A/N: Good news? Chapter five has been finished, and I've started on Chapter six. Bad news? Chapter five needs a proof-read, but I'm making good headway with Chapter six. So I'm going to carry on writing new material before I review the next chapter. So it might take longer than a week before I can do that. Shouldn't be months, but might be longer than the previous upload schedule.
In the end it actually took most of a week before Taylor was able to bring herself to leave her rooms and start working again. Even then she would be the first to admit that she was not over her recent experiences, instead she sought to bury herself in something productive and avoid the issue.
She deliberately refused to activate her emotional dampening again, understanding that she needed to work through her issues. During the day, or at least the timed equivalent on Mars, she focused purely on her work. Drones were built, upgraded, scrapped and recycled as improved versions were brought into action.
The drones were her first attempts to mix the technology bases of her benefactors. Necron scarabs were the base, but imperial restrictions and Eldar armour was brought in as a first step. At the same time, the vast majority of the working drones were following plans to create a number of machines solely based on the original racial designs.
Infrastructure was the obvious benefactor as Taylor's capacity increased exponentially. Drones excavated land and used the removed materials to build further drones. Those drones did the same while smaller numbers were siphoned off to work building equipment within the new rooms.
Once the initial rooms were created, which included vast bays for creating tanks, ships and Titans, those drones switched to creating the equipment needed to build machines, suitably altered to be able to be controlled by a singular being.
As Taylor worked, and as she added details to her future plans and possible battle strategy's, the strengths and weaknesses of each branch of technology became more and more evident. Necron technology was incredibly powerful, but it lacked focus. A lot of the bleed through of effects into the atmosphere as a Necron army went to war was essentially leakage from their technology. The lines of power and obvious shows of force actually lost a measurable amount of power. This was mitigated by their ability to create massive amounts of energy and the exotic effects they could use.
In contrast to that, the Eldar technology was amazingly elegant. It had simple applications, for such futuristic technology, and they were implemented with a skill that was almost artistic. It was that artistry that created a weakness though. Delicate components and circuitry could be effected by sufficient force. The Eldar obviously knew this weakness, hence their use of confusion technology, hiding positions and blurring the senses protected the technology as much as the armour. It was also a slow creation process. With circuits being grown as much as produced it was far slower than the more industrial processes the other races used.
And finally the Imperial solutions were the most robust. Simplistic and prone to self-inflicted damage, but you could drop their technology into water, mud, fire or space and pick it up later, wipe it off and carry on using it. The humble lasgun was an amazing example of this. Useable in any environment, frequently subjected to abuse, and it never stopped working. The Imperial battery technology was also better than their counterparts, the Lasgun could be recharged extremely quickly from solar energy, whereas the other races tended to use energy transfers.
Taylor's ultimate goal was to create a mixed drone design. The repair abilities and impressive functionality of the Necron Scarab, the extended remote power life and heavy armour of the Imperium, and the artistry of the Eldar sensors, alongside the ability to hide so inherent of that mysterious race.
It was not going well.
Each race had come along their own paths to power generation, storage and use, and there was hardly any compatibility between the systems.
It required her to break down each piece of technology and re-work it into the most basic of designs and knowledge, then build back up from there into something that would interact with another piece of technology. For obvious reasons the Imperial Technology was most resistant to this.
It was slow, tedious work, but Taylor loved it. Every moment of her work on this was reinforcing and enhancing the knowledge she'd been given, but it allowed her to put her personal spin on everything. Essentially she was rebuilding the technology bases in her own image and mindset.
After having been working on auto-pilot for the most part so far it felt amazing to prove that she was more than the information she'd been given.
This excitement of discovery and building prototypes with her own hands (well, mechadendrite and hands), was more than enough to keep her full attention and distract herself from anything else during the day.
When it was time to pause, the problems returned though. Taylor only really stopped for meals, ablutions, and sleep as much as necessary. After her first day of work though she had to schedule more time for her sleep, as the doubts and pains kept her from sleeping for a number of hours.
After a couple of days, much soul searching and more internet searches, she started coming to terms with everything though. It wasn't easy, and she still had a long road ahead of her, but the hope that she could one day get back to a mentally healthy state was a strong motivator. For so long after her mother died she'd been broken, first by the missing part of her life, then by Emma's betrayal and the constant attacks that spawned. Even at home there was no reprieve with an, at best, absent father.
It was difficult, but Taylor realised that she hadn't had anything to look forward to for so long that even just an improved state of mind was enough to improve her outlook on life.
…
Halfway through the next week, Taylor realised that simply cutting herself off from everything was not going to work. She needed the information to feed into her plans, for one, but she also needed to be prepared to protect her home. Something she could not do with no contact on Earth while she was on Mars.
With that in mind her all-encompassing approach to the design work shifted and became much more focused. The first step would be to get data-taps in place for everyone that could be her enemy, mostly within Brockton Bay, but she would future-proof her designs to expand that influence.
Based on the few days after her 'attack' on Sophia she had a short list of definitive enemies within the Bay. The PRT were first and foremost going to be at odds with her, then the Empire 88, the ABB and Coil's organisation.
Of them all the PRT would be both the easiest and the most complicated to breach. Easiest because their locations were so well known, she wouldn't have to hunt anyone down to start getting drones in place, but also the hardest because of the Rig, the Protectorates floating fortress. The infamous structure was heavily defended and included a physical shield.
