Waiting for the ferry ramp to fully lower into place, Lisa then walked across it, waving her thanks to the crew operating the vessel. Ready for her were Armsmaster and Dragon, both standing calmly in the midst of PRT staff rushing about loading and unloading the small ship. Several of them came off with her and immediately headed to the elevator, apparently in a hurry to get somewhere.
"Miss Wilbourn, it's a pleasure to see you again," Dragon said with a smile in her voice, something that impressed Lisa even more now that she knew the truth. The machine intelligence was so amazingly good at being human it was astounding, the warmth and humor apparent even without any visible face.
"This is true," Armsmaster added, his chin and mouth momentarily appearing a little less forbidding. For him that was almost an effusive welcome, she thought with amusement. She glanced at Dragon again and saw in the slight tilt of her head a sort of weary yet accepting resignation towards the man who was her best friend. With a slight smile of her own, she looked back to the local Protectorate leader. "Thank you for being so prompt with the samples," he added, a level of excitement coming into his voice as he studied the bags she was holding, a duplicate of those she'd dropped off at city hall. The contents were essentially the same as well, with a few substitutions.
"It's no problem, Armsmaster," she assured him. Looking around for a moment, she went on as she returned her attention to him, "I've always wanted an excuse to visit the Rig. The public tours don't show the interesting parts, I suspect."
He nodded slowly. "We do avoid showing off the more secure aspects for obvious reasons," he replied. "Please come this way." He stepped back and turned, gesturing to one of the elevators. She headed that way, both Tinkers accompanying her. As they entered the elevator she glanced back at the ferry, where a number of people were loading a couple of vehicles onto it, and Dauntless and Assault were standing to the side waiting to board.
"I have a question," she said. Armsmaster looked at her while the doors closed silently.
"Go on."
"What happened to that force field bridge thing you had here? I know it used to be the main way on and off the rig, but for the last eight months or so, everyone seems to use that ferry instead. That can't be as convenient." She could remember the bridge clearly but wasn't sure why it was no longer in use, and even her power wasn't sure on that. It suggested some form of equipment failure as the most likely cause.
He sighed faintly. "There was… an incident. Involving power testing for a newly Triggered Tinker who had an impressive ability to make weapons while having an equally impressive ability to neglect to fit them with safety mechanisms..." The man shook his head as Dragon made a small sound of suppressed laughter. Lisa looked at the AI, then back at Armsmaster.
"Ah. Went a bit wrong, did it?"
"One could indeed say that, if by 'A bit wrong' one meant 'Someone dropped a live weapon and it blew a hole the size of my fist clean through the floor of the testing room into the force field generator,'" he sighed, sounding peeved. She tried not to smile but it was hard. "We were only doing the testing here due to an issue with the Chicago office, which we later discovered was actually down to the same Tinker accidentally firing a different weapon while describing the usage of it. We were the nearest facility with the requisite expertise, so he was brought here for the remainder of the evaluation."
"Oh." She was still trying very hard not to laugh. "I take it that there was some form of miscommunication?"
"That would certainly be one way to put it," he muttered, striding forward as the doors opened again. "I was less polite. Certain forms of information are critically important and should not be left to a new trainee to pass on. We have made significant changes to operational procedure in the wake of the incident, so it should not reoccur, but in the meantime we're left with a heavily damaged generator that is proving very difficult to repair successfully." Armsmaster led the way to his lab, following the same course she'd been over as Metis, although he didn't know that. Arriving at the door he put his armored hand over the scanner, which immediately beeped and opened the heavy portal with almost no sound.
"Will you be able to fix it?" she asked curiously.
He shrugged with a glance at Dragon, who replied, "We hope so, but it's a very complex piece of Tinker Tech, and the original Tinker who built it is in high demand at the moment in LA on a big project for the PRT headquarters. It might take some time."
"Huh. OK, thanks for telling me. I've been wondering about that for a while now." Lisa looked around, then carried the bags over to the large table in the middle of the lab, which was mostly clear. Placing them on the top she unzipped the first one and started unloading it as both the others moved to watch. "All right, we've got four more of the standard sixty kilowatt output flywheel units to go with the one you already have," she said, putting the relevant items in a line on the table. Armsmaster picked one up and examined it, then replaced it with a nod of satisfaction. "Saurial also sent two of these higher power units, they're rated at five hundred kilowatts continuous output with a storage capacity of twenty megawatt-hours. That can be increased considerably by increasing the rotational speed, but they're currently limited to make the recharge time something sensible."
