Sauling Mnarks

by demonicgallade

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

11. 221-240

Chapter 221 Sunday morning Taylor woke up to use the restroom, mentally grumbling about Amy's habits wearing off on her since she could've easily lasted another hour or two. As she was making her way back to bed to try and get more sleep she was interrupted by a text message from Dragon.

D: Help? Please?

T: What do you need help with?

D: Just...come to the tinker building?

Grumbling, Taylor made sure she was decent enough, then relayed to the tinker building through a convenient pocket dimension. She found the lights on, but that didn't surprise her. She also found Dragon, er, Theresa waiting for her. Little Theresa.

"Morning," Taylor greeted. "What's wrong?"

Theresa fidgeted. "I don't know how to go potty."

Taylor blinked a couple of times, then rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Okay, I can see how that wouldn't have come up before now."

Deciding that it would be faster, Taylor picked Theresa up and carried her to the nearest restroom, then carefully walked her through things. It seemed that some of it wasn't a problem, mostly some of the hygiene issues that you could find documented in any number of places, but there wasn't any good way for most people to describe the actual process. Theresa had much more conscious control of things, though, so it didn't take long to get her through that.

After that they retreated to the actual residence area and the more complete bathrooms there to go over bathing. Most of it was little details that most people tended to learn from experience as they grew up, like when to keep eyes shut and hold your breath or breathe out instead of breathing in. How to deal with having soap in your eyes came up as well, and then some tips for drying off. Theresa didn't seem to have problems with getting dressed, and had obtained a couple of outfits overnight, but quickly found that children had trouble preparing their own breakfasts in kitchens not prepared for them.

Taylor ended up cooking breakfast for three, so that big Theresa could eat later, and then the two of them cleaned up the mess. Or rather, Taylor cleaned up the mess while Theresa once again found that adult-sized kitchens weren't excessively accessible to children-sized people. It probably wouldn't be long before the standard 'kitchen' space in various buildings included step stools at a minimum.

When they were done Theresa pouted even as she told Taylor that she should head home. Waiting around for the transfer into the adult body so that it could be run through everything wasn't exactly going to be interesting, after all, and then Dragon had Protectorate obligations later. Though Taylor gave in to the urge to lightly mess up Theresa's hair just before leaving through the pocket dimension portal, getting a 'Mooom!' in response.

"We should go out and do something interesting," Amy said as they finished up a slightly late workout. "Except for all the idiots waiting for us to be out in the open to target us, of course. I'm getting tired of not going out and about."

Taylor nodded. "Yeah, makes it hard to just do things." She then blinked as she thought of something, and pulled up weather reports. Grinning, she turned to Amy. "Think anyone will recognize us in Miami? The weather's nice there today."

"I'm fairly certain we'd be ignored, but that sounds like a better idea for a couple days ago so that we have time to enjoy ourselves after getting there. Even if you found a high speed transport heading down."

"Who needs a transport when the Protectorate building has a pocket dimension beacon?"

Amy stopped at that, blinking, before grinning. "Okay, that makes it a hell of a lot easier to make the trip. Think anyone will complain?"

"We should get parental permission and call ahead so they don't panic when we arrive, but I doubt it'll be a problem."

Within the hour they'd gotten permission from their parents and from the Protectorate in Miami.

Riley grumbled as she got onto the transport. She'd entered town via one, so she had to leave town via one, even if the important people in town knew about her. It was a pain in the ass, but at least it wasn't going to be a long trip. Just far enough to be out of a 'hot spot' where someone might notice that she hadn't come and gone normally.

Even the transport wouldn't be too bad on its own. But she'd woken up earlier than she'd wanted to in order to catch it, only to have it delayed by mechanical difficulties. Granted, 'the engines suddenly cut out for no obvious reason during takeoff prep' is a wonderful excuse for not taking off on time, because you don't want that kind of thing happening in the air. Full diagnostics were run over the entire system to see if they could find the fault, and in the end it'd been a short in the shutdown switch. A fucking fifteen cent part that they should've sprung thirty cents for a better version of.

Also on her list of annoyances was not finding a suitable place to have Taylor look at her new spider-bots. Doing so in the middle of Brockton Bay had been nixed because having them trigger where others might be around was considered to be a bad thing. Doing so inside of her pocket dimension space might work, if she cleared enough space for it to happen, but she hadn't and thus couldn't really use it for that. She'd ended up having to submit a request for making the attempt later as a result, and thus didn't have powered spider-bots to play with.

Once her mostly-for-show suitcase was stowed and she'd found a seat she went back to what she'd been doing while waiting. The documentation from the day before was fascinating and infuriating at the same time. Fascinating to see how they'd accomplished a number of things, especially some of the connections between the biological and computing systems. But infuriating because she couldn't figure out how to do all of it on her own, instead needing Taylor and Amy to help out.

Twenty minutes later they'd finally taken off and she was trying to plan out how to put a computer in someone's spine without crippling them too badly. The computer part was easy, avoiding the crippling or using it to her advantage was the hard part. Turning the whole thing into a puppeting system was the easy, and boring, route. Maybe randomly cross signals?

She was interrupted in her musing by her phone ringing. With a sigh she answered. "Hi mom."

It was obvious that her mother was excited. "Have you seen the news reports about what you did?"

"Since I doubt you or the news people have any clue what I did yesterday and all? I'm assuming no."

"You got the Pope!"

Riley blinked. "I what?"

"He died from complications when he had a resurgence of shingles while his immune system was disabled. Er, and something else, I was too busy celebrating to hear the rest."

"Huh."

Her mother sighed. "Is that all you have to say?"

"It isn't like I care about the guy. Or ever met him. And he wasn't telling the annoying nutjobs to be nutjobs."

"You don't care that you killed a major religious leader at all, do you?"

Riley rolled her eyes. "Only if it causes riots. That I get to join in on."

Taylor smirked as they walked down the street in Miami, having overheard another amusing group talking about them. It was much warmer than it'd been in Brockton Bay, but that was okay. The more important part was that they'd been recognized four times, only to be dismissed as lookalikes each time. Very impressive lookalikes, according to the third group, but still lookalikes. They'd overheard that group discussing an upcoming convention where people tried to dress up like their favorite parahumans while they followed along to point out all the things that Taylor and Amy had gotten 'right'. One of the parting comments before they finally went their own way was that it took 'dedication' to practice for it in civilian garb.

They'd swung by the beach, mostly to say they'd seen it. Neither had worn a bathing suit or was willing to 'disarm' enough to actually go swimming, though, so they'd made their way back to Miami proper across the Venetian Causeway. Now they were looking to get something to eat on their way to see how busy the science museum over in Coconut Grove was. They were hoping to find something local that they couldn't just get back home, but so far hadn't run into much. Then again, they hadn't been at it long either.

It seemed like they'd made a wrong turn and ended up traveling along a street with no food options at all, despite being told to head this general direction by someone else when they'd asked. Presumably they were a block off one way or the other, not being familiar with the area. They probably should've just searched for somewhere on the map, but the directions they'd been given had seemed simple enough. Two blocks further down they stopped at an intersection.

"I think we missed the street they told us to take," Amy noted.

Taylor nodded. "Should've asked for at least a business name that we could search for."

A quick check of the PRT map app showed that they had, in fact gone a block too far and all the food they'd been pointed at was behind them now. On the other hand, they could just keep going and check out an area just over the river, though they needed to shift over to where the bridge was to do so.

"So over the bridge or back the way we came?" Taylor asked.

Amy frowned, then gestured towards the river. "Probably just keep going forward, since I'd rather not backtrack."

"Works for me."

They turned to make their way over to the right street to hit the bridge when someone slammed into Amy. Of course, thanks to the force field belt she didn't even budge and he fell to the ground. A second runner stopped half a block away when they saw this.

"What the fuck?" the man said as he looked up from where he'd fallen.

Taylor blinked when she saw that he was flexing his hand as though he'd hurt it, yet he hadn't caught himself when he fell. "I take it you were planning on bowling her over to steal her wallet?" She then gestured to the other runner. "And perhaps they were going to try and grab mine?"

Instead of answering, the man flipped over and took off at a run as part of getting up off the ground, his friend joining him a moment later. Taylor and Amy shared a look, then shrugged. Not much for them to do at this point and all. A couple minutes later they were crossing the river, trying to decide which place to visit to get lunch.

The museum had been surprisingly calm, so the two had no problem spending some time wandering around in it. That wasn't to say it was empty, but with school in session there weren't nearly as many tourists around. Of course, the museum wasn't necessarily a safe place for them to be either. There were all kinds of dangers, ranging from minor issues like someone deciding to attack them to potentially major ones like an exhibit giving them ideas.

One of the lesser dangers was the young parahuman that seemed to both be following them and seemed to be getting more and more agitated by doing so. He was with what appeared to be his older sister who wasn't a parahuman and was annoyed by the kid's antics. Taylor and Amy were doing their best to ignore the kid, who didn't seem to mean them any harm. Or if he did then he was doing an incredible job of hiding it. But they still wandered off to what appeared to be an unpopular corner of the museum, one that was all but deserted. Of course, the kid followed them.

"Would you cut it out already?" the girl finally demanded.

The boy stuck his tongue out at her and darted around the exhibit, seemingly trying to get around to Taylor and Amy's blind spot. Only to stop part of the way over, of course.

The girl glared in his general direction and started whispering to herself. "What the fuck is wrong with him today? Though at least he isn't tracking a kid across half the fucking city just to yell boo from behind her this time."

Amy: I think the kid is a recent trigger.

Taylor: Sounds it. Think anyone has realized it?

Amy: Well, if that's his sister then I doubt she's been informed. Especially if this is power-induced behavior on his part.

Taylor: Maybe we should check that. Since he seems to be focused on us right now and all.

Amy: That does sound like sufficient justification.

A moment later Amy opened a channel to the kid's snark.

Amy: Hello there.

[Confusion]

Amy: Yes, we know that he's there. And that you're working with him.

[Query]

BA: Data

[Dejection]

Taylor: So do you help him sneak up on parahumans?

[Agreement. Data. Query]

Taylor: Sorry, but it's a little late for him to surprise us.

With unspoken agreement, Taylor went to collect the boy from where he was trying to hide from the two while Amy walked over to the likely sister.

"Sibling problems?" Amy asked.

The girl nodded as the kid ducked around a second exhibit in an attempt to not be spotted by Taylor. "Yeah. Mom's recovering in the hospital after...stuff. So I get to watch the brat. So of course that's when he starts pulling this shit. Picks a random person and tries to surprise them for some stupid reason."

At that point Taylor finally grabbed the kid, and he whined loudly enough to draw their attention to him. "Why can't I hide from you?"

Taylor smirked. "Because you're not the only one with tricks. Besides, you need to be more careful."

The girl had blinked at that. "What tri...crap." She looked around, and nobody else was all that near. She still dropped into a whisper. "He triggered, didn't he? And you can tell?"

That had Amy blinking. "That didn't take you long."

"Let's just say it runs in the family. But how did you figure it out?"

"He's targeting parahumans. What do you think?"

The girl turned to stare at Amy, blinked a few times, then turned and stared at Taylor as she came up with the kid in tow. "Panacea and Maul? Really? Shouldn't you be in New England?"

Taylor grinned at that. "We have ways of getting around. Would you like an information packet for your brother?"

The girl sighed. "Mom will probably freak when she finds out, but sure. And thanks for solving the mystery for me."

Ten minutes later the girl had dragged her brother off, leaving Taylor and Amy to continue wandering the museum in peace.

Monday morning Taylor and Amy both decided to have a little bit of fun and wore souvenir hats that they'd picked up in Miami to school. They originally weren't going to, but they'd spotted a store that did on the spot machine embroidery to put the date of your visit on the hat. The question was whether or not anyone would notice. Sadly, nobody seemed to have by the time they had to take them off for classes.

At lunchtime they put the hats back on and sat down in a slightly more visible spot than usual. Several people looked at them oddly when they'd done so, but didn't say anything. Or comment on the hats.

Taylor: Did we miss something about these things having a stranger ability?

Amy: I don't think so, but I'm starting to wonder.

It was halfway through lunchtime when Dennis found what he thought was an interesting picture on PHO. "Wow, those impersonators have the look down."

"What impersonators?" Vicky asked.

"Couple of girls that look like Taylor and Amy. They were wandering around in Miami yesterday. They even have the right styles of belts and visors on."

Taylor grinned. "Wish we'd known. Would've been neat to get a picture with them."

Dennis snorted. "Right. You'd have just popped down to Miami. But still, take a look." He turned to hold his phone up to the two, only to stop. He was staring at Amy's hat, then his eyes shifted to the side to look at Taylor's. "Why do you have hats that say you were in Miami yesterday?"

Amy rolled her eyes. "Because going out in public here, where all the idiots are waiting for us to be out alone, is a stupid idea if we aren't in the mood for a fight?"

Taylor nodded. "Of course, pickpockets are a lot more careful around here. They're less likely to run into you in an attempt to distract you from lifting your wallet, at least."

"That was an annoying couple of minutes before they ran off again."

At this point the entire table was staring at them. Well, the entire table except for Vicky, she'd known that they were in Miami the day before and was obviously amused by everyone else's reactions. Taylor and Amy went back to eating their lunch while everyone else processed things.

Finally Chris had enough and gestured at the two of them. "And I suppose you two fired the right way at a wall to get there?"

Amy shook her head. "That's how we got home. To get there we just used our closets."

That caused Vicky and Missy to snicker, while most of the others sighed or rolled their eyes. Obviously they thought that was a non-answer.

"So how was Florida?" Vicky asked. Even though she'd already grilled Amy last night.

Dragon couldn't believe that she was appreciative of Saint's work, but she was. He'd managed to make some of her suits wearable by people, something that she'd never needed to do, and now she was using what she'd learned from those same suits to make something for herself. Granted, the control systems were going to need nodes all along the spine to integrate into the electronics present there, but she'd easily make up the room by removing or replacing other aspects of his modifications.

It was likely going to be a week before she'd have something usable, then a couple more days for proper testing. After which she'd need to start working on 'overcoming her agoraphobia', at least in the adult body. She was already planning possible things to do with the child body, including visiting Mother at her home. Though how to get there was another question entirely, since getting a ride would be problematic in its own way. She might have to ask Mother to bring her through one of the pocket dimensions.

Thinking about that, perhaps she also needed to pay Mister Horsfall a visit. She'd been afraid of how his pocket dimension equipment would react to her, thinking that it might focus on the organic components of her suits, but that shouldn't be a problem now. Then later she could have Mother implant a couple of key crystals into the new bodies. Assuming, of course, that Mister Horsfall was agreeable. With any luck he'd be willing to work with her on that front when she was showing him her work on the access-controlled beacons later in the week.

Taylor stepped into the Wards area after school, with Amy planning on heading to the hospital since they had some problem patients. As the portal closed she went to grab a snack, since Dennis had both of them down for staying behind for some reason. The three newest Wards weren't coming through today for various regulatory reasons so they wouldn't have to monitor Rosa's tinkering. Chris had flagged himself for tinkering time, which left the other three to patrol while she or Dennis ran the console.

Missy arrived not long after that and came over to where Taylor was sitting with her snack. "So Taylor, what do I have to do to visit Miami?"

Taylor rolled her eyes. "We got parental permission first, then asked for permission to show up in the Protectorate building down there. They asked that we show up in a specific room and had a PRT officer waiting in case we couldn't unlock the door ourselves."

"Ah. I wonder if my parents would complain?"

"They might want you to not be going alone for a number of reasons."

"True. Especially being that far away from home and all. And not being familiar with the area. Crap. Let me know the next time you're thinking about something like that, at least?"

Taylor nodded. "That I can try to remember to do."

Half an hour later Aisha, Dean, and Missy had left on patrol. Contrary to Taylor's expectations, the PRT was providing all console service for the afternoon. Instead she and Dennis were sitting by the large monitor.

"Okay Taylor," Dennis said as he waited for his laptop to boot up. "It won't be long before Dean and I transition over to the Protectorate. Which means that you'll be taking over as Wards Leader, and I need to run you through things. Some of which is in official documents, some of which is currently traditionally handed down from Wards Leader to Wards Leader locally."

Taylor nodded. "That makes some sense."

"Of course, I was able to shrink the latter down to a fifth of what it was when Carlos handed things over to me by finding the official documentation that described various bits in better detail and just linking to it all. I'm still going over all of it with you, of course, including the elements of the handover checklist that I've already completed, don't apply to you, and still need to happen before the official transition."

"I don't suppose that this is all a sign that you'll be rebranding to a more serious cape name during said transition?"

Dennis looked horrified at that thought. "Hell no. If I have to be serious all the time then I'll go crazier!"

Taylor blinked at that one. "Crazier?"

"I'm a parahuman. I'm not sure we come in 'sane'."

"I can see that."

"But before we go over some of that, I have a couple of questions for you. To start with, I'd like to know the details about how you really got to Miami."

Taylor snorted. "Finally decided to ask about things more directly?"

"That and it sounds like a great way to travel if you were able to get there and back and still spend the day there."

She produced a pistol and fired at the wall, though in this case she chose to go with Ackbar's pocket dimension instead of one of the others. "Pocket dimension, with an 'open it from the inside' device that can target a beacon in Miami. Less point-and-shoot style opening devices can have the key crystals installed for remote triggering as well, allowing very quick trips home."

Dennis stared at the portal for a few moments, then sighed. "How much does that cost?"

"No clue. I haven't had to pay for any of it, but you aren't cleared to use official channels to ask for your own."

"I see. Do others in town have them, beyond you and Amy, since I'm assuming she has one?"

"Yep. This one is actually Ackbar's."

Dennis leveled a glare at Taylor. "Your tinker-built pet has one, yet I can't even ask whoever makes them about getting one?"

"It was a bit of an experiment at the time."

"That's extra bullshit. Can you tell me about anyone else with them?"

Taylor shook her head. "That's starting to reveal things that I probably shouldn't reveal. If any of the others want you to know then they'll tell you."

That evening Taylor ended up going over most of the Wards Leader documentation that Dennis had provided. She'd read most of it already for one reason or another, but checked to see where things might've changed. Some of those were 'new additions' to several places talking about parental permission for 'rapidly scheduled' non-patrol work at longer distances. Permission that, when she checked, had already been filed for herself and Missy. The three youngest weren't eligible yet due to their ages, Chris's parents had returned things with permissions denied, and Brian apparently hadn't filled things out either way for Aisha.

What that meant wasn't clear, and wasn't yet in active use, so she wasn't sure how to look for it at this point. It would probably come up soon enough anyway, so she flagged the documents that referred to things to come so that she'd know when they were updated with real details. On that front, she also added in a link to the system documentation on how to do such flagging to the 'handed down to the next Wards leader' file alongside a recommendation that various procedure documents be monitored for changes using it.

She was tempted to add a generic 'Brockton Bay Wards Leader' monitoring for those documents, but decided that it would be best to not have those that followed her get lazy. That you needed access to system administrator controls to add a generic flag like that to things also made it difficult for most Wards Leaders to update the list as well. Instead she submitted a query as to whether or not a truly generic 'any Wards Leader' flag should be added for updates to things that they should all be aware of. After all, if another group was maintaining things and it benefitted all regions then there'd be fewer issues overall.

The only other thing of note from the evening was a schedule change for the following day, relayed partially through Amy. The hospital wanted to put Taylor through their own healing certification dance so that there wouldn't be any problems if she decided to stop by to help Amy. Or instead of Amy, for that matter. She didn't mind, and the PRT had approved it already, so she'd be throwing on her 'healer costume' and heading over after school.

Tuesday morning Taylor and her father were woken by someone banging on the door. Not using the doorbell like someone sensible. Or arriving at a decent hour like someone sensible, for that matter. Taylor had enough sense to slip her belt on before heading downstairs to check who the hell it was making all the racket, though she didn't bother with attaching pouches to it. A quick check at a window showed that there was a pickup truck poorly parked in the driveway, having torn up some of their front lawn in fact. There was a single person banging on the door, and no sign of anyone else.

Figuring that she could handle one person, even if only long enough to call for assistance, Taylor switched the alarm off and opened the door. She didn't recognize the man that had been pounding on it. "Is there a reason you're waking us up this early?"

The man's response was to slur something that sounded like he was calling her a freak and attempt to punch her. She grabbed his fist mid-swing, then flipped her striker switch. She frowned at how intoxicated he was, then put him to sleep. Amy had been startled awake by that, something Taylor had forgotten about.

Amy: What are you doing?

Taylor: Not being punched.

Amy: Oh. Okay. So long as...what?

Taylor: Looks like a drunken idiot, but I can't exactly check them for master influences.

Taylor made her way over to the truck when she realized that it was still running. There were multiple empty beer bottles in the cab, as well as one half-consumed one. Shaking her head, she turned off the engine and left the keys on the front seat before heading back to the house. As a sign that she hadn't properly woken up, she made it halfway up the stairs before remembering that she didn't need her phone in her hand to call the police.

Luckily the police hadn't taken long, and Taylor found that her father had fallen back asleep. She, however, didn't expect to be able to do so after dealing with everything.

After a very early morning in the gym, since they were both up anyway, Taylor and Amy had made their way to the Wards area. There Taylor ensured that she had everything out ahead of time for later in the day and did some quick maintenance work on both force field belts and the Snitch. With that done they still had plenty of time, so they walked to school from the PRT building. Though that might've been suggested by Amy as a way to possibly attract someone that they could punch.

If that had been the goal, it didn't work.

Because they were early there weren't a whole lot of students around yet. At the same time, they didn't exactly have to visit their lockers, and sitting in homeroom would be boring. So they ended up wandering around the general area outside to waste time instead. Eventually the inrush of students started to pick up and they made their way back to the building to settle in before the last minute 'get to homeroom before the bell' rush.

Taylor: Is it me, or is Vicky not here yet?

Amy: Huh. Good point. I wonder if she overslept without me to wake her up?

Taylor: Wait, you've still been waking her up?

Amy: Usually only when she sleeps through her alarm.

Taylor: You still using an air raid siren sound to do so?

Amy: No, I usually just punch her from the door.

Taylor: Ah. That does sound somewhat more enjoyable in certain respects.

Amy: Though a couple of times I've forgotten to toggle the intangible protection deal and wondered why she wasn't responding.

Whatever the reason for her delay, Vicky did show up just in time to not be late. Though she'd come in fast and hadn't had time to visit her locker on her way to her own homeroom.

Chapter 222 By lunchtime rumors of an arrest at the Hebert household that morning had reached the local news outlets, but they hadn't gotten any details to speak of. Which led to rampant and unfounded speculation, of course. That, over the course of ten minutes of discussion, had escalated from 'some idiot that happened to be there' all the way to 'army of missed Fallen and Teeth members, with a few Merchants for good measure'.

Taylor eventually rolled her eyes. "It's amazing how people are blowing a single drunk who woke me up this morning so far out of proportion."

Missy chuckled at that. "Did they at least break into the house?"

"They banged on the door, ignoring the doorbell, until I answered it. They then tried to punch me, failed, and I ended up having to turn the engine off on the pickup truck they'd poorly parked in the driveway before calling the cops."

The few students who'd paused their own exaggerations to listen seemed disappointed, but they didn't try and argue that it had to have been more exciting. Instead they switched to arguing about why the drunken person might've been trying to punch Taylor in the first place. General dislike of parahumans, specific fear of her interactions with Endbringers, and 'thought they were banging on their own door, but were too drunk to notice their mistake' were the three leading theories by the end of the lunch period.

After that, the school day passed fairly normally, though Missy vanished between the last two periods. Apparently she had a free period at the end of the day and decided to bail early. Taylor didn't blame her.

It'd taken a couple of attempts to open a portal into the Wards area, presumably because something had been moved and was intersecting the original chosen location. The second time they'd picked the other end of the room to avoid whatever it was that had been in the way. Once that was done, Taylor and Amy stepped out of the portal into the Wards area, only to find that Missy was there. More worryingly, the girl was laying on the ground clutching her head. Next to her was a dark blue spider-bot, one that seemed to be either confused or concerned about her state.

"What happened?" Amy asked, only to not get a response.

Taylor sighed and moved over to Missy, the spider-bot backing away from her for the moment. A quick check with Shaper and it was obvious that she was recovering from one hell of a headache. "That doesn't look like an injury so much as just sudden trauma."

BA: Data

S: Data

[Gratitude]

They moved Missy onto one of the couches, made sure that they were keeping track of the spider-bot, and waited for her headache to subside enough to find out what she'd been doing. It wasn't like they were due at the hospital right away, so they had the time to wait with her. It was half an hour later before the girl opened her eyes while groaning.

"Welcome back," Taylor said. "Do you remember what you were doing?"

Missy blinked. "I was playing with Midnight. I'd warped the entire room around to make a playground, and then...crap."

Amy prodded Missy. "Crap isn't a description."

Taylor rolled her eyes and started looking for the right forms to fill out for this. "I think she's said enough to piece it together anyway. She'd warped the entire room. What did we have trouble with just before arriving?"

"Opening...oh. Her powers and the pocket dimension portals don't play nice, right?"

Missy nodded at that. "Apparently the more I've used my powers in the area when the things try and open the more extreme my headache."

Taylor resisted the urge to sigh. "That's somewhat obvious, yes. Perhaps you shouldn't be warping any 'common' areas like that going forward. After all, you never know when someone else is going to try and come in."

"Yes, I think I've figured that out."

"Either that or we see about getting a static doorway for you to leave alone. Though I have one other question. Weren't you not allowed to get a pet?"

Missy shrugged. "I think being allowed to get Midnight is somewhat of a 'play nice with my aunt in the future' bribe."

"Ah." Taylor got up at that point, since she had to get changed. "Well, I'll leave you to things, then. I've got an afternoon appointment."

Amy got up as well. "I should pop home to change as well at this point. This interrupted our original 'stop here, then at my house, then go the hospital' plan and all."

Missy collected Midnight while the other two went their separate ways. It wasn't long before Taylor and Amy met back up in the pocket dimension, and Amy showed the normal 'landing' point for the pocket dimension in the hospital. When they stepped out they found that there was a doctor waiting for them. Their name tag read Dobosh.

"Good afternoon Panacea, Maul," Doctor Dobosh greeted.

"Good afternoon," they chorused.

"If you'd follow me, we've got a selection of locals coupled with people from last month's aborted weekend, including a few that'd already applied for the one we aren't holding this weekend. They all agreed to be 'test subjects' for Maul here and have gone through the extra approval paperwork that's been forced upon us. If this goes anything like Panacea's testing did then we'll be done in an hour."

They followed the Doctor up a couple of floors. The testing that followed was simple enough. Describe problem with patient, solve problem, if you can't solve the problem explain why not. The actual problems varied greatly. Minor broken bone, spike through the spine, missing arm, torn out vocal cords with scarring from another parahuman healer, bullet wounds, a few cancer variants. Injuries to the brain were described but not healed, and two of the requests were entirely cosmetic but trivial anyway. Even if Amy had rolled her eyes at those and indicated that she hadn't been handed anything like that for her run through things.

Doctor Dobosh seemed pleased with the results. "Very good. Provided that they all check out then you're all set on that front, and I doubt there will be any problems there. We'll let you know officially in the next day or so."

Taylor raised an eyebrow. "What, no paperwork?"

"We want you to help out. Making you fill out paperwork sounds incredibly counterproductive to that goal."

Well, that was probably a good point, all things considered.

Norton sipped his drink and continued to work on the crossword puzzle in the newspaper as he waited for his quarry to arrive. The man was slippery, his role in the Fallen more subtle than many of his compatriots. He was also making progress in pulling some of the group back together without making it obvious that he was doing so. But he was also, if you knew what to look for, predictable. To the point that Norton wasn't sure why others hadn't gotten to him yet.

Whatever the reason, he needed to be dealt with in a suitably subtle yet simultaneously obvious manner. Killing him would obviously work, but was so inelegant. Even if you went with any number of stealthy solutions to that task that would make it near impossible to trace back properly with the correct precautions. Luckily, Norton had other options available to him. But he didn't trust anyone else with them, so here he was for the third day straight, sitting in Kansas. No mask, and thanking his previous desensitizing training for allowing him to do so without blowing his cover by correcting things. The tables weren't well cleaned or maintained and the less said about the food quality the better. But it was also the location of an incredibly clever dead drop that his quarry didn't know had been identified as such, so he would endure.

Luckily for his peace of mind, he was distracted from the absurdity of a couple of the clues in this particular puzzle by his quarry arriving. Finally. Still, he made a point of not moving just yet. He'd chosen the one seat that obstructed the dead drop location. That said seat also happened to be one of the few with a working electrical outlet near it probably wasn't a coincidence, especially with his quarry carrying a laptop.

"Excuse me," the man said after giving the area a once-over.

Norton looked up at him. "Yes?"

"I was hoping to get some work done." The man held his laptop up. "But my battery doesn't hold up and I know from prior experience that the only place I'll be able to plug in is behind you. Would you mind moving over a table?"

It was a clever ruse, and likely didn't always work. After all, others would occasionally be sitting there specifically because the outlet worked. But Norton wasn't playing that particular game today. He had several plans, but went for the simplest. "As you can see, I'm nearly done with my drink, so I'll be leaving shortly. I'm told they frown upon those lazing about without purchasing things."

"That they do. I'll need to get something myself so that they don't get annoyed with me."

Norton gestured towards the front of the business. "There looks to be a line. I'll pack up and keep anyone from sitting here while you place your order, then nobody else will jump in to use the outlet."

The man smiled. "I appreciate that, thank you."

Norton made a show of packing his things, but slipped a small cube onto the bottom of the chair in the process. It was quite expensive, yet nearly useless outside of the correct circumstances. Then again, there was a lot of tinkertech that fit that description. This device happened to, upon activation, find the nearest human and infect them with nanotech. Said nanotech would then clean up the person's skin, removing all scars and tattoos as well as ensuring that the entire surface was a uniform color with no blemishes. It would then build a pattern of freckles as defined by an image loaded into it beforehand.

In this case, the image was one that insulted the three Endbringers. With the loss of the tattoos that identified him to others, the sudden freckles that went against the Endbringers, and the fifteen percent chance of debilitating skin cancer there was very little chance that he'd be reforming any portion of the Fallen around him. And good luck to anyone trying to prove who'd done it to him, if anyone ever bothered to investigate properly, since the tinker who'd made the cube was already dead.

The contact poison that would act as a laxative that he sprayed on the outlet itself would break down in half an hour of exposure to air and was more a test of Bonesaw's little plague than anything else. How others hadn't figured out the source of it was an even bigger mystery, but he had no reason to enlighten others if they couldn't see the obvious signs.

Missy hadn't been around when Taylor had returned to drop off her costume. Which was fully expected, as the forms she'd filled out would've locked her out of Ward activities for a couple of days recovery. Whether or not the girl realized that Taylor had done that intentionally was an entirely different question. Oh well, if she was called out on it then she'd point out that it gave Missy more time to bond properly with Midnight.

Of course, Taylor's Wards schedule was also clear for the night. She didn't have any homework to do for the rest of the week either. So she had nothing to do for the evening. Amy was attending a New Wave meeting, but Taylor hadn't been invited and wasn't sure if she would've accepted if she had been. Grumbling, she decided that she should probably head home and attempt to spend some time with her father, possibly watching the news.

That plan went out the window shortly after she'd stepped into the house, of course. Instead she found herself staring at her broken bedroom door. One that looked like it'd been bashed a couple of times from the inside. Sighing, she collected Ackbar from in front of said door, the spider-bot having damaged his legs in the process. They wouldn't be difficult to repair, just tedious. But she should probably figure out what to do about the door first, while Ackbar wasn't as mobile.

Wednesday morning Missy and Vicky joined Taylor and Amy in the gym. The workout discussion centered around revelations from the New Wave meeting of the night before.

"You want to rebrand?" Missy asked, sounding surprised. "I thought you had pride in your cape identity."

Vicky snorted. "Some days it seems like everyone and their uncle calls me 'Glory Hole' and at this point the entire thing sounds somewhat childish. Rebranding as I become a legal adult isn't exactly unheard of, though for whatever reason a number of people do so only when they hit drinking age. Which isn't a factor for me, since mom filled out the paperwork for me getting an underage drinking card before I hit eighteen and the stupid three-year gap and all."

Taylor shook her head. "So what are you thinking about for a new name?"

"I figured that I'd follow Aunt Sarah's bit with using 'Lady' because I like it, even if the media prefers not to use it. Based on that, I was originally thinking about going somewhat ironic with Lady Newton, but it turns out that there's a villain using that already with powers that match it much better. Currently I'm thinking Lady Meissa after the star, if only to help distract people from a few other things."

Amy rolled her eyes. "Like the fact you want to put a bunch of lights on your new costume?"

Vicky snorted. "No, that's part of the distraction. Meissa means shining, after all. The controllable lights are to explain why I put electronics in my costume at all, I don't want people to notice that I've got a bunch of point projection speakers included to 'throw' sounds with. That I can more directly control my phone now and thus don't need to do as much custom programming or build a control pad is an unexpected bonus from my original plans."

Taylor shook her head. "So that's why you took programming classes. You going to use subvocalizing to confuse people by 'throwing' your voice too?"

That might've been the wrong thing to alert the older girl to, given that she'd paused for a minute before all but vibrating with excitement, followed by starting trying to get the skill down right there.