She would need to hunt down ABB and E88 bases and connections to be able to get accurate intelligence on them. Fortunately she had a start with her communications tap, filtering through the conversations and triangulating positions from that system should give her a good start.
Coil would actually be the most straightforward. His paranoia about security meant she knew where his base was, and the systems tied into the surrounding buildings gave her an in, she would only need to find any additional bases, boltholes, and find his cape minions to get everything set up for him.
After a few moments of contemplation Taylor also decided to enact the same surveillance for the Merchants as well. The drugged up idiots weren't usually capable of much, but Skidmark had gained Squealer by getting the woman addicted to drugs, so they could become a threat.
With a definitive goal in mind Taylor found herself making quick progress and by the end of that week she was ready to start getting her intelligence network in place.
Using a holographic globe and scans of Earth Taylor zoomed into Brockton Bay and started work. First came the Protectorate base. The Rig was taking on supplies and the shield would be breached during that action, therefore she had a window of opportunity. Deciding against using either Imperial or Necron teleportation technology due to the showy nature, she instead opted for Eldar short range transitions.
An orbital webway gate had been established on the moon ahead of her operation, and with that as a waypoint she was able to slip numerous tiny drones in the gap in the shield and along the supports for the Rig. From there the drones would move inside the base and create a dedicated channel for their own uses. With the Eldar technology it would be completely unknown to any human detection methods.
The next five hours were spent monitoring the Rig drones as they moved into position and attached themselves to data links and inserted themselves into networks. Each drone was the size of the tip of her pinkie finger and was the absolute pinnacle of her current designs. The first thing they did was subvert any alarms or detection methods that might have picked up on their presence, then they started digging through the data.
Shortly after the entire database for the PRT ENE was being copied to server banks on Mars.
The PRT building itself had the same invasion, but without the shield and with Piggot's mentality working against her, the infiltration was much easier. Although there were also more of Coil's data taps in the system as well, so Taylor had to adjust for information Coil was altering, deleting or stealing himself.
Even that ended up benefitting her though, as not only did she know what Coil was doing within the system (and how to counter it), but it turned out one of his capes was accessing the system as well. To someone without the prodigious technological might of the Necron's behind them the system Tattletale had to protect her hacking might have caused problems. It took Taylor less than 5 seconds to trace the signal back to her.
Even better, she was working from an apparently abandoned factory complex. Accessing the camera on the girl's laptop showed Rachel Lindt and Jean-Paul Vasil in the background. From Coil's records she knew this was the Undersider's base.
With the laptop itself providing a location Taylor queued up more drones to infiltrate that base and set themselves up. She'd have to be even more careful with their placement to avoid Tattletale's inferential ability, but Eldar holographic defences would get her what she wanted.
For a few moments Taylor studied the teenage villain, as well as her companions from the webcam in her laptop. This was the girl that was going to help sell Taylor into slavery alongside Sarah, all while bemoaning her own fate. Taylor could only find a little sympathy for the situation, but the girl was nowhere near as innocent or as much a victim as she liked to think, so it was minimal.
Making a mental note to come back to the Undersiders and check what Tattletale was working on once her basic network was up and running, Taylor moved on. Hopefully if Sarah was going to be helping enslave someone else she could catch the attempt before it went too far.
Dismissing the view from the laptop, Taylor checked the time and realised she needed to eat and sleep, so finishing off the changes for that day, she started her system on filtering information to find the rest of the gangs.
A much more substantial communications tap system had been dropped on the derelict tanker blocking the bay, and she could now intercept any communications within the city again. As well as monitoring communications Taylor ordered the infiltration of street lights. Using more tiny drones the various external lights in the city would soon as video and public conversation monitoring to her intelligence assets. It was a pretty big invasion of privacy, but regimented programming ensured that innocuous details were destroyed before being saved into any systems. It should leave her with just the criminal element details.
Confident that her filters and calculations would narrow down her searches in the morning, especially with the more active night life of the gangs, Taylor stood from her station and moved back to her quarters.
One of the things the Eldar were far better at than the other races was a separation of personal and business. Being so long-lived and with their population under constant threat they were well aware of the mental health issues that could arise in their daily lives. As such they were exceptional at being able to take a step back and unload all their issues to enjoy and benefit from whatever down time they could get.
Imperial citizens, and the mechanicus in particular, subsumed everything in their lives into their work thanks to the way they were raised and by virtue of the strength of faith, Necrons were basically dead.
Taylor had a duty, but she didn't have the fall-back of a strong faith to aid her. So she had taken steps to emulate the Eldar ways of life.
This meant that before she entered her quarters she divested herself of all armour and arms. The locker-room that formed the bridge between work and private was used as a kind of meditation, the act of hanging up her gear being an important change in mind-set.
Once she was inside her quarters she went through the process of making a meal for herself. Her mum had been the best cook at home, and Taylor had decided that she wanted to try and work towards a self-sufficient food situation to honour her memory. It also worked as a kind of hobby, trying new recipes, tweaking things and trying new things.
Absently she made a mental note to send some drones to her house and check for any of the things left behind after her mum's death. Taylor finished cooking and moved to the dining table to eat. Today's meal was a duck based stir-fry and she was determined to enjoy it.
Even her eating habit was designed to help as well, sitting at the table was another way of decompressing. She didn't allow any thoughts of work or her task to intrude on the dinner table, this was time to herself. It was very reminiscent of early days at home, where neither her mom nor dad were allowed to talk shop at the dinner table. The fact that her seat at the table was facing the wall of windows out onto Mars helped as well.
