The Elevator Pitch

by Billymorph

Lisa stepped into the warehouse and immediately regretted it. Taylor was not… normal. In fact the girl/lizard/daemon was the furthest thing from normal that Lisa had ever encountered, and she'd once run into a condiment themed supervillan. For the sake of Lisa's sanity, at least Taylor fell into a few predictable phases.

At her most sane, there was the constant low grade 'trolling' that she performed with glee and which had led to a statistical rise in Brockton Bay's daily alcohol consumption. It was something that Lisa was learning to deal with. Although, she'd found a five foot long winged lizard hanging in her closet that morning and had screamed loud enough that Brain had come running from two buildings away. Perhaps it was better to say it was something she was developing something rather akin to Stockholm syndrome. Either way, she was coping.

When things ratcheted up a level, Taylor moved on to full scale 'pranks'. These resulted in at least one person seeking therapy and PHO exploding with pictures that hurt people's brains. Taylor's ability to invent entirely new forms of physics and willingness use them for practical jokes was alarming on multiple levels. Lisa carried a bottle of extra-strength painkillers mostly because she kept glancing at Danny's paperweight and getting a migraine. Still, it was an improvement over Amy's attempts to build an all natural squirt flower. Lisa had at least been assured it couldn't survive in the wild, but no one had seen stem nor stigma of the thing in days.

Then things got truly dangerous. On occasion Taylor would get 'ideas'. The most infamous of which was the water powered, hypersonic surfboard; a string of syllables that did not belong together in a sane universe. It also included the whole Family mythos which was, to Lisa's knowledge, currently consuming the attention of a full third of the world's intelligence gathering community. Given another six months there was a good chance there would be more spies working for the Dockworkers Union than actual workers.

Worst of all were the 'plans'. Fortunately for the world only two of which had ever gone anywhere. The first, which had almost started a full scale riot, was Kaiju's enthusiastic dredging operations. The second was the fully functional Star Gate that Taylor mostly used to traumatise kangaroos.

Lisa was fairly sure she'd walked in on plan number three.

"Okay, I was going to bring you a message, but I think I have to ask first. What they hell are you guys doing now?"

"Oh, hey Lisa!" Raptaur exclaimed, waving one of her tree trunk arms. "We're working on a great idea."

Lisa shuddered, as a chill ran down her spine. Raptaur, Leet and Vectura stood around a device that Lisa could only describe as a great glass elevator. Cables, bracing and what looked like some beefy thrusters cradled a transparent box. The three tinkers formed an efficient production line, Vectura drawing blueprints as fast as she could, Raptaur manifesting the parts with a snap of her fingers and Leet throwing them together at lightning speed. A half tube of EDM stood behind them, perfectly sized for the elevator.

"Do I want to ask?"

"We're building an elevator," Raptaur replied, grinning. "Like it?"

Lisa stopped in front of the elevator, looked it up and down, then pointed at the large hole in the ceiling. "What is that?"

Raptaur shrugged. "Well, it's got to be reasonably high if we're going to test it."

Lisa pursed her lips. "An elevator?" she continued, frowning.

"Yep." Raptaur popped the p, her grin widening. She had a lot of teeth.

"A space elevator?"

"Well, that depends. See, scientists are divided on just where space begins. We're gunning for about a hundred miles. Should be good enough for a demonstration."

"Any more and there's a good chance it will rip itself out of its foundations," Leet interjected, unhelpfully.

Visions of an indestructible tower falling from low Earth orbit flashed before Lisa's eyes. They'd be lucky if the state survived that kind of disaster. Although, knowing Taylor's bullshit she could just vanish the damn thing if it ever went that badly wrong.

Sighing, Lisa rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Right…" She took a steadying breath. "Raptaur, remember when you asked me to tell you if you were going to traumatise millions, disrupt world orders or upset the President."

Raptaur frowned. "I don't remember phrasing it like that."

"Well, you actually said "don't let things get out of hand" and that seems to be about your limit." Lisa pulled a small card out of her jacket pocket. "Well, I just got this message. Raptaur, please please please please please—" She flipped over the card. "—Please. Stop. Signed, Winged One."

"Oh…" Raptaur gave a sheepish smile. "No space elevator then?"

"Lets shelve it for a few months, shall we?"

"Aww, come on," Vectura interjected. "At least lets get a couple of miles does. I've got some great plans that just need a little altitude to work."

Lisa shot her a look. She wondered just when she'd become the sensible one. "Later," she said, through clenched teeth. "Maybe after we've had a long discussion with the FAA."

"Ugh, those guys again." Raptaur sighed. "Okay. Well guys, I guess its back to project Orion."

"Yeah, I'm not touching that one," Lisa said, spinning on her heel. "Let me know if you plan to detonate anything larger than a firecracker." It would give her at least half a chance to talk them out of it."

With another heavy sigh she retreated from the warehouse. "Right then. Next, stop, Panacea."

Lisa pulled another card out of her pocket, addressed to Amy. She had no idea if the Simurgh was really was keeping tabs on the girls. However, Lisa was sure that she and Endbringer were in full agreement in at least slowing them down.