After school Taylor had left through use of a pocket dimension portal thrown on a restroom wall, but Amy had left with Vicky on foot. The longer trip home provided ample time for Vicky to continue to try and subvocalize, Amy able to tell the difference between 'came over the phone call they kept going' and 'spoken out loud' easily enough. Missy, on the other hand, had apparently decided to show off. She'd gone home, but she'd proudly sent Taylor and Amy a link to the PHO thread someone made shortly after school with a video of her departure.

Taylor hadn't appreciated the trick of opening a pocket dimension portal in the back of her locker before climbing in and pulling the door shut behind her nearly as much as people in the thread seemed to. Not that they knew about the portal portion of things, of course, meaning that they were doing their best to figure out how the hell Missy had pulled that one off. The current leading theory was that she'd found a gap in the back of things that she'd been able to open up before leaving the building some other way.

Today's Wards activities appeared to include watching over Ryan and Sandy while they did non-combat things. Aisha had volunteered to go with Sandy for whatever reason, which left Taylor and the boys to decide who would work with Ryan. Assuming Rosa was tinkering again then either nobody was running the console or they weren't sending a patrol group out. Whatever ended up happening, she got into her normal costume.

While waiting for others to arrive she looked over the news. Apparently several government and non-government groups had concluded that the 'three missing Endbringers' were, at a minimum, not running around on Earth Bet. There were theories that they were running around on another instance of Earth and that the interaction with Taylor and Amy had been accidental leakage across dimensional boundaries. Which meant that they should consider the interaction inconsequential beyond whatever direct changes had occurred to the two as a result.

Taylor: So, reading the news and comments...the sixth Endbringer bit and all. How many Boojums are there, anyway?

Amy: Oooh. That's a good question.

BA: Data

Taylor and Amy blinked in unison. Both because getting a straight answer was outside of their expectations and because the answer was a little surprising.

Taylor: There are twenty of the things?

BA: Agreement. Elaboration

She'd quickly opened up a document to run through the list. Energy, Water, and Mind fit the three Endbringers, and had already been mentioned previously so weren't a surprise. Time, Fortification, Emulation, Bombardment, Armor, Corruption, Technology, Healing, Sniper, Biology, Detection, Stealth, Barrier, Reconstruction, Entropy, Infiltration, and Light were the unknowns. And there was a hint of confirmation that the Emulation Boojum was indeed the one that had interacted with them somehow, even if that hadn't been stated outright.

Submitting a document like that was probably going to cause at least some internal panic, if only at the idea, but at the same time it also possibly allowed them to be ready in case any of the other seventeen actually showed up. Maybe. If they were lucky and guessed correctly.

Okay, they probably had no hope of knowing what to expect. She'd let the thinkers try anyway and hope that they never needed to know if they'd gotten it right.

Several members of the Think Tank paused what they were doing when a medical alert came up for one of their members. Miss Hebert had submitted something new, probably groundbreaking in some subtle way, and it was being reviewed by one of the members with suitable clearances. That was all well and good, not to mention standard procedure for unexpected submissions. The problem was that said member had apparently panicked and the equipment set up to detect these things had triggered a medical emergency call on their behalf.

Now, it was entirely possible that this had absolutely nothing to do with Miss Hebert's submission. How likely they thought that was could be summed up fairly easily by noting that four of them had moved to ensure that the submission in question was flagged as problematic within ten seconds of the medical alert coming up.

"So," one of them sent over the general discussion channel. "Who wants the next shot at reading that one?"

There were surprisingly few volunteers.

Dennis didn't want Taylor out with Ryan, in case idiots decided to use far too much force against her. Which was okay with her. Dean didn't feel like patrolling and thus had no problem with playing escort instead. Sherrel had actually shown up to help Rosa with tinkering, being a local tinker that didn't build power armor. Showing the younger tinker that it was okay to not have power armor was apparently the primary goal, but it also covered some Protectorate guidance regulations.

Taylor and Chris ended up picking some non-patrol tasks to do while Dennis ran the console, insisting that having someone able to relay for Aisha was important. Which made sense. Chris claimed a couple of the 'flight-capable' tasks available on the basis that Taylor had more options without revealing things that were currently secrets. Shrugging, Taylor flagged a couple of reasonable-looking brute entries.

Carefully not mentioning a lack of backup in case of idiots, because then she'd probably be stuck tagging along with Chris or forcing him to tag along with her, she left on her platform to head to the first site. It didn't take long to get there, a small business setting up on the outskirts of the Boardwalk. Taylor landed, cloaked her platform, and headed in.

"Good afternoon," the woman behind the counter greeted when she heard the door, but didn't turn around. "I'll be right with you."

"Afternoon," Taylor replied, looking around. They had a couple of shelves set up with things on them, but the primary business looked like it was to be doing custom work. Which wasn't available yet according to one sign.

It wasn't long before the woman finished with whatever it was she'd been fighting with and turned around. "Sorry about the...oh! Hello there. Maul, is it? Here to help with our bolts?"

Taylor shrugged. "Possibly. Your request said that you had tools but couldn't get enough leverage with normal human strength."

"Yes. Let me lock the front up before we head out back so I can show you what we're having problems with."

It didn't take her long to lock the door and bring Taylor out back to a set of metal shelves. She gestured to them. "We want to remove these so that we can set a piece of equipment up against the wall, but can't get the bolts to budge. The shelves seem too nice to cut apart and we were hoping that someone with more strength could get the bolts to come loose."

Taylor nodded. "Makes sense, and you've even got the tools on the shelves."

"Yep. Let me know if you need any help. I can call my husband back if necessary since I'm not one for some of this kind of work."

The woman moved back to the front while Taylor took a look at the bolts. She quickly determined that they weren't going anywhere because they'd been welded into place. Frowning, because they were far too uniform on this side to have been tightened down fully first, she started looking to see if she could spot anything else odd. The metal shelves weren't adjustable and had little lips to keep things from falling off, which struck her as odd as well for static shelving but could just be re-use of shelves from a truck or something. The wall didn't look odd, and it was obvious that this had been a high-traffic area in the past based on some of the wear on the floor.

Blinking, she crouched down. The shelves had obviously been here for a while, so how had the wear on the floor gotten under them? She couldn't get a good look underneath them, but she did feel air movement, implying that there was a hole or gap underneath. She fired up her visor sensors for a moment, then rendered things. A quick examination showed that there was a room behind the shelves, with obvious hinges on the other side. Which meant that the wall was a door.

Focusing on that allowed her tinker snark to inform her that it latched, but didn't lock, and the latch release was a bracket seemingly loosely holding an electrical conduit pipe to the wall. It resisted slightly when she pulled on it, not having been opened for a while, but eventually clicked and partially jammed in the 'out' position. At that point she could push on the shelving unit to swing it into the other room.

Sadly for the woman out front, the room had what looked like an old drug lab in it. Which meant that getting things dealt with would probably take longer than she, and her husband, had hoped for.

"Maul to console," Taylor said. "I've found what looks like an old drug lab and need someone to dismantle it."

With any luck, whoever was sent wouldn't need her to stick around while they worked.

It'd taken the better part of an hour for a team to show up to dismantle the drug lab, during which Taylor had explained how the opening mechanism worked and pointed out where things needed to be cleaned up to get it back to proper working order once more. Like cleaning up and lubricating the latch mechanism. She'd also shown where the nuts were on the backside of the hidden door that would allow them to remove the shelves if they didn't want them.

With that done she'd left and made her way over to the second task on her list. This time she was at a private residence. Once again she made sure that her platform was out of the way before walking up to the door. The doorbell was operational, and it wasn't long before the door was answered by an older man.

"Ah, hello there," the man said. "Are you here about my request for assistance?"

Taylor nodded. "Yep. You have something that, as you put it, 'hooligans' left behind?"

"Indeed. I decided to put a concrete floor in my shed, and while things were still wet someone snuck in and jammed a spike into the middle of the thing. I can deal with the footprints easily enough, but I don't want a piece of metal in the floor even if I cut it off at the surface. I can't get it to budge and I was hoping that a brute could get it out without damaging the floor too badly."

"I can give it a shot, but I can't guarantee much."

"That's fine. The shed's out back. Oh, let me grab the key, didn't want to see what the miscreants would do to it next."

A couple minutes later Taylor was unlocking the shed. She wasn't surprised to find it empty with a fresh concrete floor. One that had several footprints leading up to a metal spike sticking a couple inches out of the concrete. Shaking her head, she stood in front of it, figured out the best way to position herself for leverage, and then carefully grabbed on to give the thing a pull. A moment later she was trying not to fall on her ass when the spike came out with no resistance.

That stopped being a concern when the explosives she hadn't known about went off under the concrete, obliterating the shed and launching her into the air. She ended up having her platform catch her slightly-smoking body.

Amy: What the hell just happened?

Taylor: I think an old man just tried to kill me.

Amy: ...what?

Taylor: Booby-trapped his shed, came up with a wonderful story about hooligans jamming a spike into the fresh concrete floor that he couldn't budge.

Coming down for a landing, Taylor surveyed the scene. The rear of the property was essentially obliterated by the explosion. Two neighboring houses were damaged, but a quick check with her visor sensors showed no injured people and no dead bodies in them. Figuring out if the old man had been mastered was probably impossible as well, because he had died to the explosion. Though if it'd been the pressure wave itself or shards of glass from the window he'd apparently been standing in front of when things went off was a different question.

With a sigh, Taylor hit the radio. "Maul to console, my second stop was a trap. One confirmed dead and significant damage to the area from the explosion."

She had a feeling the paperwork from this was going to be incredibly annoying.

Luckily most of Taylor's stuff had survived the explosion without taking any meaningful damage, primarily due to the force field belt stopping almost everything. Her jacket and pants were a bit singed, and she was pissed when she realized that her hair had burnt, but everything else just needed a little cleaning. It was likely that anyone without a force field belt would've come off far worse. A complete lack of injury on her part also meant that they weren't putting her down for 'recovery' right now, which was an unexpected bonus.

Sadly, it was likely that they were going to refuse to let Taylor do non-patrol tasks for a week or so while they implemented new vetting rules or something. Or at the very least they were going to insist on her running the augmented patrol app even when not patrolling in order to more easily spot things like that. The latter of which would receive absolutely no complaint, of course, because being blown up by a trap wasn't pleasant.

Amy had helped fix the burnt hair problem, though doing so had taken a couple of extra tricks. Hair wasn't exactly 'alive', after all, but regrowing and repairing things hadn't taken too much effort. Apparently she'd previously done similar things for Vicky and thus had most of the problems solved ahead of time. This had been at the cost of listening to her rant the entire time about how Taylor had been stupid to not check for traps and that she shouldn't get overconfident because someone would probably find a way around the belts eventually.

Arriving home after all of that, Taylor was surprised to find Ackbar trying to examine a familiar-looking box that'd been left on her bed. Opening it up, she found that it contained a fedora. A duplicate of the one that'd been given to Amy previously, in fact.

Amy: Did you find a gift waiting for you?

Taylor: Yep. One healing-style fedora.

Amy: I've got a combat-style one.

Taylor: Well, at least we can match in 'formal' mode.

Shaking her head, Taylor put the fedora down on her desk before making her way downstairs. Her father was watching the news, and he turned when she entered the room. "So I hear someone failed to blow you up?"

Taylor nodded. "They had a good story, tried to watch, and I'm the one that survived."

"I'm not sure if I should be happy about that or not. The explosion was pretty much heard all across town, you know. People were wondering if it was another 'seed the town with bombs' thing or not."

"Nope. Just one shed. One family from a neighboring house happened to be out when everything went down and came back to a combined police and PRT cordon. The PRT put them up in their apartment building for a day or two while investigations happen, but it's likely that the house is a write-off."

He flinched at that. "That sounds unpleasant."

"At least they weren't home. There's no guarantee that they'd have escaped the explosion alive, after all. Especially if any of them had seen me arrive and gone outside to gawk."

"Ah. Yes, that does sound lucky."

Chapter 223 Thursday morning Taylor woke to find a message indicating that all Wards were currently barred from non-patrol tasks unless things had been vetted by a Protectorate member ahead of time. It was a safety of self and teammates issue and thus non-negotiable at this time. Not that she was planning on arguing it, though it wouldn't help with anyone targeting her on patrol or when she was out of costume.

More annoyingly, they'd overturned the original 'no recovery time needed' declaration and given her two days off of all Wards activities. They'd included an explanation, at least, even if it boiled down to 'regulations require it, even lacking injuries'.

News sites were going nuts about the whole event, and PHO had multiple threads dedicated to aspects of the whole thing. One of which was specifically talking about what could've happened if someone other than Taylor had been sent out, and if the person who'd set it up would've cared. Without knowing if they were anti-parahuman in general they couldn't say definitively, but the discussion was unusually civil.

"Anything of interest in the news?" Danny asked as he rinsed out his mug.

Taylor shrugged. "Just lots of coverage of the explosion."

"Ah. Do you think it would be too soon for you to be seen in public?"

"Er, probably not, though that will probably still attract idiots. Why?"

"I found a gift certificate for Tonder's that's about to expire, but they don't do take-out."

"Oh. I doubt that'll be a big deal. Not like I'm going to be patrolling or anything."

He nodded. "In that case, I'll meet you here after work and then we'll head over."

Even if she was barred from Wards activities, she still met up with Amy, Missy, and Vicky at the gym before school.

"Someone tries to blow you up and you're ignoring it," Vicky noted. "Why?"

Taylor shrugged. "I didn't get hurt, at least one family is probably out their house, and the guy who apparently did it was killed before anyone could tell if it was his idea in the first place. What am I supposed to be doing?"

"Celebrating that you're more badass than before?"

"I think I covered that with the tank shell and RPG round."

"Okay, you might have a point there."

Missy sighed. "I want her to stop taking all the badass moments, except that I wouldn't be able to survive them nearly as well as she does. Why couldn't Dragon have figured out how to make force field belts?"

Amy grinned at that. "Because the resulting levels of badassitude would go critical, turning the entire region into a post-apocalyptic wasteland of some kind. Probably one with a lot of guns."

"Dammit Ames," Vicky whined. "Now I want to see that!"

Gossip at school was pretty much entirely focused on the trap from the day before. Taylor was able to describe the thing in slightly better detail than the news had, and people generally agreed that the whole thing sounded reasonable. Several students had even grumbled that, thanks to this incident, they'd be unable to safely duplicate the fake prank of sorts with the spike. It even came up in several classes, as Taylor found out at lunchtime. Of course, by then more information had been released as well.

Dennis frowned at his phone. "This article claims that the PRT found three more 'traps' like the one from yesterday, though none of them were as potentially lethal. Two likely intended to capture a Ward, given the skill sets required, and one only intended to maim. Or possibly only capable of maiming due to poor construction, they aren't clear on that."

"So of course I got the explosive one," Taylor grumbled.

"They described the three they found. All of them were incredibly obvious. You got the only one they know of so far that was actually subtle before it was sprung. Which could mean that they just haven't identified any other subtle ones, of course."

Amy shook her head at that. "I bet none of them have a plan for how to deal with the fallout if their plans actually work."

"In fairness, it looks like they're all targeting Taylor here. Makes things far less likely to work, but I bet the PRT mandates that she have backup in the future. Just in case and all."

Amy: There's an idea, think we could swing me joining you for that kind of thing to be your backup?

Taylor: Possibly. Though if they do have a way to actually get at me then you're not exactly going to be immune.

Amy: Crap. Can we not mention that to people when we ask?

Taylor: And you think that nobody else will notice that little gotcha? Besides, if they do get me then you can lead the rescue party to me.

Amy: ...damn you and your logical logic.

Taylor tuned out some of the discussion and started looking through other news on her tablet to explain why she was tuning out the discussion. Which led her to other news that was being overshadowed locally. "That immune system thing is causing a lot of trouble."

"What?" Vicky asked, apparently not having expected the sudden change in topic.

"They aren't sure if it'll be better in the long run or not. It's wiping out several diseases, but at the same time it's also killing off seven out of every ten people with transplanted organs and ensured that future transplants are too risky to attempt. Some cancers stop being problems, others suddenly become fatal. Anything that involves an immune system response, whether it be procedure or drug, has to have all previous trials thrown out and research started from scratch. Though animal rights activists are probably happy that there are no longer any laboratory animals that can be used to test with on that front."

Jasmine, sitting behind Amy at the next table down, sighed. "So the 'counter Bonesaw' plague is being more problematic than anything Bonesaw is known to have unleashed. Sheesh."

Taylor: I wonder if it'll ever come out that this thing was Riley's doing.

Amy: No clue, and I'm not sure how people would react. She showed zero interest in taking credit for it when we asked her about it, after all.

Taylor: True. She was more interested in the challenge it would give her going forward.

After school Taylor headed home and found that Ackbar was missing. The door to her bedroom was closed, the alarm had been properly set, and there was no sign of 'struggle'. But Ackbar wasn't there. Frowning, she made a quick pass over the house to see if he'd somehow died completely unexpectedly, but there wasn't any sign of him. She highly doubted that her father had left with him either.

Eventually she dug out the limited logs available from the security system, in case her father had come home and left with Ackbar for some reason, only to find that a 'registered energy signature' had been recorded earlier. She also found that it'd noted Ackbar as having left during the time said signature was active. With a sigh, she went back to her closet and opened up the portal to Ackbar's pocket dimension. She didn't even get a chance to stick her head in to see if he was in there before he came rushing out.

"I don't know how you got in there," Taylor said, looking at the spider-bot that was now staying far away from the open portal. "But you don't seem to have enjoyed being trapped."

Ackbar kept close to Taylor while she ran through some homework and small chores, but gradually calmed down and eventually wandered off to do his own thing. Though he did push the pet carrier further away from the closet at some point as well, and vacated the room when she realized that she should pop into the pocket dimension to ensure that the opening equipment inside hadn't been damaged. She found that it'd been moved, but that was fine. She thought it likely Ackbar had tried to use it but couldn't.

She sent a question off to both Riley and Joey about that, even if she didn't think Ackbar was going to try again anytime soon. With that done, she decided to change into something a little nicer, or at least less dusty from some of the cleaning she'd done. Whether or not her father would change when he arrived home was an entirely different question.

Taylor wasn't sure if she'd never truly known or merely hadn't remembered, but Tonder's had a patio of sorts that they used as their primary seating area. It had been set up so that they could close it off during the winter or when the weather wasn't suitable for outdoor seating, but today they had things wide open. Even worse from a visibility point of view, they'd ended up on a corner, with only a short fence between them and the sidewalk.

Both she and her father were doing their best to deal with the situation. By the time they'd finished their meal only two groups had stopped to try and say anything. One had been students from Arcadia, and the other had been a couple that'd thanked Taylor for giving their nephew a plush toy at the meet and greet, showing a picture of him sleeping with it. Since things had been calm, they decided to use more of the soon to expire gift certificate and order dessert.

After making their dessert choices they'd both swung through the restrooms. Taylor was held up waiting for a mother dealing with two kids in the ladies' room, her father smirking at her as he left the men's room. She just rolled her eyes at him. It took a couple more minutes before she was able to use the restroom herself. It was as she was washing her hands that she heard a commotion outside, and she poked her head out to see what was going on.

She was just in time to see a man stab her father in the side and was moving forward before she'd consciously realized what she'd just seen.

"Maybe this'll teach your freak that she's not wanted," the man was saying as he pulled back for another swing, a taser in another man's hand explaining why her father wasn't fighting back. "Since she's a cowa..."

Taylor interrupted him with a solid punch to the face, followed by kicking him in the chest as she hopped the short fence. The man with the taser backed off in surprise, but she grabbed the hand holding the taser before he could get away. Her other hand snapped out and broke the wires leading to her father even as she squeezed down on his hand, and a moment later she'd broken his hand and partially crushed the taser he was holding.

It turned out that the first man had held onto the knife and a third was with them, having pulled out a gun in the background. The first man had also recovered from the punch and kick, lunging at her in an attempt to stab her. She dragged mister taser along with her, ignoring his cries of pain, as she spun around and grabbed the other man's hand. It was only then, both men held in place, that she flipped her striker switch.

Amy: What the hell?

Taylor ignored her for a moment, instead focusing on using Shaper to disconnect both men from pretty much all non-pain feeling and voluntary motor control below their necks, leaving them barely able to twitch. She was tempted to do more, but held back. After all, going too far if they'd been mastered would just annoy her with how much she had to fix later. She then let both men go, allowing them to fall to the ground, before sprinting at the man who'd now opened fire on her. She ignored the bullets hitting her, and he obviously started to panic.

[Destination]

Scowling, she lashed out with Broadcast Administrator, flooding the snark trying to connect to the man in front of her. The vision she'd found herself in shattered as she did so, and the man screamed as the snark failed to properly connect. A moment later she'd reached him, tearing the gun out of his hands and grabbing his throat. It was the work of a moment to apply the same level of paralysis to him that she'd applied to the other two, though she didn't clean up the pseudo-gashes in the man's back from the aborted trigger.

A quick glance ensured that there was nobody else looking to join the three, at which point she darted back to her father's side. She took his hand and carefully healed his injuries, corrected for the blood loss as best she could, and pushed the taser barbs out of his skin. She also touched up his immune system, since he apparently wasn't quite through the upgrade process that she hadn't realized he'd even begun.

"You okay?" she asked once she was done.

He patted his side, flinching at the blood on his shirt but obviously finding no remaining injury. "Yeah, apparently." He then looked over at the three men, who were just laying there. "Shouldn't you be securing them?"

She glared at them. "No need. I disconnected most of their voluntary motor control."

"Oh."

Amy: Taylor, what's going on over there?

Taylor: A group of men tried to kill my father to teach me a lesson.

Amy: ...and you what, broke a nose, a hand, paralysed all three, and I believe you even stopped one from triggering?

Taylor: No clue if they're mastered. Less for me to put back together later if that's why they attacked. And who knows what the snark would've let the guy do.

Amy: Oh. Yeah, good calls all around, I suppose. Do let the authorities know that I won't heal them if they weren't mastered, would you?

Taylor: Sure. And I suppose I need to call this in, don't I?

Amy: Only if nobody else beat you to it.

Taylor sighed and looked around. "Has anyone called 911 or the police yet?"

"Yes ma'am," one of the waiters answered. "Harry went straight for the phone."

The police and an ambulance showed up shortly thereafter. Taylor and her father both gave their statements, as did several others. The three men were loaded into the ambulance instead of the police car, to be brought to the PRT building for a quick master-effect scan first. If that came back clean or irrelevant then their treatable injuries would be dealt with before they were handed over to the police, otherwise they'd be purged of things and kept at the hospital until Taylor or Amy arrived to put them back together properly.

During that they'd moved Danny to a table much further in, and Taylor joined him. Their waiter came up at that point. "Would you two like to have your ordered desserts here, or shall I have the kitchen wrap them up for you to take with you?"

Taylor looked at her father, who was looking at her. "You're the one that was hurt. I'm going to recommend that you eat the dessert either way after I had to heal you. It'll help make up for the blood loss."

He sighed. "Might as well eat it here, then, but I want to grab one of the spare shirts I keep in the back of the car."

Taylor held her hand out, and he raised an eyebrow. "What? I can get you a shirt easily enough."

He rolled his eyes, but handed the car keys over. She collected a shirt for him and he changed into it. It was brought with him, apparently he didn't want to just throw it in the restroom's trash can. They then ate their desserts, in peace, though Taylor took the time to fill out an incident report for the PRT. When they were both done they paid with the gift certificate, having to point out that it was about to expire anyway to get them to take any payment after what'd happened. After all, under the circumstances it wasn't like the Heberts were going to be out the cost of the meal and they felt better about having paid.

All matters of their meals taken care of, they then headed out to the car. Taylor headed for the driver's side of the car while her father followed. He coughed when she went to open the door. "I don't need you to open the car door for me."

She snorted. "I'm not. You were just stabbed, haven't recovered fully from the blood loss, and I've got my license and the car keys. I'm driving."

He stood there staring as she climbed into the driver's seat, then slumped and moved around to the passenger's side without complaint.

A couple of hours later the two watched the evening news as they covered the attack in as much detail as they could under the circumstances. There were some people that felt that Taylor had gone too far, and were very vocal about it, but they also tended to be people that thought that parahumans were monsters in general and should be put down as a matter of course. The news was all but mocking those people and focusing more on the more positive reactions, including those that felt that she'd shown incredible restraint. After all, the three men had attempted to kill her father and she hadn't mutilated them or killed them outright. Further, they'd been found to not be under the influence of a master when tested.

There was a small amount of concern over the paralysis and how it would be dealt with, since nobody expected Taylor or Amy to heal the men after they'd been found to be acting of their own free will. That discussion was more focused on if some other parahuman healer would be able to help there, if they'd be willing to, and if they should. There were interesting points all around there.

"I think I should call your uncle," Danny said after the news finally moved on to the next day's weather.

Taylor blinked. "Why?"

"Because I hadn't considered that I'd be a target, and going through an upgrade fugue would help keep me safe. Besides, I hear that tasers no longer work all that well on you, and I didn't like being unable to fight back when they pulled that on me."

"Ah." Well, it wasn't like every other immediate family member of the three of them hadn't already gone through things as well, so it being Taylor's turn shouldn't be a surprise. "Not sure how long it'll be before they can arrange something, though."

He snorted at that. "I know for a fact that they can arrange for all three of you to reach whatever facility they want at any time, and I could just as easily join you for the trip there and back."

She had to admit that he did have a point there. As annoying as it might be.

Rebecca stared at the report that'd come in. Three men had attacked the father of one of the most frightening Wards in the system and had come out alive, possibly only because nobody had known yet if they were mastered or not. She personally didn't care about the injuries they'd suffered thanks to Miss Hebert's retaliation, since they were remarkably tame for what the three had been doing. She'd already approved a couple of requests relating to them, on the condition that those asked agreed.

Now, however, she was staring at Miss Hebert's personal report. She'd skimmed it first, only to pause and re-read one comment much more carefully. She rubbed her eye, then grabbed the phone and dialed it from memory.

"What's up?" Paul asked in lieu of a greeting.

Rebecca appreciated the lack of small talk today. "Did anyone send you Miss Hebert's latest report?"

"I don't think so. Do I need to know about anything in it?"

"It likely isn't critical, but I'm already anticipating headaches. Coming up with a power rating for forcibly stopping a crisis point isn't likely to be easy."

There was a moment of silence before he responded. "What?"

"If I'm reading this correctly, she terrified an assailant to the point of causing them to trigger. Then shut down the agent's attempt to connect."

"But...I didn't think anything like that was even possible."

She snorted. "Yeah. Tell that to Miss Hebert."

Friday morning brought with it a request from the PRT for Taylor to at least partially heal the three men from the night before, specifically to the point where they had a hope of taking care of some of their own needs. That said request was worded as being a favor to the prison staff more than to help the three men was a nice touch, as far as getting her to accept it was concerned. She hadn't agreed to it either way at this point, though it was tempting to trip the 'written consent from the patient required for parahuman healing' rules to see if they came up with a way to pull that off. Maybe she could use that if she decided to reject the request?

She prepared an easily-reheatable breakfast for her father, since she was going to be leaving it for when he eventually woke. He'd been told to take the day off and had barely argued, and she was letting him sleep in. Or perhaps 'forcing him to sleep in', since she'd checked on him and ensured that he wasn't going to wake up for at least another hour, probably closer to two, barring something like the phone waking him up.

With that done, she'd ensured that the house was properly locked up before heading to the gym. Amy showed up a few minutes later, dragging Vicky along.

"TAYLOR!" Amy yelled, getting everyone's attention. Luckily, that was merely two PRT officers at the far end of the room. "You tell Vicky what kind of bullshit you pulled yesterday."

Taylor blinked. "What bullshit did I pull?"

Amy rolled her eyes. "Really?"

"I mean, the near-total paralysis with pretty much only pain reception from the majority of the body was a spur of the moment thing. And crushing the taser through the guy's hand took far too much effort compared to a proper brute."

Vicky held up a hand in a 'stop' gesture. "Hold up, you made it so that they can only feel pain?"

Taylor nodded. "Yep."

"Wow. Please warn me if I'm pissing you off, because that sounds horrible."

Amy took a deep breath. "You know what I'm talking about. Though I did like the work on their nervous systems. Crude, but effective and impressive given how quickly you threw it together."

Taylor grinned. "Thank you."

"But please get to the actual bullshit."

"I don't think that my precisely timed application of power nullification should count as bullshit."

Amy's eye twitched. "You cut off the man's trigger. Practically on reflex."

Vicky looked between the two, then sighed. "I can see both sides of this argument, and I agree with both as well. It's like the ultimate badass trick, except that the execution wasn't actually anything special."

Taylor shrugged and went back to her workout.

People at school were generally split into three different camps this morning. The camp Taylor was happiest about was the 'who gives a shit' camp that was leaving her alone. Sadly, she had to deal with the other two. One of them was incredibly demanding of details as though it was their inalienable right to know said details. The other was 'sympathetic', especially to her plight from the demanding students, only to then try and get all of the details out of her anyway.

Her solution was to not answer questions at all. It was almost a pity that everyone had figured out that it took more than just being annoying for her to pull out the long-lasting punishment, because it meant that nobody was really afraid of her. Sadly, punching annoying students out was against school rules, PRT regulations, and her own moral code. Though she was considering making an exception for Amy if the other girl didn't stop snickering at all the stupid people Taylor had to deal with this morning.

Classes were a reprieve, but by lunchtime people had gotten right back into things. Though she had gotten a message telling her that they had an opening that afternoon for the maintenance class, instead of her taking it over the weekend. Since she didn't have much else to do beyond check on her father, which she could easily do before heading to the PRT building, she decided that it was a decent use of her time.

At the same time, though, there was also a request from Brockton General.

Taylor: You see the request for our time at the hospital tomorrow?

Amy: Yeah. For 'proper testing of non-standard medical procedures', whatever they mean by that. Looks like the paperwork is all in order too.

Taylor: It's a bit short on the lead time though.

Amy: True. Then again, did you have any other plans for the weekend?

Taylor: With my luck the Youth Guard will want to keep me off the streets for a couple extra days.

Amy: Well, I want to run this by Carol and Sarah first either way. And they don't need both of us, for obvious reasons, but they figure things would go faster with both of us.

That made plenty of sense, and Taylor figured that waiting to see if Amy was going to accept the request before deciding whether or not to do so herself was a good idea.

The trip home to check on her father had only taken Taylor a couple of minutes. She'd sped up the recovery a bit now that he'd had a couple of good meals, then left him to his own devices while she popped off to the PRT. She'd been sent a message with a room number and didn't bother getting into costume before heading that way. When she arrived she found one other person in the room, with a third of the conference table taken up by components of a secure door opening mechanism. Specifically an 'unlock if power is lost' variant.

"I think you need to replace the green wire pair in the secondary harness," Taylor offered.

"Bah," the man said, waving the screwdriver he was holding. "What would you know? The harness tests fine, no connectivity issues."

Suppressing the urge to roll her eyes, she picked up the harness and cracked open the protective wrapping. "I don't suppose you can see what's wrong with this picture?"

He frowned, and leaned over to take a better look. "Can't rightfully say I do."

She pointed at the green wire pair, then the orange wire pair. "You have an already-replaced pair of green wires. Next to it you have the original orange wires. You may note that the orange wires are a twisted pair, while the green ones aren't. You're probably getting interference."

Blinking, he took the harness from her and examined it, then flipped through a manual he had next to him at the table. "Huh. You might be right."

"So was this a stealth test of my ability to spot problems?"

"If it was then it wasn't my idea. This is from the therapy area and has been having occasional problems and I figured that I'd work on it while waiting for you. Granted, I thought it'd take me all of twenty minutes to clean a few contacts, only to find that they were fine. Thanks for the assist, and give me a moment to make a couple of notes. Though couldn't I just disconnect the two wires at one end and twist them?"

Taylor frowned, and focused on the harness. "I...don't think so. You can probably get away with disconnecting them at the primary connector, but you'd have to get halfway down the harness before you could try that?"

"Ah. Nick probably pulled one of them through something else when this was last worked on." He made a couple of quite notes, then turned back to Taylor. "So, I'm Jim. Head of the local maintenance department. I run everyone through the basic lessons myself, though since you're a tinker I don't plan on running you through the practicals I put normals through. That you could spot the lack of a twisted pair of wires just by looking over the dismantled components is enough evidence that it would be a waste of both of our times, assuming I'd needed anything to tell me that."

"So what are we covering if it isn't a skills test?"

He grinned. "The bane of the department, of course. We try and keep it to a minimum, but there's only so much you can do in a government agency without piles of paperwork."

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

"Of course it can. Do you have any idea how long it took to get approval to take this thing out of the therapy area, even though it was malfunctioning? We spent two months running a manual bypass while trying to coordinate time for an administrator with high enough clearance to disable the alarms that would've sounded when removing the thing. Granted, we aren't usually dealing with level nine, but if you plan on helping out then you're going to run into that kind of scheduling headache eventually."

"Ah." She decided not to mention that no, she probably wouldn't have that particular brand of headache anytime soon.

Jim frowned at the parts around him, then got up and moved down to the other end of the table. "Well then, come on over and I'll show you the ticket system. Filing, claiming, requesting administrator assistance, escalating until you get administrator assistance. We'll go over the perks of picking up tickets every so often later."

Taylor took a seat while he powered on the projector, idly wondering if she could subtly prank him later by grabbing things that administrators were holding back without explaining how she was bypassing the bottleneck. See how long it took him to outright ask and all. Or if he'd figure it out for himself, assuming he even noticed.