Once her dinner was finished Taylor spent the next hour curled up with a book, one of many she'd picked up from the supermarkets, before going to bed. It wasn't the frantic schedule she'd half expected to follow given her task, but it ensured she didn't suffer from any problems caused by stress or lack of sleep, so she was content with it.
…
The next day Taylor was back at work placing drones around the city as surveillance and narrowing down her search for the gangs. She'd been slightly wrong yesterday in how much she could find while they were active. It seemed that while action was taken during the night, the planning was mostly done during the day.
As such she was making more progress as the morning ticked on thanks to the communication taps and was close to finding the majority of the Merchant and Empire bases. Lung's solo nature actually worked against the monster this time, as he had people to call a driver to him and inform the driver where they were taking him.
This meant she now had locations for the wannabe dragon, and his new tinker. Bakuda was going to be a problem, Taylor was certain. Now that a location had been picked up she was getting surveillance in place, but already she knew just how much of a chip on her shoulder the bomb tinker had. Rants and threatening phone calls were common-place. Fortunately, the loss of Oni Lee had made the Asian gang hunker down, so Bakuda's building was slowed somewhat.
In the meantime Taylor carried on adding points to her map of the city as Lung moved to ensure everyone remained loyal in the wake of Lee's death. His visits to the most important holdouts of his gang was extremely useful.
The Merchants and Empire were being much more difficult. The Empire due to their cell structure, the Merchants because they were drugged up idiots and could only loosely be called a gang. Hopefully street surveillance would give her the majority of their operations in due time, because she certainly wasn't going to get much out of tapped communications.
A three tone beep from the side ended her review of the gangs positions and she brought up the map of a different, and familiar, part of the city. Her home.
Tapping into a drone that had settled nearby she directed it to look at the property and zoom in so she could get her first proper glimpse since leaving. It did not make for comforting viewing. The front steps were now completely broken. The front door and front windows were now boarded up.
Broken bottles and abandoned rocks on the front garden revealed the reason for the window boards. Some of which had already been spray-painted with derogatory comments or Nazi threats and symbols.
Clearly her father hadn't come back from Boston, or wasn't using the property any more.
Strangely, the back of the house was untouched. Probably too much effort to deface that side as well and no one cared enough to bother.
Still, it wouldn't do to get caught if someone left a trap, so Taylor set all of her drones to scanning the entire property in as much detail as they could manage.
Sitting back she started watching the results come up on her display. The drones had managed to get pretty much everything in the property rendered, she was just missing some parts of the basement.
Initially, it looked like the PRT was slacking. There were movement sensors and laser based trip wires on all of the entrances and exits, but nothing monitoring the inside. The fact that she was known to use teleportation should have ensured the PRT had some way of checking inside, so Taylor carried on looking after identifying the initial measures.
It took most of an hour before she finally found something. Cleverly hidden inside various electrical sockets, light fixings and along the wiring itself were a number of sensors designed to trigger an alert if anyone was inside the property.
Taking things slowly Taylor traced the new system and found that one of the blank spots in the basement was actually the receiver and controller for the whole thing. Each sensor fed back to this device which then sent any signals onwards.
Grinning nastily, Taylor was able to spot an immediate flaw in the system. The casing itself prevented the scans from penetrating. This allowed Taylor to plant a carefully calculated portal, then fire a shot inside the machine, shredding it entirely.
Checking carefully, Taylor made sure the systems were non-functional, then created a portal and stepped through into her living room. With the alarm system shot there were no immediate alarms, but Taylor figured they would pick up on the lack of returns from the system eventually, so she was limiting herself to an hour inside the house.
The living room remained mostly untouched, a couple of things missing and dust sheets over the furniture, but nothing more than that. Then again, her father only came here to sit in front of the TV and drink beer, so it was unlikely he had much he wanted to take. The glass from the empty window frames was still on the floor and crunched as Taylor moved into the kitchen, noticing all the perishables gone before heading upstairs.
Skipping her room she checked the master bedroom, noting that her father's clothing was gone. But he didn't matter, instead she moved went to what used to be her mom's side of the bed and sat near the bedside table. Listlessly she shifted through the affects her father hadn't removed to the attic.
Picking up a photo frame, she stared at the image of the three of them as a family. A second side of the frame had a picture of her and Emma's mom's together. Such happiness seemed like a long time ago.
Eventually standing again, she ordered her drones to strip the room of everything that belonged to her mom. Ensuring the drones carefully packed each item up to be delivered to a storeroom near her private suite on Mars.
Leaving the bedroom she added the attic, basement and living rooms to the drones orders before entering her own room.
It was an absolute tip. Clearly the PRT had stripped the place down trying to find anything to use against her, and quite clearly cleaning up was not a priority.
Plopping down on her own bed, she carefully folded each bit of clothing in reach. Next to none of the stuff had any real sentimental value. Her clothing for the last year and a half had been more an attempt to avoid attention than having been chosen for enjoyment or concern. Still, it was another stark reminder of what she'd lost, and she wanted to acknowledge that. Plus, comfortable clothing was never a waste.
With her clothing folded and sat on one side of her bed, she then went to her dresser and, accepting a box from a drone, started packing away what she wanted to keep. Brushes, photos and other knick-knacks went into the box to decorate her new home.
