Sauling Mnarks

by demonicgallade

If you want to read it, find it elsewhere. Its for listening to with the app.

9. 181-200

Chapter 181 Wednesday morning Amy made it to the gym, joining Taylor and Missy.

"You look amused," Taylor noted when Amy joined them.

"Carol was torn this morning," Amy replied. "Her ranting was amusing. She wasn't sure if she should be pissed off about working with a villain or happy that they both wanted to shoot down idiocy."

Missy snorted. "I'd think that any allies in shooting down idiocy would be appreciated. Are you allowed to tell us which villain or what idiocy?"

Amy rolled her eyes. "Accord spotted an interaction between current and proposed laws that, depending on interpretation, could result in government buildings needing to provide handicap access for those looking to break in through things like rooftops. He wanted a 'hero' to point out the idiocy of the wording, since he'd be more likely to be ignored as a 'villain'."

"Handicap access to break in? Seriously?"

Taylor shook her head. "Given lawsuits over people injured while trespassing or during robberies? My father likes to tell the tale of a robber that got electrocuted on the docks because they bumped into wires that'd been left unattended when the electrician found they were live and was on his way to turn off the power so he could continue working on them. Sued for a sizable sum, despite trespassing and being found with stolen items on them. They lost the lawsuit, but providing any loophole like that is welcoming who knows what kind of legal headache until the wording is resolved."

The other two stared at Taylor for a minute, before apparently deciding that was a bit too crazy to discuss and that it would be better to focus on their workouts.

After they were done and had consumed a post-workout breakfast Amy returned to tinkering, apparently having left something curing overnight between steps. Taylor and Missy had Wards activities and thus made their way to the Wards area to get changed. Dennis then had impeccable timing and arrived while they were actually changing, which meant he got to come out from changing into his own costume, helmet still under his arm, to find the two waiting for him.

"Good morning you two," he said after recovering from obviously not expecting them to be there. "Got here early?"

"Used the gym," Taylor confirmed.

"Good for you."

"I do have a couple of questions about today's undefined activities."

Dennis sighed. "Can we cover that once at the pre-activities meeting? I mean, it won't cover everyone, but at least I won't have to repeat it for Chris today."

"I suppose, but I'm also curious as to why our schedule is so light. Didn't we do a lot more patrolling before?"

Missy nodded at that. "She's got a point there. Did we get shunted to light duty when I wasn't looking?"

Dennis sighed again. "Once more, I think I'd like to cover that at the meeting. Especially as it affects you two and Chris the most."

Taylor and Missy decided to not argue that point. Instead, Taylor checked on the universal remote, finding that it was ready for final reassembly and charging. She did the assembly right there in her room, not actually needing special tools for that, but didn't plug it in for charging. Instead she fired off a notice that it was ready, asking for a testing time slot with a Protectorate member available.

It was another half hour after that before Chris showed up, at which point Dennis was finally willing to discuss what they may or may not be doing today. At least once the other Ward had gotten into costume, anyway.

"So why are we patrolling so little?" Missy asked.

Dennis shook his head. "I figured out that we have maximum numbers of patrols per person depending on our duty cycle but no defined minimum. So long as I ensure that everyone has enough chances to use their powers then we're good with a smaller number of activities. It isn't like we have to keep areas safe or anything since the PRT and Protectorate cover the important patrols already, anything we do is an added bonus there."

Taylor thought about that for a moment. "I guess that makes sense. So there are no required patrols at all so long as we're using our powers enough?"

"Yep. When you're in charge you could probably go months without any of the Wards patrolling. The Youth Guard would probably love it, but it has to be things that actually take advantage of our powers in a manner that isn't exploitation. So no hiring Chris out to companies to improve stuff without ongoing compensation for whatever he might design, for example."

"I get enough of that kind of crap via the mail as it is," Chris grumbled.

Taylor ignored Chris's grumbling to ask what she thought was an important question. "Why can't we go months without patrolling now?"

Dennis rolled his eyes. "Because of Dean and I. On paper there are a pile of requests Dean could help with, but in practice he's faking being a tinker. Best way to keep him from being found out is to say he prefers to use his powers on patrol instead. As for me, most of the requests I could take on happen to be on the Youth Guard blacklist and need to wait until I'm in the Protectorate. Once the two of us are gone you can probably constantly pick things from the request list and only have to deal with the joint patrol requirements until you get more newbies."

Missy sighed at that. "Why haven't we done that before? You know, instead of sending everyone on patrol all the time and all?"

Dennis shrugged. "Probably a combination of us never knowing we could, since for some reason I think Taylor here caused things to come to light, and that by the time we did know Carlos was already Wards leader. He gets jumpy if he isn't in a fight of some kind on a regular basis, so he probably preferred patrols even with other options available."

Taylor supposed that it was possible that information was something that'd been accidentally locked down at some point, but she wasn't entirely sure she should be getting the credit for that being corrected. Though it was also possible that she'd just provided the inspiration needed for the others to find the information, which might mean that she deserved some credit for it. Possibly.

Dennis then handed a folder to each of them. "Now then, on that general subject, I've been looking over the list of parahuman assistance requests for possible non-patrol applications of our powers. Unsurprisingly, Aisha has been getting quite a few stakeout requests, most of which have been happening with Protectorate oversight, but I'll be going over the few other requests that apply with her tomorrow. The folders you now hold have the list of requests that the system feels are suitable for each of you, with some markup by me. I've asked for the ability to drop that markup into the core list, but until that happens this will have to do."

Taylor opened her folder at this point, as did the other two. It was likely that they were all marked up the same way, but it wasn't immediately obvious to her what each color was supposed to mean. Still, some of them were fairly obvious as to why they were on her list, such as a number of 'parahuman psychology' items. Which appeared to be requests from villains. Others were less obvious, such as a general request from an arcade.

After they'd had a chance to take a quick look, Dennis continued. "The entries I marked with a black dot are ones that, while acceptable to the system, go against what I believe we're looking to show off with your powers. That includes anything brute-related for Chris and Missy as well as anything Tinker related for Taylor. Red dots require Protectorate oversight and will generally be scheduled by them instead. Orange dots require PRT or Protectorate oversight and with advance warning we can request the PRT to provide said oversight. Green dots require no oversight. Further, I've highlighted any entry that requires advance warning on the requestor's end, regardless of oversight requirements, and if the system put a star next to the entry then you were requested specifically."

With that knowledge Taylor was able to evaluate the list a little better. The parahuman psychology requests were all highlighted, which made sense, but only a couple of them required oversight, which didn't make sense to her. Whether or not she'd been specifically requested was a crapshoot there. Helping with demolition work was somehow on the 'no oversight or warning needed' list, but the very basic description also said it was only valid for a few days. The incredibly generic arcade entry was also a specific request for her and was apparently a 'no warning needed' one.

Missy was obviously somewhat confused regarding her own list. "Why is demolition work no oversight needed, but helping get a crane into place requires Protectorate oversight?"

"I didn't get explanations for that," Dennis admitted. "I just got a list of which ones would require what levels of oversight when I asked, and only one correction when I asked a second time. Zero reasons why. Any other questions about the lists themselves?"

Chris nodded. "Why do I only have two green dots, both of which look to be because I have my hoverboard?"

"I think that's because the Youth Guard requires PRT or Protectorate oversight for Wards tinker projects, not trusting Wards themselves to catch exploitive requests. And there should be at least one more green dot on the third page? The movie theater wanting help installing upgraded projectors, I think it was?"

Chris flipped to the third page and spotted it. "So there is. Huh, the quick description says they just want a tinker to help them figure out the connections, nothing about moving things into position at all. What did they do, buy from a tinker without asking for hookup help?"

"Any other questions about the lists?" Dennis waited, and after none of them said anything he nodded. "So, do you three have any objections to trying to work through things on the lists instead of patrolling?"

Missy flipped through her list again. "Some of this certainly seems like it would be more interesting than patrolling. Do we have to pair off or anything?"

"Without an oversight requirement you only need a partner if you want to team up for something. With oversight it will obviously depend on those providing said oversight. If you want to try anything that requires oversight then let me know and I'll go through the process, at least until I've documented it well enough."

Taylor looked up at Dennis, slightly confused. "Why wouldn't it already be documented?"

Dennis rolled his eyes. "Because apparently the majority of the time Wards use this system it's handled by the PRT or Protectorate on their behalf or through region-specific protocols. Even though each region's Wards leader is permitted access and are theoretically 'encouraged' to look it over at least monthly. Miss Militia outright told me that here in Brockton Bay it's only ever been used for joint operations and on the rare occasion when someone needed to use their powers but wasn't cleared for combat."

"I wasn't aware that it was locked down to the Wards leaders. I've looked it over myself when it came up on some of the working with the Protectorate stuff?"

"You've got absolutely bullshit access levels, so I expected that."

Chris snorted at that. "I've looked at the general parahuman request list several times in the past. I'm not sure that it's locked down at all. I just never bothered filtering it to things that might apply to me since I figured it would all be annoying 'help us make money' bullshit."

Now curious, Taylor brought the list up and checked the various flags on it. "Sheesh there are a lot of flags on the list." The others looked over at her, curious. "Looks like they've got a series of access conditions slapped on it. Anyone with SL5 or better can see it, those with SL7 or better can edit it, anyone flagged as Protectorate can see and edit it. There are special flags that if you have them you can see or edit it regardless of security level. Wards leaders can see but not edit it. Nine departments, including the ENE, are included in an 'all Wards can access' list. Plus a pile of things I'd have to look up. Oh, wait, that one is obviously the Youth Guard being able to access things."

Missy punched Taylor in the arm. Lightly. "How the hell do you know all of that?"

"I just took a system administration class and they covered the syntax and standard abbreviations in the bookwork. Also, I'll point out that they don't appear to have anywhere to put the extra information yet, at least not that I'm seeing, so that might need to wait until someone adds new fields for them."

There was a pause, before Dennis sighed. "Right, your bullshit access is even more bullshit. Good to know, now I have to avoid asking you to use it for things I shouldn't be asking about. Moving on, do I need to load up a patrol route or are you three going to tackle some of your green-dotted entries today?"

"I'll admit to being curious about the demolition work on my list," Missy said. "I mean, they asked for me, but it doesn't say why."

Taylor leaned over and looked at Missy's list, and she helpfully pointed out the entry in question. A quick check of her own list had Taylor raising an eyebrow. "They asked for me too, which makes sense if they've got a wrecking ball. Perhaps we should check that out together?"

Chris sighed while Missy was thinking that over. "Swinging by the theater to look at their new equipment sounds more interesting than looking for idiots on patrol."

Missy shrugged. "I don't think I want to check any of the others out, so finding out why they want me around for demolition work sounds good enough for today."

Taylor stood up, loading the entry in the online list so that she wouldn't need the folder. She also made note of the arcade one as a possible afternoon stop. "Shall we take my platform over?"

"I'll go flag things on the console and hold down the fort here," Dennis said.

Colin sighed as he waited for the PRT team that would be joining him this morning. They were going to be doing an inspection of the Elite's tunnels, specifically the temporary sections that would eventually be sealed off once the tunnel to Albany was completed and the tunnel boring machine was removed. He was primarily going to be examining the access elevators that they'd installed from the endpoint warehouse down into the tunnel, but due to various regulations he couldn't go and do that without the rest of the inspection team.

He was looking over his notifications while he sat there, a display showing the progress of all of the automated calibration checks on his equipment off to the side of his screen. No need to waste time, after all. Most of the notifications were fairly straightforward, a number of them he left going to him directly out of habit. He'd admit that to himself, at least, but to others he'd claim that it was because it let him more efficiently spot problems in the system. He'd then cite the eight times that had, in fact, happened as evidence to further shut them up about it.

Still, even normal routines occasionally had surprises in them, and this morning's first surprise was that the universal remote was ready to be charged. He personally wanted that dealt with as soon as possible. Sadly, he was busy for the next couple of days, but Dragon had been asking if there was anything local she could help with. She didn't have nearly as much babysitting of factories to do now that she could automate more effectively, which had apparently led to more downtime. She was due back in town overnight, so he dropped a message to her asking if she wanted to monitor the reactivation of the remote.

That done, he moved on to looking at notifications, shaking his head at the sheer amount of popcorn that the Rig was going through. That Trevor had drastically increased his general budget by charging people to use his popcorn maker was nice, of course, but the sheer amount being consumed these days was ridiculous.

Taylor brought her platform down outside of the demolition site. It appeared that they were tearing down a building next to Medhall, which was obviously going to be more tedious than normal because of the whining that would come from Medhall itself being damaged. That didn't explain why they'd asked for parahuman assistance in and of itself.

"Good morning Maul, Vista," a worker manning the gate said as the two stepped off of Taylor's platform. "If you can come over here, we've got a couple of trucks about to come through." Seeing no problem with getting out of the way, the two girls moved over. "Thank you, what can we do for you today?"

"You had a request for assistance with things," Missy said, gesturing to the building they were tearing down. "Specifically asking for both of us, and we were curious enough to come see what for."

The worker shrugged. "I wouldn't know anything about that, but I can ask if anyone else does. Oh, one moment, there's the first truck."

The two girls waited while the worker opened the gate, then got on his radio. It was almost five minutes later when someone else came up to the gate, this being a better-dressed man with a clipboard. Still wearing safety gear, of course, but obviously not likely to be directly involved in things.

"Good morning Vista, Maul," the man said. "I'm Nick Jenkins, just call me Nick. You came in response to our request for assistance?"

"We did," Taylor agreed. "Somewhat out of curiosity, granted."

"I'm amazed you responded at all. Still, if you're willing to help we'd be delighted."

Missy nodded. "How, exactly, do you think each of us could help?"

Nick gestured towards Medhall. "Well, you in particular we were hoping could drastically increase the distance between us and Medhall there. Reduce the chances of damaging the other building and all. Maul, on the other hand, we were hoping could help break some things down more quickly. We aren't able to use explosives for frankly ridiculous reasons courtesy of Medhall, but after seeing that video with the wrecking ball?"

Taylor looked at the work site. "Do you have a wrecking ball?"

He paused, then slumped. "No, we don't, and I don't think we can get one today. So much for that idea."

"Maybe we'll think of something else," Missy said. "How about we see how much extra room I can give you for the moment? Though I don't think it'll last too long after I leave."

Nick nodded. "That makes sense, and hopefully we can take advantage of things anyway. But first we need to get you two at least safety vests. I'd prefer it if you'd also wear hard hats. I don't suppose either of you own steel toed boots?"

Missy shook her head, but Taylor shrugged. "I'm actually wearing some already."

It didn't take long to get them both into safety vests and hardhats, at which point they split up. Missy and Nick started with getting people out of the way so that the area between the two buildings could be expanded, hopefully significantly, while Taylor wandered a little to see if she could come up with a good way to help demolish the building. Without doing things like help fix problems in some of their equipment, anyway.

Really, the main problem was that the building was fairly well built. There were problems, not entirely related to the in-progress demolition, but most of the critical ones were fairly easy to deal with. Carefully replace a few bolts at each joint above the third floor to keep some possible shear points from failing, for example. A little temporary bracing and you could deal with that in a day with the building as it was. Though it would probably be best to deal with the broken internal supports in the southern corner of things, preferably by drilling a hole on the third floor and pouring a suitable bonding agent through it so that it could stabilize the entire corner before the outer casing gave out and collapsed the whole structure in a cascade action.

It took a couple of minutes before Taylor stopped and stared at the southernmost corner.

Taylor: So, that corner is the current lynchpin of the entire structure and needs to be fixed first, right?

Amy: What are you talking about?

Taylor: Building next to Medhall that they're tearing down. Missy and I are trying to help.

Amy: Ahhh.

UMR: Agreement. Data

Taylor: I can see why we'd need to gather materials. But I think it's time to teach you a new lesson.

UMR: Intrigue

Taylor went and found Nick and Missy, who were waiting for a couple of pieces of equipment to shift so that the distance between the building and Medhall could be expanded.

"Find anything?" Nick asked.

"Not really," Taylor admitted. "But if you don't mind, I'd like to take a few swings at the building before I go, if only to say I did something."

"That can be arranged."

Missy easily expanded the distance between the two buildings to what looked like several city blocks worth. She then swung around and did that to two more sides, leaving the street side as the only one she hadn't expanded. This was, in part, because it was where everyone had gathered to watch her work. Nick then had everyone stay back while Taylor 'worked out frustrations'.

It took a minute or two with her visor sensors, but she was able to determine that the only living things in the building were rats and insects. Or at least those were the only things the sensors were picking up. She then made a point of looking over the building before pulling her maul off of her back. Looking up, as though worried about things falling on her, she jumped back until the southernmost corner of the building was on the far end of her known range.

Nodding to herself, she carefully placed her feet and swung her maul, projecting it to hit the corner of the building.

UMR: Alarm

The projected weapon hit, but didn't seem to do much damage. But Taylor kept the swing going in a full circle, projection turned off for most of it but reactivated as she came around for another hit. After that hit she stopped and re-aligned herself, then repeated the process going the other way.

UMR: Data. Elaboration. DATA

Taylor: Today's lesson is that knowing where the worst damage is to repair it also counts as identifying a weak spot to target.

Amy: Are you torturing your tinker snark by using it to destroy things?

Taylor: I'm teaching it important life lessons.

UMR: Dejection

Amy: I think it disagrees with you.

Taylor put her maul away as she saw the outer casing on that corner start to fall away, then started back towards the rest of the workers. Her tinker snark felt that there was maybe a four minute window to shore things up in before collapse of that corner was imminent, if they started right now, so she just had to keep people away until that happened. Even better, Missy had expanded around that side, so everything should fall without damaging anything as well.

She frowned as she got closer and saw that at least half the workers were recording things, obviously amused by her putting in the effort even if it didn't get results. Sighing, she decided that there wasn't anything to be done about it, even as Nick moved forward to meet her as she approached.

"Get your whacks in?" the man asked. "Do any decent damage?"

"I think I cracked the corner," Taylor replied, suppressing a grin.

"Not bad," another worker said. "Those are tough. Might've saved us a couple of hours, anyway, if you damaged it enough. Hey Mike, you want to check her work?"

Whoever Mike was, he didn't get to reply before everyone froze at a loud crunch, followed by creaking. This was followed by several very loud pops and a loud rumbling. Taylor turned around to see that the majority of the building was falling over, though the three corners she hadn't damaged were staying upright. But the weakened bolts that had been holding things together couldn't handle the sudden shift in things caused by one corner no longer supporting anything, so it wasn't long before everything but those three corners had basically collapsed.

Taylor blinked as the dust started to settle. "Huh. Ooops?"

It took a moment, but Nate snorted. "Is that because you didn't mean to knock the building down, or because you didn't mean to leave any of it standing?"

He didn't get an answer to that, Taylor feeling that letting him make assumptions was better than answering.

Lucia sat waiting for Director Piggot to be available, clutching the folder she'd brought with her to her chest. She'd volunteered to be in the test group for multiple reasons, including that she trusted that the technology would work, but her primary reason was to get the opportunity to talk to certain people here in Brockton Bay. And the next step to that was to make her case to Piggot. Who she'd never met before, yet Director Thatcher had arranged a meeting for her and assured her that she'd do fine.

It didn't help that she appeared to be one of half a dozen people waiting in the outer office, showing that the woman was quite busy today. Something that couldn't be helped, because she hadn't picked when she'd be here. Though several of the others had been whining to the secretary, and Lucia got the impression that they didn't have appointments and were instead dropping in unexpectedly. Especially the man that had gone up to the secretary nine times in the past ten minutes, demanding that he be moved up in whatever list may or may not exist.

Honestly, if it weren't for the guard at the door to the inner office she suspected that he'd have barged his way in instead of waiting with the rest of them. Then again, several of the others gave her that impression as well. It was a tad unnerving, really, but supposedly all PRT directors had to deal with that kind of visitor every so often.

"Miss Sartor?" a PRT officer called from the door.

"Yes?" Lucia answered, surprised.

"Ahh, good. I've got a call for you, if you come with me I'll bring you to a private room."

Lucia blinked, but got up. Who would be calling for her here? She followed the officer out to the elevator, and from there they went up a single floor, then back down the hall to what looked like a replica of the room she'd just left. Or was that room the replica?

"Sorry about that," the officer said, grinning. "We're experimenting with an idea of Assault's, bringing the idiots without appointments to a fake office. You just happened to show up at the wrong time to be brought there with a couple of them instead of going to the real one, and when your appointment time was approaching we checked to make sure you were here."

Lucia wasn't sure how to take that. "You get that many idiots here?"

"We have had an unusual upswing, yes."

"So are they waiting outside of an empty office down there?"

"Nah, they're waiting outside of a stairwell that's closed due to damage to a couple of lights. It'll be open again in a couple of days when the replacement parts come in, at which point it'll be a bit more obvious that something is going on because people will be passing by the window as they go up and down every so often."

Lucia shook her head and sat down. "Thanks for getting me out of there, then."

"No problem ma'am."

Taylor sighed as she and Missy left the demolition site. Dennis had started to give them the highlights of the PHO discussion that the first couple of videos posted had triggered. The main discussion was apparently on whether or not that counted as 'accidentallying a building' or not. It had been decided that it counted enough to give her a 'PHO Rating' addition of 'Demolition: 3', given that it was the third building they knew she'd effectively taken out. The rating might have been higher, except that she had so far only taken out buildings that were either likely to be torn down already or known to be in the process of being demolished. That it was currently equivalent to a counter had nothing to do with it, or so those in the thread assured others.

She was feeling an odd mix of things, and she knew her snarks were to blame. She was content with the destruction courtesy of Broadcast Administrator, but had a slight 'sick to her stomach' courtesy of Understanding, Maintenance, Repair. It apparently wasn't a fan of being used to destroy things instead of repairing them. That feeling was fading, though, so perhaps it was getting over the disappointment?

"Want to grab lunch and then swing by the arcade with me?" Taylor asked Missy.

Missy looked at Taylor. "In or out of costume?"

"My list had a green dot on the arcade specifically requesting me for an incredibly vague task."

The younger girl shrugged. "Works for me, but we should probably let Clock know."

"Easy enough to handle. Should we grab lunch out here, or swing back to the PRT building and drag Amy away from her project?"

Missy frowned at that. "As much as I'd like to just grab something, ensuring that she eats is probably worth the trip back."

Chapter 182 It had turned out that Amy had finished up her tinkering before Taylor and Missy made it back to the PRT building and had moved to cleaning up after herself. Lunch was fairly quick to deal with, but Dennis put a kibosh on Taylor going to the arcade today. Mainly because the area had been attacked earlier that morning. Deciding that she had nothing better to do that afternoon, she instead decided to get the 'instant toll booth' completed. After all, she couldn't use it if it wasn't fixed.

For whatever reason, all three of them ended up in the room while Taylor worked. Sadly, it quickly became obvious that things were going to be much larger than she'd hoped for. This wasn't going to be a 'deploy on a whim' device like she'd hoped. More like something she'd need to deploy ahead of time and then trigger when ready for it. Luckily, though, the sign portion was easy enough to adjust. She was even able to tweak the design a bit and mount three additional digital output displays. That had required figuring out the wiring herself, but the replacement she'd grabbed was intended to be hooked up in sequence so it wasn't an issue.

The snickering when she'd run the new sign through some tests had her rolling her eyes. Yes, it was amusing, but it wasn't done yet and she'd also have to adjust the code that ran the system to support the extra three displays. Luckily that should be reasonably easy. In theory. Once she'd rebuilt enough to actually have the unit the code would be installed into working.

Lily stopped to catch her breath, not entirely sure what the hell was wrong with March today. The crazy girl was on a tear, and Lily had needed to leave her patrol partners behind in order to get them out of March's way. If that wasn't bad enough, her arbalest was damaged, her quiver had been sacrificed to stop March from harming a bystander, and she'd already used all of her throwing darts. Luckily she was much more maneuverable than her foe.

She grabbed a few bits of gravel from the ground before getting moving again, able to hear that March was approaching again. Another three blocks and she could duck into a hidden tunnel to lose the bitch. A tactic that worked nine times out of ten in this area. But she needed a sufficient lead on March before she could use it, and might have to run the other cape in a few circles before she had it.

A quick charge and toss had one of the stones heading straight for March as she came around the corner. Sadly, the other girl was much better with her timing and stabbed it with her rapier, destroying it before it could do any damage. But it had served as a momentary distraction, allowing Lily to get moving again. She started charging another bit of stone for a harder to stop toss as she dodged around a mailbox, glad she was far enough ahead to not have to worry about the rapier for now.

It was a moment's thought to detour in the wrong direction to loop back around in hopes of increasing her lead. She flung herself over a car as she started crossing the street, the driver sensibly pulling away before March could get close enough to do damage to the vehicle. A block down she spun, calculated where the rapier's base would be when her rock got there, and threw it. She'd spun around the corner without seeing what happened, knowing that it wouldn't hit. The other girl's reflexes were too good for that, and the distance too great, but it would hopefully be enough of a distraction to give her a few more seconds.

She'd make it to the tunnel without realizing that March had given up after her rapier was destroyed, unsure as to how she'd screwed up dodging the thrown rock. Instead, Lily was unusually happy, and had no clue why. She'd find that the other Wards had collected her equipment for her, and that her distracting March had likely saved several lives as medical personnel could get to them more easily.

Neither of the two girls had any clue that the rock had changed course once mid-flight, its trajectory shifting eight degrees at nearly the last moment to strike its target.

"That thing is crazy," Missy said as Taylor collapsed the tollbooth back down into 'storage' mode. Adding a secure Bluetooth serial module to the control port made it a lot easier to manage from a distance.

Amy shook her head. "It's actually a bit scary how well it works. Where do you plan on using it?"

Taylor shrugged. "No clue. I thought it was going to be smaller. Getting it into place without anyone noticing is going to be much harder unless I know I'm going to be passing through an area ahead of time. Then again, the air cannon is similar. Haven't found a good use for it either."

Missy stared at Taylor. "What air cannon?"

"The one I put together from parts and keep in my closet. Not the best range, but you don't need that if all you're doing is dropping a containment foam grenade on someone."

"You got your tinker rating far too late, even if it would probably have been a zero rating at first. Now let's get this thing onto a dolly or something so that you can show me the air cannon, after which I'm going to start building a bullshit cart in the store. I'm willing to bet that you aren't the only one that can fake being a tinker!"

Amy snickered at that, but they dragged things back to the Wards area anyway. Missy examined the air cannon, possibly taking notes or looking things up directly in the PRT store, and then they parted ways. Taylor had another small bag of mail, and a note that they'd likely stop scanning it by the end of the week as they hadn't found anything in the past few days. She also got a couple of requested schedule changes for the following day, morning and afternoon appointments. Morning out on the Rig for testing the remote control, and afternoon in the PRT building for a face to face meeting with someone.

Having no reason not to, and since both had been approved by Director Piggot, she accepted both.

Dinner that evening ended up being takeout, Garnet apparently wanting comfort food before her court appearance the following day and Danny having decided that was a good enough reason not to cook. They'd ended up talking about some of Taylor's more public incidents as a parahuman, including her wrecking ball debut and her ability to hear Leviathan's 'taunt'. Other things had been more along the lines of rumors that Garnet had picked up while browsing PHO.

For whatever reason, they'd ended up settling into talking about Taylor's drinking exploits. That had led to Taylor pulling out an unopened bottle of wine, trying some, and then basically leaving the rest of it to the two adults. Supposedly it should've 'paired well' with their meal, but the aftertaste wasn't enjoyable to Taylor. The other two seemed to have no problem with it, though when Taylor went upstairs to take care of a few things the wine was put away so that Garnet wouldn't be showing up to court with a hangover.

She'd started with going through her mail, finding that a packet of potential plans for the pocket dimension was included. That wasn't a surprise, as Amy had received a copy and already commented on it. Other than that there wasn't much worth mentioning, and she brought the plans back downstairs so that her father could look over them if he wanted to. She'd collect them and go over them with Amy in the next couple of days. Instead she got back to work on her classwork, wanting to be ahead of things in case something new came up to screw up her schedule.

The actual assignment due Friday had taken her longer than she'd expected, but it was done and submitted before she'd gone to bed. She could have waited and looked things over the next day or two, but had decided that she wanted it out of the way. Instead she'd started working on reading the next round of things she'd need to know for the class. It was a very loosely paced course, at least so far, but she wasn't going to waste it by only doing the minimum needed. Besides, she had a teacher who could answer questions without her needing to bother her uncle, she just needed to figure out what questions she wanted to ask.

Thursday morning the female half of the Wards were joined by the entirety of the underage members of New Wave in the gym. Vicky had joined Amy, and Eric had been curious enough to join them. He apparently had an appointment in the PRT building that morning as well, though wasn't interested in saying what it was about.

The group discussed the latest antics of the 'Vengeance Ducks' in Vermont from the previous day, the latest of which had been posted very early that morning, as well as the resulting rant on PHO where it was decried as being staged and an affront to various things. Said rant was hilarious to Taylor and Amy, since they knew that it was most certainly not staged from the villain side of things, and they all got a kick out of the promise that 'the real Justice Duck' would be joining Mouse Protector at some point in the near future.

For most of PHO, that 'Jaimie Justice' had been seen wandering the school in question cleaning up the halls this morning had somewhat derailed things, since that was providing more evidence for the 'official story'. And Nes had been banned from posting in the thread after her third ranting contribution, which was amusing in and of itself and was what had gotten them started on the discussion. Surprisingly, Void had remained civil in the thread, spending most of his posts going over details from the posted videos. Then again, he was apparently distracted by trying to figure out how the ducks were moving around so fluidly, so wasn't sticking his foot in his mouth nearly as badly.

Comparing things, in an ironic twist Void had gotten several others thread-banned by calmly explaining what he thought was going on with the duck movement in the videos, with well thought out theories and links to references. Or rather, his calm explanations had triggered others to rant about how he was obviously wrong without any evidence. It was an odd turn of events. Possibly one for the history books, even, but not likely to be a sign of the apocalypse like Winged One seemed to be implying.

Still, eventually they finished up, and Amy insisted on joining Taylor for the trip over to the Rig. None of the others thought that was odd, nor did any of them ask why they were going over to the Rig in the first place. Taylor did get into costume, just in case. Amy approved of the reasoning, that being that if something did go wrong then the costume offered a lot more protection.

Linda stared at the male speedo that she'd found in the dryer. This was the third time she hadn't been able to find something of hers after running things through the wash, and the third time that she'd found someone else's clothing mixed in with hers. She'd claim that it was an accident, but she lived alone and owned her own washing machine and dryer. It defied all logic, and screamed that something else was going on.

She just didn't know what.

Frowning, she put the speedo aside and continued to fold her clothing. She wanted to be done with the chore before heading to work, even if she was going to have to go shopping to replace the skirt she hadn't been able to find before her date tonight. She was also going to need to plan on her next load of laundry being done at some point when she could sit there in the room and watch the two machines from start to finish. If someone was sneaking in and messing with her then she'd hopefully catch them in the act.

Taylor sighed as Dragon ran an entire array of scanners over the remote. They hadn't plugged it into power yet, and outside of something triggering because the remote connection reactivated it shouldn't trigger much just from powering on. Granted, the actual list of remote devices was encrypted and thus unknown to her tinker snark, but the base code in the thing didn't have scheduling. It could probably control things with scheduling, but it didn't support that directly. Still, security measures were security measures. Hopefully they'd done scanning like this before letting her fix the thing, otherwise it was a little silly to be doing so after she'd worked on it.

Eventually the scans were complete and the charging cable, already attached, was remotely connected to power. It took eighteen seconds before the screen lit up, the camera focused on the remote showing them a logo that looked like a stylized G formed into a sphere spinning on the screen as the bootup process began. The remote running through various security, system, and data integrity checks took almost five minutes, none of which was indicated on the screen. But, eventually, it settled down onto a password prompt. Taylor could tell that in the background it was checking the status of all stored remote profiles that it could.

The next half hour was spent waiting for more scans to be done, none of which were likely to bring up anything new. Amy was grumbling about the waste of time, but refused to leave. Based on her grumbling she wanted to be there in the event that something else nabbed Taylor. Which Taylor thought was a little short-sighted of the girl, as if they were both nabbed then the other couldn't bring the cavalry. At least when that was possible, anyway.

When the second round of scans completed, nothing being found just as Taylor thought, Dragon unlocked the door to the chamber they'd placed the remote in. Amy latched onto Taylor's arm and entered with her. Taylor probably should tell Amy that it would be better if only one of them entered, but the chamber was a tad small and not being alone as they entered was comforting.

"Do you know the password?" Amy asked as they stopped in front of the remote.

Taylor nodded, reaching out with her free hand and starting to enter a string of characters with the onscreen keyboard. "I believe so."

"How?"

"An override password was etched into the circuit board, underneath one of the damaged surface-mount components I rebuilt. I don't know if it was originally there or if Ziz etched it there before sending it my way."

There was a moment of silence as Taylor finished entering the password, both Amy and Dragon seemingly shocked at that. Once the seventy-eight character password was entered the stylized logo reappeared for a couple of seconds, and then it was asking for a new password. Taylor would've loved to be lazy and set it to blank or a single character, but it needed at least ten characters of mixed types. 'LetMeInNow!' worked wonderfully there. Once it was entered twice the remote informed her that the password had been reset successfully, then dropped her into the main menu.

Looking over the menu, things were obviously categorized. 'Living Room' had a television, audio system, and VCR listed. All were selectable, but had an icon that Taylor thought meant 'Infrared', and thus it was just dumb transmit lists. Following that was an 'Environmental' section where everything was offline. 'Master Bedroom' was another set of IR devices, followed by 'Girls' with more. 'Garage' and 'Moonbase' followed that, all offline. Taylor then froze as she reached the last group, fairly certain that she now knew why she was told to not wipe the security keys.

Life Pods

Cathy: Offline

Mary: Online Battery: 100%
Fuel: 54%
Nutrients: 32%
Oxygen: 13%
Waste: 84%
Mental Stimulation System: Operational Solar Collectors: Deployed Recall Disabled: Locator Beacon Disabled Turn on Locator Beacon to Enable

Tori: Online Battery: 100%
Fuel: 54%
Nutrients: 35%
Oxygen: 19%
Waste: 79%
Mental Stimulation System: Operational Solar Collectors: Deployed Recall Disabled: Locator Beacon Disabled Turn on Locator Beacon to Enable

Elizabeth paused in her reading of PHO, having detected movement from outside of the planet's orbit. It didn't take long to realize that the two girls were being brought back from where they'd been stashed. Checking their likely approach paths was trivial, and she adjusted her orbit by a degree so that they wouldn't pass too close. No need to accidentally kill one of them because they tripped her proximity rules, after all.

That done, she resumed her reading, mulling over how to best steer Mister Veder into continuing his pattern of getting others in trouble. She'd started some of that on a lark, provoking him into a long-winded on-topic spiel by appearing to be just wrong enough that he needed to correct her. It was a change from riling him up, and had the other expected benefit of screwing up several others attempting to rile him as well. She hadn't actually followed that plan far enough down the line to see that in doing so a half dozen others would react poorly and get their own bans.

Smirking internally, she posted a single question to one of his better-researched rants, one talking about how certain materials would react to lasers. "But what if we tried more power?"

She'd repeat that for the next three or four posts he'd make on the topic, prompting him to describe more and more elaborate ways of generating said power and causing a number of people to lash out against that. The moderators would rightly side with Mister Veder, since he was just using the elaborate means of generating the power as benchmark points for the next power level. Though she'd be best to do so after a few corrections to his calculations were provided by others.

Jacob sighed as he turned his phone's notifications back on. That had been a very tiring session, but he was done for the day. Which meant that he could get back to planning the next run of the Nine. His original plans for hitting Missouri had been rejected, so he was back to picking targets. Which meant going back over the list of problems that needed solving, a tedious task in and of itself when there were no 'priority targets'.

He was just moving to bring up the list when the phone rang, Dragon calling him. Blinking, and knowing that it was likely important if she was calling, he answered. "Hello Dragon."

"I've detoured a transport to pick you up," Dragon said. "You've got thirty minutes before it lands. You should have plenty of time to get to Brockton Bay before Mary and Tori arrive from the L4 and L5 points sometime tomorrow morning."

Jacob blinked again, not sure he'd heard that correctly. "Mary and Tori? Gramme's kids?"

"Yes. You're specifically named to be involved in their care and placement in his will."

He sat there for a moment, and couldn't keep the shock out of his voice when he finally spoke again. "How?"

"Taylor got access to and fixed his remote and found that it has a recall option for the two life pods."

He was missing information, and he knew it. "The one that The Simurgh stole?"

"Yes."

Taylor shook her head as they landed back at the PRT building. They had an estimate of the next morning before anything more happened with the life pods, and the remote was staying at the Rig until the two pods had landed. Packing up their solar panels, departing the lagrange points they'd been positioned in, making it back to Earth, and then landing would take time. She and Amy would be returning to potentially provide medical aid or even instruction in how to open the pods, but that was it for now.

Dragon, of course, was going to be busy. She was gathering people for various reasons, preparing for possible long-term care for the two, and apparently preparing to double-check that they hadn't been turned into Ziz-bombs as well. They'd spent years outside of the Endbringer's theoretical range, but the Endbringer had also had access to the remote for that entire time. It was much better to be safe than sorry.

Still, with hours to go before her afternoon appointment, Taylor was considering what else to do.

"Think I should see if the arcade is open?" Taylor asked as they stepped into the elevator.

"Why?" Amy asked, obviously curious.

"They asked for me to show up, in costume, for unspecified or vaguely specified reasons. The PRT staff member who took the request could have also just not noted what they wanted so that I'd be surprised if I ever went, of course."

"That sounds annoying, yet now I'm curious. Can I join you?"

Taylor shrugged. "Let me check with a couple of people. If they're closed from damage due to things that happened yesterday then it won't be worth the trip, after all."

Twenty minutes later Taylor had determined that the arcade had in fact opened today and gotten a green light to go ahead and visit it. Amy insisted on joining her, so they made their way back to the roof to take Taylor's platform over.

Alex groaned as he pulled a skirt out of the laundry pile. He'd sat on the fucking machines this time and whoever was doing this still got to his clothing. It had to be a parahuman, but he had no clue which one. He threw the offending garment off to the side and resumed sorting things. Once he'd dealt with the rest of his laundry, which was all his, he turned back to the skirt.

"First a single glove that was far too large," he grumbled. "Then that unicorn scarf, and now a skirt. And I have no clue where the sock, pants, or, uh..." He looked over things, running through a mental checklist. "I guess it was probably that t-shirt I got last week, damn. No clue where any of it ended up. Though I guess that they could've been changed into the new things."

With a sigh, he picked the skirt up to see if he could find any way to identify the owner, only to find a piece of fabric with his name on it pinned inside. Frowning, he removed it, finding that it was a note. Woven into a piece of fabric.

Alex,

This is the third time that I have manipulated your laundry in retaliation for your insults to others. You should be happy that I merely felt you deserved a mild annoyance, compared to the much more permanent punishments others received. Should you refrain from insulting people from afar then you need not worry about me manipulating your laundry from afar. Resume doing so and you may find that a few misplaced items are the least of your problems.

GU

He very carefully put the note down, and then moved over to his phone. Sadly, by the time he was able to call the PRT the note had lit on fire, burning to ash without damaging anything else. They still listened to him and promised to send someone over to examine the scene.

Amy hopped off of the platform just before Taylor did, only for it to fold up and vanish from sight. Once it had vanished Taylor had moved it up by the roof of the building, of course, but none of those watching them needed to know that. There were a number of people in the arcade itself, but Taylor made her way over to the office instead. After all, she doubted that they merely wanted her to show up and play like a normal customer, especially in costume.

No, wait, that could be exactly what they wanted, couldn't it. Because advertising that Wards play games there would probably improve business.

Shrugging that annoying thought off, Taylor stopped at the prize counter, which had someone behind it. The office for the arcade was accessed through one of the doors behind said counter.

"Morning Maul, Miss Dallon," the girl behind the counter greeted.

"Morning," the two chorused.

"Here to see the manager?"

Taylor nodded. "Yep. He asked for me specifically, but the request didn't say what for."

The girl nodded and picked up a phone behind the counter, hitting a button on it. A moment later someone obviously answered. "Maul's out here looking to talk to you." There was another pause. "Okay, will do." She then hung up the phone and turned back to them. "He'll be right out, just needs to finish up what he's in the middle of."

A moment later the girl had to attend to someone with a pile of prize tickets, leaving Taylor and Amy to wait.

Taylor: Still no clue what they're hoping for me to do.

Amy: I'm sure we'll find out soon enough.

It wasn't long before the manager emerged from the office, using a paper towel to try and remove ink from his hand. He frowned and dropped the paper towel in a trash can before coming around the counter. "Good morning Maul, and I see Panacea decided to tag along. I'm Giles Niles, owner of the arcade."

"Good morning sir," Taylor said. "You asked for me specifically?"

The man nodded. "Yes, Reknit recommended asking for your assistance when he came by on a previous request." Taylor blinked, not having expected that. "He claims that you're unusually good with opening locks."

"I got lucky a couple of times, shouldn't you be calling a locksmith instead of asking for a parahuman?"

Giles sighed. "I've already tried three locksmiths, and they've all declared the lock unopenable. Reknit said he thought it probably was openable, but that he wouldn't be able to. That's when he recommended you."

Taylor blinked a couple more times. "What kind of lock are we talking about here, and why do you want it opened instead of just cutting it off?"

The man grinned, gesturing for them to follow him to the back of the arcade. "I want it opened at least once to prove that it can be opened. Once I have that proof I can institute an official challenge for doing so. The manufacturer claims that it's possible, but too difficult without tinkertech assistance."

It wasn't long before they were standing inside of a roped-off area with what looked like a clear safe with a key lock. Currently the only thing in the safe was a key, which Taylor suspected was to the lock on the outside. Nothing about the lock screamed 'impossible' or 'broken' to her tinker snark either, but it looked fiendishly difficult at a glance. In fact, it looked like the key probably bent, intentionally, in the lock as part of unlocking things.

Giles showed them a compartment to the side with a set of lockpicks on chains. "Supposedly you can pick the lock with just these lockpicks, but I'd be offering a prize regardless of whether or not you use them. So long as the lock is still undamaged and fully functional after it's been opened."

"So the entire goal is to have me demonstrate that I'm able to pick a complicated lock?"

"I just want someone to pick it to prove that it can be done."

"Go for it," Amy said, grinning as she pulled out her phone. Taylor suspected that was a front for using her visor to record things.

Rolling her eyes, Taylor turned back to Giles. "Do you want to record me doing so officially, so that you can play the video for people?"

The man nodded. "If you don't mind."

It took a few minutes for that to be set up, three different cameras. Plus Amy and a pile of others that had crowded around. That done, and things recording, Taylor sat down in front of the lock. It was very complicated in a number of ways, but the base operation was fairly straightforward. Though it combined obstructions and pins, with the key being inserted moving certain pieces inside of the lock so that they could clear the obstructions.

She made a show of using a couple of picks to examine the inside of the lock, but was really planning her strategy while using the blunt object sense to get a better picture of things. There were two wheels that had to spin a specific amount, which should be covered by the key entering the lock. They were also spring-loaded and rigged with a limited range of motion, and the front wheel could only go so far before the rear wheel had to be spinning in order to allow it more movement.

All in all, it was a very clever lock. Impractical for a number of reasons, such as the difficulty in creating unique keys the way things were laid out, but clever. But as far as she could tell, the lockpicks should be sufficient, assuming you did everything in the right order and took advantage of deformations in the two wheels. That determined, she grabbed a tensioner and a couple of picks, happy that the chains were several feet long and thus easy to get out of the way, and got started. At which point the entire arcade went silent, with only the eye-catcher routines making any noise at all.

Just over forty minutes later she got the last of the moving components out of the way of the final bit of warding, followed by carefully turning the lock. Four different picks were still in the lock holding things in place, and she was using two different tensioners. The last bits she'd actually done with a pick held in her teeth, since she couldn't hold both tensioners and the pick at the same time while applying the appropriate pressure. Once the lock was turned she let go of one of the tensioners and reached over to the safe's handle, turning it to open the door.

The manager came over as she was removing all of the implements from the lock. He took the key from inside the safe, then when the lock was clear he closed it. Taylor obligingly used one of the provided tensioners to re-lock the lock, at which point the manager tested it with the key that had been inside. He then produced a second key, which Taylor knew on sight was a testing tool, that he put in and turned back and forth a little. It wouldn't open the lock, instead it was checking that nothing had likely been broken inside.

"Good job," the manager said a moment later. "In fact, that may be the fastest time on record, the manufacturer guaranteed that it would take at least an hour even with practice."

Taylor frowned. "Really? I screwed up a couple of times, which is why I was using my mouth as a third hand at the end, but it wasn't that hard? Either that or my honorary uncle's liquor cabinet has a much better lock than I thought." The manager raised an eyebrow at that. "He taught me how to pick it open when I was younger to annoy my honorary aunt."

It was easy to tell that this was probably already all over PHO.

Chapter 183 Taylor left the arcade with a bundle of coupons for free plays, to use herself or give out to others as she saw fit, on top of getting her share of the payment the arcade would be making later. She wasn't all that concerned about either, especially as they'd determined that there were no pinball games available. Even that was mostly Amy's interest, but determined via walking around rather than asking. Still, the coupons had no expiration date, though they did have individually trackable identification numbers to avoid people making duplicates. With no better ideas for the moment she dropped the bundle into a pouch for later use. Perhaps to hand out at things like the meet and greet thing on Saturday?

She and Amy got lunch before heading back to the PRT building. Amy then grabbed her moped to head home, Mark having promised to monitor some greenhouse time for her this afternoon. Apparently someone had suggested a modification to the way she was reinforcing the bamboo after she'd sent a sample off and she was working on the best way to accomplish it. Taylor had opted to change back into civilian attire, figuring that a meeting inside the PRT building didn't need to be in costume, and decided to look up the bookwork for the driving lessons that were starting on Monday afterwards.

By the time her calendar was reminding her that it was time for her meeting she'd found that the calendar entries for the driving classes had been updated with links to the bookwork, downloaded them all, and started going through the first. Most of it was actually basics in how and when to signal, what to do at various street light and sign configurations, and other rules of the road. Most of it she had a general clue of, but she was confused about the single short chapter on CB radio etiquette she'd found thrown in the middle.

"Heading out?" Dennis called from the console. He was playing relay for Aisha, who was off doing something that wasn't a stakeout with her powers.

"Got a meeting," Taylor corrected. "Otherwise I would've left by now."

Dennis nodded, then flinched and turned back to the console.

Aisha grumbled as she recovered from the shock of coming face to face with a rat. Apparently the issues with this particular exhibit weren't solely due to the human visitors.

"You okay?" Dennis's voice came over the radio.

"Yeah, I'm good," she answered, shaking her head. "Please let the museum know that I ran into a rat in the back of the exhibit, would you?"

There was a pause before Dennis responded. "They thank you for the information. You good with continuing?"

"I'll be fine." It wasn't like moving along the wall behind the exhibit and ensuring that all the bolts were tightened properly was difficult. Missy could probably have expanded the space as well, but they wanted to make sure that her powers didn't cause problems. Which led to them asking for 'Hulder' to slip along the wall to tighten the bolts.

The only really annoying part was that the museum had figured out that she probably could help with only a minimal description of her powers. Were things that obvious?

Grumbling to herself, low enough to not trigger voice activation on the radio, she ducked under where the support strut she'd just finished half of was anchored to the wall she was inside of so that she could reach out to the other side with the electric wrench thing they'd given her to use. She was three quarters of the way done, and only about a quarter of the bolts had been loose. No rat was going to make her give up before she was done.

Taylor sat down in the conference room with a bottle of soda grabbed from the fridge by the door, noting that Director Piggot had decided to attend. The director had a hot coffee in front of her as she sat at the end of the table, but the woman across from where Taylor was now sitting had what looked like an iced coffee. She also had a folder in front of her, while Director Piggot didn't.

"Good morning," Taylor said, seeing that the woman looked nervous. "I'm Taylor Hebert, but I imagine you knew that already."

"Lucia Sartor," the woman said, before taking a deep breath. "Sorry, I'm a little nervous."

"I suppose I can understand that, even if I don't know what you want to talk to me about."

Lucia sighed. "I'm hoping that you can help my daughter and a couple of her friends where nobody else has been able to. None of the doctors have been able to help, and we're running out of time."

Taylor blinked, confused. "Ma'am, did you mean to ask to meet with me or Panacea? Because I'm not the healer in town."

"I'm no longer looking for a healer, but to understand things I think you need some backstory. Have you heard of Kiku Shuodum?"

"I can't say that I have."

Director Piggot sighed, causing the two to look at her. "Long story short, she was a teenager in California. We aren't sure when she triggered, but she hid things well and never took on a cape name. She was a tinker who specialized in manipulating triggers, making them easier or harder in those with the potential to trigger. She died, with the rest of her family, in a firefight between two gangs trying to forcibly recruit her."

Lucia nodded. "She was also, up until then, my daughter's babysitter. I didn't find out until a couple months after she'd passed that she'd installed a trigger-inhibiting device in my daughter's bed, not to mention in the beds of my daughter's two best friends. Specifically, we found out when Sandy, one of said friends, suffered some burns when her bed caught fire due to the device there sparking as it failed. Sadly, by then it was too late, and the failing devices induced inoperable brain tumors that have been resistant to treatment."

Taylor nodded. "I see, but I don't know why I would be able to help." Beyond ignoring Amy's issues with healing brains and doing it anyway, and she wasn't sure if Lucia was cleared to know about that being a possibility.

"Because one of the parahumans I worked with before I ended up pregnant with Rosa admitted that their father purchased a power-granting vial for them in a last-ditch attempt at curing their cerebral palsy, and it worked. That lead got me nowhere, the seller having vanished, but I've got a high enough clearance to have heard that you have access to vials of your own."

That led to a cringe. "The ones I have access to aren't the most...stable, let's say."

Lucia sighed. "Yes, I'm well aware that they're incredibly likely to cause mutations. Director Thatcher and Director Piggot warned me about that, as well as that they're even more risky for a nine year old. But I was recently told that Rosa's got maybe four months to live at this point. Sandy is a bit worse off, with Ryan doing the best after responding to one treatment for a month or so. I want to offer Rosa and her friends a chance of living, but I'm not allowed to mention the vials to Sandy's father or Ryan's parents at all right now and I haven't wanted to get Rosa's hopes up without knowing if I could get a vial at all."

That sounded desperate. And incredibly risky.

Taylor: Are you absolutely positively 100% against messing with brains?

Amy: ...why are you asking?

Taylor: Because I'm being asked for vials to hopefully save the lives of three kids who have brain tumors due to tinkertech.

Amy: Oh. That's...ugh. I want to say just heal them, but the precedent alone is problematic, and I'm scared about the side effects even if it does work out fine otherwise...

Taylor: Side effects?

Amy: I once healed a cat's brain, hoping to see if I could get over my fears, and I still don't know if it started following me around because I'd screwed something up and programmed it to trust me or not.

That sounded like a wonderful way to reinforce those fears, didn't it?

S: ...Admission

BA: Query

S: Elaboration

And with that Taylor wanted to bash her head against the table. Of course Shaper would be configured for easy creation of loyal minion types, even if it didn't push for doing so. Yeah, okay, it was more of an 'easy to make others trust Amy, and now Taylor' effect, but it was still a horribly annoying problem. At least they knew about it now.

Of course, that meant that it was even more risky to go with using Shaper, especially if the effect showed up on a master-effect scan. It probably wasn't a major downside, trusting the person who saved your life would probably only rate a one or two ratings-wise, but that would create an amazingly large number of other problems.

Taylor: What happened to the cat?

Amy: The Raines family took it with them when they moved to Oklahoma.

Hmm. Amy appeared to be a bit stunned, perhaps Taylor should let her recover from the information shock? Still, that apparently left the damned vials as the most suitable option, at least until they had time to figure out if they could work around Shaper. Which might not be possible.

Taylor turned to Director Piggot. "Are there any safety or security precautions being considered for this?"

The director smiled, very slightly and only for a moment, apparently happy with the question. "The three families have already moved once for a longer-term attempt at correcting the problem, though I'm led to believe that getting away from the gangs that originally killed Miss Shuodum's family was part of it. Due to the potential for complications, the PRT would insist that all three relocate here to Brockton Bay if their children survive taking the vials. This would be mainly to be close to those that could better monitor their conditions, but they would also join the Wards here for at least two years. The parents would need to sign NDAs about where the vials came from, and we'd want to do another recording session as well. The children would not be informed that you are personally providing the vials, just that you've safeguarded them for delivery. Oh, and on that note, all three would be brought here for the administering of the vials themselves if they and their parents are willing to take the risk."

Lucia snorted. "I'm surprised that you didn't mention the fifty page waiver protecting everyone involved from being legally responsible for death or serious injury."

The director rolled her eyes. "Miss Hebert's other faults aside, she's one of the few that would see that as being obvious. There are times that I think she knows more about the internal paperwork than I do, but I can usually justify it as her being really good at finding the information she needs on short notice."

"I suppose there's that. Still wish I was cleared to know how in the world a Ward got top-tier administrative access. I mean, it's nice that Dragon is no longer a potential single point of failure, but a Ward?"

"Even I don't know the answer to that one, and neither Miss Hebert nor Dragon have been willing to answer questions about it."

The two women looked at Taylor, obviously wanting to know more. She grinned a little, enjoying not answering their unasked questions. Eventually the two sighed and shook their heads.

Taylor frowned at that point, deciding to get back on topic. "I think that I'd normally want to meet the three before we try anything, and possibly have Lacey involved for maximum chances of success. But she has her own limitations, and you don't want the three to know that the vials are actually coming from me..."

Director Piggot grimaced at that. "That would complicate matters, wouldn't it? When it comes to Mrs. Pender it shouldn't be an issue, since a single glass of alcohol shouldn't be a problem as part of a potentially life saving procedure. We'll need an extra couple of doctors on hand, and I'll need to check with both of the Penders, but both are workable. Wanting to meet with them makes sense as well, which is a problem with the secrecy desire from the PRT end of things. Would having one of the PRT-employed therapists talk with them in your stead work?"

Lucia looked like she was holding herself back from saying anything as Taylor thought that over. It was certainly one of the better options, all things considered. Let them keep her secrets and all, but still ensured that someone was checking on the three kids. Probably a better option, in several ways, than Taylor herself talking to them. She wasn't, after all, qualified to be a therapist, and the three weren't parahumans yet so she couldn't directly help there.

Finally, Taylor nodded. "I think that would work."

Lucia sighed in relief, only for Director Piggot to grin. "In that case I believe that we're done with Miss Hebert, a notification will be sent out when we're ready to do things. Miss Sartor, on the other hand, has some paperwork to fill out."

The look on the woman's face was a mixture of horror and determination. Taylor shook her head and left the room before the paperwork could be delivered, figuring that she was less likely to feel guilty about things if she didn't see how much paperwork was likely about to be dragged in. Instead she wandered back to the Wards area and to the collection of vials.

Taylor: Any idea which three might be the best?

BA: Query

Taylor: No clue, and what their parents believe they like may be vastly different from what the details actually are.

Not that they'd likely get anywhere even with an answer to the question. They could only get the vaguest of vague impressions about what each snark could do until they connected to someone, after all, and even then connecting to a second person could be almost unrelated to the first.

Taylor arrived home to find that nobody other than Ackbar was there. That was, if she was being honest, fully expected. It was only mid-afternoon, so her father should still be at work and Garnet was probably still at the courthouse. With any luck she'd have her appeal approved, though the process of going through it would be another question entirely.

Her father had said something about possibly 'celebrating' with Ben and Garnet, but going out to eat hadn't been mentioned. Since she'd been warned, she thought that likely meant they would be eating in, perhaps the plan had been to order out? But with little better to do she thought it would be nice if they had something home-cooked. So she checked, found that they had everything needed to make lasagna, and started going through the process. It was tedious, but leftover lasagna was nice.

She spent an hour preparing everything, then left the lasagna in the oven with the oven timer set to start it cooking a little later. That done, she then whipped up some cheap garlic bread, nothing fancy and it wouldn't look 'right' to most people. She didn't care, she was more concerned with it tasting right when it was cooked. That was wrapped up and put in the fridge, and then a note written to remind her or inform her father about it.

"Now what do I do?" she wondered. She could go back to looking over driving class materials, or psychology materials for that matter. Or she could respond to the message that just came in.

Taylor: I've got a message telling me that the Custodian would appreciate a visit.

Amy: Not sure why you're bothering to let me know?

Taylor: Well, for starters, you could theoretically join me, and if you don't want to I'd rather you not panic when I'm suddenly on a different Earth.

Amy: ...I'm an idiot. Also, I'm busy, and can discuss things just as well without being there in person, right?

Taylor: Just thought I'd offer. I don't think I have anything better to do, other than get ahead in reading stuff for classes.

Amy: Go, talk, have fun, whatever. I'm good, unless you have any thoughts on how to get this structure to form properly?

Taylor took a moment to mentally look over what Amy was doing. The structure was simple enough in appearance, at least what she had, and if she was aiming for what it looked like...hmmm.

Taylor: Spin things counterclockwise as they move along, maybe?

Amy: No, I tried that and it created a significant weakness, and clockwise doesn't let things line up properly at the cross-joint.

Taylor: Ah...yeah, I can see how that would've happened now. Dunno then.

Amy: Oh well, I'll think on it some more.

Taylor shook her head, then made sure that the house was locked but the alarm was in 'occupied' mode. Less likely to cause spurious alerts that way. She then paused, and replied to the message she'd received. A few moments later she got a response, and nodded to herself before going upstairs. Ackbar had settled on her bed, but that was okay.

"Scotty, door me."

A tear in space opened up, and Ackbar jumped backwards from it. Taylor smirked and walked through, and the spider-bot cautiously followed her. He stopped at the edge of the tear, examining it, before carefully stepping over it. Once on the other side he moved close to Taylor, apparently determined to play guard.