She put both units on the table, next to the lower power ones. Externally they were identical, with the same FamTech logo on each along with a serial number, but they had a different part code embossed into the EDM casing. Both Tinkers looked at the things, then each other, before picking them up and inspecting them closely. "They can be spun up from a standard industrial three phase power supply but that'll take a long time to reach full charge," she added. "However, they're designed to connect to a high voltage substation feed directly which will reduce that to something much more reasonable. If you have any specific requirements for output voltage, frequency, or number of phases, just let us know and we can arrange to make them for you for a modest surcharge."
She carried on unpacking. "Charging unit for the small flywheels, one. Charging units for the high output ones, two, one per unit. Then we have three sets of firefighting gear, suits, and accessories, including tank filling adapters and rebreather cartridges..."
Lisa gave her small audience a similar explanation to the one she'd gone over earlier with Roy's people, a stack of equipment building up on the table while Dragon and Armsmaster listened closely. "And finally, two sets of standard issue DWU industrial protective clothing, the new stuff we've started using recently, including gloves and boots. And one prototype FamTech PRT trooper helmet, patterned on the ones you currently use but with our modifications and easy-access system. We're particularly interested on feedback on this item." She handed him the helmet, which on the outside looked almost identical to the ones the PRT people wore as part of their equipment, although it was made of EDM and mono-crystalline sapphire like all Taylor's current helmet designs.
"Very interesting," Armsmaster said under his breath, turning the helmet over and studying the mechanism, then peering inside it. "Very interesting indeed. You can provide these in standard sizes?"
"Easily. We've got a suggested price list here," she nodded, handing him a folder of paperwork, "although we're always open to sensible deals, certainly with the ENE branch. We all live in the same place, we help each other." She smiled at him as she could feel him raising an eyebrow a little. "Ideally."
"I see," he said slowly, then returned to reading the top sheet in the folder, having handed Dragon the helmet which she was looking at with interest. "These prices seem somewhat low considering how effective and valuable FamTech equipment is," he added, reaching the bottom of the page.
Lisa shrugged. "As I said the first time we talked, the Family isn't short of either marketable ideas, or finances. To be brutally honest they don't really need anything we can give them. But they want to help, and the money they make selling equipment can be used to do things that they can't personally achieve. It keeps other people employed, goes out into the local economy, and in the end helps out a lot more than just them."
"They think in the long term," Dragon put in, making both Lisa and Armsmaster look at her.
"Basically, yes," she agreed. "And they prefer keeping people alive. The jobs the BBPD, the PRT, the fire department, independent heroes, and people like that all do is dangerous. FamTech equipment can make it a lot safer, although obviously can't remove all the risk. So as far as they're concerned it's worth the effort to get it out there, and they're perfectly happy to sell it at a sensible price to make sure it does. If it's too expensive the uptake would be much lower which would go against the entire idea."
"Understood," he nodded, sounding approving. "And an efficient method to raise the standard of living throughout the city."
"We and they hope so," Lisa grinned. "So far, it seems to be working."
"Based on what I've seen recently I'd have to agree," Dragon chuckled. "I never thought this city would turn around that fast."
"No one expected giant lizards, though," Lisa snickered, making Dragon nod and emote a smile.
"I doubt anyone ever expects giant lizards..."
"That does not appear to have stopped them," Armsmaster said almost under his breath, although she could swear he actually smiled for a moment. Only a little, but it was there. "Please pass on my thanks and those of the Protectorate ENE to Saurial and her relatives for this, it's a very generous sample."
"They can make a lot more of this sort of thing a lot faster than you'd think," Lisa replied, which made him look thoughtfully at her. "But I will, certainly."
"Thank you." He looked down at the papers he was still holding. "I would like to discuss some custom work," he continued a few seconds later, slightly tentatively. "Do you think Saurial would be open to that?"