As each item was picked up Taylor spent a little time thinking about the memories around it, some good some bad, the bad were placed with forced calm into the box, while the good were reluctantly let go.
In the end her drones had cleared the house of anything she wanted to keep long before she was done in her room. Grabbing her box of memories she ordered the drones to open a portal then stepped through to her suite while the drones headed for the storage.
She'd have to look through the stuff from the attic and basement another time, she wasn't sure she could do it right now without another breakdown.
Placing her box at the end of her bed, Taylor headed back out immediately and moved to the control room. She'd deal with the box later as well, right now there was work to do. She also wanted to monitor the PRT networks to see how long it took them to realise she'd been in the house.
Fortunately, it turned out that she'd managed to hit some luck this time around. Although the system hadn't registered her entrance or exit, it turned out there were scans being done to watch for any of her Necron portals opening.
Her luck came from Armsmaster deciding the monitoring of her home could pull double duty. The signal booster for that area of the city had been included inside the monitoring hardware. If she hadn't destroyed the insides as quickly as she had, the veteran tinker would have received an alert and been able to attempt an interception.
…
Two more days of work saw the surveillance network inside Brockton Bay complete. The E88 turned out to be easier than she thought. After thinking about their leader she realised that while the group might have employed a cell structure (ironic since it was used against the Nazi's in France), it didn't help when Max Anders was a first grade control freak.
An hour spent cracking the Medhall security then copying their records gave her the vast majority of the gangs holdings. More time was needed to crack the records for Krieg, as the Gesellschaft cape used a different system (and all in German, too). But even that turned up some important documents as she partially mapped the European villain group's holdings.
It was at that point she realised how incredibly insular she was currently being. As a native of America and Brockton Bay she'd only really focused on her home city, but she had a charge to save the planet. Eventually she was going to come up against other threats outside her city. With that in mind she set a program to start tracing other parahuman gangs across the country.
Once her programs had traced other groups she could start infiltrating them. It wouldn't help her much to simply release drones into the atmosphere and expect them to remain unseen after all.
Focusing back on her home city, she decided she wasn't as confident of the information regarding the Merchants. Their ad hoc leadership and the stealth systems used by Squealer were enough to break the information up, but with nearly every street light in the city now having a spy system (even the broken ones) she was quickly building up a map of the gang's holdings.
It would certainly come in useful in the future, Taylor was certain.
With the data now fully available to her Taylor had set several cogitators to reviewing, summarising and filtering the information she'd gained. There was a massive amount of detail covering future plans, every side of every past action, and dossiers on allies and enemies each. While she was aware she needed to know what the gangs had done, Taylor's immediate need was to understand what they were planning now first and foremost.
It was while she was reviewing the plans the E88 had prepared for various circumstances that she received a ping from one of the cogitators alerting her to high priority information. A few seconds work had the flagged file up on her main screen for review.
Moments later she was scowling and hyper focused. Apparently Kaiser hadn't taken the hint when she removed his leverage over Purity. He had liaised with Krieg to enact a new plan to get the blaster and the three capes she commanded back under control. Gesellschaft was currently putting a team together to directly combat the mother. The general plan was for the group to beat her down, then remove Aster and Theo to Europe. Aster would be returned to America one her mother toed the line. Although she would be kept outside Brockton Bay and Purity would only be allowed to visit for good behaviour.
Theo was going to be put through the trials devised by Gesellschaft to trigger as a cape. At that point he would either be used as breeding stock, kept in Europe, or killed off if he deviated from their expectations too much.
Feeling herself start losing control from the anger Taylor quickly checked when the plan was due to start. Upon realising she had a few days before the team was assembled Taylor triggered a specific protocol within her own systems.
This particular one removed all direct control from herself for as long as the protocol was active. It was something she'd created to ensure she didn't order her drones to do something when she was emotionally compromised, and right not she was very, very, compromised.
Storming out of the room while swearing viciously she made her way to the practice ranges she'd created. Stress testing lasguns, gauss rifles and fusion guns sounded like an excellent idea right now.
Entering the testing range she absently noted that the automatic sliding doors were really unsatisfying when you were in a foul mood. They lacked the ability to slam, which might have helped a little bit.
The rest of her was grabbing the first of the guns that had been created in her workshops and started firing at the targets down range.
It took a few hours and numerous shattered targets for Taylor to calm down again. Once she was able to stop herself from wanting to launch an immediate orbital strike on Medhall and Max Anders she started using more meditative Eldar methods for working through her anger.
Apparently the birth of a literal god of Chaos from their emotions taught a race the benefit of keeping calm, who knew?
Still, half an hour later she was calm enough to think properly again and discard the orbital strike plan. Mostly because she didn't have any satellites to pull it off, and if she did create and deploy one, the damn Simurgh would likely tear it apart.
Slumping into a seat at the lunch room she considered her options. Max was being very cautious at the moment and wasn't going out in costume as Kaiser at all. With the defeat of Hookwolf (who was retrieved after a week, useless PRT) and the loss of a large amount of weaponry, drugs and reputation he was making sure to be as circumspect as possible so the rest of the gangs didn't find out about the losses and get ideas.
Given that shooting the CEO of the largest employer in Brockton Bay, and violating the unwritten rules at the same time, would cause a massive amount of backlash, she couldn't express her opinion to the asshole directly. That left her looking for other options.
Staring sightlessly at the tabletop while picking at her lunch, Taylor was struggling to think about how to handle this situation without having to be physically present when the Gesellschaft group made their move.
