"OK, she'll be here at four this afternoon," Taylor said, "so that gives us a few hours more to work. Minus an hour or so for the train leaving, but that's not for nearly three hours yet." She looked at the new dragon, then at Lisa, who had exited 'Metis' and was standing watching, with her first construct leaning over her shoulder to see as well. The bioconstruct seemed fascinated by her new sister, which made Taylor smile. "Is she ready?"

"She's completely ready," Amy assured them all, standing up again from where she'd been squatting next to the new construct, checking it over. "Everything's working exactly to design."

The new draconic creature was again very similar to Taylor's dragon form, and Amy's one. Minor differences made 'Nike' and the currently nameless dragon distinguishable, but the overall body pattern was a close match and it had all the same functionality. It was the mind inside that would do most of the differentiation between them.

"I'll turn her on and we can get acquainted," Amy went on, leaning down and putting a large taloned hand on the much larger head of her latest work. A moment later huge eyes opened, blinked, then focused, as the creation smoothly stood and looked around at them all. "Hello, my new friend," the healer said quietly, stroking her neck. The dragon peered at her, then looked at the others, stopping on Lisa, who smiled.

"You already know, don't you?" the blonde said, moving forward to also feel the new Family member. After a moment, the bioconstruct gently rested its head on her shoulder for a moment as she patted it, an expression that they would all swear was happiness appearing on its face. 'Metis' moved closer and cocked her head, looking for all the world like she was curious.

Amy, who had been monitoring things during this process, nodded in satisfaction. "Everything's online and running perfectly. Let's get you two a little closer together."

"Fine by me," Lisa grinned, looking eager. She glanced about, then added, "In here or in the big room?"

Taylor thought for a moment, conferring with the Varga, who was standing next to her as a twin to her current Saurial form. "I should make some changes, now we've worked out how," she commented, turning to the main door, which was currently shut. "Hang on, this won't take long."

"What are you doing?" Amy asked curiously as both aspects began fiddling with the door. Taylor didn't answer for a moment, only kept working with her demonic companion, until they both exchanged a look of satisfaction and stepped back. "And don't just say 'math,' that's getting a little annoying," the violet lizard added acerbically, causing them both to smirk. Lisa snickered as well.

"OK, I won't say math," one aspect said.

"Instead, I'll say… This." The other one opened the door.

Amy and Lisa exchanged long-suffering gazes after staring at what was on the other side, which wasn't the office. Instead it was the huge new room.

"That's another trick you're going to use absolutely everywhere you can get away with it, aren't you?" Lisa sighed.

"Probably, yes," both Saurials laughed in sync.

"I am curious to know if Vista could learn to perform the same thing," one of them added, the Varga now in charge. "Her abilities are very compatible with the fractal dimensional mathematics, although she achieves the end result through entirely different means. I suspect she might well be able to pick up certain aspects of magic fairly readily too, which may bear experimentation at some point."

"Can you basically link any two points together like this?" Lisa asked with interest in her eyes, walking over to the door and experimentally closing it. When she opened it, the normal office view was present. "That is still incredibly cool. Same deal as the other door?"

"Pretty much, yes," Taylor nodded. "It uses the same intent-reading biosignature spell. I'm going to add that to the front and rear doors too, so we don't need keys. And I've added Dad to it. Not this one, this is only us, but the main doors are keyed so he can get in, and so is the one for the big room." She looked at Amy, a little worried. "That's OK, is it? I mean, this is your workshop, and if you want it private, just tell me."

"It's fine, Taylor," Amy assured her. "You guys are family too, so I don't mind."

"Good." She turned back to Lisa. "To answer your first question, in theory, yes, it can probably be made to work between any two points you want. But it's much, much simpler to do it between places where we've set things up properly. Here, for example, the entire place is basically mine, as in it's all made from demon magic. That makes it hugely more straightforward, but it would take me about a week to explain the math behind it. And I'm still not sure about some of it, although he is." She indicated the listening duplicate Saurial.