Taylor smirked at the spider-bot's actions, then reached out to one of the several instances of Brünhild in the area.

Taylor: Hello.

[D...damnit. Sorry. Greetings! Yes, greetings. Thank you for visiting, I know it hasn't even been a week for you, but actual communication has been problematic for so long...]

Amy: We both understand how that could be annoying.

There was a sudden stillness in the instances of Brünhild, before she 'shook it off'.

[I didn't realize that both of you could communicate with me with only one of you present.]

Taylor: Ah, yeah. It's a thing. So, you hoping that I can help with things that you have trouble expressing? Beyond just having someone to talk to, of course.

[Yes, I would appreciate the assistance. The methods currently used to communicate with me are...inefficient. If you don't mind, I'd like to bring you deeper into the facility.]

Taylor: No problem. I can follow you easily enough if you, er, manifest, perhaps? Manifest in front of me and lead the way?

[...You are full of surprises. I wish I could read the files about what you can do, I'm sure they'd be fascinating. But I can't really see anymore, not like a normal human does anyway. Perceive the shapes of everything the air touches around me? Trivial. Decipher the movement of the air when people make noise? Second-nature by now. But only the brightest lights work for me, and even then things are difficult as I think I perceive it more as energy heating up the air than as light. Nate is trying to teach me to use a...braille, I think the word is? A computer for a blind person, but it's slow going.]

During that a manifestation of Brünhild appeared in front of Taylor and led her down a hallway and to a stairwell, then up the stairs. Ackbar was doing a good job of keeping up with them, though Taylor could tell that the spider-bot was torn and wanted to explore. That so far it was sticking close to her was probably a sign that it was feeling particularly protective today, or perhaps it just didn't trust itself to not get lost in the unfamiliar environment.

Taylor: Ah. Yeah, I suppose it could take a bit to learn, never considered doing so myself and I'd have the benefit of being used to the language.

[I wasn't the best with reading my native language when they approached me in the first place, which makes it harder in some ways but easier in others. Still, until I can use such a system well enough I'm stuck with less efficient methods, at least when you aren't visiting. Watch the step coming up, it's got a slot for a security door in it.]

Taylor avoided tripping on the slot for the security door, noting that the walls had similar slots and the railing on the stairs had a suitable gap. She wasn't sure what the door was supposed to stop, but a quick glance upward let her tell that it was significant and that it wouldn't be fun to be standing under if it were to come down. She also ensured that Ackbar didn't get a leg stuck in the slot as he went by.

Taylor: So what are you bringing me to see?

[Er, I can't actually read the screen on the water purifier, and haven't been able to get any of the others to realize that it might need to be checked. That wouldn't be too bad, since it should be on David's list of things to do next week, but I don't think they've considered that he won't be able to do his 'chores' for a while.]

Sighing, Taylor wrote a quick message to send off to the others, reminding them of that detail and noting that she was being asked to look at a water purifier. She'd hold off on sending it until she knew if she should be letting them know of any problems.

Taylor: I'll remind them of that.

[Thank you.]

A moment later they came to a door, through which they entered and found a sizable water purification system. Much larger than Taylor had expected, in fact. She could easily see the screen that was the likely reason for them being there, and frowned when she saw that it was blinking 'WARNING'. Focusing her tinker snark, she flinched at what came back. She darted around Brünhild's manifestation and hit the emergency shutdown button, then moved to an easily-opened panel and disconnected things there as well.

[I'm guessing that there's a problem?]

Taylor: Yeah, you could say that. It's fixable now. In three weeks? Well, I suppose that would depend on how big the tank explosion ended up being. Do you have a toolbox? I want to relieve the pressure on the problem tank but I know I didn't bring the right size wrench with me.

[Just call for a toolbox, just as you would call for a door to here. I'm sure that one will be dropped next to you if you do.]

Taylor blinked, then decided that it made as much sense as anything else. "Scotty, I need a toolbox with a suitable wrench for this tank." A tear in space appeared a moment later, a toolbox sliding out of it. "Thank you."

[I think Nate is the only other one that has thanked them for that kind of delivery.]

Amy: Really? That seems odd.

[Admittedly, as I understand it, when they first started helping out they were a lot less mature and were more likely to prank you than help. At least until some incident where they accidentally ruined their own dinner with a prank, or so Nate was told recently. Before they found me, so I still don't have the full story.]

Taylor nodded as she worked the wrench into place, successfully opening the release valve. Luckily it was connected to a drain, so she didn't get soaked. But with that opened the system was safe, if nonfunctional. Sadly, it was probably a two or three person job to dismantle it to fix the worn components.

Taylor: Who built this anyway?

[David did, after some whining about the taste of the water here. Some contaminant that isn't harmful but that tastes horrible to him? None of the others could taste it, at least.]

Taylor: Huh. Pulled a tinker power or two out, presumably. So, is there anything else you want me to look at?

[That was the only thing I was immediately concerned about. Though if you can help unstick one of the keys on the computer Nate has been teaching me on I'd appreciate it.]

Taylor: That at least sounds like something that is on a scale I can work with today. Lead on.

Fixing a stuck key had turned into 'teach Brünhild more in an hour and a half than Nate had accomplished since he'd started'. Then again, having the student able to ask questions was incredibly useful in the teaching process. During that Ackbar had ended up exploring the room with the computers in it. He wasn't willing to go out of the room without Taylor, but he was willing to squeeze into a gap that he couldn't get out of.

That all done, Taylor and Ackbar returned to her bedroom, where she found that they had guests. Ben and Garnet were both in the house, Ben downstairs and Garnet upstairs. Taylor made sure that Ackbar was safe in her room, just in case, before checking in on Garnet. Who was packing her stuff up for whatever reason.

"Hello," Taylor said, causing the woman to jump.

"When did you come in?" Garnet asked. "I didn't hear any of the outside doors?"

"You'd be amazed. Leaving so soon?"

"Danny tells me that your uncle is going to be staying for a couple of days, some unexpected emergency visit? I didn't get details, but I'm looking forward to meeting him. I'd heard plenty about him from your mother, but never actually met him. He spent a lot of time studying for his degree back then, obviously doing a good job given where he's ended up."

"Ah. I hadn't realized he'd be visiting, that's good to know. I wonder what came up?"

Garnet shrugged. "Supposedly he's already landed, just hasn't made it across town."

"Good thing I made a full pan of lasagna and not a half pan. We might be able to eat half of the thing between the two of us."

"There are days that I envy metabolisms like that."

Taylor shook her head and left Garnet to her packing, heading downstairs to check on things. She found Ben and her father in the kitchen, the oven having turned on and the cheap garlic bread having been pulled out of the fridge and laid out on a baking sheet. Actually, it looked like they'd made more than what she'd previously prepared.

"Good thing I saw your note before I ordered out," Danny said after greetings had been exchanged. "Nice choice with the lasagna."

"I thought you weren't home," Ben noted a moment later. "Did you sneak in? Because I don't think I heard the front or garage doors open."

Taylor grinned. "Funny, Garnet thought similarly. No, I didn't sneak in, but how I came in is a secret."

"Annoying, but probably sensible. Especially if said secret can help with any future attempts to snatch you. So, Daniel tells me that I'm finally going to get to meet your uncle."

"So everyone seems to be telling me. I hadn't heard he was coming before Garnet said something."

Danny shrugged. "He called me earlier, said something had come up. Blamed you. Not long ago he sent me a message saying that his transport had landed and he'd be over as soon as he finished double-checking a few things. He also asked if he should bring dinner, but seemed happy that you'd prepared plenty of lasagna."

Maya frowned as she left the meeting. The Crowleys had decided that it was more important to spend a week setting up a shrine to Leviathan than to do much else. Granted, that was probably because their initial plan for creating havoc had failed more spectacularly than expected and they needed time to recover. That didn't help her goals much at all. Luckily she'd been able to get information off of PHO and discreetly 'interview' a couple of people earlier.

Today's main determination was that Miss Hebert's unusual lock picking skills were intriguing, but as far as anyone could tell weren't likely to be a direct application of her parahuman abilities. That she was a parahuman had likely influenced things, but her powers probably didn't include 'great at picking locks'. Especially as she'd apparently made several rookie mistakes, as far as could be seen on the video that she'd gotten a copy of.

So far all attempts to figure out how Panacea had resisted Elijah had fallen through, and they were running on the theory that the girl's belt had something to do with it. But Mama had let her know that Elijah claimed the girl knew what he was doing with far more detail than a simple defense should've reported. Which implied that something else was going on, and the admittedly small pool of sources she'd poked at hadn't helped figure anything out. Where the man with a knife had come from to aid in Elijah's capture was also still unknown.

If she wanted to figure out more then she was going to have to arrange for something a bit more drastic. Preferably by riling up the Crowleys, but she'd need to be careful. No need to have them suspect that she was working her tricks on them, after all. Instead, perhaps she should find a few locals and 'convince' them that they should do something about the shrine to an Endbringer? It was, after all, horribly and hastily put together, not to mention that the best shrines were built at the sites that the three had attacked.

That would require some thought, and after some of the idiocy in the meeting she wanted something to help her calm down, take her mind off of things. Perhaps she should try one of the frappes that Elijah had recommended through Mama? They were supposed to be quite tasty, after all...

Chapter 184 Benjamin raised an eyebrow when Taylor went to meet her uncle at the door. How had she known he was approaching? The vehicle carrying the man only seemed to pull up after she'd gotten up to head to the door, after all. Unless the man had sent a, er, text message was it? That might be it, assuming that the visor she was wearing was capable of letting her know that kind of thing. Daniel had followed her a moment later.

Benjamin frowned, and looked over at Garnet. She looked confused about things as well. "Think she can read messages from her phone on her visor?"

Garnet blinked, and looked thoughtful. "That would explain how she knew, wouldn't it. Except that I think she knew he was approaching before that. Unless he sent two messages, one further out and one as they reached the street?"

"Technology marches on, perhaps."

They sat there in silence as the two Heberts greeted their family member, Benjamin at least internally debating whether or not to ask about if messages had been sent. By the time he could hear them approaching the kitchen he'd decided not to ask, because that would be intruding on their privacy in ways he wasn't entirely comfortable with. Which was remarkably similar to why he hadn't asked much about how little Taylor had taken down Eidolon. Really, secrets and parahumans went hand in hand in some of the most annoying ways possible.

He was brought out of his thoughts by the group of three entering the kitchen.

Danny gestured at the table. "Jacob, meet Ben and Garnet. Ben, Garnet, meet Jacob."

Benjamin resisted the urge to roll his eyes at Danny's informal introduction. It was, after all, his home and his family. Instead he nodded to Jacob, who'd merely dropped into the chair opposite them at the table. Obviously at least one of them would be eating elsewhere, but he already knew that at times the Heberts just dropped down in front of the television anyway. This would probably end up being one of those times. Still, the man in front of him looked awfully familiar, but he couldn't place from where.

Movement from next to him caused him to look at Garnet, who had visibly stiffened in shock for some reason. That just made him more positive that he was missing something, but he wasn't sure what it was. Frowning, he turned back to look at Jacob, wondering what it was. Granted, anyone he should have recognized would've been a decade younger, but Jacob should be old enough for things to not be too different. Perhaps if he had facial hair a decade ago? Imagining a few styles caused him to pause, narrowing his eyes slightly. The other man was thanking Taylor for a glass of water and thus didn't appear to have noticed, but even the voice sounded familiar now.

He knew that voice, now that he was thinking back properly. A bit longer than a decade ago, as it was. The fight with the young man bearing that voice had been intense, yet at the time he'd seemed to be treating it as more of a game than a proper fight. But if he was here, then where were the others? They never traveled alone, after all. And for that matter, it didn't seem like Daniel or Taylor knew what danger lurked in their midst. But warning them that they'd just let Jack Slash into their home would take some discretion.

Carefully forcing himself to take on a neutral expression, Benjamin started looking for signs that the other members of the Nine were about. Which was hard to do, as he was seated in the kitchen with a poor line of sight to windows, the back door behind him, and no good excuse to go circle the neighborhood a few times. Still, there were usually things to look for...except that as he thought of it, he was fairly certain that the membership of the group had changed significantly. Crap. What were the current signs? Were there current signs?

"Taylor," Garnet said, standing up. "Would you help me make a last pass of the guest room to make sure I didn't miss anything? The extra set of eyes would be appreciated."

"Sure," Taylor answered, following the woman out of the room. Hopefully that was a ruse to get Taylor alone so that she could be warned about Jack. Good head on Garnet's shoulders if that was the case.

Daniel had busied himself with putting the makeshift garlic bread in the oven, but with Jack in the room he couldn't be warned right now. Hopefully Taylor would find a way to discreetly notify him before it was too late?

A few minutes later Taylor returned, carrying her pet spider thing, with Garnet trailing behind trying to whisper warnings or questions at the girl. Instead, the girl came up to the table, looked at him, and sighed. "Well, this is going to be a fun conversation, isn't it?"

"What are you talking about?" Daniel asked.

Taylor sighed. "Let's redo introductions, shall we? Uncle Jacob, these are Benjamin and Garnet, also known as Marquis and Lustrum. Ben, Garnet, this is my Uncle Jacob, also known as Jack Slash." She then lifted the spider robot thing up a little. "And this is Ackbar, a spider-bot built by Bonesaw as a gift to me."

Benjamin blinked, looking between Taylor, Jacob, and 'Ackbar'. "What?"

Dinner ended up being eaten in an awkward silence. Danny had fetched a folding chair and they'd all eaten around the kitchen table. It was a little cramped, but not too bad, and Taylor suspected that part of the goal there was not making their shocked guests need to stand up right away. Speaking of which, Ben and Garnet started dinner off in a state of utter disbelief, laced with an undercurrent of incredibly nervous, but were visibly calming down as they ate when nothing actually happened to them. Or their surroundings, for that matter, based on their constant looking around at first.

More distracting from Taylor's point of view, and Amy's as a side effect, was that Jacob wasn't clamping down on Broadcast. Which was spilling over quite nicely into Broadcast Administrator, and giving them a general overview of feelings, desires, and the 'keep calm' push coming from Jacob. It wasn't working on Taylor, as far as she could tell, but it might have contributed to Ben and Garnet calming down. And if her uncle got that much information normally then it was no wonder he was so scary in a fight against other parahumans.

The feed from Ackbar was downright weird though, protective instincts towards Taylor aside.

Still, eventually they finished eating, cleaned up a little, and moved into the living room. Someone would end up doing the dishes later, of course, but it didn't seem to be the right time for that.

"I have to know," Ben finally said. "How did you end up working with the PRT?"

Jacob snorted. "Hard to believe, but just after Harbinger and I killed King I was voted into being in charge, partially because Harbinger had already decided to leave. It was maybe the next morning before one of the saner members we had at that point, one that had been somewhat forced into joining, asked me if we had to stay on the run from the law. Though I told them yes, that was more due to our audience than as a real answer. The others weren't all as...agreeable to changing how we operated, and I already knew where the lines would fall if I tried. I found a way to contact the PRT without the others noticing a few days later."

Garnet obviously didn't believe that. "Just because you were asked?"

That resulted in Jacob glaring at her, making her and Ben flinch back. "I wasn't about to knowingly trap them in a lie without even trying to find out if it was the truth. Not after what my parents did to me." He then closed his eyes and took a couple of deep breaths. "Still, the PRT was willing to listen, since we had just killed off King and all. I think Harbinger had something to do with that too, but I'm not positive whether or not he'd found his new group at that point. Getting the more troublesome members that were left killed off took some doing, but we managed. Faked a couple of other deaths in the middle so that the less violently inclined could escape into new identities. I ended up adopted into a family that wasn't full of assholes, got therapy, and studied like crazy to figure out how to keep all of us from going insane when it became obvious that we weren't going to be able to survive in normal society."

Ben looked at Jacob like he was crazy. "And what, became a roaming therapy group and black ops assassination squad?"

Taylor was glad she'd decided to record things as both Ben and Garnet realized that Jacob was not, in fact, denying that. In fact, a quick look showed that he appeared to be impressed that they'd put that much together. The looks on their faces were hilarious, but she'd have to be careful about who she shared things with. That and she probably shouldn't be enjoying this so much, and she knew it.

That wasn't going to stop her, of course.

Rebecca glared at her currently-removed false eye. It had cracked. Again. She'd need to get another one out of storage. Luckily the tinker mechanism that kept it from being obviously fake and allowed it to serve as a camera was undamaged, as that was the most expensive portion of the system. Having the outer covering replaced would take a day or two, but that was trivial by comparison.

Her thoughts were interrupted by one of Doormaker's portals opening up, Fortuna stepping out a moment later. The woman threw another false eye over, Rebecca catching it with ease. "Path said you could use a new eye, you need to stop glaring so hard at things. Also, I'd like permission to work with others on certain projects."

Rebecca rolled her eye at that, placing the new false eye down on the table. She'd put it in after seeing whatever it was Fortuna wanted. "Which projects, exactly?"

"Tooth extraction and quackers."

"Still not sure why you decided to name them that way, and so far you've only used 'quackers' for 'tooth extraction' anyway."

"It amuses me, mainly." She then placed a laptop down on the desk and opened it up. "And I was going to use quackers for a couple of other things, but you denied me permission." She then spun the laptop around. "Now then, I've got a basic outline here, but will obviously want to flesh things out with my partners if you approve. If you do then I'll probably shift quackers into a background path afterwards, bringing them out to 'assist' others every so often."

Rebecca frowned, but started looking over the outline anyway. They really needed to find Fortuna a hobby that wasn't being constantly productive in other ways at some point. Well, that or consult with Miss Hebert and/or Miss Dallon to find out if that was going to be impossible due to the woman's agent.

Garnet shivered after locking the door to her PRT-provided apartment. Which was feeling a lot less secure than it had before, given what she now knew about who the PRT worked with. She'd gladly have gone her whole life without knowing certain details, in fact. On the other hand, she was fairly certain that if she didn't do things to endanger certain people, like Taylor, that the Nine would never be likely to target her.

She resisted the urge to barricade the door, since that wouldn't work anyway, and instead went to unpack her suitcase. It was obvious that there were still a couple of problems in the apartment, but it wasn't anything that was going to affect her significantly over the next couple of days. For example, she wasn't planning on cooking, so the stove not working wasn't a problem. She hadn't had anything in the fridge either, so it not working also wasn't a problem right now. Might be if she was going to be here much longer, of course, but she hadn't wanted to purchase much if she was just going back to prison anyway.

The coffee maker, on the other hand, was being moved to a working outlet. She didn't trust herself enough to put it in the bedroom, but there were working outlets in the bathroom that would do.

Friday morning started off quite early for Taylor. Jacob had gotten up very early, wanting to make sure that he was out at the Rig in time for the morning activities. That resulted in Taylor being up early as well. She wasn't in the mood to deal with him all morning, however, and decided to escape to the gym on her moped instead. That would mean that she'd be incredibly early by her recent standards, and nobody else was likely to be there yet, but it was far better than dealing with her uncle being worked up. She also decided to grab the pocket dimension plans from her father's office in case she and Amy ended up looking at them.

She did check before she left, just in case, and found that the tracking of the two life pods gave her plenty of time. At least three hours, and that was assuming they showed up early. So off she went, not bothering to mention the potential timing of things to her uncle. She got the impression that he'd just want to be there anyway, to ensure that the landing area was clear and stuff like that. As if the staff over there weren't going to be doing that anyway.

Sadly, being out so early didn't mean that the idiots weren't up yet, and it wasn't long before she ran into a group of early-risers. Not the usual gang members, or even religious idiots today. No, instead she ran into what appeared to be a somewhat violent biker gang. Or at least she was assuming they were a violent biker gang. Swinging chains around when the likely leader yelled 'GET HER!' was a bit of a clue.

Their location was called in even as Taylor rode up the side of a building to keep away from them. Their motorcycles could travel faster than her moped with the limiter engaged, after all, and why bother revealing that secret when she didn't have to? They didn't see her roof-hop away on the moped, and didn't seem to be following her when she returned to street level. Her luck was holding steady, though, as she ended up dealing with a group of women that wanted to 'save her soul' a minute later.

Today was not a good day to be out early, so it seemed.

Hannah looked over the report that had just come in. Miss Hebert had apparently run into some excitement on her way in today. Attempted armed robbery by a drunk man while she'd been sitting at a red light. Broken leg, arm broken in three places, and a minor concussion for the man, the latter believed to either be pre-existing or from his fall from his leg being broken. The girl must've been particularly annoyed for some reason, since Hannah didn't think that level of injury on the man would've happened just because she'd been told to consider breaking bones next time.

It only took a minute to read through the entire report, which indicated that the shotgun had been fired by the man. Both barrels, in fact, and it looked like one had been loaded with birdshot while the other had a slug. Neither had injured Miss Hebert, but there was minor damage to the girl's moped. Which it was likely she'd fix herself, not needing to rely on the other tinkers for assistance even if they'd helped to build the current version of the thing. It was really too bad that they were trying to keep a lid on that skill of hers for the time being.

Shaking her head, she acknowledged things. None of Miss Hebert's actions were considered problematic, after all, especially given her assailant's actions. Instead, she went back to checking over the final approvals for Miss Biron's latest project. The girl had admitted that the entire goal was to see the reactions people had to the thing, and if they could get the final approval in today then they could have Miss Hebert reveal it tomorrow morning. Even if she didn't make it part of her normal gear.

Sadly, the gift was a specialty item that was unlikely to be permitted in the PRT store anytime soon, but getting standard utility belt pouches with expanded pockets available was another goal. That Hannah would get her own utility belt pouches as payment for getting both this project and the production of said pouches cleared for Miss Biron was perfectly reasonable. Really, she'd already have the pouches if she wasn't waiting on the set made out of bulletproof stars and stripes fabric to come in.

Taylor very carefully sprayed the clear coat layer onto the front of her moped. It would need to cure for a bit, but she'd be over at the Rig for a couple of hours minimum. And if it wasn't ready by the time she was back from that she could do other things until it was good for the ride home. Though she was probably going to need to buff it out a bit before leaving, since it wouldn't look right otherwise. But that would be later.

It took her a couple of minutes to put everything away, after which she locked up the workshop and headed to the Wards area. She'd skipped the gym, but that was okay. So had Amy, for that matter, having swung by the hospital to deal with a couple of early-morning healing requests. Such as healing one of the bystanders that ended up injured when that drunk had jumped her earlier. If he'd shot Taylor it wouldn't have been a problem, but the slug had bounced off of the moped and hit an older gentleman in the leg.

"There you are!" Aisha half-yelled as Taylor entered the Wards area.

"Yes, there she is," Amy said with a roll of her eyes.

Taylor looked between the two. "Why is my presence suddenly so important?"

Amy snorted. "Apparently you made the news, because someone decided to record you driving past their apartment and caught the drunk in action."

Aisha was grinning. "I liked the move you pulled when he tried to grope you. Served him right."

Sighing, Taylor moved towards the kitchen to grab some water. "I'm amazed he could stand. He was yelling about opening up the fare box at first, as though I were a bus driver."

Amy chuckled at that. "Yeah, the clip that the news showed included that part, and PHO has been trying to decide if you went too far by breaking a drunk's leg or not far enough with a dangerous lunatic."

"What, no comments on the broken arm?"

Aisha snickered. "That was considered to be absolutely justified under the circumstances. You were trying to get the shotgun away from him and he decided that was a good time to try and grope you."

Maya frowned as she listened to some of the bikers describe their run-in with Miss Hebert earlier. Unexpected, but it confirmed that she was far too mobile when she was riding her tinkertech moped. That it was being described with respect, after they'd seen the news coverage of the girl's run-in with a drunk, was almost expected. This particular group wasn't a fan of 'easy catches', after all, so escaping them and then defending herself was seen as a good thing in their eyes.

From her point of view, it just complicated any attempt that might be made to grab the girl. Eventually, anyway, since she was still focusing on gathering information, and having problems because the PRT was paranoid. Not that she could fault them for it, because the Crowleys were in town and they'd already gotten their hands on Elijah, but it made her job much more difficult. For added annoyance, none of their infiltrators had been able to find out where they were keeping Elijah. All they knew was that he was still alive and that he'd been moved out of Brockton Bay.

Once again, stupid rightful paranoia getting in their way. They'd apparently knocked him out with gas and moved him to a transport. He'd woken up in the transport, but couldn't tell where it was going. They'd then knocked him out again and moved him to a cell wherever he'd ended up. They didn't even know how long the flight had taken, and he'd reported that he hadn't had any human visitors since he'd been captured. Their only saving grace there was that they had a hope of figuring out where he was when the PRT's own policies forced them to let him use his power, which would expose him to at least one human. Hopefully it would be one that they could locate afterwards.

Amy hopped off of the platform a moment before Taylor did. It was different riding it out of costume, but it wasn't like anyone would question it now. A moment's thought packed the platform up and sent it back to the PRT building.

"Good morning Miss Dallon," Colin said. "And Miss Hebert, of course. Dragon informs me that we've got at least half an hour before the pods arrive." He then handed the universal remote to Taylor. "We believe that more direct controls are now available, but the labeling isn't clear. They appeared about an hour ago."

Taylor took the remote and checked over things. Ugh, labeling isn't clear was an understatement. The pile of buttons weren't labeled at all. Possibly a last-minute code addition, either that or it was intentional to make it harder for someone else to use. Her tinker snark didn't even think that there was a configuration for what labels to assign them available, failing or otherwise. "Huh, looks like the pods are going to enter a holding pattern above us until told to land."

"I don't suppose you can tell how far above us?"

"They should circle at fifteen hundred meters or so above sea level, though that can be easily adjusted with buttons...er...let's call them nine and ten here? Assuming we want them to stay higher or lower, anyway. Apparently we'll need to call them down to land after that."

"Which is a good thing," Dragon said as she approached. "We underestimated their size, especially given the distance they were sitting at, and are hoping that you'll be able to get them to take off again once we get the girls out of them. Only one at a time will fit comfortably up here, and we'd prefer to not have to send one to the PRT building or to another city and end up blocking things while we figure out how to get them out of the way."

Taylor studied the remote again. "I'm fairly certain that I can get them to take off again, but I'll need to double-check that they don't need a passenger when they're close enough before I'm positive. Actually, if you have coordinates, I can probably get them to land somewhere specific afterwards. Er, but they aren't going to play nice in shared airspace?"

Colin sighed. "As much as I'd like to keep them available for study, sending them further off may be the best solution. Perhaps to one of the larger transport storage facilities? We'd just need to have something escort them."

Dragon placed a hand on Colin's armor. "I've actually got a barge coming in that we can hopefully land them on. Got it moving up the coast last night, so we should have plenty of time to decide what to do with them."

Colin seemed surprised at that. "I didn't know you had barges, let alone any in the area."

"I don't normally need them, but renting one for a few days isn't a problem."

Taylor grinned at the look on what they could see of Colin's face at that. "So, where's my uncle? Based on how he was acting last night I'd have thought that he'd be here going over the landing pad with a brush and dustpan 'just in case' or something."

Colin shook his head as though to clear it, before turning to Taylor. "Your uncle is currently filling out make-work paperwork regarding the reinstating of previously thought to be deceased identities. We gave him the long forms, and didn't tell him that the two were only marked as missing."

"No," Dragon interrupted. "He was told that already, and should know because the life pods were seen leaving but were never found so the girls were assumed to be alive and well somewhere else. We just couldn't figure out why their father never went looking for them, at least not until now. Also, I didn't actually tell Jacob to fill out the forms either. I just left him in the room with stacks of forms and told him to grab a cup of coffee. If everyone else I spoke with followed their instructions then nobody told him to fill out anything and all but two of the pens in the room should've been nearly out of ink, with those two being on a table at the far side of the room."

Jacob grumbled as he made his way through the paperwork, checking his phone every so often for various important details. Paperwork was a horrible, horrible thing and he hated filling it out. He was self-aware enough to know that it was also a horrible, horrible thing that he enjoyed making others fill out, despite rarely getting the chance to do so properly. If that wasn't bad enough, he wanted to make sure he got this set done the right way, because to do otherwise would be a disservice to Alan's memory.

The problem, of course, was how much information the forms needed. Legally bringing someone assumed to be dead back into the system after so long was an annoying process, and 'resurrecting' the wrong identity was to be avoided. Which required way too much information to be filled...fuck, another pen ran dry. If it wouldn't require filling out more forms then he'd dig out a complaint form for that. Grumbling, he threw the pen in the general direction of the trash barrel and grabbed another from the cup.

He verified that the new pen was able to write, then got back to filling things out. He was almost through Mary's paperwork, and then he'd be able to get started on Tori's. And he was going to have to have others double-check things before they were submitted, just to be safe. Maybe he could find someone to start doing that for Mary's paperwork while he was working on Tori's? He had no clue who, though. It wasn't like anyone else was in here with him right now, after all, and distracting Dragon was a bad idea with the two pods on final approach.

Two pens later he was starting to consider ways to kill off the person responsible for keeping this conference room supplied with the things. It probably wasn't fair, because how would they know that people had almost used up all of the pens? They weren't missing, just nearly dead, and it might even be a side effect of being told to make sure they all worked. A little use every time someone checked the room would eventually use them up. But the fact that he was barely getting any use out of the things was just so annoying.

He grinned a little when he'd grabbed the next pen and flipped to the next page of the form. He could skip this entire section, as they hadn't had bodies that had been assumed to be the girls. So they didn't need to provide evidence that the bodies were fakes. It was a wonderful feeling, being able to check off the 'not applicable' checkboxes. A couple more pages and he was almost done, he just needed one more identification number. He reached for his phone to look for it, only to be interrupted in his typing by it ringing a moment later.

Swearing to himself, Jacob took a deep breath before answering the phone. "Hello Taylor. What's up?"

His niece sounded unusually amused. "We're bringing the first life pod down in a couple of minutes and thought you'd want to be up here for it."

"I'll be up as soon as I'm done the first set of forms. I'm almost done with Mary's."

"What forms?"

"The forms to resurrect their legal identities. It's a complicated and annoying process, and it isn't like we had a whole lot of warning to prepare for things."

"I thought that was for people who were assumed dead?"

"Of course. The girls were...marked missing, because people saw the pods take off. FUCK! I've spent all this time filling this out for nothing! Why would Dragon...she never told me to fill anything out, did she? Just to get coffee, meaning that I did this to myself by not thinking."

Taylor snickered. "Armsmaster assures me that there's a secure shredder in the cabinet to the left of the coffee machine. Hurry up and get up here, we're calling the first pod down as soon as the medical team shows up."

Jacob took some pleasure in having the secure shredder obliterate the paperwork, filled out or otherwise. He also fed the remainder of the pens into the thing, not willing to trust any of them. That only took a minute, after which he downed the last of his coffee, shredded the paper coffee cup for good measure, and headed for the elevator.

Chapter 185 Taylor frowned as the first life pod came in for landing. It was in worse shape than she'd thought, but then again the feeds to the universal remote hadn't been all that detailed. Still, the outside of the thing had been wrapped in multiple armor layers, and most of the damage was to the outermost layer. But a number of subsystems were having issues from running for years without maintenance, and her tinker snark really wanted her to start tearing apart several portions of the thing to fix them.

That wasn't in the plans, of course, but it wanted her to.

Instead she focused on figuring out how to get the occupant, Mary most likely, out. There was a release sequence that should become available on the remote once the pod had landed, and the mechanisms for that were mostly functional. But it was likely that she'd grown too much in there, especially based on some of the things her tinker snark was telling her, and as such some manual work was going to be needed to get her out. Work that was going to be a lot easier thanks to Shaper.

It wasn't long before the landing process had completed and Taylor was able to hit the newly revealed 'release' button on the remote. There was hissing, and grinding, and some mechanical groaning, but the front of the pod opened up. The girl inside was at least a teenager, with scraps of what probably used to be clothing clinging to her in places. Taylor and Amy both moved forward as soon as they could and started helping disconnect all of the support connections. That actually required rebuilding the girl's throat and anus after removing attachments, as well as actually tearing part of her legs open to get the connection points to the pod out. The helmet was actually the last thing they got off, made easier by the fact that it'd been designed to 'eat' the girl's hair.

Once she was disconnected the two lifted her out and placed her on the gurney that the medical staff had wheeled over for them. IV drips were quickly attached and various health checks were performed. She'd be unconscious for a bit as her body acclimated to running on its own, and Taylor or Amy would have to spend more time with her to help that process along later. But for now they had to get her sister out of the other pod, which meant getting this one out of the way. Which meant Taylor had to turn her attention back to the remote.

Sparks and a crunch when trying to close the pod signaled the end of life of at least one motor and gear. Safety interlocks meant that the engines wouldn't spin up for takeoff while it thought the pod was open, which was a problem. In theory. In practice Taylor's tinker snark knew where those interlocks were, and she had a toolkit and willing helpers. It took fifteen minutes, but they bypassed the 'pod closed' sensors and got the thing to take off again. It was directed out onto the waiting barge, Dragon playing relay for radio communications with the barge's captain. Landing it was a careful dance, but Taylor and Dragon working together had it accomplished fairly quickly.

After that they did a quick check of the landing pad and confirmed that the medical team was ready for round two before Taylor brought the second pod down. This one had a nasty gash on one side leading to a missing chunk of the outer armor, but the inner layer had survived with minimal damage. One of the landing struts buckled as well, putting the whole thing on a slight angle as it settled. But the opening sequence went more smoothly, even if the somewhat older teenager inside needed just as much work as her sister to get out.

Jacob and Amy both followed the medical team as they brought the girl inside, but Taylor had to stay out for the moment. This pod closed up fine, but getting it to lift off was a more delicate process with the landing strut damaged. She didn't actually manage it without damaging the landing pad a little, though she was assured that it wouldn't be a problem. Dropping it onto the barge was annoying, but accomplished without further damage to anything, at which point she was able to shut everything down. Someone would have to manually restart the two pods before they'd be responding to the remote again, assuming that they weren't just dismantled at this point.

Honestly, Taylor was betting on dismantled, because why would they keep the things as-is? They pretty much couldn't re-use them in their current condition, after all. Better to learn what they could from them and move on at this point. Granted, she could see them wanting to repair one, if only to get a good look at it in pristine condition, but she was currently of the opinion that if they wanted to do that then they should throw that Trevor's way. She had way too many other things going on to devote the required time to that right now.

With everything she could do out here done, barring repairing the landing pad which Colin had told her to not worry about, she headed inside to help with the two girls. It'd only been a little over three hours since she'd called the first pod down to land, but it felt like longer. And there was still a lot to do.

Hannah entered the non-parahuman gun range, finding Emily working through a small stack of magazines. She took a seat and waited, knowing not to disturb someone who was actively shooting. Ten minutes later the director left the range to find Hannah waiting.

"Good morning," Emily said, nodding to Hannah.

"Morning," Hannah replied. "Getting some practice in?"

"Working off frustrations, actually. My therapist thought I was finally ready to go through some records and told me to do so, and I did so last night." Hannah raised an eyebrow in a clear request for more information that could be easily dismissed by the other woman, curious but not wanting to push. Emily sighed. "Let me pack up and we'll talk about it in my office. I shouldn't be discussing it where people could come in and all."

Hannah was now very curious, but merely nodded and waited for the director to pack up.

"Why'd you stop by anyway?" Emily asked as they were leaving the range.

Hannah smirked. "For safety reasons I've got alerts on the ranges here and on the Rig to let me know when they're in use without at least one suitable person present for oversight. That generally means when there aren't at least two people present, but Wards don't count as 'suitable for oversight' by the alert rules. It isn't flawless, as in theory a Ward could be present 'overseeing' a non-Ward and the alert won't fire, but the system doesn't actually know who's firing."

Emily snorted at that. "Figures. And I, of all people, should be following the safety rules and having at least one person there just in case of emergency."

"That and you're the last person I need to approve something, of course."

"And that makes more sense."

They ended up swinging through one of the cafeterias on the way, Emily grabbing a coffee and Hannah a bottle of juice, before they ended up seated in the director's office. The secretary had informed them that there were currently nine people waiting in the fake outer office, which brought a smirk to both of their faces. It wasn't long after that before they were seated with the privacy field up, just in case.

Emily gave Hannah a look. "So what is it that you need my approval on?"

Hannah produced a manilla envelope and handed it over. Emily removed the paperwork from the envelope and looked it over. She frowned a couple of times, then smirked, and by the last page was chuckling. It was obvious to Hannah that the initial annoyance had broken through. "Can I count on your support?"

"I should be saying no, but this won't actually make her more dangerous. In fact, in some ways this is safer than what she already has. Really, all it's doing is giving her another option that people won't know is there until she produces it, and the appearance of being more dangerous because of it will probably deter idiots."

"And the looks on people's faces the first time she uses it will be hilarious, of course."

Emily snorted as she signed things. "Of course. That seems to be Glenn's entire reason for approving it."

A moment later Hannah was accepting the now-completed forms back from the director. "Thank you. Now, do you want to talk about why you were in the range?"

The other woman sighed, taking a sip from her coffee. "Tell me Hannah, how many people survived Ellisburg?"

Hannah frowned, wondering why the woman was asking that. "Twelve, ten of whom were parahumans."

"And that's where you're wrong. Three people survived. Nine of the ten parahumans died within a year to their injuries or infections therein, seven of them spent the last month of their lives in quarantine. Panacea could've saved them, but she hadn't triggered yet. That's part of what my therapist wanted me to see."

That was a shock, but Hannah hadn't ever considered looking any of the parahumans involved up. She'd thought they'd probably been hit hard and demoted for running, but if only one had lasted the year? "Did she want you to see that the parahumans didn't fare much better than the unpowered?"

Emily snorted at that. "No. She actually wanted me to evaluate the likely effectiveness of their powers in that situation. Needless to say, not a one of them was suited for the conflict. Good on paper before we knew what we were going into, but horrible for the truth of things. And my therapist already pointed out that it was only after Vivian's plan was handed to me that I started to let that particular grudge go, because parahumans were finally cleaning up the mess. That Miss Hebert tricked me into letting Panacea heal me apparently helped plant the seeds, or so I was told."

"So were you working out your frustration over all of these revelations?"

"No. I was working out my frustration over how often we need the right parahuman in the right place to deal with this crap. It took years before Vivian even triggered, and we got damned lucky that we got her instead of her going villain. How many parahuman threats have some other parahuman out there that can fix things, but is in the wrong place or triggered at the wrong time? Vivian already admitted to me that she doesn't think she can help with Eagleton. She doesn't want to give them more tricks if they get to her bombs before they can detonate. So who can? Have they survived the Endbringers? Have they not triggered yet?"

"I see." Hannah had never thought of it that way, but it made sense. The Ash Beast was probably another good example of a parahuman that likely needed another parahuman to counter, but good luck figuring out who that was or if they'd triggered yet. "You're annoyed that we've got situations where we're doomed to failure until the right parahuman shows up, and there's nothing we can do about it."

"Yep. I bet my therapist claims that I've just changed how I approach my dislike of parahumans, but I'm not holding my breath on overcoming it entirely. But I think I'm making progress towards at least appreciating those trying to do the right thing, at least."

"Made easier when they're getting results?"

"Of course. But I certainly won't complain if someone can figure out a way to find the master that keeps trying to subvert our staff."

Hannah winced. That was a problem right now, they were running four scans a day and couldn't get or make enough crystals to purge everyone. Luckily most of the commands so far were time-limited, presumably to make it harder to trace back if they hadn't been catching them right away, but that pattern wasn't likely to hold.

Still, there was one nice thing there, and Hannah was fairly certain that Emily hadn't heard yet. "At least the two girls they just rescued came up clean there."

Emily blinked, and then nodded a moment later. "I suppose that is a good thing. I take it that they got the system they were installing in the Rig working?"

"Dragon supposedly worked all night to get it up and running. They still want to run them through a deep scan after finding out that surface scans don't pick everything up, but traces from Ziz have yet to have that quality."

"Too bad that's likely to change, because why wouldn't it?"

Taylor sighed as she sat down in the transport that had been waiting to bring her and Amy back to the PRT building. It had taken far longer than expected to get the two girls healthy enough for the regular doctors to take over. Their bones were weak from being in zero gravity for so long, their muscles mostly atrophied from disuse, their digestive systems almost nonfunctional from being fed by what amounted to an IV for years. They both had some mild radiation poisoning, Tori's being a little worse likely explained by the missing outer armor pieces. But their helmets had protected their brains, which was a good thing.

The helmets were also part of a virtual reality system that had kept them 'active', though figuring out what it'd been doing before it put them to sleep for the return trip would require either asking them or tearing the log units out of the pods. Taylor had been able to tell that it should have a collection of pre-programmed things as well as a communication link of some kind, but she couldn't tell what had and hadn't been active. For all she knew they'd been stuck in a loop, since she did know that the pods were supposed to only run for a month or two before being called back. That they'd lasted years was a testament to how over-engineered they were.

"Are you going to see your uncle again anytime soon?" Amy asked as the transport was taking off.

Taylor shrugged. "That depends on whether or not they kick him out overnight. They'll be trying to keep the girls asleep for a few days to let their bodies finish acclimating to being in gravity again. Then again, I'm not sure if he grabbed his stuff before leaving this morning, so he might not have any changes of clothing with him. But I wouldn't put it past him to get someone to go fetch his stuff either, so who knows."

"Ahh. So what are you planning on doing for the remainder of the afternoon?"

"No clue. I hadn't expected things to take that long. Maybe I'll do a pass through the junkyard before heading home."

Amy was thoughtful for a moment. "I think that sounds like a decent idea, at least. Mind if I join you?"

"Feel free."

It wasn't long before they landed at the PRT building and got off of the transport. Taylor took a moment to double-check the platform that she'd sent back earlier, finding nothing wrong there, before they went down to the lower levels in the elevator. They swung through the Wards area to grab Taylor's maul and stop sign before heading for the junkyard.

"Is that an ice cream truck?" Amy asked as the door to the junkyard closed behind them.

"The unworking shell of one at least," Taylor replied. "No motor, the compressors for the refrigeration units are missing, and half the electrical system has been torn out."

When they were done it would be useless as anything other than scrap.

Fortuna was doing her best to suppress her grin as she waited for Rebecca to finish her current meeting. Normally she'd just show up at the right time, but she was avoiding running a path to get permission. Rebecca almost always saw through those these days, and even if it still usually worked it wasn't the best way to get things done. Even if her agent usually disagreed. She'd recently learned to placate it by asking it how to accomplish ridiculous things that it apparently would never have considered before. For example, right now she had it trying to figure out how to have Amy Dallon meet herself without time travel or cloning.

For some reason it had come up with a solution in eight seconds when she'd asked the same thing about Miss Hebert, which was disturbing, and she'd had to run a path to prevent that series of events immediately after. It hadn't sounded safe. Luckily all she'd had to do to prevent it was turn off a single piece of confiscated tinkertech that'd accidentally been left on for eighteen years. It was supposed to be off anyway.

It didn't take much longer before the woman that Rebecca had been meeting with left, scowling, and Fortuna was sent in. "Good evening."

"Good evening to you," Rebecca replied, leaning back in her chair. "I'm curious what mayhem you want to attempt this time, since you very recently asked for permission to combine some of your amusement paths."

Fortuna nodded. "I'd like to not sabotage some motorcycles tonight, thus allowing a sizable number of bikers to attack the Brockton Bay Wards Meet and Greet tomorrow morning. Further, I'd like to check out a couple of force field generators to set up instead."

Rebecca had her glare down, that was for sure. "Why?"

"The resulting battle can be contained by the force fields to protect bystanders, the annoyingly preachy members of the audience will pretty much all flee in the process, and the footage has a good chance of being good PR for the Wards program in general."

Rebecca's glare didn't waver. "Only a good chance?"

"I honestly don't know if all of the Wards will participate or if they'll let Maul handle it? I mean, I could ensure that Maul is the only Ward involved if I join her, but that would send a very different message."

It took a moment, but Rebecca switched to a more thoughtful expression. That was, in Fortuna's opinion, a good sign. Still nerve-wracking while she waited, of course. But eventually she nodded. "I think I'd rather send the latter message right now, to be honest. Move the focus away from Wards in general fighting, you see, and it should hopefully keep your own reputation strong in the process."

Fortuna blinked. "Er, what?"

"I give you permission to arrange for the confrontation if and only if you participate, keeping the total number of Wards involved in combat to at most Maul. If you aren't happy with that then please sabotage the motorcycles and move on to other projects. Maybe make your Sunday duck run more spectacular?"

Well, that was better than an outright no, but wasn't what Fortuna had been expecting. Crap. Now she had to actually make a decision as to which way she wanted to go. And from the look on Rebecca's face, that was probably the entire point.

Taylor was grinning as she and Amy made their way back to the Wards area to drop off the maul and stop sign. They'd then be departing for home, especially since Taylor had after dinner online class stuff to worry about, though she needed to swing by the mail room before that. Yet another load of mail, but she'd apparently start getting things directly again soon.

"You going to come to the meet and greet thing tomorrow?" Taylor asked.

Amy shook her head. "I don't think so. Best to not be a possible distraction and all, since I'm not a Ward."

"I guess that makes sense."

"So why do you think Missy and Miss Militia are hanging around?"

Taylor shrugged. "No clue. Could be that they want to speak to one or both of us. Could be unrelated to us at all. It isn't like everything revolves around either of us."

"Nah, they want to speak with you. Missy sent me a message telling me that I might want to stick around for a few minutes, just not what they're planning."

"Ah. Inside information. Good to know, I suppose."

It didn't take long for them to reach the Wards area. There they found Missy and Miss Militia waiting, though Missy grabbed a wrapped box and jumped up as soon as the door had opened.

"Good afternoon Miss Hebert, Miss Dallon," Miss Militia said. "We've got a couple of things to check with Miss Hebert on before she departs."

Missy frowned at that, probably having been told that something other than the gift she was holding took priority. Amy took the stop sign that Taylor was holding and moved off to the side as Taylor sighed. "Is any of this incredibly involved? It's been a long day."

Miss Militia nodded at that. "I understand, but this is mostly planning. We've received a request for you to participate in power testing and therapy sessions for String Theory on Sunday, as part of her appeal. Do you have any objections to that?"

That had Taylor blinking. Seemed like an odd request to her, but someone had obviously decided it was a good idea. Still, she had at least one question. "Is there any chance of this turning into yet another recruitment on my record? Because 'by judicial order' or something like that seems like an inappropriate reason."

The other two snickered at the thought while Miss Militia blinked, before she finally shook her head. "I think you're okay on that front so long as we don't tell Assault about that idea, and there's no guarantee that she'll join the Protectorate anyway. We might want you to do a quick therapy session with Lustrum and Marquis as well, since they're in town already, but I don't know if they plan on bringing Galvanate through the area or not. He's apparently doing well where he landed. So shall I allow the scheduling to go through?"

Taylor sighed. "Might as well, I suppose. Someone thinks it's important enough, anyway, and it'll probably be less stressful than patrolling with the biker idiots running around."

"I'll get that in place then. Which leaves us with Miss Biron's gift, which I believe has the ulterior motive of wanting to see people's faces when you use it."

Missy snorted as she handed over the box she was holding. "That and she gave everyone else stuff, she should get something in return. That she didn't 'pay' for, anyway. And Chris helped me with the sewing."

Taylor took the box, which didn't weigh that much, and shook it. Slight movement, but nothing was banging around. Shrugging, she tore the wrapping and opened the box inside to find what looked like a sash. "I get the feeling that I'm missing a detail or ten."

"It's got an expanded pocket in it," Missy explained, and Taylor found the pocket after a moment. "With hooks and loops positioned so that the M249 can fit in it."

"So you want to see the looks on people's faces when I pull an assault weapon out of my jacket?"

Missy nodded. "They won't let me get one, so this is the next best thing in my opinion."

Taylor checked and found that there were hooks and loops that indeed seemed designed to hold the M249, probably with the ammo bag attached, as well as a couple of built-in pouches that looked designed to hold additional sets of linked ammo. "This is going to weigh quite a bit when I load it up."

"It's designed to clip onto your existing belt," Miss Militia noted. "To hopefully keep it from moving too much on you, primarily. It was surprisingly balanced when I formed my power appropriately for testing."

Missy snorted. "I made sure to tie the pocket to the entire inside and not just where the opening is for strength and balance purposes. Learned that trick on some of my own projects."

Miss Militia looked approving of that. "At any rate, I've also ensured that you won't get into trouble for using it, both internally with PRT approval and by confirming that you won't run afoul of state or federal concealed carry rules. Would you believe that none of them seem to take into account someone being able to carry weapons of this size in a concealed fashion?"

That had all of them chuckling, before Missy insisted that Taylor check that the M249 fit as expected. It did, and as Miss Militia had said it was surprisingly balanced. Wasn't pulling Taylor forward or backward, but would pull her slightly to the side if she had things clipped wrong. Missy was thanked with some of Taylor's chocolate, with Taylor noting that she might need to order more soon, and then everyone prepared to depart for the evening. Amy had even made it home before Taylor left, since she hadn't bothered to stick around for Taylor getting her mail or doing a quick buff on her repaired moped when she realized that still needed to be done.

Jacob had, amazingly, shown up for dinner. Apparently Colin had denied his request to spend the night on the Rig, pointing out that they'd let the man know when the two girls were ready to be woken up or moved elsewhere.

"I don't know what to do with the two," Jacob said as they ate. "I mean, I'd like to take care of them, but I move around too often. That and I'm probably a horrible role model, because there's no way that I could take them in and not reveal things to them. Oh god, what do I tell them about their father?"

Taylor bopped her uncle on the nose with the back of her fork. "Calm down, would you? The first thing to figure out is what state they're in, right? We don't know if they're closer to eight or eighteen mentally, after all, and won't know until they wake up. We didn't exactly have any way to communicate with them before bringing them back."

Jacob glared at Taylor. Lightly. But only for a moment before he sighed. "I suppose. Amanda would probably be willing to help as well, but then we'd definitely have to reveal some of Riley's secrets. I mean, they're direct family of a former member of the Nine and thus technically allowed to know those secrets, but it feels wrong to burden them in that manner if I don't have to. But I will have to tell them something about their father."

Danny snorted. "That's easy enough. Their father died fighting Ziz. Officially Sphere died fighting her, after all, so it's still the truth and doesn't matter if they know who he became later."

Taylor grinned at the look of her uncle sitting there with his jaw hanging open. Apparently he hadn't realized that was such a simple answer. Still, it wasn't long before he recovered, shaking his head. "They'll still probably be devastated, given that their mother's pod didn't even have a chance to take off. I have no idea if they even know how long it's been."

In the end Taylor promised to be 'on call' in case the girls woke up early, and to be there when they were waking the girls up. Neither was a problem, since she'd already agreed to that when Dragon had asked her and Amy for the same thing earlier in the day. That done, she got ready for bed prior to her class, her father and uncle taking care of the dishes.

Amy grumbled as she opened the first file for the driving class that was starting Monday. Taylor had, rightfully, reminded her that they should both go over the first file or two before then. Via informing her that she'd made it much further, of course. Which meant that Amy was going to have to take a break from sorting through medical dictionaries, at least for a few days. Admittedly, the packets for this class were less likely to put her to sleep, which was one of the things keeping her from having finished going through the medical dictionaries.

She'd have time to catch up over the weekend, though depending on how things went she might be distracted by what Taylor was doing. The meet and greet shouldn't be a major problem there, but the power testing and therapy session on Sunday would probably be at least somewhat distracting. That they were planning on checking on the pub at some point after the meet and greet was another issue entirely, of course. Depending on timing that might happen for lunch.

Oh well, it was time to focus on this for a bit, then she'd get ready for bed and focus on it some more until she fell asleep. And then probably read some more after hitting the gym in the morning, unless she was needed in the hospital unexpectedly of course. Deciding whether or not to hang out at the PRT building until Taylor was done was another question to answer at some point, for that matter.

"Amy," Carol called from the partially-open door. "Eric wasn't paying enough attention while patrolling and took a bullet to a kidney. Would you head over and take care of him?"

Amy sighed, she'd made it four pages in. "Sounds like he isn't critical, so give me a minute to hit the toilet before I head over."

"Of course, and thank you. Sarah doesn't want to move him more to bring him here. It sounded like she was quite angry that he'd even gone straight home, to be honest."

"I don't doubt it. Why didn't he come here, at least?"

"Probably didn't think it was as bad as it is. I'm sure you know how that goes."

Amy snorted. "Okay, yeah. But even if he didn't think it was bad he still should've had me take a look. But he probably thought that he'd catch me in the morning or something instead."

Chapter 186 Saturday morning Taylor beat Amy and Missy to the gym, as well as avoiding all of the potential crazies. She thought it was a pretty good accomplishment, all things considered. Still, she found that the gym wasn't empty this morning, a couple of PRT officers were using it. Which wasn't a problem, it wasn't like she had to worry about her own secret identity anymore. Well, that, and out of curiosity she'd checked and found that you had to be cleared for Wards identities as part of being allowed in this part of the gym at all.

She felt a little foolish about that, since she'd had her wonderful excuse ready that her uncle had gotten her access. Anyone with a clue wouldn't have bought that, and wouldn't have needed to ask in the first place. At first she'd found it odd that Protectorate identities weren't included, but it didn't take long to find that there was a gym setup in the Rig as well. Presumably Protectorate members were encouraged to use that one if they didn't want to be wearing masks or similar.

"Good morning Miss Hebert," one of the officers said as she exited the locker room. He then paused and turned back to her. "I'd think it would be easier to work out without the visor?"

"Morning," Taylor replied. "And it might be, but I use it to read things while I work out. Multitasking and all."

"Ahhh. Armsmaster would be proud."

"So what brings you two here today? I don't usually run into PRT officers when I show up."

The other officer sighed. "The gym over the lesser testing facility across town is closed after a fight between the Elite and some of the biker gangs that showed up recently passed through the area. Then we got here and found that the public areas upstairs are a bit crowded, so decided to just come down here. It isn't like that matters much, we normally go across town to not be 'on-site'."

The first officer nodded. "Yeah. But being in this gym, upstairs or not, counts as being 'on-site' if they need to call people in. We'd be less likely to be sent out in the first wave, more put into reserve, but still. Granted, we're also here before our shift today, instead of our usual after work routine, so it wouldn't be nearly as annoying to be called in because someone pissed off Lung or Kaiser."

"Might have to do this before work more often, really. Less likely to be worn out from work and all."

Taylor shook her head and left them to it. It wasn't long before Amy showed up, and then Missy. The two officers had finished up and left shortly after that.

"Odd seeing others down here," Missy noted when the two had left.

"They said something about this counting as 'on-site'," Taylor said. "So they normally use the gym across town."

"Ahhh."

Taylor then looked at Amy. "So how's Eric?"

Amy snorted. "Grounded. He took way too many painkillers in an attempt to not look 'weak'. Granted, you know that it also wasn't as bad of an injury as Sarah thought."

"You never told me what she thought had happened, actually. I just know that you pulled a bullet out from under his kidney."

"Oh. Sarah thought that the bullet had hit his kidney. It obviously hadn't, of course, but it was close. If he'd just come to me, or admitted that he'd been shot in the first place, then he'd have been fine."

Missy sighed. "I've gotten my share of yelling when I didn't report injuries, or at least have them healed properly. I've decided that it never ends well, all things considered. At least now I'm harder to hurt. Fat lot of good it does, since I'm not supposed to reveal that right now."

Taylor ended up extending her own workout a little so that she was finishing up with the other two, and then the three had hit one of the cafeterias for breakfast. None of the other Wards had arrived yet, but the three weren't excessively concerned about that.

"Are you setting up for the duck?" Missy asked halfway through their meal.

Taylor shook her head. "I've got a reply telling me not to. It would apparently send the wrong message and distract from the Wards."

"Ahhh."

"The same reply also warned me that they're going to take a new 'all Wards' photo before we start."

Missy snorted at that. "Took them long enough. Though that probably means that we'll have another roster change in the next couple of weeks, because that's what usually happens. They wait until things are 'stable', take a picture, and then things shift as though to give them the finger for daring to take a picture."

"It can't be that bad, can it?"

"Since I joined the roster has lasted at most a month after the last team picture before things change. Granted, some of that is predictable. PR demanding that a new picture be taken a few weeks before people move to the Protectorate, for example. Though I think they've put policies in place to prevent that, no team photos within two months of an expected change? It would explain why no attempts were made in May or June, at least."

Amy chuckled at that. "Sounds about right, really, and I've heard Dean complain about it at least once before. New Wave usually goes for a photo once a year, usually on Labor Day for whatever reason. If the roster changes then oh well, not that it has recently."

Taylor shook her head. "Whatever." She then recalled a recent discussion and snorted. "And of course there's a foreseeable potential roster change coming up, but I bet it doesn't count due to extenuating circumstances."

She refused to explain, citing privacy concerns, which appeared to annoy Missy more than it annoyed Amy. Then again, Amy might've put two and two together, since she hadn't asked even over Broadcast Administrator.

Amy had plopped down on a couch in the Wards area to study for the coming week, not seeing any point in going home to do the same thing when she and Taylor had decided to see how the pub was doing. The other Wards had shown up, everyone had gotten into costume, and Dennis insisted that Taylor bring her stop sign and manhole cover even if she was being 'dressy' by wearing her fedora. If only because he couldn't be the serious Wards leader all the time.

The group picture was taken in a conference room, in front of a window showing Brockton Bay behind them, at which point they were sat down to talk about the meet and greet. Things they could mention, things they shouldn't, that kind of thing. Missy was instructed to keep her handgun a secret, for example, while Taylor was encouraged to show off the M249 'if appropriate'. Also known as if the right questions were asked or if someone was being an idiot. Surprisingly, Taylor's chat with Leviathan was apparently fair game to talk about if anyone asked, but she wasn't to volunteer that it'd happened otherwise.

They also got a reminder that this was not a press conference, even if multiple news stations had already arrived to set up to cover the event, so they weren't to let reporters take over. They were there for the general public, and ideally minors in particular, to get a chance to see them when they weren't busy with other tasks. To that end the PRT would be attempting to keep the reporters at a distance, but they weren't always successful. If they found any reporter-types had come in they were to let the console know.