Fortuitously, an update on a project appeared on the screen built into the table at just the right time. This time her staring was more of the surprised, pleased and shocked variety. The latest part of her base to come online was just the answer she needed.
Stuffing the rest of her sandwich into her mouth and chewing frantically, Taylor scrambled up from the chair and bolted for the main hub. Unlocking the blackout protocol as she went she darted to the main computer and started checking timelines.
Grinning evilly, she realised she had time to create a single fighter jet then alter it to work via remote piloting before the Nazi group left Europe. Even better, the over-inflated opinion the villain capes had of themselves ensured they would be flying a private jet, crewed completely by people loyal to the Gesellschaft cause.
Ordering the immediate build queue, Taylor wondered how a single Imperial Thunderbolt Fury air fighter would stack up against an unarmed and unarmoured civilian passenger jet.
…
It took less than two days before the automated factory completed a standard pattern Imperial Thunderbolt Fury. With twin-linked Avenger Bolt cannons replacing the four autocannons, plus the additional nose mounted lascannons as well as the ability to field bombs on the wings, the futuristic plane was the best choice for something that could provide both air superiority and ground strike capabilities.
Well, the ridiculous Necron death beams and other edgelord named murderous weapons were the greatest at pinpoint damage, but for fucking up everything in a radius you just couldn't beat a good old fashioned hellstrike or vortex missile.
The Avenger bolt cannons were basically a Gatling gun that fired explosive micro missiles as well, which would just add to the destructive capabilities.
Another half a day was spent rigging the plane so that it was drone controlled, as much as the knowledge she'd received from her benefactors theoretically gave her the ability to fly or pilot all of the various vehicles, she wasn't ready to test that straight away.
Mentally she made a note to build a drone that she could take control over in order to attempt piloting things without exposing herself to danger, but that was for later.
With her jet ready she just needed to wait for the European group of Nazi villains to get into international water aerospace and be able to find them. A review of their systems brought a flight path, with the plane making a stop in London before heading on to New York. From there the group would be brought down to Brockton Bay via helicopter.
With the knowledge of the airline that was taking them (a Nazi front, of course) and the timing of the flight Taylor was quickly able to deploy a variety of drones into the company's holdings and tag each of the jets currently waiting. The Jet due to be used by the capes was sat available for them, but Taylor tagged all of the others at the same time just in case any counter-intelligence attempts were made.
After a moment of thought she added camera drones inside the planes as well, so she could be sure the capes were in the one she shot down without sifting through wreckage.
A few seconds thought had a communication jammer being added to the Thunderbolt Fury as well. Hopefully the uncertainty of the entire group disappearing would cause even more problems for both groups of Neo-Nazi's.
Once the work was complete and her plane had been moved to the flight deck ready for deployment, Taylor quickly set alerts to pop up once there was actual movement on the ground before returning to her surveillance.
Consciously avoiding the temptation to check into what her father was up to and the results of her final days on Earth, instead Taylor looked into any more situations she might need to involve herself in.
Bakuda was currently under full time surveillance after an initial test of some of her work in the boat graveyard created a miniature black hole. She had also been drawing up plans for bombs she could insert into people's heads. Fortunately she had also designed her full triggering system while Taylor was watching. If the worst happened the first thing Taylor would do is to order a drone to latch onto the woman's foot and self-destruct, taking the foot with it.
Lung himself wasn't causing any issues, he'd finished his tour of his businesses and was spending most of his time lazing around in his main home, occasionally evaluating someone to take Oni Lee's place as his second in command.
The Empire was also being quiet to avoid any allusions from the general public that they may have been weakened. Apart from recovering Victor, Othala and Hookwolf the group had only kept the status quo, occasional foray's to hit the Merchants when they tried something was about it. Max had managed to get Crusader out from under Purity's control, but his canny ex-wife had sent Night and Fog to Boston before he could get to them, denying him two very dangerous assets.
Presumably he was waiting until he had Purity under his thumb before advancing any plans.
Coil was also being mostly quiet, his mercenaries had taken quiet a hit with the death of most of the team sent after her initially, but it also broke the trust the group had with Coil, since they hadn't really lost while operating under his guidance.
At the moment he was using the Undersiders (Tattletale, Grue, Regent and Bitch) to harass the gangs to get them to start something. Apparently Sarah had been working on corporate espionage for Coil when Taylor initially caught her working.
Typically it was the Merchants that were being the most trouble. Various raids into rival gang territory, a bust up near the boardwalk with the Protectorate and generally trying to make themselves seen to prove they were the best.
While annoying, the rest of the gangs in the city (PRT included) were keeping a lid on the idiots, so Taylor didn't need to interfere there.
Sitting back after her review of the villains of the bay, Taylor considered whether or not to start looking into the PRT files. She already knew they'd lost all of the Empire capes again, but she didn't know their responses to her own situation.
Eventually she decided against looking. She was still working to improve her mental state, whatever she found could very well reset what progress she'd made and she couldn't risk being shut down when the Gesellschaft capes departed from Germany.
Closing the records she'd gained Taylor returned to her technological research, soon losing herself in the pleasure of discovery.
…
Two days later the German villains started moving. Taylor was tracing their communications again so she tracked them from their various homes as they entered a normal looking office building. From inside there they moved to hidden tunnels that connected the building to a second property. Inside that property the group travelled to the very top floors of the building.