"It's not really like Kevin's wormhole machine although it's got some similarities, like my 'teleportation' isn't really teleportation, it just looks like it. The WCC is much more flexible and generally useful." She inspected the door with a smile of mild pride. "Like Varga says, this is much closer to what Vista does, but through a completely different mechanism. It's got some really interesting possibilities. That breakthrough we had this morning has sort of unlocked all sorts of new ideas and techniques. I think we're going to find them really useful."

"Can you make it open into the DWU armory?" the blonde asked slowly. Taylor looked at her, then her demon, before both of them nodded.

"Yeah, that's easy enough, it's another place we made so it'll work without any real problems. Much further away than the gate will need some careful calculations, though."

"Might be helpful to do that, then," Lisa commented. "We could need access to the place in a hurry, and it would be useful to be able to store things there without walking through the yard in an emergency. Or get them back."

"Fair enough." Taylor and the demon worked out the relevant equations and applied them. "There, that should do it."

Closing the door again, Lisa briefly concentrated, then opened it. A dark room on the other side, lined with shelves, met their combined view. "Very, very cool indeed," the girl chuckled. "And it's giving me ideas like you wouldn't believe. One day we need to think about whether we could set up a city-wide transportation network using this trick. Think about something like a big phone booth on every street corner, which can link to any other one..."

Taylor stared at her, as did Amy and the Varga. "Wow. I didn't think of that at all. Neat. Like that series of SF stories by Larry Niven?"

"More or less, yes," their friend nodded. "Another thing for the list."

"That is a very intriguing idea, Lisa," the Varga remarked after a moment's thought. "Very intriguing indeed. It would be a complex project, since as the number of linked nodes goes up the math rapidly gets very difficult, and the range may pose some problems until we have fully mastered this particular field, but..." He nodded slowly. "It is definitely worthy of further study when we have time. The particularly interesting part is that I can see no reason why such a technique should be solely restricted to Taylor and myself, such as I suspect the matter creation will probably always be. That is part of my nature and as I have previously said, I highly doubt it can be taught to a non-demon. This, however, is teachable, as a form of mathemagics."

"Mathemagics?" Lisa echoed, glancing at Amy, who was grinning. "You made that up just now, didn't you?"

"Indeed," he smiled. "However, it seems an appropriate term for the field. It is, after all, magic through mathematics, rather than raw power. We are good at raw power, but at times a degree of subtlety is required."

"All magic is basically math, but some of it is really hard math," Taylor added, thinking back to her first introductions to the subject from her best friend. "It's complicated to explain. But the patterns are beautiful."

Lisa stared, then shook her head. "I'll take your word for it. Even my power is trying not to think too hard about that remark."

"It would be nice to have something useful that doesn't require any of us to do all the work," Amy noted. "Like with the one-shots. I'm going to make some one-shot-makers later, which should solve that problem nicely. And there are a few other things I'm going to build this weekend, including a load of bioguns and servicing plants for them. Right now, though, let's get on with what we started."

"OK." Lisa nodded agreeably, closing and opening the door to the big room. "Come on, beautiful, let's get better acquainted." She motioned to the new dragon, which cocked its head, looked at the others, then obediently followed, making her grin.

Taylor watched them leave the workshop before turning to Amy, who appeared very pleased with herself. "You are getting really good at that," she said admiringly. The rest of them followed, even 'Metis' padding along after the others, appearing just as interested as they were.

"Damn it, I just can't decide," Kevin muttered, putting his pencil down and flexing his hand. He flipped back through pages of notes and sketches, rubbing his eyes with his other hand.

"Decide what, bro?" Randall looked over at him from in front of the big screen TV where he was playing online and kicking ass in the latest Call of Duty game. The pair were in their living space in their new workshop, having finally unpacked everything and put most of it away in the various rooms, and were just unwinding after a lot of work. Or rather, he was, while Kevin appeared to be having trouble with something.

"I'm trying to come up with a good Family form," his best friend explained. "And it's a pain in the ass. There are too many possibilities. Amy is total bullshit, and Taylor is worse. Between them they can probably make anything I can even conceive, and I suspect a lot of things that would make my eyes bleed to look at, so trying to get that down to something plausible is a bit complicated."