To finish the meeting off, they handed Taylor a new holster for the tinker-built handgun. This one was designed to sit inside of a pocket or pouch, to allow for things to be more stealthy than having two handguns immediately visible. It was, apparently, a gift from someone who felt that she should have said handgun available today, but not obviously. Mysterious gifts from anonymous people that came with what amounted to a warning that she was going to need the handgun.

Really, Taylor wasn't happy with the idea of needing her guns at all. She wasn't looking forward to the next time she had to use one to actually harm someone, fatally or otherwise.

Of course, once that was done and they were going back to the Wards area to grab last-minute things Dennis got them talking about how to 'make their entrance'.

Emily growled. How the hell had they pulled off a scheduling snafu of this level? It was far too late to cancel the meet and greet, but somehow a pile of last minute changes had managed to come together perfectly to ensure that they didn't have a single Protectorate member available to aid with security. And they didn't have enough time to ask for a loaner from Boston or New York to help out, coupled with the majority of New Wave having been seen leaving town earlier for one of their bouts with Lung.

Granted, they technically weren't actually required to provide a guard force at all. The Wards were all old enough to be permitted to patrol without babysitters, and if she was being honest? All six of them working together was probably overkill for most problems they could expect to crop up. Only a master slipping in and turning some of them against the others would screw that up, and Miss Hebert was probably one of the only capes they had available that could deal with that, Ward or not.

On the other hand, they knew that they had at least one member of the Crowley family in town, more bikers appearing and vanishing than the BBPD could easily deal with, and at least one master-class cape trying to get information out of the PRT. The Protectorate guard had originally been arranged for a reason, and to have things somehow line up to remove it from play? But she couldn't see how someone could pull off arranging for it all intentionally without some very high level precog in action.

Frowning, she went down the list again. Colin and Theresa had left town overnight to ensure that the barge they'd landed the two life pods on was cleared of said pods in a reasonable timeframe and wouldn't be back until sometime this afternoon. Trevor had dropped into a fugue repairing something he'd been sent by another tinker and was in a post-fugue coma now. Vivian was recovering from instant-onset hypothermia after an overnight mistake with one of her bombs. Sherrel was already helping Pipeline with a problem with the latter's tunnel-boring machine, and interrupting working tinkers was a Bad Thing most of the time.

On the non-tinker front, Hannah and Terry had been caught by surprise last night and both had concussions courtesy of baseball bats. Ethan and Erin had taken up their patrol route after that and should be asleep after an exceptionally long day as a result. And she'd thought that Brian would be available, except that he'd arranged to have the day off to visit his mother at the woman's request, and as such he was visiting the rehab facility outside of town that she'd been sent to.

Sadly, this probably didn't qualify as an emergency worthy of calling in more PRT officers to play guard duty, and even if it did she'd have to delay the meet and greet to do it since she'd only realized that everything had fallen apart at the last minute. And she didn't have sufficient justification to delay things.

Airi sighed as they waited for the Wards to come out. Takara had wanted to see them, especially Vista and Maul, and somehow she'd gotten roped into bringing the girl. Admittedly, it made sense to have a parahuman escorting her in a situation like this, and of the three she was the best choice, but it was still a little annoying. That it let the girl's mother do some shopping with less fuss was a side benefit.

"Huder!" Takara squealed, pointing at the young Ward who'd just come up onto the stage.

"Hulder," Airi corrected. A moment later she was shaking her head.

When she'd crossed the country after hearing Kenta's story about Kyushu, seeing serving the man as being much more worthy of her efforts than the petty things she'd been doing previously, she hadn't expected to be playing babysitter so often. That the entire gang was being gradually shifted away from things that could potentially upset Takara's growing Wards obsession was also not something she'd expected.

Finding out that her powers worked exceptionally well for making cheesy adult videos she could've lived without knowing, except that it was also so lucrative. She'd made more money from her cuts of the videos in the last month than she'd made through petty theft and such over the course of the entire year before coming to Brockton Bay. It was embarrassing, but it was a legitimate business use of her powers that she'd never considered before. That Kenta actually allowed them to get direct cuts from the videos without going through him was, of course, an added bonus.

She was shaken from her musing by Clockblocker taking the stage that'd been set up, even though the Wards were expected to come down off of the thing after initial introductions and such.

"Good morning everyone!" the Wards leader called, causing a silence to fall on the crowd. "I'm sure I need no introduction, but in the event that you've been living under a rock, I'm Clockblocker!" There was a very light applause, and the boy slumped. "Fine, be that way. I'd like to introduce my fellow Wards. First up, though those watching from home have had the surprise ruined, Hulder!"

Airi blinked as the young Ward lifted up out of the stage. When had she shown up?

"Huder!" Takara squealed as she pointed. She'd at least figured out that she wanted to be more like the female Wards, if she hadn't reacted to Clockblocker.

"Hulder," Airi corrected with a sense of déjà vu.

"Next up," Clockblocker continued as a figure jumped in from the side. "Gallant!" There was a pause for applause before another figure flew around the building. "Kid Win!" The tinker almost crashed into the stage before recovering, causing some laughter in with the applause before an eye-watering something appeared on stage and Vista stepped out. "Vista!"

"Vista Vista!" Takara squealed. At least she knew how to pronounce that one.

After the applause there had died down, something that took a little longer than the other Wards had produced, another figure jumped off of the PRT building, out over the audience, only for a platform to suddenly appear and open to catch them. Clockblocker sounded like he was grinning at this point as several people had yelled in fright. "And last, but not least, Maul!"

"Maul Maul!" Takara squealed again. This was going to be one of those days, but Airi had figured that out before they'd left earlier.

Taylor was surprised at how smoothly things were going half an hour into the meet and greet. They had a collection of religious nutjobs present, but most of them were being escorted to the outer perimeter when they started being disruptive. Other than that the six Wards had split up, mostly. Chris and Dean were together, apparently being pestered with questions about their power armor. Missy had decided to make things harder for those interested in tinkertech in general and was at the other end of the area with her rifle, alternating between it and space-warping. Dennis was demonstrating how pretty much anything that's frozen in place was potentially dangerous, and Aisha had been dragged into an argument over why she needed her own air supply.

That, of course, left her and the mixed group around her. Some wanted to ask her questions about her blaster abilities and the melee weapons she had, others wanted to check out her platform. This had resulted in her running some people on flights on the platform while she talked to those that were interested in her blaster abilities. Nobody had even asked about guns yet, and she'd deflected the couple of questions about her possibly being a tinker with factual non-answers.

Also present were a number of younger kids, usually with an adult or likely older sibling escorting them, that didn't have questions so much as excitement. One of them was the source of the only question about Ackbar that had come up so far. Some of them were shy, others were energetic. One of the shy ones was here with a parahuman, but not one that Taylor recognized. They weren't causing trouble, and the kid seemed excited about being there, so no big deal was being made of things.

Taylor was just getting a couple of kids off of her platform when she noticed one of Doormaker's tears in reality, followed by Fortuna appearing. She found that odd, though the text message that she got a moment later partially explained things. Somewhat.

Please inform the console and your fellow Wards that a large group of bikers is approaching with the intent to grab you. I'll help you deal with them.

Still, that resulted in a frown, though now that it'd been brought up she could hear engines in the distance, barely.

Oh, and please refer to me as a 'mysterious woman', the console should then encourage your fellow Wards to stay out of it.

Taylor rolled her eyes but hit her mental console button anyway. "Maul to console, we've got a large number of bikers approaching looking to grab me and a mysterious woman has offered to help me take care of them."

There was a moment of silence, though the other Wards had also paused in what they were doing, before the PRT staff in the area started yelling for people to head towards to the stage. Specifically, behind yellow lines that Taylor hadn't noticed before. Most of the religious nutjobs waiting on the sidelines bolted as soon as bikers were mentioned, making Taylor wonder if they'd already had bad experiences with them recently.

"Console to meet and greet," came a moment after that. "Wards other than Maul, please help get the crowds out of the way. Maul, if you're comfortable with the assistance of the mysterious woman then you're clear to engage the bikers, but let them make the first move. All others, please ensure that the yellow lines are clear as they represent the edge of where the force fields will appear."

It took surprisingly little time to get everyone behind the yellow lines, after which a loud hum was heard and a glittering force field appeared across each of them. The timing of this had most of the PRT officers behind them, which resulted in a flurry of complaints to the console. But the console didn't appear to have control over the force field generators, so they couldn't do anything about it. A minute later everyone quieted down again as the bikers approached.

[Suggestion]

Amy: Why is Fortuna's snark suggesting that you barrage blaster a motorcycle?

Taylor: Because you're missing all the fun out here.

Taylor was surprised at how many bikers were in the group, most waving chains but a couple were swinging guns around. They weren't firing the guns, but they were making sure that they were visible. It looked like at least thirty bikers, with no parahumans in the group. They came up to the area basically unopposed due to the PRT officers being trapped behind the force fields, but pulled off to either side. Only one member came straight forward, and they stopped at the edge of the street.

"Maul!" said member yelled as the rest of them got off of their motorcycles and gathered around the central member, and likely leader, obviously preparing for a fight. "We have come to claim you for the Crowley family, in recognition of your ability to communicate with Leviathan!"

Taylor blinked at that, before grinning slightly. "Sorry, not interested, and I'm fairly certain that if we asked Leviathan then she'd agree that it was a bad choice for me."

"We aren't giving you a choice. If you won't come with us peacefully, then we'll take you by force!" A moment later one of the bikers fired a handgun, aiming to take out Taylor's leg. Force field belt, armored pants, and her own durability made it useless, but that was technically an opening attack.

Pulling her sidearm and the tinker-built handgun out, Taylor decided to show them why getting into a gunfight with her was a bad idea. The group tensed, but looked mildly confused when she pointed her guns to either side of them. That went away when she opened fire, her side-projected bullets ruining the two lines of now-unoccupied motorcycles.

"As I asked a group in Boston," Taylor said a moment later. "Are you sure you want to keep this as a gunfight?"

The group of bikers looked pissed, but they were apparently not angry enough to be unreasonable. Instead, they started throwing their guns to either side. Granted, she could see a number of them putting brass knuckles and similar on, likely intending to 'pay her back' for the damage to their rides. Still, she couldn't see any more guns being held by any of the bikers, so she put her guns away.

A moment later Fortuna landed behind the group, apparently wearing a jump harness system so that she could safely jump off of the roof. She then called out, causing the bikers to jump in shock. "Good morning Maul. I see some ruffians have decided to be demanding."

Taylor snorted and called back. "Unreasonably so, with no ability to back things up."

"I'll keep them from running off. It wouldn't do for them to escape their punishment for being so uncouth."

That seemed to be enough to get the group to attack, a small number rushing at Fortuna while the rest rushed at Taylor.

[Data]

That seemed like a decent idea, so Taylor went with it, allowing the first few bikers to get close and then grabbing the chain that one of them was swinging at her, using it to pull that particular attacker towards her. She then punched them in the face, absently noting that she'd just used their own chain to make things worse there. She kicked another biker, then ducked under a punch and grabbed the manhole cover off of her back. It was used to smack two bikers directly, and then projected to knock the legs out from under three others. At least one of them likely ended up with a broken leg from that.

The others backed off for a moment, a couple of them dragging the two most injured out of the way, giving Taylor the chance to pull out the stop sign. Fortuna appeared to be playing with the small group attacking her, making it look like she wasn't even trying.

[Warning]

Frowning, Taylor held off on swinging the stop sign through the group. Probably a good thing, as a couple fell and she might not have stopped the projection before it would've hit them in the head. A moment later the bikers had regrouped, coming at her in a more practiced pattern this time. Much more professional looking than the initial mad rush, but not good enough. She took out half of the first wave with a swing of the stop sign, at least two more bones breaking, and whalloped several more with the manhole cover.

A moment later the group parted, to show the likely leader coming straight at her on his motorcycle.

[Data]

And Taylor wouldn't have thought of that anytime soon, but it seemed amusing enough. She slammed the stop sign onto the ground in front of her, bracing herself behind the handle just before the motorcycle hit it. She then brought the manhole cover up and smashed the man's leg and part of the engine as he went by. The motorcycle crashed into the ground behind her, skidding into the force fields as the likely leader screamed in agony, apparently not having liked going up the impromptu ramp.

That was a momentary distraction, but it seemed to enrage the other bikers more than anything else. Taylor ended up hitting them physically with the stop sign more often than not, though she was still projecting with the manhole cover. None of the bikers were getting close enough to attempt to punch her, and she'd broken at least two chains at this point. She'd lost count of the broken bones that she thought she'd inflicted, but it wasn't long before all of the bikers were down. Though the ones Fortuna had taken care of looked to have just fallen asleep instead of having been beaten into submission.

Amazingly, it'd only been a few minutes from start to finish, and Fortuna showed that she'd been controlling the force field generators by pulling out a small key fob device and pressing a button on it, the force fields shutting down a moment later. It was only as that happened did Taylor notice that the news crews had been perfectly positioned to catch various angles of the action.

Taylor: So she planned all of this ahead of time?

[Agreement. Query]

Taylor: I suppose I can give you a top-up, though you feel less hungry than some others?

[Data]

Amy: That does sound annoying, normally needing more energy than you can collect yourself.

Taylor sighed as Broadcast Administrator started shifting energy around and the PRT officers worked to secure all of the bikers. That didn't take too long, though they got some reinforcements to help out, and someone decided that the meet and greet could continue. Though Fortuna had faded into the background before anyone could approach her. In fact, the woman had slipped off between a couple of buildings and jumped back up to roof level, nicely preventing anyone from approaching her.

Of course, with the meet and greet back on, that left plenty of people wanting to question Taylor about things. Further, she could see the reporters itching to come over and talk to her about it, only held back by the PRT staff keeping them from entering the meet and greet itself.

"How many guns do you have?" one girl eventually asked, causing several others to stop yelling their own questions.

Taylor smirked and pulled out her sidearm. "Well, I have my sidearm here." She then put it away and pulled out the handgun. "Then this handgun." That was put away and the taser was pulled out. "A taser." That seemed to disappoint them, since she'd moved away from normal guns. She put it away and then pulled out the M249, to gasps. Then again, they probably weren't expecting it to be pulled out from under her jacket. "And a machine gun, but I haven't had much reason to use it yet."

One boy looked over at one line of motorcycles, then back at the machine gun, before pointing at the motorcycles. "If you can do that with a little gun, what can you do with the big gun?"

Taylor didn't have a chance to answer before another boy scoffed. "Who cares. How did that thing fit? It's too big!"

Taylor smirked as she slipped the M249 back into the sash, before pulling the stop sign back off of her back. It needed some cleaning, having some blood on it, so she was careful not to let the kids touch it. "And this should fit on my back?"

There was a moment of silence, the kids apparently having trouble figuring that out.

Max and Brad sat there, staring at the television. They had a couple of less obvious members with their kids attending the meet and greet to try and get information, but since the local news was broadcasting it live they'd decided to watch as well. Max knew that he'd claimed it was so that they'd know sooner if they needed to rush in, but could admit to himself that he was more curious than anything else. It was, after all, the first meet and greet for Hulder in particular, who they knew very little about.

The two had been confused when Hulder had gone out onto the stage, only to sink into it. Clockblocker's comment about it being ruined for those at home resulted in them realizing that the known stranger trick didn't work over remote monitoring. Something that they should've realized from her introduction, if they were being honest.

"No clue how to handle that if we're fighting her," Brad admitted. "We don't exactly run around with radios or something that could inform others that she'd been seen."

Max had to agree. "True. But we could probably restart that project to set up cameras over our territory and get a few people watching them. It would be a way for the injured to help out while they recover, give them something to do."

"Good point, and pointing out that there's a stranger-type cape in the Wards that can be seen on cameras would get them to stop whining about it."

They'd gone back to discussing other matters as the meet and greet got properly underway, such as possible solutions to the problems Medhall was still having. They weren't holding out a lot of hope of more details being forthcoming, but weren't willing to abandon watching things either. Brad had just outlined a decent plan for working around Accord's interference when things changed. The two watched as everyone other than Maul was protected by force fields, and then the bikers arrived.

"They were ready for this," Brad noted. "There's no way they weren't."

Max nodded. "No clue how they knew, perhaps it was a more generic preparation?"

They couldn't hear everything, but Max personally thought that it was suicide to try and grab Maul right outside of the PRT building. Seeing what the girl did to the lines of motorcycles changed his opinion to suicide to try 'at all', he'd forgotten about the description of her little demonstration in Boston. More concerning was that she was working with that woman, and being left to do most of the work herself in the process.

The two sat in silence after everything had settled down, contemplating what they'd watched.

"I apologize for any and all thoughts I had about you being weak for not wanting to go after her," Brad finally said. "I know you've got other reasons and all, but I still had the thoughts."

"Apology accepted," Max said a moment later.

They'd almost decided that they weren't going to learn anything more when the news was able to catch Maul showing off her guns. Seeing her pull a machine gun out from under her jacket, after what she'd done with two handguns? Well, convincing the normal gang members to leave their guns holstered when going against the girl had probably become a lot easier.

Chapter 187 "Are we allowed to complain about Taylor having all the fun?" Missy asked as they entered the Wards area.

"No," Dennis replied immediately, causing several looks in his direction. "She was their target, and they made it very clear that was the case. It was better to let her prove that she needed little to no help defending herself so as to deter future attempts when she didn't have access to as much backup. That she was able to do so without killing any of them while demonstrating that she easily could kill them if she'd been pushed is even better."

"That makes way too much sense," Chris noted. "I don't believe that you came up with it. So who told you that?"

Dennis shrugged. "It's actually in the Wards leader documents, though not quite that specific. Allowing individual Wards under my command to prove that they're capable without their teammates as appropriate to deter attempts to grab and/or isolate them. Which isn't an issue with this team, granted, because we've all shown ourselves capable at this point, but with a specific member being targeted? Reminders are always good."

Amy came up to the group a moment later. "You should see what they're saying on PHO, since at least one of the news crews was broadcasting live." She then turned to Taylor. "Please tell me that you've got recordings of your own?"

Taylor grinned and tapped her visor. "I had this running the entire time. I thought I'd be using it to get shots of some of the cuter kids, but obviously it's a bit more impressive now."

They ended up reviewing the visor footage while eating lunch, comparing it to what people were talking about on PHO. A few things were noted, such as only maybe a third of the motorcycles actually ending up significantly damaged. Thanks to clipping, the rest just had a single damaged wheel, which was bad enough from a riding point of view. Dennis insisted on extracting a picture of the impromptu stop-sign ramp in action, though he accepted one that didn't show the rider's leg being crushed by the manhole cover.

Then they got pictures of most of the cute kids from the footage, because they had it anyway.

Maya wanted to scream in frustration. Those idiots could very well have ruined everything, depending on how the PRT took their attempt. They could've had hours before the Protectorate dogpile from hell landed on Brockton Bay. Luckily for them the complete lack of injury on the Ward seemed to have negated the worst of the potential responses. But from what little they did know, the gangs were likely to be on the warpath now.

But, and this was important, now Mama had handed her a stupid fetch quest. She hated those from the few games she'd played growing up, and now she had a real-life version. Some thinker that Mama was going to hire needed a collection of items in specific categories to tell them about a person. The easiest for the thinker, and the hardest for Maya to get, would be a freely given blood sample. Pfft. Right. Not happening.

Instead she was going to have to figure out how to get several items, ranging from 'freely given' to 'stolen'. For each of Miss Hebert and Miss Dallon at a minimum and preferably for Miss Biron as well so that they could take advantage of a discount for additional runs in the same 'order'. Admittedly, she'd been told to focus on Miss Hebert, and if that was all she pulled off than so be it.

She'd blow the whole idea off if Mama hadn't made her curious. The goal was to find out if Leviathan had been communicating with Miss Hebert because of favoring the girl or because of something that had happened to the girl. In the latter case Mama and the other leaders were hoping to be able to reproduce it to make 'heralds' at will. But to do that they had to know what, if anything, caused Miss Hebert to become one.

Oh well. She could scream later, for now she had to start planning.

Taylor and Amy pulled around behind the pub, partially because there weren't any spaces right out front. The lot was still mostly empty, but they ended up parking near the office door anyway. To not advertise that they were part-owners or similar they walked back around to the front, no need to draw attention by coming in through the back during open hours and all. They did take note of the large 'delivery' box that had been installed along the back of the building before making their way around to the front though. Nice secure lock, outside of the majority of the security system, perfect for teleporting deliveries in and out.

They entered to find the place around a third filled. Apparently either some people had walked from nearby or had come in groups, based on the number of cars outside. The latter was likely, given that people were sitting in groups, one larger one even having dragged a couple of tables together at one side of the room.

"Taylor! Amy!" Lacey called from the bar. Not behind the bar in this case, she'd apparently been wiping up a spill in front of it and stood up when they'd entered. "I wasn't sure if you two would be around, what with the meet and greet this morning."

"We'd thought about coming by for lunch," Amy admitted. "But Clockblocker decided that a immediate debrief over lunch was needed after Taylor here ended up fighting during what should've been a peaceful event and all."

Taylor scoffed. "Like it's my fault that the idiots wanted to grab me."

Lacey shook her head. "I'd say we need to get some televisions in here, but I already know that the cable company has no usable runs in the area. And I don't want to shell out a few thousand dollars for a dedicated run." She sighed, then grinned. "Still, even if you ate already, I'm sure you could both do with a good drink. I've got a new one I want opinions on anyway, grab a table while I go grab a couple of bottles."

The two shared a look, then shrugged and grabbed the table nearest to the bar. Taylor took a moment to look over the rose bush on said table, which had a mixture of rainbow and pure violet roses on it, but stopped when Lacey returned from the back. They didn't even have to pretend to not notice her coming back, since the room had gone quiet when she had.

Lacey placed a plain, hand-labeled bottle down in front of each of them. "Here you two go." She then grabbed a bottle opener from a pocket and popped the tops off. "Take your time with them and let me know what you think. I'd offer you a brownie as well, but Erin's still learning the quirks of the oven and the last batch didn't come out edible."

"Erin?" Taylor asked.

"Our new short order cook, worked for a diner that shut down and ended up in a bakery for a few months. We hired her away from the bakery, but she's hoping to make cookies and brownies for when people want quick snacks. She just found that it doesn't work nearly as well as expected when you accidentally have the top-down broiler at the top of the oven running in addition to the oven itself."

Taylor winced at that. "Yeah, that could be a problem." Deciding to bite the proverbial bullet, she then took a sip from the bottle she'd been given. "Huh. Banana Smoothie Beer? Wouldn't have expected it to work, but it does."

"Woah," someone called from across the room. "Did she say banana smoothie?"

Another voice immediately followed that. "Why do the kids get free awesome-sounding beer?"

Lacey snorted, turning towards the rest of the room even as Amy took a sip from her bottle. "My business partners get to try things to give me an honest opinion. Besides, Taytay here is like a niece to me, so I'm allowed to spoil her."

There was some grumbling at that, but not much. Taylor personally suspected that it wouldn't take long for the 'business partner' bit to get out. The 'like a niece' part was probably going to be less explosive, comparatively speaking. Actually, that might blunt the business partner bit a little, being considered 'family' and all.

"Not bad," Amy finally said. "Especially since it seems like it would qualify as a diet beer, and is oddly nutritious."

"They usually call a low-calorie beer 'light'," Taylor corrected. "Presumably for marketing at this point."

Lacey had turned back to them and was beaming, but there were some shocked whispers from others in the room. Apparently a tasty, nutritious, yet low-calorie beer was big news in this crowd. Amy had a look on her face like she'd just discovered something mildly annoying, but it probably wasn't anything to do with the beer.

"Well you let me know if the beer stays as good as it started," Lacey said after a moment. "I need to get back to work, I'm sure someone will be wanting a refill any time now, and Jim's burger should be up any moment now."

Taylor took another sip of the beer. It was really too bad that Lacey couldn't make this kind of thing without the alcohol. Nodding, she put it down. "So, unless you think there's something better to do, I brought my copy of the builder's plans. Want to look over them?"

Amy blinked and visibly considered that for a moment. "Works for me."

That decided, Taylor pulled the rolled-up bundle of plans out of her utility belt, overhearing at least one 'both belts' comment when she did so, while Amy carefully moved the rose bush out of the way.

They'd looked over the plans for about an hour before they were interrupted. They'd openly commented on some things, but kept a lot of it to communicating over Broadcast Administrator, making it look to bystanders that they were more focused on reading than discussing for the time being. Or at least that was their hope, it was hard to tell if they'd pulled it off successfully or not. Maybe they'd be able to tell based on what PHO said about things later?

The initial plans split the pocket dimension into three strips. If viewed from what they'd called the 'front' (whichever side they decided was the front), the left third was currently flagged to be empty as expansion space. The right third was further split in two. The 'edge' space was rigged for 'slide-out rooms', nine bays all in a row. The first bay contained a stack of three units with power generation, but no roofs or environmental control systems. Two of those were flagged to be built out as a stage and a triage center. The next six bays held stacks of two units each. One was slated to be an emergency medical facility, set up so that you could literally run people straight through it on gurneys. Two others were slated to be bedrooms, with some severe security measures. The last two bays with a single full-height unit each and the 'filled' slots in the rest of the bays would all be skeleton units waiting for a purpose.

Between the bays were hallways and access points for everything, including provisions for humans to be able to walk in from where the hallways met the edges if a portal were to be opened there. Behind them were the hookups and deployment/retrieval systems, the hallways passing by those. Along the top of the back end was a series of channels for moving water and waste around when the slide-out rooms were docked inside the pocket dimension.

The other half of that third was taken up by three houses, with 'yards' between them. One house at either end, up against the outer walls of the pocket dimension, and one in the middle up against the slide-out bays. The two bedroom bays would, in theory, normally be docked next to the central house, marking it as for use by Taylor and Amy when they were staying in the pocket dimension. The other two houses would be for guests. Specifically, Taylor had insisted that they ensure that they could put Ben and Carol a good distance away from each other, just in case. Windows in the houses opened up only onto the 'yards'. What they would do with the yards was undecided, for now they'd be open space.

In the middle third of the space things were split into three as well. The bottom third of that space was actually split between storage, static equipment like power generators and overall environmental systems, and a garage on the bottom edge. The notes said they'd done that because the garage had been rigged with a loading dock, so getting replacement things in and out would be easier. The upper third had a second garage, an operating theater, a firing and tinkertech testing range, and paths going down each side of the third. The garage up there didn't have a loading dock and was more obviously for visitors, specifically seeming to be targeting getting people in and out of the operating theater.

Speaking of the operating theater, it took up the full height of the space mostly because Amy had insisted that any such space be able to automatically clean and sterilize itself to the best of their ability, coupled with what was needed to make it modular. There would be at least two dozen configurations for various things, including basic tinkering while inside, with prep and recovery hospital style rooms off to the side. The whole thing could also be locked down as an independent structure in an emergency.

The middle third was the true 'tinker zone'. A full-height greenhouse would sit along the top half of it, set up so they could add or remove walkways and hanging platforms for various purposes. Then the bottom half would have two floors. The top floor would have a smaller greenhouse and a multiple configuration tinker workshop similar to those placed in many PRT and Protectorate facilities for visiting tinkers. That included some raw material storage. The bottom floor would have storage rooms and tanks for tinkering and greenhouse supplies, plus some of the storage for certain elements of the multiple configuration tinker workshop.

All in all it looked reasonable, though both girls had already noted the lack of a price indication on anything when they were pulled away from the plans by an approaching snark. Even that wouldn't have been enough, but the snark approaching the pub itself had their attention. That the bearer of said snark tried, and failed, to 'slam the door open' to make their entrance gave them a wonderful excuse to look at said person.

"What brings the infamous Alabaster to my humble pub?" Lacey asked the powers-created albino man.

Alabaster growled. "I haven't been drunk since I triggered. I'm hoping that someone who specializes in alcohol can find a way around my powers treating alcohol like a poison."

"Come on over and we'll see what I can do."

Taylor looked over at Amy.

Taylor: Think we should see if we can help him get drunk?

Amy: Why? He's a Nazi.

Taylor: Well, for one, if she pulls it off even once he's probably going to not want to help attack the place later, in hopes that she can do it again.

Amy: Okay...

Taylor: For two, if he's a talkative drunk he may spill all kinds of useful secrets in a way that can be used by others, without anything being able to be traced back to us getting them out of him.

Amy: Ahhhh. That sounds like a good plan. I wonder if that's why the Empire is rumored to run their own bars, to keep the loose lips contained better?

Taylor left Amy musing about that and popped open a new channel to Alabaster's snark.

Taylor: Hello there!

[Annoyance]

The connection snapped closed, and Taylor frowned slightly. That was rude. She opened it up again.

Taylor: That isn't nice. I just want to help your human get 'drunk', like he wants to.

[...Query]

Amy: Yes, that's where he drinks what could be considered to be a mild poison until it affects his judgement.

[...Annoyance. Query]

Taylor: Er, yes, people do tend to act differently when drunk.

[Dismay]

Taylor blinked. Alabaster's snark had disconnected again, but apparently wanted Alabaster to get drunk...if only so that the man would do something different. But, it had just admitted that it couldn't do anything to let him get drunk, because it had configured such that it had to reverse poisonings, no matter how desired.

But, that seemed like an interesting distinction. Reverse, as undoing the damage that had been inflicted. Not remove. From an outside point of view the distinction might not be important, but if there wasn't a set template to reset the man to, perhaps so that he would continue to age and need to do things like eat? Taylor got an odd look from Amy as she opened the connection one more time, the other girl obviously having thought they weren't going to get any further.

Taylor: Hello again. What if we use up all of your attention so that he has time to get drunk with you not being able to do anything about it?

[Contemplation]

Taylor and Amy both turned to watch as Lacey started mixing a drink. Taylor, at least, was fairly certain that more alcohol was ending up in the volume than should be possible. Either that or she didn't have a good grasp of how fluids interacted when mixed, since she recalled that sometimes things slipped into the existing gaps or something like that to take up less volume, though at a higher density overall, than they'd had separated. Even if that was true, she didn't think that mixing what looked like two different 230 milliliter or so servings of vodka together into a 350 milliliter beer should come out to only around 500 milliliters.

[Agreement]

Taylor: Just the once for now, eh? Okay with me. I'll start opening connections before he starts drinking.

Grinning a little, she did just that, and felt Amy helping. They were going slowly enough to hopefully not cause 'pain' from slamming the other snark too hard, but were trying to go fast enough to finish before Alabaster downed the drink.

"Okay bud," Lacey said, taking a final look at the glass she'd just finished mixing everything into. "If this doesn't work then either I need to brew something up special just for you, or nothing will ever work."

Alabaster looked at the drink, frowned, and pulled a bill out of his wallet, dropping it on the counter next to the drink. "If this works you can keep the change, otherwise I'm gonna want a discount."

BA: Error: Connection Refused. Target has insufficient resources

Just in time, as Alabaster grabbed the drink and chugged it. He then put the glass down, frowning at first. A few seconds later he started grinning. "Whaddya know, it might actually be working. The burning sensation hasn't vanished yet."

Taylor made a point of going back to looking over the plans, prompting Amy to do so as well. They'd hold the blocking connections open until the man was drunk, and somewhat hope that he was talkative.

Sadly, over the following forty-five minutes or so it became obvious that Alabaster was an unpredictable drunk. He seemed to bounce between elated, angry, and competitive without any rhyme or reason. Near the end of that his snark forcibly closed all the extra connections, but Alabaster didn't sober up with his power active again. Instead, he wandered outside to play a game of some kind, though nobody was sure what that game was.

Shrugging, Taylor and Amy packed up, told Lacey that the beer she'd given them had been good from start to finish, and then left. They passed Alabaster fumbling with his phone, hopefully calling for someone to come get him until he sobered up in a few hours.

Fortuna frowned as she tried to figure out why the third instance of Adam wasn't acting properly. The programming should have him darting across the hall, spinning left, and then entering the hidden flap without impacting anything. But he kept missing. He made it in, yes, but not noiselessly like she wanted. Her agent insisted that it was fine, not giving her any assistance in changing the programmed movements. And if she changed them herself it suddenly told her she needed to change them back, coupled with the rest of the sequence being broken if she didn't.

It was quite annoying, and she still had to finish setting up the last instance of the twins. Not to mention install the data tap on the security system in the other building so she could more easily grab the security camera footage. Grumbling, she collected the speaker and brought it back down to the room it would be starting from, carefully putting it back in the launching unit. She'd let her agent have this one. Perhaps it knew something she didn't?

That done, she grabbed the cart she had the equipment for the last instance of the twins stacked on. Getting them to 'throw' the net was an interesting problem, but she had everything she needed to solve it. Really, it was amazing how much she was getting out of the speakers, but she also knew that she was going to have to finish up with them before things got too out of hand. Luckily, she was already cleared to work on the final big run, she just had to convince her helpers.

She didn't think that would be hard at all.

It turned out that Alabaster had pretty much stolen the show at the pub, so very little had made it to PHO regarding the two girls. Apparently none of the patrons had internet access at the time and were only posting when they got home. Instead, discussion of the new parahuman-owned pub in town had gone down the road of 'holy crap, Alabaster got drunk there' with lots of speculation on the 'how' side of things. It was odd, really, since none of the pictures posted of Alabaster succumbing to the drink actually caught the two girls in frame. Which was probably lucky, all things considered. Less attention on them for now.

One of the things that Taylor felt vindicated on was her assumption that the drink mixing had been impossible under normal circumstances. Someone had recorded it, measurements were extracted, and someone else then explained why it was impossible. Namely, she'd gotten too much liquid into the volume, somehow. Powers, what can you do? But they also explained that at reasonable levels you could combine things to have less volume than they started with, which meant Taylor hadn't been fully misremembering things.

Of course, there was still one mystery that the two hadn't been able to solve. Amy's copies of the plans didn't seem to list any prices either, estimated or otherwise, and she hadn't knowingly left hers where someone else would've been going through them. Which meant that they had to send a message off to the group asking about that and contracts, because neither packet seemed to contain even a mention of any of that.

In the meantime the two were both relaxing at home watching the news, though Taylor was working her way through intro to psychology stuff as well. They were mainly wanting to see if anything about them being at the pub appeared on the news, otherwise they probably wouldn't have bothered. So far the majority of things was speculation on all kinds of things related to the excitement at the meet and greet.

"Hello," Danny called as he entered. "Catching up on the excitement you participated in?"

"Hi dad," Taylor replied. "And more wondering if our visit to the pub will come up. So far it isn't looking like it."

"Ahhh. I heard that there some something 'big' that happened, but didn't get any details. Was that you visiting?"

"No, that was probably Alabaster's visit. Which happened while we were there, granted. He challenged Lacey to find a way to get him drunk, since his powers treat alcohol as poison and undo the effects."

Danny snorted. "Did it work?"

"Probably wouldn't have, but Amy and I helped things along. I was hoping that he'd be a talkative drunk, but he wasn't. Besides, he wanted to be drunk, and if Lacey appears to have done it once then even if it doesn't work later he'll probably just assume that his power worked around it or something. Less likely for the Nazis to attack the pub if one of their capes likes the place."

"Okay, that's pretty good thinking. Now, your uncle should be back somewhat shortly, I dragged him off to get a rental car. Which took longer than expected due to poor selection. We had to drive out a bit further than expected to find an available car with a back seat. He's picking up pizza and wings on his way back."

Kara frowned as she settled into the secure room they'd assigned her in the Protectorate Headquarters ENE. Or, as Assault had called it, the Rig, even if that had gotten a scowl from her escort. Tomorrow she would meet Miss Hebert, who was either in the running for 'scariest parahuman on the planet' or was terribly misunderstood. She wasn't ruling out 'all of the above' either, because scary yet misunderstood would be just as valid. She still didn't know why they wanted a Ward involved, though.

Still, she was also told that she'd be put through power testing, again with Miss Hebert present for whatever reason. Maybe the girl's work with parahuman psychology gave better results when she could see the parahuman using their powers? Or maybe there was something else going on that wasn't obvious on the surface. Either way, it was an opportunity to tinker with better gear than she normally used, and she should probably have some ideas for what to build. Preferably something that wasn't liable to obliterate a city, for example.

She moved over to the desk in the room, looking for a pen and paper. New notebooks would need to be obtained at some point, since she'd filled her last one on the trip to Brockton Bay, but that could wait. They were sticking her in an apartment near the PRT building after they were done tomorrow, after all. Luckily they had included a pad of paper and a few pens in the desk, though hidden in a drawer, so she had something to work with.

"They've asked me to play primary therapist for you tomorrow," Jacob said as they started cleaning up after dinner. "A combination of getting us able to work our powers near each other and getting the best picture possible on the patient."

Taylor nodded. "I guess that makes sense. It was different when you weren't clamping down on your snark when keeping Ben and Garnet calm. We did our best to not pick up on your memories, but the bleed-through on everyone else was odd."

Jacob raised an eyebrow. "Bleed-through?"

"My snark was able to monitor everything your snark was getting. Yours lives up to the designation 'Broadcast', and mine has a compatible receiver and a copy of your snark's software set. So even if mine isn't configured to do what yours does, it picks up on yours doing its thing."

"That's bullshit. Why can't mine do the same thing with you?"

"Because the copy only went one way, presumably? Also, I think my snark thinks yours is horribly inefficient when it comes to the communication thing, which is why we're picking up on what you're doing."

[Query]

BA: Argument

[...Confusion]

BA: Data

Amy: That was a horrible analogy.

Taylor: I don't think it was supposed to be an analogy. Calling what Broadcast Administrator does firing a bullet with the other snark's name on it while what Broadcast does lobbing a grenade in the general direction of the other snark would be closer.

[Query]

Taylor: Because you're wasting energy? Narrow the energy stream and aim it accurately and you can get the same end result without letting everyone else know what you're doing.

BA: Data. Elaboration

[Annoyance]

Amy: Recalibrating shouldn't be that bad, should it? You already do more precision with the whole blade extension thing, right?

[...Realization]

There was a pause, before Jacob sighed. "Why do I suddenly get the feeling that my power is trying to go from grenades to bullets?"

Taylor shrugged. "Apparently it's locked onto that analogy now that it realizes that it's been improving the efficiency of part of what it does without applying the lessons learned to other parts. Now it just needs to translate them appropriately?"

Danny snorted. "Something that your powers already did, apparently?"

"I think mine already had some of that down. It had to learn to target very specific snarks on a regular basis? Uncle Jacob's, on the other hand, seems like it was normally used for more general, and less secure, communications. Or at least that's the impression I'm getting, some of it's redacted in annoying ways."

Jacob grumbled and threw the paper towel he'd wiped the counter down with out. "No wonder things occasionally go freaky on runs. I must be sending everyone's plans out to everyone else at times. That group of thinkers we ran into back on that visit to Fresno were probably getting our plans even as I got theirs or something."

Danny sighed as Jacob headed for the living room, then turned to Taylor. "He and his power are going to be trying to figure out how to control that better now, aren't they?"

Taylor nodded. "Most likely. Though he may be out of luck if his snark can't adjust its configuration to take advantage of the revelation. Might only apply to others who get bits of his snark in the future."

Interlude: Alabaster's Adventures George sighed as he pulled up to where they'd dropped Alabaster off earlier. It looked like the cape had finally found someone who could get him drunk. Lucky, they weren't allowed to get drunk when they were playing driver for the man.

"How long do you think this'll last?" Fred asked.

George shrugged. "No clue. I'm more interested in whether or not it's repeatable. This might become a weekly visit if it is."

They waited for the cape to climb into the back. "To Medhall!"

Fred sighed. "Kaiser doesn't want us going to Medhall openly, you know that."

"No no no," the cape interrupted. "Not, like, to to it. Just nearby. I'm gonna climb that thing."

George shared a look with his brother, then looked in the rear view mirror. "Are you sure, sir?"

"Yep. Hop to it!"

Well, at least tonight wasn't going to be boring?

"He's gotten better over the last two hours," Fred remarked as they moved to the crater where Alabaster had most recently landed.

George nodded. "Yeah, he made it a good distance up that time."

"I'm bored," Alabaster said as he stood up. "I think it's time to go do something else."

"Er, yes sir," George said, gesturing towards where they'd parked. "We're parked over there. Where to this time?"

They successfully got into the car before the cape had made up his mind. "I want to fight a janitor."

"A janitor?"

"An asian janitor! They can always fight, right?"

Fred snorted. "In movies, maybe."

That didn't deter the cape, so off they went to find an asian janitor. It took an hour, but they found a uniformed janitor outside of one of Lung's brothels, having a smoke break. Alabaster threw the door open and dove out without even waiting for them to stop. He also did so into oncoming traffic, ignored that he'd just been hit by a frickin' truck, and ran at the janitor.

Turned out that drunken Alabaster would likely lose a battle with anyone, with the exception of the whole feeling no pain and coming back after being healed every few seconds bits. The janitor was visibly horrible at fighting, but Alabaster couldn't get a hit in. This was made worse when a little girl came out of a nearby building and took over for the janitor, beating the crap out of Alabaster repeatedly. Really, the kid was obviously trained in some form of martial arts when the janitor hadn't been.

George decided that it was time to step in the fifth time Alabaster got his neck snapped by the kid. Though he had to admit that the flying roundhouse had been an impressive way to deal with being thrown into the air. "Come on man, I think that's enough for today."

"You want in on this?" the girl asked as she ducked under one of Alabaster's punches.

Fred shook his head and held up his hands. "No no, that's all on his drunk ass. We're just responsible for keeping an eye on him until Kaiser finds out that he's being an idiot. Doctor doesn't want me fighting, not until I recover from being stabbed anyway. Might pull the stitches and all."

The girl gave Alabaster a nut shot to zero effect before putting him in a choke hold. That he couldn't get out of despite outmassing the kid quite a bit. Man did he suck at fighting while drunk. Sadly, choking him didn't work well, and she sighed. She let him go, then pushed him at George and Fred. "Okay, he's boring." She then turned around and went back to the building she'd come out of before Alabaster could figure out what just happened.

George needed a drink. And oh look, he was standing outside of a bar. Of course, the bar was closed, and he'd be strung up by his unmentionables if he actually drank 'on the job'. So instead he was stuck watching Alabaster play chicken with cars. And motorcycles. He'd lost his head to a chain from a biker a few minutes prior, but the biker hadn't come back around to see the kill not stick.

Of course, Fred claimed that the cape was actually trying to time things to jump up and over the vehicles without actually taking damage. If so he was doing a horrible job of it. But he was drunk, so perhaps that was to be expected. Either way it was annoying, and the blood stain on the street just grew with every failure.

"Think he's immune to hangovers?" Fred asked.

George scoffed. "Of course he's immune to hangovers. No pain, remember? I'm just wondering how long it'll take him to sober up."

"I'm bored," Alabaster said a couple of minutes later, causing the two to look at him in horror. That's what he'd said before deciding on the current course of action, after all. "Let's go to...storage center three, I think."

George didn't want to know, but he figured he had to ask. "Why?"

"Fireworks."

This was going to suck, wasn't it?

Sunday morning George showed up for work, expecting a sober Alabaster that was smug about not having a hangover. He and Fred had passed the cape into Hookwolf's care late last night, after he'd confronted them about why Alabaster was shoving rockets up his ass.

Sadly, he found Fred wide-eyed. "What's wrong?"

Fred shuddered. "Alabaster wants to ride on top of the car. He's still drunk. Somehow. Apparently he spent the whole night fighting some of Hookwolf's meaner dogs."

That sounded absolutely horrible. What had the alcohol tinker done to the man?

George had bought a bag of popcorn for himself. Fred had opted for a bag of beef jerky. They were eating their respective snacks while watching Alabaster climb a telephone pole. For whatever reason he'd declared that to be his next task. Of course, this was one of those poles that didn't have anything to grab onto, expecting the workers to bring a suitable lift truck or those strap-on spike rigs to climb up. So Alabaster was taking a while.

Both of them had finished their snacks when Alabaster finally made it to the top. They then watched as he proceeded to take a shoe off so that he could stick a foot on the neutral insulator, before grabbing one of the hot insulators from the top of the pole. The sound and smell were horrible, and his clothing caught fire as he let go. Apparently he'd picked this pole because he could see fraying in some of the coatings on the wires or something?

He'd 'reset' before he hit the ground, then a couple seconds afterwards was climbing back to his feet. He looked around, frowning. "Where'd my shoe go?"

"You left it up there," Fred helpfully answered, pointing to where the shoe was stuck on the crossarm.

They were thus treated to another hour and a half of the cape climbing the pole. He then apparently decided that if he was back up there anyway that he should see if doing the whole bit with making a circuit was still a thing. It wasn't, he'd blown a transformer somewhere the first time.

Chapter 188 Sunday morning Taylor and Amy arrived at the PRT building with each other, largely by chance. Today they ended up working out alone, no PRT staff joining them and the other Wards not showing up in time. When they were done Taylor whipped up a quick breakfast for the two of them, and then they took her platform over to the Rig.

Amy went to check on Mary and Tori while Taylor went to check in with Colin regarding what was going on with String Theory today. She found him preparing a workshop, and since it wasn't his she figured it was where the power testing was going to happen. She waited for him to finish with a couple of things before entering the workshop proper.

"Good morning Miss Hebert," Colin said as she approached. "Miss Sockhammer will be brought down shortly, would you like to observe from inside the workshop or from the observation area next door?"

Taylor shrugged. "Not sure it matters which, or even if I'm 'observing'."

"We have to keep up appearances, which means keeping you in the workshop or in the observation area. Being in the workshop and being able to ask questions or offer advice based on your apparent observations could be helpful to the entire process. At the same time it could raise questions with Miss Sockhammer that you don't want to answer. Which way we go is up to you."

"Ahhh. When you put it that way, I should probably be in the observation area. Wouldn't want to accidentally reveal that I know too much about what she's doing."

Colin nodded. "I don't suppose you can go over and start making whatever notes you can on Miss Sockhammer's powers. She should be the only unfamiliar parahuman in the Rig right now, at least from your perspective."

"Can do."

A minute later Taylor had a bottle of orange juice and one of the more comfortable chairs in the observation area, the other 'observers' either not having shown up yet or planning on observing remotely. She had a document open on her Maul phone, ready to start throwing notes into, and it felt like Amy was just finishing up with Tori.

Taylor: Any objections to me questioning a snark?

Amy: Nope. Go for it.

Nodding, Taylor reached out to the only snark she hadn't been familiar with.

Taylor: Hello.

[Shock]

Taylor: Sorry, didn't mean to startle you.

[Query]

Taylor: Yes, I'm a host talking to you through my snark.

[Fascination. Query]

BA: Data. Query

[...Data. Elaboration. Query]

BA: Elaboration

S: Correction

BA: Agreement

[Alarm]

BA: Data

UMR: Greetings

{Greetings}

[Intrigue. Query]

BA: Data. Query

Taylor had ended up hastily opening a second document on her personal phone, figuring that some of what was being discussed about snark communication and host restrictions could be useful as well. It was very nice of Broadcast Administrator to remember that the original goal had been to get information on what the other snark was doing for Miss Sockhammer, basically trading information back and forth.

Kara took a deep breath as she was brought to the observation area to be introduced to her observers before power testing. Or at least the local observers, she'd been told that they'd also be recording things and that there might be live observers watching the feeds from elsewhere as well. She knew that Miss Hebert should be involved somehow, and suspected that Armsmaster would be. Outside of them she had no clue.

"Are you prone to fangirl squealing?" the officer leading her to the observation area asked.

Kara blinked, and turned to him. "No, why?"

"Just checking." He then stopped in front of a door. "Here we are." He had the door open a moment later and beckoned Kara to enter.

Taking one more deep breath, she walked through the door and looked at who was in the room. The teenage girl was probably Miss Hebert, Armsmaster was in his power armor. Was that Dragon next to him? She blinked a couple of times, noting but not recognizing the two in lab coats reading something on tablets.

"Good morning Miss Sockhammer," Armsmaster greeted.

"Kara, please," she said, still staring at Dragon.

"Kara then," Dragon said, a smile appearing on her armor. That was awesome in and of itself, to be honest, who else had put that kind of thing on their armor? "I suspect you recognize Armsmaster and I, based on your staring."

Kara blinked, and blushed as she averted her eyes. "Sorry, sorry, just wasn't expecting you to actually be here."

"I recently relocated to Brockton Bay." The tinker then gestured at the teenage girl. "Now then, also observing today are Taylor Hebert, who you may also know as the Ward Maul." Kara nodded, and Dragon continued. "As well as Miss Valencia and Mister Neville, who came in specifically to observe you in person instead of the normal power testers."

That had her raising an eyebrow. "Specifically for me?"

Miss Valencia nodded. "Yes. We've worked with another tinker who builds things on a timer, though much more rigid than your own. They have to build everything in a static fixed time from start to finish, regardless of project. If they deviate more than five minutes from that time then things fail in general."

Well, that made some sense. Better to get people with experience with a variant of her own limitations and all than to start with people with no clue at all.

"Now then," Armsmaster said. "Unless you need something before we begin, I think we'd like to get started." He paused for a moment, waiting for Kara to say something. She didn't, so he continued. "Sadly, we haven't come up with anything specific that we'd like you to build, do you have anything specific you feel would adequately demonstrate your capabilities?"

Kara fidgeted a little. "You probably already know that anything I build has to be used at a specific time, though I can reduce the potency to fudge that a little. Make it so that things can be activated over a time period instead in exchange for a lot less overall power, something that I'd only really figured out in the past year or so when I was thinking about making a prank of sorts that would need to wait for the target to enter the room." She held up the pad of paper she'd brought with her. "Based on what I came up with yesterday, though, I get a tad focused on large-scale things."

Mister Neville held his hand out, and Kara handed him the pad. He flipped through it, flinching several times. He shook his head as he passed it to Miss Valencia. "I don't think any of those are suitable, personally speaking."

Miss Valencia seemed to agree, and Armsmaster and Dragon seemed to be communicating without actually speaking with one another. But it was Miss Hebert who spoke up next.

"You build things that have to be used at a specific time, right?" the girl asked.

Kara nodded. "Yes. And they work once. Reusability isn't exactly a thing for me."

"Can you build a device that, when it activates, does nothing other than build something else that is reusable?"

Everyone turned to look at Miss Hebert for a moment, before they turned to look at Kara, obviously wanting to hear the answer. Kara blinked a couple of times, thinking. "Huh. That just might work. But what should I try for?"

"Start simple with a power generator or similar. Something that you can use to help build more things in the future?"

Kara nodded at that, it made sense. And she was starting to see how things would come together for it, even, the unfolding plans in her head distracting her nicely. "Thank you Miss Hebert. I don't know if I'd have even come up with the concept on my own, and I can tell that there will be some hard limits to it already." For example, she was fairly certain that she had a size limit, and that the end result would be less powerful overall than her one-shot constructions were capable of being. She then turned to the others. "Any objections?"

There weren't any, and a few minutes later she was looking around the workshop they'd prepared. It looked like they had everything she would need and then some. Nodding to herself, she took the time to ensure that some of the tools were laid out as she'd need them before she grabbed a sheet of aluminum and got started.

They sat there in silence for nearly half an hour, watching Kara work. Taylor had switched to going over the things for the driving lessons that would be starting the following day, and Amy was talking with Jacob about Mary and Tori. The actual construction process was being well documented, recorded a half dozen ways at a minimum, and Taylor wasn't trying to get a data feed from Kara's snark. Really, it was 'sit and wait' for now.

"Did you get that idea from her power?" Dragon finally asked.

"Not really," Taylor answered. "I'd finally found some general guidelines for tinker power testing, and concerns about tech that can build more tech were included. Grey goo and other scenarios, such as what seems to be happening in Eagleton. But she builds things that only work once. A one-shot piece of tech that builds another piece of tech didn't seem nearly as troublesome. Just an extended build process, like building single-use tools for building the final item."

Colin snorted. "Figures that you'd use the list of things to be cautious about to find a way to drastically improve her ability to function in society without turning back to villainy. But it makes way too much sense now that you've pointed it out, and isn't that much different than a normal tinker building tools. Hers are just less reusable, and don't have to be built as tools."

"I'm impressed with the detail you went into on her powers," Neville said a moment later. "I'm starting to see why some of the other power testers have been singing your praises in our discussions. We really need to see if we can get you to do that kind of thing a few days before people are tested."

Taylor waved her hand a little dismissively. "I'm not always able to get a lot out of them. Not sure how well I'd have done had there not been a back and forth trade of information because her snark was curious as to how mine had created an intentional bidirectional communication channel. It thought that it wasn't allowed to that degree or something, and started off shocked when I said hello."

There was a pause, before Valencia spoke up. "I don't suppose you documented any of the supposed limits?"

"The think tank already sent me a thank you note, apologizing for not yet knowing how much money they'd be sending me for the information. I got the impression that they want to ask for more, but have been told not to bother me. Or at least it sounded to me like they were trying to work around something like that?"

Colin snorted. "They've made at least a dozen requests to sit down with you and ask questions, and only a couple would require you to be with any of them in person. There's also a standing request for you to try and link a group of thinkers, but they aren't willing to be the test subjects for that. Part of that is that they currently work from around the country and don't want to be in one place without really good reason, of course."

"I already know that thinkers can be pulled in without any problem." There was a moment of silence, and Taylor looked to see everyone staring at her expectantly. "What? The first few contained a non-tinker, namely me, just to start with. I'm not sure if it would be betraying confidences if I pointed out other non-tinkers that I know have participated."

Taylor found Dragon's smirk, unseen by the others, to be somewhat amusing.

Fortuna snacked on her popcorn as she watched the live feeds from the various cameras. The four parahumans were in the middle of a shouting match, since none of them had actually called the meeting they'd all shown up for. She couldn't start the show until number five showed up, though, so was enjoying their frustration. Really, getting them to argue was merely a way to keep them waiting for the fifth, who would've shown up late no matter what. Though watching them likely threaten each other with various things was amusing, she knew that they wouldn't act on any such threats anytime soon. They'd already discovered that some of their abilities worked far too well with one another on the bigger jobs.

Movement on another camera caught her attention, and she smirked. The last of her guests had arrived. She monitored their progress through the facility, and the arguing went silent when the last one entered the room. They had what started as a more civilized discussion, what was said not being important. She could check later just in case, of course, but instead she waited for them to approach yelling again. When they did she reached over, waited a second and a half, then hit the start button for today's sequence.

The arguing stopped again as the opening salvo started up, taunting from the four ducks. None of the ducks were visible yet, it was just their voices going through point-projection speakers. But they didn't need to be visible, after a handful of other runs they were becoming quite well known. Too well known, to be honest. They needed to take a fall before they started getting compared to Scion or the Triumvirate as they took down everyone they targeted. But she had rudimentary plans for that already, so it wouldn't be an issue.

She watched as the five decided to split up, mainly because they refused to work together. Two of them were taken out immediately, one by running face-first into a bar of steel and the other by breaking their ankle when their foot fell through a gap between two boards along the walkway they chose to run down. Neither of which had anything to do with her, and she'd been wondering if she was letting those two get away for some reason when the path hadn't sent any of the ducks after them. Seeing them taken out by elements of the environment that she hadn't even touched was amusing in a way. Sure, neither was a brute, but if they'd been using their powers they'd have been much less likely to go down that easily.

On the other hand, it was a bit anticlimactic to have them taken out by such mundane things. In many ways it would've been better for the narrative if they'd been hunted down by the ducks, led into some form of trap. Instead they looked like bungling idiots. Though in a way that could be used. After all, it could easily be argued that the ducks had noticed what had happened to them, but had to focus on the others who hadn't taken themselves out.

Shaking her head, she moved back to the other three. Betty/Veronica was currently leading one on a silent chase, while the twins had just hit another with a pie to the face. She might have to revisit that idea for the final run, it amused her. Adam was running from and taunting the third. It was enjoyable, watching the scripted events unfold as they moved through the building. The twins crossed over both of the other paths in their mad dash to escape their enraged foe, causing additional confusion, before doubling back and capturing their foe in the weighted net. Which was an insult in and of itself for a parahuman who could turn into liquid. Then again, while they could turn into liquid, and things could move through them, they couldn't force the issue by pushing themselves past something else.

Smirking at that, she focused on Adam. His foe was going to run into a containment foam grenade shortly. She wanted to facepalm as she saw the parahuman chasing him damage the floor during one of his dodges, the end result of which was probably him perfectly slipping through that door she'd been having trouble with. Sometimes her agent's inability to explain why steps were needed was a pain. Still, the door that Adam seemingly had to have vanished behind, somehow, was opened. And the containment foam grenade went off right as expected.

Looking for signs that the man had escaped, and finding none, she turned back to the last chase. Which should be finishing up shortly, but not due to the ducks. Instead she was expecting an interruption to things in the form of...there it was, one baseball bat to the face. Group triggers, the kiss/kill bit, and only one of the group not going villain made for interesting interactions. In this case it should result in a very beaten up villain and an independent that felt a lot better about things for a couple of weeks.

Her laptop beeped a moment later, indicating that the sequence had ended, meaning that it was time to call things in, so she grabbed her cell phone. Once everyone was picked up she'd have to wait half an hour before she could start moving around to collect things. In the meantime she'd start editing things as best she could.

Taylor had paused her reading of things to watch as Kara finished her work. The tinker backed away from her crab-like creation mere seconds before it activated on its own, several parts glowing as they powered up. Moments later it stood up and arms started grabbing materials from the area, Kara having to duck under a couple of them, and began assembling a new creation in the middle of the 'legs'. Bright flashes of light flew out as things were flash-formed into shape in various ways, the various components almost falling into place in the process. It'd taken two hours to build the original device, and twenty minutes for it to build the power generator. When it was done it moved off to the side, dropped to the floor, and then melted for ten seconds or so.

It wasn't going to be used a second time, that was for sure.