The top sections of this building were not on any of the official records and were only accessible by the elevator from the hidden sub-basement. This was where the group received their final orders via video conference before they moved into rooms to suit up as villains.
When the team went back down in the elevator Taylor watched as they moved in a different direction and entered blacked out vehicles from an underground parking lot. The team were then transported to the private airstrip and trooped on board the private jet for their trip.
It took two and a half hours for the plane to reach London, refuel and get back into the air. From there it was a mostly straight shot over the Atlantic towards their next destination of New York. Apparently, they weren't flying directly to Brockton Bay to avoid suspicion. Germany to New York was common enough not to raise a fuss. Three hours later they were over international waters and Taylor was ready for the next step in her plan to help Purity.
From inside the aircraft hangar part of her base the Thunderbolt Fury started up, twin after-burn turbofans preparing to bear the plane aloft. Starting up the plane began moving towards the far side of the massive room. As soon as the machine was airborne, roughly halfway down the long runway, a huge portal opened in its path.
With a fading roar the Thunderbolt passed straight through the portal and into Earth's atmosphere, the change in pressure shaking the vehicle fairly mildly for a few moments, then the screen Taylor was watching evened out and the plane started a dive.
Far below the civilian plane carried on, unaware of the intercept attempt.
Thirty seconds later the Thunderbolt was in optimum range to open fire. Before it could strike, Taylor accessed the cameras inside the plane to check if her targets were still there. She was just in time to see one of them jump from his seat and shout.
Evidently one of the people sent to capture Purity was capable as a tracker for airborne threats, and he'd detected the fighter. The pilots reacted with admirable skill and speed, immediately beginning evasive manoeuvres. The inside view showed several of the serving staff being thrown around as the commercial vehicle suddenly banked and dived. One unlucky man slammed into the doorway, the crack of breaking bones coming before the screams as he clutched his shoulder.
The pilots themselves were screaming into their radios trying to raise anyone they could. They were unaware no one could hear them.
Everyone else in the vehicle was desperately trying to get back to a chair and strap themselves in. A terrified stewardess helping her injured colleague after all of the capes ignored his plight. Based on the arguments she could hear over the scream of wind it also seemed that one of the team, a blaster this time, wanted to try and strike back. His team members were shouting him down before he blew a hole in the fuselage.
Without any sign of strain, the Thunderbolt kept tracking the desperately moving jet below, the engines of an ordinary civilian passenger plane, even one as luxurious and fast as this, were no match for the advanced engines of a fighter jet tuned for endless war. Quickly realising her drone controlled fighter was waiting on orders, she gave the go-ahead for it to open fire.
With the civilian jet firmly in the figurative crosshairs, the Avenger Bolt Cannons opened fire. Massed heavy bolts started shattering the plane's fuselage and causing destruction and fires inside. The cameras inside, before they died, showed individuals being ripped apart and killed with swift succession.
Lascannons also cracked as they joined in the destructive fire and the plane fell apart swiftly. Mere seconds after the first shots were fired the remains tumbled out of the sky. The Thunderbolt fired an additional volley of the lascannons, this time aimed at the Nazi cape that could create a personal shield. The force of the strike was blocked, but the intense heat still killed the unfortunate man as he fell out of the sky.
Giving orders for the plane to remove as much evidence as possible the Avengers kicked in again, hammering the falling metal to shred it further. The advanced war plane pulled away once the civilian craft hit the ocean. Another large portal had the vehicle back on Mars and powering down to a smooth landing.
Feeling glad that everything had mostly gone smoothly, Taylor leaned back into her command chair while the plane landed, came to a stop and was then attached to a bank of diagnostic equipment. The immediate threat was dealt with, now she needed to decide what to do next, the people who died today were just pawns, not the real actors. So it was possible they could try something new. How best to head that off?
She needed a warning she could deliver, and a warning to Purity would not go amiss.
Sitting back up, Taylor's hands started dancing across her interfaces as she accessed the computer system of Max Anders.
…
Enclosed in the penthouse office suite of the Medhall building the man known as Max Anders to most of the world, and secretly the supervillain Kaiser, was working almost feverishly at his computer.
His records had been hacked recently and he'd lost massive amounts of blackmail material and leverage over people. Worse still, all of those he had information on had been informed of the destruction. Some had been too cowardly to test if that was true, but the majority had reacted with remarkable vindictiveness against his personal and hidden life.
The only bright spot in the entire mess was that while the blackmail material on the sisters Fenja and Menja has been destroyed, the twins hadn't abandoned the cause entirely. Instead they were keeping personal distance from him personally. As such he wouldn't be losing the services of the Valkyrie twins. It was fortunate the twins were believers in the cause, although he would miss being able to use them as bed warmers. But that still left him with the moles in dozens of organisations turning on him, either as Max or Kaiser.
Right now he was sending his paid agents to attempt to recreate the evidence where he could. He'd been able to point out some of the details from memory, but that only worked for those who had needed the occasional reminder. Given the separation between his lives he'd not expected the need to memorise most of the actual information, trusting his records.
That was coming back to bite him in the ass now. Although the fact that numerous back-up's had all been destroyed was completely unexpected.
Max had set Victor, who had the best computer skills (stolen) in the Empire, to track and find the offending party. Once the individual was found they were going to be made an example of in the worst way possible.
While he was working on that, Max had the unenviable job of fending off the attacks on his holdings and legal status, as well as plugging the various leaks the losses had opened up.