Chapter 224 Taylor arrived home full of knowledge about how maintenance tasks were assigned, claimed, handled, and paid out. She'd also heard a lot of griping about how difficult it was to find suitable administrators to help turn off security measures and alarms. It got to the point where she'd started looking things up, finding that Jim was one of three maintenance staff for the main PRT building and one of eight in Brockton Bay cleared at SL9. They had it primarily for maintenance on the therapy areas, but they'd been put through all the 'are you trusted' checks to get that far.

At the same time, a full third of the maintenance staff in town had some form of administrative rights, except that they were all SL7 or lower and couldn't use their administrative rights for SL8 or SL9 equipment. That led her to digging out the requirements for requesting administration access. She'd then made sure she had her visor recording before asking Jim why he hadn't signed up for administration lessons, since he qualified for access once he'd passed the class.

Sure, she'd probably just ruined all chances of pranking him by using her own administrative access to deal with things, but it was worth it to see the look on his face. Though she wasn't sure who else might like to see the recording.

Heading downstairs, she found her father feeding Ackbar. There were a couple of sizable steaks prepared for the grill sitting on the counter, likely intended for the two of them. "You feeling back to normal?"

He snorted. "I'm hungrier than usual, which you made sure I knew to expect for a day or two, but other than that I'm fine."

"Good. Do you need me to prepare anything while you grill the steaks?"

"No, I made everything else already."

Taylor nodded, then set the table instead before wandering into the living room to drop onto the couch. She didn't bother to turn on the television, she just wanted the more comfortable place to sit while she waited.

Amy: Carol, Mark, Neil, and Sarah all think that there shouldn't be a problem with the request for tomorrow. Ben volunteered to be nearby in case of trouble.

Taylor blinked at that.

Taylor: Ben volunteered?

Amy: The rest of them think that if anything happens then the troublemakers will need saving from us at this point.

Taylor: Okay, they might have a point there. I assume that nobody thinks I should avoid joining you?

Amy: Vicky thinks you need a proper shopping day to relax from all the stress, but that's about it.

Taylor: Like I could safely shop around here right now. Though I suppose running around stores in Miami could work, if shopping was something I found relaxing like she does anyway.

Amy: So shall we meet at the gym?

Taylor: Might as well. I should grab my healing costume before we head to the hospital anyway.

Saturday morning Taylor gave her father one final checkup before heading to the gym. He was essentially fully recovered physically at this point, though she expected that he wasn't going to take the insult of them having gotten him that way sitting down. In particular, she suspected that he'd already called her uncle and was going to find some other way to prepare himself before things could be scheduled.

"So what nonstandard things do you think they plan on dropping on us today?" Taylor asked as she and Amy were working out.

Amy sighed. "I suspect at least some purely cosmetic stuff. Not sure what else they're intending. They didn't exactly provide a list."

"True. And I suppose the hospital would be vetting everything ahead of time to remove the crazier requests."

"As I understand it, this is more of an experimental run. So they will let reasonably crazy requests through just to see how we react."

"Oh. That would make sense too. Probably means they've got a variety, because duplicating things without variations wouldn't make sense either."

"Yep."

Taylor wondered what they were getting into, but didn't dwell on it. Getting a message from Sherrel telling her that her order was ready and that they'd make suitable arrangements was a suitable distraction on that front.

It hadn't taken long to throw on costumes and head over to the hospital after their workout and breakfast. They stepped out into the 'arrival' room, as Taylor was starting to think of it, to find nobody waiting for them.

"We should check the office down the hall," Amy said, heading for the door. "They might not be expecting us this early."

That proved to be correct, and they were brought to a break room while the hospital staff ran around making phone calls to let people know that the two were earlier than expected.

Eventually Doctor Dobosh came into the room, shaking his head. "Sorry about the wait. We really should've expected you two to come in first thing."

Amy rolled her eyes. "We showed up almost an hour earlier than my usual arrival time. Don't worry about it."

"Right. Thank you for agreeing to come, both of you. We're hoping to both find out some more of your limits and offset some of the negative press you've been getting elsewhere in the country. Some of this is cosmetic, though not as straightforward as clearing up wrinkles and the like as we'd run Miss Hebert through previously."

Taylor sighed. "And how much paperwork is involved in all of this?"

"We rented a truck for it all when delivering it to the PRT, are running entirely with volunteers for experimental procedures, and even ran everything past three different judges. You two merely need to worry about documenting what you do. Now then, we have the first couple of volunteers here already, including a couple that were just down the street drinking their morning coffees when we called. Would you like to get started?"

The two nodded, and he brought them across the hall to an examination room. There a teenage girl and what looked to be her mother were waiting, the girl sitting on the examination table. Doctor Dobosh gestured to the girl. "Mary here is hoping that you can change her eye color. She claims that she isn't picky so long as they aren't gray."

Amy looked at the girl. "No preference at all?"

The girl shook her head, but her mother snorted. "If you're sticking to 'natural' colors then she'd probably love green, but she'd probably prefer to stand out with pink or purple."

Nodding, Amy held her hand out to the girl, who nervously reached out and grasped it. Taylor then monitored as Amy examined the girl's eyes, shifting each one individually. One pink, one purple, using some of the normal structures in slightly different configurations. Nodding, she then grabbed a hand mirror that was obviously there so that the girl could see the results. "Which do you prefer?"

The girl took the mirror and stared at it, blinking several times. "Oh my god, that's awesome! I didn't even think about different colors! Can I keep them just like this?"

Taylor snickered, since it was obvious that Amy hadn't been expecting that. "I suppose that's probably at least in part up to your mother?"

The woman waved her hand. "She's nearly an adult. If she wants to stand out like that, then I'm not going to stop her."

Amy picked up a clipboard that was by the door and scribbled out a quick description of things, then handed it to Doctor Dobosh. He read it over, nodded, and put it back where Amy had taken it from before turning to the girl and her mother. "Well then, I'll let my colleagues take a look while we move on."

The next room had a dark haired man and a red haired woman sitting next to each other on the examination table. Doctor Dobosh nodded to them. "Mister and Mrs. Griffin are hoping that you can help them with somewhat related problems. Mister Griffin is hoping that you can help him with his bald spot and lighten up his hair to more of a blond color. Mrs. Griffin has sensitive skin and is hoping that you can remove most of her body hair."

Taylor looked at Amy. "Split them?"

Amy nodded. "Which one would you like?"

"I'll take him, you just got to play with coloring."

"Right."

They moved over to the two and held out a hand each, each taken a moment later. It didn't take long for Amy to ensure that Mrs. Griffin wasn't going to need to shave anywhere that it looked like she regularly did, as well as heal some minor cuts and scars likely from shaving. Taylor had to focus more, rebuilding hair follicles and adjusting functioning ones, and she jump-started things with a few millimeters of growth to check that everything was functioning.

Taylor nodded when she was done. "That should do it, but it'll take time for it to grow in properly."

Mister Griffin nodded, reaching up to feel his former bald spot. He grinned when he felt that it was no longer bald. Mrs. Griffin, on the other hand, was feeling her skin.

"Here's his sheet," Amy said, handing Taylor a clipboard. Taylor accepted it and wrote down a quick description of things, making a much more detailed one on her phone to turn over later. Doctor Dobosh read over both of them, and they were brought to the next room.

They met Kevin there, who wanted his skin to have a lighter base color so as to draw less attention from the Empire thugs he lived near. Taylor took care of that. That was followed by Miss Fierro, who wanted to go the other way, being fascinated by dark skin, taken care of by Amy.

After that they ended up back in the break room, waiting for others to show up.

"Nothing too bad so far," Taylor noted. "Not much worse than 'clearing up wrinkles' and such, anyway."

Amy nodded. "Yeah. Though I suspect that there will be some bigger things coming. No need for both of us to be present for any of the little stuff, so asking for both of us likely means that at least one incredibly complicated task sits before us in some fashion."

"That would make sense."

It took half an hour before Doctor Dobosh returned and brought them back to the first examination room, obviously having cleared out the previous group. There they found Louise, bouncing in excitement on the examination table, with an older man that was likely her father sitting in a chair off to the side.

Amy sighed. "Figures that you'd hear about this and volunteer."

Doctor Dobosh chuckled. "We aren't sure how she heard, but she did. She's hoping that you can give her a tail. Though I don't think she stated what kind."

Louise blushed when Taylor and Amy looked at her for that answer. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a fake tail. It was thin and black but connected to the top of a red heart shape at the end. "I'm kinda hoping you can give me a fully red tail with a heart on the end. Like this one, but colored all red?"

The man snorted. "You sure you don't want horns and wings too?"

"Daaaad! I can hide the tail if I need to! I probably wouldn't be able to fly with any wings they could give me and horns would just get in the way of doing my hair!"

Doctor Dobosh shook his head. "Her mother also convinced her to volunteer for breast augmentation and anything else to make her look 'more exotic', assuming you're willing to go beyond the tail. We insisted that she not be in the room because she's a bit...pushy about it. Do I need to get any additional material for you to work with?"

Taylor nodded. "I doubt it would be safe to pull the material needed for the tail alone from the rest of her body, let alone anything else. Though I don't know what else would fall under 'more exotic'."

"I do have some possibilities from her mother. Pointed ears, non-circular pupils, non-circular areolae, and I believe she mentioned removal of the belly button."

Amy blinked at that. "Really?"

Louise blushed again, but nodded. "Yeah. I want the tail, everything else would be a bonus?"

Doctor Dobosh sighed. "I'll go get some additional material for them to work with while you discuss particulars." He then left, muttering something that Taylor couldn't pick up.

Taylor moved over to Louise. "So you want the tail. How long do you want it?"

It took a moment for Louise to answer that one. "I think I'd like it to be just able to reach the ground?"

"Okay. Pointed ears?" The girl nodded. "No belly button?" Another nod. "What shape would you want us to try and make your pupils or areolae?"

Louise visibly thought about that. "I think slit pupils would be neat. Maybe heart shaped on the areolae?"

Amy nodded at that. "And how much more do you want up top?"

"How big do you think you can go?"

Her father interrupted. "No bigger than a double D for now." Louise glared at him, but he just waved her off. "We can't get bras that would otherwise fit you larger than that in town without a custom order this weekend, as you told your mother and I last night."

Louise slumped slightly, but nodded.

A few minutes later Doctor Dobosh returned, pushing a cart with a couple of containers on it. "Here we are. Extra biological material. Some animal, some plant."

Amy waved Taylor forward. "I want to watch this one, but I'll chime in if I think you need to adjust something."

Taylor rolled her eyes, but moved forward anyway. She checked the material on the cart first, even as she planned some of what she was going to do. Luckily the meat had some bone in it. She then looked over at Louise. "I think you're going to want to loosen the hospital gown."

Louise blinked, then just untied the thing entirely as she started bouncing excitedly again.

Sighing, Taylor pushed the cart next to the table and held her left hand out to the girl. She grabbed it, and Taylor stuck her hand into the bin full of onions. They were surprisingly easy to work with for some reason as she collected the material, then shifted to the bin full of meat. Pulling some of that into the mix, she ensured that she had enough for what she was doing. Nodding, she brought that hand over to the girl's back, where the material slipped off and joined with the girl. Most of it immediately started forming the tail, but some of it slithered around to her chest as well.

Forming the tail took some concentration. Building a suitable structure, ensuring blood vessels and nerves were hooked up properly, modifying the girl's already-replaced immune system to not attack the new cells being added to help maintain the drastically strengthened skin. The tail was quickly the most durable thing on the girl, which would likely help as she adjusted to having it. Taylor also made it fairly sensitive. Merging the rest of the additional mass into the girl's breasts was trivial by comparison, and the areola were easily changed. Taylor even made the breasts more naturally firm than normal and the areolae slightly pinker than usual to 'fit the heart theme' as she saw it. Switching Louise's eyes to a slit pupil took some extra adjustments to things to ensure that dilation and such worked correctly, and Taylor finished things up with the quick adjustment to the girl's ears and the removal of the belly button.

All together, it took almost twenty-five minutes to get everything settled to Taylor's satisfaction. Once done she had to pull a couple of times on her hand to get Louise to let go. Of course, once the girl realized that Taylor was done she jumped up to start examining herself. Only to fall over because she wasn't used to the way she needed to balance now.

Amy: I'm impressed. I hadn't considered that method of duplicating the tougher skin trick without Riley. But why did you only apply it to the tail?

Taylor: I'd rather not be fixing it because she closed a door on it.

Amy: Ah. And you made it extra-sensitive why?

Taylor: So that she'll hopefully very quickly learn to stop closing doors on it. I'm still trying to figure out why I went through with it all in the first place.

Amy: I assumed it was because neither of us wanted to deal with her whining for the rest of our time with her in school over us not doing all of it.

Taylor: I was thinking more that she was here specifically for the tail.

Amy: And you don't think she'd have whined when we knew about and didn't do the rest?

Taylor: Okay, that is a good point.

It took Louise a few minutes to get used to standing, and she nearly fell twice more while trying to get a good look at her tail. But she figured it out, and with the aid of a mirror checked out her ears and eyes. She didn't bother checking her areolae.

Finally she jumped forward and hugged Taylor, to the latter's discomfort. "Thank you thank you thank you! This is awesome!"

Eventually Taylor was allowed to fill out things for the follow-up doctors to look at, and Doctor Dobosh grabbed the cart before bringing them into the hallway, stopping on the way to the next room for a moment to talk. "That was impressive, though took longer than I expected."

Amy snorted. "She was building a tail from the ground up, including making sure that it won't be cut off by accident the first time it gets closed in a door or something."

He nodded. "I'm still used to the much faster work you usually do, but I suppose that I should've treated it more like regrowing a limb. Just without a template available." He then turned to Taylor. "Do you want to take a break?"

Taylor shook her head. "I'll just let Amy handle the next person or two."

"Okay then." He then continued down the hall, though the three looked back when a woman's squeal of delight was heard behind them. "I suspect that her mother has returned."

Amy ended up removing the tattoos from an obvious Empire thug, except that his black girlfriend was with him. They both seemed happy when she was done with things. That was followed by a woman who wanted to ensure that she couldn't get pregnant without surgery and a tall man that wanted to be a foot shorter. He got stronger muscles as part of dealing with the extra mass.

Taylor ended up taking a girl who wanted her breasts reduced, since they were getting too large for her sports aspirations, followed by both of the girls taking time to figure out the best way to strip two hundred pounds of fat off of a woman who wanted an extreme weight loss plan. Just using a shower stall like they had with the man or how Taylor had basically ensured that the girl didn't need to eat lunch wouldn't cut it there, but they dealt with it.

They ended up working together on the last person before breaking for lunch, since it turned out that neither of them was incredibly artistic and building a tattoo from scratch was hard. The man was happy with the end result, but it was difficult to get the imagery correct. Both of them had decided that any future attempts at making tattoos would require a reference image.

"I wonder what they'll have for us after lunch," Taylor mused as they sat down with pizza. Free from the hospital cafeteria.

Amy frowned. "They've got at least one big one planned, since I overheard them talking about preparing an operating room for us."

Taylor blinked at that. "Seriously?"

"Yep. Not sure what for. Did they send you the proposed price list for everything we've done so far?"

"Yeah, I'm a bit shocked at some of them. I mean, I get that some of them can effectively be done without parahuman powers and thus there's a base market price that they just pumped up ten percent, but others surprised me. The tail costing less than any of the eye changes, for example."

"I think that's because the tail can be removed by a surgeon, but the eye changes are pretty much impossible to revert without parahuman assistance?"

"Maybe."

They looked over each other's detailed documentation as they ate, suggesting wording changes or addition of details in various places, before Amy dropped it into the hospital computer system for them and Taylor dropped a copy into the PRT's system, the latter sanitized of personal information. A new file would be used for the afternoon, so that people could start looking over the morning's notes sooner.

Doctor Dobosh collected them again after their lunch break and brought them back to the first examination room again, indicating that they probably weren't at the 'big' item yet. They found two women sitting there on the examination table, both looking nervous.

"Tiffany on the left and Violet on the right are recently married," Doctor Dobosh started, and the two women nodded. "They want to have a child, but they want it to be their child. Obviously this would normally be a problem, but they're hoping it isn't an insurmountable one for you two."

Amy frowned. "That shouldn't be a significant issue, but there are some questions we'll need answered before we can begin."

Violet spoke up at that. "What kinds of questions?"

Amy held up her hand to count things off. "First up, who gets to be pregnant. Second, who gets to be the mother from a mitochondrial point of view. Third, how many children. Fourth, how would you like the genetics combined."

The two women both seemed a little surprised there, and the three 'medical professionals' waited while they held a whispered conversation. Taylor was doing her best to not listen in, but didn't know if Amy was doing the same. Eventually the two women came to an agreement.

"We'd like two children," Tiffany said. "Each of us carrying the one that we're the 'mother' of."

Violet then continued. "And we'd like them to be free of genetic defects, of course, but otherwise randomized as normal reproduction would do it, if that's possible?"

Amy nodded. "That sounds easy enough. Shall we get started?"

The two women nodded, and Taylor took Violet's hand while Amy took Tiffany's. Both blinked as they found that the women had ovulated in the past day, making that side of things incredibly trivial.

Taylor: Think we should go for maximum genetic diversity barring flaws?

Amy: What do you mean?

Taylor: Take every chromosome not present in one egg and put it in the other.

Amy: Oooh. That would be an easy way to handle that bit. I'm on board with that plan.

With that decided it was quick and easy work to 'fertilize' the two eggs and ensure that they'd attached into place. They also ensured that nothing would go wrong from an immune system point of view and gave the two women a quick tune-up in a couple of other ways.

"There you go," Amy said as they released the womens' hands. "With any luck you'll have easy pregnancies."

The two women each brought a hand to their stomach, as though they'd be able to feel the difference already. They were both grinning, and they hugged each other a moment later.

"Thank you," Violet said.

"Very much so," Tiffany continued.

The notes this time were trivial to write, and were essentially identical for both women, and then they moved onto the next room where a young woman was waiting.

"I think Jessica here is a variant on things from this morning," Doctor Dobosh said. "Though she was a bit more specific in the paperwork, wanting cat ears instead of her human ones."

Amy shook her head. "I don't think we can do properly functional cat ears."

The doctor blinked. "You can add a tail to someone, but not cat ears?"

Taylor sighed. "Humans have the wiring for a tail, you just have to hook it up. They don't have the wiring for non-human ears, which would mean modifying the brain to add it."

"Ah. Yes, that would be a problem."

Jessica looked disappointed, but didn't argue that particular point. "Can you give me cat ears that don't work as ears?"

Amy nodded. "That would be doable, though they'll likely feel odd."

"Don't care. I want cat ears, even if they don't work."

It only took a couple of minutes to give her cat ears that looked good but did squat otherwise, though she seemed to be happy with them.

Doctor Dobosh took them out of the room once the paperwork was done, but stopped them in the hallway. "I suppose that any form of interactive heads-up display is probably out of the question, but would augmenting a person's nose also require changes to the brain?"

"Most likely," Taylor answered after a moment. "I mean, there are probably ways to avoid doing so, but the results wouldn't be anywhere near as reliable."

He nodded. "Then I think we'll skip them and head over to the operating rooms for the last couple of potential patients."

The operating rooms in question were on the next floor, and they were brought to a breakroom down the hall from them. The doctor waved his hand at the mini-fridge in a 'help yourself' gesture before sitting down, obviously wanting to talk more about what was to come. They both grabbed a soda from the fridge before sitting down opposite him.

Doctor Dobosh sighed. "So I know we've been springing things on you with the patients there all day, but in this case I want you to know what you're getting into first. We have two teenagers waiting, though I'm not sure how the office staff found two Quinns. Mister Donnelly and Miss Tennison are both 'in transition' to the opposite sex, desiring to become Miss Donnelly and Mister Tennison. Both sets of parents are available if comparison on that front is needed, but I need to know if there are any other problems you anticipate before we're in front of them."

Taylor nodded. "We wouldn't be able to fully change their genetics without risk. Their brains in particular would only really work with a retrovirus, but that could cause other problems."

Amy blinked. "I hadn't considered the retrovirus, but yeah, that could be a problem that we couldn't necessarily fix safely if things went wrong. We'd also possibly need extra biological material for at least one of them, but you already have stuff prepared there."

"It's also going to be difficult and dangerous, so we'd need to work on only one at a time. I'd be most comfortable if we were working together so that we could ensure that one of us is able to be stabilizing the current patient at all times throughout the procedure."

"Very much yes. Less chance of screwing up that way on a number of fronts."

Doctor Dobosh nodded. "That all sounds reasonable and expected. I assume that if there are specific requests for appearance that you'd be willing to accommodate them to the best of your abilities?" They both nodded. "Okay then, do you have a preferred direction to start with?"

Taylor and Amy shared a look, then shrugged. Amy turned back to him. "I don't think it matters either way."

"Then I think we'll start with Mister Donnelly."

They ended up spending thirty minutes going over what was wanted for the first operation. He currently towered over his mother and was even a little taller than his father, but wanted to be shorter than both if at all possible. Outside of that it was primarily a desire to be themself, but biologically female. Given the drastic height change it was unlikely that they'd need extra biological material, but some was prepared anyway.

Unlike the rest of the day, they had several doctors watching this time. They started by putting him to sleep, then had his father there for them to copy an X chromosome from. Once they'd ensured that they had a proper sample there, which only took a moment, he left so as to not see things in progress. From that point it was a very careful rebuilding of the human body, essentially reworking everything but the brain itself.

It took nearly two hours before they were done, extended to just over two hours as they ran back over everything to ensure that they hadn't missed any details. Interestingly, they hadn't had to build an exception into the upgraded immune system, since it didn't use the gender chromosomes for targeting. Almost like Riley had anticipated something like this happening. Or perhaps she'd just decided that dealing with X versus Y was too much of a pain, it was hard to tell.

"She'll sleep for a few hours at a minimum," Taylor said once they were done, allowing the observing doctors to step in at that point. "But watch out for mood swings for a couple of days while her hormones settle."

They took a short break, including a larger than expected snack, before moving on to the Tennison family. After another half hour discussion they knew that she had no real desire to be taller, but did want to give up her blue eyes for her father's brown as she transitioned into a he. The other operating room was used this time, possibly because they hadn't 'properly cleaned' the first one, but other than that the entire procedure went similarly. Copy the Y chromosome from the father, though instead of shedding excess material they needed to bring in some extra to cover for some differences in biological makeup.

In the end it took almost three hours total, the girls needing to take extra care in building a male body when they were less familiar with them in general. But they finished, and gave similar warnings about how he'd sleep for at least a few hours and probably have mood swings when he woke up.

All four parents took time to thank the two, after which they had a final debrief with Doctor Dobosh and a quick submission of relevant files before they left. The two headed back to the PRT building more for the greater variety in the cafeterias than for Taylor to drop off her healing costume, then both headed home for the evening. All in all, it'd been an interesting day, and they could tell that Shaper was unusually content. Then again, that wasn't a surprise with all of the various things they'd done with it throughout the day.

Amy: I don't think I've had that much fun with biology since I first got my greenhouse.

Taylor: It was a lot of new things you'd never done before, so I'm not surprised.

Amy: I wonder if that's part of why we went along with some of it?

Taylor: Probably. Though I wonder how long it'll be before the news picks up on any of it.

Amy: Tuesday at the latest for Louise, I'll bet.

Taylor: Not touching that one, thank you very much.

Chapter 225 Sunday morning brought with it an unspecified request for Taylor and Amy's time around ten. Taylor smirked at that as she got ready for the day. She wasn't visiting the gym today, on mutual agreement with Amy, so she made herself a slightly larger breakfast and sat down in front of the morning news to eat it. She was surprised to learn that they were up to over twelve thousand lawsuit attempts against the PRT, New Wave, Amy, and her since Labor Day, most of them relating to their contact with the Endbringers but a fair number more directly relating to their powers.

Of course, the news anchor seemed to feel that the majority were being filed by idiots, even if they didn't come out and say that directly. There was no legal basis for suing over contact with the Endbringers, even less so for those mentioning Behemoth or the mysterious sixth Endbringer that there was no evidence of bidirectional interaction with. Otherwise you could theoretically sue anyone who'd shown up to or been in the region of an Endbringer attack. A subset of this group was specifically targeting the fact that contact with Leviathan had been kept secret, except that the government had known and classified the resulting transcript.

Amazingly enough, though, some of the people whining about contact with Leviathan had stopped going after Taylor and Amy entirely. Instead they'd gone after the government to release a copy of the transcript 'for the good of all mankind'. Their overall argument was that it could contain clues the government had missed relating to how to stop the Endbringers once and for all. They obviously hadn't succeeded, but it was a far more intelligent course of action.

As for the original set of lawsuits, the much smaller number of cases related to their powers had been grouped into categories by the station. Largest amongst them were those that argued that keeping the scope of their powers secret, in particular the biokinesis but to a lesser degree the ability to communicate with powers, was illegal under various laws. Healing people with a power that could do far more without disclosure was the primary attempt, and apparently it was illegal in nine states. None of which Taylor or Amy had actually healed anyone in. Next were accusations of violation of parahuman privacy from the 'communication with powers' aspect, but nobody filing suit was able to prove that they were affected. And the smallest group were those insisting that the still-unknown powers be revealed in full. Something that there was no legal basis for anywhere in the country.

Even with all of that, there were still a couple dozen lawsuits that hadn't been dismissed entirely, which was mildly concerning. Three of which were in state courts that hadn't dismissed things based on jurisdiction yet. Apparently Alaska, Arizona, and Washington State had laws that could be used against them if they, as known parahumans, entered the state while the lawsuits were 'active'. The rest were in federal courts but were being handled by the PRT and New Wave in various ways, since those were the organizations responsible for the 'parahuman' identities and the 'civilian' identities weren't actually able to be targeted by the laws in question, even when known.

Taylor ended up shaking her head as they went to commercials. They'd promised more on her and Amy was coming up next as well. At the same time, she'd been sitting there with her breakfast in front of her and due to her shock had barely eaten any of it. Taking a few more bites, she wondered if she should actually be concerned about the lawsuits. It wasn't difficult to send a message off to the PRT about it. Depending on their answer she might ask Amy to check with New Wave as well.

She'd made good progress on her breakfast by the time they came back from commercial break, and they'd made good on the pre-commercial break promise. They had a summary of things from the day before, provided by the hospital. They'd categorized things, starting with the incredibly large deal it was to have two complete bodily reconstructions into the opposite gender. That had been followed by stating that they could help those who couldn't have children naturally conceive, though they'd not revealed that it'd been two females. Whether that was the hospital's decision or the news station's was unknown. Weight loss and correction of 'various growth problems' were mentioned, and the rest was summarized as 'purely cosmetic changes' without any actual details.

So far the press was good, but she'd hold out to see how they reacted to Louise. Because there was no way that she wasn't going to make the news in the coming days. Not without something incredibly distracting, and possibly not even then. Someone would probably try and sue them over the changes made to the other girl too, for that matter.

Taylor was doing her best to keep her grinning down as she met with Amy at the PRT building. The fact that Amy was also grinning was mildly confusing, though offset by Amy obviously being confused about why Taylor was grinning. Both of their grins were muted when their day at the PRT building started with questions about the previous day's activities at the hospital. Some clarifying questions, warnings about possible legal issues with regularly offering the more cosmetic services before they came of age, and their own interpretation of likely 'market prices'. Some of which overlapped with the hospital's, others didn't.

They also covered Taylor's question about lawsuits, and instructed the girls to check with the PRT or Carol before visiting the three states with active state-level lawsuits. Doubly so if they were going to do so 'as parahumans'. Apparently they could attempt to imprison the two until things were resolved, depending on interpretations of things. That would be easier for them to make stick with Amy, legally speaking, but that kind of legal battle wasn't one they wanted right now. Instead they were hoping that people within the three states would get impatient and screw their own cases over. Though they refused to elaborate on how they'd possibly do that.

As a result of the unexpected discussion, it was nearly noon by the time they moved on to other things. Taylor wasn't sure why Amy's grin returned, but was getting to the point of not caring as she grinned in anticipation. They were brought to the secure garage, where Sherrel was waiting.

"Good morning," Sherrel greeted, glancing at her watch. "Or at least good last few minutes of morning, anyway."

"Morning," Taylor and Amy replied.

The woman grabbed a couple of boxes off of a cart she had with her, double-checking the labels before nodding. "Now then, I'm not in the mood for theatrics." She lightly threw a box to each girl. "You'll need to fill the paperwork in those out and turn it in. But do that on your own time. Now come over here."

Taylor and Amy were both blinking, but they followed Sherrel anyway. She led them into the maintenance garage itself and over to where two of the four booths for repainting or redecaling things after repairs were. They were currently closed. She then pointed Amy at one and Taylor at the other.

Nodding, Sherrel turned to them. "There you go, they're inside since we needed the lifts. Hebert on the left, Dallon on the right. We left the keys on the seats, have a nice day." She then moved off to where they'd pulled the rear end off of a truck, apparently wanting to either get back to work or make sure the person working on the truck was doing things correctly. Taylor wasn't sure which.

Deciding that standing there was getting her nowhere, Taylor opened the door on the left. Inside was a minivan, but definitely not a stock one. Two of the more obvious changes were the higher ride height and the police-style push bar across the front. The blue flames painted on it were another detail, their ability to be 'lit up' being the portion that screamed 'tinkertech', and her tinker snark was telling her all kinds of other details as well. Such as that the entire thing was armored with over the top internal protection features. She now knew that she'd built the harness for the integrated sensor drone system, and they'd integrated pistol-style pocket dimension opener systems pointing front and rear controlled from the driver's seat. A secure PRT-issue CB radio and an access key relay system were almost expected. The whole thing ran on a powerful yet fuel efficient custom-built motor and contained a number of other 'top of the line car' features as well. Huh, and apparently an inertial compensator for ride comfort.

She was shocked out of staring at the thing by Amy projecting a slap into the back of her head, causing Taylor to turn to stare at her. "What?"

Amy rolled her eyes. "Did you actually get me a custom ambulance of all things?"

Taylor shrugged. "I thought it fit, but you should be able to configure the back for passengers. And it shouldn't have any protected symbols on it if they followed my requests, so you shouldn't have to be careful about how you act while driving it. Also, it should have a number of things you apparently had them put on the minivan, though I wasn't expecting the sensor drone system or the pocket dimension openers."

"The what?"

Blinking, Taylor took a look at the ambulance. It had pretty much the same list of things that the minivan did, except with a much more subdued paint job that didn't light up. Well, that and it had the medical equipment in the back. "Huh. Looks like you got more than I paid for, which I suspect means it went both ways."

Dragon ran another test of the systems in the new armors, wanting to ensure that nothing was going to go wrong. They were primarily defensive, the goal was to be able to get out of the area and return with something more suitable to the situation. The enhanced communication elements she'd constructed would also hopefully help there, with any luck they'd reduce the transfer time to a more reasonable duration, one suitable for emergencies.

Everything came back well within tolerances, so she shut down and disconnected the extra testing units. She then made sure that the communication systems in the 'pods' were functional as well, since this would be one of the first tests of that element as well. They checked out, so she took a metaphorical deep breath and began the transfer.

A mere fifteen minutes later Theresa woke, the pod disconnecting the IV lines automatically. She grinned as she verified the transfer time, then stepped out as the pod door opened for her. A moment later she frowned, and headed for the bathroom. What had been a necessary stop ended up including a shower before working on getting her hair into a series of braids. Once she was done with that she moved back to the main room, collecting a skin-tight suit from a rack. She had plenty of practice getting it on and was dressed in it a moment later. A few stretches ensured that it was on properly, after which she moved over to the larger suit of power armor.

"Here I go," she said, turning around and holding her arms out. A moment later she'd triggered the suiting process, and the stand holding the armor came to life. Each piece was attached in sequence, the torso being used to lift her up to make room for the boots to be placed on her feet. A few moments later she had everything but the helmet on and the suit powered up. She could feel the line of communication relays along her spine establishing their connections, and suddenly she was just as much the power armor as the body inside of it.

A quick range of motion check ensured that there was no pinching, something that she'd run into as a problem with the early undersuit iterations. Smiling, she picked up the helmet and slipped it on. It connected to the rest of the systems and she got to deal with the duality of having eyes that could only see some basic information conveyed by a few tiny lights as well as having cameras that could see far more than human eyes were capable of. She frowned slightly, the expression from her biological face being mirrored on the mechanical one, deciding that she'd have to either expand the room in the helmet slightly or braid her hair differently in the future. It wasn't a big problem, of course, and wouldn't impact testing.

One last diagnostic run now that she was in the armor was followed by heading out into the testing area she'd set up to put it through its paces. And when she was done she'd have to do it all again in the smaller armor.

Not that doing so would be a burden by any means.

They'd ended up parking the two vehicles in the Shaper-linked pocket dimension, finding that the backup cameras were quite nice in the process. After that they'd taken the four sets of keys each and the paperwork boxes to one of the cafeterias so that they could eat while going over the paperwork. They grabbed lunch and claimed a table, then spread things out.

Each paperwork box turned out to contain stacks of the same basic forms. First up was a final confirmation for 'transfer of ownership' of each vehicle to the other, followed by 'acceptance of ownership'. Acknowledging the exceptions made for installing the sensor drone system, accepting the insurance plans provided by the PRT, and ensuring that the 'list of drivers' was correct on said insurance. Each of them was listed on the other's plan, but Taylor's included Danny while Amy's included Carol and Mark.