The Tinker sighed, dropping the notebook to the floor and leaning back in the easy chair he was sitting in, until the footrest lifted and he was almost prone. "So many possibilities. I don't want to waste this opportunity, but I can't decide what I want."

"You're overthinking it, man," Randall smiled. "For a start, it's not like you're restricted to only one Family form, right? Considering how crazy Amy is, I don't doubt for a second she'd happily make you half a dozen if you wanted."

Kevin, who had put his head back and closed his eyes, lifted it again and looked at his friend. "Huh. Yeah, I guess you're probably right there. I keep forgetting how easy this is for her. Tinker bullshit, right?"

Randall laughed. "Takes one to know one, but yes. I don't know if Biotinker is actually the right description for whatever the hell she really is, but damn, she can sure fake it. Adding Taylor's and the Varga's abilities to hers is almost unfair. And it's not like they seem to mind making things, hell, it's hard to get them to stop!"

"You got that right. At this rate in a year or so there really will be an underwater city full of reptilian aliens off the coast," his friend snickered. "Sounds like fun, though. But that doesn't help with this problem." Dropping his head back onto the rest, he stared at the ceiling. "There's so many things to think about. Do I pick something from a game or a show or something? That would fit with our thing, but on the other hand I don't want to risk anyone putting two and two together and coming up with the right answer, so it's probably a good idea to steer clear of that."

"Good point," Randall nodded, pausing his game and swiveling around on the sofa so he was lying on it, facing the other man. "We need to be careful not to accidentally give too much away. I don't want to put Amy at risk."

"Yeah, that probably would end in tears one way or another," the Tinker sighed. "Most likely for everyone else, but why risk it? But that does sort of kill half the ideas I came up with."

"Taylor came up with all sorts of forms on the fly the other day. That naga form was pretty cool."

"It was," Kevin agreed thoughtfully. "Although I still don't think it's enormously practical for most purposes. That said, it might be an interesting thing to try." He shrugged after a moment. "Maybe later. It's got the issue that it doesn't quite match most of the other forms they use, and that might raise questions we don't want raised."

"True." Randall thought some more. "OK, breaking it down some, at the moment we see the Family as having three main variants. Pretty much a reptilian version of a human, in other words Saurial. Something a lot bigger and less human, but still bipedal, as shown by Ianthe and Metis. Then something even larger than that, which gives us Raptaur, and a form that is either bipedal or quadrupedal as required. Kaiju is an enormous version of the same thing, and Umihebi is the outlier, something that's obviously a fully aquatic form. And fucking insane in scale." He grinned. "I doubt Amy is going to make something that large any time soon, but I sure wouldn't want to say she couldn't."

"That girl has mad skills, sure enough," Kevin nodded respectfully. "I wouldn't put it past her. It's too big for day to day use, though. So is Kaiju."

"Yeah, neither one would fit in here." Randall looked around thoughtfully. "Something a little closer to human scale is probably better. But the point is that right now there are those three main body types, if we ignore the giant-sized versions. And that dragon of Taylor's which no one else knows about yet."

"That is going to raise a few eyebrows," Kevin pointed out in a dead-pan voice.

"Oh, hell, yes," Randall guffawed. "I can hardly wait. When we first met the girl I was hoping she could do a dragon, and she could, but now she's made one that actually works. That's just nuts. And I have a lot of ideas about how we can use it."

"To be honest, I kind of want a dragon form now," Kevin grinned.

Randall looked at him like he was simple. "Of course you do, man, that's completely normal," he said in a long suffering tone. "Everyone wants a dragon form."

His friend nodded eagerly. "Damn right."

"But again, that's a little too much to start with." Randall thought some more, idly toying with the console controller. "And there's the matter of which side of the Family do we want to be from? Taylor's side, in some ways, would make sense. Engineering and all that. But we can't pull off all the really neat tricks without a demon neither of us has."