"Pretty sure she'd be fine with it," Lisa nodded, knowing full well what the answer would be. "What are you after?"
"A number of things," he replied, turning and leading the way over to an elaborate computer system with a number of enormous monitors attached to it. He pointed at one of them. "I have made some design changes to my motorcycle system based on the Family hardware and would like to commission the Family to manufacture the parts, as one project. I am also interested in upgrading my power armor to encompass at a minimum an outer layer of EDM plates, although if the possibility of adding fractional dimensional storage spaces to it was available as in the armor that Metis and Ianthe use, I would be very interested in that as well."
"I can't see any problems with any of that," Lisa said thoughtfully, pulling out a notebook and one of Taylor's pens and quickly jotting down some information. "I'll mention it to Saurial and Raptaur as soon as I see them today."
"Thank you. We are also interested in upgrading the costumes of the Wards, and probably the other Protectorate members as well," he said, sounding pleased.
She made more notes, not surprised. It was almost inevitable that this would happen and in her view as well as Taylor's and Amy's, it was about time. "Sure. No problem, that shouldn't be difficult. We'd probably find it easier to have this happen at the BBFO office but if you can't do that, I guess Saurial could come here easily enough as soon as she has a free moment. They're a little busy right now but… maybe the end of the week or so?"
"Excellent, that would allow time to finalize the designs," he said with a glance at Dragon who nodded.
"OK, as soon as you have an idea of what you want, email it to me and I'll work up a quote for it," Lisa told him, putting her notebook away, then handing him one of the cards she'd made up earlier that morning. He took it, looked at it, then put it next to the keyboard on his desk. "Does Director Piggot know about this?"
"I have discussed it with her and she raised no great objection," he replied soberly. "The main concern was one of cost, but based on this document I don't see that as a factor. It's considerably lower than I expected, which will please the Director and the accountants equally."
He sounded mildly irritated, suggesting that often neither of those parties was pleased by his requests, which made her suppress another smile.
"All right, I'll let them know. Anything else for today?" she asked.
"I can't think of anything," he replied with a shake of his head. "Although if you happen to encounter Leet, please tell him that his tricorder design is highly effective and clean and I am having considerable success in miniaturizing it in conjunction with Dragon's data. As soon as I have a finished design I will contact him to discuss it further."
"Of course. I'll probably see him today as well," Lisa smiled. Turning to Dragon, she looked inquiringly at her.
"I've got some things I need to talk to Saurial about at some point, but it's not currently urgent," the other Tinker said without prompting. "I'll contact her when I'm ready."
"OK. In that case, I'd better get back," she replied. "You can keep the bags, we have lots of them."
"Of course," he said, heading towards the door. "I'll accompany you back to the ferry. The next one will be leaving in… six minutes."
Six and a half minutes later she was watching the shoreline approach, while sitting in her omnivehicle in the car mode and thinking about what the next FamTech product should be.
"Are you sure about this, Lieutenant?"
"Yeah, it's fine, these are only the tungsten penetrators. No one will let me use the depleted uranium rounds, even though that stuff isn't all that radioactive."
Sergeant Goff, SWAT armorer technician, looked dubiously at his immediate superior. "'Not all that radioactive' implies it's still radioactive to some extent, and generally speaking people get nervous about the idea." He picked up the twenty-millimeter cannon round and studied it. "Where the hell did you even get these things?"
Lieutenant Ricci glanced over from where he was adjusting the largest fucking gun Goff had ever seen in his life and smirked slightly. "I know a guy who knows someone in the USAF," he replied. "Those are M61 Vulcan 20mm by 102mm armor piercing, and those other ones are the SAPHEI rounds. They're impressive, tungsten carbide penetrator with high explosive and incendiary filling for extra goodness. Go right through an armored personnel carrier in one shot. Body armor wouldn't even slow it down."
He resumed working on the weapon. "Armsmaster himself would notice if you shot his armor with one of those fucking things. Mind you, he'd probably kill you afterwards, but I bet it would at least knock him on his ass."
"What about Raptaur?" Goff asked, putting the first round back in the box, then picking up one of the explosive ones to inspect curiously.