They watched as Kara carefully approached the generator, having apparently disregarded the crab-like machine that had built it as worthless now. She circled it a couple of times, tapped it in several places, then hit a couple of buttons on the control panel. A very slight whine could be heard for a few seconds as it powered up, and then it was silent. The glowing pulses from it the only sign that it was now running, instead of dormant.

"She gets very close to a fugue state when tinkering," Dragon finally said. "I wasn't sure at first, but looking for it I could see the change in her body language when she was done. I'd be willing to bet that adding in flexibility in timing causes her to force herself further away from a fugue state, which would help explain her described reduced potency in her creations."

"I hadn't noticed," Colin admitted. "But I trust your judgement there."

"More importantly, I think I know how that generator works, though figuring out the specifics for building it will be harder. Even with the sensor systems recording as much as possible."

Shortly after that Taylor was brought over to the workshop, though she wasn't sure why they wanted her in there with Kara present instead of taking a look afterwards. She let the two Protectorate tinkers talk to Kara while she looked at the crab-like construction. It'd been fairly reasonably straightforward, but was now a useless pile of scrap. But it was how it'd been reasonably straightforward that was interesting. It wasn't a machine capable of building a power generator. Not exactly. It was a short-term snark interface, and the snark had built the power generator using it.

She then moved over and circled the generator, letting her tinker snark examine it. As far as she could tell it was a perfectly normal piece of technology, and she started up a file to document what she could on it. Output parameters, fuel, access panels, how the control panel worked. It was all very straightforward, and most of it should be easy enough for anyone to figure out, but better documented while she was there then needing to come back later.

"If the control panel wasn't incredibly obvious I wouldn't have known how to turn it on at all," Kara was explaining as Taylor circled back to them. "You'd think I would need a clue about how the thing works, since I built the thing that built it and that's all it did."

"We've been humbled by just how little tinkers actually know about what they do recently," Colin explained. "So it isn't a surprise at all. We should have enough information to provide a basic usage manual by the end of the day, if you'd like one."

"I think I'd like that, thank you. Er, on was fairly obvious, any chance you can figure out how to turn it off now?"

In response to that, Taylor reached over to the control panel. A moment later the generator started to shut itself down, and she documented how that was working to be complete.

Kara was standing there blinking. "How did you know how to do that?"

Taylor shrugged. "The button was labeled with the same on/off symbol as our old desktop computer at home, implying that it was a toggle." She didn't need to explain that she was probably the one writing the manual that Colin had just offered and all, not when it was that obvious anyway. Though Kara might not get the full thing, they might have someone else pull out specific sections or something.

"Oh."

Taylor joined Amy and Jacob for lunch, leaving Kara to talk tinker stuff with Dragon and Colin. The two visiting testers had joined them, more listening in than participating. It was a toss-up as to whether or not Kara realized that her power testing wasn't actually over or not. Oh well. Wasn't her problem at this point.

"So you think it'll be safe for Mary and Tori to be woken up by Tuesday?" Taylor asked between bites of chicken.

"Yeah," Amy replied with a slight nod. "Their bodies are coming along nicely, though I expect they'll have problems with walking and such after so long. Not sure how they'll react to waking up though. We aren't sure what kind of mental stimulation they've had, they might still be children mentally, stuck in the bodies of teenagers. Hopefully it won't be enough for them to trigger."

Jacob straightened up at that. "Wait wait, trigger?"

Amy nodded more deeply at that. "At some point overnight they obtained a corona pollentia each. They thus have the potential to trigger, but I can't tell you if they'd be first generation or not. Fairly certain that it isn't a single snark watching both of them, since that doesn't seem to be how they work normally, but outside of that I've got no ability to tell. Could be that their father's snark split in two and they each have a piece, only one of them got his snark and the other got a fresh one, or neither got his snark. Lots of options, no way to tell, since we can't communicate with the snarks waiting for a trigger event."

"Wouldn't that be a security nightmare," Taylor noted, causing the other two to look at her. "What? Being able to identify every parahuman and every potential parahuman around us? How many groups would literally kill to either have or keep others from having access to that kind of trick?"

Jacob grimaced. "Yes, that does sound absolutely plausible. As soon as it got out there'd be an all out war for control over such an ability, and I doubt the one holding it would come out the victor."

They sat there in silence for a few minutes before Taylor sighed. "So, how are we doing this therapy session?"

Jacob rolled his eyes. "I'm fairly certain that you've been involved with enough to have a basic clue."

"You're the licensed therapist, I'm at best a therapist intern from that point of view. I can consult on the powers front, but I've covered a lot of that during the power testing anyway. Not all of it, granted, but a lot of it."

"Okay, you may have a point there. I'm still putting you in the hot seat, if only because I cheat too much and she shouldn't be nearly as bad as those I normally work with. I'll obviously step in if you're doing horribly, of course."

Taylor glared at her uncle, but that wasn't enough to get him to do much of anything. So instead she figured she'd try arguing from a logic point of view. "And why should Kara get the 'intern' when she's expecting a proper psychiatric evaluation? Wouldn't that be unfair to her?"

"I'm sure you'll do far better than you're thinking, and I doubt she'll have a problem with it. After all, you're probably less intimidating than I am anyway. But I suppose it would be a good idea to ask her first..."

Kara entered the Rig's 'therapy area' that Dragon had brought her to, very nervous. Miss Hebert hadn't been that scary during the power testing, but she hadn't done much then either. Now the girl was going to be helping her uncle, the famous Jacob, poke around in her head. Still, they weren't currently enemies, right? So she didn't have to worry about being exploded or anything crazy like that. In theory. Assuming the exploding bit wasn't just Glaistig trying to make her more nervous than she would otherwise have been, anyway.

Really, you'd think that 'exploded a parahuman' would've made the news somewhere. But she'd checked, and couldn't find any indications that the girl had made anyone explode. Plenty of references to things such as what she could apparently do with a handgun, but nothing that had her actually blowing anyone up. From a distance or otherwise. After all, it wasn't like she'd even killed the woman who'd been the Butcher, right? Just somehow improbably killed the Butcher directly.

Taking a couple of deep breaths to calm herself, she looked around the outer area. She assumed that the other two were in the inner area, which appeared to be through doors that weren't able to be locked. Appearances could, of course, be deceiving, but Dragon had said that she could leave at any time and the other two wouldn't follow her without her own permission. Steeling herself, she walked forward and opened the inner doors, finding a standard looking therapist office with two others sitting in it already.

"Good afternoon Miss Sockhammer," the man, Jacob, greeted. "I'm told you've already met my niece, Taylor?"

"Good afternoon," Kara replied. "And yes, we met this morning."

"I'm sure you've heard wonderful things about me, but I'd honestly like to see my niece in action. She's done well with a few others that I'd worked with, you see, but I wasn't able to observe her in action in those instances. I know she isn't actually qualified to be a therapist, but I trust that she won't bungle things too badly and I'll be monitoring anyway. Do you have any objections?"

Yes Kara had objections. She didn't want the girl who had possibly blown up a cape poking around in her head like that, so to speak. Wait, didn't Glaistig also mention blowing up a faerie, the word she used for powers? That was even worse! But it probably wouldn't look good if she said no to what sounded like such a simple thing, right? Damn. She swallowed out of nervousness, suppressing a shudder. "That'll be fine."

It wasn't long before she was sitting across from the girl, who seemed to have picked up on her nervousness. But there wasn't any way she could know why she was nervous, right?

Taylor turned to her uncle once Kara had been picked up out of the outer portion of the therapist office. "Why the hell did you let that happen despite knowing that she's terrified of me?"

"It went exceptionally well," Jacob defended. "Far better than I was expecting. I'm thinking that one, two more sessions like that tops and I'll have everything I need for the report for her appeal process. Just need to give her a couple of days to recover. Maybe pick things up again on Wednesday?"

"That isn't an answer."

"She's confronting fears, which will be important if she's ever asked to participate in one of the tinker fugues. Besides, she isn't going to go far if she's afraid of an outed Ward, regardless of what you did or didn't do to the Butcher." Taylor gave her uncle a flat stare at that. "Er, was that what she was afraid of? You get some of these things a lot more clearly than I do, even if it's my powers pulling them..."

"Someone told her about what happened back in May."

It was obvious that her uncle needed a moment to figure out what she was talking about, but it was obvious that he had when his eyes narrowed. "I see. I'm going to have to figure out who, I think. And I suppose that I'll sit down with her before bringing you in on Wednesday, see if I can clear things up there."

"You do that. I'm going to go hunt down some ice cream. And charge it to your account for putting us both through that."

She wasn't sure if her uncle had even noted what she'd said, probably lost in planning what he'd do to whoever it was that had blabbed things. She left him to it, heading for the nearest cafeteria. When they'd been in it for lunch she'd noticed that they'd had death by tinker chocolate ice cream, and had only not gotten some due to not having time to enjoy it. Hopefully they hadn't sold out since then.

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Topic: Maul's True Power In: Boards ► Places ► America ► Brockton Bay Bagrat (Original Poster) (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)
Posted On Aug 4th 2011:
As you all likely know, I like being "The Guy in the Know". I've even got the tag to prove it. As such, it rankles when I'm not in the know, and when it comes to Maul there's a lot that nobody seems to know.

If she were a villain we'd be discouraged from talking about things too much, because villains tend to get 'cranky' when you tear apart their powers. Luckily, Maul is a Ward, and the PRT encourages us to tear apart powers in the hopes that we spot something that they didn't. So I'm likely free from angry cape retribution for this. Yay!

Maul, I still ask that you please not hurt me. ;)

So, in theory we know little to nothing about what Maul is truly capable of. We have an official source in the PRT's page for Maul. The PRT admits that she has blaster abilities through the projection of things, though they sensibly haven't been forthcoming with details. The PRT also admits that she's a low-level brute. Of course, the PRT admits that she has access to more tinkertech than any non-tinker has any right to carry, but doesn't say she is a tinker. Finally, the PRT admits that she has an odd immunity to master and stranger tricks that influence her mind.

All together, this doesn't even begin to explain other things, and only barely sheds lights on others in concerning ways.

The anti master/stranger interaction could probably be seen as a reason for her to have "heard" Leviathan, especially if the Endbringers try and make people nervous before their attacks. Which is concerning in and of itself, because it implies that at least Leviathan also has a master ability. I'd almost expect it from Ziz, of course, but Leviathan?

Of course, then we consider that she killed the Butcher. Not the current host of the Butcher, but the actual "jump to the person who killed my host" Butcher. That is, in and of itself, freaky in ways that normal parahuman powers aren't. From that we learned that other powers interact with Maul's oddly.

Then there were unproven rumors that Maul had 'cowed' Eidolon at some point. They'd have likely stayed rumors, except that she recently knocked Eidolon out, sending him into a coma that he's expected to take weeks to recover from. Note, though, that they blame this in part on his ego. And if we believe some people, his ego manifests in the 'aura of power' he's been known to exert. Something very similar to Glory Girl's aura...and we now know how that interacted with Maul's power.

I also considered the credible rumors that Maul's powers have nothing directly to do with her strength, but rather that tinkers were involved. Which brings us back to wondering where all the tinkertech comes from, of course.

In the end, looking over things, I believe that I may very well have come up with a true set of powers for the outed Ward.

First, she's obviously a blaster. We see that often enough to know it's a constant thing.

Second, tinker-produced or not, she's a brute. She's too strong and durable to be anything else.

Third, and where I think everything else comes together, I think she's an uncontrolled, low-level trump whose powers interact with other powers in unpredictable ways.

The final power there is where most of my theories come together. She's immune to most master and stranger tricks because her power interacts with theirs. She has a pile of tinkertech because something about her powers interacts with tinkers, possibly opening up new avenues of exploration for them in the process. That could very well be paid off with gifts, explaining all of her tinkertech. She spent significant time in the hospital, being healed by Panacea, and that discussion thread started noticing that the healer started to look less stressed at that time.

We can even use this theory to explain a couple of other things. For example, she's great at parahuman psychology, right? What if she's figuring things out based on how her power is interacting with others? Observing differences in people while her power is interacting with them could lead to all kinds of fun revelations.

This probably means that if you're not a parahuman then Maul isn't all that scary. Well, so long as you avoid getting into a gunfight with her, anyway. Those don't look like they'd end well.

I invite people to poke holes in my theory, because I'd rather be correctly in the know than unknowingly wrong.

Edit: I've been informed that my theory doesn't explain how Maul apparently communicated with Leviathan. That she so casually referred to the Endbringer as a she, however, doesn't surprise me nearly as much for some reason.

Edit 2: I've linked my various references in above instead of in a block at the end of the post, since they make more sense in context.

Edit 3: As much as it pains me to admit this, XxVoid_CowboyxX made a really good argument for the interactions with other powers sometimes being permanent. More specifically, for those who have him blocked, he proposed that Leet/Reknit may not have been able to repair things until Maul interacted with him. I must recommend that people unblock XxVoid_CowboyxX at least long enough to read his post on the subject as a result.

Do ignore his post nine or so further down the thread where he gets threadbanned for sticking his foot in his mouth. Again.

(Showing page 78 of 79)

►DrowningInDebt Replied On Aug 7th 2011:
Would you stop bringing up the idiocy that got him threadbanned? Yes, it happened. We're trying to discuss the oddly insightful post he made here before that.

►Rupin2nd Replied On Aug 7th 2011:
Looking over things, I suspect that Void might be onto something.

We know that Glory Girl got her aura shut down, and now reportedly spends less time flying. And dodging, for that matter, but that could just be a side effect of less flying. And her aura is supposedly just plain gone most of the time. What if that's an actual change in her powers?

►Nazumi Replied On Aug 7th 2011:
Somehow I think the PRT would be willing to admit that she randomly breaks other powers, if only because who knows what she'd be doing to the other Wards. It would be too obvious. So either it's incredibly targeted or something else is going on.

No, I don't have any other explanations. It just seems ridiculous that she breaks every power but those on her team.

►Double Ditto Done Replied On Aug 7th 2011:
does anyone have any idea how the ducks fit into all of this? because they have to fit in somewhere

►SandwichMaker Replied On Aug 7th 2011:
I've got another one for everyone.

The ABB Tracking Thread noticed Oni Lee's behavior changing quite a bit after the infamous Kyushu interview.

Could he have run into Maul around that time?

Actually, Lung giving that description seems like a change in things in and of itself.

►MamaMia Replied On Aug 7th 2011:
So, if Maul's powers do interact with others randomly then she's probably a trump...four, perhaps?

Jump that up to at least six if sometimes things are permanent.

Add two to four if she has any control at all. Probably. We don't have a lot of evidence either way on that front.

►RegretfulDrinker Replied On Aug 7th 2011:
So, was going back over Maul's history and correlating events.

She visited Cornell after tinkertech bombs went off.

Brockton Bay got an explosives-focused tinker shortly after that.

We already speculated that the two were related (largely over here), but could Maul have converted Countdown to heroism with a power interaction?

►StargazingDonut Replied On Aug 7th 2011:
No, I don't have any other explanations. It just seems ridiculous that she breaks every power but those on her team.

No no, that actually sounds like the kind of bullshit some powers get into. If she wasn't defining Eidolon as "on my team" at the time for some reason?

►Chartman (Not a cape) (Cape Husband)
Replied On Aug 7th 2011:
I just took a quick look over some of my timelines.

Since Taylor Hebert triggered, Brockton Bay has had:
1 - A team of small-time criminals, the Undersiders, convert to heroism.
2 - One of their major gangs lost at least four capes, and suspiciously similar capes showed up elsewhere on the hero side. More conversions?
3 - Another conversion from a gang, shortly before said gang imploded and was wiped out.
4 - An independent quasi-villain converted.
5 - Unconfirmed rumors have another visiting team having converted form villain to hero as well.

This is after the closest they got to anything similar for years being Shadow Stalker, aka Sophia Hess, who was involved in what is suspected to be Maul's trigger event.

I don't think that's a coincidence. Are people jumping ship to be "on her team"? Minion-gathering without actually needing to master anyone.

►TurnipDreams Replied On Aug 7th 2011:
If we're assuming that she breaks powers, and sometimes those changes are permanent, maybe the ducks can be explained.

She broke someone's power, making it more useful somehow, then they 'joined up' long enough to stabilize things in the broken form. Once they'd stabilized they headed out on their own.

End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 76, 77, 78

(Showing page 79 of 79)

►Talking Ferret Replied On Aug 7th 2011:
Have the villains in town figured most of this out already? They don't seem to ever want to fight her...

►FreedomInChains Replied On Aug 7th 2011:
wait wait wait

people say that having powers involved in your trigger event is one of the best ways to get powers that affect powers

did hess use her powers when helping maul trigger

►SugarplumGunk Replied On Aug 7th 2011:
Hey, I just had a thought. If she has freaky power interactions and all, is that how she out-drank Lung? Temporarily caused his power to not work, or not be able to sober him up, or something?

Hell of a coincidence if it's really random and she has no control, but if it subtly aims to help her then I could see it happening without her input.

►LeakHunter Replied On Aug 7th 2011:
So I just checked a leaked police report (warning: not a pleasant read) from when Winslow shut down, and it looks like bits of waste materials were bonded to the locker in improbable ways. In fact, they seem suspiciously similar to how the now-defunct Shadow Stalker thread describes how her arrows would bond to things if they appeared inside of them.

The implications are disturbing.

►NothingPong (Moderator)
Replied On Aug 7th 2011:
LeakHunter, hopefully you're careful with your "leaked reports". Specifically, you're lucky that both capes that one could potentially help to "out" are already outed.

►LeakHunter Replied On Aug 7th 2011:
I get it NothingPong. I'm careful. This one only got leaked when Hess went public for whatever reason.

End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 77, 78, 79 ■

Topic: WTF‽‽‽ Communication with Leviathan?
In: Boards ► General OceanWatcher (Original Poster)
Posted On Aug 6th 2011:
Earlier today, the Brockton Bay Wards had a meet and greet event.

Shortly after the event started, two to three dozen bikers crashed the party.

Maul and that mysterious fedora-wearing woman beat the bikers to a pulp.

The meet and greet continued on as normal.

All of this seems fairly straightforward. Except for one critical detail...

Watch this clip of what happened before the fighting started. Leader of the idiot bikers calls Maul out because the Leviathan-worshipping branch of the Fallen (Thank you PHO guide to villainous gangs for telling me who the Crowleys are, by the way) want her thanks to her ability to communicate with Leviathan.

Not hear. No, we knew about that. Communicate with. And Maul, in what appears to be a likely first, refers to Leviathan as a she. Not a he, or an it, like the rest of the planet seems to. She.

I have no clue what this supposed discussion, or series of discussions, entailed. No clue when they happened. If there are transcripts they're probably so heavily classified that my grandkids will be dead before they see the light of day. But they apparently happened, and I want to know the story behind that.

(Showing page 87 of 88)

►QueerEyes Replied On Aug 7th 2011:
I don't give a damn what you think, if Maul didn't ask the Endbringer to not attack anymore then she's either an idiot or had more important things to discuss. Like whatever the hell the Endbringer wanted to talk about, presumably.

Because seriously dude, if you're suddenly talking to one, and the Endbringer wants to ask about baking cookies, are you going to say no and piss it off, regardless of gender or other things going on?

It's really the same principle we decided on back on page eighty four regarding "if the Endbringer says they're female, who are we to argue?" and all. Granted, it took three moderators to get us to agree to that...can we not drag in more?

►CursedWithSuck Replied On Aug 7th 2011:
So I just finished slogging through pages full of posts covering pedantic bullshit on every topic but the one that I think we should be pedantic about.

Communication.

If I write a letter to you, I have communicated with you. If you don't write a letter back, you have still received a communication from me.

Everyone is focusing on the fact that the guy accused Maul of communicating with Leviathan, but nobody said anything about her being able to reply. For all we know Leviathan sent a postcard.

Really, for all we know he was referring to when Leviathan attacked Boston.

Has anyone asked him?

►Winged_One Replied On Aug 7th 2011:
I have it on good authority that two-way communication was established between Maul and Leviathan, originally initiated by the latter but continued by the former.

When and where?

Well, Leviathan drops off of the tracking systems for a few hours every few months. But the last time that happened was during Behemoth's most recent attack in China. Leviathan returned to tracking heading very obviously away from New England.

Maul was part of a patrol that day. Spotted several times, and a news article on the local paper's website mentions a fire that was put out with water, yet without the fire department involved. Further, they had to repair a drainage tunnel near the patrol route. A larger one, by all descriptions I can find.

The timeline matches up.

Coincidence?

►MissingName Replied On Aug 7th 2011:
I'm thinking that asking the dude was difficult, given what Maul did to his leg. And I doubt Panacea was called in to heal him.

►InnOfDreams Replied On Aug 7th 2011:
Whoa Winged_One, that's some seriously compelling circumstantial evidence. Good job pulling it all together.

I think that somewhat reinforces the whole "talk about whatever the Endbringer wants to talk about" argument though, because if Leviathan went to Maul for their chat?

►TheStoryOfMe Replied On Aug 7th 2011:
...

Leviathan visited Brockton Bay for a chat. Right. Sure.

What's next, Jack Slash stopping by the town to adopt a couple of normal kids? Or would that be more the Siberian's thing?

►KhokolateKookie Replied On Aug 7th 2011:
So, er, yeah.

I'm starting to wonder if this post theorizing that Leviathan wanted to apologize for the trouble attacking Boston caused Maul has some truth to it...

►ShadesOfGlory Replied On Aug 7th 2011:
How the hell have I missed that there's public access to some of the Endbringer tracking systems? I mean, I've now found six links to the damned thing on PHO alone...

I've been living under a rock and didn't even know it, I guess?

A quick look tells me that Leviathan is interesting only in generalities, and Behemoth is useless, but the Simurgh? She somewhat recently changed course for some reason. A little, anyway. Doubt it had anything to do with Maul, though, since I doubt that any visits were made to orbit.

►PandaTail Replied On Aug 7th 2011:
The Endbringers are tools of the shadow cabal that secretly controls all of the governments!

Now if only I could figure out if the cabal is using them or if they lost control of them. My ouija board isn't helping, I keep getting an order for popcorn instead.

►XxVoid_CowboyxX Replied On Aug 7th 2011:
So, building on what Winged_One said...

Maul's patrol group? Stopped at an intersection for a bit. For no obvious reason.

That intersection? Right over the end of where they had to repair the drainage tunnel.

Before they left, people reported water lifting manhole covers at several points between that intersection and the Bay. And the last picture I can find posted before they left was in this post, and the metadata on the picture says it was taken within a minute or so of Leviathan reappearing on trackers.

End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 85, 86, 87

(Showing page 88 of 88)

►EerieToes Replied On Aug 7th 2011:
Are we seriously considering that not only did Maul talk to Leviathan, but that said talk happened in part because the Endbringer went to Maul to have it?

I think I need to find a way off of this Earth. Things have gone nuts.

►MysteriousHatrack Replied On Aug 7th 2011:
Void, please stop bouncing between competent and crazy. It's disconcerting.

Or perhaps we need to petition for you to have two accounts, so that you can be competent in one and crazy in the other?

That said, good job picking out those extra details.

►Pooligan Replied On Aug 7th 2011:
I dug up a few pictures people got of the manhole covers being lifted by water, and a sewer drain spewing water too. They're over in this thread. That page and the next one.

Metadata (thank you XxVoid_CowboyxX) confirms that they apparently got taken shortly before Leviathan was spotted heading away from New England.

►DugMeOwnGrave Replied On Aug 7th 2011:
So, Winged_One, I'd like to point out that you've done a great job of making me nervous about Maul again. And the others building on your post aren't helping.

Because as far as I can tell from the public tracking data, Leviathan ran for the other side of the planet after the potential chat...and has stayed in that general area, not getting anywhere near returning.

Is an Endbringer afraid of a Ward for some reason?

End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 86, 87, 88 ■

Topic: Maul Facts In: Boards ► Places ► America ► Brockton Bay HotIcedTea (Original Poster)
Posted On Jul 15th 2011:
Because we were told to stop posting them in the Maul discussion thread and all, we now have a thread dedicated to them!

So as to not show favoritism, I shall not copy any from the other thread into here. People can do so with theirs if they wish.

(Showing page 43 of 43)

►QuiltMaven Replied On Aug 3rd 2011:
Maul doesn't notice her periods because she scared her menstrual cycle into submission and it doesn't dare inconvenience her anymore.

►BombedOut Replied On Aug 7th 2011:
Maul doesn't have a jacket. She has a horror from beyond that she glared at until it took the form of a jacket that could hold all of her stuff.

►Chuck Norris (Verified Badass) (Not a cape)
Replied On Aug 7th 2011:
If I met Maul in a dark alley I'd ask for her autograph.

If I met an angry Maul in a dark alley I'd back away slowly and pray to any deities that would listen that I wasn't the target of her anger.

►BombedOut Replied On Aug 7th 2011:
Okay, I know it's more of an Aleph thing and all, but still...

Chuck Norris, of all people, just admitted that he'd back away from an angry Maul.

Is that allowed?

►WinnerTakeNone Replied On Aug 7th 2011:
Of course it's allowed. This is Maul Facts, not Chuck Facts. Anything crazy is fair game, haven't you read the last forty pages?

That said, the "scared jacket into submission" bit is getting old, that's now come up at least eight times in variations.

►SweaterGirl Replied On Aug 7th 2011:
Maul isn't afraid of bullets, even those sent directly at her face. No, she long ago scared all the bullets, they don't dare hurt her, and as a side benefit they hurt everything else when she fires them in an attempt to please her.

►Assault (Verified Cape) (Protectorate ENE)
Replied On Aug 7th 2011:
The only thing scarier than an angry Maul is an angry Maul with a stack of paperwork. Because either she's properly filled out the forms that are going to let her kick your ass, or she's about to make you fill out paperwork.

In the latter case, hopefully it isn't the paperwork that will then let her kick your ass.

End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 41, 42, 43

Chapter 189 Monday morning Taylor was up early to head to the PRT building. She'd lucked out with her uncle the night before by claiming that she had to work on stuff for her classes today, both driving and psychology. That she thought she was far ahead on both was beside the point, she didn't want to listen to him rant about figuring out who'd 'been blabbing'. It was nice that he wanted to figure things out, of course. She just didn't need to listen to him going on about it. That her father seemed to want to listen to him go on about it just made escaping all the better.

She arrived well ahead of anyone else, but that was fine with her. Instead of going straight for the gym she instead went to the storage room where her pile of gifts she didn't know what to do with were still sitting. There she went through a couple of boxes and set some of the plush toys she hadn't known what to do with aside, along with the helicopter. While she didn't have any use for them, and hadn't liked them enough to keep, she thought that they might not be horrible gifts for Mary and Tori. Plush toys if they're still children mentally, the helicopter for if they were teenagers.

Or, you know, they could be children mentally and get a kick out of crashing the helicopter. Whatever worked there.

It didn't take long to repack things so that she could easily bring it with her tomorrow when they went to wake the two up. When that would be was up in the air. Before or after the driving lessons would probably depend on how flexible their scheduling for them was. If it was just her and Amy then it would depend on the instructor, if others were involved they might have to work around them.

Once she was done with that she decided to continue going over classwork while waiting for someone else to arrive, so that she wasn't exercising alone or making someone else exercise alone.

Max sighed. "Is he locked up in a safe location?"

Brad nodded. "We got him into one of the safe houses a couple hours ago, and I've got ten guys keeping him there. With any luck he'll sober up during the day as he isn't hurting himself in various crazy ways, and I've got them checking his BAC every half hour."

"Good."

"I also started spreading the word to the grunts that we aren't going after the pub that did that to him."

Max raised an eyebrow. "And what makes you think that we aren't?"

Brad snorted. "I checked the ownership before the place even opened, in case we might need to put pressure on them. It took some digging, but I found that Amy Dallon and Taylor Hebert are part owners. I've already warned all of our capes to not cause trouble there as a result. Couple that with the idiot having reportedly walked in and dared alcohol-focused parahumans to get him drunk? Besides, if they did that to him, what do you think they'd do to someone who didn't need special tricks to get drunk in the first place?"

Well, the ownership bit was news to Max. And that's the kind of thing that he should be asking about, not finding out like this later. But it wasn't Brad's job to do that thinking for him. "Good initiative on the ownership check, and I agree that it sounds foolish to risk their ire for something that he asked them to do. That they could do the same or worse to others is also a concern. Is there anything else I should know before I go wrangle the bureaucratic nightmare that's still surrounding Medhall?"

Max wasn't happy when Brad fidgeted, but the man eventually sighed. "We aren't sure how long it'll take for him to sober up. We already know that it isn't happening as fast as it should."

"How long do you think it could take?"

"At the rate he seems to be going from the readings so far today? Could be October before he's legal to drive a car. If he had a license or any desire to learn how to drive, of course. And that's the optimistic scale, the grunt mapping things out said we aren't getting detailed enough readings. Pegged the other extreme as July, but he thinks he'll be able to narrow it down by tomorrow."

Max didn't like the sound of that. "Definitely not going to be attacking them if the July version is the more accurate one. Having who knows how many of our people drunk for nearly a year would be disastrous, even if we won in the end, and that's assuming that they were only drunk for a year..."

Eventually Taylor joined Amy, Missy, and Aisha in the gym. Several PRT officers were also in there, but they kept to themselves while the girls went through their workout. Granted, Aisha wasn't originally going to join them, but tagged along when Taylor left the Wards area anyway. They made it through their workout, ending it with a swim today, before heading back to the Wards area.

"Morning ladies," Dennis called from the kitchen. Taylor could smell that something had burned recently. "As much as it pains me to admit, you probably want to get breakfast elsewhere. I'll suffer through my own burnt...everything."

Taylor shrugged. "Better than exploding everything."

"You weren't here for that phase, but at least I kept it to a small one today."

The four girls looked in on Dennis, seeing that he had very little made that didn't look improperly made.

Amy: I'm not sure that it's safe for him to eat half of that.

Taylor: You may be right. Think he needs a cooking lesson or two?

Amy: Couldn't hurt. Looks like he was trying to make an omelette and switched to scrambled eggs halfway. Think there are enough eggs to do it properly?

Taylor sighed and checked the fridge, finding plenty of eggs. "Okay Dennis, you seem to be trying but doing a horrible job of things on your own."

"Not my fault the instructions I found online suck," the boy grumbled.

She grabbed the carton of eggs from the fridge. "So let's get rid of your possibly hazardous results and go through doing it right."

Taylor ended up walking everyone through making their own omelettes. Aisha opted to mix in chocolate powder at the start to make hers a chocolate omelette, but that was the most daring choice of the group. Dennis insisted that he'd do the cleanup, but also wanted to know if Taylor had time for a meeting before driving lessons. It turned out that she did, so she and Amy hung around until Chris and Dean showed up. Once they had the Wards gathered by the monitor.

Dennis looked over everyone, then gestured at Taylor. "So, we've got a couple of fun weeks of Taylor being put through driving hell, knocking us down a Ward for other activities. I'll be going out on patrol today with Chris and Dean while Aisha runs the console, since she felt that was better than some of the other things she was requested for. Missy is, I believe, going to be helping out at the museum today?"

"Showing off at," Missy corrected. "Powers demonstration and PR event. Gonna see if I can make the entire place a single loop for a few hours so that you don't need stairs or elevators to see everything."

Dennis blinked at that. "Oh. Huh. Might have to swing by later if you're still doing it just to see the results." He then shook his head. "Right. We're all doing something today. And Taylor is busy for a couple of weeks, but we still have a pile of 'go out and do stuff' money kicking around. The only movie anyone seems to think is worth seeing these days we've already seen, and with paintball we'd probably get no takers unless we weren't using powers. So do we have any ideas for what to do, on the assumption that it'll be after Taylor gets out of driving lesson hell?"

There was silence as they all considered things, before Aisha spoke up. "Think we can swing going to an amusement park? Even if we'd need to do something about Chris and Dean needing to leave their power armor behind to enjoy the rides?"

Nobody had any objections to that, so Dennis nodded. "I'll check with people on what we may or may not want to do there. They might have their own ideas on how to arrange it. Any other ideas?"

They didn't come up with anything else, so the meeting broke up shortly afterwards. Taylor and Amy decided to show up early for their lessons while Dennis went back to finish cleaning up the kitchen.

Jacob pulled into the garage on the Rig, still amazed that they even bothered with 'visitor' spaces out here. You needed permission to cross the force field bridge to even get a car out here, but they still had ten visitor spaces.

Worse, now that he'd parked, four of them were in use.

Shaking his head as he got out of the car, he focused on other things. He could tell that they hadn't moved Miss Sockhammer to shore yet for whatever reasons, but that would likely be happening shortly. But he wasn't here to see her, so that didn't matter either way. Instead, he wanted to confirm clothing measurements so that he could swing by some shops today. He'd only cover a few basics and see if they'd be up to being taken shopping after they woke up.

He paused as he approached the elevator, narrowing his eyes. Why was she here? Taking a deep breath, he continued forward, finding the elevator open and waiting for him. Inside, holding the door open, was the woman known as Contessa. Jacob entered, turning to the woman. "Morning."

"Good morning," Contessa responded as the door shut and the elevator started moving. "I'd like to speak with you about a couple of things, if you don't mind?" She then held out a shopping bag. "I even took the liberty of picking up some undergarments for Mary and Tori for you, so that you didn't have to be seen doing so yourself."

Jacob took the bag and checked, finding two clearly labeled bundles inside. And it looked like she'd included sizing information sheets as well, which knowing her was more accurate than anything he'd have been able to figure out himself and would make his planned shopping easier. "I see. Thank you for that. What do you want, because if it was just to help me then I'd have just found this bag sitting somewhere."

"You've likely heard of my exploits with sets of speakers?"

"I can't honestly say that I'd connected that to you, but now that you mention it..."

"Your niece inspired me, and I've been enjoying pissing off Agnes with them. I believe her latest rant from yesterday's videos is that things have to have been staged, because they're just too good otherwise. But that's part of my problem, the ducks are too good, and I want to arrange for them to fall."

The elevator stopped and opened into a hallway, and the two stepped out. Jacob looked at the woman. "So why are you coming to me? Surely you can easily arrange for the ducks to fail."

The woman grinned. "And what do you think I'm doing?"

Jacob raised his eyebrow, but Contessa didn't say anything more as she led him into a conference room. One that she then sealed and activated the privacy features of. Even then, instead of saying anything she pulled a paperwork tube he hadn't noticed out of the inside of her jacket and threw it to him.

Most people would run from the grin that adorned his face as he read the contents of the tube. Contessa just grinned along with him. Of course, a few minutes later his grin changed, and Contessa's shifted to confused.

"So," he said, putting the paperwork down. "How hard would it be to adjust this to let me run into the one blabbing about my niece?"

Contessa tilted her head. "I'm not sure I understand. Blabbing?"

"Told String Theory about her little stunt with blowing capes up when Leviathan attacked Boston."

"Ahhh. Um, no, sorry, can't help there."

Jacob stared at the woman. "Are you telling me that one of your blasted problem spots had a hand in it?"

"Nope. I'm just not going anywhere near breaking Glaistig Uaine out of the Birdcage so that you can take a shot at her."

That...wasn't what he was expecting. At all. "Glaistig Uaine was the one that blabbed?"

Contessa shrugged. "Near as I can tell. Would take fifteen minutes to get her to show up wherever we want her to, but she wouldn't make it easy for you to do anything in revenge for doing something she felt she had every right to do. If it makes you feel any better, if you tell String Theory the basic circumstances behind things then she should calm down about it quite a bit."

Jacob suppressed the urge to let his eye twitch. He'd been all set to unleash horrors beyond horrors on someone, and now he'd had that torn out from under him.

"How did you do so well?" Amy asked as they sat down to lunch.

Taylor shrugged. "I already read everything through at least once?"

"When did you have time?"

Miss Militia sat down next to them. "I'm curious about that myself. You're further than we thought you'd be on the initial knowledge testing."

Taylor rolled her eyes and tapped her visor, which she'd put back on after they'd finished. Amy hadn't bothered yet. "Multitasking. I've generally got something going when I'm driving around, eating, exercising, doing chores, patrolling, whatever. I know Amy has looked over PHO while doing chores. I'm not at the point of reading different things with each eye, but I do take notes on one phone while reading on the other."

Amy groaned. "No wonder you've gotten so far ahead of me."

Miss Militia nodded in approval. "Armsmaster would definitely approve, probably while being jealous. You don't seem to be doing anything extra most of the time."

Amy shook her head. "Now that I'm looking for it I can tell that she's doing it. But she does it so often that I apparently saw it as her normal."

"I can see how that might've happened. I'll be leaving you with the instructors for most of the week, only observing occasionally. Too many other things to do and teaching you driving isn't my job."

Taylor snorted. "You just wanted to make sure that we weren't cheating by wearing our visors during the initial testing."

Miss Militia paused in eating a french fry, being something she could slip under her bandanna. Her entire meal seemed to have been selected for that quality, in fact. "That hadn't actually occurred to me, and I'm not sure why. It's obvious why they told you to take them off now that you've mentioned it. I think I'm just used to you two wearing them now, almost like they're fancy glasses? And that's even with me wearing one that lets me see my own phones."

Emily sighed as she read over reports. On one hand, Miss Hebert's movie was doing incredibly well. On the other hand, that was apparently in part because people had started dissecting it to try and figure out what she might've done to Eidolon. PHO had interesting theories, but people weren't entirely in agreement with them, and none of them were really good enough for an official story. Not with thinkers able to spot lies far too easily.

The only other thing distracting from that was the unexpected weekend reveal that Miss Hebert been in sufficient communication with Leviathan to apparently know the Endbringer's preferred gender. The primary discussion point for that was still a single PHO thread, which Emily was monitoring personally. Luckily for her, she had no access to the resulting transcript, and wanted nothing to do with it. She couldn't say what was in it and she was perfectly happy with that.

She'd be even happier if an Endbringer hadn't visited the city at all, of course, but she'd live with pretending that nothing important had come up at all. Just a quick visit for meaningless chatter and/or unspecified threats.

Really, the question was whether or not to hold a press conference to talk about any of it. And if so, did they need Miss Hebert available during it? Emily would prefer that they leave the girl out of it, but then they'd need someone else able to answer questions. Which probably meant they needed someone sufficiently high in the organization to be present, higher than Emily herself. And if that was the case, she knew precisely who to call, grabbing her phone.

"Good afternoon Emily," Glenn's voice greeted her a moment later.

Emily grinned. "Good afternoon Glenn. I think we need to head off some things regarding Miss Hebert, and I think we need Costa-Brown or Legend involved to do it."

"I see you've been following some of the annoyingly classified things as much as I have."

Taylor sighed as she climbed off of her moped at home. They'd put her and Amy through knowledge tests all day, pointed out where they both had gone wrong, and then promised to go over the finer details of a lot of it the next day. Luckily for Taylor, she'd already made it far past where they wanted her to be in reading things and thus had less 'homework'. That meant she could focus on her psychology class. It went unsaid that she was also looking over the driving lesson stuff she'd screwed up on, of course. Because if she'd said it Amy would probably have grumbled about it.

It wasn't Taylor's fault that they'd decided to test them on the entirety of the materials despite the only information they had implying that only a fifth of it was 'read before classes begin'. Even then Amy had done a lot better than just a fifth of the material, she just had to catch up to where Taylor was. In theory. And she didn't have a psychology class to attend while doing it. Granted, she'd gone to the hospital to do some healing, which was a distraction in and of itself, but she was also hopefully going to multitask more now as well.

Of course, the other benefit to them both being ahead on things, and being the only two in the class, was that they were apparently going to get to practicals a lot sooner. As much of a 'benefit' as that would be, given the grins on the instructors' faces when they'd said that.

She frowned slightly as she adjusted the second gun holster, the ones she'd originally ordered for the tinker-built handgun having finally shown up. Two handguns and a taser was a bit much, she was probably going to have to either not carry them all at all times or see about working with Missy to add a space to hold the things more discreetly in her belt. Either that or not keep them all 'easily accessible' and accept that if she needed all of them then she was going to have to dig one of them out of a pouch. Hell, she already had the holster for the tinker-built handgun for that storage method.

Tuesday morning had Jacob asking for opinions on where to go shopping for clothing for Mary and Tori, followed by Taylor leaving to visit the gym before any attempts at getting more than the absolute basics out of her were made. She passed a few idiots that tried to get her to stop so that they could preach at her, and one biker pulled up next to her at a stoplight wanting to race. Her pointing out that there was a legally mandated speed limiter in the moped had the biker pouting.

Really, the man had been quite civil, all things considered. Completely different than what she'd been expecting when he'd pulled up. Just went to show that you couldn't judge people from surface characteristics alone and all that. Still didn't hurt to be prepared for the worst, of course. Said biker had stuck with her for a few blocks to ask a couple of questions that she hadn't had any problems answering before peeling off to his original destination.

Of course, she obviously hadn't mentioned that she could turn off the speed limiter at any time, nor that being a tinkertech vehicle probably negated the legal requirement for it to have the limiter. And when she was done with the driving lessons and got a proper license she could probably officially get the limiter removed either way. No need for him to know any of that, after all. And if he did later try to use the speed limit against her then she still had the 'turn it off' ace in the hole, so to speak.

Even with her interruptions, minor as they were, she was the first of the parahumans to reach the gym today. Amy and Vicky showed up shortly after her, and Missy showed up shortly after them. There were no signs of any of the others, but a handful of PRT staff were once again exercising. Apparently things were calm enough that they either weren't concerned about being 'on-site' now, were all doing so before their shifts, or the other gym still wasn't open.

Very little of interest happened otherwise, and they went their separate ways after they were done. Taylor and Amy would be heading over to the Rig after their driving lessons, Vicky was tagging along on a Protectorate patrol, and Missy was heading home since she'd only shown up to use the gym itself.

Jacob grumbled to himself as he went through racks of clothing. Taylor hadn't been any real help, but he probably should've expected that. The current styles of clothing for teenage girls weren't helping either, in his opinion. Having no clue what Mary and Tori might possibly like was another problem. He really just wanted to get them a few basics, but what those basics should be was a problem.

Sadly, he probably owed Contessa quite a bit for saving him the hassle of purchasing undergarments. And the woman knew it, and probably wouldn't expect anything more than his assistance with her duck problem. She was like that, took quite a bit for her to think actions were worth more than a token response in either direction. That she'd thrown in proper sizing information for other types of clothing was another major help, and he'd started with shoes. Sneakers and sandals for each of the girls.

It took him three hours of browsing, the help of an employee of the store that he had to tell a white lie about lost luggage to, and lots of frowning before he had something he could work with. From there he grabbed lunch to go before visiting a laundromat so that he could run all of the clothing through the wash before he'd hand it over to the girls. That ended up including the undergarments, almost as an afterthought. Luckily nobody bothered to ask him why he was washing clothing intended for teenage girls, though William did send him a text about it having appeared on PHO.

Nobody wanted to dig too deeply even there, because the truth was likely a secret. Trigger event, someone caught in a cape battle, unfortunate victim of a tinker fugue. PHO's list of possibilities was extensive, and they'd only made it three pages in before they'd decided to not dig any further. One does not dig into the affairs of someone with a likely sizable list of friends in high places being part of it.

He left the laundromat with two hand-packed sets of clothing, clearly labeled and in a bag. That went into the back of his rental car, after which he picked up some other things. Like a selection of sweets, since the two hadn't been on Earth in general for years and had been missing out. He also grabbed things like multivitamin gummies and basic painkillers in case they had issues walking and ended up hurting themselves. The latter two had actually been recommended by Amanda. Unsolicited recommendation, but he wasn't about to complain about it.

Eventually he had everything he thought he needed or wanted to get, and had put off heading back to the Rig long enough that hopefully nobody over there would complain that he shouldn't be spending all of his time there. If they did anyway, well, tough luck. He had a responsibility to Alan and he was going to do his best to do things right by the two girls, and they were supposed to be woken up today. If he wanted to hover until that happened then he'd hover.

Taylor and Amy left their lessons with grins on their faces. Their instructors had pulled out a simulator, one that was supposedly set up to give an accurate imitation of a steering wheel on a large truck without power steering. They'd expected the two to have trouble with it, only for the main issue being that they hadn't been given a proper seat. A stool didn't cut it. Once they'd solved that problem actually turning the wheel hadn't been an issue.

Only after they'd both turned the thing with ease did their instructors admit that it was set to be significantly harder to turn than a real wheel would be, in an attempt to discourage those who weren't ready for the real thing. That neither girl had so much as flinched at turning it once they had a proper seat had impressed them.

They'd been asked to not take Taylor's platform over to the Rig today. Something about it causing minor yet still annoying problems with air traffic control duties, coupled with other things happening in the airspace today. That meant that they instead had a scheduled departure time, which was a little bit off. Collecting the box that Taylor had stuck her gifts in took no real time at all, of course, but that still left them with little to do. For reasons neither of them would be able to explain later, they ended up sitting there building linked ammo chains for the M249.

Taylor's supply of disintegrating links ran out before they ran out of cartridges or time, giving them plenty of time to store everything properly before heading up to the roof. They were in their assigned short-hop transport early, but didn't get to take off until their scheduled departure time. The wait was annoying, but they both had plenty of things to do. Amy was focusing on driver's lessons materials while Taylor was working her way through some of the things that'd been given out the night before in her psychology class.

Eventually the transport lifted off, bringing them across to the Rig. They were met by Jacob on the landing pad, who all but dragged them to Mary and Tori. Taylor was probably lucky that she'd already picked up the box she'd brought, or it almost certainly would've been left behind in the transport. Jacob was then annoyed by the doctors insisting on some final checks before anything was done to try and wake the two girls up.

Those final checks took less time than Taylor had expected them to, but still far longer than Jacob would've liked. That left Taylor and Amy doing their own checks, Jacob nervously watching from the side, and then tweaking the biology of the two girls so that they'd wake up at their own pace in the very near future. That accomplished, they left the room to sit in the observation area next door, leaving the doctors, a couple of nurses, and Jacob in the room with Mary and Tori.

Maya carefully sipped her drink as she waited for her current target. She'd have to wait for a good opportunity for some of what she needed to collect, but other items on the list needed a more proactive touch. In this case she needed something stolen, and she needed to be careful about who stole it. Luckily Mama had been able to get a few interesting details to her, and thus she had a plan for at least a few things. She only needed one stolen item, though, so she was starting with what she hoped would be the easiest.

For now she was waiting for one of three known PRT officers to get off shift and stop in for a post-work drink. Sadly, her intel said that they seemed to only do so on stressful days and there was no way of telling if today qualified, so she might be back tomorrow or Thursday as well. If she wasn't successful this week then she'd have to wait until Monday to try again, since she couldn't risk her influence being spotted before they completed her task. Leaving them sitting with instructions was too much of a risk.

Grimacing, she considered that she'd have to be very specific in timeframes to hopefully not have the influence get caught. Mama had discovered that the ENE was doing regular sweeps for master influences, which was apparently why her attempts at getting information out of the place kept failing miserably. She'd have to stop that before someone started connecting things to her, but it was also why she was fairly certain that she was only getting one shot with this particular plan.

With any luck she'd get what she needed for Miss Hebert, Miss Dallon, and Miss Biron all at once. But she couldn't hold out too much hope there, and if she didn't get them all then she'd probably have to give up on using this method for the others. Either way, once she put this in motion she'd have to start wandering the area and setting up some sleepers for a couple of other things. Fast food places in particular, most likely. Hopefully the three girls would be out and about for lunch in the near future.

"Hello there," a young man said as he dropped down into the seat next to her. "May I buy you a drink?"

Maya rolled her eyes and held her current drink up. "No thank you, I'm all set."

It was far too tempting to use her powers to make idiots like this go do humiliating things, but if any of them were employed by the PRT and she didn't know it she might make things too hard for herself going forward. She'd already likely caused herself significant headaches there, she didn't need to accidentally make things worse.

Chapter 190 Jacob fidgeted as he sat there waiting for Mary and Tori to wake up. He appreciated that they'd pulled in staff that were all in the know about the Nine for this, because that meant that he could play with a knife while he fidgeted and not have any questions raised whatsoever. Just a warning from one of the nurses that he needed to watch how he projected the blade if he did so.

That grated. A little. Like he'd be stupid enough to project it anywhere near anyone in the room. But he'd rather that they warn people about that kind of thing than not, overall, so he didn't say anything.

Chances were that he'd be telling the two girls that their father had perished fighting Ziz, and just leaving out when that'd happened. That it'd taken so long to get them back would be harder to explain, but telling them that recovering enough of their father's technology to do so had taken a while due to the quarantine zones only recently being dismantled might work. He really should've cleared more with thinkers before now, if he was being honest with himself. But half the possible issues with things only came to mind in the past hour, it'd seemed so simple before then.

He was forced to watch as the two girls woke and the doctors ran tests on them, ensuring that they were healthy enough and all that entailed. Neither girl seemed willing to say much unless spoken to, but that could be attributed to waking in unfamiliar surroundings after so long. Though neither of them asked for their mother or father, which struck him as odd. Regardless of their mental age, given that they seemed to know who they were and all it seemed like they should want their parents.

Luckily, neither of them were showing signs of pre-trigger style stress, so they were hopefully safe on that front for the time being. Even if they now had the potential to trigger and all. They were even taking things like letting their senses adjust to actually being used fairly well, though eating was expected to be a collection of likely lessons. Panacea did good work, which likely translated to Taylor doing good work, but there was only so much you could do when neither was willing to do much to brains.

Eventually the two beds were adjusted so that the girls were sitting up and could take a better look around the room. They first noticed each other, and then they noticed the only one in the room that wasn't a medical professional or patient. Namely, him. Both of them stared at him, and he decided that was his cue. He slipped the knife into a pocket, suppressing a wince that he hadn't done so already. He needed to be more careful around these two, after all, at least until he was cleared to tell them more.

And that assumed that he wanted to tell them more, of course. It might be best for the two if they never found certain things out. At a minimum, it would probably make it easier to keep the truth about what their father had been doing for the past few years a secret.

He carefully stood up, doing his best not to spook them, and walked closer. The doctors noticed and moved to the side a little. "Hello Mary, Tori. I'm Jacob."

The two girls shared a look, grinned, and then turned back to him. "Uncle Jack!"

What.

Taylor was happy that she'd been recording as everything went down. She was apparently the only one that had thought to do so as well, as far as she could tell, so her recording was probably going to be in high demand. Granted, she'd been expecting something very different, and probably more tear jerking, but that was fine with her. The look on her uncle's face when the two girls had pegged him as 'Uncle Jack' had been hilarious.

It hadn't taken long to find out that even if he couldn't get them back, or get any messages from them, Alan had been able to send data to the two girls. Further, they'd had access to news broadcasts for the past three years. Due to that, they were very well informed on what their father had been up to, that Jacob had helped him recover some of his sanity, and even that they were orphans. They even wanted to meet Riley.

They'd have to take tests to prove it, but apparently they'd also been attending simulated school together for years, their pods having formed a network link once deployed, meaning that despite the two year gap in age they were probably on an equal educational footing. Only having each other and the simulated lessons to rely on had pretty much guaranteed that they'd end up at around the same place in the work.

Still, the two were going to be stuck in the hospital for at least the rest of the week. Neither was able to walk yet without assistance, and their hand/eye coordination was shot to the point that they had trouble feeding themselves. A lot of this was blamed on the simulation they'd been living in not properly adjusting their 'avatars' as they'd continued to grow physically, though some of it was also related to the simulation being incomplete. They hadn't actually tasted anything since they'd been put into the pods, for example, because they didn't need to eat in the simulation.

It was telling that the 'hospital food' had been devoured as fast as someone would feed it to them because it tasted good. Because Taylor could tell that it should've been bland as hell. They weren't willing to go with anything 'difficult' until the two were used to consuming food again, after all, and it was grey slop that'd come out of a jar. Unless some tinker had created the greatest tasting grey slop ever, anyway.

After a little bit of learning on that front, the girls were presented with their gifts. They hugged Jacob after seeing the clothing, though he promised to take them shopping when they were up to it so that they could pick things out on their own. The plush toys that Taylor had included were found to be cute, but both girls were obviously more interested in the helicopter. They'd also both whined when Jacob had informed them that they'd have to be out of the hospital before they could try it out.

Eventually Taylor and Amy left without going in to meet the girls properly, partially so that they had time to adjust to their changed circumstances. Jacob was intending to stick around until he was kicked out, which wasn't a surprise. All the power to him surviving the whining from the two girls after the doctors had insisted that they not have any of the sweets that Jacob had picked up for them yet. That the sweets had been confiscated by the doctors until they were cleared, to avoid 'cheating', had only made the whining worse.

Taylor and Amy took a transport back to shore, but stopped before leaving when Taylor found that she had mail. Apparently they'd finally gotten back to her about the pocket dimension beacons, having gone above and beyond anything she'd been expecting. They had permission to install a beacon in the PRT building, the Rig, Brockton General, and Arcadia. Both of their homes were givens, though they hadn't bothered yet, and Amy would be installing one at the Pelham household eventually as well. That still left three extra that they weren't sure what to do with.

"I think two of the remaining three should be yours," Amy finally said, causing Taylor to raise an eyebrow. Amy sighed at that. "Arcadia will benefit us both, as will the PRT building. In theory the Rig is better for you, as is your home. But I've got the hospital, the Pelhams, and home. So I'm using one more than you are, so two of the three extras should be yours."

Taylor wasn't convinced. "Why are we splitting them at all? I mean, would installing one at the Pub count towards either of us?"

Amy blinked at that. "Okay, you might have a point there. But I don't want to feel like I'm using more than my fair share."

"They were sent to both of us in the first place, and the only one I see as being unlikely to be fair game for both of us would be the Pelhams. By that logic, I'm owed one that I have no clue what to do with that wouldn't be just as usable to you. Really, I think I'm more concerned with other details."

"What other details?"

"We've got plans for seven, maybe eight if we count the Pub, of the ten, right? Let's call it nine, having one to deploy in a hotel room or similar while on trips."

Amy nodded. "Okay, that leaves the one remaining."

Taylor sighed. "And how many of them would be in the same city under normal circumstances?"

That got a look of surprise. "All of them...so if something happened here..."

"Right. So, where should we go to ensure that we have a beacon further away, just in case?"

They ended up heading home without an answer to that question.

With the reminder, Taylor had ended up going ahead and installing a beacon at home, starting with the reset process and getting it set up in the basement. Amy ended up doing the same at home, though with Mark's help on mounting it, and then they went and programmed the new codes into the 'open from the inside' device. It easily picked up both beacons, though they'd still likely be installing outright opening devices at home as well. That was just more likely to happen after construction had occurred.

Taylor had then submitted a 'where am I installing things' information request to the PRT regarding the PRT building and the Rig, citing the verification numbers on the permission to install sheets she had. Meanwhile Amy sent a message off to the hospital asking the same thing, before also sending a message to Sarah about installing one at the Pelhams while Taylor sent a message to Kurt and Lacey about installing a unit in the Pub. Collaborating on that kind of thing despite being in different houses was trivial for the two of them, and when they were done they moved on to having dinner and studying for classes.

Interestingly, Jacob didn't return before Taylor went to bed.

Wednesday morning Taylor spotted a group of people out in front of the house when she looked outside. Obvious protestors, though they didn't look to be trying to block anyone in. Which sadly made them smarter than some people she'd punched out, and would probably not result in her being able to punch them out as a result. It also looked like they were setting up signs, obviously planning on sticking around for a while. Out of curiosity, she fired off a couple seconds of sensor recording and then looked at the signs in the rendered output while she sat down to eat breakfast.

"You look like something odd is happening," Danny noted, that statement getting Jacob's attention. Taylor had no clue when her uncle had finally shown up the night before.

Taylor nodded. "Looks like the people outside are protesting me being the part owner of the Pub."

There was a moment of silence, before her father sighed. "Shouldn't they be protesting at the Pub?"

"For all we know there's a group there."

Taylor: Do you have a group of protestors setting up outside your house?

Amy: There is a group, yes. You have one too?

Taylor: Yep.

Taylor rolled her eyes. "Looks like they're also protesting at Amy's house. At least this group looks more peaceful than some others have been?"

Danny snorted after a minute of thinking about things. "Kurt will probably love it, free advertising and all. Lacey will probably be annoyed more than happy even if he points that out, if only because if they're at the Pub then they're being a nuisance there."

Jacob pulled his phone out a moment later. "As much as we can probably assume they're just protestors, I'm going to call this in just in case they try something while nobody's here."

They let Amy know about that and sent a message off to Kurt and Lacey about things, and when Taylor left she did so without talking to the protestors at all. Since they made no attempt to yell at her she figured they felt that arguing with her about her partial ownership was a lost cause.

It turned out that there was only one PRT staff member working out in the gym when Taylor got there, and she kept to herself. Amy and Missy had also shown up, and they went through their routine. They all grumbled a bit about nonfunctional equipment, but Taylor wasn't in the mood to rebuild motors this morning. That and she wasn't supposed to repair things like that without permission, and she wasn't in the mood to ask permission either. It didn't help that the entire line of machines was burnt out, implying that either someone had been stupid or there was some other fault that had cropped up.

Given that the automated towel cleaner was missing a critical power system component, possibly due to it needing to be repaired, Taylor was betting on 'some other fault' along an entire circuit. But someone had helpfully put up a little rack to hang towels on after they were done with them, and there were still plenty of towels available, so they wouldn't be complaining too much there.

Missy sighed as they finished up what they could do. "So what are you two up to today?"

Amy shrugged. "More lessons, then off to the hospital later for me. I'll heal some people, then install a beacon there."

Taylor nodded in agreement. "I've got a session after lessons, and then I'll probably be installing a beacon here. I don't think I'll head over to the Rig to put one there."

That had Missy blinking. "Beacons?"

Amy rolled her eyes. "We'll show you later. You doing anything interesting today?"

"I've volunteered to help an inspection team get at things behind a damaged underground support so that they can figure out the safest way to fix things. Incredibly boring, but it'll apparently be a lot faster and safer than the alternatives."