"Yeah, that does sort of limit it a little." Kevin nodded slowly, still staring at the ceiling like it held the answer. "But while Amy's side is possible, is it the right fit? I mean, what talents do the new Family members bring to the table? We don't want to make it so obvious that everyone goes, 'Hey, don't those two seem awfully familiar in some way?' after all."

"No, another good point." Randall pondered the problem. "And while she's mentioned the combat branch of the family, it's probably not a good idea to end up being seen as lizard shock troops or something. Even if it would play right to our strong points in some ways." He grinned widely. "Think you could rebuild the Mjolnir armor to fit a lizard?"

Kevin snorted with laughter. "With Linda and Taylor's help, yeah, I probably could. What's the point, though? Amy's constructs are faster, stronger, and have better senses even without any augmentations." He thought it over, then added, "It would look pretty cool, though, I have to admit. Might have to think about that. And that reminds me, we still need to test the BFG." Shaking his head, he dismissed that for now. "Later."

Randall thought out loud. "Engineer or Tinker branch, Taylor's side, yellow-orange eyes. Medical, or Life-shaping branch, and Thinkers too, Amy's side, green eyes. What do we add? Combat branch isn't a good idea, so what's left?"

"Hmm." His friend considered the problem, as did he. "Entertainment branch?"

They shared a grin. "That would fit, in a way, but again it's a bit of a clue, you know?"

"Yeah." They sat in silence for a while, Kevin retrieving his notes and adding to them. Eventually the Tinker said, "It needs to be something we can both do, so it makes some sort of consistent sense. Damn, this is a hard one."

Nodding a little, Randall agreed with him. It wasn't an easy problem to solve. "We're probably going to have to talk it over with the girls, I suppose."

"I guess we are. I'm sort of stumped at this point." Kevin sighed. "Oh well. I wonder if a beer would help?"

"Can't hurt," his friend grinned. Both of them got up in search of a drink.

Entering the BBFO office, Danny looked around. It was empty, although the door at the far end of the room was slightly open, and he could hear the sounds of movement coming from there. Locking the door behind him, he walked over to find out what the girls were doing around the back of the building. When he pulled the other door open, he stopped dead and gaped.

After a long period of staring, his head moving around, he blinked hard, then sighed. "Oh, for god's sake, you lot. What the hell are you doing this time, and how for that matter?" Finding that the other side of what should have been a door out to the access road behind the office was actually the entrance to a room so large he rather felt it should have its own weather system was something of a shock, although not nearly as large a one as it would have been a while ago. He was almost used to Taylor's bizarre concepts of space now, but this was definitely pushing it.

Finding that there were four huge dragons apparently working on martial arts inside the preposterously cavernous room, on the other hand, was not what he had been expecting. He thought ruefully that perhaps he should have done. All four of them stopped and turned to him, smiling widely. Absently he noticed that 'Ianthe' and 'Metis' were squatting off to one side, next to each other, watching with what looked to be great interest. Looking between them all, he tried to work out who was inside which construct, since it was obvious that Amy had been very busy in the last couple of days.

"Hi, Dad," one of the two identical black dragons said happily, waving gaily to him. "Neat, right? We have lots of dragons now."

"Yes, I can see that, dear," he sighed, walking over to them. "I have to admit I'm not entirely sure that it's a good idea, but whatever. The thing I'm wondering about is how you have a lot of dragons." Looking at the other ones, he knew her twin was the Varga, so presumably the remaining pair were Lisa and Amy. Glancing between them, he finally pointed to the one on the left. "Lisa?"

"How did you know?" the draconic form, which was obviously patterned on Taylor's current form, but had subtle differences and was bright blue, asked with a grin.

"You have, even like that, a distinctive smirk," he said. "For people who really know you and the truth of this mad place."

The remaining one snickered. "He's got you there," Amy said with amusement. She was a deep green in color, with faint orange highlights. "Like it, Danny?" she asked, spreading her wings and posing majestically, with her tail wrapped around her feet and her neck arched. "I'm pretty pleased myself," she added, grinning. He admired her latest project, then looked at the other one housing his assistant. Both of Taylor's aspects were watching with smiles on their scaly faces.