Ricci snickered. "You saw her at that Merchant op. She tanked an RPG without flinching. One of those things wouldn't even tickle her. Then she'd bite your head off." He moved to the rear of the enormous gun and sighted carefully down it, shifting it very slightly to the left, and nodded to himself. The end of the muzzle was sticking through a hole in a two inch thick ballistic glass shield nearly six feet across that was part of the wall separating their position from the rest of the test range. Going back to the side he locked the elaborate tripod in place. "That should do it. It's sighted in on the target, suppressor is fitted, so all we have to do is load it. Hand me that mag, will you?"
The sergeant picked up the huge magazine, nearly the size of a brick, and gave it to the other man. Despite the size and weight it only had three rounds in. "How on earth did you get hold of that monstrosity?" he asked, watching as his superior snapped the magazine into place on the side of the immense rifle. "I've never even heard of the damn thing before. It makes an M82 look like a toy."
"Another guy I know, retired army gunsmith." Ricci stepped back, satisfied everything was in order. "He's consulting for a company down in Houston that's been working on this weapon for about eight years. He was allowed to lend it to me for today." He patted the more than six foot long gun rather possessively. "Started as a South African Denel NTW-20, but it's been redesigned to use the longer cartridge. It was originally chambered for the 20 by 82 Mauser round, but they wanted more penetration. Denel made a variant with the even larger one ten millimeter Hispano round but the Vulcan cartridges are easier to get in the US. The military was considering it as an anti-Brute weapon at one point before the PRT got all pissy about it."
"That's serious overkill for a lot of Brutes," Sergeant Goff noted.
"Yeah, and completely ineffective against others," Ricci nodded. "Glory Girl, or Lung, would laugh at it. Raptaur wouldn't actually notice. Anyone who wasn't as tough would get splashed all over the street. And if you missed..." He shrugged. "No one within about two or three miles would thank you for that. Over a thousand meters per second with a round that massive goes a long way, and it's got about fifty thousand foot-pounds of kinetic energy. More than three times the fifty cal we tried before."
"Which just bounced."
"Which did indeed just bounce. Damndest thing I've ever seen." Ricci picked up one of the implausibly thin sheets of slick gray metal with a FamTech logo in one corner that was on the table next to the ammunition and looked wonderingly at it. "Un-fucking-believable. Look at it, it's like a sheet of cardboard, but a fifty cal AP round bounced off it without even leaving a mark." The man shook his head in amazement. "If this doesn't do anything, I can't really think of anything that would and still leave the building in one piece."
"We sure can't fire an RPG down here," the sergeant grinned. "City hall would go mad."
His superior looked mildly disappointed, making him chuckle. The older man was entirely nuts in his opinion, but knew his stuff like no one else he'd met. "OK, let's see what happens. Make sure you have the ear plugs in too, even with the suppressor this thing is loud." Both men put in active noise canceling shooting ear plugs, then a set of normal hearing protectors over their ears as well. Goff checked the cameras recording the test from a number of viewpoints, then signaled Ricci, who nodded.
Moving to the rear of the gun, he double-checked the target was still sighted in, flicked off the safety, worked the bolt, then pulled the trigger.
Even with the hearing protection the boom! when the gun fired was deafening, echoing off the walls of the underground range and making it ring like a bell. The barrel snapped back into the recoil damping assembly then more slowly returned to the normal position as it absorbed the massive kick from firing the round, and smoke rose from the end.
Simultaneously at the far end of the range, sixty-five yards away, there was an enormous shower of sparks when the tungsten slug hit the EDM plate at nearly three times the speed of sound and shattered. Fragments pinged all over the long room, causing one light in the ceiling to break, then all was silent again.
"Holy shit!" Goff yelped. The impact to his chest from the shock wave caused by the weapon had taken him by surprise.
Ricci looked pleased as he straightened up from the firing position. "Hit it dead in the middle. What happened?" He looked at the monitor showing the live image of the target from an armored camera near it, then frowned in disbelief.
Goff was staring as well.
"Not a fucking mark. That's… Is that even possible?" the sergeant muttered.
"Apparently so," Ricci replied, sounding stunned. "It pushed the stand back about two feet, which is a good trick considering how heavy it is, but the plate looks completely intact."