The PRT had registered both vehicles for operation on the road, similar to how they'd registered the mopeds when transitioning them to fully road-worthy vehicles. Primarily due to the extra features, since they both ran on diesel and worked like any other manual transmission car or truck. Then again, the engines weren't exactly standard, taking advantage of tinkertech materials, so maybe that had something to do with it as well. Either way, they didn't have to worry about getting registrations and license plates for them after dropping off the paperwork.

"So what should we do now?" Amy asked.

Taylor shrugged. "We should probably ensure that everyone knows about the two vehicles. Though I'm not sure how to best go about that."

"I'd say go out to dinner and just show up in them, but your last dinner out didn't go over well. Have they been bugging you about what you did to the men?"

"They politely requested that I restore enough motor control for them to take care of themselves, but haven't actually followed up on my lack of response. They worded it quite nicely to imply that it wasn't to do the men a favor." Deciding to show Amy, she dug out the request, only to find it wasn't open anymore. A little more digging found that it'd been 'retracted due to the wishes of the patients'. "And apparently the men decided that they don't want my help, so it was retracted."

"Huh. They never even bothered to ask me. Or maybe they sent a request and Sarah didn't bother to send it on."

"Could be."

Amy frowned a minute later. "Regardless of how we go about showing people the vehicles, I think I need a lesson in using them. Or at least the extra features, since Sherrel didn't seem to include manuals."

Taylor blinked. "That would be a problem, wouldn't it? I suppose that showing you everything while writing a proper manual would be ideal there."

By the time they'd finished documenting everything they still hadn't decided on any fancy way to do a reveal to their families and had decided to start with just parking them in the respective driveways to see what the reactions were. They had given each other a set of keys, though, if only so that they could each move both vehicles around if needed in the pocket dimension. They'd also decided on how to park them in the pocket dimension for now, because it seemed prudent to plan ahead for that, even if there was plenty of room.

Amy knew that the house would be deserted ahead of time, but Taylor had popped in through her bedroom to double-check that her father wasn't home first. Finding that he wasn't around, she re-entered the pocket dimension and opened up the garage door portal so that she could drive the minivan out. She parked it as though she'd backed in, then locked it up and headed inside.

A little over an hour later she heard her father pulling in and headed downstairs to see what his reaction was. He entered the house and found her waiting. "So I see you and Amy got each other's gifts."

Taylor blinked, because that wasn't what she'd expected. "What?"

"Did you honestly think that you two could order things that expensive without the PRT running it past those in charge of you? Carol, Mark, and I have been incredibly amused over the whole thing since you two apparently got the same idea within three days of each other. Still, the paint job on yours looks good, and the pile of extras we approved for each of them should make them far more useful to you than the base would've been. Did they get the light-up effect working in the paint? Dragon wasn't sure if they'd be able to pull it off when we last talked to her about it."

"Er, yeah. With options for brightness and light-patterns."

"You'll have to show me that later."

Maybe Amy would have better luck with Vicky, but Taylor felt cheated out of the reveal side of things already.

By Monday morning Taylor had put the minivan back into the pocket dimension, if only to leave room for visitors to park in the driveway without eating up space in the garage. Amy hadn't put the ambulance back in before they met up at the gym, though apparently that was in part so that Sarah could swing by and take pictures for New Wave's website. Vicky had joined Amy on the trip through the pocket dimension, and thus seen the minivan, and Missy had joined them this morning as well.

This, of course, led to the minivan being the topic of discussion while they worked out.

"The flames are an interesting touch," Vicky said. "Not something I'd have expected from you."

Taylor jerked her thumb at Amy. "Tell that to her, since she's the one that made those decisions."

Amy grinned. "I figured that standing out is something thrust upon you, so I continued the trend. That it's unlikely you'll have problems finding it in a parking lot is a bonus, of course."

"And the fact that it's like a rolling target?"

"Like anything you regularly drive wouldn't be. This way people are less likely to attack something that just happens to be similar, due to a lack of similar vehicles. Which should mean less idiots attacking unarmored vehicles and killing innocents."

There was a pause there, before Missy spoke up. "It's an armored minivan?"

Taylor sighed. "Yes. With a Wrench Wraith custom-built engine and several useful tinkertech tricks included."

"That means that it's safer than walking or using the mopeds, right?"

"Technically, yes, though it can't roof-hop to stay out of sight."

Missy was bouncing slightly. "You should drive it to school today, both so that I can see it and to see how everyone else reacts!"

Taylor looked over at Vicky, already able to tell that Amy was grinning and thus likely to agree with that plan. Sadly, Vicky was also grinning. "And if I don't want to draw that kind of attention today?"

"But today is the best day for it," Amy argued. "By tomorrow you won't be able to split the shock of the new ride with the shock of Louise showing off."

Missy and Vicky shared a look, only for Vicky to turn back towards Amy. "Why would Louise be showing off?"

"We can't actually tell you," Taylor replied instead. "But I'm sure you'll know by lunch at the absolute latest."

It was obvious that they didn't like that answer, but they also weren't stupid enough to push for more information anyway.

Taylor took full advantage of the backup camera as she backed into a parking space at school, having been convinced to drive the minivan in from the PRT building. Amy had claimed 'shotgun', leaving Missy and Vicky to sit on the bench seat in the middle of the thing. There weren't any seats in the back, that having been left open for more cargo space. Though mounting points and seatbelts for seats did exist there, and she could shift the bench seat to the rear mount points if she wanted the middle to be more open. Which could be useful if she wanted to load things from the side door instead of the back.

A number of students were taking pictures as the four got out of the minivan, but none of them approached to ask questions. Instead they decided to wait until the four were inside the school itself before swarming to take a closer look. As evidenced by the warning beep from the alarm system.

Taylor and Amy went straight for the office while Missy and Vicky split off to do their own things. It was better to get the two new vehicles registered with the school now than to wait, even if the rules gave them time. That consisted primarily of handing in pre-filled-out forms with a basic description and the license plate numbers for each vehicle. The most important thing from the school's point of view was the alarm systems, and that was only in case they needed to drag the girls out of class to disarm the things because someone set them off.

After that the two headed to homeroom. It was obvious that Louise hadn't shown up yet, but it probably wouldn't be long before she did. Whether or not the rumor mill reached them before classes began was the better question, one that they had no answer for yet.

By lunchtime Louise had found a downside to the changes made to her, and ended up sitting against the wall in one of Taylor's usual spots in order to try and have time to actually eat.

"My poor, abused tail," she whined. It was wrapped around to her lap, where she had a small towel and an ice pack for the end of the tail. It seemed that some people had been a bit too grabby. Healing from Taylor or Amy had been rejected on the basis of 'she had to learn to deal with it', though she'd stated that if it felt like something was actually wrong then she'd check with them.

"So how are the rest of the changes going?" Amy asked.

Louise shrugged. "I think all of two people have noticed the eyes, though the ears are a hit. Everyone else has been focused on my tail and the sudden growth of my breasts."

"I asked how they were going, not how many people noticed them."

"Oh. Right. They're going fine. The biggest issue is that I've needed to adjust a bit to the way my eyesight has changed with the slit pupils. Some of my initial clumsiness wasn't just balance but was more misjudging distances. I think I've got some of that handled, but I have to actually pay attention to it when moving around. I'm sure I'll adapt eventually. The slight change in my hearing is nothing by comparison."

Taylor nodded. "That makes sense. So, your mother sounded excited when she first saw you."

"Yep. It was somewhat embarrassing, since she insisted on taking pictures of everything when we got home. She also took a pile of measurements and did initial shopping for me while I worked on navigating the house without falling over or walking into things." She looked down at the very revealing top she was wearing. "I'm going shopping after school too, because this is the only top she got me that follows the school rules and there's no way I'm wearing it every day."

"Oooh!" Vicky said, bouncing a little in her seat. "I'll come with. It'll be fun and I can play bodyguard from the idiots. Which would be part of my fun, of course."

They ended up discussing where the best places for Louise to shop likely were for the rest of lunch, and at the end Vicky stopped Louise so that she could look the other girl over from a style point of view. Which had her blinking. "Where the hell is your belly button?"

Louise shrugged. "Don't have one anymore."

"That's...huh. Wasn't there mention of all but the tail being your mother's ideas? Or was that the rumor mill being crazy?"

"No, that's right."

Vicky frowned. "I can't imagine my mother doing that kind of thing."

"My mother retired from making porn when I was born and took up stripping as a hobby when I was ten. Dad thinks that she wants to ensure that I can make plenty of money when I'm away at college."

"Oh."

Louise shrugged. "I'm hoping that I can find something a little more tame. I'd be quite the exotic model, for example."

"I can see that."

Taylor shook her head as she threw out her trash, silently wishing Louise the best of luck. Both on her job prospects and in surviving shopping with Vicky.

After school Vicky left on the bus with Louise, but Amy and Missy joined Taylor for a ride to the PRT building. She let both of them out in the secure garage, then used the integrated pocket dimension opening device to pull the minivan into the Shaper-linked pocket dimension.

"So what are you sticking around for?" Taylor asked Amy once she stepped back into the garage and closed the pocket dimension opening.

Amy shrugged. "I'm avoiding heading home because I don't want to have to deal with Sarah probably wanting pictures of me in or around the ambulance."

"Ah."

The three headed up the stairwell and down the hall to the Wards area. Dean was pulling in with Dennis and Chris while Taylor and Missy went to slip into their costumes. The boys didn't bother to get into costume before they all sat around the monitor with drinks, Amy off to the side.

"We don't have the three youngest today," Dennis noted. "And I'm told that Aisha got detention for getting into a fight and thus won't be joining us. The Protectorate has requested that Dean and I join them for a couple of things today, and we have zero non-patrol tasks approved outside of the building. But I've also been asked to make sure that Taylor in particular is seen out in costume, to show that she's fine after the trap. Which leaves a patrol."

Taylor frowned. "A visible patrol, it sounds like. Which probably means more 'Boardwalk' than 'run-down areas where we might see action'."

"Yep. Though we're running low on the latter anyway. Dragon bought up and started redeveloping large sections of previously-abandoned properties in expectation of using them for various things. The Elite are doing something similar, Accord has dumped a pile of money into various projects, and the continued use of our port in lieu of Boston's unavailable facilities means that everyone is making money in the process. Short of running into a skirmish between the Empire and the Elite there isn't a whole lot of action to be found, and they've mostly agreed to their territory lines for the time being."

"So we're pretty much guaranteed a boring patrol, barring idiots waiting for me to be out on patrol."

Dennis opened his mouth to refute that, but paused and sighed before doing so. "Yeah, you've got a point there. Though 'plenty of witnesses' is a thing too, and you three are probably the best ones for an ambush situation anyway."

Missy grinned at that. "Just so long as you acknowledge that we're likely to be attacked because Taylor is with us."

"Yeah, yeah. Don't rub it in."

Amy got up and came over. "Any chance that I can join them?"

Dennis stared at Amy, then groaned and grabbed his phone. "I'm not making that decision, but if the oversight people say yes then I won't stop you."

Amy seemed to be incredibly happy that she actually got to patrol. It certainly caused some interesting looks as she walked along with Missy while Taylor and Chris flew overhead. Though some of that might be due to the number of idiots that had, in fact, been waiting. Taylor and Chris had ended up watching most of them, instead of needing to intervene. Four of them would've been overkill for most of the idiots, after all, and they were content to watch. Missy seemed equally happy with the results, having punched out several idiots while Amy was busy with others.

Of course, since it was obvious that they were patrolling along the Boardwalk, and the turnaround point was pretty much fixed for that, there was plenty of time for an ambush to be set up. One that was incredibly obvious thanks to the augmented patrol app highlighting the two dozen people hiding with handguns. Granted, the Snitch was out in front of them aiding with that detection.

"Vista to console," Missy said after some minor discussion on their parts. Technically they weren't supposed to intentionally walk into ambushes that obvious to them. "We've got a likely ambush at our turnaround point."

It took a minute for a response to come back. "Console to Wards patrol. Please delay at least five minutes, then approach your turnaround point."

While unexpected for all four of them, it was easy enough to arrange for. A quick stop to buy some drinks and use the restrooms easily ate up the five minutes, during which it was obvious that other teams were moving into position around the turnaround point. Primarily because they started showing up on the augmented patrol app.

Once it looked like everyone was in position, the four moved to the turnaround point. As soon as they arrived the various hidden people jumped out, all of them with their guns drawn.

"We've got you now!" one of them yelled, opening fire. Most of the others did the same. Several of them were holding two different guns and hitting nothing they were aiming for as a result. Amy's force field took four hits, Missy took five hits that slipped through her spatial warping but didn't make it through her armored costume, all reaching her despite them aiming for Amy, and it only took a few seconds for the entire group to run through their magazines.

"Police! Drop your weapons!" came a moment later, from three different points, as the BBPD and the PRT swarmed the turnaround point.

"That was the least effective ambush so far," Taylor noted.

Chris nodded. "Yeah. Kinda sad, since it was the only one with shots fired."

Sadly for their ability to punch out idiots, that was also the last ambush of the afternoon.

Chapter 226 After dinner Taylor was convinced to sit down with her father to watch the news. They'd tuned in during the weather report, and apparently it was going to be rainy overnight into the morning, and probably windy for the next couple of days on top of that. Scion had apparently suddenly detoured into the various Chinese nation-states earlier in the day, or overnight for them, and as far as anyone could determine had detonated a nuclear device that someone had built. After moving all of the animals in the area away from the blast zone, though the people in the facility didn't seem to have been intelligent enough to realize that they should probably leave during that phase of things. It would probably be a couple of days before anyone could confirm that it was a nuclear device that he detonated, though, due to it being hard to get into the area normally.

When they looped back to the more local news they started with the partial destruction of several buildings in Boston during a running battle between two unknown villains and the Protectorate. The latter had both been ambushed and tried to keep things from getting out of hand, but the members initially attacked had likely intentionally been a poor match for the striker and blaster combo they were up against. They'd been forced to retreat, being chased by the two villains until reinforcements arrived. The villains had gotten away, the Protectorate more immediately concerned with ending the fighting and dealing with the existing destruction than capturing the two. Something that the news felt was a good decision on their parts, but they'd be taking measures to ensure that any future attempts by the duo would be less likely to succeed.

A couple of smaller items were followed by a group of people outraged over Louise's appearance. Interestingly, the good press from many of the other things accomplished over the weekend seemed to be keeping Taylor and Amy from being targeted by this group. Instead, the group was claiming that the hospital and Louise's parents should have stepped in and prevented the changes from going forward on a minor, and should've stopped Taylor and Amy from making the changes in the first place. The two girls were apparently 'blameless for doing what theoretically reasonable authority figures asked them to' this time.

Of course, that wasn't the end of it. That was only the first group. The next group talked to objected on religious grounds and thought everyone involved was going to hell for the procedure, as well as a couple of the others from over the weekend. Then another objected to minors doing cosmetic surgery, powers-assisted or not, in general, with a heaping of disliking minors being on the receiving end of 'exotic' cosmetic surgery as well. Though they focused more on the two gender changes than on Louise.

The news apparently wanted to end on a positive note, having found a group that saw everything known about the work done over the weekend as good things. Their view was that the level of control shown by the two in working on the various requests meant that any number of powers-created problems could be corrected by them. And if people wanted to look more exotic than that was their choice, so long as it wasn't being forced on others. They'd compared the two to various villains that changed people involuntarily, stating that while the capability may be there, it was the choices in how they used that capability that was the important part.

"I wonder if the priest reached out to them or if they found the priest," her father mused as they broke for commercials. "It nicely offset some of the previous religious ranting either way."

Taylor nodded. "The claims that Louise presents a healthier looking view of 'attractiveness' than the anorexic models that seem to dominate the industry today wasn't a bad point, but I think that stating that he'd rather see people go through some of the procedures once they're known to be safe and stable than commit suicide due to the disconnect between their mind and body was inspired. It might shut some people up about things."

"It'll probably mean that people will push for it to be at least a few months before you do anything else like that outside of 'emergency' situations, like dealing with Riley's work."

"True."

Tuesday morning was rainy and windy, as promised the day before. Taylor and Amy were joined by a few PRT officers in the gym, but none of the others.

"So what are your plans for the afternoon?" Amy asked as they got started.

Taylor checked various calendars. "Nothing's scheduled for me. Looks like the kids are being rotated through some training today while work is done on the Wards area, with a request to stay away without good reason."

"Ah."

They continued their workout with more small talk, such as what movies were showing or special events were happening in town, showered, and visited the cafeteria for breakfast. At which point they needed to decide how they were getting to school.

"You've got the ambulance in the pocket dimension," Taylor noted. "I showed off the minivan at school already, so why not finish the job?"

Amy sighed. "That's probably not a horrible idea. But it's a bit wide, surely you've noticed that the parking spaces at Arcadia are a bit on the skinny side?"

"Oh. That's a good point, I hadn't considered that when picking an ambulance design. Hmmm."

"It'll be great for actual emergencies, but it's a bit larger than a lot of places expect in their parking lots. I put it in the pocket dimension because now that Sarah has pictures it's a bit too big for our driveway. Well, that and the driveway isn't intended for more than two cars."

"So I guess our best bet today is still the minivan."

"Probably."

Their arrival at school was largely ignored due to students not waiting outside in the wind and rain, but it didn't take long for Louise to find them in their homeroom. She appeared to be a little worse for wear this morning, with several bandages on.

"What happened to you?" Amy asked as she got up.

"I was ambushed on the way to the bus stop," the girl answered. "Mixed group, they tried to cut my tail off and 'fix' my ears. My mother saw them and summoned aid, and I came in because I knew you two would be here."

"Do I have permission to heal you?"

Louise held out her hand. "Please do."

Taylor and Amy flinched when the latter took the girl's hand. It looked like they'd done a number on her left ear and had made progress into cutting the base of the tail. It didn't take Amy long to correct all of that, though the full reinforcements would take a day or so to fully reassemble on the tail after which she helped Louise remove the bandages.

"Thank you," she said once Amy was done, rubbing her ear to check how it felt after being healed. "I don't think the cuts would've healed properly without your help."

Amy nodded. "You're welcome. What happened to the group that attacked you?"

"They were arrested, though Mrs. Fairburn broke a couple of bones before the police showed up. She offered to teach me some self defense before helping me onto the bus, I hadn't known that she'd taught martial arts for forty years before retiring. I think she was excited to figure out how to properly make my tail work with some of the kata too."

"Sounds like something you should take her up on," Taylor said. "But it'll probably be hard, especially at first."

"I know, but it'll mean that I shouldn't need rescuing from idiots like that. That's worth the effort alone."

"YOU!" Dennis yelled while pointing dramatically at Taylor at lunchtime.

Taylor patted herself down. "Yep. I'm still me."

He ignored her. "Have you no shame? It was bad enough when it was just you, but now you've started to corrupt others!"

Amy sighed. "What are you on about?"

Dennis glared at Amy for a moment, before focusing on Taylor again. "How long will it be before the school expects us to come in after being attacked in the morning?"

Louise slapped Dennis in the back of the head. "I didn't come for class, I came because it was where the super healers would be, and probably the only ones who could fix some of the damage. You moron."

He looked at Louise, then back at Taylor and Amy. "Oh. Nevermind then, that's actually reasonable sounding and makes more sense than going to the hospital." He then dropped down into one of the empty seats at the table. "So, did anything else interesting come up this morning?"

Taylor shrugged. "Not really, at least locally. I think there was something about a cape fight damaging a riverbed and threatening a historic house in the news this morning? Apparently they might want to move the entire thing to save it, but actually doing so is a problem."

Vicky nodded. "I've heard of some of the things they do to move houses. They can be a pain on short notice, and if it's large enough they could have issues with other aspects. Like fitting it on trucks or through the nearby streets without having to take it apart first. Doing so as an emergency on short notice would make it even harder, though if they can get parahuman assistance then they could probably pull it off. At that point they might be able to just fly it to a new location, actually, if they got the right assistance."

"Sounds a bit dangerous, carrying a house over everything else."

"True. It would be safer to move it along the ground, but that isn't always possible. Maybe they can load it onto a barge instead?"

And thus lunch turned into a discussion on possible ways to move houses of varying sizes for whatever reasons.

After school Taylor and Amy headed for the minivan, but they weren't sure what they were going to do for the afternoon.

"I don't suppose you'd be willing to catch a movie?" Amy asked as they sat down.

Taylor frowned. "Didn't we decide that we weren't interested in anything showing here?"

"Yep. But Miami has showtimes for 'Fall of the Three Blades' and we can easily make several of them."

"Ah. That did sound interesting, and it's gotten some decent reviews. My father gave me blanket permission to run off across the country so long as I let him know I'm doing so, but would you need to check with Carol or Mark?"

Amy shook her head. "No, just send them a message. I think getting permission to exit in Miami would be the harder part."

"I'll drop a request into the system now, then we head for the PRT garage, if only as an easy place to pop into the pocket dimension instead of opening the hidden door. Then we either exit to Miami and drive to the theater or park the minivan and head home to do whatever."

"Works for me."

"So how was the movie?" Danny asked at dinner.

Taylor shrugged. "The plot was better than the action scenes, though that might be me being able to pick out where things were obviously being done wrong more than anything else. I cringed at some of the things they were doing with guns, and the hand to hand was a bit too obviously faked."

"You probably aren't the target audience for those parts. Which just makes it feel more crazy that you went all the way to Miami just to catch a movie."

"It was faster to get there than to New York, which I think is the closest place to catch it before the weekend, and nobody realized we were there in time to attack us."

"Which is also crazy. Both that it was the fast option and that you have to leave town to not be noticed. You doing anything like that tomorrow?"

"I think I'm scheduled for a patrol, so probably not."

"Ah. I believe you're busy over the weekend, but do you have anything happening Friday?"

Taylor took a moment to check. "Doesn't look like it. Why?"

"Garnet expressed interest in going out to dinner and asked if you were available. I think she wants to share stories about your mother that she feels that I've been 'remiss' in not telling you about."

"I can block out my calendar in case something comes up, but it looks like they already blocked it out due to a first thing Saturday morning meeting. Probably don't want anyone accidentally getting knocked off duty due to idiots on Friday."

"That sounds smart of them."

Wednesday morning was still quite windy, and when Taylor went to connect to the PRT building from the pocket dimension she found that the interface had changed, first requiring her to use her access key to even connect. She then found that she could still do manual selection, but there were also multiple 'fixed' locations available now. Wards area, Wards garage, Protectorate garage, PRT garage, and a 'visitor arrival room'. She picked the Wards area and the opening appeared, her and Amy stepping out from a doorway that'd been installed.

"Guess that's what they were installing yesterday," Amy noted.

Taylor nodded as she hit the finger-pad on the doorway to close the opening. "Looks like it. It'll make it faster to come and go, less targeting and all, so I'm not about to complain. Though I'll want to see how big the garage openings are. It'll be annoying if they're intended for people and we still have to manually target to pull vehicles out."

They headed for the gym and their morning workout. Surprising them, Missy showed up on foot partway through, entering through the upper gym and then heading down.

"Morning," Taylor greeted when Missy came out of the locker room.

Missy sighed. "Hi. Did something happen to the beacon? I couldn't connect to it."

"They upgraded it to use access key restrictions, so you probably need a hardware update in your pocket dimension."

"What?"

"I assume that it was done for security reasons and all others in PRT and Protectorate buildings will get the same update. You should send a message asking about what you need to do to get your equipment upgraded. Ours was done as part of initial testing with Dragon, and I think Riley got hers upgraded during that as well."

Missy grumbled something that sounded offensive, but didn't argue past that point.

When they were all done and had eaten they headed for the garage, though Missy wasn't sure why. "I figured that you'd rather bounce across rooftops since I'm here and all?"

Taylor shrugged. "We can do that, I just want to see if the door they put in the garage area is person-sized or vehicle-sized."

"What door?"

Instead of answering, Taylor and Amy just led the way into the Wards garage area. The 'door' was a sizable one, set where there hadn't been parking previously, and was definitely large enough for a vehicle. Amy found the finger pad, sitting below a slot for a crystal key, and activated it.

"Come take a look at the updated opener," Taylor said, gesturing to the portal.

Ten minutes later they exited into the Wards area, Missy grumbling about wanting a warning before this kind of thing was done to equipment she was using. She did like the ease of locking onto the pre-placed doorways, though. From there they headed for the roof and braved the wind as they bounced across rooftops to Arcadia.

By lunchtime the gossip engine was in full force, since someone had found pictures of an 'awesome van' found in a parking lot in Miami. That had been posted to a PHO thread, which had been compared with other PHO threads, and eventually people came to the conclusion that either Taylor had copied someone else or someone else had copied Taylor's minivan. The latter was considered an impressive feat if true, given how long said minivan had been known about for.

"Have you seen this thing?" Louise asked. People were starting to get used to her new features, so she wasn't hiding against the wall, but she had joined them anyway. "It looks just like yours!"

Taylor looked at the picture. "I'm going to have to disagree."

"Are you blind today? I'd be willing to put money on the flame pattern being identical to yours!"

"If that's a copy then they did a very impressive job. Even got the license plate right. Which is probably illegal."

That caused a moment of silence, before Chris and Louise both started frantically checking their phones. Chris finished his examination of pictures first, sighing as he turned to Taylor. "What was your van doing in Miami?"

Taylor rolled her eyes. "I parked it there while Amy and I were in the theater. We wanted to see 'Fall of the Three Blades' and it wasn't showing until the weekend here. And I think I'm busy over the weekend, so I wouldn't have been able to see it then anyway."

Louise groaned. "You went to Miami. In your van. After school. To see a movie that wasn't showing here, and are back here today. How fast is the van, and how did nobody notice you making the trip?"

"It isn't all that fast. The trip was greatly aided by knowing how to properly shoot at walls."

That was met with more silence, before Missy spoke up. "So how was the movie?"

Amy groaned. "They were horrible with guns in the action scenes."

Emily sat there with Colin and Hannah, waiting. Granted, they were all early, and Colin was doing something in his armor's computer to stay efficient. The wait was one of the perils of showing up early when calling a meeting and the participants weren't all going to be in the building before it. It was still better than dealing with some of the idiots wanting some of her time without even making an appointment.

She paused in her musing when the door opened, only for a dark haired woman in a dress to enter. There was a familiarity there, even though Emily was positive that she'd never met the woman before. Whoever she was, she used a phone to lock the door.

"Sorry if you've been waiting," the woman said as she dispensed some hot water and collected a tea bag.

Emily looked over at the other two, who seemed to be just as confused as she was. Hannah had even manifested her power as a sidearm instead of keeping it as a small knife. Turning back to the unknown woman, she cleared her throat. "I'm afraid you have us at a disadvantage. You would be?"

"Oh, sorry," the woman replied, a slight blush. "I'm used to people recognizing me on sight, but showing up like this would stop that, wouldn't it? I'm Theresa Richter."

"Dragon? I thought you never went anywhere outside of your power armor?"

Colin interrupted. "Can you prove that you're who you say you are."

The woman smirked. "Easily. Are you satisfied, or shall I provide more proof?"

Emily looked at Colin, who was silent. There wasn't any time for the woman to provide proof, was there? But he nodded. "I apologize for doubting you, but seeing you like this is a bit of a surprise."

Theresa nodded. "I can see that. It took some courage to go through with having a tinker fugue for myself, but the results were well worth it."

There was something off about that, even if Emily couldn't tell what. Of course, the benefits of the fugue were probably enough to feel 'safe' in public, and it probably had taken some courage to allow the three girls to work on the woman. On the other hand, there was that familiarity, as though Emily had seen the woman or someone closely related to her before, but couldn't place where. Oh well, it probably wasn't important and it wasn't something she should be prying into either way.

Instead, she nodded. "I see. Thank you for coming on short notice, hopefully this won't take too much time from your preparations for spending a few days in Texas."

"I should be fine on that front."

It didn't take long for Theresa to sit down, her tea still steeping, and Emily focused on the task at hand. "We've got several things coming up this weekend, and I want to be certain that we're ready for all of them. Obviously, we have the Wards leader transition with two Wards shifting to the Protectorate. I'm under the impression that everything is ready there?"

Hannah nodded. "Everything except for the ceremony selection and scheduling, which will need input from the Wards themselves. Clockblocker has done an admirable job in preparing for everything, better than Aegis had."

"Very good. Sadly, now we have to do a final check of the Wards exchange procedures. I know that we have paperwork for Maul and Vista. Have we heard back on Hulder and Kid Win yet?"

After school Taylor was kind enough to meet up with Missy in a restroom before departing, since the younger girl couldn't use her pocket dimension to get to the PRT building right now. Amy was going to be swinging home to get her costume before heading to the hospital for general healing. As such, Taylor didn't wait to open the portal to the Wards room, and the two stepped out before the other Wards had even had a chance to leave the school grounds.

It didn't take long for the two to get into their costumes, after which they raided the meat locker for one of the larger cuts and started preparing to cook it. The schedule said that they would be feeding Rosa and Sandy, after all, and thus there should be plenty of time for it to cook. They'd just have to ensure that the person running the console kept an eye on things.

The meat had just gone into the oven when Dean's car entered Taylor's range, Chris and Dennis along for the ride. Missy had dug some crescent rolls out of the fridge and started to prepare them, even if they'd need to be put in much closer to the end of the meat cooking. They could slip the pan back into the fridge once she was done preparing it. Taylor wasn't sure what 'low effort' side dishes to make, since she doubted that she'd be the one staying behind, and figured that could probably be decided by whoever was going to be on the console.

"What the hell is that?" Dennis asked as the three boys came in.

"The what?" Taylor asked in return as she came out of the kitchen area. Dennis just pointed at the new doorway. "Oh. It's a door."

"A door to what, exactly? Since it looks like a small version of the thing in the garage and all."

Taylor walked over and opened up the Shaper-linked pocket dimension. "Pocket dimensions. Much easier to work with than some of the other methods of getting into and out of them. With this here I don't even need my pistol opener to leave, though I'll probably still use it when I don't feel like coming into the common area."

Dean snorted. "And I bet there's a way to open up an exit in Miami, right?"

Dennis surprised Dean by answering that one. "Of course. Probably other places too, right?"

Taylor nodded. "Yep. Haven't tried going to Vancouver or Los Angeles yet, and I'm sure others will become available over time. The doorway is a recent upgrade to the beacon that lets those of us with access to the things come here more easily without leaving a device configured so that anyone can gain access to our pocket dimensions. It also allows for more control over who can show up where than the previous version did."

"Oh. That sounds like the kind of thing that's going to be deployed elsewhere pretty soon too."

"Most likely."

Taylor and Missy ended up patrolling with Ryan while Dean and Dennis patrolled with Sandy. Chris was going to be running the console, monitoring Rosa's tinkering, and keeping an eye on the cooking. Aisha was theoretically helping with that, but was actually sitting there dealing with make-up work since she'd lost a couple of assignments. Brian had apparently locked down her network access and had configured alerts to tell him if she left the Wards area. She hadn't been happy about it.

It felt odd not having three 'older' Wards on the patrol, but the rules for number of full Wards per patrol had been shifted back to the 'two by default' level due to a combination of lower rates of running into anything on patrols and the impending reduction in numbers thanks to Dean and Dennis moving to the Protectorate. Needing more than half of the total Wards for a patrol if bringing one of the kids with them was against two different regulations in and of itself, though only because they had more than five Wards total. Without that change they'd have been unable to bring the kids on patrol at all once they were down to seven Wards.

Dean had lost the coin toss and gotten the Boardwalk route, allowing Taylor to take her group through a slightly less public route that passed through some gang territory. Not that the gangs usually caused trouble along the route, or they wouldn't be allowed to take Ryan down it. Of course, they also hadn't seen anything of interest, which was the other reason they could take Ryan down it.

Taylor frowned as they approached Empire territory. A parahuman she wasn't familiar with was on the edge of her range. One that was approaching them.

"I hear something weird," Ryan said a moment later, pointing. "Coming from that direction."

It didn't take much to figure out that Ryan was pointing at the approaching parahuman, which was mildly concerning. Taylor stopped them halfway down the block they were moving along and started checking for anyone that might also be trying to flank them. That didn't seem to be the case. Just in case, Taylor moved forward, in front of Ryan, and waved for Missy to take up position behind him. The other girl did so without complaint, preparing her sniper rifle just in case as she did so.

Taylor monitored the parahuman's approach, and it wasn't long before a woman with a buzz cut and a cage-like mask approached them. There was a shift, and suddenly a high-pitched strobing sound was audible. Annoying, but not exactly a problem. Taylor merely adjusted her stance a little, pulling her wok off of her back in the process. She believed that this was likely Cricket, of the Empire, but hadn't ever met the woman before to be certain.

All of a sudden the strobing sound cut out, and the woman tripped on her own foot. She caught herself and rolled, but stopped in a crouch and started looking around, confused.

"She's funny," Ryan said, getting her attention. A moment later a different high-pitched sound started up, only to suddenly stop again.

Taylor looked between Cricket and Ryan, a couple of details she recalled reading coming up. Eventually she focused on Ryan. "Are you canceling out her echolocation?"

"Maybe? Is she like a bat?"

Cricket had also apparently focused on Ryan, and darted forward in an attempt to get through to him while Taylor wasn't watching her. Taylor backhanded her with a projection from the wok without even bothering to turn around. Instead she was trying to decide if they should bother fighting the cape or not, since Ryan was essentially canceling out a good portion of her powers. And if Taylor was right, he was treating it as a game more than anything else.

Frowning, Taylor spun around when Hookwolf entered her range, obviously running. "Shit. We've got more company incoming."