"I have to admit that once again I am more than impressed by your abilities," he said in the end. "Well done. You do indeed look magnificent, as I'm sure you know."

She relaxed from the pose, giggling, which sounded very weird in such a deep and resonant voice. "Thanks. This is incredible fun, and flying is amazing. Would you like one? We're getting pretty good at making them, Lisa's one was only about five hours work."

"Wow. That's pretty incredible," he said after a moment of surprise. "Really? That fast?"

"Yeah, she's getting a lot quicker with practice," his daughter chuckled. "So are we, Making the skeletons and the other mechanical parts is easy now. And they're getting smarter too, Lisa's one was almost talking to us by the look on her face when she woke up."

Danny stared at her, then at the duplicate being run by the Varga who nodded. "It does appear that they are getting steadily closer to something one could hold a conversation with, Danny," the demon said with a note of approval. "Whether they will actually reach that point in reality we are currently unsure, but I certainly wouldn't say it was impossible." He pointed with a wingtip to the other two bioconstructs who seemed almost to be listening, watching them all with attention, and added, "I include our other cousins in that, of course. They are also becoming… more."

"They sure look like they're watching and listening," Danny observed, turning to regard the 'empty' bioconstructs. 'Metis' met his eyes and he could almost swear she sort of smiled. Shaking his head in wonder, he turned back to the quartet of dragons. "I'm not sure if I'm ready for a dragon of my own, Amy," he added, smiling. "I do, after all, have a lot of work on right now. Perhaps later, but thank you for the offer."

"It's a hell of a lot of fun," Lisa put in with a look of enjoyment. "Taylor was just working us through the Family style in these forms. And we were trying to design some appropriate armor, like we have for those guys." She nodded at the other constructs. "Not that we really need it but it looks good and fits the style we seem to have developed."

"Internal consistency is key to any story," he chuckled. "I can't help feeling, though, that an armored dragon is slightly mixing your archetypes a little. Will you be rescuing a knight from a ravening princess next?"

All of them laughed. "That's actually a good idea, Dad," Taylor giggled. "We may have to do that." She manifested a sword proportionate to her current size, and a shield as well, then posed. "Stand aside, horrible Princess! I have a fair Knight to rescue in yon tower!"

Snickering, Danny watched as she performed a little skit that had the other three almost rolling on the floor, which was one of the weirdest things he'd ever seen even with the recent life he'd been leading. "Very good, dear," he said when she finished, clapping.

Taking a bow she dismissed her props, grinning. "Hey, have a look at this," she said, indicating a spot on the floor a hundred feet away. "In fact, have a look in UV."

Puzzled, he glanced in the direction she'd indicated, activating the extended vision modes he was still getting used to. "A big circle on the floor?" he queried. "Which is for…?"

"It's our back entrance," Amy replied, walking over and putting one enormous hand down just inside the line. He twitched when the circle disappeared almost instantly, revealing sea water a couple of feet down. Approaching it himself he could smell the scent of the bay, and looking down saw several rows of lights descending some considerable distance then curving away to disappear in the direction of the ocean.

"That's… impressive. In a number of ways," he said, rather stunned. "Holy shit. How long did this take to make?"

"Not long," Taylor told him, padding over with one aspect to sit next to him and peer into the tunnel. "Half an hour or so? We're getting pretty practiced at this sort of thing. Like with the door. I'll show you how that works too. But we've been thinking of a way to get in and out of here without anyone noticing, or using the cloaking spell, for a while now. Last night I finally got around to sorting it out."

"Where's the other end?"

"In the shipping channel, right down at the deepest part," she replied with satisfaction. "I'll probably branch it off out to somewhere in the ocean off the coast soon but I've got other things to do right now."

"We have learned a number of interesting techniques that allow this sort of thing to be done considerably more effectively and easily than before," the Varga added, coming up to stand on his other side. "Increasing the range of the teleporting to some fifty miles, is one of them. It was an offshoot of the work we were mainly aiming at."