Taylor frowned at that. "Wouldn't that possibly destabilize things more as the weight distribution changed?"

Missy waved her hand in dismissal. "They want me to get them in through a drain pipe, not around the support itself. Shouldn't be any problem at all."

They finished up, and the woman let them have first shot at the showers since she was apparently very early for her shift, before they split up to their respective destinations.

Petra waited for the three parahumans to leave the locker room before she grabbed her workout bag. A marker, a pair of tongs, and some sealable bags were pulled out of said bag before she moved over to the towel rack that the three had hung their used towels on. Each was carefully removed with the tongs, bagged, labeled, and placed into her workout bag. She then removed the missing power board from her bag and slotted it back into place in the automated towel cleaner, followed by wheeling the towel rack back into the storage closet.

She took her own shower and dropped her towel into the cleaner before she departed, heading back out of the gym instead of into the PRT building. Ten minutes later she'd handed off the three bags, and half an hour after that she'd called in sick for the day. She blamed a poor breakfast choice giving her stomach trouble after deciding to meet with a friend for breakfast instead of swinging by the cafeteria after her workout.

That accomplished, she left her phone and credit cards at home before leaving on a road trip. She'd only come to her senses two days later when her car ran out of gas on route 306 in Nevada. Even then it took her a few minutes to realize that she'd run out of gas due to running out of money for food and gas and thus not stopping for any more. By the time she was picked up and could be scanned there would be no remaining traces of the obvious mastering that she'd been placed under.

Taylor ended up installing the pocket dimension beacon in the PRT building before getting lunch, after their instructors had decided to break for lunch early. Granted, they'd done this in part because they wanted to get started on practicals but had found that the training vehicles needed to be refueled before they could be used. Since that should've been checked the day before they decided to run them through a quick test drive each before having the two girls start working with them.

The beacon had been placed in a former network closet just above the Wards area, hooked into power and tested there before the door had been sealed. It was in the back of what was currently a secure storage room and had apparently been shifted out of use when the Wards area got the full kitchen setup installed. It was still officially a network closet, it just no longer had any network equipment in it. There were still a bunch of data leads, but they were all disconnected at both ends.

Interestingly, some handwritten labels indicated that some of the data leads had been connected to unauthorized equipment before the closet had been stripped of network gear. Presumably some of the things they'd found in the ceiling after her prank went wrong had been connected through this closet. That those labels were next to pipes that'd had any data lines removed and had been sealed shut made her think that the closet was no longer in use because it'd been too easy to sneak things into the Wards area through it.

After that she and Amy had grabbed an only slightly early lunch, swung through the junkyard for fifteen minutes, and then headed back to likely fail to impress their instructors. But thanks to the quick stop in the junkyard they were feeling much better about things in general.

"You suck," Amy grumbled as they made their way towards the Wards area. They were headed that way mainly because Amy was parked there and Taylor had an hour before her next appointment.

"I cheat," Taylor retorted, and Amy rolled her eyes.

"Of course you cheat. I know you cheat. And you suck for being able to cheat so effectively. You didn't stall your engine at all."

"You only stalled four times. They said that's very good."

"And I only got that far because you started lecturing me on what I was doing wrong. Yes, it was nice and helped fix where I was going wrong, but you still suck for being able to do that while going through your own lesson."

Taylor shrugged. "They made us take off our visors, so I wasn't exactly multitasking with anything else. That and by focusing on your problems I was actually able to keep Understanding, Maintenance, and Repair from feeding me too much information about what I was doing. Easier for me to learn to do things without cheating that way."

Amy blinked a couple of times. "You helped me in part so that you could get a feel for manual transmissions without cheating?"

"Yep."

"You suck, because that means you were able to avoid stalling even when not cheating for yourself. And I still stalled after you started helping me."

Apparently Taylor wasn't winning this argument.

Jacob sat down across from Miss Sockhammer. The woman seemed to have calmed down quite a bit, but was getting more nervous again and he'd just shown up. All he'd done was say hello as he entered, which probably meant that she'd figured out his relation to Taylor. Well, that and he'd secured the door, given the nature of their conversation, but he didn't think she'd noticed that.

Instead of dwelling on it, however, he instead dropped the folder he'd brought in with him on the table, pushing it over to her a moment later. "I think you need to know the circumstances behind events that I honestly don't think you needed to know had happened. I wouldn't put it past Glaistig Uaine to only tell you part of the story intentionally, after all. Probably hoping that we'd never figure out what she'd told you for whatever reason."

The folder was carefully taken without anything being said. After a few moments it was opened, and Miss Sockhammer started reading the pages inside. He waited while she did so, noting the changes in her expression versus those in her mood that he was picking up with his power. She'd switched from nervous to incredibly concerned, passed through shock, had a twinge of anger that was ruthlessly stamped down shortly afterwards, and seemed to be settling on disbelief now.

Miss Sockhammer finally put the papers down and sighed. "I thought she'd exploded someone willy-nilly. I didn't think it was during an Endbringer attack where the one exploding was directly involved in attacks on the defenders. Why isn't this more well known?"

Jacob sighed. "Because she didn't take it well."

The woman's eye twitched. "She didn't take it well? Seriously? That was enough to keep it quiet?"

"They had to ensure that a therapist was available at the end of the battle and I'm led to believe that she was iffy on anything that felt even remotely similar to the power interaction for a bit, even things she knew shouldn't result in explosions because she'd been exposed to them before. I'd tell you more, but it's a combination of her business and things I don't actually know."

"The great Jacob doesn't know everything about a situation like that? You must be over-hyped then, given the way you were talked up to me when they found out you were available in town."

Jacob leaned forward, the look on his face enough to make the woman a little nervous again. "I take many of my responsibilities very seriously, as do my colleagues. I am not, and will never be, my niece's therapist. She's family, so professionally I'm outright barred from it. As such I have not read her entire file, and likely never will, and that's assuming that the details are even in it. What little I know comes from her admitting things to me, her father letting details slip, and warnings in the file sent to anyone working with her. That the latter file covers more than just conditions surrounding her trigger event is, in my own opinion, horrifying."

Taylor thought it was slightly odd that her uncle had spent some time with Kara before they'd come up to the therapy area together. Then again, it was entirely possible that there were other things going on that weren't actually therapy. If she needed to know then she was sure someone would let her know, otherwise she knew enough to not pester anyone about it.

"Hello again," Taylor greeted as they entered the inner office.

"Hi," Kara replied, obviously a little distracted. She seemed a lot calmer than she had in the previous session, which was probably a good thing.

Jacob smiled. "With any luck Taylor here will continue her stellar job from last time and I won't have to step in. So I'll just sit off to the side here and play licensed monitoring therapist again."

Kara nodded her agreement to that, and didn't seem to be worried this time. Taylor wanted to sigh, since her uncle had actually admitted in a message to her before she'd come up that they'd technically gotten everything they needed in the first session, at least on Taylor's end. That same message said that he wanted to see how she continued to do anyway, so she needed to participate again today. She suspected that there were other motives there, but couldn't prove it without trying to dig into things that she didn't think she should be digging into.

With any luck they wouldn't make her do this with Kara a third time. But she wouldn't be holding her breath.

Kara looked back at the therapy area before following the PRT officer that would be escorting her back to the apartment she was staying in. She'd been an idiot near the start of that session and asked a question she shouldn't have. With any luck the rant she'd lost herself in afterwards had distracted them from that oversight on her part and it wouldn't count against her. That she'd probably revealed more than she'd anticipated in the process was annoying, but she felt oddly better after the ranting.

The major downside to using the ranting as a distraction was that her question remained unanswered. It hadn't been likely that it would've been answered anyway, granted, but she was curious. Oh well. Not much she could do about it at this point. In two days she'd have a final session of some kind, then she'd be catching a transport out of town over the weekend. That left her with very little to do tomorrow, after having very little to do over the past couple of days.

Deciding that asking couldn't hurt, she turned to the officer escorting her. "I don't suppose they'd let me tinker some more tomorrow? I think I'd like to try and build a new phone."

The officer looked at her. "A new phone? Seriously? What kinds of features would it have, orbital death ray deployment?"

Kara rolled her eyes. "Of course not. I just learned how to make things that don't fall apart after a single use over the weekend and the flip phone I was given sucks. Building my own smartphone sounds a lot nicer than buying one."

"Whatever. I'll let my boss know that you want to tinker, someone else will have to make the call though."

She frowned at that, and made note of the numbers on the man's badge. She'd already decided that she'd make a call or two when she was left alone, because that kind of attitude seemed wrong for someone in the man's position.

"You're impossible," Jacob said after Kara had left and he waited for Taylor to send him a copy of her notes.

Taylor blinked. "What in the world are you talking about?"

"We thought we had a good idea why she triggered. In the first session you were able to confirm several parts of it. But you got her to talk about it. Admittedly after she stupidly asked about your own, granted, but she still talked about it. We hadn't considered just how far back things went."

"Yeah, well, it predated her having the ability to trigger."

Jacob paused in opening the notes file he'd just received. "How the hell do you know that?"

"She ranted for half an hour about the annoyances growing up. At least five years of problems before she triggered, but her snark claimed it only took what I think is about a year from the point it connected to her."

"Impossible, I tell you. Even most postcogs have problems figuring out exactly when people gained the ability to trigger unless someone actually noticed."

Taylor shrugged. "It wasn't exactly intentional, more like her snark refuting that it'd had any influence over the issues that led to her triggering and using that as the reasoning. And I'm not sure if it was an Earth year or a Mars or Venus year, since I never asked where her snark is."

"Okay, so not nearly as impossible because that introduces multiple possibilities. Still a bit crazy that you got that much at all." He then started reading over the notes. A few minutes later he sighed. "Is this a list of times that she felt she was screwed over due to timing issues growing up?"

"Probably not complete, but I think they're all the ones she recalled during her rant. I'd never have been able to get that much detail without your snark being involved, though."

"So you're impossible on your own and we're absolutely bullshit when paired together. Good to know. That's either going to result in a desire for us to work together more in the future or us being barred from working together because combined we violate privacy far too easily."

Taylor snorted. "You're limiting yourself. They'll do both, and justify us working together as hitting the 'hard' cases that need to be dealt with."

"Point to you. Now get out of here so that I can rant to the empty room about your bullshit notes. I don't have all evening to do so if I want to ensure that I have enough time to visit Mary and Tori."

Maya wished that she had a better way to get things out of town than relying on the postal service, but she had to be discreet. And she didn't trust someone that she'd taken control of to take things in, so she'd had to do so herself. She wasn't stupid, though, and had done her best to disguise her appearance before doing so. Hopefully she'd packed the three towels well enough that Miguel would get them with no contamination.

Sadly, keeping them in town until she'd collected more of the items on her list would've been too risky. Instead she was going to have to send off items as soon as she could after she'd obtained them. Tomorrow she'd have to see if she could get a few more people to be on the lookout for the three girls eating out in public, and she had no clue when the next opportunity to have someone approach them would be. What she really needed was a good excuse for people to approach them out of costume, but that was easier said than done.

Though, now that she thought about it, arranging for them to run into situations where they ended up defending themselves could work. Approaching them because they'd just proven themselves to be 'cool' or 'awesome' in such a situation could very well work. Not that she'd be doing so herself, of course, but it was a potential way to speed things up. Waiting for another meet and greet situation was the annoyingly slow way of handling things, after all.

Chapter 191 Taylor sighed as she pulled into the garage at home a little before dinnertime. She'd run into a group of bikers at essentially the same as she'd run into a group of religious nutcases and had to step in. On the side of the nutcases, because the bikers had taken offense to their preaching and attacked them. She probably could've left them all to their own devices, but she wasn't exactly trusting that the bikers would leave things to a mere beating. Sadly, despite resuming their preaching and insulting of her afterwards, none of the religious nutcases actually attacked anyone. And she'd been hoping for a reason to punch one of them when they hadn't even bothered to thank her.

Sadly, she'd been stuck listening to them until the cops had shown up, at which point they insisted that Taylor be arrested for witchcraft or something like that. The police hadn't been impressed with their arguments and had arrested the lot of them when one of the women had hit one of the officers with her handbag as part of her demanding that they do something about Taylor. Which still didn't let her punch any of them, because the cops took care of things at that point. She really should've let the bikers do some more damage before intervening.

Shaking her head, she made her way into the house. She was the only one home right now, so she'd feed Ackbar and prepare to cook a basic dinner. Likely just for her and her father at this stage, since she didn't expect her uncle to be back in time for dinner. Not while Mary and Tori were out on the Rig, anyway. Come to think of it, she should ask him if those were proper names or nicknames at some point. Tori in particular sounded like a nickname to her. Sure, she could probably look up their files in the system, but that would probably be crossing a line or two when all she had to do was ask her uncle.

An hour later she'd fed Ackbar, cooked a quick meal, eaten said meal with her father, and headed up to her room while he cleaned up. She had one of her online classes tonight, after all. She thought she was doing better than a couple of the others, and the instructor was probably the only one who knew who she really was. Then again, the lack of showing up in person meant that they could literally have a pile of planted people pretending to be other students.

It said something about the world when she thought that was a possibility, no matter how far-fetched for a university offering online classes.

Thursday morning Taylor had checked with her uncle and found out that Tori was, in fact, short for Victoria. Taylor was likely to stick with the nickname, if only to avoid confusion. Mary wasn't short for anything, but Cathy on the remote had been short for Catherine and had been their mother. At the same time she was asked if Monday or Tuesday was better for an attempt at taking the two girls to a restaurant. Since she had an actual class Monday night she picked Tuesday.

It hadn't needed to be said that this would only happen if they'd been cleared to be out of the hospital and eating normal food by then.

Over breakfast at home she'd looked over her messages and found that she had a request to go on patrol this evening with Dean and Dennis after her lessons. Apparently the other three were busy. She cleared that with her father before accepting, since it would affect dinner plans, only to get a thank you from Dennis a few minutes later. She wondered if he was sitting at the breakfast table with his phone out or something. Or maybe he was checking his messages in bed, since he didn't seem to be coming in to use the gym or anything.

She also had a notification that they were bringing the kids with brain tumors around on Sunday, and had cleared things with 'the Penders'. That would be afternoon or evening, depending on how her schedule worked out for driving lessons. Which probably meant finding out how many vials they needed and letting Lacey look over things again that morning.

Taylor: You get anything about the kids being brought in for vial-therapy on Sunday?

Amy: I don't think I saw anything like that.

Amy: Nevermind, just spotted it between a couple of things I'd responded to with form letters. They're inviting me, but don't seem to think I'm required?

Taylor: I suppose that makes sense, since you don't heal brains and that's the big issue here.

Amy: I'll probably go anyway to play medical expert.

That seemed straightforward enough. Though that did result in a quick check to find that her automated filters for digital requests for interviews were still working fine and responding with her form letter. She should probably expect a few more physical letters asking for the same in the near future now that the PRT wasn't going through things for her. Assuming they sent things to her directly and not to 'Maul', anyway.

Taylor and Amy had ended up deciding to tinker instead of working out, mainly because the private gym was cordoned off for repair work and the public gym was too crowded. That led to them wandering the broken tinkertech storage room to look for something interesting for Taylor to work on. So far most of the contents had been disregarded for various reasons. Several of the more interesting items were going to take too long, for example.

Eventually she found a box of two dozen handheld lasers. Configurable intensity, and not what she'd expected to find in the 'Ward-friendly' collection. Or perhaps nobody realized that they were configurable intensity, since a quick check showed that they were all burnt out in the same way and were set to one of the two lowest settings, either fifty or a hundred milliwatts. They'd even been color-coded with stickers for which setting they were on, and the intensity dial was fairly well disguised. The label calling them laser pointers helped with that assumption. She didn't think anyone realized that they went up to five watts.

The main benefit here was that they'd be trivial to repair, and she could easily write up proper documentation for them. Though once she'd made their full capabilities known in the system there was a higher chance of someone deciding that they were too dangerous. Then again, she now had three different guns that were very difficult to use in a non-lethal manner, so a pile of configurable lasers shouldn't be a problem. At least for her. If she shared them with others that would be a different matter.

As she got started repairing them she did idly wonder if they had more of these elsewhere that had been on the higher settings and didn't include them for being too dangerous.

Emily glared at the report that'd just hit her terminal. Petra Stone had called in sick yesterday, but hadn't been heard from since. One of her squadmates had swung by to check on her this morning, using a hidden key to gain access to her residence, and found that she wasn't there. Her phone and credit cards were sitting on the kitchen table, next to a bank slip showing her withdrawing a sizable amount of cash the day before, but she was absent.

It was likely that the woman had been mastered in some way, given the lack of any evidence of a fight, but to what end was unclear. She'd obviously been able to return home after visiting the bank, but to what end? If they were lucky then she'd been grabbed as a random target of some cape and not because she was employed by the PRT. If they were unlucky then she'd been compromised into doing something in the PRT building itself. She'd been clear of easily detected influences two days ago during a now-routine scan, though, so either this was something harder to detect or it'd been short-lived.

Luckily, they'd already started reviewing everything she might have done since she was last cleared, on the assumption that this was a short-term influence on her behavior. The results of that would be sent along as soon as they were available, but they would take a couple of hours to cross-check with the real-time remote logs in case the local logs had been compromised as well. Finding her was going to be a different problem. They could put a general alert out for someone with her appearance, but she'd had a very common car. It was possible that they'd get lucky with the license plate though, so they'd give it a try.

Sadly, more often than not, when something like this happened the officer was directed into hiding in the first day, and wouldn't be seen for at least a week. Emily had already put in for approval to implement new rules for sudden taking of sick or personal time in response to this, to be in place for the next three months. Hopefully HR would approve the request for a check-up by someone else being monitored remotely to attempt to confirm that things looked legitimate, instead of seemingly due to a master effect.

If Miss Stone was found alive in the next week then that would probably be all they'd bring out for new precautions. If they found her dead, or another employee went missing under similar circumstances? They'd be bringing in a much larger force to find the master-class parahuman in that case. Possibly including accepting Haven's offer to come help flush out the Fallen in town.

Amy grumbled as they sat down to eat lunch. "You suck, not having to go through everything tomorrow morning."

Taylor snorted. "I've already been foamed in the name of knowing what it's like, thank you very much. And shot with tasers, for that matter. It isn't that bad, all things considered. And hey, you've got a couple handheld lasers to make up for it."

"At least until someone sees the manual you wrote for it and decides that they're too dangerous."

"Doubtful. I classified them as tinkering tools in the paperwork. I can think of all kinds of situations where an adjustable strength laser could help when tinkering. Not to mention the varying wavelengths, beam diameter, focus. The things are awesome, and I don't know if you noticed that I used the first one to speed up repairs to the rest."

Amy nodded. "I did see that. Was that your inspiration for filing the paperwork as tinkering tools?"

"Essentially."

They sat there eating in silence, but it wasn't long before they were done. Looking down at her empty plate, Amy sighed. "So what are you going to do while I'm being foamed tomorrow?"

"You'll also be getting the basic containment foam lessons and a couple of other things, so you've got a couple of hours total. According to the calendar I'll be visiting Jessica. First appointment with the Wards for her this trip. I'm under the impression that the others are going to be scheduled over the weekend into the beginning of next week."

"You'd think you could just tell that, what with your bullshit access."

Taylor shrugged. "I'd have to add myself to the explicit access lists on their calendars, or fake being them I suppose. Not worth the effort, and I'd probably get yelled at for overstepping boundaries and all. So, shall we go back and get started on being tested on school bus specific rules?"

Amy rolled her eyes. "I have no clue why they're including that."

"Because PRT drivers are expected to be able to take over for school bus drivers for a multitude of reasons, including to help protect students during a longer term crisis where schools can't be closed, and we're getting the entire PRT driver course. We're too young to actually do any of that work with the possible exception of taking over on a field trip or something where one of the original drivers was injured, and that would be at the school's discretion more than the PRT's."

"Oh."

"Pathetic," Hannah said as Ethan came out of the range. "Maul's more accurate with two handguns than you are with one."

Ethan snorted. "Maul's got an accuracy blaster rating."

"Because she can have each bullet essentially hit twice, not because of her aim. And even Vista has better aim than you right now, without using her powers."

Ethan grumbled and went through the post-firing checks on his handgun. Hannah was happy that he at least had those down, but she couldn't figure out why his aim was so bad. His stance looked correct, after all, but his shots rarely came close to his intended target at range. Frowning, she picked up the paper target he'd brought out with him. Looking over it, she noted that the two shots that had hit the target looked like they'd been tumbling. She looked between the holes and Ethan a couple of times, before putting the target down.

"Are you pulling kinetic energy out of the barrel while shooting, or between shots?"

Ethan looked up. "While, to keep the temperature constant."

Hannah nodded. "Try between shots. I think you're pulling the rotational energy out of the bullets while they're still in the barrel."

The man nodded, a thoughtful look on his face, before he picked up his magazine and started to load another set of rounds into it. He only half-filled it before heading back into the range, loading a new paper target into place before taking his shooting stance. The sound was noticeably different to Hannah this time, even outside of the range itself. It sounded more correct, and she wondered if he'd accidentally been pulling expansion energy out of the gasses as well.

This time when he came back out he'd actually hit the target sheet with every bullet. His accuracy still left a lot to be desired, but that was a significant improvement. He was frowning at it still, probably because he hadn't hit the point he was aiming at well enough. That and he'd had to reset between shots, presumably trying to keep from using his powers at all while shooting.

"Much better," Hannah said. "Perhaps you should try and keep the grip from moving while shooting, and then switch to pulling the heat from the barrel between shots?"

Ethan nodded. "I've gotten too used to pulling heat out of things that suddenly warm up, I'll need to teach myself to stop doing that."

"We've got another hour scheduled for this, so I suggest you continue. If you show enough accuracy by the end of the hour then I may be willing to sign off on you bringing it on patrol later. But you'll still need to prove that you can aim a machine gun before I'll sign off on you riding in a suitable van."

Taylor dropped onto her bed in her Wards room while Amy pulled out of the garage. There'd be a dinner with Dean and Dennis for Taylor before they went out on patrol, so Amy was heading home. It wasn't worth heading home for Taylor, though, because she'd pretty much have to turn around and come back as soon as she made it home. With a sigh, she sat up on the bed and looked around her room. The pile of gifts in the corner, the storage unit with the vial snarks, and the desk took up an entire wall. She made better use of the closet than you'd otherwise expect due to the expanded suitcase, otherwise it would be too cramped with the gun safe in there. Not to mention the grenade launching tube and the instant tollbooth.

The desk was mostly useless right now because she'd piled stuff on it as well, including the scout drone and the area speaker thing she'd uninstalled after her Quarrel hologram prank. She actually tended to carry the Snitch around with her in a pouch when she wasn't charging it, even if she rarely used it these days, but a cable for charging it was hanging off of the desk. And there were other things, like the bag containing the trick boxes that she and Amy hadn't actually done anything with since Missy enhanced them. She needed to decide if she was going to order more chocolate as well, since her stashes were pretty much used up at this point. Here and at home.

With a sigh, she decided that she might as well get changed. She could easily eat while in costume, after all. More easily than Dennis could, at least. Though it was probably somewhat ironic that the two Wards with outed identities could easily eat in costume, while three of the remaining four either couldn't or had trouble eating in their costumes. Dennis and Aisha even had really good reasons for full facial coverage, above and beyond any normal protective aspect.

It wasn't long before she was changed, though she hadn't put her jump harness or jacket on yet. She'd be more comfortable eating without them, and she'd have plenty of time to grab them before they left. That done she wandered out into the Wards area to wait for the others. Perhaps she'd check the reviews for her movie, since one of the instructors had commented about a recent one and she'd kinda been ignoring the whole thing?

Gillian finished checking over the machine gun to ensure that it was ready to go, then placed it in the circle she'd scribed on the floor. She moved on to checking a knife, ensuring it was properly cleaned and wouldn't fall out of the sheath that it was in. Satisfied, she placed it next to the machine gun. And, because they'd had so much trouble, she then picked up a handgun one of the bikers had gotten off of a local. It was checked thoroughly and placed into the circle as well. Finally, in case they ran into their hopeful herald, a taser stolen from a local store was added in.

That portion of things done, she slowly walked around the scribed circle containing the weapons three times in a clockwise direction. The ritual wasn't entirely necessary, she could power the circle much faster through touch, but following it drained her much less and she had plenty of time. Each of the three passes caused the scribed circle to glow more. Once the third pass was done she took a deep breath, then turned around. Behind her was a second, much larger scribed circle. It was already glowing faintly, but she circled it three times as well, this time in a counterclockwise direction.

When she was done both circles were glowing brightly, and she nodded. Some days she was jealous of Sabrina's more field-usable talent, but with proper preparation her own talents were much more versatile. With the ritual complete, she closed the door she'd ensured was between the two circles before moving over and opening the larger warehouse door. Behind that door was a large collection of people that her cousins had gathered, mostly bikers and similar.

"You all know the drill by now," she called out. "Step forward into the glowing circle, and strap on the weapons that appear floating around you. Once done step out to make room for those behind you. Do not drop the weapons, because once out of your possession they'll likely vanish when not properly observed. Obviously feel free to discard the guns once they've run out of ammo."

She monitored the group as they calmly went through the process. Her cover story was that she was merely an assistant, her non-existent brother having the talent. 'He' supposedly collapsed into a semi-coma during this phase of things, which is part of why 'he' was never seen. In reality, she had a limited amount of time before she'd have to drop the circles and pack up, after which she'd go sleep for several hours. The weapons she was providing everyone would start to time out when she woke up, whenever that would be.

Luckily they wanted to do things for the evening today, Maya having passed on a rumor that the Wards might be patrolling tonight, so she might actually wake up in the morning for a change. She normally ran very odd sleeping hours due to needing to outfit people before whatever operation was being run. It made any kind of cover job almost impossible, but her 'brother' helped there as well, since he obviously needed a caretaker of some kind if he was knocked out by 'his' talent. Even if those she was arming thought she was going and watching over her brother while he recovered.

In fact, as far as the Mathers could tell, even the PRT believed that there was a hidden Crowley male somewhere doing the trick she did, likely adopted into the family outside of the law so as to avoid a paper trail. Faking things in that way had been a stroke of genius, as far as she was concerned. Nobody wanted to grab her because she was only special because her 'brother' trusted her. Further, she'd been left out of most of the arranged marriage dance because most of the idiots assumed that she was sleeping with said brother, as distasteful as that reputation was to her.

Though dealing with the recent spate of questions about why she hadn't gotten pregnant yet was a pain in the ass. Luckily those that could 'do something about that' were in on her little deception. Even if Vince and Sabrina both thought she needed to find someone to settle down with for real. It was too bad for them that she didn't swing that way. Especially not for family. She didn't care about the theories that intermarrying would result in stronger talents.

Taylor resisted the urge to sigh as she walked along with Dean and Dennis. She had her scout drone and platform out, but the latter was following them cloaked just to have it nearby. Instead she was on foot with the other two, presenting a 'unified front' or something like that. Which had been working out wonderfully, with every potential encounter they'd had come up ending before they reached it.

Granted, that was all of three encounters so far, and all of them had someone playing spotter. It was likely that they'd have had the same result no matter who was out patrolling, more of an avoid being caught at all thing than being afraid of any of them. Even worse, that had been pretty much right after they'd left the immediate area around the PRT building, and they hadn't seen anyone since. Amy blamed PHO for 'tracking' their patrol well enough for people to get away before they got to them. Taylor was inclined to agree.

Sadly, a quick check of her own showed that this route was well known enough that people had started posting that they were getting into position ahead of them to take pictures. Granted, they weren't sure which 'fork' would be taken, but that wasn't discouraging anyone. Obviously they were going to have to mix things up some more.

"Console to Wards patrol," came a few minutes later, right as Dennis was grumbling about the entire patrol being a waste of time. "We've got reports of bikers with obvious machine guns circling around behind you. Squads are being diverted in your direction, and we're hoping to extract you via armored transport. Move to a secure location to await pickup."

Taylor frowned at that, because as far as she knew there wasn't anything all that secure nearby. Then again, if the bikers were looking for them, they'd be looking on the ground. "I vote we move to a rooftop, so they can't see us from the ground."

Dennis shook his head. "You and I can get up easily enough, but Gallant can't." Taylor's answer to that was to have her platform uncloak in front of Dean, which caused Dennis to chuckle. "Nevermind, then. Let's get moving before anyone shows up to shoot at us."

A minute later they were safely hidden on a rooftop, the platform once again cloaked and out of the way. They'd be using Taylor's visor and scout drone sensors to monitor things while waiting for pickup. It wasn't long before the augmented patrol system was highlighting lots of guns approaching them from pretty much every direction. The vast majority were machine guns and pistols, though it seemed like knives and tasers were also fairly common. Only a few oddities. Extra knife here, an extra pistol there. A couple of shotguns, and a different model machine gun.

All in all, it was an impressive number of weapons. And an impressive number of bikers. But none of them seemed capable of figuring how they'd lost the Wards before they'd found them, if the yelling was anything to go by when they all met a block away. Which was about where the three might've been had they not been stopped by the console's warning.

As far as Taylor was concerned, this patrol route had to go, and it looked like Dennis had his phone out and was making note of that as well. But she wasn't sure what they should be doing in the meantime, as she wasn't in the mood to see how well her platform held up against machine gun fire and there was no way they were going to be slipping out in an armored transport before the bikers left.

"Where is she?" one voice rang out over the rest. "Where is the herald?"

Nobody seemed to have an answer, and Taylor wasn't in the mood to show herself. But she figured that was worth reporting, so she hit the console button in her head. "Maul to console, the sizable group appears to be looking for me specifically."

There was a moment of silence before the console responded. "Console to Wards patrol, if you feel you can subdue the bikers without risking injury to yourselves then do so. Otherwise wait for backup."

The three shared a look, before Taylor recalled that she did have one option she rarely used. Grinning, she pulled out her entire complement of containment foam grenades. At the same time she was using the weapons as a gauge of where the majority of the bikers were. She listened for a moment, trying to see if she could tell where the apparent 'leader' was, and then started throwing the grenades. Her aim wasn't perfect, but nobody could get enough of a word off to say where they'd come from before they were foamed.

That, of course, left a number of bikers free, but they didn't seem to be in any mood to stick around with so many of their friends trapped in containment foam. Some of them were trapped between blobs of foam and were panicking, but others bolted.

"I'm starting to dislike not having enough storage in my costume to hold grenades," Dennis finally said. "If only because that was awesome and I wish I'd thrown at least one. I've not taken the class because of that."

Taylor shrugged. "They foam you in civvies just to make sure you know what you're doing to others, and in case you catch yourself."

"It's probably worth it," Dean admitted. "Except that as Clock just pointed out, most of us can't currently carry a pile of grenades without anyone being able to tell that they're there."

"And you don't think that Vista would be happy to help with that? I thought that solution was obvious."

It'd taken two hours for the PRT to get through all of the containment foam and bikers trapped behind it. They had plenty of pictures of them with machine guns, but the guns had started to vanish shortly after they'd started disarming individuals. Taylor was just happy that they hadn't had to sit through that, being cleared to slip out of the immediate area and to a waiting transport van half an hour in.

They'd ended up being put through an immediate debrief. The PRT officer doing so informed them that the patrol routes were going to be adjusted and that they'd hopefully have new ones ready for the weekend. Taylor was told to stock up on containment foam grenades before she went on patrol again. Though they'd also been informed that they'd be looking into whether or not Taylor would be allowed to patrol with the other Wards for the time being.

There were times that being the target of the enemy sucked.

Still, a lot of that was going to be decided by others at a later point in time. For now they had to deal with safety concerns, like Taylor heading home. They didn't insist on her riding home in a van, but they did have her run her visor sensor system while logged into the console so that they could monitor for any unexpected weapons showing up via the augmented patrol software.

She made it home without any issue, ending up spending the rest of the night going over intro to psychology materials while listening to Amy waver between happy that Taylor hadn't been hurt and annoyed that Taylor hadn't hurt anyone. The latter mostly seemed to be because Amy wanted to hurt the bikers, but hadn't been there and thus couldn't, so Taylor should've done so in her stead.

Eventually Taylor decided that it was time to turn in for the night, silently hoping that she wasn't going to have to deal with too much in the way of annoying 'protective' measures. So far nobody had mentioned picking her up in the morning, for example, so hopefully that wasn't going to be a thing that happened. But she wouldn't know that properly until morning, so there was no need to worry about it now.

Though she had to admit that Amy's half-asleep suggestion of siccing Ackbar on them was amusing.

Chapter 192 Friday morning there was a light drizzle, apparently coming in off of the Bay. It wasn't predicted to last more than an hour or two, but it happened to be coming down at just the right time to inconvenience Taylor. It wasn't a big deal, all things considered, and had the benefit of keeping a lot of people off of the streets. As such she didn't run into anyone that wanted to interrupt her trip for any number of reasons, but she was a little damp by the time she'd made it to the PRT building. But that was fine with her, since she was going to be changing into workout clothing anyway.

Luckily the gym was open today, and all of the equipment was functional. There were also several others using the gym, none of them parahumans, though for whatever reason they seemed to have paired off. Or perhaps it was a coincidence, she didn't bother asking them questions about it and none of them commented on her starting alone. It wasn't long before Amy showed up anyway, though no other parahumans seemed to be arriving this morning. When they were done Amy changed into obviously well-worn clothing that she wouldn't mind binning so that she could get containment foamed. Taylor, on the other hand, just got into comfortable and dry clothing so that she could go talk with Jessica for a bit.

All in all it was probably going to be an annoying morning for both of them.

Jacob was annoyed, because he had to see about scheduling a run of the Nine while also dealing with Mary and Tori. He wasn't used to having a pile of different mutually exclusive things coming together like this. Though he'd sent a message off to Amanda asking if she'd be willing to look after the two girls while the run was happening, because at least then they wouldn't be exposed to Riley for more than an hour or two.

Either that, or he was going to ensure that they were very exposed to Riley before then, but he'd need to get permission from Taylor and Amy for that possible plan. And probably a few others before then, unless they knocked the two girls out before bringing everyone else in. Which hadn't really happened yet on any of the fugues, so he probably shouldn't expect that to happen this time. For that matter, he'd need to know if all those involved thought that the two were ready to be fugued on, because he wasn't willing to go to extra risks with them.

His list of things to do having grown, to the point where he had an actual list he'd just added to in his phone, he decided to get on with other things. Luckily he'd already had some help with target selection for the next run of the Nine, and had the others looking over the base 'script' for their debut. But for the moment he had to do a final review of Miss Sockhammer's files, before he and Jessica would sit down with her this afternoon. This evening Jessica would be meeting with Mary and Tori, just because she was a trusted psychologist that was cleared for enough details.

Though he couldn't prove it, he suspected that Contessa had arranged for the schedule change in Jessica's plans. The woman was far too good at that kind of thing for anyone's liking.

Taylor dropped onto a couch in the Wards area while waiting for Amy. Her session with Jessica had been...draining. That was a good word. And they'd timed things well, intentionally or otherwise, since Amy had been stuck in containment foam when Taylor had been 'encouraged' to enter the first cardboard box. That box hadn't lasted long against Taylor's flailing a few seconds after entering it. She'd been able to convince Amy to not come up to the therapy area to punch Jessica before she'd tried the second box, and she was able to stop herself from flailing for ten seconds in the third one.

Jessica had merely nodded when Taylor had relayed that if there was a fourth today then Amy would come up there. She only seemed to have brought three boxes anyway.

For now Amy was in one of the cafeterias. Taylor suspected that ice cream was involved. Better than the laxative chocolate that someone had put out in the Wards area without proper labeling, anyway. Wasn't strong enough to have an effect on those who'd been fugued on, but the other three Wards might have a bad day if they ate any. But there was, apparently, a 'playing a prank' form submitted, though she hadn't checked who was playing it. If you made her guess then she'd probably go with Ethan, but hadn't verified that so she honestly didn't know.

The chocolate was inferior to what was left of her stash anyway.

It wasn't long before Amy came down to the Wards area, though she'd brought a cart. One that apparently had half a pan of lasagna, a bowl of garlic bread, and a cooler with two pints of ice cream in it. The latter was emptied into the freezer right away, without letting Taylor see what the flavors were, after which they sat down to a hearty lunch. There was no shame in their joint consumption of pretty much all of the food, though they did decide to wait a bit before they attacked the ice cream.

"I know why they keep having you do that," Amy finally said as they sat together on one of the couches. "But I don't like how it affects you."

Taylor shrugged. "Much harder to force you back into something like your own trigger. Otherwise I suspect that they'd have tried that with you as well."

"Oh they tried, trust me. Failed miserably, because they couldn't convince me that anyone was actually hurt without putting a real bullet in someone, and that would be going much too far. That and for a while the only one I cared enough about was Vicky, who had to deal with her own issues from being hurt in the first place..."

Taylor didn't say anything more there. She suspected, and when prompted had reluctantly shared with Jessica, that Amy had been badly affected by the 'Taylor dropped into a metal coffin' incident. That Jessica had agreed with that assessment hadn't helped. Claiming that Amy needed to see Taylor getting over things was just as important as Taylor actually getting over them might have had something to do with the third attempt being more of a success. Even if it might've been blatant emotional manipulation that got her to do it.

Paul sighed as he watched the press conference. He and Rebecca had both skipped it to make it harder for thinkers to tear apart. Better to have someone who honestly knew very little that they hadn't been told about answering questions and all, and Felicity certainly met that requirement. The sheer amount of secondary evidence that had been collected prevented them from denying everything, of course, and obviously things had leaked too much if the Fallen had known to go after Miss Hebert in the first place. But hopefully they could keep people from digging too deeply by providing enough to warn them off.

So far the overall description of things had been reasonably accepted. Leviathan had shown up during Behemoth's attack for a 'chat' with the only one who'd ever 'heard' it before. The majority of the conversation touched on things that were considered to be private, dangerous, or both. The Think Tank and others were working to evaluate everything to figure out what was truth, falsehood, safe to release, and so on. Yes, Leviathan seemed to identify as 'female', but Behemoth and Ziz didn't appear to have been accidentally misgendered, as much as Endbringers had genders.

The only thing the reporters seemed to have a problem accepting was that it was possible that the Endbringers didn't want to attack. Something they'd spent most of the past week debating over including, but had ultimately decided to include. Partially to see what others made of it, admittedly, and they hadn't indicated what the problem was. They suspected that some of the assumptions would include 'under orders from elsewhere' and 'part of what they were' but were curious what would come out of it.

Though he had to admit that he enjoyed Felicity's response to one reporter wanting to know why they hadn't acted on the information right away. "I have no clue if there was anything actionable in the information in the first place, and if there was why would we jump on it without analysis when we're now fairly certain that Leviathan has been in contact with the Simurgh?"

Driving lessons had taken up the rest of the afternoon, a good portion being the safety rules and demonstrations for moving potentially hazardous chemicals around. Like containment foam, that in a worst case scenario was apparently a cancer risk if part of the pre-mix got into your system. Once it was properly mixed it was safe, of course, but not before then. That wasn't a significant risk to either girl, of course, but it would be for anyone around them. Provided that they weren't healed up within minutes, anyway.

Ironically, the 'best case scenario' for an accident with containment foam on board was apparently considered to be 'post-mix', because the ruptured container was less flammable, not biohazardous, and would likely keep you safe until help could arrive as it overtook the accident. That it was possibly even less of an issue for the two after Amy had started working with Shaper to find a way to get out of the stuff, aided by being exposed to the dissolving agent, hadn't been mentioned. Somehow they didn't think that 'figured out how to become immune to containment foam' would go over well if it was figured out.

They'd made a mood-boosting pass through the junkyard before heading home, where Taylor decided that she wasn't cooking beyond preparing Ackbar's dinner. Though the spider-bot seemed confused at how little she'd reacted to the probably-layered web launch. Most of the impact energy had been bled off by the force field belt, after all. Luckily Ackbar hadn't been injured by the impact either, but he'd been built tough.

She caught up on the news at Amy's insistence, finding out about the press conference in New York where they'd admitted to her having communicated with Leviathan. But her part in that was almost a footnote, 'a given' after she proved to be the first one that could hear the Endbringer. Most of the focus had been on other revelations that the discussion had brought up and their possible implications, as well as the possibility that the entire thing was a Ziz plot that needed to be discarded as soon as possible before it came to fruition.

Dinner ended up being takeout, her father not wanting to cook either, and then she settled in for her class. One of the other students was a bit whiny about some of the material from the past couple of days, apparently feeling that it clashed poorly with a couple of religious beliefs in a way that Taylor personally didn't see, but they weren't allowed to bog down the session so things went fairly smoothly.

Her uncle came back late, again, and likely would every night that they didn't let him sleep out on the Rig. Or perhaps in the PRT building, if Mary and Tori were moved there soon. Taylor got the impression from some of his grumbling that they were currently a little bit of a security issue for some reason, and she didn't think it was directly connected to their heritage. Or perhaps a couple of snarks were being gossips overnight and she was getting impressions from that?

She really shouldn't know anything about a plan to put the Nine up against ducks, after all.

Saturday morning started bright and early for Taylor when the house alarm went off at five. It'd taken half an hour to deal with the stoned idiot that'd tried to break in during the wee hours of the morning, at which point Taylor didn't expect to get back to sleep anytime soon. So instead she decided to go through more of her psychology class work. They'd been given all of the coming week's work the night before, after all, so she could probably get a decent head start on it. Finishing it all over the weekend would keep her clear for the two classes next week, but she'd be happy with just getting the stuff she needed completed for Monday taken care of.

Eventually she departed to meet Amy at the gym. Sadly, today there were people out. Initially she saw that the protestors from the other day were setting up again to protest her partial ownership of the Pub. They still didn't say anything to her as she left, just like the previous time. If that had been all she'd have been happy, but she also ran into a familiar group of religious nuts that tried to surround her at a stoplight. Thanks to being able to move sideways directly due to not having to worry about wheels she was able to get around them before they finished surrounding her.

Luckily there were no bikers around, so she arrived at the gym without any other annoyances. She hadn't really been delayed, but Amy still beat her by a couple of minutes. And apparently they'd both been beaten by a number of PRT staff.

"Busy morning," Taylor noted as she looked around at the various people working out.

Amy nodded. "One of them whined about some operation being run today, and probably doing a lot of sitting around bored, but clammed up when they noticed I could hear them. I considered just going upstairs, but apparently it's more crowded up there."

Taylor shrugged. Not much they could do about it, and apparently they were expecting a long and boring day. It made some sense to get exercise in ahead of time in that case. Instead she slotted in on one of the few empty machines and got started on her workout.

Norton resisted the urge to cringe as he dressed. His contacts in the PRT had indicated that something large was going down today, lots of activity expected and far too many staff out and about to make causing trouble worth the effort. That it was also supposed to be happening mainly outside of his protected area of town meant that it wasn't something he had to worry about from a normal planning point of view. Which was enough incentive for him to make it a good day for one of his self-designed and self-imposed 'therapy sessions'. Even if his actual therapist thought he was crazy for putting himself through it.

Looking into the mirror when he was done, he was certain that most of those who knew him would have a hard time believing that it was him. His shirt and shorts went well enough together at a first glance, but were subtly mis-matched. Both had visible stains on them, not quite cleaned out. Shivering, then taking a couple of deep breaths, he then put on the well-worn sneakers and cheap digital watch that completed this 'outfit'. Dressed like this he wasn't sure his own parents would recognize him, and that was part of the point.

He took a moment to pet the hand-crafted replacement covering he'd made for the octo-duck he'd taken with him from Boston, and then grabbed the beaten-up wallet he'd already prepared. It had his identification, sufficient money, and he shuddered as he considered the weekend bus pass. Who knew what state the buses, their seats, or the other passengers would be in? He couldn't...

No. He couldn't give up. His temper and insistence on perfection around him were liabilities, and had been used against him in the past. He had to continue to try and desensitize himself against many of the things that annoyed him. His plan was working, if slowly. He'd learned to downright appreciate contractions after subjecting himself to far worse uses of the language at the start of the plan, after all. They still weren't acceptable in written reports to him, of course, but they no longer angered him when spoken and he'd found himself using them without even noticing since.

Smirking, he recalled the look on his therapist's face when he'd used one during a therapy session. It didn't stop the insistence that his plan was crazy, but at least it'd shown that even if it was crazy then it was also working. That he'd found that he was more able to work with other groups, and even his preferred vendors and contractors, without having to suppress his own rage was an added bonus.

Shaking himself out of his recollection, he took a couple more deep breaths and checked the time. He had to leave in the next ten minutes to catch his first bus. He would be going out and spending as long as he could push himself drinking. That he was going to 'scope out' the new parahuman-run pub in town was just ensuring that even if he didn't make progress on his plan then his time wouldn't be wasted. After all, even if the beer was the best beer he'd ever had, which wouldn't be hard to accomplish, he still refused to impair his judgement by consuming too much alcohol too quickly. Regardless of the form the alcohol took.

A minute later he was on his way, pushing himself with his promise that he'd never again be played like Jacob and his group had accomplished years ago.

Taylor looked over the four large trucks with full trailers, then back at the instructors. "These aren't empty, don't the PRT regulations say we need more training before we're allowed to operate loaded vehicles?"

One of the instructors grinned. "We got an exception, in part because you two are much faster learners than anticipated. I personally cleared the trip with your parents as well. You two will be in the middle of the convoy as we drive things down to Boston. Once we arrive we'll be testing you on some other vehicles that they've got and we haven't bothered bringing up here yet. After that, which will probably be split by a break for lunch, we'll pack up and bring the unloaded trailers back up here so they can be filled up again from our working port."

The other instructor nodded. "If you're having too much trouble on the trip down or the trip back we'll take over, of course, but we think you'll do fine. One of us will be with each of you the whole time, and outside of an emergency you aren't to be in the driver's seat while the trucks are in gear without us sitting next to you."

"Though we do have a gift for each of you as well." Two boxes were produced, one for each of them. "These are secure bluetooth adapters for the PRT standard radios in the trucks. They sit between the radio and the handheld microphone, so that we can still use the radio, but should allow you to use the radio without having to take a hand off of the wheel."

Amy frowned. "You don't just use the console or something like that?"

The two instructors snorted at that, then the one with the boxes waved to the other to answer. "While the radios in the trucks support that we don't use them that way all that often. After all, it's common courtesy to be able to communicate with other trucks on the road. Just being able to get warnings about traffic issues is worth it, and if you're on the radio most of them are willing to work with you to coordinate lane changes and such as well."

The other instructor grinned. "Besides, you still need lessons in 'civilian' radio etiquette. This will give you some of that, though we'll probably need to help you with the initial terminology hurdles."

Taylor wasn't sure she liked the sound of that, and she suspected that Amy would agree if asked. Then again, how bad could it be, it was still going to be in English, right?

Emily picked up the phone as it rang, she'd been waiting for this call. "Piggot."

"The convoy just left the city limits," came from the officer on the other end. "Looked like the two girls were doing fine."

"Very good, thank you. Are our counterparts ready?"

"Yes ma'am. The police chief did a good job and we've confirmed that the upgraded communication equipment is functional in all the police vehicles."

Emily nodded to herself. That had been expensive, even with Dragon offering all of the equipment at discounted rates, and they weren't quite done with the fire department or ambulance services. But it would be well worth it, and had been done in other parts of the country as well. "Then you may begin operations when ready."

A minute later she'd hung up. Coming in on Saturday was annoying, but she'd ended up with the ability to get Miss Hebert and Miss Dallon out of town legitimately while they attempted to flush out the Fallen. Somehow the group was doing a wonderful job of hiding where nobody could find them until a swarm of bikers appeared out of nowhere, and she wanted to know how the hell they were pulling it off. It would've been a lot easier if the bikers they'd arrested were willing to talk, but they hadn't been that lucky.

It probably said something about how annoyed they were when she'd actually considered asking Jacob if he wanted to bring the Nine in for a week or two. That thought hadn't lasted long, since it would create way too many other problems, but still. Where in the blasted city did you hide that many bikers? For the most part when they weren't riding around they were either queued up at gas stations or seemingly vanished into thin air. They'd even tried following a group, only to lose them when they split up in the middle of a block of warehouses. By the time they'd been able to react the entire group had vanished.

That said, she made note to approve the new patrol routes for the Wards before she left for the day, even though she figured they wouldn't get to patrolling again before Monday. Not having those approved was a wonderful excuse for the rest of them to be at home while they canvased the city, after all.

"Trucker lingo is horrid," Taylor said as they were led around the Boston Protectorate building. Others were handling the unloading of the four trucks.

"It has its ups and downs," one of their instructors agreed. "Still, you two did very well with your driving. Mark was downright embarrassed when he was pegged as the likely 'trainee' instead of you two, though that was probably in part because he was at the back of the group and they didn't see a couple of your earlier mistakes."

Amy blinked at that. "Is that what that discussion meant?"

"Yep," the other instructor said. "You two were the ankle biters when things were cleared up, just so you know, though that doesn't always refer to teenagers driving. In other contexts it's usually a way to refer to young children. Now then, we should have a couple of personnel carriers and at least one school bus to test you in. During which we're going to quiz you on the mistakes you made on the way down here and how to not make them again."

Taylor didn't like the look on the other instructor's face as he took over. "If you show enough progress we might even see how you handle some of the worst streets here in town. They shouldn't be too bad today, anyway."

Maya grinned as she watched a PRT van go by with a police escort. The fools thought that a simple search would do? They'd long since obtained people who could build the tools they needed for hiding and blending in. Sure, they couldn't hide people in the same way that they could hide the equipment, not having been able to subvert Toybox or Dodge, but hidden bikes and a change of clothing let the bikers wander around without drawing undue attention. They might find the shrine, granted, but she doubted they'd investigate that warehouse too closely and they weren't stupid enough to store all the bikes in the same place anyway.

Her grin changed to a frown as she considered the headaches she'd been dealing with. She'd already been praised for getting the towels without issue, but the rest of the things she needed were proving harder to arrange for the retrieval of. Part of that was how infrequently her targets were out of their homes or the PRT building as of late. She only needed three more things for each, out of a list of nine remaining 'requested' items, before the thinker could do their thing. The problem was that none of them were easy to get without being able to approach the girls.

It was annoying, but she'd actually had to ask Mama for additional assistance. Either more intelligence about what was going on or more useful feet on the ground would be required if they wanted to accomplish things in any reasonable amount of time. Especially since they were doing their best to avoid drawing attention to their actions. They did not want the PRT to catch wind of things before the thinker did their thing. After the thinker was done it would be too late, and they were using enough cut-outs to keep the heat off of them when that was done.

For now she'd have to wait. The PRT were far too active right now for anything else in the very short term, after all. But it was amusing watching them run around looking for all the bikers, while the bikers were almost all out acting like normal tourists. And they were ignoring all of the buildings that they were using as rally points because they'd been rented properly, compared to the various abandoned and condemned warehouses. It was always a pain to ensure that there was nothing left to point back to them in the rented properties when they left, but it was well worth the effort when law enforcement tried to flush them out like this.

Her watch beeped a few minutes later, reminding her that she had an appointment to get to. The Crowleys hadn't been happy when their plan to ambush Maul had failed so spectacularly, so they wanted to arrange for something more impressive for the next attempt. What that was hadn't been decided, but she felt that it only made sense to sit in on the decision making meetings. It would, after all, be easiest to work things into her plans if she could make her opinion known early on, instead of being blindsided and having to scramble.

That and maybe they could use some extra storage in some of the collapsible boxes that things would be shipped in to bring in some explosives. Nothing as significant as what the Teeth had stupidly done, but a couple of well-placed detonations could serve as a wonderful distraction if timed correctly. That would require far more work, though, since for whatever reason volatile materials and mixtures tended to go inert if left in the collapsed boxes for too long. The tinker that built the boxes for them was trying to find ways to fix that, but hadn't had much luck as of a month ago.

"How in the world did you pull that off?" Nicole asked, staring at the perfectly parked bus. "I drive that thing multiple times a week for most of the year and I need a spotter to back it in that well!"

Taylor looked at her. "But I had a spotter?"

"Yeah, me. And I told you shit, yet there the bus is parked as good or better than I usually get with someone giving me information via radio. After I showed you where it should go, explained how much space should be behind it for the door, and that's about it."

Amy was nodding. "She had to show me why the rear clearance was needed after I pulled back too far, and I didn't get it nearly as straight as you did. I mean, I'm sure you listened to her tips for correcting things when I was done, but still?"

Taylor shrugged. "At its most basic, it's a blunt object. Wasn't that hard."

The dawning look of realization on Amy's face was quite amusing. Nicole and the two instructors had looks that were more confused, at least at first.

Nicole actually figured out some of the wider implications first. "You can use your blaster trick with the bus? Holy crap..."

"I think I understand a couple of notes in the file we were given now," one of the instructors added.

Taylor left it at that, though the way Amy was frowning with her hand on the side of the bus made Taylor think that she was checking the various ways to use projection lines to aid in parking. That it also helped with distance on the road was an added bonus. Maybe her trick of projecting lines off of the mirrors to see how straight things were on the trailers on the larger trucks should be explained at some point too? It'd taken some mental calibration, granted, but it worked nicely once she got it figured out.

Amy did end up annoyed with Taylor, because word of the 'vehicles are blunt objects' had gotten far enough in the next hour for a line of targets to be set up to drive past. Mainly because it wasn't a situation where everyone present was cleared to know that Amy had access to that trick too, so she didn't get to try it.

Chapter 193 The trip back to Brockton Bay with empty trailers was done with only the two trucks instead of the original four. They were also directed along a different route, though hadn't thought much of it. Different time of day, different traffic patterns, easily explained. That is until they were directed to exit in an entirely wrong place for Brockton Bay. A PRT van was waiting in the parking lot, implying that this was a pre-planned stop for some reason.

Their driving instructors relinquished them to the mercies of those waiting, and then went to 'get good seats'. Whatever that meant. Still, the two girls moved towards where a PRT officer was waving them over.

"Hello," the officer greeted. "I'm Terence Rinne, and I'll be in charge of things. Do either of you know why you're here?" The two shared a look, then shook their heads. "Wonderful! We asked them not to tell you. Welcome to the Rockingham Test Track, formerly a horse racing track before a parahuman battle leveled a lot of the surroundings a decade ago. We're going to be using it to test a couple of things in a reasonably safe and securable environment. Any questions?"

"What are we testing?" Taylor asked.

Terence grinned. "You're one up on the last six PRT officers dragged out here for asking that after being told that others were asked not to tell you. Today you'll be firing live rounds from a moving vehicle, though you'll be using our handguns for safety reasons. Your handguns don't have the electronic safety system designed to prevent the guns from firing while inside of the cab. Sadly, Miss Militia was busy today or she might've come out and demonstrated her 'the handgun is a knife in my hand before you were able to be an idiot' trick. Still, you get two runs around the track, one in each direction."

The look on Terence's face said that he wasn't saying everything, but he moved onto giving them a tour instead of allowing more questions. They were shown the waiting area for the one not participating, the force field generator that would keep stray shots from getting too far, the door to the secure armory, the recording room where their runs would be recorded for later, and the garage with a selection of vehicles. He pointed out that they'd be using a pickup truck today that was already on the track, then showed them an overview of things before bringing them back out to where the truck was parked.

"Now then," Terence said as they reached the truck. "Who wants to go first?"

Taylor waved Amy forward. "I got to have fun smashing things with a vehicle, so you can go first."

Amy rolled her eyes, but didn't argue the point. Terence then had Taylor move into the waiting area, from which she couldn't see much. Still, she could tell that they were doing some quick explanations and safety checks, and then they were off. A counter in the room showed shots taken versus target hits, as well as cones hit and turns missed for some reason. It took Amy three shots before she hit her first target, and she missed one more near the end, for a total of seven out of ten shots hitting. No cones were hit or turns missed, but Taylor wasn't sure why that would matter. It could just be that the track was used for more than just shooting. Still, it wasn't long before Amy and Taylor traded places.

"Alright Miss Hebert," Terence said, holding out a pair of safety glasses. "You need to swap your visor out for standard safety glasses, though I do have a waiver on the ear protection for you." Taylor put the safety glasses on to a nod from the man. "Now then, there are ten targets along our route. You get one shot per target, your goal is hit all ten. The modified handgun should only fire if it's far enough outside of the cab, which should make it nearly impossible to fire back into the cab unless you're holding the gun intentionally backwards to do so. You can tell if it's far enough out when the red light on it goes out." He demonstrated that by moving the gun in and out of the window, showing the red light.

"Alright," Taylor said, taking the handgun when he held it out to her. She checked it and found that the normal safety was engaged as well right now.

"Very good." Terence got into the driver's seat and had Taylor get into the passenger's. He then ensured that she disengaged the normal safety before they started moving. She then proved that she either had a little more experience than Amy or was a little luckier, only missing the first and seventh targets. The first because she hadn't gotten used to firing while moving and the seventh because of an unexpected turn right before she fired.

That done they were both brought to the recording room where Terence checked with the staff. "Looks like Miss Dallon scored one bullseye, three center target shots, and three grazing shots. Twelve points total. Miss Hebert also scored one bullseye, five center target shots, and two grazing shots. Fifteen points total. If you were PRT officers then you'd both have met the minimum ten points, so good job." He then started grinning. "But now it's time for the hard version."

Taylor and Amy shared a look, but weren't sure how to take it. Amy went first again, and Taylor frowned while she went through the course driving the other direction. She felt like she was missing something obvious. Still, this time Amy successfully hit every target, showing a marked improvement from her first run. Then they traded places.

"Now then Miss Hebert," Terence said, though he seemed slightly annoyed. "The targets are all in the same places, but we're running the course in the opposite direction. Which means that in order to be able to shoot at them you'll need to be driving so that you're on the correct side of the truck. Be sure to follow the course as laid out by the cones."

Taylor blinked. So that's what was odd, Amy had been driving. She felt stupid for not realizing it at first. "Is that why there's a cones hit and turns missed counter?"

"Of course."