"Should I knock Cricket out?" Missy asked. She'd been watching the Empire cape fail to be as effective as normal with her powers partially countered, apparently amused at the drop in effectiveness. "Though I'm a bit confused, since she normally doesn't operate alone like this."

Taylor sighed and stepped over to Cricket. "I'm going to say no, if only because she's already knocked out. I might've given her a concussion at that." A quick flip of her striker switch and a touch to the woman's hand had Taylor grimacing. "Yep. Mild concussion, and has she ever been to a doctor?" Shaking her head, she moved to the side, turning to face where Hookwolf was about to come around the corner. Sure enough, his metallic form dug into the pavement as it turned, only to stop a moment later.

It was interesting to watch as the wolf-shaped mass of blades suddenly collapsed in on itself to reveal a human male. One that immediately held his hands up. "I'm not here to fight."

Taylor nodded. "What are you here for, then?"

"Stormtiger called and told me that Cricket there had run off towards you guys. I was here to stop her before she did something stupid, but I suppose you just knocked her powers out somehow?"

Shrugging, Taylor pointed a thumb at Ryan. "She uses echolocation, and Soundstone essentially eats sound. I'm sure you can do some of the math. Though when she tried to get around me I hit her a bit too hard, gave her a concussion."

Hookwolf looked at Taylor, then at Cricket, before sighing. "I hate power interactions, and I'm betting this was her being enraged when he interfered with her echolocation. But she still should've known better." He then paused, and looked back at Taylor. "Huh. She attacked you guys, and thus a lot of the rules about using your powers are a bit suspended, right?"

"In theory."

He grinned. "I don't suppose you'd like to help me punish her for being an idiot in a way that she's likely to never forget?"

"That would depend on what you intend."

"Nothing destructive. Don't need personal experience with your skills with a gun. I'm actually thinking about your healing ability. Cricket is very proud of every injury she's ever received, never wanted Othala to heal her or anything, and I'm thinking that having you heal her up a little would be fitting punishment for being an idiot."

Taylor blinked, even as Missy snorted behind her. "You want to punish her by having me heal her?"

"Yep."

"Letting her get away with Hookwolf is less paperwork than capturing her," Missy noted.

Taylor looked between Hookwolf and Missy, then shrugged. "You have a point." She then moved back over to Cricket and touched her again. It didn't take long to heal everything other than the concussion, though some of the raw material was pulled from the woman's muscle mass. She then prodded her awake, before stepping back.

Cricket groaned, and put a hand to her head, then froze and started to feel herself. Hookwolf interrupted her, grabbing the back of her neck and lifting her up. "You can examine yourself later. For now you should be happy that Maul didn't decide to shoot first when you attacked them."

"I may have bullets with your names on them," Taylor noted. "But it didn't seem like the right situation for gun violence."

Hookwolf gave Taylor a look, then focused back on Cricket. "You are going to leave. Now. Wait for Kaiser and I to come talk with you about your idiocy."

The woman nodded, and Hookwolf let go of her. She landed unsteadily, then looked at Taylor once before turning and running the other way.

Shaking his head, Hookwolf watched her for a moment, then turned to Taylor. "Bullets with our names on them? Really? How cliché."

Taylor grinned, reaching into a pouch. A moment later she pulled a necklace out of it. "I've got a number of bullets with names on them. I made a necklace out of them."

He blinked, then looked past Taylor. Probably at Missy, who Taylor suspected had produced her own necklace. That led to him chuckling. "You win."

Five minutes later he was gone and the three Wards were on their way out of Empire territory.

Chapter 227 When they'd returned to the PRT building Taylor had been asked why she didn't capture Cricket. Her excuse was that fighting Hookwolf while Ryan was there would be a combat situation that he wasn't prepared for, even if he had been able to render Cricket partially harmless on his own. They'd also asked about the healing, and Taylor had admitted that she'd pulled resources out of the woman's muscles as part of it, rendering her weaker.

In the end the report had been accepted, nobody was chastised for their actions, and the three Wards headed down to the Wards area for dinner. Well, Ryan was going to be hanging out, but the other two would be eating. They found that Chris had ended up making baked potatoes to go with the meat, but had burned the crescent rolls. The other patrol group was just returning as Taylor cut up the cooked meat, finding that the shape of things had resulted in various levels of 'done'. Which was both expected and a good thing, as Sandy preferred meat to be less cooked than the rest of them.

"So you fought Cricket?" Dennis asked as they set the table that had been lifted out of the floor.

"I'm not sure it counted as a fight," Taylor admitted. "She was incredibly disoriented by Ryan canceling out her echolocation, I think all three of us were immune to her attempt to disorient us, and then she didn't expect to take a wok."

He snorted at that, shaking his head. "I'm definitely going to have to see about getting your patrol footage."

"I can whip up a quick video from it if you want. We can watch it after we eat."

"Even better."

It didn't take long to get everyone eating, though Dean and Dennis spent part of it looking over Aisha's school work to make sure that she'd actually completed it. They seemed satisfied, and Taylor had made three different videos from the patrol footage. One that could easily be seen as being stitched together from body and visor cameras and didn't show anything past Hookwolf coming around the corner that she was thinking about posting on PHO. The second continued from that point to when Hookwolf left. And the third took advantage of the visor sensor data to show the entire thing from an 'outside' perspective. The latter she also overlaid sound meters onto, since the sensor system had picked up on the sound waves coming from Cricket and Ryan and she could isolate them.

After dinner they watched the last of the three as a group, Rosa and Sandy thought that Ryan making Cricket stumble like an idiot just by canceling out her sound was awesome. Taylor's 'casual wok slap', as Dennis referred to it, was also a hit, but the older Wards were more impressed with the 'bullets with your names on them' necklaces. Though Missy had complained that she'd been hoping to be able to use the line first. At the same time she was happy that she was present when it was used.

The three youngest were then shipped out, and Taylor let the older Wards watch the 'for PHO' video while she checked on Rosa's workshop. Nothing was in need of significant repair, and apparently she and Sherrel had been busy. There were four flying water delivery robots, with space for a person or two on each to satisfy Sherrel's snark. Two 'fill-up' stations to be installed at a water source, and a desalination unit that could be hooked up to one of the fill-up units to let it fill from the ocean. A backpack that was compatible with the delivery robots sat off to the side, partially disassembled with one modular connector in place of a fixed hose, showing that Chris had likely been a bit more active in his assistance.

"Can I post that to PHO?" Dennis asked when Taylor returned. "Please?"

Taylor sighed. "You just want to post it with a funny title, don't you?"

"Duh."

"Go for it."

Max wanted to sigh as he stared down Melody. She kept fidgeting, not used to the lack of scars, aches, pains, and other remnants of her various injuries. On top of that, she was exhausted from the testing they'd put her through, only making it through a sixth of the routines that she used to do with ease.

"You're lucky that Brad already arranged for such an effective punishment," he finally said, causing the woman to gulp. "After all, you not only attacked Maul, against my direct orders to the contrary, but were targeting one of the younger Wards without provocation. It's one thing to attack younger Wards when they attack first, but their powers passively interfering with yours is not an attack."

He let that sit for a moment, then turned to Brad. "Though I wish he'd found a punishment that didn't render you so much less useful in a fight, in several ways it works into some of my current plans." Turning back to Melody, he narrowed his eyes. "Your complete lack of scars means that you can now easily blend in with others. Combined with your enhanced hearing and normal awareness of your surroundings? You'll be perfect for information gathering in various establishments. Though we will need to get you a wig or ten."

"But sir," Melody started, obviously not used to her own voice with the flinch from hearing it. Or perhaps not used to the lack of pain when speaking.

"No buts," Max interrupted. "It'll probably take you years to recover your strength and stamina, and you never broke your stupid showy habits anyway. Until you'd gotten the first half dozen hits in you never struck seriously, which you know has been used against you, multiple times at that. Besides, you need a job while you aren't able to function as a front-line combatant, and nobody is going to expect you to go infiltration. Unless you'd rather volunteer to work in the sex trade?"

He watched as her eyes went wide and she whipped her head back and forth to indicate that she didn't want to go anywhere near the sex trade. Followed by clutching her head in pain, because she still had a concussion. It took two minutes for her to recover, but he turned to Brad once she had. "Now then, I know you didn't know just how far Maul would go with her healing, but it still cost us a capable fighter. Melody needs a new wardrobe, you will be assigning her helpers in choosing suitable attire for various tasks. More importantly, you will be personally funding the shopping trip."

Brad nodded, and didn't argue. "Understood."

Turning back to Melody, Max looked her over. "You've got a week off before your shopping trip to recover from things and get used to moving and speaking without your scars and injuries. After that you'll begin training for some of the jobs you'll need to be able to do in order to not stand out in each establishment. Training yourself back up to fighting fit will need to happen on your own time after you've recovered from the concussion. Oh, and if you mutilate yourself and thus render yourself incapable of doing anything of use then I'll turn you over to the PRT personally. Understood?" She nodded, carefully this time. "Good. Now get out of my sight."

He watched the cameras for the building to ensure that she was well away and out of hearing range, then activated the acoustical privacy field just in case anyway. Turning to Brad, he raised an eyebrow. "She doesn't seem to realize that turning her over to the PRT wouldn't do much. I thought for sure that she'd have pointed out that they'd need a reason to arrest her."

Brad shrugged. "She skipped half the classes, and you keep enough dirt on all of us to give the PRT reason to take us anyway."

"You'd be amazed at how little I have that they could actually act on without her admitting guilt to things directly. It's a useful bluff, but eventually someone will call me on it."

"Huh. Really? What would you do then?"

Max grinned. "Truss them up and hand them, and the 'dirt', over to the BBPD instead. They operate under much less significant restrictions, after all."

"Oh."

Amy: He picked 'Talk to the wok' for a title? Seriously?

Taylor: Whatever floats his boat, I don't really care in the end.

Amy: I get that. But 'wok this way' is more catchy.

Taylor: ...whatever.

Taylor shook her head before going back to reassembling the wind-up clock that her father had attempted to fix. As far as she could tell, the original problem hadn't required taking the thing apart to this level. But she'd shown up far too late in the process to point that out. Specifically, she'd shown up about ten seconds after the gears had exploded out of the back of the thing.

Eventually she finished, including fixing the dent in the back plate that prevented the key from being inserted properly. A quick test showed that it was working, and she picked it up and headed into the living room.

"You got it working?" her father asked, getting up from his chair.

Taylor nodded, tossing the clock to him. "Yep."

"Thanks. Sorry for making so much more work for you. I didn't expect it to explode on me when I took the screws for the inner plate out." He then examined it for a couple of minutes, smiling as he watched it tick along at the right speed. "Good job too, I think it's running better than before it got partially crushed." Putting it to the side, he looked back at her. "I hear that there isn't much planned for tomorrow?"

She shrugged. "Something could always come up."

"True."

Ethan sighed as he headed for the break room to meet up with Erin. It'd been a boring patrol, but that was okay with him. Upon entering, he found her filling a travel mug with hot chocolate.

"What's that?" he asked, pointing at the table in the corner.

Erin turned to look at him. "What?"

"The box."

She looked over, blinking a couple of times. "No clue, I don't think it was there when I came in."

Frowning, he moved over to it. There wasn't much to it, beyond an obvious seam where it could open and a sign on top. "I only open for the funniest?" A quick check showed that it didn't currently want to open, but he grinned anyway. "I suppose that I'll just have to prove that I'm worthy of whatever this prize is, huh?"

"Seriously?" Erin asked, as she came up. She snorted upon reading the box. "I doubt your sense of humor counts, anyway."

He waved her off. "We'll see who's laughing when I get the prize."

She stared at him, then the box. "I really want to prove you wrong, but my sense of self-preservation tells me to drop this."

Taylor paused in her workout on Thursday morning, getting Amy's attention. "Is something wrong?"

Shaking her head, Taylor resumed her exercise. "No, I just got my third recruitment bonus. Plus one."

"What?"

"Not sure which one counts as 'first'. The one responsible for all the vanishing tanks and the kid in Miami both joined up, though they credit you as having helped in both cases. Interestingly, they both came in under 'following in the footsteps of an admired parahuman'. I guess the kid was a fan?"

Amy blinked a couple of times. "I'm confused. The kid, sure, but the other one?"

"No clue there, there aren't any details."

"Dammit. That's going to bug me now."

Vicky spoke up at that point. "I'm confused about both of them. What kid?"

That led to a brief summary of that incident, which Vicky found hilarious in several ways. They then finished up and had breakfast, then took the minivan to school due to a lack of Missy to make roof-hopping easier.

"You're bullshit," Karen said, waving her phone. She'd brought up some of the clips people had made from the patrol video Dennis had posted the night before. Most of them putting captions on Cricket's stumbling or Taylor's use of her wok. Sound effects were also common, that trend having started with someone commenting that it just wasn't right for the wok hit to not have a 'gong' effect.

"Why am I bullshit?" Taylor asked. "I mean, Soundstone did more to neutralize Cricket than I did."

"You scored a perfect hit on her face. Without even giving her the courtesy of looking."

Ignoring that she'd projected just far enough to accomplish that, since you couldn't tell that from any footage at all, Taylor instead took a different tactic. "Do you have any idea how my powers work?"

"You project blunt objects so that they can hit further away."

"And all I have to do is get the projection line to cross my target. Swing wok, project line at guessed head height. She didn't duck, and thus got whacked in the face without me having to know how far away she was at all."

Karen opened her mouth as though to argue that, but didn't say anything. A moment later she dropped down into her seat, pouting. Taylor just went back to eating, though she noticed a couple of people had started hurriedly tapping away on their phones. She thought it likely that the 'just needed to project at head height' was going to show up in at least one thread in the next ten seconds.

"So how did you know which direction to swing?" Vicky asked. As if she didn't know.

Taylor countered that with a question of her own. "Could you hear her running in the posted video?"

"Duh."

Dean lightly-slapped Vicky's forcefield, then sighed because it just wasn't the same as slapping her in the back of the head. "If it was audible to the cameras then you can assume that Taylor heard it too."

"Oh."

After school Taylor had dropped Amy and Missy off at their homes before heading home herself, if only to be seen moving around in an obvious manner. They'd chatted a bit about schoolwork, with Taylor commenting that she was further ahead than the others seemed to be. Missy blamed multitasking, only for Amy to note that she hadn't had time to get that far ahead either, and Taylor was busier with Wards stuff. As such, the other two had decided to buckle down and get further ahead on things.

Taylor was also working on homework, but was also planning on cleaning up the living room. Moving all of the furniture to one side of the room to give the carpet a good cleaning, and later she'd shift everything to the other side to get the other side of the carpet. To that end she was currently doing some quick repairs and maintenance on the aging carpet cleaner they had. Sure, they hadn't used it for a few years because it was broken, but that wasn't exactly a problem for her.

Multitasking aside, it helped that it seemed to be easier to repair the carpet cleaner if she paid less attention to what she was doing. Which was annoying in a way, but tinker snarks were like that. It wasn't like she'd know why she was doing some of the steps anyway.

Eventually she'd reassembled the carpet cleaner and was digging through the cleaning supplies for the bottle she needed when Amy apparently decided that she was fed up.

Amy: I still can't believe you found the time to get so far ahead on your homework.

Taylor: What do you mean?

Amy: It isn't like you can do most of it while patrolling or anything like that.

Taylor: Why not?

Amy: Because you need your school books and people would notice if you had them out?

Taylor: Not much to notice when I'm using digital copies.

Amy: Digital...you jerk, why the hell didn't you tell anyone else?

Taylor: Nobody asked, and it seemed obvious.

There was a bit of silence, during which Taylor found the bottle she needed and started measuring things out. She then found out that Amy had gone silent because she was switching to text messages so as to include Missy, Vicky, and Chris.

A: Taylor's been holding out on us.

M: What do you mean by that?

C: Wha?

A: She's gotten ahead on her homework because she bought digital copies of her school books.

V: Wait, you didn't already know that?

C: I've been getting digital versions of my books since I joined the Wards.

T: See? Told you it was obvious.

A: ...

A: You all suck.

M: Agreed.

Taylor rolled her eyes and moved over to the sink to finish filling the upper bottle for the carpet cleaner with water.

That evening Taylor was in her room going over impending Wards leader stuff. She wanted to be certain that she knew what she needed to be doing until such time as she jumped to the Protectorate or they got someone older than her to step into the role. Most of it was fairly straightforward, but some of the reporting requirements were confusing. Some things were always required, others were required by default but could be overridden by local policy, others were optional unless made required by local policy, and then there were the ones that were always optional. Worse, operating as Wards leader in another region changed your reporting requirements.

There didn't seem to be a regional cheat-sheet already available, but Taylor was working on making one, if only for her own use. She was even planning on having it be semi-interactive, highlighting differences from a selected region. Maybe even have it detect your home region and the region you were accessing from to put them as the top two by default? She hadn't dug into things enough to see if that was possible yet.

She'd made it through twenty departments when she was interrupted.

D: Do you have a few minutes to assist me with something?

T: I believe so. Is this something I need to come to you for?

D: Yes, but I don't believe it will take long. I can meet you in the tinker facility.

T: Okay. I'll be there shortly.

Curious, Taylor got up, heading downstairs first to let her father know she was leaving. It turned out that he was on the phone, so she wrote a quick note for him and he nodded. She then headed back up to her room and used her closet to open up the Shaper-linked pocket dimension, followed by exiting into the tinker workshop.

Amy: What're you doing?

Taylor: Dragon asked for my assistance.

Amy: Oh. Okay.

Taylor headed for Dragon's suite to see what was up. She found the door open and Dragon in a power armor body, the two more biological bodies in open pods in front of her. "Hello Dragon. I see you made support pods."

"I did," Dragon agreed.

"So what do you need help with?"

Dragon gestured to the two pods. "I was hoping that you'd be willing to implant a couple of things in these bodies. Specifically, I got my own pocket dimension and I have key crystals for it."

Taylor blinked. "Oh. Is that all? I assume you have a couple of crystals with you."

A small box with two crystals in it was handed over, and Taylor opened each support pod long enough to carefully slip a crystal into each body. She then waited for Dragon to transfer into big Theresa, which took far less time with the added bandwidth the support pod allowed for. After that it was only a couple of minutes to show that the implanted crystal worked for Theresa just as it did for the others with them.

"Thank you," Theresa said, handing Taylor another box. "This contains a spare crystal for my pocket dimension, and a biometric security key for the server vault I set up in Vancouver. I plan on using both as my primary backup points going forward, and if anything goes wrong I feel that you should have access to both."

Taylor took the box and opened it to take a look. Sure enough, one key crystal was in one padded section and a biometric security key was in the other. "I see. I suppose it makes sense to have backup access methods." Now she just needed to figure out where to store them. Maybe in Ackbar's pocket dimension space for the time being? If she removed the key crystals from the opening devices at home then there would be little to no way in without her being involved, after all.

"Oh!" Theresa said, bouncing lightly, which resulted in Taylor doing her best to ignore that the woman hadn't put any clothing on for the few minutes she was going to be 'awake'. "I have something else for you too." She then darted out of the room, only to return a minute later with another box. "These are upgrade kits for the pocket dimension beacons, so that you can tie them into your openers if you want to. I included one for you and one for Amy, they support up to eight openers each."

Blinking, Taylor took the box. "If we upgrade Amy's beacon at home, will that lock the rest of her family out? Missy was locked out of the PRT building beacon when that one was upgraded."

Theresa blinked at that. "Oh. That's a good point, and Miss Biron had requested the upgrade needed for her own equipment. I'm scheduled to help her next week, I'll see about getting the other three Dallons included."

"Thank you."

It wasn't much longer before Taylor was at home, trying to use the act of figuring out what she needed to do for the beacon upgrade process to distract her from feeling a little jealous of Theresa's body. She'd helped build the thing, after all. On the upgrade front, the beacon itself looked trivial, but connecting the opening devices to it would require running wires. She'd probably have to get help with that.

Friday morning Taylor had a list of things to pick up for the 'beacon upgrade project'. Primarily a spool of network wire and some fish tape that could reach the basement from the second floor, but she'd also need some nail-in clips to hold the wire in place. She was planning on picking up enough wire and clips so that the leftovers could be used for Amy's beacon, which shouldn't be hard. Her father had also admitted that it would probably be a good idea to put an opener in downstairs, but the doorway they'd chosen didn't have power next to it, so she needed electrical wire and related items for doing that right as well. At least she had plenty of opener units thanks to the full kits Joey had provided.

She met Amy and Vicky at the gym, but Missy didn't seem to be joining them today. Discussion was limited, mostly Amy still annoyed at only just having found out about digital copies of her schoolbooks the day before, though Dragon had apparently arranged for upgrades to the pocket dimension openers over the weekend instead of the following week. A bit of a 'duh' moment, really, since all of the pocket dimensions needing the upgrades had key crystals available to Dragon for installing equipment. Vicky was proud of the fact that she'd started it by asking if it was just a courtesy notice, given the work already happening.

When they were done they swung through one of the cafeterias, then hopped into the minivan to head to school. Amy offered to drive, stating that it shouldn't always fall on Taylor, which led to an explanation of the 'both are listed on the insurance plans' details for Vicky's benefit.

"FREEDOM!" a girl yelled as she exited the school that afternoon. Which caused Taylor to roll her eyes. It was just the weekend. The following weekend was at least a long weekend.

"What are your plans for the afternoon?" Vicky asked as they headed towards the minivan.

Taylor shrugged. "I've got to do some shopping, get ready to go out to dinner, and ensure that I get enough sleep for a first thing in the morning meeting tomorrow."

"Shopping?"

"Couple kinds of wire, nail-in clips to hold things in place in the basement, a gang box or two, useful tools for working with things. I should probably get some more electrical tape too, for that matter, since I didn't think to check how much we had available."

"Oh. Home improvement type shopping. As much as it isn't supporting the local guys, you'll get far better prices and selection at the big store just outside of town, especially if you're going for full spools of wire. For whatever reason the locals have decided that hobbyists and very small jobs are the only ones to cater to."

Amy blinked, and turned to Vicky. "How the hell do you know that?"

"I price-shopped for various kinds of wire for personal projects. There's a single decent hobby store in town if you're looking for spools of single strands for small work, but anything you need nail-in clips for is going to be best obtained at the big store. I ended up going with a small spool of phone wire to cut apart for pre-twisted pairs."

Taylor shrugged. "I was planning on heading out that way anyway, since I wanted to get at least one larger spool. Want to join me?"

Vicky nodded. "Sure."

Taylor unloaded the contents of the rear of the minivan into the garage, having easily found everything with Vicky's help. Though it was weird hearing her discuss the merits of various options for getting pull cables through walls, something Amy had agreed with. Personally speaking, Taylor was hoping to cheat at home, but that was for another point in time and required assistance she'd probably forget to ask for. For now she had to shower and put on some clean clothing, because the force field belt didn't protect against idiots dropping bags of quick-set cement and making a mess in the aisles when they burst.

It didn't take long to determine that she should start by getting a vacuum out to clean up the inside of the minivan, then go take a shower. If they weren't using it to go to dinner then she'd store the minivan in the pocket dimension when she was clean.

Half an hour later she'd showered, put on slightly nicer clothing, and was preparing a quick meal for Ackbar. Her father would be home soon and they could decide which vehicle to take when he got there. She didn't have a significant preference, since while the minivan was armored it also stood out a lot more than her father's unarmored car. Either way it probably wouldn't be a big deal.

After dinner and an extra hour of chatting Taylor was finally getting into the driver's seat of the minivan, her father unsteadily moving around to the passenger side. She'd driven on the excuse of Garnet seeing the minivan, but suspected it was actually so that her father could have alcohol with his meal. Especially as Garnet hadn't expressed any interest in seeing the minivan. It took no time at all for Taylor to be ready to go, but her father took a couple of minutes to figure the seatbelt out. Mostly remembering that it was on his right and not his left, while insisting that he didn't need any help.

"You didn't seem to know a couple of Garnet's stories," Taylor noted as she backed out of the parking space. "Like the bit about her accidentally bringing pot brownies to a middle school bake sale."

Her father nodded. "She hinted at that one, but I'd never heard the details. Nor that she repeated it a year later, even if that time it was her roommate's fault. But she bragged about the laxative-laced brownies for the frat party multiple times. I suspect so that she could call that 'the brownie incident' instead of the mistake with the middle school. But I could've done without hearing about some of the other cruel pranks she took part in."

It was her turn to nod. "Yeah. Not sure I wanted to know about capsaicin in a frat's showers after one member pissed her friends off. Though getting it blamed on someone else in the frat sounded somewhat impressive. Did mom really try and steal all of your clothing while leaving you with a single female outfit?"

He snorted. "Yes. Three times, though she never 'got away' with more than a third of my wardrobe each time. Then again, she ended up wearing all three outfits not long afterwards, so I suspect that she was using her 'budget' to buy herself clothing that she thought I might like to see her in. It was more obvious when they pointed her at Harry and she pulled it off without any issues whatsoever, and without leaving any evidence that it'd been her. Then again, he had a habit of trying to pinch her ass."

They spent the ride home talking about the various stories that Garnet had told Taylor, and when they got home she pulled the minivan straight into the pocket dimension. Her father was a little disoriented when they exited into her bedroom, but didn't complain about not having to climb the stairs. Instead he just mumbled something about 'better than an elevator' as he headed for his room.

Taylor kept an ear out for a few. Her father didn't try and shower, but he did go through the rest of his evening routine. Only when she was certain that he'd made it into bed safely did she go to bed herself. She didn't know why they wanted the group of them in for such an early meeting the next day, but she definitely didn't plan on being half asleep during it. Though due to the early meeting she wasn't planning on visiting the gym first thing, in part because Amy didn't want to have to get up early enough to join her.

Though she did wonder why Dragon had sent a message earlier with the beacon code for El Paso. Sure, it was nice to know, but did she really need to be told about it as soon as it was confirmed to be set up and working? She'd even checked and found that it wasn't even on the PRT's list of codes yet.

Chapter 228 Saturday morning started early for Taylor. But not bright and early, as she'd gotten up before the sun had come up due to an unexpected need to use the bathroom. Unable to get back asleep, she swung through the gym alone, since Amy hadn't gotten up before it was reasonable to be up. Visiting the gym hadn't been in her plans, but she was up anyway and it was more productive than laying in bed doing nothing. After that she got into costume and headed for one of the cafeterias for waffles. The others started to arrive while she was eating, but she didn't rush to finish just because of that. Brian dropped Aisha off, Dean had picked up Dennis before driving in, and Missy and Chris seemed to have ended up on the same bus.

Eventually Taylor wandered back to the Wards area to find the others waiting in-costume.

"When the hell did you get here?" Missy asked upon seeing that Taylor was in costume already.

Taylor shrugged. "I came early to use the gym."

It was likely that several of the others were staring at her with incredulous looks on their faces, but masks made it hard to tell. So what if she'd gotten used to 'waking up' by exercising.

Twenty minutes later they were in a conference room with Deputy Director Renick, Colin, and Miss Militia.

"Good morning," Miss Militia greeted. "We apologize for the very early meeting, but we have a few things to go over before we hope to take advantage of a new program. To start with, though, we need to schedule the transition of Clockblocker and Gallant to the Protectorate, with Maul taking over as Wards Leader. As school is in session it will need to be done on a weekend. Do any of you have a problem with it happening next Saturday?"

"It's supposed to be rainy," Dennis noted.

"And for security reasons we were going to hold it indoors anyway, so that's a bonus. Anything else?" Nobody said anything, so Miss Militia nodded while Deputy Director Renick made a note of that. "Okay then. Now we need to decide which ceremony variant to use. Maul is currently 'in the spotlight', so we should probably use one of the more long-winded versions."

Taylor snorted. "I vote we use the one where I kick the two over to a Protectorate member, say ten words, and then leave the stage."

Miss Militia sighed. "You weren't here last time when I pointed out that it isn't on the sanctioned list."

"Anti-hero. I'm encouraged to pick from the 'not sanctioned' list. That's the entire reason the list exists."

There was a pause before Aisha, Dennis, Dean, Deputy Director Renick, and Miss Militia pulled out electronic devices, obviously wanting to find this for themselves. Taylor suspected that Missy and Chris were doing the same, but using their visors and built-in Bluetooth instead.

"She's right," Dennis said, apparently having beaten the rest. "I don't even care that it'll make me look like a fool, going down in history as the first ones to be literally booted over to the Protectorate is worth it."

Dean nodded. "It'll definitely make an impression, and the ten-word 'speech' with no offering of time for questions would probably piss off the reporters. Which I also like the idea of, to be honest."

Miss Militia looked at Renick. "Are we really going to let them do that?"

Renick shrugged. "They're right. It's a single line in the regulations that we overlooked, and may not have come up before, but we don't have much of a reason to deny them."

"Huh. Well then, might as well put Assault down as the token Protectorate member. We won't hear the end of it if we don't. But only if Clockblocker and Gallant agree to that ceremony."

Both of them gave her a thumbs-up, and scheduling requests were made. Deputy Director Renick then took over, turning on the projector to show a 'teleportation network' intro slide. "Now then, we've finished installation and testing of teleportation units nationwide, and Brockton Bay has volunteered to be part of the initial testing group for moving parahumans around. To that end, we contacted parents and guardians of those of you that are still underage. Kid Win, your parents have declined to give you permission for now, but indicated that may change. Hulder, your brother has requested veto rights for any trips you would be making. Maul and Vista have full permission."

A moment later the slide changed, to show a list of rules and procedures, and Renick continued. "As you can see from the rules, the three youngest Wards don't qualify for the program yet and departures to other regions cannot happen after three in the afternoon on school nights. PRT staff will be passing through the system ahead of any Ward, in either direction, to take advantage of the inability to retarget the teleporters immediately after they've been used. A check with staff at the other end of the connection will need to be cleared before Wards pass through. Accepting of out-of-region tasks by Wards requires permission from PRT oversight, and cross-region training and patrols requested by the PRT will require acceptance from those participating. Are there any questions on these rules and regulations?"

Everyone shook their heads, and Renick nodded before flipping to the next slide. This showed a general overview of arrival and departure zones. "As you can see, we've aimed to standardize things. Each PRT building has ten teleportation units total, eight split between arrival and departure and two that are capable of both roles. These are split across five rooms by category. Protectorate buildings have an additional two full functionality units in a sixth room. Generally one incoming and one outgoing room will be flagged as 'for emergencies' at any given time, though which ones are flagged as such will rotate to balance usage. Protectorate buildings will have one full functionality room similarly flagged. Use of the 'for emergencies' rooms without an actual emergency is a punishable offense."

He glared at them, then flipped to the next slide. This one showed an image of an internal system. "Maul will be receiving access to the cross-system requests queue next weekend when it's opened up to participating region Wards Leaders. I won't go over it in detail today, but it has filtering options for regions, general types of tasks, things suitable for specific parahumans, and will automatically lock things out as needed if a target parahuman is selected. For example, Maul shouldn't be accepting tasks in Alaska, Arizona, or Washington right now due to possible legal issues. When filtering for things suitable for her those regions would be automatically locked out. A request for permission to take on a given task can be easily generated from the interface."

A moment later he dismissed the slide, and powered down the projector. Miss Militia then took over. "For the initial foray into things, we have requests available for Maul and Vista. Starting with the latter, there's a standing request for Vista to aid in moving several historic buildings through streets that are too narrow to fit them. One has become higher priority due to damage to the riverbed it sits near, but there are several in the queue across the country. Vista, would you like to take that on today?"

Missy nodded vigorously. "Definitely."

"Very well. Maul, there are a number of requests for your assistance in various ways, from power testing and psychology assistance to various things where a blaster of your abilities would be helpful. However, El Paso believes they have a lead on a smuggler that they feel may be a parahuman. They have no proof and are hoping that you can help them determine things more definitively."

Taylor blinked. "Oh. I guess that's why Dragon gave me their beacon code."

"Beacon code?"

"Pocket dimension beacons. It's part of how I get here every morning without being seen these days."

Miss Militia blinked. "I wasn't aware that they had that as an option, but that would make it easier for you to make your way there. If you're willing to aid them then I'll verify that things are valid before allowing you to head over."

Taylor shrugged. "Might as well, though it sounds like it shouldn't take long."

"Then I'll let them know you're coming, though they might not be ready for you yet. There's a couple hours time difference to take into account. Perhaps you can ensure that you have everything you need ready in the meantime?"

Nodding, she started thinking about what she might need that she didn't already have available. Perhaps she should fetch her platform from the roof to slip it into the pocket dimension so that she didn't have to worry about it traveling a good portion of the country unescorted if she needed it?

Miss Militia ignored Taylor's change in focus, instead turning to the others. "As for the rest of you, the other aspect of this is patrols in other regions. Our first act on that front is hopefully going to be hosting a couple of Wards from elsewhere in the country. In particular, we've got a couple of Wards Leaders that haven't previously dealt with mixed patrols but recently got mover-capable teammates. They and their mover-capable teammates will hopefully be arriving in the next couple of hours and we'd like you to lead them through mixed patrols."

Taylor stepped out of the doorway into the 'visitor arrival room' room in El Paso at around seven in the morning, local time. She'd been able to warn Amy, who found the whole thing amusing and annoying. Amusing because until the public figured out what was going on there were going to be a lot of odd cape sightings. Annoyed because they didn't want her going along for the trip.

"Good morning Maul," a man greeted her. He didn't look like much, but that didn't mean anything. "I'm Bruno Campo, Deputy Director here in Department 19. Thank you for coming on short notice, but we've got a lead on our likely smuggler that'll only be good for a couple of days, if that. She's very good at slipping away."