Fortunately, the lessons learned at the fists of his father and sister, as well as the basic structure of the Empire he'd inherited was helping mitigate some of his problems. All of his agents, forced or not, only had knowledge of a small number of their fellows. That decision was paying off in spades as people turned on each other.
So it was fairly understandable that when all of the screens in the room went black one after another his reaction was to slam fists into the desk and start swearing. Checking around him he noticed the two screens of his computer, plus both of the large screen TV's in the room were still showing as on, but not responding, even when he tapped a remote for one.
Seconds after he tried the remote, but before he could try and contact anyone with the separate intercom system the screens changed again, showing a strangely mechanised and wired skull with a cog in the background.
Max had several seconds to study the unusual icon, not one he'd seen before, then it changed again and there was a horrific figure in view.
Hunched over and covered in a red robe, there was a maliciously glowing red eye on their right hand side, a thick jaw plate that extended down from below the nose and the rest was a porcelain mock-up of a human face. Thick cabling was attached to both the mask and the face-plate while above the persons back a metallic fake mohawk of steel rose ending in another cable which had a skull attached to the end.
The skull was wavering and moving, constantly changing its position but never deviating from staring at him. All in all it gave off a very inhuman visage, further reinforced when it spoke, mechanical tones neatly obscured any humanity the figure may have. Max took a second to figure out what was actually said, but when he realised the details he tensed in anger and fear.
"Good afternoon, Kaiser of the Empire 88. I believe you know who I am. Once Taylor Hebert, now Mechanicus."
Once he registered just who this was, and given that he wasn't in his cape costume, who she was referencing, Max jumped to his feet, the office chair behind him lifted slightly as it rolled backwards. The thump as the chair hit the ground again punctuated Max's return comment.
"Hebert! This is a blatant violation of the rules. You invite overwhelming retaliation on yourself." He managed to growl the rebuttal, but given his shock it wasn't anywhere near as impressive as his normal speech.
The inhuman visage on his screens tilted its head as it watched him, the still floating skull giving the impression it was laughing at him, then the mechanical tones came again. "Breaking the unwritten rules. An interesting implication from one such as you. Given your continued and repeated trampling of those self-same rules. How many dead are you responsible for, how many sold into slavery under the Gesellschaft? Do not attempt to browbeat me with rules you abandon at whim, filth."
Feeling his grip on the edge of his desk tighten Max struggled to keep control of his power at the accusations. The all too knowing tone combined with the exact issues giving him information to add to his anger at the chit of a girl for beating Hookwolf and evading his grasp.
"You." He hissed out, "You're the one who destroyed my documents."
Even through the unmoving plates that made up her costume, Hebert managed to convey just how amused she was by that, "Of course. I felt it was a good idea to enact some karma. Give all those whose lives you used and ruined a measure of power back. It's not as if it was even difficult. And yet, you prove yourself to be remarkably simple even so, you didn't seem to get the hint. I have had to make another example. And now I find myself actually lowered to speak to such scum to ensure this time you learn your lesson."
Suddenly feeling faint at the idea that someone could casually dance through his security, security which had held Armsmaster out a time or two, Max croaked out through a suddenly dry mouth, "Example?"
Again the TVs in his office went blank, while the computer monitors continued to show Hebert's face. The rest showed a video. It took Max a few seconds to realise he was seeing a plane in flight from above on one TV, and the inside of a plane from the other. It took him another few seconds to realise that he was looking at the reinforcements he'd bargained with Gesellschaft for to bring the Empire back into prominence, and Purity back under his thumb.
By the time he realised what that view meant the videos showed the plane going into desperate evasive manoeuvres, the people inside being thrown around until they got strapped into their seats. Then whatever was showing the view from outside the plane opened fire and the vehicle was ripped apart violently.
Watching as the entire cape team died and then as the remains were spread across international water Max stumbled back into his chair and dropped heavily into it. The repercussions of the entire team having died while on a mission for him was thundering through his head as the video looped for a third time. He came back to himself in time to hear Hebert carry on speaking again, and making everything much worse.
"I will be speaking to the individuals involved in Europe as well, to ensure nothing like this is tried again. I trust I will not need to make any further examples to get my point across, yes?"
Nodding his head absently, Max watched as the screens all switched back to where they were before Hebert contacted him. Starting sightlessly out of the large windows of his office across the bay he desperately tried to think of anything he could do to prevent a war with Gesellschaft.
With a trembling hand he reached for the intercom, asking Nessa to contact Krieg and letting his main link with the group know they needed to speak. His only thought as he waited and tried to get control of himself was that he was in some kind of nightmare.
…
Leaning back after she cut the transmission to Medhall off, Taylor smiled to herself in pleasure. The decision to use a version of Belisarius Cawl's appearance to throw him off was a last minute change, but it seemed to add to her performance.
A few minutes thought had her deciding to ignore contacting Gesellschaft, despite what she said to Max. Afraid of their response he would reach out to them and update them on what happened. That might mean they would be under the impression she couldn't get into their systems which was to her advantage.
Hopefully the groups would assume she was close enough to Brockton Bay, or had installed equipment that allowed her entry. That would lead to them attempting to root her out and wasting time.
It would also mean that the German group weren't trying to keep as much of their information off computers, which Kaiser soon would be if he was as smart as he was supposed to be. Not that it would stop her surveillance network, but the longer they didn't know that the less problems they would cause.