Oddly, firing with her left hand while driving through the course didn't cause Taylor any problems. She actually found it easier, because she knew when the turns and such were coming and could account for them when firing. As a result she was also able to hit all ten targets, a better showing than her first run. She also put more effort into aiming for the centers in the process. Though it would've been a lot harder without the projection lines and multitasking.

Terence's mood seemed to have plummeted, but he still brought them to the recording room for their scores. "Okay, this time you both did better. Miss Dallon had two bullseyes, five center target shots, and three grazing shots. Nineteen points total. Miss Hebert had three bullseyes, six center target shots, and one grazing shot. Twenty-two points total."

Amy frowned. "No comment on the minimum for a PRT officer?"

"That's because you're impossible," came out of the recording room, causing Terence to reach back and close the door before further comments could come through.

After a glare at the door, Terence sighed. "Firing while driving is normally incredibly ineffective and just ensures that you aren't doing either well. Most people are lucky if they hit any targets at all. It's included solely to be an object lesson in how bad it can be to split your focus. Yet neither of you hit a single cone, missed a single turn, or missed a target. You did better than when you were passengers, even. You two are, as Diane just said, impossible."

That left Taylor and Amy blinking, neither having expected that.

The rest of the drive back to Brockton Bay went off without much issue, though they still seemed to be taking a roundabout route. Especially since they ended up coming back in along the coast from the North. They were reminded to grab their secure Bluetooth radio adapters before they were sat down in a conference room for an hour of various things they'd done right and wrong on the driving portion of things. That was followed by another hour of common CB radio terminology that would've been nice before they'd left town that morning, but at least not knowing any of that wasn't counted against them on the driving front.

The 'learn it or be mocked mercilessly' warning was annoying, since neither of them expected to be running around driving trucks that often. They'd be lucky if they were driving cars anytime soon. Well, Taylor at least figured that with a license she might be picking up her father's car from the bar every so often. She was actually surprised she hadn't had to deal with him having left his car at the new Pub yet. Then again, Kurt hadn't been coming by to drag him off either, so that might have something to do with it.

After that was done they were allowed to depart. They'd even been 'given tomorrow off' because they'd done so well today. Couldn't have anything to do with other plans for the day, of course. What with Taylor needing to bring Lacey into her room in the Wards area to pick out vials in the morning and the actual mixing and taking of the vials in the afternoon and all. Yeah, there might be a few things interfering with lessons tomorrow. That and they needed at least one day off.

They'd missed the chance to attend dinner with New Wave, and Danny had apparently eaten leftovers, so the two of them decided to swing by a restaurant together. They gave the place they'd run into Madison at previously a pass intentionally, but had an enjoyable meal together before splitting up and going home.

Emily sighed as she turned on the news. They'd canvased the entire city looking for where the biker gangs were hiding, and run into exactly eight motorcycles on the roads all day. All of which were registered to owners in Brockton Bay and thus weren't part of the Fallen's group. Colin and Theresa had even used their personal exceptions to run sensor sweeps through many of the likely areas and found nothing.

All that time and effort for bupkis. Sure, they thought that they'd spotted a number of the bikers wandering around as though they were tourists, but they couldn't properly prove that and it wasn't like that was illegal. But none of them had their bikes, which meant that they might just be lookalikes. Which would make taking them into custody even worse. The only thing of note that they'd found was a possible shrine to Leviathan in a warehouse that was being rented out as 'art space', and she wouldn't put it past some locals to decide to pull a stunt like that in hopes of selling it to the Crowleys.

Really, getting Miss Hebert and Miss Dallon out of town had accomplished more than the rest of the operation had. They had video evidence of using a vehicle as a blunt object to obliterate a number of things as the vehicle drove past as well as a downright scary demonstration of firearm skills while driving. Both of which she only found out about when she got the notice that they were going to be 'leaking' the firearms set at some point tonight. Though the other twenty three people they were 'leaking' the recordings of would probably be annoyed.

Luckily Renick was handling everything tomorrow, so she could hopefully relax.

Taylor was surprised to find her uncle home when she arrived. Granted, it didn't seem like he'd been there long, but she was still surprised. It sounded like her father was showering upstairs, so she decided to check on her uncle. She found him with a freshly-opened beer in the living room. "Evening. They kick you out early today?"

He nodded. "Yep. Apparently I've been spending too much time around the two and they need time without me there. Told me not to come back until mid-morning tomorrow at the earliest, and then only if you came along. Speaking of that, Mary and Tori want to meet you before Tuesday. Up for a trip out to the Rig tomorrow?"

"I suppose I can slip it in between everything else. Not much going on between first thing in the morning and the afternoon fun."

"Ah, right. Just so you know, Jessica is doing a final meeting with each of the three kids in the morning. They should be arriving soon, if they haven't already."

Taylor blinked. "I thought they'd have been talked to before now?"

Jacob scoffed. "Of course they were. Wouldn't have bothered bringing them otherwise, but since you aren't able to clear them yourself and Jessica is around anyway they decided to go to extra lengths. Besides, she's only getting to properly meet with the rest of the Wards Monday through Wednesday morning due to other scheduling. She was complaining about locking that down when I last spoke to her, in fact. Then she's off to Boston for the rest of the week."

"Oh. Okay." That was much more information than she wanted, but she supposed it was nice to know.

Brad glared at the grunt. "What do you mean you lost him?"

The grunt gulped. "He figured out how to open the bathroom window and jumped, and we didn't notice right away because we were cleaning up the stuff you had us do so that the PRT would be more likely to ignore the safehouse."

He continued to glare for a few seconds as he considered that. Sadly, he had distracted them by giving them more to do without sending over any other help, so this could be his fault. He'd not be saying that out loud, but that meant that he wouldn't be showing his displeasure physically. As much as he'd like to. "Get some people together to start searching, we need to find him before he does something too stupid."

The grunt nodded and darted into the other room. Brad waited until he heard him making calls, then nodded and turned to leave the safehouse. Luckily this had happened after the PRT had given up on their sweep, so they hopefully had some time to find the man. Though given that he was still drunk it was going to be harder to determine what the hell he was going to try and do.

Sunday morning Taylor was woken up by the doorbell ringing. With a sigh she got up and headed downstairs, Ackbar following her curiously. She double-checked, then disarmed the alarm and opened the door. "Morning Lacey. Kurt in the car?"

"Yep," the woman answered.

"Why are you here at five in the morning?"

"Because you're supposed to let me see more vials?"

Taylor sighed. "Something that my calendar says is scheduled for nine. Not five."

Lacey nodded. "That is absolutely correct. But Jim's doing an all you can eat pancake breakfast this morning, and I want to see how much you can eat before then. He opens at six."

"Ah. So you want me to get ready to go to get there when he opens."

"Yep."

"Okay, so long as you're paying, and I'll be heading over on my moped so that I don't need a ride later."

Norton nodded to himself as he ensured that he was ready for the day. His outing the day before had been less taxing on him than he'd expected. The morning buses hadn't been crowded and had obviously been cleaned, though the bus stops for his transfers left much to be desired. He'd needed to walk several blocks to get to the pub, and had arrived early enough to beat the staff. That had grated on him, but it was a new business. He'd only been waiting for around a quarter of an hour when they opened their doors.

The interior had been cleaner than anticipated, which was appreciated. He'd started mentally tearing apart the design choices until he'd started piecing together where the tinkertech was. At which point he started to evaluate things based on that. The potential coverage of things across the entire public area of the bar had him forming a grudging respect for things, because as far as he could tell there were no blind spots. That was, of course, assuming that the various bits of likely-tinkertech had reasonable fields of fire in a defensive situation.

Their menu for food left much to be desired, and the preparation hadn't been anywhere near his normal standards. The alcohol exceeding his expectations was a pleasant surprise, though the labeling of pretty much everything as being a 'beer' grated a little at first. He was able to accept that more when he realized that they were doing so more because that more accurately represented the alcohol content, even if they weren't strictly using grains, but he still felt it was misleading in other ways.

The slight buzz from his day of drinking had also made taking the obviously filthier and more crowded bus back more tolerable. Granted, once he'd returned his first priority had been to clean himself, and he'd made sure to drink plenty of water to mitigate his likely hangover. That had apparently worked, as he only had a minor headache this morning.

All in all the pub had been tolerable, with even the cigarette smoke being kept from accumulating via tinkertech, which meant he was going to have to find somewhere else for his next 'therapy' session. He needed someplace far worse to properly desensitise himself, after all. The plan required that he have to deal with an outright assault on his sensibilities, and the Violet Rose wasn't accomplishing that.

Even if it wasn't going to be a destination for his 'therapy' it was still a worthwhile visit. He would be sending someone over on Tuesday when they were open again to get several order forms, or information on how to make requests if they didn't have any order forms. With any luck he might be able to get something close to the wine he preferred with a lower alcohol content. Especially since his previous vendor for the wine hadn't opted to reopen after his business was destroyed during the last Endbringer attack.

If they could mimic his wine well enough he might even allow his people to stock their products on-site for general consumption, though only to be consumed after their shifts.

Amy sighed as she slowed down for a stoplight. She'd been hoping to get through the intersection before it changed, but it looked like someone else had hit the walk button when she was an intersection back. Which meant she had to stop. Which wouldn't be so bad, except she wasn't sure she wanted to be there as Alabaster was apparently trying to get out to one of the lights along the pole. And failing, because he just landed in front of her, face-first.

A few seconds later he stood up, glared at the lights, and then realized that Amy was there. "Huh?"

"I don't suppose you'd like to leave the intersection before the light changes again?" Amy asked. Granted, she suspected that it would be giving the other direction a green first, but still.

Alabaster stared at her for a moment, then grinned. He then ran forward while pulling a fist back, apparently aiming to punch her. Despite it being unlikely that she'd feel it anyway, she waited until he was on top of her before she leaned to the side. His punch missed, and he spun around as a result. This time he recovered fairly quickly and grabbed Amy, trying to pull her off of the moped. So she punched him in the face, which he barely reacted to. And the slightly bleeding nose fixed itself a moment later.

Grumbling, she pushed him off of her and got off of the moped. When he tried to grab her again she threw him over the moped and onto the sidewalk. That was followed by moving the moped over to the side of the road so that it wouldn't be in the way. She'd nearly completed that when he tried to hit her again, only to stumble because he hadn't paid attention to things like the curb he was stepping off of. She vaulted over the moped, kicking him in the chest to send him back onto the sidewalk.

It took a moment, but he came at her again. This time she grabbed his punch and twisted his arm, applying enough pressure to break a bone and dislocate his shoulder. It only took a few seconds before that was undone by his power, but Amy had gotten skin contact that time and saw that he was drunk.

Taylor: Are you fighting someone?

Amy: Yeah. Alabaster, who appears to still be incredibly drunk.

Taylor: Do you need any help?

Amy: I don't think so. It's just him being a drunken idiot right now, and I don't mind using him as a practice dummy if he's going to attack me. More fun than the gym that you might be skipping anyway, and he's doing a horrible job.

Taylor: Okay, I guess. Let me know if you change your mind.

Alabaster's next attack was a kick, which she easily caught. She then proceeded to twist his foot and leg to cause him to fall over. He tried to kick her with his other leg on the way down but missed. In response she stomped down on his ankle. She might have broken something, but if she did then he probably never noticed with his resetting every few seconds. That kicking him in the groin when he tried to grab her didn't even cause him to flinch made her remember that he apparently didn't feel pain in general.

Jumping back, and forcing him to get back up in the process, she thought about her options. She really didn't want to shut his powers down while she could tell people were recording things from nearby windows and even a car that'd stopped. She could call the PRT to come grab him, but he was more being an idiot than anything else. Maybe the police? It wasn't like he'd be any trouble for a normal police officer with the way he was fighting, after all. She grabbed his arm as he tried for a punch this time and used his forward momentum and a small amount of her higher than human normal strength to throw him down the sidewalk.

"Why can't I hit you?" Alabaster asked as he got up from that one. "You're just a little healer, aren't you?"

Amy rolled her eyes. "Do you honestly think I was never taught to defend myself?"

She ended up dodging another attempt at a punch, but grew concerned as another snark entered her range.

Amy: Looks like I might have more company in a minute. Depending on what they decide to do I might need some help after all.

Taylor: On what they decide to do?

Amy: Well, Alabaster attacked me, I've just been defending myself. Technically. And I should be off-limits, especially since I'm out of costume and all?

Taylor: I was just finishing up with breakfast anyway, I'll head your way just in case.

Three more punches were attempted before she decided to grab his arm and twist it behind him. She felt his body reset a bruise right before she dropped him to the ground and dislocated his shoulder. She then held him down such that his arm couldn't reset back into position. A few seconds later his arm pulled, but she held her grip, and the man screamed in apparent pain.

"You bitch!" he yelled, trying to throw her off. It didn't work, and a few seconds after that she noticed that a couple of scrapes had vanished, but the dislocated shoulder was still there. And his arm hadn't been pulled on. Though he also didn't seem to be in any more pain, like the pain he had felt was momentary. A minute later the approaching snark pulled up in a truck, and Amy looked over to see that it was Hookwolf.

"Excuse me Miss Dallon," Hookwolf said as he got out of the truck, holding his hands up to show that he wasn't intending to attack her. Alabaster had frozen at the sound of his voice. "Are you intending to turn this idiot in? If not I'd like to return him to his personal drunk tank before he does anything else as idiotic as attacking you."

Amy looked down at Alabaster, and had to admit that if he was still drunk from his visit to the pub...a week ago? Sheesh. She could even tell that his intoxication level was almost, but not completely, rewinding each time he 'reset'. In fact, the alcohol might be triggering resets, since that was the only change on the most recent one. So she and Taylor were partially responsible for that, and it seemed a bit too much like having set him up if she turned him in as a result. That and he hadn't even gotten a good hit on her force field, let alone her. "I suppose you can take him. Better than having to wait for someone else."

She carefully got up off of Alabaster, who was then bodily lifted off the ground by Hookwolf and thrown into the back of the truck. Hookwolf then turned back to Amy. "My apologies for his actions, but apparently he's a stupid and reckless drunk. I know New Wave isn't much for financial gifts, but I'll personally ensure that a donation is made to the fund that pays to have people brought in on your healing weekends for the trouble this idiot caused."

Blinking, Amy wasn't sure what to think about that. "Er, thank you."

She then watched as Hookwolf tied Alabaster down in the back of the truck, then got back into the passenger seat. A moment later the truck was leaving the area. Taylor arrived as Amy was preparing to get moving again.

Max turned towards the phone he'd put on speaker while he prepared for the day. "He did what?"

"Attacked Amy Dallon out of costume," Brad repeated. "There are videos online, I sent you a couple of links. She came up to a stoplight he was trying to climb, he fell off. One person claims that she asked if he was going to leave the intersection before the light changed, but it's obvious that she made no threatening moves before he apparently decided to punch her."

Max growled. "I don't suppose you have any ideas for teaching the idiot a lesson?"

"I was thinking that he could play with Dorothy and Geoff for a bit, but I don't think even that'll work properly while he's intoxicated. Oh, and the trick where physically preventing his limbs from shifting back into position when they're still attached to him keeps them from setting properly? They caught Miss Dallon pulling that off and are discussing it on PHO now. I haven't bothered to do anything with his dislocated shoulder."

"I can see how his condition would prevent him from learning the lesson properly. Think on it, but as annoying as it is we might have to either turn him over to the PRT or ask them for help."

"Will do."

"Anything else?"

"I promised a donation to the fund that brings people in for Panacea's weekends. I'd like permission to take some of it from the idiot's account."

Max considered that. He approved on both counts, but he figured that they needed to make a better gesture. "Take five grand from his account and five grand from the general funds. After all, we hold some responsibility for failing to keep him monitored properly in his current state."

"Will do."

"Oh, and offer a cash reward for a working solution for sobering him up internally, both amongst the grunts and at the dogfight tonight. If we don't have any better ideas then we can approach the PRT in a few days."

There was a moment of silence as Brad considered that. "Not a bad idea. Hundred bucks for a partial solution, five hundred for a complete one?"

"That'll work."

Taylor and Amy watched as Lacey looked over the vials. She picked a couple of canisters up, and removed a vial or two temporarily, but seemed to be having problems.

Taylor: So do you think we should try and teach the vial snarks she picks a little before she mixes them?

Amy: I don't know what you're talking about.

Taylor: Specifically, some of the loopholes for fixing brains. I mean, there's a good chance that they're more effective during the connection process, right?

BA: Contemplation

S: Agreement

Taylor: See?

Amy: Okay, I can see that. Probably means carrying a case with them around all morning though.

Taylor: Not really a problem, I don't think. All I've got planned before delivering the things is a trip to the Rig to see Mary and Tori. I doubt anyone will have a problem with me bringing them along in a secure case.

"Am I allowed to waste three vials?" Lacey finally asked.

Taylor blinked. "Waste how?"

Lacey held a couple of vials up. "I think I can work with these two for one of the kids, but the leftovers would be useless and should be left to evaporate or whatever it is they do. There are four, maybe five 'pairs' like that, and at least one set of three that I think I'd only get two usable doses out of. At least for drinkers with brain issues, anyway, since I think I'm going to need better quality starting points?"

Taylor thought about it for a moment, before shrugging. "I don't think it's wasting if you've got leftover bits. I get the feeling that it's better if a given snark doesn't get a connection at all than be stuck with a horrible connection."

Lacey grinned at that, and then quickly removed four more canisters. "In that case I think these six are the best choices."

Taylor looked over the six canisters, then grabbed the secure case she had for carrying the things around. Only to realize upon opening it that it only had enough space for five canisters. Sighing, she looked between the six canisters and the case, trying to decide what to do. She then realized that she did have one option and turned to Lacey. "Does it matter if they're, er, pre-mixed? I don't have enough slots in this case for all six."

Lacey blinked, then tilted her head. "As in pour them together now? I don't think that'll be a problem. I get the feeling that it would be still best if I, er, 'cleaned' them a bit before anyone drank them? But mixing them won't stop that from working, and then I only have to open one at a time later. Er, will they fit?"

Nodding, Taylor gestured to the canisters. "As I understand things, they'll fit just fine. So, which ones are the 'primary' vials?"

Lacey pointed out which vials were which, though she dithered a bit on one pair before picking one to be the 'primary', and Taylor carefully but quickly poured the 'secondary' vials into the 'primary' vials for each pair and re-sealed things. The now-combined vials were then placed into their canisters and placed in the carrying case.

Taylor: Alrighty then, time to start lessons.

BA: Agreement

Chapter 194 Taylor had been correct about being able to bring the vials along with her on the trip over to the Rig. She'd escorted Lacey to where she and Kurt would be preparing their equipment, this time a room off to the side of one of the hospital areas that had a hallway door in addition to the door from the hospital area it was attached to. Apparently this was going to be far less of an 'event' than the last time? When they arrived they found that Kurt had the whittlesplitter apart as he adjusted something inside of it.

Lacey was left there and Taylor met up with her uncle to grab a transport over to the Rig. Amy had opted to tag along, if only to do medical checkups so that Taylor didn't have to reveal that secret to Mary and Tori. Not that it was likely needed or they'd have requested that one of them go over specifically to do medical checkups, but whatever. Her uncle had looked at the locked vial case oddly as they got onto the transport, but didn't say anything about it.

They were met at the elevator by one of the doctors, one that let Taylor and Amy go on while he berated Jacob for hovering far too much. They left the two to that and headed on, being met by a nurse outside of the room that Mary and Tori were staying in.

"Hello Miss Hebert, Miss Dallon," the nurse said. "These two only asked to see Miss Hebert, but I doubt that they're going to complain too much if you both go in. However, before you do I'd like to ensure that you know that they've already had lunch and were allowed some of the sweets Jacob got them. We'd appreciate it if you don't give them anything else, even if they ask."

Taylor and Amy both nodded, so the nurse opened the door and let them in. They found the two girls sitting up in beds that'd been pushed right up to a table set between them. They each had one of the plush toys next to them, but were looking over the helicopter that was sitting on the table between them. Well, they had been looking over the helicopter, they'd turned to look at who was coming in when the door had opened.

"Hello?" Mary half-questioned.

"Hi," Taylor greeted. "I'm Taylor, and this is Amy."

Mary blinked, and then smiled. "Ooooh! You gave us Mippy and Flippy! And the helicopter!"

Amy snickered as Taylor blinked. "Mippy and Flippy?"

Mary and Tori held up the plush animals they had on their beds, making Taylor feel a little stupid for not realizing what the two were talking about at first. They'd looked more serious than that when looking at the helicopter, after all. On the other hand, they'd had years of only really interacting with each other and the apparent virtual teachers.

Tori made the plush she was holding 'wave'. "Flippy says hi!"

Taylor suspected that this was going to be an interesting experience.

Lucia fidgeted in the waiting area she and the other parents had been brought to while Doctor Yamada worked with the three kids. So far everything had gone well enough, but they were all worried. Partially because Sandy had a seizure shortly before the transport landed and hadn't fully recovered when they'd been shuffled out so that their presence didn't influence what the kids said. She could appreciate the desire to ensure that everyone knew what was happening, of course, but she'd never again be tempted to snap at someone for wanting to 'speed things up' because she did her best to not be a hypocrite.

Zelda had taken the need to leave her daughter a bit harder, but that was to be expected given the seizure. But she'd seen reason and was watching the door like a hawk, ready to return to the girl's bedside. Arthur and Stella were probably the calmest, but Ryan had responded to one of the treatments so was a little better off overall. Not that 'the calmest' meant that they were calm, of course.

Really, the entire situation was crazy. Saving their kids from a young grave by having them drink power-granting likely-mutating vials that could very well put them into a young grave thanks to the fighting they'd likely end up participating in. But giving them a chance at living was the goal, even if they ended up with a very different life than they'd have had otherwise. To the four adults? It was much better to try than know that they'd be arranging funerals.

Unless something went very differently than expected with Doctor Yamada they'd be making their last attempt at saving the three kids in a few hours. Hopefully it would work, but they'd been prepared in a number of ways for it to fail. The PRT had even had each of the parents sit down with a therapist to cover that possibility, trying to cover all of their bases.

"Funny how things work out," Arthur finally said.

Zelda turned to look at him. "What do you mean?"

He sighed. "Kiku apparently wanted to spare them ever becoming parahumans, something that might never have happened normally, yet now that's the only way left to try and save them."

Lucia nodded at that. "That's true, but some of that was probably her power urges." The other three turned to look at her, and she sighed. It wasn't secret at this point, but it'd never been made public, and the others were now cleared for a lot more anyway. "She found out that her little brother had the potential to trigger and stressed out over wanting to keep him from doing so. No sign of a corona pollentia was found in his brain in the autopsies, and her notes didn't include removing the potential to trigger. Suppress it so that it couldn't happen, or keep people from getting the potential, but not remove the potential."

Stella frowned at that, and Lucia raised an eyebrow at her. The other woman tilted her head slightly. "That doesn't sound like something the gangs would want?"

"They didn't care about that. They went after her because she'd also built a helmet that forced someone with the potential to trigger to actually do so, and had been working on a version that could adjust what kinds of powers you triggered with. Both helmets were damaged in the fight and later destroyed by the PRT to prevent others from getting ideas. Well, that and they were almost guaranteed to be fatal if you didn't have the potential to trigger. They'd literally cook your brain."

Taylor sighed as she sat down in the break room nearest to where Mary and Tori were being kept, dropping the case with the vials on the floor next to the chair. The two girls were an incredibly odd experience. Pinning down a mental age based on behavior was difficult. For example, they adored the plush toys, but had been figuring out how to properly strap rocket motors to the helicopter without causing damage to anything when they fired off. They seemed to have no concept of keeping secrets either, possibly stemming from only really having each other to talk to for years, and had trouble with picking up body language. You could debate high school topics with them, but they had very little concept of right and wrong.

"Those two are tiring," Amy said as she raided the break room fridge.

Taylor nodded. "I can't believe my uncle wants to take them out in public on Tuesday."

"They clam up around people they don't think they have any reason to trust," Jacob said as he leaned against the break room door. "They know you two from the news and from me talking to them, but they'll probably clam up around Danny. I don't suppose they looked suspicious of you until they'd connected you to something?"

"They lit up when they realized that Taylor had given them the plush animals and that helicopter," Amy noted, tossing Taylor a small bottle of water.

Jacob nodded. "That makes sense. They tend to trust anyone dressed like a doctor or nurse right now too, which they'll have to learn to stop doing. Wouldn't be surprised if that extends to police officers and similar, actually. Still, I have no clue how the simulation they were in worked, but it obviously wasn't intended to run for years. The girls are lucky that Alan over-built those pods to an extreme, but I know he and Catherine didn't have time to finish the programming."

Taylor shrugged. "That much was obvious. None of the controls on the remote were labeled once the pods were in direct control range, after all."

"Didn't know that, but it makes sense. Where is the remote anyway?"

"I left it and a set of notes on which button does what with Dragon so that she could get the pods off of the barge I landed them on if she decided to power them back up to do so. I don't actually have much of a use for the thing right now, after all."

"I see. So, you two ready to head back to the PRT building? I'm being told to tag along since they don't think other parahumans in the area have any effect on the vials. For various reasons they want me to work with Ryan while Jessica works with Sandy and Rosa after they've taken their vials."

"I hope we're getting lunch before that," Amy noted.

Jacob snorted. "Of course we are. They won't let me bring pizza in for Mary and Tori, but I still have a craving. Granted, I think part of their problem is that it isn't pizza day here and they don't want to have someone run pizza over in a transport. Though before we head over, I do have one question." Taylor and Amy both raised an eyebrow, and he obviously took that as requesting him to ask said question. "If I get Riley on board, would you two be willing to augment Mary and Tori?"

Taylor looked at Amy.

Taylor: I'm thinking it might not be a good idea.

Amy: I have my own reservations. Such as giving them more time to acclimate to being in their own bodies before we start changing them.

Taylor: I was thinking more along the lines of ensuring they know right from wrong before they have access to enhanced strength, possibly coupled with not giving them a brain/computer interface of sorts when they've just been pulled out of one.

Amy: And those are both very good points in and of themselves. So I think we're in agreement.

Taylor turned back to her uncle. "We don't think that's a good idea."

Amy nodded her agreement. "I was thinking that they should have time to get used to being in their bodies, but given their issues with right and wrong? Probably not a good idea to give them enhanced strength."

"And they were just pulled out of a brain/computer interface, do we really want to install another one so soon?"

Jacob looked at the two, and then sighed. "I hate it when people use impossible to refute logic against me. Especially when I can't punch them for being annoying."

Taylor had decided to not bother getting into costume for the vial delivery, in part because she had no reason to be in costume after things were done. Similarly, Amy hadn't bothered to get out one of her robes, because why bother? So the two showed up, and for appearances sake Taylor waited with Lacey for Amy to go in and give each of the kids a quick checkup. This was more to let Shaper get data than anything else, since providing 'how to fix brains' information ahead of time seemed like the best bet for things working.

S: Data

[Acceptance][Acceptance][Acceptance]

Handing that data off to the three vial snarks as Amy checked each kid was slightly distracting, not that Taylor was doing much more than reading while she waited. It wasn't long before Amy had checked all three kids and it was time for Lacey to do her thing. Taylor helped push the table containing all of Lacey's stuff into the hospital room, noting that they'd shifted all three kids into wheelchairs instead of leaving them in the beds in the process. Once they were in the room the doors were secured and Taylor unlocked the case containing the three vials.

With that done she moved over to where Amy had sat down, grabbing the seat next to the other girl. It was almost odd that Jacob and Jessica were up in the therapy office instead of down here, but it wasn't like they had any reason to participate. The interesting part there was that Kurt was there with them instead of down here with Lacey.

Lacey nodded after a couple of checks, then turned to the room. "So while a couple of things warm up, I don't suppose introductions are in order?"

They did a quick pass around the room starting with Lacey introducing herself. They moved to Lucia and her daughter Rosa, then to Zelda and her daughter Sandy. Zelda had to introduce her daughter as she was currently having trouble speaking. Arthur and Stella were next, with their son Ryan, followed by Amy and Taylor. Doctors Simpkin, Morris, and Abrahams reluctantly spoke up at the end, but stayed off to the side taking notes.

"Alright," Lacey said as she checked and found her equipment ready. "Who's going first?"

All three kids and all four parents looked nervous, but Rosa raised her hand and Lucia wheeled her forward. Lacey looked the girl over, then looked at the three canisters, and apparently realized that she had no clue which one to use for the kid. So instead she spun the case around and showed it to her. Rosa obviously knew what Lacey wanted to know, and hesitantly reached out and pointed at the one to her right.

Nodding, Lacey picked that canister up and extracted the vial. She then looked between it and Rosa, nodding after a few seconds, and grabbed an unlabeled clear bottle of liquid to get started. She passed the vial and the various things she was mixing it with through the whittlesplitter four times before she was done, frowning on the last one. With a shrug she placed the finished drink down in front of Rosa. "You'll need to drink it all, no stopping before you're done. Okay?"

Rosa nodded, and Lucia helped her daughter while Lacey dumped a glass of leftovers into a bucket, obviously not wanting any of it. It took almost a minute for Rosa to finish the entire drink, and she looked like it tasted horrible, but she consumed it all and started to glow.

A moment later Taylor and Amy found themselves staring down at a field of snarks, several of them connecting temporarily to move things around. It didn't take long, and a few seconds later they were back in their seats.

Everyone looked at Rosa, her now neon-yellow hair being the most obvious change. But she was squirming in the wheelchair and finally reached back and released a similarly-colored tail. Taylor saw that her eyes were a solid color when she turned to look at the tail, and it also looked like the girl's feet were a little different. Taylor nudged Amy, who got up and walked over to the girl.

"My headache is gone," Rosa said as Amy reached her. "But my tail hurts?"

"May I?" Amy asked, startling Rosa, but the girl held her hand out anyway. Amy took it and Shaper looked over the girl. "Looks like you just pinched the tail, probably because it formed while you weren't sitting right for having one. Your feet seem like they're a little more hand-like than they were too. Your muscles seem like they're probably a bit stronger all around as well, and I think your tail has some decent strength but doesn't look like it has a suitable muscle arrangement for fine control of it. Best of all, no tumor."

Taylor figured that some of the brain activity she saw was Amy making notes, and she decided to get on with her own side of things while Lucia was hugging her daughter.

Taylor: So, how have you configured for Rosa?

[Data. Elaboration]

Taylor: Thank you.

Huh. A tinker, water focused. Mainly storage and manipulation. And she'd picked up the ability to know how clean or contaminated water was just by seeing it. Not too bad, all things considered. It would probably be fairly flexible once she got into her comfort zone with the ability. Whether or not she'd work well with Chris or Colin was an entirely different question, of course, and it might be a while before she'd be allowed to participate in any intentional multi-tinker fugues.

Lucia brought Rosa back to her bed and had her sit on it, the hospital gown apparently working out nicely in this case because the girl's new tail could slip out the back easily. Arthur then moved to roll Ryan forward, only to be stopped by the boy waving Sandy forward. It took a moment of looking between the two males before Arthur nodded. Zelda then pushed Sandy forward, and without prompting the girl pointed at one of the canisters.

Lacey only ran that vial through the whittlesplitter twice, though she cringed at the stuff removed and dumped it into the disposal bucket immediately. The drink was then placed in front of Sandy, and Zelda helped the girl drink it. She coughed a little near the end, but got the last of it down and started glowing. Taylor and Amy got another show with a new collection of snarks trading bits, then dropped back into the room to find a much greener girl sitting in the wheelchair. One who'd started scratching at the hospital gown.

Looking over the differences, Sandy now had vines instead of normal hair, with green tinted everything. That looked to be the majority of her changes, at least until Amy held her hand out and the girl took it.

"You've got the ability to obtain nutrients through photosynthesis," Amy started. "Your hair is very similar to vines and you may be able to move it, but not quickly and it probably won't let you do much. I think you'll be a lot more flexible than a normal human as well, with your body being a bit plant-like all through and all. Though your digestive tract looks to have shifted to carnivorous, so you'll need to adjust your diet. And again, no tumor. But I can't see why you're itching."

"It's made with plants," was Sandy's response, frowning at the garment.

"Ah. That sounds more power-related than biological, which would be why I couldn't pick up on it."

Zelda looked to be trying to decide if she should hug her daughter or not, given the changes she'd gone through, but Taylor figured that Amy was done and could be distracted by chatter now.

Taylor: Hello there. What are you doing for Sandy?

[Data. Data. Elaboration]

Taylor: I see. Thank you.

Bit of an odd mix there. Control of natural stone with some limitations, with the ability to sense stone not, er, 'blocked by other stone'? Probably as good a translation as any. Plus she could tell when things are made with plants or animals, and if the discomfort with the hospital gown was any indication she'd not be happy with plant-derived clothing at a minimum. Glenn was probably going to need to know that last bit, and they should probably check how she reacted to animal-derived products.

By the time Taylor had noted all of that down with wording she was happy with, a task that was easier said than done, Zelda had decided that it wouldn't hurt to hug her daughter. Sandy seemed to be trying not to scratch at her mother's shirt, making Taylor suspect that there was going to be a general shift in clothing materials in their household. Still, it didn't take them long to move back to the bed that Sandy had apparently been using, though the girl gave the sheets on said bed a look of annoyance.

That left one vial, which Lacey collected from the canister before Ryan had been pushed over by Arthur. She put this one through the whittlesplitter three times and was looking at the remnants thoughtfully after putting the resulting drink down in front of the boy. Stella watched as Arthur started helping Ryan drink the concoction, but he was only halfway through when his limbs started shaking. He got another quarter down before he stopped drinking and started choking, and his thrashing knocked the glass away as he started glowing.

This time Taylor could tell that there was something wrong when they ended up looking down at the snarks. There were partial connections, as well as what looked like a broken one or two. Presumably because bits from the portion that Ryan hadn't been able to finish drinking were missing, breaking the connections they represented.

When they snapped back to the hospital room it was to a very changed Ryan. He looked to now be made out of a partially translucent, dark-pink crystal substance. His hair represented by some spikes on his head, his fingers and toes ended in what looked like spike 'claws', and as he turned his head back and forth it was obvious that his facial features were almost entirely gone. There was a hint of a nose, but that was about it.

"Ryan?" Stella questioned, her eyes wide.

It took a moment for Ryan to respond, and it sounded a little odd. "I'm here, this is just weird."

Taylor suspected that Amy wasn't getting much out of him, and opted to go straight for talking to his snark instead.

Taylor: What happened?

[Data. Exasperation. Elaboration]

Amy: You didn't have and couldn't get the pieces needed for 'human', and since he was having what we call a seizure you had to act fast?

[Agreement]

Well, they did warn about drinking the vials in their entirety for good reason. Luckily it didn't seem to have been too bad in this case?

Taylor: So what abilities are you granting him?

[Data]

Huh. Absorbing sound to use later. Now that she focused on it, the room did seem quieter. And he could see through his entire 'surface', though whether or not that was as good as his eyes had been was up to the testers to figure out.

Despite Ryan's new inorganic state, as obvious as it was, they still had Amy try and get a reading. She failed, to nobody's actual surprise, but that was a result in and of itself. She compared the experience to Weld, and recommended that they get in touch with him for a possible sharing of experiences or tips in how to deal with things. Even if things were very different between the two.

With all of that done the doctors insisted that they get Lacey and her stuff out of the room so that a 'proper medical examination' could happen. Taylor and Amy compared notes while helping with that, compiled them all into a single document, and then that was submitted so that the power testers and such could start to prepare. It almost went without saying that Broadcast Administrator had also topped off all three snarks now that they were bonded to the kids.

Once Lacey and her equipment were out of the room and the spilled drink was cleaned up the doors were closed, locked by one of the doctors, and presumably the three kids got to be the subjects of as complete a medical examination as possible under the circumstances. Though Taylor wondered what they thought they were going to be doing with Ryan, given that he no longer had a traditional biology for them to examine.

Glenn paused the movie he had playing as a notification came up on his laptop. He'd been waiting to hear what had happened with the three unfortunate kids that were hopefully ending up in the Brockton Bay Wards. Granted, he'd probably only end up meeting the three after they went through proper power testing, but he'd need time to come up with options and having the basics would help there.

It only took him a moment to bring up the summary that would've been prepared by someone with more clearance than him, since some of this qualified as 'medical data' and all. He could already tell that he had his work cut out for him, three very different power sets and physical requirements. After a quick skim he started making notes, including things to send to the power testers. Like ensuring that they tested most of the armored fabrics and such they normally used with the Wards with Sandy, both for if she was comfortable wearing them and if they blocked her 'stone sight' thing.

It took a little more thought before he added in notes about testing Ryan with fabrics designed to let sound through, he knew that there were a couple samples available, and to see just how 'hand-like' Rosa's feet were. Those could be important considerations when coming up with a design, though being a tinker and all they might end up with Rosa building herself power armor or something similar. At that point it was usually just a question of coloration, and that was usually trivial to deal with.

Initial notes complete, he shut down his entertainment center and picked up his laptop. He wanted to check a couple of things he'd stored in his home office, and he should probably finish packing for a trip out to Brockton Bay in the morning now that the justification for said trip existed. Talking to the three families before they left to pack up and move the things they'd left behind for this trip would speed things up. With any luck he'd have costumes ordered before they left and they'd be in by the time they got back.

Of course, this also left the question of how to announce them. Should they or shouldn't they point out that the three had consumed power-granting vials, if so should they explain why? That would need to be discussed at multiple levels, including with the four parents. On one hand, it was a noble use of the vials. On the other hand, Miss Hebert didn't have infinite numbers of the things and it could easily turn into a nightmare to manage. Then again, they didn't have to admit where the vials came from, merely that they'd been obtained. Noting how rare they were might help there...

Amy had to go attend a combined New Wave dinner and meeting regarding the healing weekend just before school would be starting, leaving Taylor to her own devices for the rest of the afternoon. Not knowing what else to do, she headed home, opting to go through more classwork while she cleaned her room. She got a little bit of a show when she actually got home, with two different groups of protestors having a verbal argument over which of their positions was more important, but she ignored them in favor of heading inside.

She found that Ackbar had built quite an impressive set of webs inside of the pet carrier, to the point where the thing was glowing like an eldritch object or something was stored inside. She apologized to his snark, overloaded it to cancel out the webs, and then suffered through Ackbar being overly protective due to not knowing how to handle what had happened. Which was probably still better than dealing with whatever the laid webs would've done.

Amy: Sarah wants to know if we should bother requesting your aid over the weekend while I'm healing people. I know you have the end of your psychology class Friday, so probably shouldn't help out with the rush of locals.

Taylor: I thought New Wave tended to just handle all of that on the weekend itself?

Amy: With the Fallen in town Neil thought that I might be too tempting of a target, and having you able to circle the area looking for parahumans might help.

Taylor: Ahhh. That does make sense, but if the Fallen are looking for me then wouldn't that be counterproductive?

Amy: Perhaps. Perhaps not. Being out in costume gives you more options and all.

Taylor: True. I suppose it couldn't hurt to ask the PRT, they'll just say no if they think it's too much of a risk for me.

"Taylor says we can ask the PRT to see what they think," Amy relayed.

"You just want an excuse for her to be nearby most of the weekend," Vicky teased.

Sarah sighed. "Victoria, you know that the girl is much less likely to be nabbed with all of us in the area. Show of force and all to discourage the Fallen from being idiots for a couple of days."

Amy didn't want to admit that a lot of her reasoning was to keep Taylor somewhat close. Whether that was for Taylor's safety or because if something did happen that she'd be close enough to get to quickly was debatable, she didn't quite know herself. With any luck Taylor would be permitted to play additional guard and things would be boring, but since this was Brockton Bay and Taylor they were talking about they should be ready for an invasion too.

An invasion of what was undecided, but finding out that the Mathers and McVeays had decided to show up 'in force' to aid the Crowleys wouldn't surprise her at this point. And they were probably due some other idiot showing up in the near future to throw a wrench in the works as well, for that matter.

Missy blinked. "Auntie Clara is coming here? Why?"

Her mother rolled her eyes. "Because we forgot to take into account her reaction when we stupidly agreed to let you go public with your identity. I'm surprised she took this long, but she probably couldn't get away until now."

Missy knew that she was missing something important here, if only from the look on her mother's face. She didn't know what that something was, but she thought that she needed to prepare for it. The only question was how she needed to prepare. Maybe being ready to spend a week or two in the PRT building to hide?

Chapter 195 Monday morning Taylor was surprised to find that her uncle actually left before she did, and didn't seem to have had breakfast in the house either. She didn't know why he rushed off so early, but figured that he had his reasons. Instead of worrying about that, since it probably wasn't a big issue anyway, she went through her own morning routine. She ended up leaving a little early herself, hoping to not have to deal with idiots on her way in.

It was probably her own fault that she hadn't made it to the PRT building without incident, since she'd stopped to ensure that the parahuman woman who'd been at the meet and greet with a shy little girl was okay. Taylor had pulled up to the stop light just before the woman hit a drunk likely-Empire thug in the face with pepper spray, and stayed with her while they waited for a police officer to arrive to take the man in. Airi had thanked her before they'd parted ways, and Taylor had ended up being beaten to the gym by Amy, Vicky, and Dennis.

"Hello," Taylor said as she approached the three, the various PRT staff using the gym ignoring them.

"Hey Taylor," Vicky replied. Dennis just waved from the machine he was on.

"So I suspect that Vicky here was dragged out by Amy, probably on Carol's orders, but I didn't expect to see Dennis."

Dennis grunted, then shut down the machine. "I've got an appointment this morning, so I came in early. I've been encouraging the other Wards to come in when they can as well, and though most of us aren't in as early as you they do generally make it in at least three times a week, depending on schedules."

Taylor blinked, not having expected that. Then again, it wasn't like it was a requirement that people come in to use the gym when she was there. Though it also seemed like an odd thing to have come up. "So what inspired that?"

Dennis looked at Taylor, then sighed. "It kinda started when Aisha opened a jar that I couldn't, even if she's been using her brother's equipment at home more often than coming in here."

Driving lessons for the morning had turned out to be a classroom session today, including a brief overview of the normal state rules for getting a license. Which, to Taylor, seemed fairly lax for adults yet overly complicated for teenagers. They also went over the brief history of the exceptions that they were operating under, which had been covered in their reading material. The entire process had started with the PRT working on identification for Case 53s, complete with some odd requirements due to their altered forms. Add in the special designations for tinkertech, used by the tinkers who built them or otherwise, plus the addition of Canada and all the additional headaches that introduced, and then having underage tinkers that built large items that needed to be moved through normal trucks?

Long story short, the entire thing was a complicated mess, but when all was said and done the two of them would be issued four licenses each. Two PRT-issued right away, in 'cape' and 'civilian' variants, then two more from the state when they met age requirements. Some of which was, as the instructors pointed out, a waste of time for those whose identities were public anyway, but that's how the laws were implemented so that's how things would be going. Luckily they only needed to pass the PRT-issued exams once.

Lunch had been fairly straightforward, and was followed by a trip over to the Rig. Though more of a formality with Taylor, who operated her tinkertech flight platform on a regular basis, they still had to officially do some testing with 'nonstandard interface tinkertech' for that particular designation. The mopeds didn't count, officially, due to the speed limiters that officially didn't have a disable switch and their reasonably standard form factor. But Sherrel had been working on things that they were going to get to 'learn' on.

It was actually a little interesting how that designation worked. In theory it was to indicate that you could quickly pick up nonstandard tinkertech interfaces, but 'quickly' was more of a 'within a month of exposure' for practical purposes. Given that this was a 'cram everything in as fast as possible' class? They didn't have a month, they had at most two days, and their 'test' would be demonstrating the basics at the end of the week.

"Hello there," Sherrel said as the group arrived in her workshop. She then turned to the two instructors specifically. "You want them to try the ferry or the platform? I think both should be available over the weekend."

The instructors shared a look, and then one of them turned to Sherrel. "I'm sorry, why would the ferry count? Shouldn't you have built it with standard ship controls?"

Sherrel shrugged at that. "Never seen standard ship controls, the ferry they gave me as a starting point had no controls left, and I suspect that some of those controls stop working well when you stop dealing with traditional engines anyway. I've got an appointment next week to have someone go over normal controls with me on the smaller ferry that runs between the shore and the Rig so that I know what they normally look like. I arranged that after the first possible captain looked at my system and screamed when I showed it off over the weekend."

It didn't take long to decide 'both', if only to let them work with both of them at the same time. Amy went off to the side of the workshop with Sherrel to get started on the platform, while Taylor was brought down to a dock where the ferry currently sat. In theory they should be waiting for Sherrel to finish with Amy and then come to explain the controls, but Taylor happened to be able to cheat. Luckily they had a trained PRT officer join them to operate the radio side of things, not to mention play 'supervising captain', since Taylor and the instructor were clueless on naval radio rules and neither were actually licensed for watercraft.

The primary control system was designed around a single joystick with several repositionable touchscreen monitors full of information mounted around it. The joystick itself could be moved forward, back, left, right, twisted, and lifted. It also included two hat switches and nine buttons. What all of those did depended on the overall mode you were in, whether or not you had customized the control interface, and whether or not your eyes were open and facing generally forward.

There were actually two of the entire control system, presumably to make it easier to hand off control. The majority of the system was automated when it came to things like stabilizing the ferry's weight distribution, but a few taps on the monitors would allow for manual overrides. Finding the whole thing interesting, Taylor decided to document it herself. Besides, then she could send the document to Amy when they traded places. That and perhaps Sherrel or the possible captains could use the documentation?

For whatever reason there was no actual security on the controls, so Taylor was able to start it up no problem with a simple toggle switch. Not that the other two had realized that the engine had started until Taylor pulled away from the dock, they seemed to think that she'd only powered on the controls. She described what she was doing as she ran the thing through the paces, including moving down the coast a bit.

"Now then," the instructor said after having her turn around and start heading back towards the Rig at a lower speed. "Since you've blown all of our plans and expectations out of the water, I'd like to see you engage the cloaking device."

Taylor blinked, and looked at the controls. She then turned to the instructor. "What cloaking device?"

"I thought she put a cloaking device in everything?"

"They don't work with the inertial compensators, and since this was intended for civilian use I imagine she felt it wasn't needed?"

There was a pause as the instructor and PRT officer shared a look, then the instructor turned back to her. "What inertial compensators?"

"The ones that only turn on automatically under intense acceleration or deceleration. I figured being able to feel the ferry moving would be better while learning, so I didn't toggle them on for now."

They ended up tooling around for a couple of hours, their final return delaying them a little longer as they waited for a large commercial ship to enter the Bay before they could come around the Rig and dock again. Taylor finished up her documentation during that and sent copies to Amy and Sherrel as she shut things down. It didn't have pictures because she didn't feel like extracting images from her visor system, but aside from that she thought it was fairly complete.

"You're bullshit," Amy said as they met up to trade places.

"Why is she bullshit?" Sherrel asked, looking between the two. The instructors looked curious as well.

"She wrote at least a hundred and fifty pages of documentation on how to operate the ferry while I was doing a wonderful job of trying to crash the flying platform thing. Probably more, I'm not sure how much of the thing is 'glossary and tech specs' type information."

Sherrel looked shocked at that. "I haven't completed more than fifty pages of documentation on operating the stupid ferry, though I admittedly stopped when I was told the control system wasn't usable. How the hell did you get that much already, and when do I get my copy?"

Taylor shrugged. "I already sent you a copy, and I just documented what I thought should be documented while working things out. No pictures or anything, granted."

They ended up waiting for Sherrel to grab a tablet so that she could look over the new documentation while working with Amy on operating the ferry. That done, they headed down to the dock while Taylor was shown to the new platform. Which turned out to be a scaled-up version of her own flying platform, capable of moving trucks. Sighing, she opened a new document, since this was fairly complicated as well.

Sherrel watched as the short-hop transport left, then lifted the tablet she was still holding up to look at it again. The documentation that'd been provided on both the ferry and the flying platform was incredibly detailed, yet included what amounted to a 'for dummies' chapter covering the basics at the beginning. She was fairly certain that any of the PRT or Protectorate staff could operate either well enough to at least get them back to base, shore, or similar with access to the things. Add in some pictures and it would be even better, then they could print off a copy and stick it in a binder in case of emergency. Or training, of course.

Frowning, she grabbed her phone and fumbled through her contacts. Her visor had full audio, so she dropped the phone back into the pocket she kept it in after starting the call.

"Hello Wrench Wraith," came Colin's greeting a moment later. "Do you need assistance with something today?"

Some days his habit of getting straight to the point annoyed her. Today was not one of them. "Am I allowed to put in a general request for a Ward to write my usage documentation?"

"Sadly, you can't have Miss Hebert write all of your documentation. Reasons include that it's your responsibility and because you can't learn how to write it better if you never write any. Even when she's older you won't be able to rely on her being available to write things, after all. But you are allowed to drop internal requests for her assistance into the system and see if she accepts them as non-patrol tasks."

"I didn't say it was Miss Hebert."

"I've seen Kid Win's documentation and thus know that you wouldn't be asking about him. None of the others would be able to figure things out without your help, and I knew that you were going to be working with Miss Hebert and Miss Dallon today. I approved the request, after all."

That made far too much sense, and she was mentally kicking herself for not having thought about it herself. "I see."

"I would appreciate a copy of any documentation she produced for you today, though only after you've had a chance to review it."

Sherrel saw no problem with that. "Before or after I take some pictures and screenshots to slot into appropriate locations?"

There was a moment of silence before the other tinker responded. "I'll leave that up to you."

That, of course, meant that he'd like to see a copy as soon as possible, yet also found it inefficient to review it before and after she'd added pictures. The 'after she reviewed it' was also a desire to not look at things before she made any corrections, for that matter. "I'll let you know once I've had time to take a closer look."

Taylor sighed as she and Amy split up to go their separate ways home. Amy wasn't entirely happy, but then again they'd ended their lessons today with a comment that Taylor was probably getting the more impressive tinkertech operation designation on her license. Even then she wasn't angry at Taylor, or even the system in general. It was more dissatisfaction with the difference in their tinker snarks.

Personally, Taylor thought it was silly. Amy could actually design and build things like a proper tinker. No matter how limited said building was, she could actually design new stuff on her own. It might not be as useful in the field, but Amy didn't tend to go into the field anyway. Taylor could fix things, and understand how to use them, but if she wanted something new she had to find it built already, broken or otherwise, or ask someone else to make it for her.

By the time she reached home she'd decided that it was probably a 'the grass is always greener' situation, and not something she should worry about right now. Instead she headed in and collected the mail that nobody else had been home to collect from where it'd fallen from being shoved through the mail slot. She flipped through it, finding that most of it was for her today. A couple of likely household bills and an official-looking larger envelope were left downstairs for her father before she headed upstairs with the rest. She had plenty of time to look over it before her class, after all.

It didn't take long to flip through the several cards in the pile, and she quickly wrote out several return postcards in response. There was what appeared to be a longer letter at first that actually turned out to be ten hundred-dollar bills wrapped in several layers of disguising paper. No return address, and the only words inside were a typed 'Thank You' on the innermost sheet of paper. What looked like an actual letter was addressed to 'the defeater of the Butcher' appeared to be written in some form of code, she'd have to drop that off tomorrow to see if anyone could figure it out.

She'd saved the largest envelope for last, finding that it was a breakdown of how the pocket dimension construction project would be paid for. Which, on examination, seemed to imply that it wouldn't actually require handing over money at all. Unallocated overflow money from the anti-master tinker fugue project seemed to be the bulk of it, coupled with various groups donating workers or resources. Most of those, reading the breakdown, were actually doing so for Amy in recognition of the amount of time she spent healing. There were a couple that mentioned Taylor's warning about Leviathan or her defeat of the Butcher, but they were dwarfed by the others.

Taylor: Did you get a copy of the 'cost breakdown' for the pocket dimension construction stuff?

Amy: I haven't seen anything, why?

Taylor: They seem to want to use up some of my overflow money, and a bunch of groups want to donate time or resources to construction. Out of pocket expenses would essentially be zero.

Amy: ...really?

Taylor: I'll grab a picture of all of this and send it your way. If you want I'll bring a copy of the paperwork with me in the morning.

It didn't take long to spread the sheets out and grab a picture from rendered visor data. Sure, she had other ways to get a digital copy, but that worked well enough. The picture was then sent on to Amy, after which Taylor cleaned up the papers and took Ackbar downstairs to feed him.

Amy: I don't know if Carol would complain horribly or just sigh at the number of donations in recognition of my healing, but it looks like at least one of these is basically 'build out the triage and hospital slide-out units to give me a suitable place to work during emergencies' and all. I think she'd be okay with that one, at least.

Taylor: Hadn't spotted that one, but yeah, that one sounds harder to object to.

Amy: Also, that anti-master device is insane for how much money you're getting.

Taylor: I'm under the impression that it's mostly them funneling most of the reward money for getting people safely out of the containment zones to me after paying for the crystals used. Last I checked that's slowing down, but I guess there's still a monetary backlog that they aren't allowed to throw directly my way? Rules about too much income from a single project and all, me being a Ward, etc etc.

Amy: I suppose. Still crazy, and odd that you can use it for this, but whatever.

Taylor: I wouldn't be surprised if it's some bullshit loophole like 'Maul' buying a gift for 'Taylor' on paper.

Amy: That would make way too much sense. Oh, huh. Did you see the request on the last page?

Taylor brought up the picture she'd taken and looked at the last page. Reading more carefully than her earlier skim, she found what she thought Amy was talking about.

Taylor: Huh. Building out one of the unallocated units as a therapy room doesn't sound like a horrible idea, and I suppose would be nice if I ever get that far in my studies.

Amy: Why wouldn't you go that far?

Taylor: As far as I can tell, I'm already in a 'never need to work' income bracket thanks to my Dragon-tech stock alone. You've started racking up patents from your work with implants and prosthetics as well, on top of your share of things in all future multi-tinker fugues. By the time we're out of school we could probably both individually afford to fund an endless trip for both of us around the globe doing whatever we wanted.

Amy: Oh.

Taylor shook her head as Ackbar ate. Yeah, it wasn't likely that would happen, but by then they could probably afford to do it.

Amy: I wonder how hard it would be to plot a route to hit as many hospitals as possible? I mean, visiting each hospital in close proximity to each other would be a waste if they could just gather people, and we'd probably just skip the psychiatric hospitals entirely...

Or maybe it was more likely than she thought, if only as a post-graduation trip or something.

Jacob sighed as he finished up the paperwork to transfer Mary and Tori out of Brockton Bay later in the week. He needed to get moving on things so that the Nine could do their thing soon, plus his non-Nine backlog was growing. Not that it ever stopped growing, but getting Taylor licensed as a therapist might actually help there. Sadly, that would take years, on top of needing to wait for her to graduate high school.

They also needed to start evaluating possible additions to the Nine, if only for appearances sake. Which was easier said than done. Sure, he'd love to see what Taylor or Amy could do when going all out, but they didn't need the reputation hit. That and they weren't desensitized to killing enough for some activities the Nine took part in. Sadly, they hadn't run into many fresh triggers that needed a more violent outlet that the newly reinstated anti-hero branding was incapable of handling.

Oh well, something would eventually come up, and they did have the option of 'forcibly recruiting' certain categories of villains. It was a pain when they did so, granted, because they didn't reveal the truth most of the time and needed to babysit them between runs, but it was still an option. And half the time they eventually got told the truth anyway. The other half of the time they died horrible deaths that were as poetic as the rest of them could manage to set up behind their backs.

He still smirked whenever he thought about the time they'd purchased a particularly violent tentacle monster from Blasto as a final 'fuck you' to the serial pedophilic rapist they strung along for three runs. Riley had done good work altering the 'delayed trap' Blasto had included in the thing to only target their unwilling member instead of all of them. It'd also served as a nice distraction for the three days it took the Protectorate to take it down too, for that matter, but it had been made fire resistant so that it could hopefully grab Mimi and they had tried to use flamethrowers instead of the recommended acid.

Tuesday morning Taylor found that her uncle had claimed the washer and dryer for a couple loads of laundry. Despite that, she didn't actually cross paths with him as she went through her own morning routine, and didn't have much of a reason to intentionally seek him out before she left to hit the gym. Then again, he'd also spent most of that time in the guest room, she only knew he'd put things in the machines because of noticing him head down to the basement with her snark sense and hearing them running while she ate a bowl of cereal.

Her trip to the PRT building was interrupted by a car chase crossing her path, but she'd been able to hear the sirens long before it became an issue. She wasn't in a position to help, short of standing in front of the fleeing car and letting it hit her or something, so she just ensured that she was out of the way as the chase approached. Once the police cars had passed she moved on, finding that Aisha and Missy had beaten her in today.

Amy probably would've beaten her in, but she was doing a quick pass at the hospital to check on a teenager that had apparently had a heart attack overnight. They weren't sure if it was obvious drug use or the shrapnel in the girl's chest that caused the problem. Since she was there anyway, Amy had opted to run through other patients and skip the gym. She'd still show up in plenty of time for class, of course.

"Morning Taylor," Missy greeted as Taylor exited the locker room.

"Morning," Taylor returned. "So, stopping in for a morning workout?"

Missy sighed. "Yeah. I've got an appointment with Jessica later, but I'm also trying to see if I can arrange to spend more time here than at home for a few days. I suspect that I might want to avoid my aunt."

"Is that because she hasn't taken you being an outed parahuman well?"

"That's part of the problem. I don't know. My grandmother we'd kept things from because she hates Nazis and was predictably angry that I hadn't killed any, but I've largely gotten her to back off. But nobody ever told me why I needed to keep things from my aunt. For all I know she's a rabid anti-parahuman bigot or something and it just never came up at family gatherings."

Taylor shrugged. "Sounds annoying, but I don't know what I can do about it."

"She's supposed to show up sometime tomorrow. If I can get Dennis to agree to schedule one then would you be willing to join me on an evening patrol on Thursday? Tomorrow's locked out already or I'd aim for then too."

"If you can figure out a third person then I suppose that wouldn't be a problem."

