perfect sync rose to two legs and bowed.
Complete silence filled the square for ten seconds. Then, without warning, the first chord rang out at a volume high enough to make windows rattle around the area, but without any distortion at all. Emily instantly recognized the music.
"Oh, hell, why that piece?" she sighed.
A voice started singing, the black cloud swirling away from the front steps of the city hall to reveal Saurial dressed in her armor, but with a fedora on her head. She was grinning and seemed to be having fun.
Emily, despite herself, thought the reptile had rather a good voice.
The first bar of Carl Orrf's 'Oh Fortuna' movement played as Saurial sang, her lone voice filling the square, then everyone twitched as it abruptly swelled into a massive choir of voices. The smoke roiled and billowed, rapidly retracting downwards and inwards in a completely unnatural manner, until it vanished through the front door of the city hall building.
Emily stared, then looked slowly around at what was left behind, feeling a cold chill run down her spine.
Saurials.
Everywhere.
There were hundreds of them, arrayed on the steps in ranks, along the roof-line looking down at the square, standing on ledges all up the front of the building, even clinging to the walls.
And every one of them was singing, perfectly synced.
Not only that, but on each flank of the vast crowd of lizard-girls, there were neatly arranged formations of multiple copies of Raptaur, each of them behind either Metis or Ianthe. All of them were singing as well, adding a bass counterpoint to the contralto voice of the smaller reptile.
The overall effect was incredibly impressive and extremely creepy.
The five mechs began a sort of dance, moving in a horribly fluid and lifelike manner to the music, in a way that was completely unlike any machine that Emily had ever seen before. Vectura, in the middle one, was grinning like a madwoman, obviously enjoying herself massively.
The performance went on for several minutes, until the first movement of 'Carmina Burana' wound to a close. With one final chord, the entire assemblage fell silent, then as one bowed deeply. The first Saurial straightened up and looked directly at Emily, then smiled and waved. "Hi, Director Piggot!" she called chirpily.
Almost the entire, totally silent, crowd turned to look at Emily. The rustling sound of thousands of people moving as one was even more disturbing than the vast choir of impossible reptilian figures, who were now watching silently as well.
Emily sighed very, very quietly.
The crowd turned back to look at the huge number of identical lizard-girls. Almost all of them were holding their phones up, and despite sanity suggesting otherwise, didn't seem too worried. Just as she was wondering if that was it, music began playing again.
Putting a hand over her face, the PRT director shook her head in despair. She definitely wasn't paid enough for this. She wasn't sure anyone could be paid enough for this…
How the hell the damn Family was managing to pull this off, she had no idea. And she was at the point that she really didn't care any more. Holograms, Vectura's hard light projector, time travel… whatever it was, it was something she was going to deliberately ignore and hope would go away if she did. She watched for a few seconds as the crowd became very excited, hundreds of tourists joining in, then shook her head again, turned around, and proceeded back towards the PRT building. There were reports to do.
Pausing only to glare at the Wards, who were dancing along to the music, she gritted her teeth and kept going. Dennis waved happily at her. Missy was giggling to herself and apparently having a lot of fun.
With a last look over her shoulder, seeing that dozens of DWU people had appeared from nowhere pushing various food carts, which were already doing a roaring trade, Emily went back inside.
Hannah watched as Grue's smoke quickly fumed up around the impossible crowd of duplicate Family members, reaching the roof of city hall in seconds, paused, then sank away again. She wasn't surprised to see that every single one of the lizards had disappeared without a trace except for Metis and her sister.
The five mechs formed up into a two by two arrangement with Vectura's one at the front, snapped off a neat salute that made the crowd laugh, about faced, and trotted off down the street. Moments later they were gone. Metis and Ianthe exchanged glances, looked around, smiled at each other, and headed for the nearest hot dog cart, quickly picking up a collection of tourists who wanted pictures with them.
Not entirely sure what had happened, Hannah watched for a little while, before shrugging and leaving. It was weird, but it was, after all, Brockton Bay.
Better whatever that was than gang warfare any day.