"That would still hurt," Goff noted.
His superior nodded, returning to the gun and looking through the scope. "Yeah. Break all your ribs for sure. But you might live, which you sure as hell wouldn't without the thing. One of those rounds would make you a fine mist all over the scenery just from the kinetic energy." He worked the bolt again, then fired once more. Again, when the echoes died away and the shrapnel stopped bouncing, the EDM plate was entirely intact.
"Amazing." Lieutenant Ricci shook his head. "Hand me the explosive rounds."
Somewhat nervously, Sergeant Goff accepted the first magazine he was given, and replaced it with the other one. He didn't expect that these rounds would do any more damage than the previous ones had, and was wondering a little worriedly what his superior would come up with to test the Family-supplied armor with next...
"You're kidding..." Linda said in a bemused voice, staring at Kevin, who shook his head. "Holy shit. That's a lot of power."
"Yeah, should be enough to work for most purposes," he grinned. Both of them were sitting in front of a whiteboard on which he'd sketched a more complete version of his infinite loop gravity-driven generator, along with calculations on how large it would need to be for various power outputs, and expected size when Taylor got finished with Mathing it into submission. Having cooperated on the flywheel design, he was getting a good feel for his new friend's crazy abilities although the math itself was still not something he was competent with beyond the basics.
He thought he could probably handle it in the end, at least to some level, but it was going to take a hell of a lot of effort. Randall was slightly further ahead although even his power was having trouble with it.
"I mean, a gigawatt is the sort of output you'd get from a decent sized nuclear station, and those things are fucking huge. Not to mention cost billions of dollars, take decades to build, and are even more expensive to decommission when they're shut down. And you're talking about fitting all that into a small shipping container!" She shook her head in wonder. "Fuck me that's going to make people look at us."
"That it will," he agreed. "Sure, there are some Tinker Tech power units that are capable of that sort of output, or even more, but they're rare, unreliable, and hellishly dangerous if they go wrong. I've got designs myself for a few but I sure as fuck wouldn't make any these days. With the way my power works, Brockton Bay would end up as a huge crater..." He shook his head again, sighing. "Which is just fucking annoying, as well as scary as shit."
"Let's not risk that," Randall advised from the side, where he was listening to them while idly playing a racing game. "The place is getting better so wiping it out would be counterproductive. Aside from all the dying and so on, of course."
Kevin looked at his friend and frowned slightly, while Linda laughed. "Yeah, yeah, I know. Anyway, the whole point about this thing is that it's not Tinker Tech at all. OK, the Family are the only ones who could make it out of EDM, which you'd need for a really high power one, but at least in theory I'm pretty sure a perfectly normal person could eventually learn to do the congruent space trick."
"A perfectly normal math savant with several years practice and a drinking problem," Randall commented, grinning.
"That might help, yes," Kevin sighed. "I swear, some of those equations look at you..."
"They're mostly harmless," his friend chuckled.
Linda looked between them then shook her head and went back to studying the board for a while. "I can't see any real problem with it, assuming that whole portal thing works the way you say it does," she finally said. "Although if we build enough of them, in the end we're going to cause some weird problems with the orbit of the planet."
Kevin waved a hand. "In theory, sure, but the rotational potential energy of the Earth is so fucking ridiculously huge it wouldn't be a problem for centuries, and there are ways around that anyway. Here and now it's a clean, reliable, and basically free source of all the power we'll ever need for most things. We can reserve the Tinker power units for the special projects and use something like this for powering the infrastructure."
"It'll be interesting to see what Saurial and Raptaur think of it," she commented.
"We'll find out when they turn up." He leaned his chair back on the rear legs and put his feet on the workbench next to the board, feeling rather pleased with himself for the idea.
"What's that?" she asked, glancing at the disassembled device near his feet, which had parts all over the place while the main unit was half-eviscerated in the middle.
"That's the shield generator," he explained, dropping his feet back to the floor and sitting upright again. He picked up one twisted and melted part. "This seems to be the weak point, it's the primary fold-space controller. It just couldn't handle the strain across it and when it failed the entire output of the thing got dumped instantly. Total meltdown. We were lucky it didn't just blow up."