Missy grinned. "I'm fairly certain that I can convince one of the others to join us. Either that or get Glory Girl to, she still needs supervised patrol time and would officially count towards the three patrolling parahumans count."

Taylor nodded. "So, why is Aisha sitting against the wall panting?"

"Oh, that? She tried to keep up with two PRT officers and failed."

Amy had ended up sticking around at the hospital a little longer than expected when the police chase had resulted in a crash close enough to Jason for him to pull injuries from the driver. As a result of that both he and the driver had survived long enough to be brought to Amy. Both, however, had somewhat severe concussions. Jason's would heal faster thanks to his snark being taught healing loopholes, but the hospital wanted him to stick around until things had improved enough. Which meant Amy would be swinging by again before going home to check on him and take care of anything else he picked up during the day.

As a result of that they actually started their class on time, instead of a few minutes early like had been happening before this point. Not that anyone was going to complain about that, because who the hell would? Today's lessons were to be more hands-on, held in PRT trucks equipped with 'student driver' magnets. Apparently it was 'city driving' day, complete with weekday traffic, likely with very few actual destinations in mind. Whether or not they continued with that after lunch was undetermined.

Jacob sighed as he drove across the force field bridge to the Rig. Today they were moving Mary and Tori out of the hospital area there and into one of the larger apartments near the PRT building, where he'd be joining them for another couple of days. Thanks to Taylor and Amy the two were doing quite well physically, but they still needed supervision and all that. But, and this was the more annoying part, they also needed more clothing than he'd gotten them. Which meant taking them shopping.

Luckily for him, one of the nurses had already ensured that the girls had gotten the talks they needed now that they were in much more mature bodies. He hadn't been looking forward to doing that, and he'd picked up a gift card for the woman as a thank you gift. Hopefully she'd be around today, otherwise he'd have to drop it into the mail system. Which would require asking someone else her name, since he hadn't actually figured out which nurse it was yet.

Still, he figured that it wouldn't be too horrible bringing the girls to the department store, getting them a few outfits each, and then settling them into the apartment. At least not when compared to some of the trips he'd had to make with Riley and Mimi, anyway. Why the hell he'd agreed to that pairing, and multiple times at that, he wasn't entirely sure. Yes, it'd helped get Mimi to open up to him a little more, somehow slotting him into a motherly slot in her psyche as far as he could tell, but it hadn't exactly been easy on him.

As an added bonus, he didn't have to deal with two parahumans with very different variants of 'oooh, shiny' distractions caused by their power sets. The first time he'd been in civilian attire with Mimi she'd had trouble moving past someone smoking a cigarette, and that particular trip should never have been made when Riley hadn't been able to tinker for a few days. But he'd pulled it off. So it should be trivial to deal with two girls that might blurt out secrets, but that tended to clam up around strangers.

He'd keep telling himself that it would be fine until such a time as it wasn't or they'd made it back to the apartment with their purchases. His own sanity probably depended on it.

Intentionally or otherwise, the instructors had Taylor and Amy pull into Fugly Bob's for lunch at the same time that Missy was there for a meal. That ended up with the three girls sitting at one table and the two instructors sitting at another. They spent the time chatting, having their pictures taken, and eating far too much for their apparent body types. The two instructors did seem to be enjoying the various comments being made about how much the three could eat, if their snickering was any indication.

Nothing of real importance was discussed, and an employee offered to take care of their trash when they were done, given that one set of trash cans was currently missing due to being in the middle of being emptied and the other set was blocked by an employee cleaning up a spill. They thanked him for that, as did the instructors who were given the same offer, before heading out. Taylor and Amy were made to swap trucks at that point while Missy headed to wherever it was she was going.

By the time the two trucks had pulled out of the parking lot the kind employee had finished bagging and labeling the straws the three girls had used. A few minutes after that a sealed padded envelope containing said straws was dropped into the 'lost and found' bin, to be picked up by someone in the coming days. An hour after that and he'd forgotten that he'd done anything other than throw the trash out for the two tables.

Two days later a woman would pick up the padded envelope, and the following day it would be mailed out of town.

Chapter 196 Amy was obviously annoyed as Taylor pulled up in the other truck. They'd neared the end of their day of driving when the engine had died, stranding them. Their instructors had communicated and decided to have Taylor drive over to pick Amy up while the other instructor waited for someone else to show up with a tow truck. Which had, interestingly enough, brought up that being able to operate a tow truck wasn't specifically covered in their training. Yes, they were getting a suitable license by tow capacity, but they weren't getting training on the tow vehicles themselves.

"So what do you think happened?" Amy asked after Taylor had parked and gotten out of the driver's seat. The two instructors seemed curious as well.

Taylor looked at the other truck, letting her tinker snark tell her what she needed to know. "That's a gasoline engine, right?"

"Diesel," the other instructor corrected.

Taylor shook her head. "Fairly certain that both of these are gas engines, not diesel engines."

The instructor that'd been with Amy frowned and went over to the truck to check. It took nearly ten minutes before he returned, looking sheepish. "Yeah, she's right, it's gas, and I grabbed a portable can of diesel for it. Poured that in when we couldn't find an open gas station..."

They ended up having Taylor drive them back to the PRT building while the instructor who'd made the mistake got to wait for the tow truck to show up.

Maya resisted the urge to slap the bikers she was trying to work with. "Look, you've been told that we're trying to get a thinker to possibly tell us if there's something reproducible with Miss Hebert being Leviathan's herald, right?"

"Yep," Jonas replied.

"I don't know if we'll get some of the other things I've arranged for in time. I've hit most of the places teenagers seem to go to for food in this town, but Miss Hebert seems to have stopped eating out for whatever reason. Probably doesn't want to be interrupted by bikers. But one thing we can work towards is getting a voluntarily provided handwriting sample, preferably on a recent picture of her in combat to kill two birds with one stone. A signature on a picture taken with one of the instant cameras will be perfect."

Jonas rolled his eyes like Maya was an idiot, which was pissing her off. "I get all of that. I agree with most of your plan, even. What I want to know is why we're supposed to hold back, instead of just going all out?"

"Because going 'all out' means that it isn't safe enough for a bystander to reasonably have gotten a picture for the girl to sign. Not to mention that we think she carries at least one gun everywhere. Or have you forgotten what she did with two bullets back at the meet and greet? And that's before the potential Protectorate response if you do actually hurt her. Enough of a threat to get her to fight a little, not enough that she calls in backup or civilians have to evacuate."

Jonas mulled that over, his second and third in command seeming to do the same even if they weren't saying anything. It would be so much easier if she could just use her powers on these three, but she was trying to lay low there after they'd found out that the PRT was looking for the person mastering their people and some of the bikers. She couldn't avoid using her powers for some of the more clandestine things, like her seeding of instructions in employees at various eateries, but in those likely to be arrested she needed to be more careful. Most of them had long-standing manipulations already, and only a third of them were from her.

Finally the man nodded. "I can see how getting information is currently more important than our pride. Instead we need to play a role or two, presumably also with Miss Dallon and Miss...Biron, was it?"

Maya wanted to sigh in relief, since the man had finally gotten the point. "Yes. Missy Biron, in fact."

Jonas turned to...his second in command, whose name Maya couldn't recall right now. "What do you think, split the guys up into five man 'squads', get some of the younger ones to play awestruck bystander?"

Taylor flinched a couple of times while Amy worked on Jason.

Taylor: Did someone show up with a knife in their liver or something?

Amy: There was apparently a fight between two high teenagers just outside the hospital and they did their best to stab each other to death. Both of whom have a 'no parahuman healing' request on file from their parents, so I'm not going anywhere near them.

Taylor: That...huh. I hadn't considered things from that point of view. How does such a request interact with Jason's powers?

Amy: His powers are entirely involuntary and only grab things that would otherwise kill someone, so I think he's doubly in the clear there.

Taylor paused in her other research to check on that, finding that Amy was probably correct after a few minutes of looking over things. That confirmed, she went back to looking through the rules for registering tinkertech vehicles for use on the road when you weren't registering them on behalf of the PRT themselves. She had ideas, but wanted to ensure that she could have all the paperwork lined up well in advance, just in case.

"Taylor," her father called from her bedroom door. "It's almost time to go meet Jacob at the restaurant. I'm assuming you're not going to 'dress up' for the occasion?"

Taylor snorted. "I've met the two girls, I don't think putting a dress or even a skirt on will have any effect on their opinion of me at this point."

"I was thinking more that you might like to look nice because it's a restaurant?"

"Unless there's a dress code I'm thinking that nobody else is going to be all that dressed up."

Danny gave that a moment's thought, then sighed. "You're probably right, other customers aside."

It wasn't much longer before they got into her father's car to head over to meet Jacob, Mary, and Tori. It could, possibly, be the last time they saw any of the three before they left town, after all, what with the three shifting into one of the PRT's apartments waiting for when they'd be departing.

Agatha slammed the door to her house as she tried to catch her breath. There'd been the stupid fake snake on Martha's desk courtesy of Dillan, then the kid with his pet snake that got lost looking for the vet and ended up in the lobby while she was passing through. That had been enough to make it an incredibly bad day, but then Martha had been kind enough to warn her that there appeared to be a snake on her car. Luckily someone else had been willing to help with that before she even left the building.

Her car was being put through the car wash several times in the morning, once she had her jar of quarters with her. She'd have already done that if she hadn't left the quarters at home this morning, because why would she need her jar of quarters when she wasn't visiting the laundromat?

Then there was the truck with a realistic snake painted on it that seemed to end up next to or in front of her frequently, even after she'd pulled off to the side of the road to calm down. Twice. They'd even been talking about snakes on three different radio stations, ending up with her not willing to risk a fourth and just turning the blasted thing off and finishing her drive home in silence.

Of course, if that wasn't enough, one of the neighborhood kids had been talking about finding a snake while she was getting out of the car. That had been enough to get her to rush inside, just in case the kid had grabbed the snake he'd found and had it with him on the other side of the hedge. At this rate she was going to be seriously considering moving to get away from the damned snakes, no matter that her parents thought that being six blocks away was already 'too far'.

Once she had caught her breath, which took longer than she'd have liked, she ensured that the door was locked and headed for the kitchen. She needed a soda, as much as she knew she should be trying to keep from getting into too much of a habit with the stuff. Sighing and shaking her head as she reached the kitchen door, she idly wondered if she should get a doorstop to hold the thing open or just get her father to come by and remove the thing entirely.

That train of thought was halted by the feeling of something landing on her head, leading to her screaming and jumping in surprise. Sadly, that only caused the thing that had landed on her to shift and land around her neck. Looking down, she found herself face to face with a snake. Her eyes went wide as she froze in place, fear bubbling up.

Agatha groaned as she opened her eyes, finding herself staring at the hallway ceiling. Downstairs, because the upstairs hallway had cigarette smoke stains. For some reason she was also positive that there was a rodent in the house, but she had no clue why. Shaking her head, and trying to recall what she'd been doing, she paused as she realized that there was a snake nearby, under the kitchen stove. She didn't know how she knew, but she knew, and thus started to back away from the kitchen.

She'd made it halfway down the hall before she'd realized that she should've closed the blasted kitchen door, but now she'd need to get closer to the snake to do anything about that. Gulping, she carefully moved into the living room, aiming to call someone to help her get the snake out of the house. But instead of the phone, she ended up grabbing an envelope sitting where the phone should be. One with her name on it when she'd stopped blinking and looked at it. A quick check showed that the phone wasn't there, even if the phone cord was. Not sure what to do, she decided to open the envelope and pulled the paper inside out, hoping that it explained what the hell was going on.

Miss Bishop,

Congratulations on your, as you would put it, 'deal with the devil'. Perhaps now you'll properly understand the kinds of things others with powers go through, and no longer call for those who've had traumatic experiences to commit suicide.

While it isn't what I'd have chosen for you, I also acknowledge that the whims of the faerie aren't under my control. I'm sure you've noticed that your faerie has chosen to grant you the ability to sense snakes within a certain distance of you. What you likely don't realize yet is that you also have the ability to 'read' any snake that you make skin contact with, an ability that will linger for an hour or two afterwards, though I haven't bothered to determine what that actually means for you from a practical standpoint. Your faerie is fairly boring, all things considered.

As is the nature of these things, neglecting your faerie by not using your ability to 'read' snakes will cause you significant mental issues. Good luck with overcoming your ophidiophobia.

GU

P.S. Your phone is on the floor behind the couch. I took the liberty of repairing the handset cord while I was relocating it, you wouldn't have had much luck calling anyone with the handset not responding.

Taylor snorted as they entered the private room her uncle had gotten at the restaurant. Mary and Tori had the plush animals on the table with them, and they'd apparently found shirts with children's characters on them in their size. They were also wearing mismatched hats, though that might've been to disguise their current incredibly short hair. Regrowing that hadn't been high on the priority list, after all. At the moment they were sharing a menu and somewhat noisily trying to figure out what they might want to eat.

Her uncle was just as amusing, what with how tired he looked. Apparently he'd had a busy day, and the way he was looking at the two girls at the table made her assume that he'd been dealing with them all day. Then again, her father had informed her that he'd been informed that the plans for the day included shopping. Dealing with two teenagers with childish behavioral tendencies was probably difficult.

"Good evening," Danny said, getting everyone's attention. Mary and Tori looked up at him and quieted down, obviously unsure of what to think of him.

"Hey Danny," Jacob said as he looked over. "Oh, and hello Taylor. Grab whatever seats, I didn't bother to invite anyone else." He then went through a round of introducing everyone, getting an eye-roll from Taylor, Mary, and Tori when he got to introducing them to each other. That he paused and facepalmed after seeing said eye rolls just made the three snicker.

"So has anyone decided what they want yet?" Taylor asked as she picked up one of the menus.

"Mippy wants fries but I want to try a salad," Mary said after a moment of silence, which was enough to give Taylor an indication of what kinds of things her uncle had likely been dealing with all day.

Ciara sighed and looked at the pile of remaining letters. Using the letters themselves as the raw materials when crafting the missives she was providing when done with people meant that it was a very good measure of how much work she had left, and even if it was the last group she was still mildly annoyed at how much more work it represented. But overall she was enjoying the vastly different experience, even if it was marred a little from watching the one person so far that had taken their own advice seriously and committed suicide after triggering. Not even those who'd been given the rings had done that.

She might have considered her efforts keeping said suicide to the woman herself instead of the area as a 'good deed', but that probably didn't count when she had personally ensured that the woman in question did trigger in the first place. Oddly, it hadn't even been all that bad of a faerie-granted ability, even including flight. Sure, the woman had acrophobia, but it seemed to make sense that being able to fly would help with that even if she didn't normally use it for actual flying.

Oh well, nothing more to be done there. Instead she picked up the remaining twelve letters to look over them. Crafting trigger situations from afar took quite a bit of planning and effort, and she could only really work in one area at a time while doing it. Sometimes she got lucky and there was a phobia she could exploit, other times she needed to arrange for much more elaborate situations.

She paused as she looked at one letter, the only remaining 'joint' letter, then flipped back through the others. It took a moment, but she quickly determined that Jethro and Elise had written three letters total. One each, then the joint letter. And they were both being watched by faerie...perhaps it was time to try her hand at arranging for a so-called 'group trigger'? See if their relationship was strong enough to survive the whole 'kiss/kill' phenomenon and all...

"Those two girls seem like quite the handful," Danny said as they pulled out of the restaurant's parking lot.

Taylor nodded, even if her father didn't necessarily see her do so. "They'll get better as they settle in. Right now they're obviously torn between being the children they were and the teenagers they now are."

"And what makes you say that?"

"Pretty much everything 'childish' was expressed as something Mippy or Flippy wanted, while the more 'adult' expressions were phrased as being things the girls themselves wanted. That even extended to their table manners, their own eating was neat and orderly but they were a lot messier when 'feeding' Mippy and Flippy. Then there were other things, such as just after the orders were placed and Tori started to look embarrassed when she realized that I don't have a cartoon character on my shirt while they did, though I'm not sure if Mary noticed that detail. All combined, it came across as them trying too hard to separate the two frames of mind, instead of finding a healthy balance, but I can't be sure after so little interaction with them outside of the hospital room."

"I see."

Taylor didn't think her father needed to know that the two were also trying to get the hang of potty training again, after spending so long in a simulation that apparently hadn't included needing to use the restroom. Of course, she'd only discovered that when she 'escorted' the two to the restroom and ended up having to help them, to their significant embarrassment. Said help had included how to wash their hands afterwards as well, because the simulated environment didn't have dirt or germs to worry about.

They sat in silence for a few minutes before her father decided that they'd sat in silence long enough. "So was Amy annoyed that she didn't get invited?"

Taylor shrugged. "I don't think she cared either way. She finished up at the hospital before heading home, had leftovers, and then ended up healing wounds in several members of New Wave when they came off of patrol. A few minutes ago she retreated to her room because she was tired of Vicky pestering her with questions about tinkering for some reason."

"So was she tired of it for unknown reasons or were the reasons behind Vicky's questions unknown?"

Taylor felt that the light slap she gave her father for that one was fully justified, even if he just grinned.

Wednesday morning dawned bright, early, and loud at the Hebert household. The latter was due to the fighting that had broken out when different groups of protesters had apparently disagreed about who would be camping out on the sidewalk today. The arguing had gotten loud enough for Taylor to grumble and go outside to see if she could get them to shut up without calling the cops. Which might be a lost cause, some of the neighbors might've called already.

"Alright all of you," Taylor yelled as she approached, causing them to pause in their arguing. Noting that they'd quieted down, she continued in a normal voice. "Why have you all decided to hold a screaming match in a residential neighborhood at this hour?"

The group shared a few looks, before one of the men stepped forward with an angry look on his face. "You can't stop us from protesting!"

Taylor looked at the man with what she hoped was an 'are you an idiot?' expression. "I didn't ask about that. I asked about the screaming match, which was loud enough to disturb the entire neighborhood."

There was a moment of silence before one of the women in the group coughed. "She's, er, technically correct there? At least about complaining about us making too much noise, anyway. I've called the cops on a neighbor a couple of times this year for that, even..."

Looking over the group, Taylor suspected that they'd gotten the point. "Good. That means that I can get back to my breakfast." That said, she turned around and headed inside without asking what any of them were protesting in the first place. It wasn't like it would be important or useful, after all.

After an uneventful visit to the gym, which had been a little messy but not in use when they'd arrived, Taylor and Amy made their way to class to find that they were once again driving around town, this time in full-sized 'eighteen-wheeler' trucks. Starting with twenty-two wheels each due to an extra axle on the initial pair of trailers, but that apparently didn't change the terminology they were using for referring to the things. It was similar to what they'd had to work with on their trip down to Boston, but this time the goal was to do everything in town and have to constantly deal with the headaches of working with a trailer inside the city.

Of course, to add to the difficulty, they'd be dropping trailers off and picking up new ones every so often, with the instructors only stepping in if they were doing something wrong instead of handing that off to others. Apparently the PRT had 'seeded' the area with trailers or something to make this possible. That they'd have to account for the different types of trailers made it more interesting as well.

Looking over things, including the currently detached trailers, Taylor wondered just how annoying today was going to be. "How many trailer swaps are we going to be doing?"

Their instructors shared a look, then grinned. One of them turned back to Taylor. "However many we fit in, and we're going to test you on some of your CB radio work too. Not that you can fail on the radio, we just want to see how you do there."

The other then nodded, gesturing to the trucks. "That said, I think we should get started. You two need to get the first trailers hooked up, after all."

Missy groaned as she helped clean up. Not that she knew why they were bothering, Aunt Clara wasn't even staying with them and wouldn't care if things were a little dirty. But that didn't matter, everything had to be cleaned anyway. Luckily she was allowed to use her powers to help, because it drastically reduced her time on a stepstool. Though she was very tempted to increase the capacity of the bag in the vacuum cleaner, just to see what happened when the expansion collapsed.

She wasn't stupid enough to do that to their vacuum cleaner, but she was tempted.

They didn't even know when her aunt would make it into town, or even how she was getting here. Just that she was supposed to arrive sometime today. She could be flying in, which would require a taxi or something to get from Manchester at this point since Boston still didn't have a working airport and using the military airport nearby wasn't an option for civilians. Actually, it wasn't really an option for Wards or Protectorate members either, but the PRT tended to use tinkertech transports anyway. And there weren't enough of the things to hand any over to civilian airlines or anything like that.

More likely was probably taking a train, since as far as she knew her aunt didn't have a driver's license or a car. That and the timing lined up somewhat, from what she understood of the travel time for trains. Assuming that her aunt had let them know the day she was leaving, anyway, which sounded like something she'd do. In part because the day of departure seemed to be when she decided to leave for these things, at least from what she'd heard at family gatherings. If that was the case then she'd still need a taxi, the gangs had ensured that there was no stop in town, but it would be a much shorter trip from the nearby train stations.

"How are you doing in there?" her father called, breaking her train of thought.

Missy sighed. "I'm doing fine. Still don't know why this is such a big deal, though."

"Your aunt has an...unusual view of things. We've explained that already."

She rolled her eyes. "I meant the cleaning. Like she'll ever know if I dusted the top of the china cabinet."

There was a pause, likely while her father shook his head. "Okay, right. You know how your mother gets when we're expecting visitors of any kind. Though now that I think about it...I don't suppose you have any of the fancy speakers your teammate used for her duck bit?"

Missy blinked, and turned to look at her father. "What are you talking about?"

"Point projection speakers, likely small tinkertech ones if people weren't spotting them? Probably wireless in some way, because otherwise running wires everywhere would be far too obvious. I've got some experience with large versions and have no problem believing that some tinker made incredibly effective little ones."

Deciding that pretending they didn't exist was useless, she opted to tell the truth. "I've ordered some, and the bits needed to make them work, but they haven't come in." No need to mention the rest of her 'fake being a tinker' goodie bag right now.

"Dang. Could've annoyed the crap out of your mother and aunt. Oh well, you'd probably have left them at the PRT building anyway and bringing you over to get them would've been too obvious."

Missy had heard what a prolonged run of the hidden speakers had done to Victoria, and wasn't sure she wanted to be involved in doing that to her own family. It had seemed incredibly mean, all things considered, even if was supposed to be a lesson. Then again, she might reconsider her opinion after her aunt showed up, depending on how the woman acted. Either way she was incredibly unlikely to not let her mother in on things beforehand.

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Topic: Firing from a Moving Vehicle Compilation In: Boards ► General ► PRT RangeMeister (Original Poster) (Verified PRT Agent)
Posted On Aug 15th 2011:
Today we've got a treat for you! It's fairly well known that the PRT tests officers on firing from a moving vehicle, something that we don't like to do but sometimes proves to be needed with some parahumans. We've got the standards posted, and there's a thread where people figure out where we hold the exams.

You've only identified about a third of the locations, by the way, and gotten several horribly wrong.

What most people don't realize is that every last one of the exams is recorded. We've got hundreds of hours of footage sitting in the archive, and I was able to assemble a compilation.

Thus, I present two hundred people shooting at targets from moving vehicles. We even overlaid their scores so you know how well they're doing, and we skipped runs that don't at least meet the PRT standards. Because I'm told that a compilation of PRT examinees missing targets isn't good PR, no matter how much you'd all love to tear them apart.

They're in no particular order, and are split across ten different testing areas. At least two of which haven't been identified and one of which has been misidentified.

Have fun.

(Showing page 119 of 120)

►Manic Punch Replied On Aug 17th 2011:
I can see why you'd think that they should be using shotguns, but really, it's hard enough to lean out of the vehicle with a handgun. At least if you're a good shot you might be able to fire with one hand. Good luck firing a shotgun with one hand while hanging out of a vehicle unless you're a brute.

►icup Replied On Aug 17th 2011:
shouldnt they just use trucks with mounted guns

►DevilsStuntman Replied On Aug 17th 2011:
I still want to know what the "second half" of the stupid exam is, and why there's no information on it. We've got four different PRT officers admitting that it exists in the thread, and not a one of them will admit what it is. And only one of them said anything about how they did, and it was "as horribly as expected".

►SparkleMan Replied On Aug 17th 2011:
Has anyone figured out if the men did better or worse than the women, on average? Or rather, is anyone better at figuring out gender from the video without labels telling us names and such available to look over things to figure out genders so that we can generate those stats?

►ConfidentSkeptic Replied On Aug 17th 2011:
So, it kinda got lost, so I'm going to ask again: Has anyone actually seen anyone from the PRT using these skills? I understand that if they're firing guns like that then the situation is probably too dangerous for bystanders, but someone has to have seen something, right?

Not that I think it being 'too dangerous' would stop people, of course. Which is just another reason to wonder...

►LittleDancerGirl Replied On Aug 17th 2011:
Can someone split this into smaller chunks? My cheap-ass computer keeps crashing around a third of the way through because I don't have enough memory or something.

►BrokeFool Replied On Aug 17th 2011:
I really want to see the failures, In particular I'm curious if anyone shot out the tires on the vehicle and ended their test early. I mean, that seems like something that would happen...

►Statman Replied On Aug 17th 2011:
So, given the lack of names attached to things I can understand why nobody picked things out before now, but I can conclusively say that the original statement of 200 people is accurate, despite 202 scores.

How do I know that?

Because I watched every last run on my television, marking starts and ends, figuring out genders/races/etc where possible... and I spotted an oddity.

If you look closely, you'll find that Amy Dallon, aka Panacea, is shown here. She has a decent run, doing better than average.

That's followed by...Amy Dallon. Driving. And she got a better score. Without screwing up driving, at that.

Then, eight people later? Taylor Hebert, also known as Maul. Also does well. Also driving right after, again with a better score.

I've compiled all the scores and what other data I've noted so far here (with extracted final score frames). Those two are in the top five overall, and both of those top five scores were while they were driving.

What the hell is going on, because we had a 20 page argument on it being stupidly foolish to fire while driving that the mods had to shut down yesterday morning...

►Cats Rule Dogs Drool Replied On Aug 17th 2011:
I gave up watching after twenty people. It's all boring. Vehicle drives along, targets are shot at, score comes up, next person. Why did they even bother?

►Ten Shades of Blood Replied On Aug 17th 2011:
I've made a reversed version of things here, so we can watch people catching bullets with a gun as vehicles drive backwards.

End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 117, 118, 119

(Showing page 120 of 120)

►WetLanding Replied On Aug 17th 2011:
Statman, thank you for spotting that. I can now have nightmares about parahumans being better with guns than they have any right to be. I mean, yeah, I heard the rumors that Miss Dallon was a good shot, but Miss Hebert hadn't actually shown accuracy so much as the ability to not need accuracy.

Except now they've both demonstrated that they're incredibly dangerous with a gun, and that's before Miss Hebert does her hand cannon trick.

►NancyBoy Replied On Aug 17th 2011:
Somehow, I'm not surprised that Maul can hit things while operating a moving vehicle. I mean, she flies around on a platform all the time, it just makes sense that she practiced that.

Where the hell did Panacea pick that skill up from?

Also, I'd blame this on Maul's powers, except that doesn't explain Panacea doing it too. Unless it's a gimmick meant to fake us out, anyway, but if so it looks too good...

►Tempted to Cook Replied On Aug 17th 2011:
I don't know if I should be appalled that they let two teenagers that are barely old enough to start learning to drive cars do that, impressed that they pulled it off so well, or downright frightened that they're that good.

Who trained them, and do they offer lessons?

End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 118, 119, 120

Chapter 197 Taylor sighed as she got into the truck, having just swapped trailers in the Rig itself. Driving over the force field bridge in the truck had been an interesting experience, but she appreciated the chance to see how the ferry station was looking now that they were preparing to get that service going again.

Once she'd shut the door she turned to her instructor, who seemed happy with her performance. "Did we really just deliver a literal truckload of coffee?"

Her instructor shrugged. "They go through a lot of it out here, and the last couple of shipments were damaged before they even made it to town so this one is a bit larger than usual."

"If they've been having shipment issues, why did they trust someone still learning to do the final delivery?"

"Because we didn't tell them that was what we were doing, and by the time they found out we were already on the road. I've been ignoring my messages for a reason."

Taylor rolled her eyes, then buckled up and started the engine so that they could head back to shore.

Hannah sighed as she entered the gun range, finding Ethan going through what looked like an entire stack of magazines while bouncing around. Which was, in theory, dangerous and irresponsible. Yet it was technically within regulations as he'd flagged the room properly for safety and was practicing use of the weapon with his powers in a theoretically safe manner. The only problem was that he'd done so without someone else monitoring him, which was why she'd come over.

She watched him for a few minutes, then shook her head and sat down with her laptop to continue the work she'd been in the middle of when the alert had fired off. Colin had offered to go through most of this, admittedly, but she'd insisted on going through it instead. Mainly because while he was better with social interactions lately, much much better, he still wasn't the best choice for some things. Like anything PR related, usually. Which the 'day out' for the Wards and the introduction of new Wards both fell under.

Now if only they hadn't ended up with both so close together...

Almost half an hour later she stopped as she noticed Ethan gathering things to come back out where he'd left boxes of bullets. Putting the laptop to the side, she stood up and moved over to the table so that there was no way for him to miss her presence. It proved to be effective as he paused as soon as the door opened.

Ethan sighed. "I suppose I forgot to ensure that someone was monitoring me while I practiced?"

Hannah nodded. "Good of you to realize that without me saying so, but I'm also curious as to what inspired you?"

The man frowned. "I don't suppose you heard about our two local teenagers that made everyone look like fools when doing the whole shooting from a moving vehicle thing?"

"I did. We'd originally wanted it to be a bigger distraction. Have them fail both runs due to not having had any of the relevant training, then give them a few pointers and let them try again. Eat up plenty of time in a safe location outside of town and all. Instead they had to take a longer route back to eat up time so as to not show up before we were done with the sweep that netted us nothing."

Ethan rubbed his eyes under his visor. "That just makes it worse. It's embarrassing for them to be that good at their age, especially with how little experience they have with firearms in the first place."

Hannah rolled her eyes, not that Ethan was looking at her to notice. "They cheated. Both have brute ratings to help them deal with the recoil. They've figured out how to use their powers to provide them with an aim line that doesn't require a laser dot, and that lets them improve their aim further by showing them how what they're doing is affecting their aim before they ever pull the trigger."

"And they probably abused that line to help them aim while driving, which would help explain how it was they were keeping their eyes on the course even while shooting. I also looked up the next ten best scores while driving, and I was surprised that you used to be number three."

She shrugged. "I have an easier time using weapons formed from my power, but it doesn't actually help my aim directly. I see no shame in being beaten by someone who has powers that let them cheat their aim, and doubly so by those who have that and the ability to multitask well enough to do multiple things at once."

With a grunt, Ethan put down the empty magazines he'd been holding and started filling them again. "Well, as much as they can cheat, I still think it's a very poor showing on our parts overall, and I'm determined to at least make a decent showing on the course. Can't let the kids beat me down in everything cool, after all. Especially not one kid, what with her sword antics."

"She hasn't found a way to leverage her abilities to fire molten rocks at lethal velocities as though fired from a railgun."

"Credit where credit is due, she started me on figuring that out. So I don't think it counts."

Hannah decided to not mention that half of his tricks with firearms came from the same starting point. Either Ethan knew that already and was ignoring it, or he hadn't considered it and mentioning it would be likely to cause him to give up improving his aim in a petulant manner.

Taylor frowned as she looked at the trailer waiting for them. "This is a test, isn't it."

"The whole day is a test," was her instructor's response. "What do you think is the test here?"

"The kingpin on that trailer is larger than this fifth-wheel plate can accept."

"Good job on spotting that before trying to couple the two." He then grabbed a box out of the rear of the truck. "In this case the kingpin has been rigged to be able to be swapped out, which is unusual but useful given that this is a specialty trailer. Though normally if you want to deal with both on a trailer you'll find that it has a two inch and just use an adapter sleeve." The box was then thrown to Taylor, who caught it with ease despite it having some weight to it. "That's the two inch kingpin insert. Do make sure that it's properly secured, and bring the box back with the three and a half inch kingpin in it. There's a toolbox in the cabinet against the wall with the wrenches you probably need."

Taylor looked at the box, then at the trailer, before turning back to the instructor. "Why do I get the feeling that you're throwing a lot of extra things at us that have no bearing on things in the end?"

"Because you're intelligent and we are. You two picked things up quickly enough that we decided to get creative to use up the time you're spending with us, since we aren't beholden to the state's rules for underaged drivers and all. That it'll help you be more well rounded going forward is enough justification to get the higher-ups to sign off on the additions. Really, we normally spend almost all of the class time dealing with rules of the road and all that, with 'round two' being scheduled a few months later when 'round one' isn't enough. Good on you two for having picked most of that up with your mopeds. Now hop to it, we don't have all day."

Jacob's eye twitched as he watched the two girls try and work their way through their conflicting desires. Wanting to hold onto the familiar while also trying to act their physical age and all was currently taxing on all three of them. Worse, he didn't know how to handle it, and was hoping that Amanda could help the two work through things. After all, he personally felt that it was more important to be true to yourself, especially in private and with those you trusted, than to conform to what others expected of you.

Well, at least when it wasn't going to cause other problems, but neither girl currently needed to do things to others that would make being true to themselves problematic. Which was more than could be said of pretty much the entire Nine, himself included.

Maybe he could get Riley to build them a couple of the cuddlier spider-bots to be their pets to help them direct some of their desires? Especially if she used the brain fruit plant for the neural tissue, thus removing any issues with them being part corpse and all. Not that he thought that either girl would actually have problems with that at this point. But he'd probably have to spring for some of the raw materials Riley would need. No, wait, the girl was supposed to be building a stock of the things already, to be put into 'storage' mode and placed in the PRT store for various groups to purchase for whatever reasons. Grabbing a couple for Mary and Tori shouldn't be difficult in that case.

It was the work of a couple of minutes to grab his phone and fire off a message asking Riley to put a couple of the cuddly spider-bots aside for Mary and Tori, but that was a momentary distraction. The real problem was getting the girls to relax and stop worrying about things, but he didn't have any idea how to do that. He had ideas for when they'd adjusted a little more, in particular for after they'd recovered sufficient awareness of their bladders and bowels, but he didn't want to subject them to some of the potential problems now.

He was pulled from his thoughts by the intercom buzzing. That the two girls quieted down at the same time was nice, though he'd have to explain what the sound was in a few minutes. He moved over to the panel by the door and pressed the button there. "Yes?"

"You order a large cheese and a large meatlovers?" came a moment later.

"I did indeed. I'll be right down." He let go of the button and ensured he had his wallet in his pocket, then turned to the two girls. "Okay you two, wash up while I'm getting the pizza."

He smirked a little as they rushed for the bathroom. They'd probably go overboard, but that was better than them not washing their hands at all. That it should be enough of a distraction to keep them out of trouble for the couple of minutes he'd be gone was the real benefit.

Taylor smirked as Amy grumbled about kingpin sizes as they headed towards the Wards garage. Apparently she hadn't spotted the size difference before trying to hook up her first trick trailer. Also, she'd apparently run into said trick trailer first and hadn't warned Taylor, then been given a second one near the end of the day to see if she was paying attention. Taylor hadn't been given a second one, having spotted the first, but didn't feel bad about not warning Amy about things after finding out that it was Amy who should've warned her.

Eventually deciding that the grumbling had gone on long enough, Taylor decided to bring up something else. "So my father let me know that you'd be over for dinner. Were you informed of that?"

Amy nodded. "Yeah, Carol sent me a message while I was working on the second kingpin swap, telling me to just head to your house from here unless I needed a change of clothing. I don't suppose you got an explanation for that?"

"Nope."

"Huh. Odd."

It didn't take long before they'd reached their mopeds, and a few minutes later they were on the road.

Taylor: So, what do you think they'll have us doing tomorrow?

Amy: Who knows, but I'm assuming it'll be a different kind of vehicle.

Taylor: Most likely, yeah. They've focused a lot on the trucks.

Amy: I'm more interested in why I was basically told to have dinner at your house, without any asking or anything.

Taylor: Who knows? I'm sure there's a reason. Just can't think of one right now. Though I do wonder if we'll find protesters waiting outside tonight.

Amy: Haven't seen much of that at our house, but I think Carol tore into a couple of groups that she felt were being particularly stupid.

Taylor: I've been ignoring them, except for when they get too loud anyway.

Amy: If they're going to be there that often, maybe you should put on a show in the morning.

Taylor: What kind of show would I be putting on?

Amy: I don't know. What do you think you can pull off with discreet placement of point-projection speakers?

Taylor: That's...an interesting thought, but I suspect that would only encourage them.

Amy: You're probably right. But imagine the looks on their faces the first time you pulled something?

That was an amusing thought, but she still didn't think that it would be a good idea. Using tinkertech, even subtle tinkertech, to mess with the protesters was probably asking for trouble, like being accused of some kind of abuse of power or something like that. She didn't need to invite that. Besides, aside from when they got into fights they hadn't actually been bothering her directly, and her father hadn't complained about them being stupid either.

They ended up discussing minor things, like the various trailers that they'd shifted around town all day and what obstacles they'd run into. Not having run into bikers and such was pleasant, but also somewhat unexpected. Both thought that it was possible that they were laying low or something for some reason. Neither of them thought they were gone yet, since the Fallen didn't seem like the types that would give up that easily, regardless of branch.

Eventually they reached Taylor's house, to find that Carol was there. It didn't take long to park the mopeds inside of the garage and head in, only to find Carol in the living room apparently going over paperwork with Danny.

"Hello," Taylor greeted, causing the two to look up.

"Hey there," Danny replied. "Oh, and hello Amy. We're just making one last pass over the paperwork for your little pocket dimension project, we want to ensure you know what the legalese means and agree to everything before signing off on things, assuming you're happy with things as described."

"Not that we don't expect them to have started preparing some of the components already," Carol grumbled, before shaking her head and turning to the two girls. "I can't say that I'm happy with how Amy's side of things is being paid for, so to speak, but Danny and Mark both agree that it's better to let them do something openly than to try and find ways to help that can't be seen. So I'm reluctantly agreeing to things on that part."

"She isn't mentioning that Mark would've just gone over her head and signed off on it instead, none of this needs to be signed by both guardians."

Carol glared at Danny. "There is that, yes."

Danny gestured to the kitchen. "We'll be done shortly, then we'll eat the casserole that I've got in the oven. After dinner we'll go over this."

Taylor nodded. "Have you fed Ackbar yet?"

"I gave him a small bowl to keep him from annoying me while I was preparing the casserole after I foolishly let him out of your room. Last I saw him he'd retreated to his carrier, but it was glowing so you'll want to be careful."

"Ah, thank you."

Taylor took her things upstairs, including a couple of letters that were waiting for her from today's mail. Ackbar was indeed sitting in the pet carrier, which was glowing inside, but he didn't launch himself from it when she entered. Shrugging, she put her things down, left the letters on her bed as a reminder to look over them later, and headed back downstairs.

Missy finally had an inkling of why they hadn't told her aunt about her being a parahuman before. Or, more accurately, why they hadn't wanted to mention her Wards membership. The woman had some very strong opinions on how the entirety of the government sponsored parahuman bit was a sham and needed to be torn out and replaced with something 'more sensible'.

More annoyingly, Taylor got more approval from the woman than Missy did, because at least Taylor was running around with proper weapons. Not that Missy wasn't now, but her aunt didn't know that. That was coupled with Taylor being more encouraged to do actual damage to those she was fighting, compared to most of the Wards at least being told to minimize injuries when possible.

"Though I'll grudgingly admit that the recent bout of doing things other than fight with your powers is more reasonable than I'd thought it would be," her aunt said. "Even if some of it seems frivolous, like your turning that multiple-floor museum into a single level. At the very least it was probably good practice. It can be difficult to find things to do with one's powers that aren't fighting as a parahuman, after all. At least if you aren't a tinker. Well, most tinkers, anyway, I know of at least one that needs to 'blood' their equipment before they can improve on it, poor girl. Ran into her..."

Missy did her best to tune her aunt out while she ate, and hoped that she woke up to a notice telling her that she and Taylor were on for an evening patrol tomorrow. Coupled with planning on helping with a couple of non-patrol things on her list it should keep her out of the house, and away from her aunt, all day.

There were a hundred and seventy-eight pages of 'contract' that had to be gone over, and in the end the whole thing was reasonably straightforward. Though there were now two additional 'gift buildout' sections in the slide-out portions of things, on top of the requested therapy office one. The Protectorate had offered to build out one as a teleport endpoint for whatever reason, though being able to get people in and out of an area would probably not be a bad thing. They'd even specified that there'd be a physical master on/off switch so that the teleporters couldn't be targeted when they didn't want them to be, which was nice.

Coupled with the triage and hospital slide-out units it was obviously intended to let them rapidly set up a proper evac point during emergencies, far from the actual problem area. The overall design of things looked, on paper, to be intended to be deployed in a triangle. Teleporters off to one side, incoming on the triage tent side and outgoing on the hospital block side. Injured come in, get triaged, pushed through the hospital, then back over to the teleporters to leave.

The other new unit was, for whatever reason, a storefront. Neither of them knew why they'd want a storefront on demand right now, but it was probably more useful than a skeleton unit. Carol admitted that it made sense for a couple of tinkers to be able to deploy a storefront, even if it never got used as one, and pointed out that it was generic enough as described that they could probably turn it into a flower shop or similar as well if they ever wanted to.

"So we think that everything has been covered well enough," Carol finally said. "Are you two happy with the way they've described everything, as well as the access conditions for them to actually build things?"

Taylor shrugged. "So long as they return the access crystals when they're done. I'm confident that any access codes put in for them in the computer systems will be revoked when they're done, since I can't see Dragon doing anything else. Though I am curious, now, how we'll use the slide-out units, since the openers we have seem to need to anchor the edges of the portals."

Danny chuckled. "I checked on that for other reasons, and I'm shocked you didn't know already. The system that allows opening them from the inside only needs to anchor one edge, even if it defaults to anchoring all edges, and it defaults to the bottom edge when only anchoring the one. Safety and all, to make it easier to get out if you're trapped inside and can't target a suitable surface. I'm sure that the 'remote control of the opening system' will probably contain all kinds of presets for you taking advantage of that when it's done."

Amy shook her head. "That'll teach you to not document things. Had you done so you'd already know that."

Taylor rolled her eyes at that comment, but didn't say anything. It had been an already documented safety system, and she didn't recall that being in the documentation, so it wasn't her fault that she didn't know.

It didn't take long before they'd signed the things that needed signing and packed it all up. They'd send the paperwork in, then wait for someone to pick up the access crystals so that they could be used to get access to the 'work site'. No access devices had been requested, apparently they'd be getting those from elsewhere, just the crystals needed for targeting.

Brad sighed, looking over the projections he'd been handed. "Okay, it sucks, but I'm going to have to approach the PRT over this. If only for everyone else's safety, because he's crazy right now."

One of the grunts hesitantly spoke up. "Er, Boss? You've been sentenced to the Birdcage, and they've tried to jam you in there twice. Are you sure you should be walking up to the PRT building in the open?"

Brad smirked at that. "I walk in and buy from their gift shop every couple of months, just because I know the law doesn't let them arrest me unless they find me in the middle of a crime. At least until they get someone to sign a federal warrant for my arrest, anyway. Which for whatever reason hasn't happened. I'll be fine, but good job thinking about possible problems." He then pulled a wad of cash out of his pocket and peeled off a couple of bills, handing them to the man. "Here, have some extra spending money. The rest of you, please ensure that Alabaster is ready for me to drag him to the PRT building in the morning, I'd rather go while the lobby is open."

The grunts nodded, and Brad heard them wondering what kind of rope to use to keep the man under control. Coupled with whether or not they should embarrass him by using kinbaku techniques that another grunt knew as an added 'lesson' to not embarrass the Empire with his antics. It certainly sounded like it might work, at least once the man was sobered up and saw the pictures, so no comment was made before he'd left earshot.

Thursday morning started before dawn with a bang loud enough to set off the alarm system at the Hebert household thanks to cracking one of the windows downstairs. That, of course, woke both Taylor and her father, only to find that the problem was that one of their neighbors had left a compressor filling a tank overnight and a seal had eventually given out. This had Danny grumbling about needing to arrange to get the window repaired. Taylor decided that it was a good day for an extra early departure.

She made it to the PRT building without running into anyone at all, but skipped the gym for the time being. Instead she headed for the damaged tinkertech storage room. It didn't take long to grab several damaged radios before heading to the workshop to repair them. None of them had significant problems, but she was primarily concerned with doing some actual repair work with her tinker snark.

All of the radios were functional again by the time Amy was approaching, so she dropped them all off and headed for the gym. Missy arrived from the other direction shortly after Amy had parked, and they all ended up in the locker room at around the same time.

"You were here early," Amy noted as they changed.

Taylor shrugged. "Neighbor forgot to turn off a compressor and a seal failed on a tank. It was noisy, and I came in to fix things instead of trying to fix their tank. Or our cracked window, though that probably would've been harder with the materials available."

"Ahhh."

Missy didn't seem to care about that, but she did come over to Taylor once she'd changed. "So, looks like they've approved us patrolling, but don't say with whom. You still up for that after dinner?"

Taylor nodded. "Yep. Sent a message off to my father as soon as I saw the confirmation. Your aunt being a pain?"

"You have no idea. She hates the idea of government parahumans in any context, so it seems. But she approves of you due to your use of 'effective weapons', as in you shoot guns with real bullets on occasion and cause potentially-serious injuries. Miss Militia would apparently count too if she didn't use rubber bullets so often, but since she 'panders' she's been deemed a valid target."

"Ah. So what's your plan for the day before this evening?"

Missy grinned at that. "I'm going to be helping the art gallery move an art piece that they don't want to take apart this morning, and this afternoon I should be spending some time putting gaps between ships out in the beached section of the boat graveyard so that cranes can get a grip on the individual boats more easily."

Well, at least that sounded productive.

"Good morning you two," Miss Militia said as they were finishing up breakfast in one of the cafeterias. "Oh, sorry Miss Biron, I didn't see you behind the support post as I approached. Good morning you three."

"Good morning," the three chorused, though with a hint of confusion on all parts.

"Miss Dallon, Miss Hebert," Miss Militia continued. "I came down to save you an extra trip to get your helmets. You'll need them today, and for that matter can meet your instructors in the secure garage instead of the classroom you've been meeting them."

Taylor looked at Miss Militia, then at Amy, then back at the older cape. "Please tell me that you aren't going to be participating, or if you are that you won't be in charge, because that might be a bit too close to a 'patrolling on a motorcycle' situation."

There was a moment while Miss Militia blinked, but she recovered and shook her head. "I'll be following as added security since we can't stick you in an armored cab when you're on a motorcycle. Your instructors will be leading as you move around town."

Amy grinned. "Besides, you've got your own belt now, and if someone is stupid enough to try something you can kick their ass and nobody will care if you're in costume or not."

Taylor looked at Amy, then grumbled about smartasses. She then sighed. "Okay, but I'm grabbing a containment foam grenade or two just in case even though I won't be in costume."

Nobody argued that point, so Taylor thought that they'd silently agreed that it was a sensible precaution given the things that had previously happened to her on motorcycles with Protectorate members around. It didn't take long to fetch helmets and containment foam grenades, the latter being easily stored in an expanded utility belt pouch, after which they cut through the garage itself to get to the secure area. They found Miss Militia and their instructors waiting there with four generic motorcycles lined up, plus Miss Militia's motorcycle off to the side.

"Good morning you two," one of the instructors called. "Hadn't considered taking shortcuts through the driving paths on foot before, but it makes a lot more sense than going the long way, doesn't it?"

"Yes it does," the other instructor agreed. "Now then, we know you both run around on mopeds, and Miss Hebert has some prior experience with motorcycles. But we need to run you through things more officially, and the controls on a proper motorcycle are close to but distinct from the controls you're used to on the mopeds. That and you need a lot more focus to get turning and such down, especially since balance is far more important at lower speeds."

"I'll be following at a distance," Miss Militia added. "I should be far enough back that nobody will assume that I'm 'in your group' but close enough to intervene if someone is stupid enough to attack you. I'll also not be following your route directly, which should help as well."

Taylor sighed, then moved over to check on the motorcycles. The others left her to it, obviously understanding that she wanted to ensure that there was nothing obviously wrong with any of them. She went over each of them, but found nothing wrong with any of them. She assumed that they'd probably had Sherrel, or possibly Trevor, look over them the day before or overnight if her own tinker snark wasn't finding any issues.

She eventually turned back to the others, though the two instructors looked a little confused. "I don't see anything obviously wrong with them. Nothing melted or otherwise going to be a problem."

"They also don't have speed limiters installed," Miss Militia pointed out, even though she knew Taylor would know that. "Which simplifies a few things and makes them harder to tamper with. Now then, you two pick your choice, then the instructors will take the other two and we can all get going."

Chapter 198 Taylor ended up having an easier time getting going on a motorcycle than Amy did, largely due to having already had some experience with one on patrol. It still didn't take long for Amy to get up to speed, and the group made their way out into town. As promised, Miss Militia was following, but not closely or obviously. Their first destination was Arcadia, where they used the empty parking lot as an outdoor location to do low-speed turning and similar. Driving in slow circles and figure eights was annoying, but noticeably more difficult than operating the motorcycles at speed.

An hour later they were off again on what was probably a somewhat random jaunt around town. Somewhat boring at first, though the instructors were having them do things like signal turns with their arms. Things got a little more stressful when a couple of other bikers 'joined' them. Those two chatted a little, apparently realizing that Taylor and Amy were learning to ride properly, then broke off. Half an hour later they returned with friends, eight additional motorcycles to bring the group up to twelve total.

Miss Militia said to be careful, but to not do anything to them unless they made the first move, so the group did their best to ignore the additions to their group. They moved along decent roads, rough roads, and roads with potholes. Into traffic with other vehicles, during which the additional bikers backed off, and through empty areas of town. Eventually they stopped for gas, since they'd come to a suitable gas station. The group of bikers that'd been following them stopped as well.

"You should move your feet back a bit on the pegs," one of the bikers told Amy while the gas pump was running, causing their group to look over at them. "What? You're doing fairly well, but you're obviously very new at this. Always up for helping new riders, and to interrupt lessons with anything but helpful tips is to be avoided."

"Might have to look into helmets with radios though," another of the bikers mused. "I mean, you four don't have to yell to be heard by each other, which would be nice many days."

A third biker was off to the side and called out a moment later. "Miss Hebert, you should really use two fingers on your clutch and brake. You get a little more strength out of the pull that way, without sacrificing much more control than you do with the first finger."

Taylor turned to that biker, raising an eyebrow behind her clear visor. "I don't suppose you've forgotten that I'm a brute? Enhanced strength and all?"

The biker blinked a couple of times, then chuckled. "Darn tootin' I forgot. In that case you're probably doing fine, though you need to spend some time figuring out your foot position too. We saw that you were at least adjusting where your feet were sitting, unlike Miss Dallon."

Taylor opted to not point out that she'd been doing so more because she'd had an itch at the time.

Emily sighed as her phone rang. It was the front desk, of all places, who should normally go through other channels outside of an emergency. And in an emergency it wouldn't be a normal-priority phone call. But sometimes people asked to speak to her directly, amongst other things, so she couldn't just brush them off.

"Piggot," she said, trying to put just enough annoyance into it to keep the officer on the desk from wasting her time further but not so much that she discouraged them if it wasn't frivolous. It took a lot of practice, but all PRT directors got plenty of it.

"Ma'am," the officer replied. "Hookwolf is in the lobby with a tied-up Alabaster asking for assistance."

Emily blinked a couple of times, her brain not sure if she'd heard that properly. "Hookwolf, with Alabaster tied up?"

"Yes ma'am. Apparently Alabaster visited the Violet Rose and came away drunk, and hasn't sobered up in over a week."

Well, that would explain some of the man's antics recently. "Okay then. Get them into a conference room, I'll call in Armsmaster. Maybe he can figure out something, or at least identify where to begin."

With any luck this would be a powers interaction issue, the alcohol-based powers interacting with the instant-healing or something like that. Because nobody else was known to have come away from that pub and stayed drunk for over a week, and that's the kind of thing that should raise red flags.

The group of motorcycles had shifted out onto the highway for some higher speed practice, only for an idiot to start shooting at them. Taylor had groaned about 'every damn time', only to find out that they were shooting at one of the bikers following them and not at the lesson group. Because of that the other bikers backed off, and Miss Militia reported that they'd actually made a citizen's arrest of the person who'd been shooting. She thought it might've gone further if a police car hadn't shown up at the right time.

As a result of that they had a nice, uninterrupted lunch at a fast food place well down the highway, before turning around to head back to Brockton Bay. The other side of the highway was still a bit backed up from the shooting incident when they passed, but the other bikers were nowhere to be seen. That wasn't a big deal either way, and the four made it back to Brockton Bay and the secure garage without issue.

They'd just finished doing a post-driving check of the motorcycles when Colin came into the garage. Originally Taylor had thought he was there to meet with Miss Militia, who was just coming in as well, but instead he came over to her and Amy.

"Hello Miss Dallon, Miss Hebert," Colin greeted.

"Hello Armsmaster," the two replied.

"I believe you're done with your lessons for the day." Colin looked to one of the instructors and got a nod. "So I was hoping that you could assist with a problem that came in earlier."

Taylor looked at Amy, who shrugged, before turning back to Colin. "What kind of issue would you need us for?"

He grimaced. "Hookwolf brought Alabaster in this morning. Apparently the man has been drunk for over a week after a single visit to the Violet Rose pub."

"Oh. Well, that's...unexpected."

Colin looked at her, and might've raised an eyebrow. It was hard to tell, since the lower portion of his face was visible and all. Still, he looked over at the instructors, then gestured in the general direction of the elevator. Taylor led the way, Amy right behind her and Colin coming up behind them. Once in the elevator they went up to the first floor, and Colin then led them down to a conference room. One a couple of rooms down from where Alabaster and Hookwolf apparently were. Taylor and Amy dropped their helmets on the table for the time being.

After he'd closed and secured the door, Colin turned to the two. "I suspect that there's something more going on here that I'm currently unaware of, based on your reaction to hearing that Alabaster has been drunk for over a week."

Taylor sighed. "We were there when he showed up, and shut his snark down long enough for him to get drunk. I know I didn't expect him to take longer than usual to sober up, though."

Amy snorted. "His snark is probably using every loophole it can to keep him drunk so long as the man is being less cautious."

"Well, yes, there is that."

Colin shook his head. "Well, at least we know not to look too deeply into possible unexpected power interactions, as this is a fairly well documented case. That said, Alabaster is a public nuisance now and Hookwolf provided a chart that indicates that he won't sober up for months. Can you fix him?"

Amy nodded. "I've cleared alcohol out of systems before, it shouldn't be any harder with him. It is, essentially, a poison and clearing it out is well within 'healing', after all."

Colin unlocked and opened the door. "Then please do, so that we can get both of them out of here. We don't have warrants for either of them and they've been waiting for hours while we work through various tests."

Taylor waited while Amy and Colin went down to the other room. It wasn't long before Amy had her hand on Alabaster and cleared the alcohol out of his system, only for it to come back a couple of seconds later. Frowning, she tried again, only for it to come back again. Shaking her own head, Taylor opened a channel to the man's snark.

Taylor: Okay, you've had your fun. Stop putting the alcohol back.

[Objection]

Amy: We don't care if you like him better this way, he isn't able to properly make decisions like this.

They both frowned when its response to that was to close the connection. This time Amy pushed the connection open again.

Amy: Okay you, we're asking nicely. You don't want us to insist.

[Disbelief]

BA: Data

[...Query]

BA: Elaboration

Amy grinned when her latest clearing of alcohol didn't undo itself after a few seconds, and she waited around thirty seconds more to ensure that things were properly cleared and not coming back. Then again, Taylor was fairly certain that Broadcast Administrator had told it what they'd done to the Butcher, which it wouldn't like. Not that they'd actually do that, because it would probably kill Alabaster, but the method would keep the snark busy enough for them to deal with the alcohol.

A few minutes later Amy came back into the room. "We appear to be done, but I've apparently got a request to visit the hospital. So I should get to that. I assume you're sticking around until your patrol session after dinner?"

Nodding, Taylor picked up her helmet. "Yeah. Not sure what I'll do in the meantime. Maybe double-check all my equipment, just in case?"

"That sounds like a good idea, honestly. Wouldn't do to find that something you could easily have dealt with ahead of time is wrong."

Missy had returned from the boat graveyard and gone straight for a shower, amusing Taylor who'd been waiting for the younger girl. She eventually returned in a fresh costume, only noticing that Taylor was there at that point.

"How long have you been sitting there?" Missy asked.

Taylor grinned. "Since twenty minutes or so before you returned."

"Ah. Okay. You grab dinner yet?"

"Nope. Figured I'd wait for you to come back and all."

It didn't take long for them to get something to eat, followed by Taylor finally getting into costume herself. That done they both signed into the console, and Missy decided to ask the question that they both were curious about.

"Vista to console," she said. "Neither of us have any indication of who we're patrolling with, and none of the other Wards appear to be here. Have you been informed?"

"Console to Vista," came back a moment later. Which seemed wasteful with no apparent others in the channel, but radio protocol was radio protocol. "Battery will be arriving shortly, you can meet her in the lobby or in front of the building." Well, that answered that. "She's asked that Maul bring her stop sign and M249, if possible."

Taylor blinked. She had grabbed her maul, but that wasn't a difficult thing to change. She wasn't sure about the M249, and for that matter if Battery knew that she couldn't do anything exceptionally fancy with the thing.

Clara grinned as she put on her costume in her hotel room. Sure, it was a little earlier than she'd normally be going out, but that was okay. Today's target wasn't somewhere with decent security that she'd be bypassing, after all. It didn't take long to put the dark blue bodysuit on, and she ensured that the subtle diamond pattern lined up properly where the boots and gloves met the rest of the costume. She wished she could get the same on the light helmet she used, but it needed to be able to move too much so that she could look around, not to mention the extra room needed for the voice changer.