Taylor nodded. "Good morning to you too. Though if your smuggler is a parahuman then they might be a mover, which would help with slipping away and could hinder my identification of them."

"We're hoping that you can help contain them if it comes down to that, but even confirmation that they are a mover would be enough for us and Border Patrol. Regardless, if you come with me then we can get to the meeting and go over what we do know."

A few minutes later they were in a conference room. Taylor had claimed a donut before sitting down, looking around the table. She thought it slightly odd that she was the only parahuman in the room, but it could be that they didn't have anyone local that could easily help with things. It would certainly help explain why she'd been called in from New England to help with something in Texas.

It wasn't much longer before a folder was passed down the table to her, and she opened it up even as Miss Sarka started to go over the contents. "As you can see, we've been following Jeanie Hafner, nineteen, known to her clients only as Jeanie. She's suspected of moving people, money, guns, and drugs across the border. We have evidence of her being paid for said work, and two people in custody who claim that she got them into the country, but no idea as to how she does it. What we do have is a hotel room that she checked into yesterday and knowledge of a meeting arranged with a potential client later today. We'd like to get you near the hotel, and if she is a parahuman we'd like you to follow her to the meeting."

Taylor blinked at that. "Why would I need to follow her?"

"Because if she is a parahuman then she's likely to bolt from the meeting when the federal agent posing as a client tries to arrest her. We're hoping that you can aid in capturing her. Of course, if she isn't a parahuman then we obviously have more work to do in order to figure out who she's likely working with."

"Ah."

Missy grinned as she sat on top of the historic house while it rolled down the street on a set of trailers being pulled by a large truck. They'd closed down the entire route, gotten everyone out of the way, and then she'd done her thing. Five times wider than it had been, six times taller to the lowest wires or traffic lights, and one hundredth the length. The end result was that a lot of people had shown up to watch, only to flee with headaches. Of course, the entire operation was going to be completed in a fraction of the time they'd originally expected thanks to her crunching the distance, so there wasn't anywhere near as much to watch anyway.

The only downside was that she couldn't do her homework while focusing on keeping the manipulation going. Taylor and Amy were bullshit with that whole multitasking bit. It would've been easier to hold in place if she wasn't showing off, but the route wasn't originally straight and she'd made it straight in the process of warping everything. The added complexity there meant that she had to keep most of her focus on it, and eventually she'd have a killer headache. But they'd be done long before she got to that point.

Ten minutes later the eighteen minute trip across three quarters of the city was completed, several hours ahead of the planned schedule. Missy carefully dismantled the spatial warps she'd set up, finally able to relax as the last one was released. After a few moments she warped space enough to get to the ground easily.

"Thank you Vista," the driver said as she climbed out of the cab of the truck. "That took far less time, effort, and fuel than expected. If my bosses listen to me on anything then you should get a bonus for that part alone. Not having to turn with that thing hooked up was a godsend."

Missy shrugged. "It wasn't that hard, and I'm not sure how you were going to turn with a house behind you."

"Very carefully, and the hope was that you could make the intersections large enough to do so without backing up. Instead you made it a non-issue."

"I'm glad it helped. But now what do we do? It doesn't look like they were expecting us to be done with this part already."

The woman nodded. "There is that. While we wait for someone to show up, how about I buy you a milkshake?"

There was no way Missy was going to say no to that.

Taylor was bored. They'd had her get into position on the hotel roof, but Jeanie wasn't actually there yet. Instead they had various groups keeping an eye on her as she did some perfectly normal shopping. It was expected that she'd return to the hotel to change, since she was known to wear a costume, which was part of why they didn't have Taylor running around to follow her already. The other goal there was that it was far more likely that someone would spot Taylor, and they wanted to keep her presence from being too obvious.

So instead she was sitting in a blind spot on the roof, working on scripting lookups for her 'Wards Leader acting in another region' page. If she got it working correctly then it would update itself automatically when any region changed their rules, and adding new rules for comparison would be trivial. Sadly, the 'highlight changes from your region' bit hadn't panned out, but she'd been able to get both 'pick a region and highlight differences' and 'pick two regions to compare' working. That the first region defaulted to the ENE was her prerogative as the creator of the thing, right?

"Observer six to Maul," came over the radio while she was trying to determine if the active quarantine zones had non-standard formatting intentionally. "Target is heading your way."

Blinking, Taylor sat up. She saved her current work and switched to the camera feeds she had available for watching the hotel entrance and elevators. Sure, she could just use the sensor system in her visor, but there was a rendering delay and privacy concerns. Not to mention that the locals didn't know about it, as far as she knew. So the semi-public camera feeds it was.

It took Jeanie twenty minutes to enter Taylor's range, an additional nine to get into her documented range, and then four more to get into view of one of the cameras for Taylor to confirm that it was, in fact, Jeanie that she was sensing. The woman made her way up to her hotel room and moved around for a few minutes, then seemed to settle in for the moment. Then again, it was still nearly two hours before she was supposed to meet up with her 'client'.

"Maul to console," Taylor said. "Target is a parahuman. Proceeding with information gathering."

And now came the interesting part. Technically it could be considered an invasion of privacy for Taylor to communicate with the woman's snark without her obviously using powers. Except that they actually got a judge to sign off on a search warrant variant in the event that she was a parahuman. One that allowed Taylor, operating with permission of Border Control, to gather information on the woman's power.

Taylor: He...

[Dismissal]

Taylor frowned as the connection shut.

Amy: Unusually rude snark.

Taylor: I noticed.

Amy: I don't think it felt hungry from here.

Taylor: It isn't, at least as far as I can tell. Which just means figuring things out the hard way, I guess.

"Maul to console," Taylor said, suppressing an urge to sigh. "Target's powers aren't willing to talk."

Sadly, it was now 'hurry up and wait' time again. There wasn't much to do until the woman got into her costume and headed out for her meeting, after all. Luckily, when they'd explained some of the known timing Taylor had decided to ensure that she had a packed lunch with her.

Dennis wanted to smack Rockstar, but had resisted. So far. The boy was a pain in the ass and had abhorrent views about gender roles at that. Not willing to accept that his younger female teammate should be anywhere near battle, despite having power-driven urges that directly included fighting. Granted, mostly via sneak attacks, since she seemed to have triggered as a mix between stereotypical and real-life ninjas. She could climb buildings and run along rooftops without issue, but her idea of 'blending in' for a sneak attack was based entirely on not looking out of place instead of with any obvious stranger ability. Coupled with unnaturally quick reflexes and an instinctive fighting style and she was a decent threat to gang members.

"Look kid," Dennis said, having pulled Rockstar to the side. "I don't know where you got your ideas, but you can't treat Surefoot as though she's nothing more than a scout."

The boy scoffed. "She's a girl and shouldn't be fighting."

"She is your teammate and by all indications has to fight to stay sane."

"Bah, she obviously fooled them into thinking that."

Dennis wanted to glare at the boy, but his helmet would render it less than effective. On the other hand, Surefoot had said something about this earlier, including that she'd already filed two complaints. They hadn't gone anywhere yet, but that was probably because she didn't know who to file the complaints with for maximum effect. So he waved the boy to continue down the street. Once he wasn't looking, Dennis toggled the privacy mode of his helmet and pulled his phone out to make a call.

"Hello Clockblocker," Mrs. Cooper answered almost immediately. "You do know that you're essentially out from under our purview at this point, correct?"

Dennis snorted. "Of course. I even resisted the urge to send a tacky card in celebration."

"I see. Then why are you calling today?"

"I'd like to report a Wards Leader that's intentionally dismissive of his teammate's power urges."

"Really now? Give me a moment to get a new file open."

"Take your time, I doubt anything will actually happen along our patrol route."

There was a moment of silence before he could hear Mrs. Cooper sigh. "You're calling me while on patrol?"

"Yep. Didn't think this should wait."

"Well, you might be right there."

Taylor floated along, keeping Jeanie in range from a couple blocks over. They'd finally reached the 'she goes out in costume to meet the client' phase of things. Of course, Taylor had to stay out of sight while still tailing the woman, which was easier said than done. They didn't think anyone had noticed her skimming the rooftops on her platform yet, but it was probably only a matter of time. Assuming anyone bothered to look up, anyway.

It took twenty minutes to get from the hotel to the meeting point, and Jeanie had made the entire trip on foot. Taylor settled down next to a running air conditioning unit even as she was tied into the wire the 'client' was wearing. Most of the initial chatter was designed around pre-arranged code phrases to verify that they were each other, followed by moving down an alley and to a more secluded spot that Jeanie had apparently prepared. She had at least three exit routes that Taylor could spot, possibly five if she had access to a couple of the buildings. Border Patrol was already moving into position around the area either way.

Taylor's cue to get moving was the woman bolting when the agent tried to arrest her. Oddly, instead of going for any of the obvious exit routes, which were also covered by others at this point, the woman darted through the back door of a bar. It might've been that she knew that agents were already coming down the other routes, but there hadn't been any hesitation. Landing just outside, Taylor watched as several agents ran into the bar. More would be doing so from the front of the building too.

"She vanished," one of the agents called a few minutes later, triggering a flurry of orders and activity from others.

Blinking, Taylor wondered how the hell they were missing the woman, since she was obviously still in there. Though perhaps she had a stranger power? Those usually became obvious fairly quickly, but then again Taylor wasn't in the room. Perhaps she was 'out of range' at the moment. The agents spread out to search several nearby buildings, and Taylor took the opportunity to head into the bar herself. It wasn't like they'd done anything sensible like ask her where the parahuman had gone, after all. In fact, they were treating her like she didn't exist, despite knowing that she'd tracked Jeanie without needing to see her already.

Once inside she noted that the place had obviously seen better days, and based on the mess nobody had cleaned it in the past day or two. With a sigh, she walked over to the bar, stepping behind it as she wondered how the hell the agents had missed Jeanie hiding there, since it seemed obvious to check behind things in the room. Of course, it wasn't long before she had her answer. It was certainly an interesting trick. Now Taylor just had to decide how to deal with it.

Hannah raised an eyebrow as she looked across the table at Dennis. "You called the Youth Guard, while on patrol."

Dennis nodded. "Of course."

"And got them incredibly riled up in an amazingly short time."

"Yeah. Mrs. Cooper seemed outraged that certain reports had been overlooked when she was checking on things."

She nodded. "Yes, I got that impression as well when I talked to her, though I wasn't privy to why you called. What, exactly, did you say to her to get them started on revoking Rockstar's status as Wards Leader?"

"I merely pointed out that he was intentionally ignoring Surefoot's need to fight due to his upbringing instilling a very limited view of what women should be doing in the world. One that directly clashes with Surefoot's needs."

"I see. And the claims he made about you assaulting him with your power?"

Dennis shrugged. "He refused to listen when I told him to stay back while Surefoot engaged the drug dealer. Freezing his costume in place was the easiest way to ensure that he didn't risk her safety by alerting them to the impending attack."

"And I assume you feel that your patrol footage backs that up."

"It does."

"Then there shouldn't be any problems."

Dennis snorted. "Oh, I'm sure that there will be plenty of problems. Just none on our end."

"Indeed."

"I can't believe she got away again," Deputy Director Campo grumbled. "I thought for sure Maul would be able to help there. Miss Hafner must be a mover, which would explain a few things."

Taylor snorted, causing everyone to turn to her. "Sadly for her, I'm fairly certain that she isn't a mover."

"A stranger, then?"

"Nope. Well, possibly a one, I suppose. Doubt it goes higher than that if it's there at all."

Mister Homewood from Border Patrol grumbled. "Given that she got away and you couldn't tell us what her powers are before, how can you be so certain of this?"

Taylor tilted her head. "Who said she got away?"

"The lot of you came back empty-handed after she vanished in the bar. We're going to have to see what we can find for tunnels out of the place, just in case, but it's already too late for that."

"I doubt there are any tunnels."

Deputy Director Campo sighed. "And why do you say that?"

Taylor shrugged. "Do you honestly think that I would've let her escape through a tunnel without following her?"

That seemed to bring everyone up short. They'd all been read in on her status as a cape detector, after all.

Mister Homewood narrowed his eyes. "If she isn't a mover, and you didn't let her get away, then where is she?"

Taylor smirked and pulled a capped bottle out of her pocket, placing it on the table. "May I present one Jeanie in a bottle. Likely a breaker state of sorts, I'm sure they'll want to run some tests."

It was probably a good thing that she'd been recording with her visor. At a minimum she was certain that Amy, Dennis, Missy, and Ethan would want to see the looks on everyone's faces at that statement.

Taylor had returned home in time for dinner, after they'd attempted to yell at her for her little joke. It wasn't her fault that they hadn't realized that she'd filled out all the appropriate paperwork ahead of time, and she'd been the only one present that PRT regulations technically considered to be suitable for restraining a parahuman with a breaker state. She'd even insisted on following proper procedures for transferring control of Jeanie to PRT officers, at which point they could do whatever they wanted with regards to Border Patrol without it officially impacting Taylor.

She'd also prepared videos and dropped them into the system, ensuring that links were sent to Dennis, Missy, and Ethan. Amy had been sent a copy directly before that and was still snickering about it. She even forgave Taylor for not telling her what was going on before that since it would've ruined the surprise the first time she watched the video.

On her way out she'd also briefly met up with Dragon, who was there to help set up a trial run of using tinkertech to monitor border crossings. Inspired by Jeanie's comings and goings through that particular border crossing, as far as they'd been able to tell, but minimal testing had shown that the sensors in question didn't pick up the woman's breaker state. They'd still be running the test to see what else might be picked up. That project hadn't needed Taylor's help, so she hadn't stuck around.

Of course, it wasn't all fun, because federal agencies working together required lots of paperwork and she had her own share. On that front, she still had to fill out a number of things, including at least two 'survey' sets and various things required by each side of the whole dance. Most of which they'd only told her about as she was about to head home, and half of which she couldn't even start on until others had finished their portions. Luckily, all but one of those were now at a point where she could fill out her parts and she'd been assured that the last one would be available by mid-morning at the absolute latest.

It wouldn't take long to ensure that she had everything that she could take care of completed before going to bed, and she idly wondered what she'd be working on the following day. Not to mention where she'd be working on it, for that matter. After all, she could end up almost anywhere in the country with minimal issue at this point, with or without beacons available thanks to the teleporter network that'd been set up.

Ethan grinned as he walked over to the box. He'd gone on a prank offensive and had surely proven himself as 'the funniest' by now. For extra proof, he had Erin recording his impending success.

"Ready?" he asked.

"Of course," Erin replied.

Nodding, he reached down and pulled on the lid, his grin expanding even more as he did so. A moment later the lid flipped entirely open on its own and he was hit in the face with a pie. He could hear Erin laughing at him even as he tried to figure out what the hell just happened.

A moment later he pulled the pie tin off of his face, wiped his eyes with his other hand, and looked at the table that the box had been sitting on. Which now had a layer of ash on it, but no box. Grumbling, he looked at the pie tin, only to see the word 'sucker' written on it.

Finally, he growled. "I've been had."

Erin got enough control over herself to respond to that one. "They just proved that you're the funniest target."

Sadly, she was entirely unaffected by his glares.

Chapter 229 Sunday morning Taylor started her day by dealing with paperwork. Both expected and unexpected, since they'd sent her a summary of findings from Jeanie, whose cape name was apparently Genie. Which seemed like it would be a recipe for horrible misunderstandings, but she'd made it work for her over the past few years. Most of the reason for her getting that information was confirmation that the woman couldn't see or hear anything while she was in a container, which Taylor had figured out before jamming a cork into the bottle in the first place. Forcing a cap onto it afterwards was just extra insurance. Because of that Jeanie had no clue who'd actually captured her.

With that done, she had a quick pre-workout breakfast, then headed for the gym. Amy and Vicky met her in the Shaper-linked pocket dimension.

"So I hear you got a solo capture yesterday," Vicky said as they headed down the hall from the Wards area.

Taylor shrugged. "It wasn't like there was a fight or anything."

"Still impressive that you caught someone who'd been eluding people for years."

"All I did was stick a cork in a bottle, cap it, and drop it in my pocket."

Vicky stopped walking for a moment, obviously stunned, before rushing to catch up. "You did what?"

Amy snickered. "She captured a parahuman with a breaker state that lets her put herself in containers like bottles. Presumably with the ability to bring people and items in with her if she was using it to smuggle."

"Oh."

For the second day in a row Taylor was sitting in a meeting room with the older Wards. Miss Militia and Deputy Director Renick were also present again, but it wasn't as early as the day before. Aisha had been the last to arrive and hadn't bothered to get into costume before coming to the meeting.

"Good morning," Deputy Director Renick said to start things off. "I wasn't planning on another meeting like this today, but then Maul made fools of Border Patrol in Texas."

Taylor snorted at that. "Not my fault they forgot that I existed. Or why I was even there, for that matter."

"And nobody is blaming you. Your 'Jeanie in a bottle' video has become an instant hit internally and will likely be shared as part of the 'cautionary tale' that will come of this in other agencies working with us. Namely, if you've asked for parahuman assistance, don't forget that you've got parahuman assistance. The superiors of those Border Patrol agents have already sent thanks for doing your job even though they decided to ignore you, and you can possibly expect a gift basket by the end of the week as well."

"Oh."

"Yes, well, thank you for that. It might make our work with a couple of agencies go a little more smoothly, if only in hopes of avoiding something that embarrassing being pulled by parahumans aiding them. Also prompting this meeting is an incident yesterday where the Youth Guard was called in on Rockstar. The decision was entirely correct and we can't find any fault with it, but it has caused some interdepartmental friction. They may attempt to find out who called the Youth Guard, but that's protected information. Do not believe any claims to the contrary, no matter who makes them. If anyone pushes the issue you should inform them that they need to make the inquiry through Director Piggot. Any questions?"

Nobody said anything, and Miss Militia took over. "Very well. Due to some of the mentioned interdepartmental friction we won't be hosting anyone from other regions today. At the same time, all requests for Maul to assist with psychology have been suspended. Though there is a request from Minnesota for assistance with a tinker who keeps building deadly traps. So far nobody trapped in them has died, but it's been close several times and is believed to be a matter of time."

Taylor blinked. "Are you asking if I want to intentionally go after someone building deadly traps?"

"As I said, none of them have killed anyone. Even without that, you've got your own skills to help with any that you run into, you'd have backup ready to pull you out of anything that did grab you, and none of the traps have been brute rated or captured parahumans in the first place."

"Oh. So it should be reasonably safe for me no matter what, compared to random people who stumble upon the things?"

Miss Militia nodded at her. "Exactly."

"Okay. That sounds reasonable enough."

"Good. Especially since the other request for you to go out involves devices that cause explosive tumors and we aren't happy with the safety precautions they proposed." That had everyone staring at Miss Militia for a moment, but she didn't elaborate. Instead, she continued on. "As for the rest of you, we'd like two volunteers to join the Protectorate today for a combat exercise, and ideally only one of them should be Clockblocker or Gallant."

"Combat?" Aisha said, beating the others to responding as she bounced a little in her seat. "Count me in!"

Chris shrugged. "Unless you want one of the other two, I'm game."

"What's the plan for the rest of us?" Missy asked.

Miss Militia shrugged. "If you want to patrol, do so. Otherwise take the day off."

Unlike the day before, today Taylor had to depart for Minnesota using the new teleporter system. She still had her platform in the pocket dimension for easy access, of course, but it would take far too long to get there using any other methods available to her short of invoking Scotty. And she didn't think that it was a good use of their abilities when other options were available. She watched as they powered up and targeted the departure pad, then waited for the PRT officer to make the initial trip.

"Arrival has been confirmed," the woman operating the controls said. "You're clear to follow."

Taylor nodded and stepped forward.

Taylor: I'm about to make the jump.

Amy: Thanks for the warning.

A moment later she spent a fraction of a second being in Brockton Bay and Minnesota at the same time, after which she stepped off of the arrival pad in Minnesota.

"Welcome to Minneapolis," a male parahuman Taylor didn't recognize greeted. "How was the trip?"

Taylor shook her head. "Bit disorienting being in two places at once for a moment, but okay otherwise."

The man blinked. "That was supposed to be a joke, but two places at once? And how did you even notice?"

"I have my ways."

"Right. Whatever. I'm Longjump and have been assigned to help get you over to South Dakota. Specifically Rapid City, it'll take us about an hour. I'll be useless for at least an hour after we get there, but we've got people waiting for us that'll take over with you."

"I suppose that would be faster than flying there myself from here."

"Most likely, unless you can fly five hundred miles per hour."

Taylor shook her head. "Nope. Nowhere near that fast."

He gestured to the door. "Then we should probably get going."

Their arrival in Rapid City had actually been near the airport to the East, where Taylor was handed off to a group of PRT officers. They had her get into a van for a trip through town to where the tinker had been building their traps most recently.

"Most of the traps are multiple-use," officer Anselmi explained. "But we dismantle them as soon as we find them, which is pretty much only after at least one person has been trapped. A group of locals has stopped reporting them when they find them, treating them more like thrill rides than the life-threatening hazards they are. We've been lucky so far in that nobody has used some of the extra lockdown features that would prevent escapes, though that could be because we're the only ones looking for the control boxes. Which we find to be odd, since they're in prime 'observation' points."

A couple of videos showed a person escaping a previous trap, and what happened when they'd tested it with a human-analog a few days later. The latter results weren't pretty, though apparently it'd taken half an hour from 'trapped' to 'torn apart'.

"These are just left out where people could stumble into them?" Taylor asked after watching the videos.

Anselmi nodded. "Yep. We're hoping you can provide additional insight into things, or that we show up while the tinker is assembling things and you can help us capture them. We think we've spotted them a couple of times previously, but aren't actually certain that it was them."

It didn't take much longer for them to reach the area, though they admitted that they didn't actually know where any current instance of the tinker's work was. So instead they spread out a little, ensuring frequent radio check-ins, and started searching. Taylor pulled the Snitch out of a pouch and sent it out, firing up the augmented patrol app. It ended up bouncing around a little before logging into the support software back in Brockton Bay to do rendering for her, and she fired off a quick question about that before continuing her search.

Taylor spotted the first signs of something, but had been beaten to it by a local. Who'd been snatched up by mechanical tentacles and lashed to a cross with a laser powering up to cut them in half. They rushed to help them, only for Taylor to stop when she got a good look at the contraption.

Taylor: Please tell me that you're joking.

Amy: What?

Taylor: Not you. Understanding, Maintenance, Repair.

Amy: Oh.

UMR: Offense

Taylor: Look, you have to admit that it's ridiculous.

UMR: ...Agreement

The PRT officers rushed to help the boy that'd been grabbed, but he seemed to be doing fine on his own. He'd freed his left foot, his shoe falling off in the process, and used his toes to pull a cable out of one of the tentacles. That released his right arm as the tentacle lost power, and he was able to pull more cables out to free himself. He did so with no more than three seconds to spare, grabbing his shoe and rolling behind the cross before the laser struck it. The officers hadn't been able to do much before that point, but quickly got the boy out of the area.

Anselmi arrived a couple minutes later, panting from running over. "Was anyone harmed?"

"There are one hundred and seventy eight ways to escape that thing," Taylor answered.

"What? You mean you've found that many?"

"I'm sure I could find more if I wanted. Those are the ones built in. Also, it masters anyone living who gets caught and leads them through a suitable escape method and refuses to capture living things that it isn't positive that it can lead through the escape measures, mostly by only capturing those it can master into falling for the traps to begin with."

"You're kidding."

Taylor shook her head. "Nope. There are also exceptions. Triggering it from the control panel, non-living human analogs, and members of the Slaughterhouse Nine are more static ones. Dynamic exceptions seem to be aiming for 'very obvious criminal' with a number of factors. Three or more of: a fake ID, multiple illegal drugs on their person, someone else's blood on their clothing, guns with filed-off serial numbers, or more than two thousand dollars in cash. Er, or if you have an ID with the name Wyona Jacques on it, in which case it's more likely to capture you and explode."

Anselmi sounded desperate. "Please tell me you're kidding?"

"The paperwork is going to be a bit annoying. Luckily only a small amount of it will need to be on actual paper."

Taylor returned to the Wards area in Brockton Bay on her own. She'd lucked out in that only three forms fell under her responsibility, leaving her plenty of time to wander the city a little and pick up lunch. Unexpectedly, she found Dennis and Missy sitting on the couch with popcorn, watching a feed on the monitor.

"What's up?" Taylor asked.

Missy half waved while Dennis answered. "Got a feed of the 'combat exercises' and are enjoying watching Aisha fail repeatedly. At least Chris is holding up well. I was assured that a complete video would be available by Tuesday if you want to watch from the beginning."

"Ah. That sounds less likely to have me wondering what I missed."

It wasn't much longer before she'd gotten out of costume, opting to just open the pocket dimension from inside of her room to get home. That trip took no time at all, and she wandered downstairs once she had. She found her father going through the stuff she'd purchased at the hardware store.

"Hi dad," she greeted. "Looking to get started on that?"

He jumped a little, but nodded. "Yeah. I was thinking I might start running wires without you, but if you're done for the day we could probably accomplish things a lot more quickly working together."

"In that case I should pull things out of storage and I recommend that we start with the beacon itself."

"If you say so."

Pulling the equipment that Dragon had provided out of her pocket dimension was easy enough, and the changes to the beacon itself were trivial. Replace a single circuit board, swap out one plate on the outside for one with connectors available, and install new firmware. Adding in the security keys so that it wouldn't be a 'wide-open' system took longer, but that was primarily because she went through the process of creating a new security group. With that done, she gave it a test and found that it was working, but she didn't mount it back where it'd been installed just yet. The connectors would be easier to get to if she held off on that step.

That done, they figured out how to run a wire from the garage unit, into the basement, and over to the beacon. It was easier than anticipated since they were able to use a wire that used to be for a phone to pull the new wire into the basement. From there a connection was made to the beacon and to a key crystal slot on the opening device. Taylor popped out the Shaper-linked crystal and checked to ensure that it was working. Finding that it was she disconnected the multiple-key adapter and attached the beacon directly to the opener. She had it set to allow opening into the driveway or into the garage, though the latter would require opening the garage door first.

Getting a wire down from the second floor took more effort. There wasn't a straight drop from where she'd installed things. They actually ended up running a fish line from the attic down to the basement, pulling a wire up and over, then dropping it down to where the unit was in her closet. She'd been able to grab the wire with a small hook from her toolkit to pull it through one of the holes she'd already made in order to hook it up. Testing that had worked wonderfully, though she'd added a 'only for her own personal access code' rule for it. She might add Amy's access code later, but it probably wouldn't be needed.

The opener to be installed downstairs was the last hurdle, and they spent half an hour trying to determine the best approach. Some checks had shown that the studs were offset from what they'd been expecting, and they were also wondering how 'visible' the opening equipment should be in the first place. Eventually they figured out that the trim on the doorframe had no real support on one side and carefully removed it. That gave them sufficient access to install the gang box with an outlet as well as a smaller opening device right inside of the wall. Running the wires down to the basement was also trivial from that point, though configuring the opener had to be done before they closed things up again. When they did so you'd only be able to tell that there was anything special there if you noticed the finger pad on top of the door frame.

Re-mounting the beacon had been easy enough at that point, as was tying the wires up to neaten things. But at that point neither of them was in the mood to cook. Taylor volunteered to go fetch dinner while her father took a shower, which he readily accepted, and she ate her portion of the chinese food she'd picked up before showering herself. It was only after that point that she realized that Ackbar was now avoiding the doorway that they'd installed an opener into, apparently unwilling to risk possibly entering a pocket dimension on his own again.

Monday morning Taylor had everything she needed ready ahead of time and left for the gym from downstairs, taking advantage of having a doorway down there with an opener already prepared. The lack of installed key crystals would make it harder for people to gain access to her pocket dimensions as well, especially if they thought they knew how things worked. Though she suspected that if anyone got to that point that they'd trace things back to the beacon, which would be an inconvenience. But it was supposed to generate an alert now if moved more than fifty meters from where it sat, so it shouldn't be a significant problem.

"So you've gotten your beacon upgrades completed?" Amy asked as Taylor opened the portal to the Wards area.

Taylor nodded. "Yep."

"Too bad we can't get everything taken care of at home yet."

"I found out that we could. The system seems to default to a 'wide open' state if you don't install access key based restrictions, and we could just leave things disconnected at the openers until everything is ready. But it probably makes more sense to go through it all when Dragon has finished updating their equipment."

Amy blinked as they made their way to the gym itself. "Huh. That makes sense."

"So where's Vicky?"

"She plans on working out this afternoon with Dean."

"Ahh."

The gym was oddly crowded when they made it there, a lot of PRT officers having come in to work out this morning. There was grumbling about a canceled meeting that might explain it, but neither of the two girls cared enough to ask outright. They just went through their workouts, ate their post-workout breakfast, and ended up taking their mopeds to school.

At lunchtime they discovered that Louise had a black eye and significant bruising on her arms. Since they hadn't heard of any fights that morning it was likely from the weekend, but she didn't seem to be bothered by the injuries.

"What happened to you?" Dean asked after he sat down next to Vicky.

"Got beaten up by an old lady after I got cocky," Louise responded. "Object lesson that I needed. But she already thinks I'm getting better, so there's that." The girl then flicked her tail up in front of her. "Oh, and she learned not to underestimate the tail of awesome, though that's how I got the black eye."

Taylor nodded. "Underestimating the tail is a bad thing. Would you like us to heal you?"

"Nah, I think I'm good."

Amy rolled her eyes. "Can I at least make sure that your eye isn't damaged?"

Louise looked like she was about to decline, before she obviously realized what Amy had actually said. "Er, yes, that does sound like a good idea." She held her hand out to Amy, who flipped her striker switch as she took it.

"I've fixed a couple of minor problems from your eye being hit. Sure you want to keep the bruises?"

"Yep. They're a reminder to not be so cocky next time."

Amy shrugged as she let go of Louise and flipped her striker switch back. "Whatever."

Karen grabbed the seat next to Missy before anyone else could, filling the table. "So Missy. I hear you were riding a house elsewhere in the country on Saturday, yet nobody saw transports leave the area. Is there a scoop there, or are you going to blame shooting at a wall in the correct way?"

Missy snorted. "The PRT got me there and back, but I have no clue if I'm allowed to tell anyone how. The other Wards people saw patrolling here traveled the same way, though. Not sure about all of Taylor's trips, though."

That had Karen, and several others, looking at Taylor. Who sighed. "I used pre-prepared doorways on Saturday, but needed PRT and Protectorate assistance to get to where I was yesterday. Never been there before and they didn't have anything prepared and all. Getting home was easy enough, though."

Several discussions sprang up about what that might mean, nobody bothering to try and ask Taylor to go into details. Presumably because they rightfully believed that they'd not get any from her.

As the repeaters came online that afternoon messages came in, one of which informed Taylor that she wasn't going to be doing much patrolling today. She wasn't included in Ryan or Sandy's patrol groups, plus Aisha had console duty as punishment for how horribly she'd done the day before. Sure, she could probably tag along with the kids, but that was likely to be boring or make things more dangerous for the kids because she was there and idiots were idiots.

"Ugh," Amy groaned as she met up with Taylor on their way outside. "The hospital has asked me to come in to help with things after a police chase ended with a vehicle in the side of a bus."

Taylor winced. That sounded unpleasant. "Want some help? My afternoon is unexpectedly free."

The other girl blinked, then turned to Taylor and attempted a puppy-dog pout. "Please?"

"Why are you trying to convince me to do what I was offering to do?"

Amy didn't seem to have an answer for that, and a minute later they'd reached the two mopeds. They made straight for a rooftop and a couple blocks down popped into the pocket dimension. From there they split up to put on costumes, Taylor heading for the PRT building and Amy heading home. Neither took long before meeting back up in the pocket dimension and heading to the hospital, and either Amy had called ahead or the hospital was hoping that they'd come right over because a nurse was waiting for them when they arrived.

"Both of you?" the nurse said in surprise as they stepped out. "That's great. We could use both of you in the emergency room."

They made their way straight there and were split up immediately. Taylor ended up starting with a couple of elderly patients who'd also been suffering under the immune system replacement process. She actually dropped one hand on each and worked on both at the same time, startling Amy. It wasn't long before they had four people going at a time, though they focused on particularly tough cases one at a time every so often as they moved along. It took fairly little time to make it through all but five of the injured.

"So what's with the last five?" Taylor asked, noting that they weren't being directed into that area.

"They've got orders on file, no parahuman healing," one of the nurses replied. "We ensured that someone let Injury Magnet's parents know that you two are here and that by the time he could get here the only likely problem patients would have said orders on file."

Amy grinned at that. "And I suppose his aunt is picking him up from school today, and thus won't have gotten the memo?"

"Quite possibly."

As apparently expected, Jason showed up with his aunt not long after, while Taylor and Amy were working through less seriously injured patients. Amy had Taylor continue with that while she headed downstairs to heal Jason. She also ended up taking care of some scrapes that his sister had picked up while she was at it.

Amy: Huh. Jason has even more protection than normal if anyone complains that he came.

Taylor: Really?

Amy: Yep. I missed that his grandmother was one of the ones I healed.

Taylor: Ah. That would kill most possible complaints, wouldn't it? Came to check in on her, ooops, too close to seriously injured people.

Amy: Only because it's automatic, of course. Only targeting life-threatening injuries just makes it harder to go after him.