"Fifty miles?" Danny stared at the demon, then his daughter's other aspect. Both nodded, looking pleased with themselves. "Good grief, that's remarkable. Do you think you can improve on that?"

"Most likely, with time and experimentation," the Varga aspect replied. "But it will suffice for now. It easily covers the entire city from any point within it, which will undoubtedly be of use in the future. And some considerable distance outside it as well."

He nodded thoughtfully. "So you can go straight from home to here without even straining yourself," he mused.

"Yep," Taylor grinned. "Or from home to school, or whatever. It's really cool."

"What, he said with a feeling of impending dread, was the thing you were trying to do when you more or less accidentally became a much better teleporter?" he inquired.

The two dragons looked at each other, then vanished. He looked around, hearing Amy and Lisa start giggling. "OK, that part isn't exactly new," he pointed out. "I've seen you do it any number of times."

"But you haven't seen this, right?" Stereo voices sounded from his shoulders, as two small weights landed on them. He looked to either side, meeting a small reptilian smirk each time, then sighed.

"Oh, good lord. How on earth did you find a loophole this time, Taylor?"

"The excess mass is stashed away in a fractional dimension," the one on the left shoulder told him. "I'm more or less my own pocket of holding right now. Works pretty well."

"It does, indeed," he nodded. "So now I can expect to find two micro-dragons asleep in the armchair rather than one?"

"Possibly," she grinned, as Amy laughed again. "It's a neat form, I could spend days like this."

"I also find it most comfortable," the demon put in from the other side, sounding amused.

Both of them took off and flew around, then one headed for the door. "Hey, come and see how this works, it's really cool," his mad daughter called, making him shake his head, then follow.

She was right, it was.

Tightening the last bolt, Linda made sure it was at the right torque, then removed the tool and eased herself out from under the main control console of the new mech, lithely flipping around and dropping into the seat. Tapping a couple of controls, she ran a diagnostic and nodded happily. The system was reporting 100% functionality. 'That's three done,' she thought, pleased with the progress she'd made. Shutting it down again, she hopped down to the workshop floor and grabbed the cover panel for the exposed innards, climbing back up with it and quickly installing it into the relevant place. When everything was properly assembled and she'd double-checked her list, ticking everything off with a sense of satisfaction, she put the clipboard down and leaned back.

'Going well. I can probably get four done today, which is enough to let the guys start training on them. I've got the service manual half written, and Lisa said she'd help finish it off and tidy it up. The documentation department can add all the standard DWU stuff to it later.' She'd decided the obvious thing was to write it up in exactly the same format as all the other DWU documentation for heavy machinery since they'd come up with a flexible and efficient system. It made sense to stick to that, as all the mechanics in the place would be able to follow it easily. And aside from certain black box aspects of the machine, they'd be able to service it too, not that it was likely to need all that much servicing if she and the two Family members had done their jobs correctly.

When these four were finished, she'd get Saurial to add that incredibly useful dimensional folding trick to them, which would make storing the things simple, then go talk to her team of volunteer mech operators. Of which she could pick from at least a couple of dozen so far. They'd be able to proof-read the manuals, properly test the mechs themselves, and undoubtedly put together a large amount of information for the operator's manual, which would be the next job. She was pretty sure that inside a week they'd have the machines fully and comprehensively documented and stress-tested.

At that point, she'd finish the rest, getting the lizards to help assemble the other six chassis units, and then start the next project. Once the mech squad had fully trained on them, they could make as many as were required for the work, but a dozen would suffice for the moment.

She had a lot of other ideas she was keen to move onto, as interesting and fun as this one had been.

But now, it was time for lunch, then joining in with the people watching as their first train full of scrapped tanker headed upstate towards the smelter, showing the entire city that the reclamation project was going well. Linda was pretty happy to be part of that, overall, and absolutely sure she was exactly where she belonged.

Smiling to herself, the feline woman leaped out of the open mech cockpit, flipped once in the air for the hell of it on the way down, then headed for the door.