"Which is usually what happens," Randall complained, pausing his game and turning to them. "Why do so many Tinker Tech inventions fail dangerous? Usually in a really spectacular and loud way? I mean, he invented a super-fast coffee machine once, which was amazing, it could make a perfect cup of the best espresso I've ever had in four seconds! But then one day I turned it on..." He grimaced. "We needed to find a new place after that, and the crater was glowing blue for three weeks."
Linda snickered as Kevin sighed heavily. "The temporal accelerator was a little unstable," he said weakly.
"A little?" Randall glared at him. "It ate the building! I liked that building. And I lost all my save games too. Again."
"How are you two still alive?" she asked with a grin, making them exchange a look then shrug. "Talk me through what this thing is supposed to do, maybe we can figure out any other failure points," she said a moment later, pulling her chair over to the bench. "Your stuff is a lot cleaner than mine, but mine is a lot more reliable and doesn't usually explode for no reason..."
"Lady has a point, dude," Randall said wisely, then went back to his game, only wincing a little when Kevin bounced a pencil off his head, before starting to explain the design to his fellow Tinker.
Glancing to the side, Officer Michelson spotted something odd and slowed the patrol car a little to get a better view. "Huh," he said to his partner Harry, attracting his attention from the in-car computer where the other man was logging the last traffic stop they'd made ten minutes ago. "Looks like someone's doing something with the old Westway Mall. That place has been shut for, what, ten, twelve years?"
"About that," Harry agreed, also peering at the large bright yellow sign in the window of the main entrance to the large building, which had once been a small but fairly popular mall some years back. Built in the early sixties, it had done a lot of business until the late eighties, but the combination of malls in general slowly dying off in the face of mail order and rising gas prices, the general economic state of both the country as a whole and Brockton Bay in particular, and a severe clash between Marquis and the Teeth had finally finished it off. It never recovered from the fire caused in the latter event, which although it hadn't actually done a huge amount of damage, had closed the facility for over a month for repair work since it destroyed the electrical control room completely.
As a result of that several of the stores in it had either gone under or relocated to other places, some of them leaving the city entirely. In the end, the mall never reopened, the holding company deciding it wasn't worth trying to attract new business in the face of all the problems and coming to the conclusion that throwing good money after bad was a waste of effort. So the entire building was shuttered in the late nineties and had remained unused and slowly decaying ever since.
David remembered that there had been one or two cases of people breaking into the place over the years, either to look for something to steal or to squat there, but for whatever reason it was mostly untouched. Even though it was very close to the Docks, having been built there when that area was much more prosperous, not even the Merchants seemed to have thought of using it. It was a little weird, but the majority of people who looked for abandoned buildings for various purposes, nefarious or otherwise, didn't appear to consider malls as valid targets.
Possibly it was all the glass, he mused. Or maybe they just didn't like reminders of stale food and economic decay. Who knew?
Indicating, suddenly curious, he glanced in the mirror then turned into the mall parking lot, which was fairly substantial even if cratered and in need of some serious resurfacing. Weaving around the random dumped cars and other piles of crap that tended to pile up on any empty space in this area of the city, he drove up to the main entrance and stopped. Both of them read the sign with interest.
Coming Soon!
BBSS Co. Outlet!
Property acquired for BBSS Co. by Castle Investments LLC
Warning, this property is secured and alarmed. No Trespassing. Violators will be dealt with.
"What the hell is BBSS Co.?" Harry said after a few seconds, mystified.
David shrugged. "Not a fucking clue. Some sort of bargain store chain? A pet shop? God knows, around here it could be almost anything." He chuckled as he put the car into reverse and looked over his shoulder. "Might be another Family thing too, of course."
Harry nodded absently, looking around at the area, which showed a few signs, other than the actual sign, that someone had been doing a bit of clearing up. The main door had visibly shiny new locks and there were a number of very high end and discreet cameras mounted in various places, only visible to the expert eye. "Wonder why anyone would put money into a mall these days? And in the fucking Docks for that matter."