It wasn't long before Jason left with his family, and Taylor focused on what healing she was doing. Including the man with a transplanted kidney that, for reasons beyond her, wasn't in the emergency room. He had two functioning kidneys with his own genetics when she was done, and she wrote an admittedly rude note for those who'd put him in a normal room while his immune system was destroying the kidney. It'd probably been worse before Jason had shown up as well, for that matter, given how much work Amy had done on his kidney.

Eventually they finished the rounds, were thanked by the hospital staff, and departed. Back to the PRT building for Taylor and home for Amy. Costumes were trivial to change out of, but then Amy joined Taylor in the PRT building for a trip down to the junkyard.

They'd end up needing to shower before eating dinner after the mess they made, but they felt it was worth it.

Later that evening Taylor was surprised when she got a message from Doormaker, asking if she had time to swing by. Well, a group message to her and to Amy, but the latter had replied that she was in the middle of things right then. Taylor looked over her pajamas, decided they were decent enough for a quick trip, and stood up.

"Okay Scotty," she said, and a tear in space appeared before her. She stepped through and found herself in a hallway. White, with no defining marks whatsoever on the doors. Four parahumans were nearby, though she only recognized Doctor Mother and Number Man. The latter was the only parahuman on this floor. "Where the hell am I and why am I here?"

The only response was 'right door', which was where Number Man was. Grumbling about lack of information, she opened the door to her right, hoping that Number Man would be willing to tell her more. Instead she found that it was a hospital-like room, with Number Man as the patient. Sighing, she walked over to him and checked on him, finding that he was suffering from the immune system plague. Specifically, complications due to a bone marrow transplant at some point. That was trivial to deal with, but she didn't wake him up.

"Is that it?" Taylor asked when she was done, only for another tear in space to open in front of her. She could see that this time it led to the conference room she normally met with Cauldron members in, so she stepped through. Brünhild had apparently ensured that a pitcher of ice water and a glass were available, and a small cart with cookies came in a moment later.

Taylor: Thank you.

[You're welcome. He suddenly took a turn for the worse an hour ago and we didn't know what to do.]

It wasn't long before Doctor Mother joined her. "Thank you for coming on short notice. We still don't know what happened to him."

Taylor shrugged. "He'd previously had a bone marrow transplant."

"Ah. And that immune system thing made to counter young Riley's efforts didn't appreciate it?"

"There were complications, yes."

"Hopefully he was the only one, then. Legend wasn't happy when he realized that he'd accidentally infected us and caused problems, I'm not sure how he'd have reacted if Number Man had actually died because of that. I certainly wasn't looking forward to passing that information on."

Taylor nodded, easily able to see how that might be taken poorly. "Well, it won't be a problem for him, though I obviously can't say the same for anyone else that Amy and I haven't looked at."

"Of course. I'll tell you now that we're working on getting a collection of patients to you two this coming weekend. A couple of our staff and a number of others who have transplanted organs. Good PR all around as the PRT gets them in for healing so that you and Miss Dallon can heal them."

"Ah. It's nice to have a warning about that, and I'll make sure that Amy knows it's coming as well. Any other plans that you think I need to know about?"

She shrugged at that. "Not really. We've been helping to round up the Fallen as a side project, but that doesn't impact you directly. Contessa claims that there isn't a biotinker working to combat the Slaughterhouse Nine, which makes the whole plague more curious in the first place, which also isn't exactly your problem. We might arrange for you to help capture the one responsible at some point, but we need a better lead on them before that's going to happen."

Taylor did her best to not roll her eyes. "Okay then. Anything else?"

"Er I don't think...wait. Right, we've installed a pocket dimension beacon here and would like to know if it actually works. Let me get the code for you."

It took a few minutes, but Taylor was able to confirm that the beacon worked and that the pocket dimensions weren't actually locked to Earth Bet as a result. Doctor Mother's grin as three more beacon codes were handed over was interesting, but Taylor accepted them and the comment that she and Amy should check them out at their leisure without complaint. She then headed home via the pocket dimension, so as to not bother Doormaker, and left the codes sitting on the opening device in the process.

Taylor: Well, we've got a busy weekend and the ability to get very far away if we want to.

Amy: Busy weekend?

Taylor: Cauldron is arranging for a bunch of people with transplanted organs to visit us this weekend.

Amy: Ah. Yeah. That sounds annoying.

Taylor: No clue where the other beacon codes they gave me lead to, but I'll wait on exploring until we have a decent amount of free time.

Amy: I'm curious, but having more than an hour to explore sounds like a wonderful idea.

Chapter 230 Tuesday morning Taylor had met Amy and Vicky in the gym, though the latter was somewhat annoyed. Apparently she was unusually sensitive to people entering her pocket dimension and someone had gotten an early start. Once she'd realized that was what was going on she'd been fine, except that it'd woken her up and she'd been too awake by the time she figured out what was going on to get back to sleep. Due to that she'd convinced Amy to head in early, meaning Taylor showed up after they'd already arrived.

They hopped into the minivan for the trip to school, only to find that someone was ready for them to have done so. When they were between two intersections they were cut off, front and back, by large trucks. Taylor looked over at Amy who shrugged and undid her seatbelt. Taylor ensured that the van was in park before she did the same, and they both climbed out a moment later. Vicky also got out, but took to the air with her phone out. Taylor suspected that Amy had her visor running just as she did, but wasn't sure if the other two realized that she'd also started up the van's larger sensor system as well.

"I don't suppose you merely need help with your trucks," Taylor asked the driver of the truck in front of them. Instead of an answer she got to see a number of people get out of the truck, many of them carrying guns. She suspected that the same was happening behind them, but let Amy focus on the rear. The first shot at her happened to come from the rear, but several more came from the front a moment later.

Amy rushed at the people behind them, but Taylor just scowled and calmly walked forward. The man in front of the group backed up a couple of steps, firing his handgun at her at point-blank range to no noticeable effect. When she got close enough she grabbed the gun from him, breaking his fingers when he didn't let go quickly enough. The gun's safety was then carefully engaged, the magazine removed, the round in the chamber ejected, and the trigger ripped off before she discarded it and turned to the next gun wielder. It took doing so with four people, breaking fingers on three out of the four, before the rest realized that the guns weren't working.

Being idiots, since why else would they be trying this stunt, they decided to try and dogpile her instead. That didn't go over well, and she calmly subdued each individual with at most two punches and then used zip-cuffs from her utility belt to hobble them. She prioritized those trying to free those she'd already tied up, but used what she felt was minimal force the entire time. Once she had everyone on her side of the conflict subdued she dragged them off of the road and onto the sidewalk, lining them up against the building. A quick check showed that the back of the trailer was empty, and it didn't seem to be a rental.

Only then did she unholster the tinker-built handgun, using several shots from it to obliterate the back of the trailer to get it out of the way and make a point. She left the cab alone as it wasn't actually in the way of driving through the intersection for her. With that done, she made a point of pulling her phone out to call the incident in, leaving Amy to the beatdown she was giving the idiots at the other end of the block. A couple of people had run off during all of this, those likely being the smarter ones.

It only took ten minutes for a response team to show up. They took statements, the footage from Vicky's phone, and told Taylor to make less of a mess when getting vehicles out of her way next time. Amy got a mini-lecture on acceptable force against idiots from another officer, one who seemed to be trying not to laugh their ass off over the healer having caused almost all of the injuries while the combat cape had used minimal force when subduing people. The destruction of the trailer was a wonderful counterpoint for what she could have done instead.

The three of them didn't make it to school in time for the start of homeroom, but their homeroom teachers didn't make a big deal of things. The students, on the other hand, seemed intensely curious, but it was far too late to question them on their tardiness. Sadly, that would eventually change.

By lunchtime the news had picked up on things. Taylor had ended up with free time before then and had hidden in the back of the classroom to make videos that showed things from multiple points of view. Her visor, Amy's visor, and a couple of points on the minivan. She and Vicky both uploaded their footage independently of one another when the repeaters came online, though Vicky posted a link to her one video first.

"No fair!" Vicky whined when Taylor had posted her links. "How am I supposed to compete with your bullshit multiple camera angles?"

Taylor smirked. "Who said you were supposed to be able to compete? All you did was move off to watch."

"Which means that you shouldn't have had time to make recordings."

Amy slapped Vicky from across the table. "She's right about you not participating. If anyone has any reason to complain it's me, since she posted my point of view without asking me first."

A general pause followed that, before Louise asked the obvious question. "Does that mean that she has access to your phone?"

Taylor snorted. "Our visors can work together with each other and with things such as the equipment installed in my minivan, and that's not necessarily counting some of the things that they've come up with for when on patrols."

"Oh. That sounds useful."

"It can be, yes." It was also not technically a lie, even if she was letting people assume she was talking entirely about normal cameras.

Over the next twenty minutes the complete set of videos was probably downloaded by at least a quarter of the student population in one way or another. Several people complained about the download speed due to the school's network connection not being able to handle the sudden load, coupled with Taylor's videos being fairly high resolution.

"You...holy crap," Dennis said as he obviously watched one of the videos. "How the hell did they not piss their pants as you just walked up to them like that?"

Taylor shrugged. "Maybe they'd already used the restroom beforehand. I intentionally avoided checking."

Several people at the table stared at her after that, but she ignored them and worked on finishing her lunch instead.

After school Taylor gave Missy a ride to the PRT building, without Amy or Vicky tagging along. Amy actually escaped into a pocket dimension from a restroom. The two got into costume and then waited for the others.

"So how hard was it to ignore being shot this morning?" Missy asked.

Taylor shrugged. "It wasn't that bad, partially because they were terrible shots. Until I got to point blank range at least half the shots missed me entirely. Which just pissed me off, because if you're going to fire a gun you should at least try to learn how to aim the thing."

"The show with the trailer at the end was a bit excessive. Made a point though."

"That was the intent, but I've been told that I probably have to pay a hundred dollar littering fine, since the trailer could've just been moved with the still-attached cab at the time. They'll let me know by mail by the end of next week."

Missy coughed. "A hundred dollars, for the mess you made?"

"It's a minimum."

It wasn't much longer before Dean showed up with Chris, Dennis, and more surprisingly Aisha. Perhaps they'd been delayed because of needing to pick her up where nobody could see them? Either way, the group came out of the parking lot together, waved at Taylor and Missy on their way by to get changed, and eventually joined them for a pre-whatever meeting. Chris, Missy, and Taylor had visors on, the rest had left their headgear off. Then again, the rest couldn't control their phones somewhat directly with their brains, so that probably made sense.

Dennis started the meeting by dramatically pointed at Tayor. "YOU! What did I say about being a badass?"

Taylor rolled her eyes, not that they could tell with the visor. "You wanted me to be less of a badass. Don't care. I'd rather scare them into leaving me the fuck alone."

He stared at her for a moment, then shrugged. "Okay. Point. In other news, I've got a request for you to swing by the greenhouse. There's a problem with a plant or two, and then you haven't had a console run in a while so I think you're it for the afternoon. Besides, you're less likely to cause problems being badass if you're stuck here."

She frowned, mainly because none of that actually required her to be in costume. "Okay. Wish I'd known before I changed, but whatever."

He then turned to the rest of them. "As for everyone else, we have a couple of approved non-patrol tasks. Hulder has been requested to spy on some police officers suspected of misconduct, which only requires someone here on console to provide communication, and when the kids get here we have a request for Dryad to do more rock-art in a couple of parks. Rosa will probably be trying to finish things up so she might be able to patrol this weekend, though I doubt she'll pull that off, and Ryan is joining the Protectorate today by their request. I'm planning on going for the rock-art, which leaves three of you available for patrolling."

"I'm game for a patrol," Dean replied, turning to Chris and Missy. "Either of you up for dealing with me being ground-bound?"

"Why not," Chris answered. "I need to properly field test some 'swap things out remotely' tricks I've started adding to my modular components anyway. Be happy that you don't have to deal with the paperwork for dealing with teleporting equipment, by the way. It's taken me months to get some of it cleared."

Dennis blinked at that. "Months?"

"I neglected to properly document things such as what kinds of energy release occurs at either end. Organic matter tests were a pain in the ass, but I was able to skip the majority of the Manton Limit checks because living organic tissue can't be teleported in the first place. Then my shielding needed to be tested, new and after various levels of damage. After that it turned out that I'd forgotten to test range and had to run through a pile of tests a few more times. I only got permission to field test the stuff yesterday."

"Oh."

Taylor shook her head. "I'd have gone the easy route."

Chris snorted at that. "I looked for an easy route. Didn't find one. Asked Armsmaster about an easy route. He didn't know of one either. What did we miss?"

"Ask for power testing, then the power testing people are responsible for almost all of that, and if anything is missed and becomes a problem it's their responsibility and not yours."

Everyone stared at Taylor for a moment, but Missy was the first to speak. "Are you saying that the easy route is to volunteer for a new round of power testing?"

"Yep."

"Are you crazy?"

Taylor rolled her eyes, to no effect for them. "All parahumans are in some way. But power testing would be one form and one day of testing. He's been at this dance for months. Which would you rather do?"

Aisha raised her hand. Nobody objected, so she spoke. "I'm thinking that the power testing sounds like a lot less of a hassle."

Chris slumped into the couch. "Damn. I wonder why Armsmaster didn't think of that?"

Taylor wiggled her hand. "It's a bit of a loophole, one that I stumbled upon by accident after I got curious about my botched power testing. It only works if they agree to the request for power testing, there's a minimum amount of time since your last power testing before it can be attempted without really significant power changes, and as a Ward you'd need Director Piggot to accept things first. But filling out the form takes a couple of minutes, you wait a week and a half to see if any of the various groups that it passes through rejects it, and if they do you move on to the more official, non-loophole methods."

Dennis pulled his phone out at that, making the others curious. Dean was the one who decided that he didn't want to be left in the dark. "What are you doing?"

"Submitting a request," Dennis replied, gesturing at Taylor for a moment. "She's obviously missing a thinker rating somewhere if she can find loopholes that Armsmaster missed."

Taylor had swung through the greenhouse, finding that some of the carbon cube generating plants had stopped working for different reasons. Correcting that hadn't taken long. While she was doing that the meeting had continued, Missy deciding to join Dennis and Sandy on the 'rock art' job. Taylor returned just after the three kids arrived, though Ethan picked Ryan up shortly after that. They got the console set up, made sure everyone was signed in, and Taylor decided to be sneaky and send the Snitch out to follow the 'rock art' group.

She then started cooking while remote controlling the console, feeling that she had enough time for one of the larger cuts of meat today. Thus her afternoon was generally split between keeping an eye on cooking, working on homework, and playing relay between Aisha and the police chief. Chris and Dean ran into one problem group, but otherwise used the entire patrol as an excuse to test the teleporting modules that Chris had built. Aisha easily figured out the truth of what was happening, which hadn't been anything like they'd thought was going on originally, and got to watch three police officers be arrested before they gave her a tour of the rest of the station. Sandy's work was met with significant approval, and they didn't seem to realize that Taylor had recorded the whole thing with the Snitch. And as everyone started to return she found out that Ryan had accidentally blown out Battery's eardrums when they'd sent a request to the Wards console regarding having the woman swing by for healing.

Aisha had been the first back and had changed before getting the table set up. Ryan was dropped off by Ethan and Battery, the latter getting a quick heal from Taylor before dragging Ethan off. Chris and Dean returned next, carrying extra components that hadn't 'returned' properly. Dennis led Missy and Sandy in not long after that, Taylor collecting the Snitch as they came in.

"Where was that?" Dennis asked, seeing Taylor catching the Snitch.

Taylor shrugged. "Following you."

"What?"

"I was a little surprised that none of you three noticed. Granted, I kept it further away from you outside, but it had to stay fairly close to get through doors and join you on the elevator."

He turned to Missy, who shrugged, before he slumped in defeat. "At least you've probably got better footage of things than we did?"

"Probably."

They went to get changed and Taylor was finally able to shut down the console. Food was brought out, including a plate specifically for Sandy with a cut that'd been removed from the oven earlier than the rest of the meat.

"Hey Taylor," Chris said after everyone had started eating. "Armsmaster got back to me on the power testing loophole. He asked how it was spotted, apparently it took him the better part of two hours to confirm that it exists."

"Ah," Taylor replied. "I ended up checking on the rules for power testing someone, wondering why they hadn't just declared the botched power testing I went through as a bad job and done it over again. That led into the other side of things, and the sheer number of things that the power testers are supposed to handle for the parahuman in the process of testing their abilities. A new facet to a tinker's power can be considered sufficient to re-test, provided that it hasn't been too soon since the last test. The combination of it all presents an interesting, if unreliable, loophole."

Dennis shook his head. "You are going to be a terror whenever someone tries to slap you down with regulations without triple-checking everything. If the Youth Guard is involved I ask that you get pictures."

There were nods from the older Wards and looks of confusion from two of the three kids. Ryan might've been confused, or ignoring them for that matter. It was much harder to tell with him.

Wednesday morning Taylor had barely shut down the pocket dimension portal when it snapped open again and Missy stepped out.

"Guess you got your update too," Vicky noted, Amy nodding next to her.

Missy just grinned. "I am so happy about being able to get here the fast way again. Though they didn't give me 'open a portal anywhere around the beacon' permission, which is bullshit."

Vicky snorted at that. "At least you have permission. I'm only allowed to cheat when I tag along with Ames here. Even then I need her help to get to the gym from here because the doors won't open for me."

"If you joined the Wards, or rapidly approaching join the Protectorate, you'd get access too."

"Except that I'd probably be shipped across the country at this point for bullshit reasons. They'd probably whine about me doing my best to still 'live' here to be with Dean too, even if it's trivial for me to get back and forth without them needing to do anything."

Missy nodded. "I can see how that could be a pain."

They made their way over to the gym, Vicky pointing out the various things that she thought would be likely to be invoked to get her out of the area. Though she did admit that one of them made some sense, that being that it was too calm now in Brockton Bay for someone whose power induced the urge to punch people or to avoid dodging attacks. At the same time, she wasn't in the mood to end up at one of the quarantine zones, which were some of the most likely places to stick someone with her power-driven urges.

Discussion dried up when they started working out, partially due to having split up to different pieces of equipment, and when they were done they ended up chatting about in-school Wards presentations.

"The Youth Guard prefers that they not happen at all these days," Missy explained. "They've taken a stance that doing so is too much of a risk to our identities, because it's incredibly obvious when the Wards are 'sick' on those days. Especially those that aren't normally sick at all. I was surprised when 'absent on every one of the nine different Wards demonstration days that Vista participated in' wasn't included in the list of reasons why that group of Aisha's knew my identity."

"That's easy enough to explain," Vicky interjected. "That's the kind of thing that you had no control over, so it wouldn't be fair to use it against you."

"What?"

"Most of the cape-identifying groups see official crap like that as inappropriate to use against you for their little games since it isn't under your control. It's more fun to build it on your own slip-ups. The sudden lack of non-outed Wards candidates being seen coming and going from the PRT building confused the crap out of them though. Even the outed Wards have an astonishing rate of not using the front doors and they can't figure out why or how anyone is getting in and out of the building."

Amy sighed. "How the hell do you know that?"

Vicky grinned. "They won't let me join directly, but Janet runs pretty much everything her faction figures out past me to see what holes I can punch through things. On that subject, though, at some point an 'obvious answer' for some of the lack of coming and going is going to be needed for Taylor and Missy here, otherwise I think they'll start seriously looking for signs of secret entrances."

Taylor snorted. "Missy, and anyone along with her, could very easily just enter through the roof from six blocks away. Add in 'who knows what kind of tinkertech I have access to' on top of that?"

Vicky just sat there blinking for a moment, before snorting as well. "Okay, yeah, I'm definitely going to need to pass that on to Janet. It even has the benefit of being absolutely correct even if it's horribly misleading and fits far too many of their existing data points. They're going to facepalm over missing it, even. But I'm thinking that they'll want to know why you don't use whatever the fancy tinkertech is when out on patrol."

Missy rolled her eyes at that. "That's easy enough to explain, all it would take is being difficult to carry for any number of reasons. Could be that it's tied to a physical location, requires too much power to use in the field, needs equipment at both ends, maybe it's too fragile? It's tinkertech, bullshit restrictions are a thing there. Haven't you heard of things like that laser that can cut pies but not cake out in Idaho?"

"Okay, point."

By lunchtime Taylor felt that Vicky had passed things on to Janet, if only because several groups were mocking members for not considering the rooftop doors of the PRT building. She wasn't all that concerned with the gossip, being more interested in her messages.

Amy: You busy tomorrow afternoon?

Taylor: I don't believe I have anything pressing scheduled, why?

Amy: Mark wants to know if you could help with the difficult parts of updating our beacon and tying in our openers.

Taylor: What difficult parts? I'd originally wanted to cheat by asking Missy to help temporarily expand the insides of walls and such, but I'd forgotten to check on that before we started and things went fine anyway.

Amy: That sounds like a wonderful way to make it go easier, but I think he's more concerned with getting it done while Carol is out of the house. Plus none of us has the ability to make a proper ACL in Dragon's systems to put into the beacon.

Taylor: Ah. That would be a sticking point, wouldn't it? I don't think it'll be a problem, but I'll put a time off request into the PRT system for it to be sure. If it's denied I'll let you know and we can reschedule.

While that was all well and good, Taylor was more interested in the message from Dragon to her and her father asking about joining them for dinner on Friday. Her father had already accepted, then sent a message to Taylor asking about what the hell you made for dinner when an AI was visiting. Dragon had sent a message asking about the code for their beacon and if she could add herself to the access list that Taylor had set up, as well was stating that she'd like to show up as the younger Theresa.

With an internal sigh, Taylor set a reminder to deal with the beacon details after school, then told her father that something like chicken nuggets and french fries would probably be appropriate in this case. She wasn't sure if he'd question that or not, or what she'd tell him if he did, but she was thinking that she wanted to have a recording going when Theresa arrived. Mainly because she was certain that his expression would be priceless.

Taylor had been released from her last class of the day early, having finished the day's test and having no other reason to stick around. She'd swung through a restroom, in part because she needed to use one and in part because they were convenient places to open portals from. Though the early departure had annoyed Amy, who was stuck in class and hadn't expected Taylor to suddenly be in the pocket dimension.

It only took a couple of minutes to add Dragon to her access control list and send the beacon code over, though that didn't include access to Taylor's closet door opener. Not that she thought that Dragon couldn't get at that one if she really wanted to, and she hadn't exactly restricted use of the 'open in the area of the beacon' trick either. That was something to consider doing, but wasn't strictly necessary right now.

While thinking about things, she also sent a separate message to Dragon asking about purchasing a couple of additional beacon upgrade kits, followed by a question to Joey about how the beacons reacted to moving around while active. She didn't think they'd have a problem there, and she dug one out of the box to double-check what her tinker snark thought, but figured that it was better to ask and be sure. For all she knew there was some other interaction that would cause problems that wasn't obvious until it actually happened.

With all of that done she dug up Dennis's notes for the day. He'd been kind enough to put them in a shared folder so that she could get at them in her role as incoming Wards leader. It looked like Sherrel was stopping by to work with Rosa again, Ryan had a class on the various properties and uses of sound intended to help him leverage his power better, and Sandy was going to be heading off-site for lessons in the dos and don'ts of stone construction. The calendar said that Aisha had the day off due to 'family obligations', Chris had asked for the day off for unspecified reasons and Dean and Dennis had a pre-transition meeting with the Protectorate.

Amy: What are you blinking at over there?

Taylor: Wards stuff. I think that it's just me and Missy for the afternoon due to a pile of other things.

Amy: Ah. Any chance you can arrange for Vicky and I to be able to join you? The hospital doesn't need me and New Wave isn't planning on a patrol this afternoon.

Taylor: Four people on patrol seems like overkill today.

Amy: When there's a good chance of people attacking us because it's us?

Taylor: Okay, you may have a point there. I'll ping Dennis, since the request for Vicky at least should come from him. At least until the end of the week.

Sending a message to Dennis didn't take long, and Taylor decided to actually change into her costume at that point. She decided that today was a stop sign and manhole cover day.

"This is awesome," Vicky exclaimed as they waited for a police van to pick up the latest round of attackers. Approval for the girl to join them had come quickly, and due to the 'extra support' they were able to take a custom-made patrol route projected to be 'more dangerous'. "How in the world did you figure out where all the idiots were going to be?"

Amy and Missy seemed interested in that as well. Taylor grinned, but didn't tell them. She was positive that they'd eventually notice that she'd posted the planned route on one of the PHO tracking threads in hopes of getting all the idiots to come out of the woodwork. Twelve 'ambushes' in and it was obvious that her ploy had worked, with all four of them getting plenty of opportunities to show that they weren't pushovers.

There were also an unusually large number of bystanders along the route, many of them with popcorn or other snacks ready, obviously having figured out what was likely to happen. It'd been an incredibly transparent ploy, after all. That just showed how little thought those attacking them had put into things.

They made it another three blocks after the previous group had been picked up before they came across another group prepared to ambush them. Of course, they'd known that the group was there well ahead of time, and the police had another van on the way already. Two vans, actually, though one was going to be following along a few blocks back until it was needed. As for their attackers, this was looking to be a group of five, only the second group to outnumber them so far. Most of the attacks had been two or three people working together.

Taylor and Amy walked into the intersection this time, and the group opened fire with two handguns and a machine gun. The last two threw grenades, though neither had anything remotely like decent aim and one of them was an idiot and left the pin in. One of them went off under a parked car and the other was picked up by Vicky, who grumbled about morons. Hopefully one of the idiots owned the car, either that or the owner had good insurance. It didn't take long for all three guns to be out of ammo, at which point the girls made quick work of subduing the five.

"I want to bait the next group," Vicky noted as the police collected the group. "Has the Snitch spotted the next likely volunteers for punching yet?"

"Three people with shotguns four blocks down," Taylor answered, gesturing down the route. "Just after our next turn. I don't think the dude with a sniper rifle seven blocks down is with them, but he's positioned correctly to get a shot off when we reach the three with shotguns if he wanted to. I suspect that he's actually with the couple of people that look to have bats the turn after that, since his gun is facing that way right now. Hoping to surprise us with a sudden bullet when we aren't expecting one, perhaps?"

Missy shook her head. "This is just ridiculous. Even our well-known routes don't attract this many ambushes. Wasn't this one made up on the fly? I suppose you could've asked for thinker support for what route to take, but I can't see that going over well when they found out that you intentionally targeted all the ambush points."

"Oh you jerk," Amy said a moment later, causing the other three to look at her. "You actually posted our route on PHO ahead of time?"

That caused Missy to cringe. "Oh man, that's not going to go over well. You're not supposed to tell people where you're going to be, especially when you're a target."

Taylor rolled her eyes. "I cleared it with the PRT oversight under anti-hero rules before doing it. Why the hell do you think they haven't pulled us off of the patrol already? We're thirteen ambushes in, ten past the 'must be pulled in because something is horribly wrong' point, and the console has said squat about pulling us back to the PRT building and sending Protectorate members out to clear things."

It was a good thing that she was recording everything anyway, because the looks of astonishment on the faces of the other three would've been a horrible thing to not have recorded.

Chapter 231 Thursday morning Taylor started her day by looking over the various threads from the night before. There was the tracking thread's overall reaction to being told the patrol route, various threads on individual attacks that people had seen, and then her own thread for the entire patrol. The latter had five videos per ambush, as though taken from cameras on each of the girls plus the roaming Snitch, even though the latter hadn't actually been at a single one of the fights when they'd happened. A lot of discussion had been linked back to the individual threads for specific ambushes, where the videos for the specific incidents had been edited into the first post or two in the threads, but at least a third of the ambush attempts hadn't been posted about before the 'entire patrol' thread had been created and had defaulted to being discussed there as a result.

She found that most people were being reasonable, treating the attackers as the idiots that they were, but a few groups kept trying to make trouble. Claiming that the posted patrol route was baiting and entrapment in particular, though that was generally shot down by others within the following six posts or so. Usually by pointing out that, regardless of the intent behind the posted route, there was no deception on Taylor's part. She'd even named the four of them that would be participating. From that point of view it was probably more of a warning than anything else, at least from a legal standpoint.

Sadly, her messages for the morning included notice of a complaint from the Youth Guard. Apparently someone felt that they'd put Missy in too much danger by allowing her to join them, since she was the only one without a force field of some kind to protect her from bullets. Nevermind that she wears an armored costume, is bullet-resistant thanks to the tinker fugue, and they intentionally kept her out of the line of fire of anyone with a higher-caliber round because she was the only one without a force field. She didn't have to do anything about the complaint, she was only being informed as that patrol's leader since the PRT had approved things before they left, but she sent that reasoning on just in case they'd overlooked any of it.

There was also a message from Joey with some notes from previous testing with moving the pocket dimension beacons. Apparently they could take fifteen minutes of being stationary to settle when moved too far and drained power at a much higher rate while moving. Rebooting them when you stopped moving them was a preferred method of dealing with that since the bootup initialization was shorter than them adjusting to having been moved in the first place. Which was easy enough to deal with.

Eventually she got out of bed to get ready for the day, ensuring that the extra supplies for the pocket dimension beacon upgrade were loaded into the Shaper-linked pocket dimension before heading for the gym. Amy and Vicky joining her for a morning exercise swim. Missy didn't show, but they ended up finishing up their swim and breakfast early enough to jog to school for an extra bit of exercise. Their arrival was met with cheers and questions about idiots they'd defended themselves against the day before, pretty much all of which were ignored by Taylor and Amy. Vicky was much more willing to talk about it all and attracted most of those wanting more information as a result of her actually answering the shouted questions.

Around ten minutes later Missy seemed to have slipped in with minimal fanfare, probably because Vicky was still drawing most of the attention.

By lunch the school had split into factions, arguing over which tactics used against people on the previous day's patrol had been the best. Some preferred the straightforward tactics, others preferred some of the sneakier ones. Though across those two groups there was a general approval for Taylor using her jump harness to sneak up behind the sniper while Amy and Vicky were more straightforward in dealing with the bat-wielders. Other points of contention were the choices for who actually presented themselves as the initial target for each group and the violence levels used for each group.

"People are a bit more bloodthirsty than I expected," Taylor noted.

"What do you mean?" Dennis asked, looking around.

"I don't think any arguments have come up saying that we should've done anything other than be more violent with people last night except for when two kids were visibly watching from a window. Apparently Missy breaking an arm was 'going just far enough' that time."

"Oh. I suppose you were a little tame. Didn't even pull out your guns in response to their guns and all, what was up with that?"

"That level of response wasn't needed. Besides, it was more fun to punch them."

Vicky and Missy both nodded enthusiastically at that declaration, while Amy just grinned. Dennis took one look at the three of them, shivered, and decided to just focus on his meal.

"Crap," Taylor grumbled as the repeaters came up at the end of the day. Not that anyone paid her much attention in the din of students moving to get out of the building. She made her way to a restroom anyway, detouring from her first choice to one a little further away when she found the first one too occupied. From there she slipped out into the Shaper-linked pocket dimension. Amy joined her a minute later.

"Do you need to pick anything up from your house?" Amy asked.

"Not really," Taylor answered, gesturing at the pile of supplies as she did so. "But they dropped a meeting on Dennis and I to discuss yesterday's patrol with the Youth Guard."

"Ouch. Do you think it'll take long?"

"I have no clue. I know I followed all the applicable rules and regulations, even if some of them were a pain in the ass."

"Yeah. Relaying the possible threats for every encounter to the console seemed like a bit much."

Taylor nodded. "And my report should've covered everything of importance. As should the sensor data. But someone obviously decided to make a stink, probably because Missy doesn't have a force field."

"But she cooperated fully with staying out of the way when needed, didn't she?"

"Yep."

Amy shook her head. "Good luck then. Mind if I start gathering things at home?"

"Feel free. I'll let you know if it looks like it'll take too long."

"Thanks."

With that Taylor opened the portal to the Wards area, where she'd wait for Dennis to arrive before heading to the meeting.

It was an interesting meeting already, as Director Piggot and Miss Militia were sitting opposite of Mrs. Cooper, with Taylor and Dennis on the end of the table. Oddly enough, none of them seemed to be happy with the meeting happening.

"Well?" Director Piggot asked. "The Youth Guard called this meeting."

"I'm well aware of that," Mrs. Cooper replied. "Except that it wasn't me who called it, and I've still not received any direction whatsoever as to what I'm supposed to be doing. I looked over everything and it looks like the patrol group went above and beyond all requirements for what they did. They didn't even need to keep Miss Biron out of many of the dangers that they held her back from, beyond wanting to keep her augmented status secret."

Miss Militia nodded at that. "We're in agreement on that front. Which brings us back around to why any of us are wasting our time in a meeting. If there aren't any formal complaints from you, and we have no problems either, then it falls on whoever did call the meeting to inform us about the topic. But they aren't here and haven't asked to call in, have they?"

"Not at all, no."

Director Piggot nodded. "Then does anyone have an objection to us calling this done and moving on?"

Taylor cringed, but spoke up anyway. "Technically, if we don't make an attempt to call them, asked to be included or not, then they could consider our dismissal of the unknown topic as an attempt to subvert things."

Mrs. Cooper blinked. "And how do you know that?"

Miss Militia sighed. "Because it's in the Wards Leader documentation and ideally both of those two know it from having read said documentation. She just beat me to mentioning it, but I'm happy that she's been keeping up with things."

"Ah." She then looked through some of her things. "Er, I don't actually know who called the meeting. I just got an automated notification for it? Did anyone else get that information?"

Director Piggot frowned and checked her own papers, then pulled out her phone and stared at it for a moment. "That's odd, my notice says that it was called by you. Which seems problematic if you aren't the one who actually called the meeting."