With the Nazi mess dealt with Taylor paused to undertake some Farseer meditative breathing, she had the ability to under-take proper visions, but right now she wanted to calm her mind more than anything. The only thing left to look at was what the fallout in the PRT was following her exit. It was likely to be painful.
She already knew that the PRT had lost all of the Empire capes they'd captured. Hookwolf at least was still mostly combat ineffective from her final attack, but he was actually able to generate some of his metal again, so he'd be back in fighting shape within another week or two.
That was already disappointing, but not as personally damaging as her own situation had the potential to be.
Letting out a deep sigh, she sat back up and engaged her systems to look into the PRT.
Five minutes later she was swearing viciously.
It seems the trio had been broken up. Madison was cleared of any major involvement but the bullying behaviour had been noted and she suffered various detentions and marks on her permanent record, she was still at Winslow though. Emma was now in counselling full time, the diagnosis of which had kept her clear of the courts alongside the fact that Taylor herself had disappeared. She was now in Arcadia after her father pulled some strings.
Sophia was the first indication that she wouldn't like the results. She had been thrown under the bus alongside her Youth Guard and PRT handlers. But whereas the later pair had lost their jobs and been heavily fined, Sophia had been tried and convicted, but she wasn't imprisoned, instead she had been moved to the Madison Simurgh containment zone, still working for the PRT. Which basically put her back exactly where she was before her crimes came to light.
The worst part was that the people of Brockton Bay had been informed she was in jail. For a moment, Taylor was seriously tempted to spread the truth of the matter, let everyone know just how much the PRT was breaking the law and the lengths they would go to just to keep control of a useful cape.
Other than that there were no major changes in the local PRT. With the handlers and Sophia taking the majority of the fall Piggot had been able to defend her decisions on the basis that the information provided to her from several sources painted a new villain emerging and attempting to unmask and murder a Ward. As Taylor expected they had also found the tracking modules she'd installed in her father.
Armsmaster determined they had been created via limited programmed nano-bots. The elder Hebert had been drugged then tagged by his daughter. Pretending to have been aware of this fact before the contracts to tie her to the PRT had been written allowed Piggot to argue that she needed the strictest possible position in order to keep Taylor from carrying on down the road to villainy such as a robotic tinker like Bonesaw.
The outrage of outing Taylor on TV and taking advantage of a depressed father then writing an illegal contract that amounted to indentured servitude had only gone as far as getting a committee put together to provide oversight on similar decisions and ensure the laws were kept to. Several of those committee's were pointed squarely at Brockton Bay, but were only able to repeal decisions with a unanimous vote.
Oh, and Piggot had been fined.
Closing her eyes for a few moments, Taylor wondered if the proper reaction to this clusterfuck was to create a massive swam of Necron scarabs and disassemble the entire city. That would surely make her feel better, right?
Going through the calming breath techniques again, Taylor waited until she was relatively calm before considering the situation. The PRT was even more corrupt than she'd thought. Going forward no one and nothing to do with the organisation could be trusted.
If they were willing to go to these lengths just to keep someone that was absolutely guilty of attempted murder then there was no telling how much further they would go for an actual protectorate member. Nor how much they were willing to forgive.
Right now she wasn't in the position of being able to solve that particular problem, so she would save herself the heartache and avoid the personnel files in the PRT systems lest she find something she couldn't stop herself from acting on. She would have to content herself with never trusting any Protectorate capes.
It was another heartbreak for the little girl that had posters of Miss Militia, an Alexandria lunchbox, and memorabilia from the other members and had, at one point, so hoped that the heroes would save her from what happened at school. Not quite as acute as finding out that Sophia was a Ward, but yet another pain to add to it.
Opening her eyes again Taylor carried on her search, this time looking for details of her father specifically. She found the details as a minor note on her own file. He was apparently living a PRT provided flat, essentially under witness protection since the building was protected and all the other occupants were PRT officers.
He was back to his job with the Dockworkers Union, so nothing else had changed in his life. There was a note on her file that part of the shake up from her PHO revelations was that the guardianship of her he'd surrendered to the PRT was overturned, but a judge had decided that he wasn't fit to take that role back. An additional point noted that he could have received the status back if he had agreed to go to therapy then put a petition through, but he'd declined categorically.
Taylor only managed to keep it together long enough to find out that her guardianship was due to be given to a PRT branch away from Brockton Bay, but with a court appointed independent advocate once Taylor was in custody.
Quickly retreating to her suite Taylor unloaded her equipment and armour before sealing the door behind her. Collapsing into a soft and comfy chair she wept for the loss of the last of her family. Practically dead since the passing of her mother, now totally lost to her.
After a poor day and a fitful night's sleep Taylor returned to work the next morning still eating a larger than normal breakfast. She hadn't been able to bring herself to eat much of her dinner the previous day and was trying to fill the gaping hole her stomach had decided it should become.
Standing in front of her main workstation Taylor was almost glaring at the blank screen as she thought. She wanted to return to her research on combining the technologies of her benefactors, but the fact of the matter was she was still far too angry for that kind of work.
Her research needed to be meticulous and involved slow, careful work. Right now, as much she had wanted to make some progress before her drones created an army's worth of equipment, she wouldn't be able to settle down and give it the attention it needed.
Swearing lowly for a moment. Taylor whirled around and stormed from the lab complex. Fuck it, she was going to build a Titan. Creating such a magnificent edifice to technology and destruction was just what the doctor ordered.