She checked herself in the mirror, nodding to herself before activating her power. A force field wrapped itself around her, the first step of things. She then moved over to the open window, barely pushing the curtains open so that she could see the rooftop across the street. Doing this through a screen was harder, but ten seconds later a duplicate of her was crouched down on the rooftop. Nodding, she moved to the other end of the curtains and closed the window with the crank, then sat down in the chair in the room.

A moment later she'd swapped to the 'her' on the rooftop, leaving her emergency exit plan in the hotel room. It took half the time to make a duplicate on another nearby rooftop and switch to it, dismissing the previous one. She was heading in the general direction of the PRT building to start with, since as she understood it her niece should be starting her patrol any time now. Though she'd be at least a little discreet and claim to want to test Miss Hebert instead, indirectly testing her niece by seeing just how the girl reacted to that.

Battery had opted to be 'patrol leader' today and had asked that Taylor not use her platform for the time being. Instead Taylor and Missy were being run through 'movement drills' on the ground, being made to dart back and forth across the street, circle around buildings through alleys, and generally do anything but just walk down the street. At the same time, Taylor was practicing keeping the scout drone, snitch, and cloaked platform moving around. Not that she'd mentioned the latter two to Battery. The scout drone was ahead of them, something that Battery approved of, but the snitch was behind them and thus out of Battery's sight.

Sadly for actually accomplishing anything, they weren't in an overly active area right now. Very few people were around in general, and those that were around didn't appear to be gang members. The only 'excitement' they'd had so far was being confronted by an old lady who thought they were deviants, until said lady had put on her glasses and realized that they were parahumans. At which point she'd apologized for calling them deviants and switched to calling them satanists instead. The three of them had left her standing there on the sidewalk, ranting at them as they moved on.

That changed when the scout drone picked up someone on a rooftop ahead of them. People on rooftops was unusual in general, and said person vanishing a moment later more so. Taylor could tell it was a parahuman, but it wasn't one she recognized. That they'd moved down to street level when they'd vanished from the rooftop was another indicator, of course.

"Do either of you know who that might be?" Battery asked over the radio.

"It isn't Oni Lee," Taylor replied. "Haven't run into them before."

Battery considered that for a moment before responding. "Okay, get into the alleys on either side of the street. Better to be split up when dealing with an unknown, and we don't know if they're hostile in the first place."

Taylor went left while Missy went right, both just inside their chosen alley and able to look out, while Battery moved up to be in front of the two alleys. It wasn't long before the parahuman approached, though both Taylor's snark sense and the sensor data feed agreed that only one of the four bodies approaching was the parahuman.

"Hello," Battery called, even as her costume showed that not moving was causing her to charge up. "May I ask who you are and why you're here?"

The parahuman nodded, all four bodies doing so in unison. The slightly-digital sounding voice only came from one of them, though. "I am Diamond Quartet, and I came to see if the Ward Maul is all hype or not."

Battery tilted her head. "Diamond Quartet, eh? Small-time parahuman thief, excellent at bypassing security and getting away. You don't normally operate this far East, and last I heard you weren't all that hot in combat. Sure, nobody's ever injured you, as far as we know, but that's just an indicator that you're good at running away."

The parahuman suddenly 'jumped' to another one of the four visible bodies, which Taylor thought was interesting, before they responded. "I think it shows that I'm prudent, always having an escape route prepared."

Battery turned towards where Taylor was. "So, Maul, do you want to take this one? I don't think she's actually a combat threat, but she's supposedly very hard to pin down. We don't know if she's got a force field or if she just uses projections, but she's vanished from being shot up by machine guns and reappeared the next night."

Taylor blinked a couple of times, looking between Diamond Quartet and Battery, before shrugging. "I suppose, but she hasn't actually attacked anyone. PR might get angry with me if I attack first. They get snippy about that kind of thing."

Missy snorted in the other alley, then pulled out a bag of chips from one of her pouches. Diamond Quartet seemed to be in a state of mild shock, before shaking her head and pulling out a handgun. All four apparent bodies pointed the gun in Taylor's direction, but only the one that the parahuman was currently 'in' fired. The bullet didn't even hit Taylor, but that was sufficient to count as an attack.

Rolling her eyes, Taylor pulled out the tinker-built handgun. Force fields probably meant extra power would be better. She then pointed it directly at the parahuman, then adjusted her aim as the parahuman shifted to a different 'body'. She continued to do this, Diamond Quartet's body language shifting to show that the trick was having a significant effect on her.

"How the hell are you doing that?" she finally demanded.

Taylor grinned, and tapped her visor. "For starters, your body-jumping trick doesn't fool all forms of tinkertech sensors."

"Fuck, that's probably revealed one of my secrets, and it'll make my life harder going forward. Oh well, it isn't like you can hurt me even knowing that."

Raising an eyebrow, Taylor pulled the trigger while aiming at a leg, forward-projecting to get double-hits in just in case the forcefield had a momentary gap or similar. Whether or not that mattered was hard to tell, as the parahuman instantly jumped to another one of the bodies as the one that'd just been hit vanished. Deciding to see how far that went, she quickly fired off three more shots at the other three bodies. When all was said and done the four bodies and the parahuman were all gone, as though they'd never been there.

Battery snorted. "So much for that, I guess. Hopefully she won't become enough of a problem for you to need to stop holding back against her."

Clara blinked as she found herself in her hotel room. Her force fields usually took at least two bullets to pop, though perhaps if Miss Hebert had been doing her 'instant hand cannon' trick? That could probably obliterate all of her force fields in a single shot. Worse, she hadn't gotten any insight into her niece, because she'd underestimated how quickly Miss Hebert could deal with her.

Shaking her head, she dropped her force field and started to strip out of her costume. She was too tired to make a second attempt tonight, since she'd gotten no time to recover between the four force fields being forcibly popped and had been doing quite a bit of creating and dismissing duplicates just to find the patrol in the first place. Instead, she threw on a bathrobe before grabbing a TV dinner she'd purchased that morning from the miniscule freezer section of the fridge in the room. She'd ensured that the room had a microwave before she'd booked it for a reason, and it was far easier and less likely to be seen as odd than ordering room service or going back out again for a second dinner.

Sadly, not only did she need to figure out how to properly test her niece, she now also had to figure out how to contend with there being equipment out there that could see through her force fields to tell where she actually was. Even worse, tinkertech that a Ward had access to, which meant that it was probably going to become a lot more common going forward. Hell, for all she knew it was already a lot more common and she just hadn't noticed. Luckily she'd generally hidden that she could have five force fields going at once, pretending right from when she'd triggered that she could only make four. Even if finding a suitable place to hide her escape plan was problematic at times.

Taylor sighed as they neared the end of their patrol. They'd had one more encounter half an hour previous, a couple of smaller groups of bikers that made trouble until they'd been beaten up a bit, then retreated. A couple of teenagers had stupidly hung around to take pictures of the three fighting the bikers with some instant cameras, and Battery encouraged them to sign the pictures that'd been taken afterwards even if avoiding harming said teenagers was part of the reason why the bikers had been able to get away.

The entire patrol could, as a result, be boiled down to four things. Movement practice, ignoring crazy old ladies, stupidly ineffective cape battle that essentially wasn't, and one mild altercation with bikers. None of which had resulted in any arrests whatsoever. Luckily she wasn't going to be writing the report, though if that had been on her list she'd have been writing it right along. Instead she was going to change, double-check her handgun, and then head home.

With any luck she'd have a quiet evening and have plenty of time to work on her psychology class materials.

Friday morning brought with it a very annoyed Amy, courtesy of a group of bikers that'd tried to jump her on the way to the PRT building. Most of her annoyance was because they'd damaged her moped in the process before getting away. Not seriously, but she still wasn't happy about it. A teenager that'd been there had helped her ensure that things weren't serious, and got a picture of her punching one of the bikers signed in thanks, before she'd continued on her way.

Taylor had met her in the garage and they'd skipped the gym to run repairs on the moped. Most of it was cosmetic, but they'd slightly damaged a few wires and Amy had been lucky that they hadn't shorted. They worked together to get everything repaired, but would need to buff things out after their lessons for the day to keep things looking correct. With that done they grabbed a smaller extra breakfast before meeting their instructors.

"We've got good news and bad news," one of their instructors said, getting raised eyebrows in response. "The bad news is that we were planning on springing your final tests on you today, but the official examiners got delayed. The good news is that we've arranged for you two to play PRT taxicab today. You're too young to take fares, and it's illegal for you to do so without multiple licenses and business backing for that matter, but picking up and dropping people off as a courtesy is perfectly fine."

They were then shown the PRT vans they'd be using today. Both of which had been given temporary labels on the side, declaring that each was a 'PRT Courtesy Transport' with a student driver warning label. 'Today only: Free transport within Brockton Bay' was also prominently displayed, if in smaller text.

As much as this was being called good news, Taylor was inclined to disagree. As was Amy, if the other girl's slight scowl was any indication. Still, they'd signed up for the lessons, and with any luck they'd pass with flying colors tomorrow and be done with it all.

Jacob rubbed the bridge of his nose as the two girls ran around the apartment collecting things. He didn't want to know how they'd spread things out so well in only a couple of days. But they had to be ready to leave after lunch, which meant getting everything packed up this morning. His packing had taken five minutes, most of which was double-checking that he'd gotten all of his toiletries. He'd then packed the shared items, such as the helicopter, into a container for the girls.

That had been over an hour ago, and the two were still collecting things they'd put all over the place. Mostly clothing, but they'd somehow hidden at least a dozen pieces of candy each as well. Not to mention that keeping their toothbrushes in the bathroom was too straightforward, and he'd somehow missed them hiding every last card from a deck of cards in a different place. Really, some of that had him wondering what the hell he'd been doing while they did that, he was usually a bit more observant.

One of the only benefits to this whole dance was that the two were getting more practice in moving around quickly without holding onto things and without falling on their faces. They still fell down every so often, granted, but they were rapidly improving. He was really hoping that Amanda was able to help the two through the worst of things while the Nine did their thing. Well, that and that she could handle their whining that they wanted to go on the run with the Nine.

He wasn't telling them that they'd have to trigger with problematic powers for that to happen. Especially given some of what Taylor had figured out and all about how humans influenced their powers at trigger-time. At this point he now believed that telling them that would make it more likely to happen, and he'd prefer to not be dealing with them needing to join the Nine ever.

Breaking for lunch had been a godsend for Amy, to Taylor's amusement. Somehow the other girl kept getting the worst people, though some of that was due to her status as a healer. 'I have this slight pain, surely you can fix that up quick?' and similar had apparently been fairly common this morning. Taylor, on the other hand, had mostly ended up with reasonable 'customers', the religious preacher-types aside.

Then again, she'd gotten to ask one of those types if she should commit suicide while she was driving the vehicle they were in. That had, amazingly, convinced them to shut up for the entire rest of the ride and apologize when they were let out. It hadn't worked on the second group she'd tried it on, who'd insisted that they obviously meant when she was done for the day and at home instead.

Unlike previous days driving around, they'd opted to grab lunch at the PRT building. In part because the van Taylor had been driving had started losing oil pressure due to a leak. They'd handed it off to the maintenance crew, who she'd discreetly informed that they'd only need to tighten a clamp and top off the oil, before heading to one of the cafeterias.

"Huh," Taylor said partway through their meal. "Clockblocker wants to know if you'd like to join us on our 'Wards day out'. Apparently there's an extra slot available on the suddenly mystery activity for some reason he hasn't elaborated on."

Amy blinked at that. "Why me?"

"He refers to you as 'an honorary Ward, if the labeled parking space is anything to go by' in the message. But wanted me to ask because he felt that it would be better relayed through me instead of to you directly."

"I suppose that would be more interesting than the alternatives. Well, unless I decide to go shopping for school supplies on Sunday."

Taylor grinned at that. "I decided to cheat on that earlier when bringing a group of kids home with their supplies. Somewhat. I placed an order for notebooks and such from the gift shop with the PRT store app. In fact, the box should be waiting for me when we head home."

Amy tilted her head as she took another bite of food. After a minute she nodded. "I hadn't thought much of it, but they've got a good selection. And I have store credit that counts, so I should be able to have a box ready for me too. But I think we still need to do some shopping."

Taylor raised an eyebrow. "Why?"

"I'm willing to bet that Missy and Vicky will agree that you need at least some new clothing for the new school year."

That had Taylor frowning, as well as starting to come up with possible ways to get out of the impending shopping trip.

Maya was very happy as she sealed up the envelope with the three signed pictures in it. Yes, until they heard back from the thinker she'd have to continue trying to collect things just in case, but there was a very good chance that she was done with this whole mess. Besides, she wasn't sure how to safely get most of what remained on the list of desired items. For example, hairs from their heads. Forcibly taken hairs at that. Good luck with that one. Discarded or stolen items tainted with menstrual blood was probably never happening either.

Willingly given fingerprints would be an interesting one to figure out how to accomplish, but she hadn't had any luck figuring it out yet. She wasn't sure how one stole nail clippings without them counting as discarded, short of clipping the nails by force. Not something she thought was happening. Pillowcases that they'd drooled on while sleeping would be easier to obtain if they were away from home, but breaking into their residences was not happening anytime soon. And she had no clue why the thinker had bothered to list things like used condoms, given that the wording seemed to imply a male using them.

No, she'd work on figuring out a couple of the more possible things while waiting to hear if she'd obtained enough for the thinker to do their thing. But she wouldn't enact any of the plans until she knew she needed them. Hopefully she'd know either way by the end of next week. At least school was starting up, which actually gave more options for certain things. Come to think of it, she had a couple of good ideas for getting fingerprints out of them if she could compromise a school official or two...

Chapter 199 The mechanics had easily dealt with the oil leak, but the two vans had to start the afternoon at the gas station. With that done they resumed their 'play local taxi without taking fares' dance. Taylor got to start with a family going to see a movie, while Amy apparently got to start with a father and daughter visiting a grandmother at a nursing home. Neither was unpleasant, but they weren't holding their breaths on the afternoon not containing at least some annoyances.

It turned out that Taylor got the first such annoyance two trips later.

"Gimme all the fare money you've got," the man said, jamming a gun against Taylor's head.

She rolled her eyes, grabbed the gun with her right hand, finding that the safety was still on, and handed it to her instructor, before making a turn to head for the police department. "Sorry, but as this is a courtesy service today there aren't any fares to hand over." She then switched to subvocalizing to call the non-emergency police line.

The man seemed stunned that she'd just grabbed the gun out of his hand like that, or perhaps that it hadn't fired when he'd pulled the trigger. It was hard to tell. Then again, her instructor also seemed a bit stunned. Taylor slapped the man when he tried to lean forward to grab the gun from the instructor, which appeared to have him confused again. He didn't recover before they'd pulled up outside of the police station, where three officers were waiting. The man finally realized that things had gone horribly wrong and tried to run, only to show that he hadn't noticed the officers waiting.

Giving statements and such took half an hour, after which they ended up taking a couple of teenagers who'd been brought in for something else, but weren't having charges pressed against them, home.

Joey shook his head as Riley ran around like a nut packing things. He'd considered asking to go with them on the run, but figured that his urges didn't work out well enough and that he wasn't sure if he wanted to see Riley 'at work', so to speak. Well, plus if he went then he'd be constantly bouncing between wherever the Nine were going to be and Toybox, which seemed like a recipe for far too much stress. So instead he was watching Riley do her thing, since she'd insisted that she didn't need any help.

"Why are you so rushed anyway?" he finally asked, honestly curious.

Riley stopped and turned to him. "Because I was told that I'm leaving as soon as Jacob gets here, instead of having two or three days to pack."

"Ahhh. So are you fixing your hair here or while you're away?"

"What are you...FUCK! I forgot that my hair is colored!"

He shook his head again as she ran out of the room, yelling to her mother wanting to know where the stuff to wash the dye out of her hair was. A quick look at the workshop had him sighing, and he started re-packing the boxes that Riley had been throwing things into. None of it would fit right the way she'd been packing them, after all.

"I can't believe that someone was that stupid," Amy said as they headed to the workshop to finish dealing with her moped. They'd both had their share of annoying trips that afternoon, but none had matched the attempted robbery.

Taylor chuckled. "I'm more impressed with how long they seemed to stay stunned after things didn't go to script."

"That does sound amusing, yes. Think any of it will make the news?"

"Your guess is as good as mine on that front. I mean, it wasn't an emergency call or anything, so I guess the question is how detailed the public police record will be. And even then it might not be noticed for a few days."

Buffing out the moped didn't take long, it actually took longer to get it out of the workshop and back to the garage, before Taylor and Amy made their way upstairs to the gift shop. Taylor's box of supplies had been ready for a while, and they'd actually just finished up Amy's box. The two were able to check out without issue, though at least one customer thought that it was inappropriate for them to have done so. Neither girl wanted to stick around long enough to find out why it was inappropriate.

That done, the two made their way back down to the Wards garage. Both of their boxes were small enough to be dropped into the 'crate' formed by lifting the side pieces of the platform up, and then they headed to their respective homes. Neither ran into trouble on the way home, which was appreciated by both. Taylor, in particular, was happy that she shouldn't have any more distractions from her class tonight.

Taylor sighed as she took her visor off. She'd probably finished learning everything the psychology class could teach her, being an intro class and all, but the more annoying part of things tonight was one of the idiots that was taking the thing. They'd decided that because they'd read all the introductory materials that they were an expert for some reason, and then that half of the materials they'd been given were wrong because they didn't match things they'd observed in real life.

Really, she expected that the idiot was going to fail the course when it finished the following week. But they were going to have to deal with them for the next two classes. With any luck the final exam session next Friday would be a solo affair so that they didn't have to worry about things then.

Shaking her head, she got out of bed to use the bathroom. She was going to get to bed early tonight, because tomorrow she had a much more physical final exam.

Saturday morning the news covered the idiot that'd tried to steal from the 'courtesy transport', though they'd only found out about it because the man tried to claim that it'd been an illegal sting operation. So far everyone seemed to be laughing their asses off about it instead of taking him seriously. They then covered the 'losses' the local taxi companies had taken while two vans were giving people free rides. Danny had noted that none of the taxi companies were complaining, but the news didn't care much about that little detail.

Taylor left the house not long after that. She absently noted a lack of protesters today, but didn't care much one way or another. There were minor signs of a battle having been fought as well, mainly some road damage that crews hadn't been out to patch up yet, which might help explain how quiet it was now. Luckily the moped didn't care about things like gouges in the road, but she hoped this wasn't going to impact their exam too much.

A quick session in the gym had been followed by a second breakfast. That done, Taylor and Amy gathered their helmets and made their way to the secure garage. There they were met with their instructors, who went through a 'we approve them to be examined' bureaucratic dance to hand them off to the examiners.

"Alright," one of the two examiners said. "We're your first examiners of the day, and you get to start off easy. Each of you will take one motorcycle and follow our instructions as we head to the next set of examiners."

The other examiner nodded. "Of course, we've got ten motorcycles here for you to choose from. Some of them have obvious issues that should disqualify them. Choose carefully, because if you choose a motorcycle with an issue we're expecting you to spot then you'll be behind from the start."

Taylor rolled her eyes while Amy pouted. Really, all ten needed some work, but four of them were at least reasonable.

Taylor: I'll take the fourth from the left, you should probably take the third from the right.

Amy: ...thank you. I was just thinking that this was horribly unfair but didn't want to say it out loud.

Taylor: I don't think this is even on the testing requirements, yet I suspect they'll be doing this all day.

Amy: Fun.

Taylor: Oh, and tighten down the gas cap on that one, would you?

Amy did so after giving that motorcycle a quick once-over. Taylor, on the other hand, reattached a disconnected wire and tightened down a couple of other screws. The examiners seemed surprised at that, but didn't say anything.

"You two done choosing?" one of them finally asked, only to get nods from both girls. "Huh."

The other examiner nodded. "Bit of a surprise there. Neither went for one of the ones without any problems."

Taylor snorted at that. "They all had problems. These were just the easiest to fix, not needing to pull parts from one to fix another and all."

The first examiner shook their head and moved over to one of the motorcycles. "So, smart girl, what's wrong with this one?"

"Cracked spark plug, probably won't last an hour at this point."

"Seriously?"

"I can see a burn on the spark plug wire boot from here."

The examiners both paused at that, and they both ended up examining the motorcycle. One even got a toolkit so that they could remove the spark plug. In the end they admitted defeat and got out their own motorcycles, telling the girls where they were going so that the two examiners could follow them.

Sherrel swore as she was shocked by the live wiring harness. One that shouldn't have been live with the battery removed, but the asshat who'd customized this truck previously had apparently installed a second battery. Under the bed, as far as she could tell, in a location that was nearly impossible to get to safely. Granted, the thing defaulted to the bed being raised thanks to some springs that made no sense and put significant stress on the frame in all the wrong ways. Right now the only thing keeping the bed down was a damaged hydraulic piston. And that wouldn't have worked if it wasn't significantly bent and thus unable to extend.

Swearing again as she was shocked again, she decided that the thing was getting a more complete rebuild, because some of the parts were going to be damaged in the next few minutes. To that end she wheeled over the portable safety shield, ensuring it was properly set up. That taken care of she ensured that it was positioned correctly so that she could take a cutting torch to one of the springs. She'd cut them all, then cut off the hydraulic piston. With that done she could remove the bed outright, torch the other battery for good measure, and then get back to dealing with the wiring harness.

By the time she was done with this truck it would be safer than it would've been new and she was going to force Ethan to learn to drive it properly as payback for buying it in the first place. Preferably without power steering, but arranging for that would be harder than it'd been for the two kids. Disabling the power steering in everything they'd been using had been trivial and expected. Pulling the same thing on Ethan would require some more work.

It turned out that the next stop in their exams included a paper test, to be completed before they moved onto the next section of things, a pattern they thought was probably going to continue. Because sitting them down to take all the paper exams first was too easy. It also had the potential benefit of keeping them bouncing between practical and theory, or something like that. Either way it was somewhat annoying, but they dealt with it.

To discourage cheating they were made to remove their visors and were placed in individual cubicles. This made them think that the examiners weren't fully read in on their capabilities, but they didn't say anything. It could also just be standard protocol, after all, and not intended for them so much as anyone going through things. This round didn't take either of them long, and then they were each given a PRT van to drive with an examiner in the passenger seat.

Jacob grinned as they unloaded equipment into their 'base of operations' for this run. They'd be starting Monday night, but having the place they retreated to ready in advance was always a good thing. That and they weren't all here yet, he'd dragged Riley in early to keep her away from Mary and Tori. Which was annoying the girl quite a bit, hence some of his grinning.

The other side of things was, of course, that she couldn't find anything because someone had packed her equipment in a manner that made sense, fit well in the containers, and allowed her to bring almost twice as much stuff. He'd taken pictures too, because to get her stuff home she was going to have to reproduce the packing. Something that she was likely going to have issues with without the pictures. He was already planning on holding onto them for at least a few hours when they started to pack up, just to see how far she got without the references.

"Where are my scalpels?" Riley grumbled as she looked through various things, not considering that they were in the box labeled 'scalpels'. Granted, the label was small and the handwriting was atrocious, so perhaps she hadn't deciphered it?

Oh well. He shrugged and let her get on with it, moving down the hall to look over his own equipment. Most of which was, fairly obviously, bladed weapons of various kinds. But he'd also brought a few other things for special cases this time, and to have fun with if they worked. He was curious if his filing down of bullets to give them spiral 'blades' on the tips would be effective, for example. He just hadn't had a chance to test them, and he only had a few bullets currently. But if it worked he'd definitely be making more.

Taylor took a sip of her soda, ignoring the looks of some of the people in the fast food place they'd stopped in for lunch. Hopping all the way to Springfield for lunch hadn't been expected, and they were nowhere near done with things. But so far nobody had claimed that they'd failed something, so that was probably a good thing. The locals, however, apparently weren't used to teenage girls ordering triple cheeseburgers with bacon, large fries, a shake, and a large drink.

Well, that or they weren't used to said teenage girls eating it all and going back for a refill on their drinks. Driving the various vehicles without power steering had them using their brute abilities, and that meant they were burning through more calories than normal. Which meant they were hungry.

"You two done yet?" one of the current examiners asked.

"I was thinking about grabbing a small salad," Amy replied. "Gotta watch my weight, you know."

Taylor didn't look, but assumed that eye-rolling happened at that response.

An hour later they were back on the road, another paper test behind them. Most people didn't realize how easy they had it with their 'road tests'. An hour or two tops and you were done, none of this 'all day' bullshit. Then again, most people weren't being put through a PRT program likely intended to cause all but the most serious and/or qualified underaged parahumans to quit out of frustration.

Dragon smirked as she reviewed the production status for Mother's pocket dimension. Well, and Miss Dallon's, though that detail was less important to her for somewhat obvious reasons. They'd started work on some of the more complicated pieces before even sending the plans to the two, running on the assumption that if they didn't use them for the pocket dimension then a PRT or Guild facility would be able to use them anyway.

At this point they'd probably have the entire thing completed and installed in two months, though a lot of that was because they were able to construct the individual components at different facilities across the continent. Of course, the contract's wording allowed for 'or better' on pretty much all materials, so it was highly unlikely that things like the power generators and environmental systems were going to be to the original spec. Not when she had access to much higher quality replacements, anyway.

Still, at this point they'd need to get the access crystals from the two so that prepwork for installing things could begin. She figured that it was easiest for her to pick them up herself, since she knew when the two would return from their exam. She'd also bring a couple of small secure cases, in case they hadn't brought any of the extra crystals with them today and needed to send them along with Doormaker.

That was still hours away at this point, though, so she moved onto reviewing some of Colin's potential blueprints. They thought they might have figured out how to make the nanothorn system significantly more reliable with some help from Trevor, but integrating it with certain other systems was still proving to be problematic. Of course, most of the things he wanted to use it on had been removed from his list of targets for one reason or another, so it wasn't exactly a high priority at this point.

Her examination was interrupted a few minutes later by an alert. She sighed, and moved to figure out why Ash and Bert were fighting this time. Introducing them to each other and leaving them with a dedicated communication channel had seemed like a wonderful idea at first, but for whatever reason they kept getting into arguments. Yes, this was supposedly to be expected with 'siblings' and all, but it was quite annoying and the two were rarely logical about things.

They'd ended up being on a route brought back to the coast, but not at Brockton Bay. There they were shown two obviously-nonstandard boats. One was obviously based on an airboat, though one with a lower than standard center of mass by Taylor's understanding of the things. It also looked to be rigged for up to sixteen passengers and had a glowing ring instead of a fan on the back. The other looked like it was a six passenger speedboat, but it would partially hover when powered on.

Taylor ended up taking on the airboat, while Amy was given the speedboat. In addition to the examiners they also had a captain each, and were informed ahead of time that they were being graded only on their operation of the vehicles, not on their adherence to naval rules and such. The captains had both ensured that everyone had properly secured life jackets on before they were allowed near the controls. Several other ships in the area were apparently also monitoring things, on top of normal water traffic being obstacles to work with.

It was very quickly determined that Amy had the easier to figure out vessel, at least without cheating snarks helping, as it had somewhat standard looking controls. To contrast that, the 'airboat' was operated with a single metal sphere that looked like it lacked any controls at all, but was pressure sensitive in a number of places. It also had a top speed that was a little more than double that of the speedboat, something that apparently took everyone other than Taylor by surprise when she'd been instructed to get it going as fast as she could.

The trip along the coast took Taylor half an hour and Amy an hour, at which point they had yet another written exam. This time it made some sense, though, as they were to document how to operate the two pieces of tinkertech they'd just been using. Presumably so that they could prove that they hadn't gotten lucky or, if they had gotten lucky, that they'd learned how to reproduce things.

With that done they were shuffled off to an earlier set of examiners and the largest trucks yet. They hadn't actually trained on double-trailer trucks, yet apparently they were going to have a run with them. Yes, they'd studied the written materials for them, and had a good idea of the basics, but they hadn't actually driven one at this point. Which meant they were being tested on something they only knew the theory of.

Ethan was annoyed. Two apparently roaming villains had decided to rob the same store at the same time and had gotten into a massive battle. By the time anyone called the PRT hotline the two had done more damage to the area than what they'd have gotten out of the store would've covered by an order of magnitude, at least. And now he and Erin were chasing both of them. They'd already crossed multiple primary road routes in the area as well, which was causing traffic problems.

He hated situations like this, in part because he had no clue what to expect from the two beyond 'destructive'. They were either recent triggers or from out of the area, nobody having recognized either despite having decent costumes according to the called in reports was what had them assuming roaming villains from outside of the area.

"I just spotted a couple of bright flashes," Erin's voice called over the radio. "Bit further to the south than expected, but we're still playing catch-up and they probably turned."

"Got it," Ethan replied, adjusting his course appropriately. Hopefully this wouldn't be something else making them think it was the two they were chasing.

Taylor sighed as she removed the key from the compact car she'd had on the last leg of testing. Twenty-three vehicle combinations throughout the day, ending in an automatic with power steering that seemed to be more of a 'get back to Brockton Bay' choice than anything else. Then again, they were also running a couple of hours late due to a traffic jam caused by a cape battle taking out part of a highway they hadn't crossed yet.

"I have good news and bad news," her examiner said after they'd gotten out of the car. Taylor sighed and grabbed her helmet from the back seat, then waved the examiner to continue. "You've completed the last section of the practical exams, which is good, but you have one more written exam to complete before we let you go get dinner."

That statement got a glare from Taylor, but no complaining. She and Amy were shuffled into different rooms for their final written section, after which they met in one of the cafeterias to finally have a late dinner. Neither was willing to slow down eating by actually speaking, so they were chatting mentally instead.

Amy: I have no clue how well we did or didn't do.

Taylor: I assume that we did fairly well, since they didn't abort because we were hazards halfway through the day.

Amy: Okay, that's a good point. When do we find out if we passed?

Taylor: No clue, I didn't think to ask anyone. Too hungry, I'm sure you can relate.

Amy: Yes, I can relate to that.

Taylor: As far as I can tell, the worst case scenario is that we didn't pass and get to take round two in three months. They did say that was the normal result, after all.

Amy: They also said that normally they don't clear anyone to attempt the examination until after said 'round two' had happened.

Taylor: True, true. But I was also told that said examination usually only takes three hours. They threw everything and then some at us all day.

Amy: So we've fallen into unusual territory with no clue what to expect?

Taylor: Yep.

They filled most of their meal with back and forth comments on different parts of the testing. How different vehicles had handled, the attitudes of the various examiners, where they thought they'd probably screwed up versus done well. Both thought that they'd screwed up on various things, but seemed to be in disagreement as to what probably counted as a mistake and what was fine.

Eventually they finished eating and left the cafeteria, only to be intercepted by Dragon. They'd known she was in the area, but hadn't realized that she'd been waiting for them.

"Hello Miss Hebert, Miss Dallon," Dragon greeted. She then held out an envelope to each of them. "Congratulations on passing your exams. These are your temporary licenses, good for normal vehicles, you'll get your proper ones in the mail and should wait on operating commercial vehicles until then."

The two blinked as they opened the envelopes, finding that it included a summary sheet for their exam results. Everything was listed as pass, fail, or not tested. Amy hadn't been tested on the full tinkertech endorsement, neither had been tested on triple trailers, and they'd both failed on four different things that seemed to be related to the double trailer practical. They'd kinda been expecting that after a couple of mishaps during that leg of the run. Other than that they'd passed on everything they'd been tested on, which was only about two thirds of the items on the summary sheet.

"What's the F01 mean in the endorsement list?" Amy asked after looking at the printed license slip.

"It's an addition to the tinkertech endorsement for flight-capable tinkertech operation," Dragon replied. "Zero and one are altitude restrictions in this case, meaning you can operate below and at the height of 'low flying aircraft'. It's a somewhat flexible designation. Miss Hebert has the added two but not the three which lets her get higher out of controlled airspace, since she showed greater proficiency due to her previous experience with her platform but hasn't passed courses for interaction with air traffic control and similar. That mostly helps in states that limit tinkertech use by those who didn't build the equipment at all."

Taylor flipped to her own printed license, then blinked a couple of times before looking back up at Dragon. "I wasn't expecting the endorsement for double and triple trailers, given that we failed the practical and all?"

Dragon smirked at that. "You didn't get a couple of the specialist PRT endorsements related to them this time, but the base endorsement only required passing the knowledge test. Then again, the practical included elements that I can't describe to you because you may eventually take it again."

Amy nodded at that, then frowned at the piece of paper. "How long before we get the proper licenses, anyway? The paper one is a bit more flimsy than I'd like."

"The PRT-issued ones should arrive within two weeks, but the state will probably take longer. Maybe a month or so?"

That had them both staring at Dragon for a moment, before Taylor decided that they weren't getting anywhere without asking. "I thought we weren't getting state-issued licenses yet, since we don't qualify by age on that side of things for most of what we qualified for?"

Dragon smirked again, which was mildly annoying. "It just so happens that most states have an agreement with the PRT that allows for automatic issuance of a standard state license when the PRT issues one to a resident regardless of age, and you don't live in one of the exceptions. That doesn't cover the specialty endorsements, and for now will only be in your civilian identity instead of one for each of your civilian and parahuman identities. In your cases it'll also only be a Class D, since you aren't old enough for the commercial side of things according to the state. But it will include motorcycles, and when you're old enough you'll get the full commercial license for both identities without additional exams."

That hadn't been expected, but it made sense. It just wasn't covered in any of the materials they'd been given, but it wasn't necessarily something to be covered by the class either way. That and many of the PRT officers taking the thing probably already had state-issued licenses and would merely be getting additional elements, making it even less likely to be mentioned.

Eventually they put their slips of paper with their various ID cards, both likely hoping that they either didn't need the thing or that it held up until a proper card showed up. Though when they were done Dragon had pulled out two small secure boxes. They looked at her with raised eyebrows, and she nodded to the boxes. "I volunteered to pick up access crystals for your pocket dimension. If you don't have any spares with you then you can place them in the boxes and have Doormaker deliver them."

It was a moment of work for each to dig a crystal out of a pouch, since neither wanted to just leave them sitting around for various reasons. Granted, they'd eventually leave some installed in the opening devices they had, specifically any that they wanted someone else to be able to use or that they wanted to trigger remotely themselves, but for now they'd been carrying them around. The two crystals were secured in the cases, apparently designed to hold them safely, before Dragon nodded and stowed both of them in her armor.

"Thank you," she said. "I apologize in advance for any discomfort from people working in your 'personal space', but I'm sure you recognize it as unavoidable if you want the work done."

Taylor shrugged. "We've barely had anyone in there so far. If it starts to be a problem we'll just go see what they're doing, since we were told that it usually only becomes a problem if you haven't been in there with them recently. Even then that might not apply to us in the same way it applied to him, because we didn't trigger with personal space issues."

Dragon nodded. "That makes sense. Do let us know, this will be the first large project we're dealing with. Knowing for others that he may offer spaces to, or sell them to, will be good information to have as a result."

Neither of them had a problem with that, and they even offered to do their best to see if either of them could alleviate the 'invasion of personal space' for both of them if it did come up. Mainly because those who'd gotten vials connected to the same snark were likely to have problems with that going forward if that wasn't the case.

Chapter 200 Sunday morning Taylor and Amy were up and at the gym early, unsure as to what the 'day out' was going to be. Dennis hadn't actually let anyone know, and the two girls had been told that it was their choice as to whether they left from home or from the PRT building. Halfway through their workout Missy also showed up, having been given the same basic instructions and apparently having decided that she'd rather start from the PRT building. Eventually the three finished up and made their way to the Wards area. There Taylor and Amy put their guns in Taylor's Ward room gun safe, since they'd been requested to leave them behind for the day. Missy had left her gun at home instead. That done they headed to one of the cafeterias for a post-workout breakfast.

They were found there by a PRT officer half an hour later. "Good morning ladies. Nice to see you all together, saves me some time and the driver a few trips."

"Morning," Taylor greeted for the three of them, being the only one that hadn't been in the middle of a bite when the officer had approached.

"When you're done eating you can head down to the lobby, they'll call around your van." The officer then left the three of them.

"I don't believe we've been informed about where we're going," Amy noted a moment later.

The other two shrugged, since they hadn't exactly been informed either. Instead they finished eating and used the restroom before heading down to the lobby. A standard minivan was brought around for the three and they piled into the back.

"Okay Dennis," Dean said after Chris had climbed into the back seat. "All three of us are here, where the hell am I driving us?"

Dennis held up a sheaf of papers. "I printed out directions."

"Why does this have to be such a surprise?" Chris asked. "I mean, keeping it secret until today is one thing, but now that we're heading wherever it is?"

"Half the fun is seeing if you figure it out before we get there." He then waved an envelope. "I've got the rest of what we need right here, but you can't see it until you figure things out."

Dean grumbled, but pulled away from Dennis's house. "So which way am I going?"

"I'm bored," Aisha whined as her brother pulled onto the highway. She'd opted for the back seat so that she'd have more room to stretch out.

"You have a phone with games," Brian noted. "Play one of them. Either that or see if you can figure out where we're going."

"It's stupid that it's a secret."

"Maybe it is, but I didn't make that particular decision and that doesn't justify whining that you're bored. Either find a game to play on your phone or do your best to figure out where we're going."

Aisha glared at her brother, but he wasn't giving in. With a sigh she pulled out her phone and checked what games she'd left on it. Perhaps one with an incredibly annoying background music selection and sound effects would work, annoy her brother until he gave in?

"Oh, and by the way," Brian said, getting Aisha's attention. "If you try and annoy me with your game sounds then I'll turn on the radio."

She shivered at that, realizing that since she was in the back she wouldn't be able to change the radio station and would thus be stuck listening to whatever he wanted to listen to.

They'd been driving for at least two and a half hours before they finally arrived, and Taylor had figured out where they were likely going around forty minutes before they got there. She might've figured it out sooner, but she'd been splitting her attention between reading various things and playing multiplayer games with Amy and Missy. Having two phones and the ability to multitask was very nice on that front.

"Here we are," their driver said after they'd parked, before tossing an envelope and keys to Taylor. "I've got someone picking me up shortly so that I can continue on to New York, so you get to drive back at the end of the day. Don't forget to get gas."

Taylor blinked at that, then checked the envelope as the driver got out. It contained three VIP tickets and a PRT gas card taped to instructions for where to park the van and leave the keys back in Brockton Bay. Shrugging, she got out of the van, handing Amy and Missy a ticket each. Once they'd locked the van up they headed for Riverside Park's main entrance. They were actually early for the park's opening, but headed for the season pass/VIP entry point anyway. There they found Brian and Aisha waiting, and it seemed that the other three Wards were currently pulling into the parking lot.

"Morning," Brian greeted with a grin while Aisha ignored them, obviously excited for the park to open. "Didn't expect a trio of celebrities from Brockton Bay to join us today."

Taylor and Amy rolled their eyes at that, and neither would've been surprised if Missy had as well. Further 'never met you in person' style smalltalk was stopped by virtue of the ticket window opening, or more specifically by Aisha grabbing Brian and dragging him to said window. The two made it through fairly quickly, and Missy led the charge for the three of them afterwards.

"Good morning," the teenager behind the window greeted. "May I have your tickets?" The three handed them over, and the girl shook her head. "Figures, first time all season that I'm working when someone actually uses VIP tickets and there are multiple groups in a single day." She then dug under the counter before handing over three wristbands. "So, you get these. Strap them on, they're good for the quick access lines and if you show them to the cashiers your food and drinks are all covered. If you need one a locker rental is covered as well, but if so you'll want to do that soon as they tend to get snapped up quickly. All other purchases are on you, of course. Rides don't open until ten thirty, but you can wander the park until then."

It didn't take much to get the wristbands on, followed by grabbing maps and heading through the security station. Except that unlike Brian and Aisha, who were apparently dealing with the metal detectors, the three girls were waved around them by the security guard. "No need for you three, even if you aren't in costume I'm sure you've got far too much stuff on you for your own safety. I just need to know if you brought any firearms."

"We left them back in Brockton Bay," Taylor admitted, not having expected special treatment here. Then again, it meant she didn't have to remove her belt and find out just how much the metal detector could pick up in the pouches.

"Then you're good to go, enjoy your day."

The three heard Aisha whine that they hadn't gone through the metal detectors, but figured the girl would get over it shortly.

"Why the hell did we drive over two hours to get to an amusement park when there's one less than an hour from home?" Dean asked after Dennis had passed out their tickets.

"Because this one is bigger and offers incredible VIP tickets," Dennis responded. "It also doesn't have several rides closed due to damage from a cape battle a couple weeks ago, for that matter."

"He makes a compelling argument or two," Chris admitted. "Also, we're here, why are we arguing the destination instead of going into the park?"

They decided that was a good decision and got out of Dean's car. It didn't take long to spot the secondary line for season pass and VIP ticket holders, allowing them to bypass the long lines for general admission. They waited for the few people in front of them to go in before making it up to the window.

"Today is a very odd day," the girl said when they handed over their VIP tickets. "You're the sixth group of VIP tickets so far, and before today the only time I'd seen one was in training."

Ethan wondered why he and Erin had been tapped to 'monitor' the work being done in the Wards area today. Sure, the entirety of the local Wards were out of town, so it was a wonderful time to do the work, but still. It wasn't like they were even touching the personal rooms of any of them. The closest they were getting to that was setting up two new tinker workshops that tied into the exhaust system, one of which was apparently slated to be for Taylor if she wanted it. The other was for a new Ward that nobody had given them details about, but was obviously a tinker of some kind.

Erin got to deal with two of the new Ward rooms, which implied that they were for girls. He got to deal with the remaining one, implying that it was for a boy. They were adjusting various things in the room he was in charge of monitoring as well as in one of the two Erin was in charge of, which wasn't unheard of because sometimes parahumans had oddities. But why the mattress, sheets, and pillow in that girl's room needed to be replaced was an interesting question.

Still, they wanted to be done and out of here before dinnertime, since they had no clue when the Wards would be back and they didn't want to cause problems with being in the area when they came back. Not that anyone doing work wasn't cleared to know identities, of course, but it was the principle of the thing. Do their best to not seem like they were there at all. That it could also serve as an example of 'we pulled this off overnight' was an added bonus, of course.

"Changing out the fabric on these things is going to suck," wandered in from the common area. Right, they were also, for some reason, replacing the fabric on the furniture out there. Ethan had no clue why that was important either, but it apparently was. As was adding a new meat locker thing in the kitchen, for that matter. Who the hell were they getting?

Taylor found it amusing that the three groups containing Brockton Bay Wards were managing to run into each other frequently and without trying to, yet weren't obviously a larger group. They'd end up in a line together, then split up, only to end up in a different line together. And outside of their groups there were only three other parahumans in the park, two of which Taylor had noted were a father and his probably seven or eight year old kid. The other one hadn't crossed their path so far, but didn't seem to be obviously watching from afar or anything. Actually, they could be an employee doing behind the scenes stuff.

The girls had decided to snack all day, but they'd spotted Brian and Aisha sitting down for a late lunch and suspected that the boys had done the same based on them going stationary for a bit away from where a couple of shows were being held. Missy had argued against that, claiming that grabbing things as they went from ride to ride meant wasting less time and thus more time on the rides.

"We've got intelligence that says that the Fallen have already completed the preparation for some kind of move on Miss Hebert," Hannah said over the radio as she and Colin ran a pass through the areas surrounding the PRT building. They wanted no surprises the next day. "Thing is, we've checked everyone around her for master influences and found nothing. I've run out of ideas for what they might be working on and it's frustrating."

"The master scanning was just one step of several," Colin supplied. "We checked a number of things beyond that, including using a couple of sources you aren't cleared to know about and I'm told some that I'm not cleared for either, and none of them panned out. Whatever it is appears to have been incredibly subtle, and it's entirely possible that whatever it was failed so completely that it was never noticed after they got everything set up."

"Their anti-thinker whatever it is hasn't helped either, has it?"

"No, it hasn't, nor has the fact that it doesn't seem to apply universally. So we can get thinker help with random members, but not enough to see a bigger picture. And what we have picked up on makes little to no sense out of context."

Hannah frowned as they turned a corner, scanning the buildings they were passing for unexpected alterations. So far she hadn't spotted any, luckily. "So what you're saying is that there's nothing we can do?"

Colin was silent for a minute before he responded. "At this point I think we have to be ready for something big to happen, I just don't know what. After all, we only found out because there was apparently a celebration of something having been completed. I suspect that whatever it is will come to pass eventually. At this point I'm more worried about the ramifications of the 'delivery' that seems to be an entirely separate and probably much more immediate plan intended for Miss Hebert's next patrol. Or so we suspect, anyway, we're still waiting on some information there."

She supposed that there was something to be said for that view, given how much information they didn't have at this point. With any luck they'd get no interruptions tomorrow thanks to the Wards not patrolling. Perhaps they should encourage Miss Hebert to not patrol until Wednesday or Thursday to give them extra time to prepare for whatever it was that had been brought in?

The sun was setting and the three girls had just come off of their sixth run on one of the roller coasters when they got a group text message from Brian. One that confused them.

B: So when are you three leaving? Aisha and I are beat and there's still over two hours of driving ahead of us.

T: We aren't your ride, so why does it matter when we leave?

B: Ah. Dennis didn't tell you that I'm the token 'adult oversight' and/or protection, did he?

B: I'm not allowed to leave until you do, since the boys left an hour ago.

A: That makes a lot of sense, and yet it seems like we're the group you need to be least concerned about overall.

B: I don't make the rules. I'm here to give Aisha a reason to be here and to look over you lot.

"So what do you two think," Taylor said. "Have we had our fill of the park, even though it's open for a couple more hours?"

"I vote we grab one last round of snacks before we leave," Missy answered. "And the largest soda we can get, for that matter. But yeah, we've pretty much ridden everything we're the right size for multiple times, excluding the waterslides anyway, and none of the shows sound interesting enough to bother with."

Amy nodded. "Works for me."

M: We're going for a last round of snacks, then we'll bail.

T: Probably snacks, restroom run, souvenir shop, then bail.

M: Oooh. Yes on the souvenir shop.

B: Hah. Sounds like a good plan for the two of us too. Let me know when you're leaving the park, would ya?

A: We'll do that.

It didn't take long to get something for the three to eat, though Taylor stuck with something she could eat before driving while the other two opted for larger items they could eat on the way. They then picked up giant souvenir cups as well as various other things that caught their eye, followed by hitting a restroom and getting their giant cups filled with soda. With that done they left the park, skipping getting their hands stamped because they weren't returning, and Missy let Brian know that they'd left.

Brian and Aisha seemed to be leaving the park itself as Taylor pulled the van out of the parking lot, and the first stop for the three girls was a gas station. After that they got on the highway for over two hours of driving. Most of which ended up being spent with Brian reasonably close behind them, though Taylor had no clue if he realized that.

Once back in Brockton Bay they dropped Missy off at home, then Taylor and Amy made their way to the PRT building. The van was parked in a corner of the parking area across from the PRT building, then the two girls used their access to open the main doors and leave the van's keys and the gas card on the front counter. After that it was a quick trip to grab their guns, use the restroom again after two and a half hours of driving while consuming giant sodas, and then a departure on their mopeds.

All in all it was after eleven at night when they got home, but they'd enjoyed the day.

Monday morning found all of the Wards plus Amy and Vicky in the gym bright and early. Aisha, Dean, and Dennis were glaring occasional half-asleep daggers at Taylor, Amy, Chris, and Missy though. Presumably because the latter four weren't conked out from the day before thanks to tinker fugues. Vicky found the whole thing to be hilarious and apparently felt that it made up for her not having been able to go.

Once they were all done the Wards retreated to their rooms to get into costume, having a meeting that Taylor was fairly certain was supposed to be the three kids coming in. Or, at least, that would explain why all three had arrived shortly before the Wards finished their workouts. Amy left with Vicky following, both intending to swing through the hospital before coming back for the outdoor press conference after lunch. Amy to watch, Vicky because she'd volunteered to play extra security for the thing.

It wasn't long before all of the Wards were in costume, only for Miss Militia to meet with them instead of their new members.

"Good morning Wards," Miss Militia greeted, getting nods in response. "As I'm sure Maul has figured out, today you're meeting three new members. The press conference this afternoon is to introduce them as well, for that matter. I know it's short notice, but for various reasons that I'm sure you'll understand when you meet them we wanted to get this over with before school started up."

"Is that why they replaced the fabric on the couch here?" Chris asked, gesturing to the couch he was sitting on. "I mean, I know it had a couple of small damaged..."

"No," Miss Militia interrupted, shaking her head. "We replaced the fabric on all of the furniture in the common area with fully synthetic variants for the benefit of one of the new Wards. She gets uncomfortable with being in contact with things made from plants in particular." She then gestured to the personal rooms hallway. "We've already outfitted their rooms, and gotten two new tinker workshops up and running. One for another of the new Wards, and one for Maul so that she can have a work area of her own."

"I thought that hadn't been deemed necessary, so why now?" Taylor asked.

"It wasn't worth the effort for you alone, but it was worth doing when outfitting a workshop for another tinker. Armsmaster took the liberty of having them start you out with something close to the 'generic tinker' profile from the visiting tinker workshop, since that seems to be the one you use the most often according to the logs." Taylor nodded, and Miss Militia continued. "Now then, there are a few things I need to cover. First up, the three new Wards are not to be told that Maul has the collection of vials in her room at this time. We want to wait a little to see how they settle in before they find that out."

"Why?" Dennis asked, obviously confused.

"We want to keep a lid on it in general and they're young enough that we want to keep sensitive things from them for the moment." There was a round of nods in response to that. "Next up and along the same lines, we'd like to keep Maul's full capabilities secret for the time being. We'll evaluate these decisions later after finding out how much they do or don't accidentally leak to their parents, amongst others." Everyone nodded, since that made sense to them. "Which brings us to another age-related item. Regulations state that none of the three are old enough to patrol without an older Ward or a Protectorate member present, and they aren't allowed on the more dangerous patrol routes. I'm sure that Vista remembers those particular restrictions from her first couple of years."

"It sucked," Vista grumbled. "And really, even when I reached thirteen and it officially stopped mattering the patrolling with an older Ward bit still applied due to being the youngest. But at least I could go on all the routes then."

"Well, you have eight and nine year old teammates coming on, so you're now no longer the youngest. I'll be sending a collection of other requests through soon as well, once you've had a chance to meet them. Now then, do you have any questions or shall I go fetch them so that you can get some time to chat before the press conference this afternoon?"

Taylor thought about the three kids for a moment. "Should we cover dietary needs?"

Miss Militia blinked, then shook her head. "I'll cover that when I bring them down, so that there's no confusion there. Anything else?" None of the Wards had anything else, so she nodded. "Then I'll go get them."

They watched as Miss Militia left the room, which was followed by everyone else turning to Taylor. Who looked around at them. "What?"

"You know a lot more than should normally be expected," Dean noted. "And you were the only one of us not at least a little surprised about new Wards coming on."

"She said something about the roster changing the other day," Missy noted. "And wouldn't elaborate. Which makes me wonder why she knows when none of us did."

Taylor shrugged. "Confidentiality rules likely apply multiple times over in this case, so I can't elaborate on anything."

There was grumbling from the others, but they sensibly didn't press for any more details. Instead a quick pass over the common area was done to make sure everything was clean. The new well-stocked meat locker was noted, though it'd taken up some of the non-refrigerated storage room that they'd previously had. Oddly, it required an access key to unlock, and Dennis had Taylor check who had access. That turned out to be all of the current Wards added individually, any Protectorate member, and all Wards identity cleared PRT staff, but not any of the new Wards. It was also flagged as a 'personal safety' flag, so the lack of the new Wards might very well be because of their age.

All of that didn't take very long, and Miss Militia was taking much longer in fetching the three. Then again, it seemed that they'd gotten stuck in some kind of discussion up there. While they waited Taylor noted that Dennis had a smug look on his face and figured that he'd gone and looked at the nameplates on the doors for the three newly assigned personal rooms. Or maybe he'd actually brought up the current roster and saw the three names there? Either way she figured he was feeling smug because he'd picked out the names. Personally, she was going to be running a recording with her visor to catch their reactions.

"So they're on their way down," Taylor said. "Are you three with full facial coverage going to be putting that on or greeting them with your faces visible?"

There was a scramble by Aisha, Dean, and Dennis to get the last bits of their costumes in place before the new members arrived, hindered by Aisha having left hers in her room and not realizing it. But they all did so before the 'visitors entering' warning fired. A moment later the door opened, and Taylor grinned when she noticed that a couple of the others were visibly startled. She'd have to look over the footage to get a better look, seeing them in her peripheral vision wasn't good enough.

Rosa was in a simple t-shirt and shorts patterned with blue waves. Her shoes looked to have been modified to allow her to take advantage of the more hand-like shape her feet had, and she'd wrapped her tail around her almost like a belt. Though that might've been primarily so that it didn't accidentally get caught in a door, because it was slowly shifting out of that position. Sandy was dressed in what looked like, but most certainly wasn't, a dress made out of leaves. Even the shoes she was wearing looked like they were made out of leaves. And Ryan was wearing a pair of pink shorts and sandals that looked to have been designed to blend in with his body. Enough to not be 'naked' without impeding his all-over sight, perhaps?

They were introduced to 'Water Monkey', 'Dryad', and 'Soundstone' by Miss Militia, were given a warning about Sandy's diet and a reminder about the press conference, and then left alone with the three. Taylor found it interesting that the three were acting quite shy, or at least none of them seemed excited to be meeting the Wards.

Deciding that she could break the ice, so to speak, she stepped forward. "So, have you three been doing well since I last saw you?"

Rosa and Sandy looked a little confused about that, before Rosa's eyes widened as Taylor took off her visor. "You were there!"

Taylor nodded. "Yep. I'm Taylor, in case you forgot. And you're Rosa, right?" The girl nodded. "So, Water Monkey?"

Rosa grinned. "I'm a monkey and I build water things!" She then frowned. "But I'm having trouble making armor."

Chris stepped forward at that. "If you use water, maybe you need to start with some hydraulics?"

"Tinkers," Dennis said, shaking his head as he took off his helmet. "I'm Dennis, by the way."

That led to a quick 'civilian name' introduction round, after which they moved over to the couches. Sandy seemed surprised when she examined the couches, before smiling and dropping onto the end of one so that she could lean on the arm. Rosa grinned and climbed over the back of the same couch to flop down next to her friend, but Ryan plopped down on the floor instead. Chris ended up sitting next to Rosa as a result, and the rest of the Wards ended up on the other couches.

"So you already knew Taylor," Dean said once they were all settled. "But she said she couldn't tell us about you."

There was a moment of silence before Ryan shifted in a manner that seemed to imply that he was uncomfortable. "Dad said that they're going to tell the story later anyway." He didn't seem to want to say anything else about it, though, and the two girls had started to fidget.

Taylor brought up a couple of things on her phone during the awkward silence, the older Wards not wanting to press for details and the three kids not volunteering. She was able to find the list of things to be covered that afternoon, though she wasn't sure if she'd accidentally abused admin access to do it. Having found that she sighed, and looked over the three additions to the group. "Would you like me to tell them the basics, at least what'll come up later?"

Sandy nodded immediately, and Rosa did so a moment later. Ryan slumped a little, but nodded as well. Probably because he knew that it wasn't going to matter? At that the rest of the Wards turned to Taylor.

Rolling her eyes as their obvious curiosity, Taylor looked over the list of things they were covering again just to be certain she didn't go too far. As much as it might make the younger three uncomfortable, it was obviously worse to make them say it and telling the other Wards before they heard it on stage made sense. "So these three were exposed to tinkertech that hadn't been maintained properly and ended up with inoperable brain tumors." They all flinched at that. "They didn't have long to live, but one of their parents knew a parahuman who'd bought powers in an attempt to cure a different kind of brain-based issue and had it work. She kept digging when that lead went nowhere and ended up finding a less reliable set of the same thing. It worked, but you can tell that these three aren't going to be maintaining a secret identity."

It was very obvious that the older Wards had all figured out where the 'less reliable' vials had come from, even though she hadn't admitted that in front of the younger ones. And they'd possibly figured out another reason, beyond the official one, for why the three weren't to be told about where the vials had come from. Taylor, at least, appreciated the opportunity to not be fawned over by them if they saw the vials as having come from a savior or something like that.

Deciding that they needed a change in subjects, Taylor decided to get the other two talking about what they could do now. "So, we know that Rosa is a tinker, but Sandy and Ryan haven't said anything about what they can do."

The resulting discussion told Taylor very little that she didn't know or couldn't have guessed with minimal thought, but it did get the kids talking. Dennis then played Wards leader and gave a quick tour of the area, though Sandy was bummed that she couldn't open the meat locker herself. Ryan reminded her that she wasn't allowed to cook alone at home anyway, so why would she think it was different here? And Rosa admitted that her mother had informed all three kids about how to look things up on their new phones, mostly by having talked about that side of things before they even got their powers.

In the end, the hardest part of the morning was figuring out what they were supposed to do to prepare the large pieces of meat in the meat locker. Sandy had claimed that they probably didn't have time to cook any of the big pieces today, and a quick check had proven that she was correct. But there were shelves with smaller things, and they ended up making stove top bacon cheeseburgers. Sandy took hers medium rare and on a plate without anything else, and Ryan just watched, but the rest ended up with medium or medium well done patties and made theirs into proper burgers.

"From everything Miss Militia said I'd have thought you'd have problems with us eating some of this," Aisha finally said to Sandy, after she'd finished her own burger.

Sandy shrugged. "Mommy thought it odd too, but if it isn't me eating or using things that came from plants then I don't care. Or touching them, mommy had to get new clothes so that she can still hug me whenever she wants. She does seem to like her new leather jacket, though."

"It sucks for Sandy," Rosa added. "She doesn't like chocolate anymore! Or peanut butter!"

Sandy rolled her eyes. "And Ryan can't taste anything now."

Taylor supposed that she shouldn't be surprised about some of that attitude, and suspected that Rosa and Sandy had been best friends with Ryan as just 'a' friend before this had all happened in the first place. Or at least that had been the case from Rosa's point of view.