As David turned the vehicle and headed back to the road, he replied, "The city is changing pretty quick these days. I mean, you've seen all the shipping in the bay, right? I haven't seen that much activity on the water since I was a kid." He slowed at the parking lot entrance, checked for traffic, then pulled out to resume their patrol. "Since Saurial and her family turned up, things have definitely improved. Much faster than I'd have believed. I mean, look at this road!" He pointed ahead of them at the tarmac. "Looks brand new. But the city didn't do it, I checked. It's them. They're fixing everything they can get their hands on, mostly for shits and giggles as far as I can tell."
"Yeah," his partner agreed, shaking his head a little. "It's weird, but it's nice to see capes actually fixing things and not breaking them all the time. And I can't honestly say I miss the Merchants. Or the ABB. Or the E88."
David grinned. "I heard that Lung spends his time playing cards and drinking beer these days."
"I'm completely fine with that," Harry chuckled. "No one is likely to lock the fucker up, but if he's content to stay out of things, that's nearly as good. And Kaiser seems to have decided to keep his head down."
"Because if he doesn't Raptaur will probably eat it," David snickered.
"Think she really would?"
"Dunno, really, she's actually a nice girl, but I'm damn sure she'd kill him without a second thought if he pushed too hard. Nice girl, but she has her limits." David glanced at the other man who was nodding thoughtfully. "Leave her and her people alone, she leaves you alone, but mess with them..."
"Does seem to be a thing." Harry leaned his elbow on the door and rested his chin on his fist. "You know that sooner or later some stupid fucker is going to test that?"
"Sure. People are idiots. But the Family takes a lot of provocation, so with any luck they can stop it going too far before they have to do something drastic. If someone actually manages to hurt any of the DWU or whatever it's going to be the last thing they ever do." He sighed a little, then shook his head. "And you know what? I'm more or less OK with that. About time some of these asshole villains realized that they're not the biggest predator around. Especially compared to Kaiju. PRT's let them get away with things for way too long, all over the country, and it's grown into a problem we certainly can't solve. Neither can they as far as I can tell, or maybe they just don't want to."
"But if the Family can..."
"If the Family can, it's a good thing. If things kept going the way they were going three months back this fucking city was headed for a hell of a disaster sooner or later. You know that as well as I do."
"Yeah." His partner nodded slightly.
"So I for one am perfectly happy to have some bizarre reptilian girls turn up and stomp the assholes flat. Especially since they're polite, helpful, and clean up the mess afterwards." He grinned as Harry snorted with amusement. "And keep repairing everything without even being asked. And make cool toys for us."
Picking up his Tac-Smak® baton from where it was sitting in the center console, Harry spun it in his hand. "That part I can definitely agree with. The new body armor they're evaluating right now is going to be neat too, from what I heard."
"That I am looking forward to," David nodded. "Too many idiots with guns in this city. Even if the Family is out there, they're still idiots. And have guns."
"And Saurial can't be everywhere," Harry agreed. "Good armor is the next best thing."
As he was speaking, a high end pickup truck shot past at far over the speed limit, making both of them twitch. Harry looked down at the computer screen when the system chimed at him. "Got a hit on the plates, that was stolen two days ago in Haverhill. Wanted in connection with a drug store robbery in Groveland yesterday."
"And he's doing about ninety in a forty zone," David muttered as he stomped on the accelerator while flipping the switch for the lights and sirens. The car surged ahead as the engine roared. "I wonder if he's local?"
"Doubt it."
"So he probably doesn't know about the big hole in the road he just turned down?"
They squealed around the same corner a few seconds later, to see the now badly damaged truck tipped onto its side in the aforementioned crater, which was left over from a Merchant vs E88 battle from six months back and one that Saurial and her sister hadn't yet got around to repairing.
"Apparently not," Harry laughed as David stopped the vehicle, both of them watching a pair of bedraggled and slightly concussed-appearing robbers clamber out of the hole, swearing loudly as they staggered around. The two cops exchanged a look, shrugged, and got out of the car, weapons drawn.
As far as David was concerned, he'd far rather deal with this sort of stupidity than the E88 and automatic weapons, or some cape fight. Or both.
Yes, overall, in his opinion Brockton Bay was improving rapidly. Even if there were still a remarkably large number of criminals wandering around, at least most them weren't likely at the moment to burn your face off...