Taylor frowned, and checked her own notification. "Mine says that it was requested by Lucian Gunther on behalf of Patricia Cooper." The others turned to stare at her. "What? There's an option to enable the display of the actual sender of pretty much everything that's permitted to be delegated. It doesn't even require special permissions, though I have no clue why it defaults to off in all the PRT reader applications. Winslow had it turned on by default for student email."

Mrs. Cooper shook her head, then got up and moved over to the conference phone controls in the corner of the room. She checked her own phone for a moment, then dialed a number.

"Gunther," came over the phone a moment later.

"Lucian," Mrs. Cooper greeted. "We have a few questions for you regarding the meeting that you called, the most important being why and how you did so on my behalf. I don't recall giving you permission to do anything like that."

"Oh. Er. I believe they delegated that to me when you were sick?"

"If that was the case then I'd like to know why you're doing so now."

"Because there were over two hundred complaints submitted by the public about a Ward in your region, of course. That indicates a problem that has to be dealt with, especially since you've been lax on keeping several Wards safe."

Mrs. Cooper clenched her fists for a moment, before tapping the mute button and taking a deep breath. She then turned to the rest of them. "This was obviously an attempt to discredit me, if not the entire ENE, and I do believe I have some yelling at people to do. Since the meeting was called on false pretenses and through authority that shouldn't exist I think you can go, but I'd like to use the conference room for a bit."

"Go right ahead," Director Piggot replied as she got up. "I think I'll go lay some groundwork of my own to ensure that this doesn't get buried."

"Why the hell are they bothering?" Dennis asked as the door closed behind them a minute later.

"It's likely a power play to try and get key Wards out of the region," Miss Militia answered. "Something that we thought had been nipped when the mastered individuals were flushed out of the Youth Guard, but we don't have a sure-fire way to detect corruption. Though I wouldn't be surprised if they also tried to make it an action against New Wave, except that there's basically no way to force one of their members to relocate without finding a way to force them into the Wards in the first place."

Taylor shrugged, then pulled a pistol opener out of a belt pouch and fired it at the wall. "I'm off to do productive things with my afternoon. Have a nice day."

Getting everything installed at the Dallon household had been easy enough, though they'd had to go up to the attic for all the bedroom closet door openers and then down to the basement from there. Which hadn't been all that difficult when they'd realized it had to be done, since they'd been able to send all of the lines down at once. The bedroom openers were locked to those who used the bedrooms and a general access list was set up for the common area openers. One that Carol and Mark could edit if they wanted to, and Mark tested that functionality by adding Taylor to it.

Carol arrived twenty minutes after they were done, and whined about not having been included. She had some plan for helping that involved her breaker state, but Mark didn't want to let her explain the 'rampant stupidity'. She tried anyway.

"Mom," Vicky had interrupted. "If something had gone wrong, how would we have gotten you out of the wall? Since you can't exactly climb up strings and all."

Amazingly, that had worked to shut Carol up.

Taylor stayed for dinner, and halfway through got a message from the Youth Guard main office informing her that she was not to have any meetings with Youth Guard representatives from other regions without Mrs. Cooper, Director Piggot, or Chief Director Costa-Brown being present in some fashion. Actually, looking over it, all of those cleared to work in other regions had been included in the message, so there was likely some kind of plot that'd been uncovered. Or maybe they were just covering their bases? It even provided permission to ditch any such meeting with force if any of them felt it was necessary. Using wording that implied 'anything short of lethal' was acceptable.

She sent a copy of the message off to Mrs. Cooper, Director Piggot, Colin, Miss Militia, and Costa-Brown, enquiring as to the validity of it and the permission to use force. Mainly because she wouldn't put it past someone to realize that their previous plot had failed and this was plan B. After all, encouraging Wards to skip out on meetings in a violent fashion seemed like a wonderful way to discredit the ENE region, something that seemed to be the goal with the earlier meeting.

Friday morning had dark clouds but no rain yet. It was obviously on the way, and Taylor was somewhat glad that she didn't have to rely on her moped or buses to get around. Missy joined her and Amy at the gym, but Vicky had apparently pulled off dumping cereal all over herself and hadn't been ready when Amy had left. The three of them went through their routine, ate, and then walked over the rooftops to get to school, fully intending to escape via pocket dimensions later to avoid being out in the predicted rain.

Most of the day's gossip was the scheduled Wards transition and handoff event that was scheduled for the next morning. Everyone seemed to be determined to not miss this one after the non-event the last one had been, and the 'predictions' about what was going to happen were amusing in their inaccuracy. Or at least Taylor hoped most were inaccurate, one of the theories was that there would be a massive battle due to people deciding to attack during it. That would be annoying to deal with.

As predicted, it was raining by the time school let out, making Taylor happy that she could escape via pocket dimension. The Wards had the evening off so as to keep any issues that cropped up from 'jumping' leaders, officially, but she had some planning work to do in advance for the weekend. She was going to be busy, after all, so she needed to ensure that scheduling was done for the rest of the Wards. Luckily for her, most of that was going to be easy enough. No 'non-patrol tasks' were cleared for the rest of the Wards.

Looking things over, Rosa's gear hadn't been cleared for patrol at all, having had some critical failures during testing, so she was likely going to be tinkering. No out of town requests were in the queue for the others, which left five of them theoretically available to go on patrol. Of course, Ryan and Sandy were 'tag-along' members and had to be considered differently. So from a base planning point of view she only had Aisha, Chris, and Missy available as primary patrol members. Checking over things, she decided to give Aisha a shot at patrol leader with Missy on the console for Saturday afternoon, the morning having been blocked out for the ceremony. Sunday she then put Chris as patrol leader with Aisha on console for the morning, then Missy as patrol leader with Chris on the console for the afternoon.

She then considered things, and opted to have Sandy join the patrols that Aisha and Missy were leading and Ryan join the patrol that Chris was leading. She also decided to have the three kids 'shadow' the console to learn about things from that end, even if they couldn't run it themselves yet due to age restriction rules. Ryan Saturday afternoon, Sandy Sunday morning, and Rosa Sunday afternoon. Locks were automatically placed on the available patrol routes due to the kids joining them, but other than that she left it up to each patrol leader to decide which route to use.

All of that had taken her ten minutes from the point she'd put her visor on before leaving her last class of the day. Which left her with a few hours before dinner, and she'd already dropped her school stuff off at home.

Taylor: You busy?

Amy: Not really, no. Why?

Taylor: Because we've got three mystery beacons and I have nothing to do until dinner.

Amy: Ahhh. Sounds like a good use of a few hours. Let me let Mark know, then we can meet up in the pocket dimension.

It didn't take long to get the three new codes entered in to the opening device and locked to their personal access codes, just in case. Though they weren't yet labeled beyond a simple 'Mystery 1/2/3'. Taylor selected the first and found a small structure on the holographic interface, but she targeted the ground outside to start with. A moment later the portal opened and they stepped out to find themselves in a tropical area, the structure being a hut not far from a beach.

"I wonder how far away from home we are," Taylor mused, looking around.

"If you head back to your house for a moment we can see," Amy replied.

"Good point, though you get the next one."

"Deal."

Taylor popped back into the pocket dimension, then opened up a portal to her bedroom. When she stepped out she blinked.

Taylor: I don't think that beach is on Bet.

Amy: Yeah, I was just coming to that conclusion myself. I'm wondering if any of the beacons are on Bet.

Taylor: Given where the codes came from? I'm assuming not.

Amy: Good point.

It didn't take long for Taylor to return, after which they checked out the hut. It had no lock on the swinging door, and was essentially only a bathroom and a bedroom. There were a couple of spots that it looked like tended to be used to put a cooler or suitcase down in, and a quick check showed that there was a small tinkertech generator underneath the hut to power the minimal technology there. The pumps and water heater, the pocket dimension beacon, cellular communication relay, and the lights and outlets in the hut. It also looked like filling the water tank might need to be done manually if it didn't rain enough.

They took half an hour to explore the area, finding that they were on one of at least three islands in the middle of a crescent of land, several other islands stopping ocean waves from making it through at full force. Nothing within sight looked man-made other than the hut they'd arrived at. In fact, the island they were on was the only thing that looked like it might've been touched by humans at all, and several birds looked unlike anything either of the two of them had seen before.

"This seems like a nice place to relax," Amy finally said. "I suppose it's also a safe beach for us to swim at, which is nice. But I doubt they set it up for us specifically, so hopefully they have a way to keep us informed if it's a bad idea to swing by."

Taylor nodded. "I'm sure they do. Shall we check the next one?"

"Sure."

They ended up going back to the hut to find a suitably large flat surface to open a portal with, then labeled the beacon code as 'Beach Hut' before bringing up the next one. This time it defaulted to inside of a house. Figuring that it was likely another location that wasn't occupied, this time they opted to open the portal inside the structure. Especially as they'd moved around the interface enough to see that there were neighbors.

Amy checked the window, frowning as she did so. "The neighbors have Florida license plates, but the design looks wrong."

Taylor nodded. "We did agree that things were likely not going to be on Bet. Your turn to pop back home for a moment."

It didn't take long to determine that they were much closer to home this time, at least when dealing with a Zornward scale, than the beach had been. When Amy returned they checked and found the beacon, with another repeater unit, were strapped to the beams in the basement. The house seemed to have electricity and running water, and had a computer that was an unfamiliar model and had a password neither knew in an office. The kitchen had no food in it either, but there were four bedrooms and three bathrooms upstairs and a full entertainment center in the living room.

A quick check of the news revealed that this was a world very similar to Bet, but obviously different as well. Sadly, it was likely that none of their money would be good here, but they could probably work something out if it came down to that. They might need to ask if there was anything special that they needed to know as well before leaving the building. Due to that uncertainty in particular, since amongst other things they didn't know if the guns they had on them were legal, let alone their parahuman status in the first place, they returned to the pocket dimension to check the last beacon.

Initial appearances seemed to indicate that it was underground in some fashion, so they opened the portal in the room the beacon seemed to be in. Motion sensors turned the lights on as they stepped through, and it was quickly obvious that they were in an 'arrival room'. The large 'Welcome to Test Site Falco' banner was a good indication there. Warnings for various things, including a chart of symbols used to denote various things such as high radiation zones just added to the impression. Taylor was oddly disappointed in the lack of signs pointing out where the restrooms were.

As soon as they closed the pocket dimension portal their phones lost signal, which indicated that this wasn't intended for normal use on that front. One of the signs talked about radio etiquette, which seemed to imply that was a primary means of communication when the facility was in use.

"Weird," Amy said as she read one sign. "Apparently there are a lot of foxes around here. Some are friendly, and they've noted that the green foxes will steal and eat donuts, but blue and purple foxes have shown bad reactions to baked goods in general. Oh, and one in three yellow foxes seem to be adapting to be poisonous or have been feeding on things that make them poisonous?"

Taylor blinked at that. "Really?"

"That's what it says."

"Huh."

They examined the room, then left through the only door to find themselves in a short hallway. The restrooms were right there, surprising Taylor, and there was one other door. They approached it, only to find it locked.

"That's annoying," Amy noted.

"Yep. I could pick it?"

A moment later a tear in space opened up, dropping an envelope at their feet before closing. Taylor sighed and picked it up, finding that it had a letter and a couple of keys inside. She held the letter so that Amy could read it as well.

Miss Hebert and Miss Dallon,

The facility you're in is a repurposed nuclear fallout bunker on another Earth. We've used it in the past for testing abilities that could be fairly destructive, either in their use or in our testing methods. For example, if you follow the orange path you'll find a modified naval cannon we installed as part of a brute testing setup. Most of the equipment is up to date, though we rarely use the facility.

Normally the bunker is kept locked when not in use, only those areas we intend to utilize unlocked for any given session, but the enclosed keys are masters that will get you into all areas. Feel free to use the facility for more destructive uses of your powers. We just ask that you do your best to keep the actual destruction to the exterior of the bunker itself.

Please be careful outside of the marked safe areas as there are some old remnants of the nuclear weapons that were deployed years ago. We've worked to clear most of them out of the immediate vicinity of the bunker, but left some intentionally for testing purposes. What you may or may not find outside of the marked boundaries has not been determined, so be very careful if leaving them. There are full hazmat suits in the storage rooms next to every airlock, just in case.

There's a map of known bunker locations in the observation area (blue path), though none of the systems in them are functional anymore and many of them no longer have safe or stable entrances. Pay attention to the warnings as shown on the map if you venture out to them.

Should you decide to wander more widely we urge you to be careful. We don't think anyone has survived on the planet, but there's a blind spot that moves around the countryside that could be a parahuman. We aren't sure, and haven't gone to the effort needed to find out, just in case that draws undesired attention.

-Cauldron

P.S. The naval cannon has a rifled barrel and we hid some flat rounds for it under the blue floor tile.

The postscript was handwritten, and Taylor suspected it was Doormaker and Clairvoyant's doing.

"I'm curious about the cannon," Amy finally said. "Do you think it's safe to play with?"

Taylor snorted. "Not at all. Is that going to stop us?"

"We have no supervision to speak of, so I'm thinking 'no'."

It took no time at all to get through the first locked door and start following the orange path.

Taylor was grinning as she returned home, a feeling that she knew Amy shared. The naval cannon had a barrel just short enough to use with 'Barrage Blaster' mode, and was on a turret setup that lifted it high enough into the air to make it useful. Sure, one of them had needed to operate the controls while the other positioned themselves to apply their power to the round, but that was okay. They'd taken turns, and obliterated a lot of trees in the process. And smoothed out some rocky outcroppings, for that matter, and may have accidentally diverted a river a little bit.

Now that she was back in range for things, she composed and sent a message off asking about that house in the other Earth's Florida. Little details, like how likely they were to be breaking laws by carrying around guns and/or being parahumans in general there. Or if there was a way to get local spending money if it was safe to venture out of the house. And on a whim she included a request for a login for the computer.

While she was debating over the wording of that she was also collecting a change of clothing, since she needed to take a quick shower before dinner. Amy was doing the same, though in her case she didn't have to worry about visitors. Cleaning up didn't take long, and she headed downstairs to help her father with cooking when she was done.

"So where were you?" her father asked as she joined him in the kitchen.

Taylor shrugged. "Visited a few places. A very private beach, a house somewhere in Florida, and a renovated bunker with some fun toys installed."

"And which of those had your phones lose signal?"

"The latter. No repeater equipment was installed there."

"I see. Must've been pretty far away then."

"That's...likely an understatement."

He paused and turned to stare at her. "An understatement?"

She nodded. "Yeah."

"How so?"

"None of the three are on Bet, mainly."

It took him a moment to wrap his head around that. "You have a way to get to other Earths, and visited a 'very private beach', some random house, and a 'renovated bunker'? Why those locations?"

"Because those are the locations that someone else installed the beacons in."

"Oh." He frowned. "I suppose I can see how that would work. Though now I'm wondering just how private the beach is, because that seems to be the odd one out to me."

She blinked at that. "The beach is the odd one out?"

"The other two sound like safe houses of a sort, by intention or otherwise."

"Ah. I suspect the beach is on a version of Earth with no native intelligent life. Very private as a result, and probably used as a vacation spot. The hut left there was just enough for staying for a few days, with no obvious signs that things like locks are needed at all."

"Okay, that makes more sense than just a beach. Especially from the point of view of what a parahuman with access to jump around to other Earths might look for. Speaking of jumping around, when do we expect Dragon to pop out of one of the doorways?"

Taylor grinned, and her father seemed to notice and frown slightly. "I'm not sure when exactly, but I don't think it'll be much longer."

Chapter 232 Taylor happened to spot that the downstairs portal had been opened before her father and moved to greet Theresa. Only to find the end of a box barely sticking out of the portal, stuck on the carpet. Frowning, she moved over and lifted the end of the box slightly, then pulled it through. There was a pause before Little Theresa stuck her head through the portal, likely wondering what just happened, before smiling and running up to Taylor with a loud "Mommy!"

It took Taylor a moment to get the box put down to the side. "I don't recall anything saying that you needed to bring gifts."

Theresa shrugged. "You asked for more upgrade kits, though I don't know what you want them for. They aren't permitted for Arcadia or Brockton General, or anywhere that isn't owned by or the primary residence of someone who isn't at least cleared at SL5. I thought all the other beacons you would want them for already had them too. But you also went somewhere that your phone didn't work today, so I prepared a backpack for you to fix that."

"Oh. Thank you." Taylor suspected that this had something to do with the AI not wanting to be entirely out of contact with her, though wasn't sure if the primary drive was actual concern for her well-being or some of the 'stay in contact' directives that still ran in the background.

"Hello?" her father greeted, obviously confused.

"Hello grandpa!" Theresa greeted.

Taylor sighed. "This is Theresa. Little Theresa, one of two bodies we made for Dragon in a fugue a few weeks ago. She decided right from the start that when she's using the younger body that she should act her apparent age. Mostly."

Theresa looked up at Taylor. "But this is my actual age?"

"I'm not sure that you should be judged on human development rates there. How many equivalent years of human-speed consciousness have you experienced?"

The girl pouted. "I don't know. I thought that it should've been at least a hundred years, but human bodies are complicated. There may not be a realistic conversion factor."

Taylor watched as her father took a moment to center himself, before he shook his head and gestured to the kitchen. "Well, dinner's ready, so perhaps we should eat."

The finger-food worked well for Theresa, though Taylor was positive that she'd been practicing for eating with utensils as well. Practicing with various forms of eating so as to not be blindsided in public sounded like something that the AI would do. There wasn't much discussion as they ate, though Taylor noted that her father kept looking between her and Theresa. Eventually they finished, and the few dishes were rinsed but left to be washed later before they moved into the living room. The box that Theresa had brought with her was picked up by Taylor on the way by.

"So," Danny said, looking between the two. Taylor had sat on the couch, and Theresa had eagerly joined her. "I can't help but notice that there's a...resemblance?"

"Because Mommy is my mommy," Theresa replied, as if it should've been obvious. Which it was, especially to those who'd participated in the fugue that made the bodies in the first place.

He stared at the two of them, before shaking his head. "I don't know why I didn't see that answer coming. Why was a child body included in the mix?"

Taylor looked at Theresa, then shrugged. "It wasn't in the original plan, such as it was. I assume that she wanted to be able to be a child at times or we wouldn't have bothered. I don't think any notes we took covered the why." She then leaned over to open the box. "I'm more interested in the backpack right now, because I'm curious as to how it could help with places that my phones don't work."

It didn't take long to pull the backpack out of the box, and while it looked somewhat like a normal backpack on the outside it was obviously pretty much full. Knowing it was technology of some kind helped as well, since her tinker snark started examining it right away. It wasn't long before she knew that it was a repeater system with a six hour battery life, capable of communicating zornward with similar units. Beyond that it was set up for use with the cellular network as a primary, though it also had wired and wireless networking for computers, the latter needing configuration before it would function. Charging looked to be simple enough, with a cord that could be plugged into twenty-three different kinds of outlet and a charging system that could handle a very wide range of input power. Or it could be left out in the sun with the flap open to expose the solar panel attached to it, and there was a hand-crank that could be flipped out as well.

"Is this a standard hand-crank system?" Taylor asked, after realizing that the crank system was the same as the one Joey used in his system. She also put the backpack down, since she didn't see a lot of point in examining it further right now.

Theresa shrugged. "Dragon-tech makes exactly one kind of hand-crank charging system. It's an unusually popular product for how low-tech it is, and that's without taking into account how many of the things get sold overseas."

"Ah. And given why you're giving me this, it seems odd that it doesn't look like it has a location system? I mean, it identifies itself as a mobile unit, but surely it would try and locate itself for you somehow?"

"What would it use to do so? It's intended for places with no existing infrastructure."

"Well, the pocket dimension beacons use a two-point triangulation system that functions thanks to five different signal types that take different paths from the opening system to the beacon and back again, at least on a zornward level. So long as you know where either one of the endpoints is you get incredible precision relative to it. I thought you'd have figured out how that whole system works and duplicated at least part of it for a location system."

Theresa shook her head. "That only works when one end is in sufficiently folded space. The triangulation fails otherwise."

Danny raised an eyebrow at that. "Don't those pocket dimensions that everyone seems to be getting count? Stick the other end in one of them."

Taylor and Theresa both stared at Danny for a moment, before Taylor frowned and looked at Theresa. With a sigh, she poked the girl's forehead. "Stop that."

Theresa blinked. "What?"

"You're warming up, which probably means you're trying to do too much. Wait until you're in a more processing-friendly system before figuring out whatever it is you want to work on so that you don't hurt yourself."

"Oh."

"Now, did you want to leave so that you can shift to a system that can handle that processing, or did you want to stay for a bit longer?"

Theresa fidgeted for a moment, though she did start to cool down again. "I'd like to stay a little longer."

"Okay then." Taylor then thought about it for a moment. "I think we've got a few board games, perhaps we should dig those out?"

Taylor watched as the pocket dimension portal closed behind Theresa an hour later, then shook her head and turned to her father. He rubbed his eyes and sighed. "Okay, that was not how I expected the night to go. Some warning would've been appreciated."

She shrugged. "That wouldn't have been nearly as amusing."

"At least I don't have to explain how I have a biological grandchild her age." He paused, noticing Taylor fidgeting a little, then sighed again. "She's biologically your child?"

"Essentially. Both bodies, really. I'm still not sure why we did that, but I wouldn't put it past the others in the fugue to have 'out-voted' me."

He stared at her for a moment. "Please tell me that's a secret?"

"Outside of those of us who participated, who aren't about to be blabbing, I don't think anyone has any reason to compare our genetics at this point. And anyone who did would likely either be aware already or wouldn't blab either. Unless they want to piss off who knows how many people by sequencing and comparing genetics to release information on people, anyway. Haven't the last couple of people who tried something like that met unusually messy ends?"

This time he flinched. "Yeah, I think the last one I heard about was found spread across three states. Granted, they happened to be based right next to a couple of state borders to make that easier. Sioux City, I think it was? Still gruesome."

"It's too bad that I could see the next one to do something like that targeting Amy and I, deterrents like that or no. But I don't see Dragon using the two suits all that often in public, at least not in any way that would link them to us anyway. If only because I suspect that they're too valuable to her to risk around idiots."

"Ah. That makes sense too."

Saturday morning Taylor got up early and met Amy in the gym, ignoring the rain since she wasn't going outside. Dean and Dennis both showed up half an hour later to exercise as well, but joined the girls for breakfast instead of sticking around longer. Most of that was to discuss exactly what Taylor would be doing, and some of the why. The 'basic outline' for the chosen ceremony was vague and didn't work exactly as written for the two. After that all four got into costumes, though for different reasons. Amy into her healer costume for after the promotion ceremony, Taylor and the boys into their 'dress' costumes. Amy then went and hid in the back corner seats to watch things while Taylor and the boys met up with Ethan.

"What are we doing?" Ethan asked as they sat down in a waiting area. "Nobody would tell me, I just kept getting smirks."

"Taylor's doing the bulk of the work," Dean answered, gesturing at her, obviously not going to give a proper answer. "I think everything else will be fairly obvious once we begin."

"Ah." Ethan then turned to Taylor. "So do you have your speech ready?"

She nodded. "Of course. I have it memorized, even."

"Really? You aren't just going to load it up on your visor and read it?"

"Nope. Memorized."

Ethan frowned, but didn't say anything else. It wasn't much longer before they went to get set up, Ethan waiting to one side of the stage to represent the Protectorate while Dean and Dennis waited at the other side as the graduating Wards. Taylor had moved off to keep extra out of sight for multiple reasons.

Deputy Director Renick walked out, standing at the podium and looking out over the assembled press and those who'd arrived early enough to get seats. "Welcome. Today we are here for the promotion of two Wards to the Protectorate and the introduction of the new Wards leader. I see that unlike the last time we did this, today we have a significant crowd." There was murmuring at that, but he continued. "Still, we don't have all day, so let's begin. Here to represent the Protectorate, Assault."

Ethan stepped forward onto the stage, grinning and waving. There was polite applause, but he didn't seem to mind. Taylor judged a couple of things and repositioned herself, but would need to wait to determine her exact entry point.

"Next up," Renick continued. "Clockblocker and Gallant, both of whom are moving to the Protectorate this quarter."

Dean and Dennis both walked onto the stage from the other side, also waving to polite applause. When they stopped Taylor was able to make a final adjustment to her position, then waited for her cue.

"And finally for the morning we have the new Wards leader," Renick said. "Maul!" There was a moment of polite applause before people noticed that Taylor wasn't coming out onto the stage, at which point people switched to murmuring. He looked around, seemingly annoyed.

Just as Renick looked to be about to say something else, Taylor jumped out onto the stage, landing just behind Dennis. She crouched down and carefully kicked forward and upwards, propelling him forward towards Ethan. He dropped into a roll even as Taylor was standing up and spinning around, grabbing Dean as she did so. One spin around and she let him go, sending him flying over Dennis and into Ethan.

With that done she stalked over to the podium, Renick moving to the side as though afraid that he was next. She stopped at the podium, and looked over the crowd. Nodding, she began her 'speech'. "I'm the oldest, making me the new Wards leader." She gave another look over the crowd, then nodded. "Bye."

That done, she walked off the stage before anyone had recovered. Amy stuck around to see some of the baffled reactions while Taylor was changing into her healing costume, then snuck out the back to meet up and head off.

"I think the audience was torn between applauding you and starting a riot over the whole thing," Amy admitted as they waited for a PRT officer to collect them. Apparently they weren't going to the hospital under their own power.

Taylor smirked. "Was that before or after several people started laughing their asses off? Because I know I heard people laughing."

"I think that group thought it was a joke and that you'd be coming back momentarily. Most of them were annoyed when Renick 'gave up' and ended things."

"Ah. I suppose that makes sense. Have you checked to see what people are saying on PHO yet?"

"There are at least five edits of you kicking Dennis across the stage already, with overlays or captions. They seem to be less interested in the throwing of Dean across afterwards, but I'm not sure why. Maybe people just haven't come up with a good idea for him landing on Ethan? Either that or they see him being thrown as an unfortunate side effect of kicking Dennis over and not something to make fun of. It's hard to tell."

"I'm assuming they just haven't come up with anything good yet. Because since when did anyone on PHO actually care enough to not make fun of something like that?"

"True."

Taylor decided to look up a few of the edits, but hadn't gotten far before a PRT officer collected them. It quickly became obvious why they weren't going to the hospital under their own power, because they were brought to the teleporter rooms instead. The officer checked in, went through, and they got the all clear. After that Amy went first, followed by Taylor. They came out in Pittsburgh and were shuttled to the hospital there. When they arrived they found that the hospital had several snarks in the blocks surrounding it, but none of them were familiar. There were also three unknown snarks in the hospital.

"Good morning Panacea, Maul," Doctor Hume, according to her ID badge, greeted them. "We've been working with Brockton General to prepare things for today, but the entirety of the patients we'd like you to look at are having complications due to the immune system altering flu. Some we're fairly certain that we know what the problem is, others we have little to no clue about. We've got the worst cases in the emergency room, almost all of them are transplant rejections but there are a couple we're baffled by as well."

"Then perhaps we should get started," Amy replied. "Are you our guide for the morning?"

"Probably all day. The emergency room is just down this hall."

It wasn't long before the two were going through patients. Most were indeed suffering due to transplants, though bone marrow was more common than organs. One woman had a compromised immune system that was going very slowly through the infection process as a result, but her unborn child's immune system had already been replaced and was causing problems. Eight and ten year old siblings had baffled everyone except for their parents when they were found to have somehow had their livers swapped. Taylor really wondered what the story was there as there weren't any obvious signs of surgery, but they didn't press for details and thus didn't know.

It'd taken until lunchtime to clear the 'dire need' cases, after which they didn't subject Taylor and Amy to the hospital's food. Instead they ordered from a nearby restaurant, the girls opting for spaghetti and meatballs with garlic bread. They'd been told that each such meal was enough to feed two, but asked for their own anyway.

"PHO knows we're here and are debating over the method used to get us here," Taylor noted while they ate. "They're blaming the short promotion ceremony on us needing to get here to save lives, which has negated most of the whining about how short it was."

Amy blinked a couple of times at that. "That sounds far too reasonable for PHO."

"Well, they're also having too much fun with their edits of the ceremony. Surely you've noticed that every time people start getting uppity about how short or improper the ceremony was another group posts their latest edit to the video to derail the conversation?"

"Okay, yes, I'd noticed that. But where are they talking about us being here?"

"The Pittsburgh boards."

Amy flinched at how obvious that was in hindsight, which made Taylor grin. They continued to look over things, commenting on various edits people had made of the ceremony, but eventually finished their meals. Doctor Hume's eye twitched a little after realizing that they'd both eaten the entirety of their ordered meals and they'd both produced chocolate bars from their utility belts for 'dessert'.

The first group of people after lunch were much less significantly affected, but still needed help. A number of them had cancer that was causing poor reactions, others were natural genetic chimeras with just different enough genomes to be causing problems. That had surprised Amy when she'd run into the first one, finding that the flu was attempting to adapt to the different genomes, but they were just too far off from one another for it to succeed. They hadn't expected that to be the case when they first examined the thing, but it made some sense since variations tended to occur in everyone anyway. This group also included a number of people who simply had an infection that was causing problems while their immune system was down.

One of those who merely had an infection baffled Taylor for a few minutes. The girl couldn't have been more than nine and appeared to have caught the flu while she already had chickenpox. That was easy enough to deal with, but she also didn't have her original heart. Or a human heart at all, if the genetics were anything to go by. The entire thing was, for reasons Taylor didn't understand, being completely ignored by the flu changes. Said heart was rebuilt into one that matched the girl anyway, just in case of future complications, but the entire situation had been odd.

They'd taken a break before the last group of the day. Most of them were apparently locals that just wanted the symptoms to be over with and had been left for last because of that, though they were also the only ones that had paid for treatment. Their payments were being split between the two girls and a fund for moving the more seriously affected patients around, though several 'large, anonymous donations' had been made to the latter as well. Taylor and Amy suspected that Cauldron was at least one of said donators, but had no proof and didn't mention it to anyone else.

"I believe we're done for the day," Doctor Hume said as the last patient was being looked over by another doctor. "I can call the PRT to let them know that you're ready to head back."

"No need", Amy replied. "We can make our own way back. No need to bother the PRT about it."

"Really?"

Taylor nodded. "It isn't a problem. Trust us."

"Okay then. If you say so. Thank you for your assistance today, and have a nice evening."

They waited for the woman to make it to the next room, where they heard her calling the PRT anyway, before using a pistol opener to leave. A minute later Taylor had exited into the Wards area so that she could drop off her healing costume, Amy exiting into her room at home right after that. Taylor was home as well within five minutes, at which point her phone rang.

"Hello," she answered.

"Miss Hebert," came from the other end. "Doctor Hume indicated that you and Miss Dallon were going to make your own way home."

"That's correct."

"We're not sure that's wise, given the distances involved."

Taylor snorted. "Amy and I are already in our homes. I even had time to swing by the ENE PRT building to drop off my costume. It was no trouble at all for us."

There was a moment of silence from the other end, and then her Wards phone pinged her with a tracking request from Pittsburgh. She allowed it once, and a moment later she heard a sigh from the other end. "So I see, at least for you. Sorry to bother you."

It wasn't long before Taylor was looking over reports for the afternoon, wanting to ensure that the other Wards were doing well. She found no problems that needed immediate attention, but made a note to look over some of the console shadowing procedures as they'd have some initial setup trouble for it. The last thing for her to review for the day in her new capacity as Wards Leader was a notice that Dean and Dennis had completed the movement of their equipment out of the Wards area and their parking spaces had been shifted into the Protectorate lot.

Sunday morning Taylor and Amy once again ignored the rainy weather as they met up to visit the gym, though they weren't joined by anyone else this time. They laughed at some of the videos that'd been posted overnight, then decided to use visor data to make their own versions. Specifically, they both took their own visor recording and worked on their own to see what they came up with while they worked out.

Taylor started with a view from the front, where one of the cameras actually was, and applied labels as Deputy Director Renick, Ethan, Dean, and Dennis came out. That done, as 'Maul' was being introduced she faded in a filter to unnaturally smooth things out instead of the more realistic rendering, hoping to use that to disguise just how good the recording actually was. Included in that was a simplification of hair rendering and a couple of other things. That done, she filtered out anything she didn't want to show and shifted from the static camera to an incredibly dynamic camera. The now dynamic camera swung to show her arrival behind Dennis close-up. A freeze-frame there was used so that she could overlay a circle on his unadorned ass and label it 'Weak spot - No clock to block attacks'. She then showed the launching kick hitting said 'weak spot' in slow motion, spinning around it until the point where her foot was no longer in contact with him.

With Dennis in the air she swung the camera around, keeping him in frame while she showed her grabbing Dean from behind them. This kept Dennis's roll in view even as Dean was being swung around in a circle, after which she 'followed' Dean's flight through the air. She spun around that to get a good shot of the impact with Ethan, freeze-framing it at the moment of impact. There she applied coloring to Ethan, showing center of mass and that Dean had hit to the side of and above it. A label indicated a 'minor penalty for poor aim'. The coloring and label flashed out and she played the entire impact in slow motion, Ethan canceling out Dean's forward motion and swinging him onto his feet safely.

The camera then panned out and back to the podium, and when it reached where one of the cameras actually existed she faded out the rendering filter to return it to 'real'. Labels were slapped on her stating 'New Wards Leader', 'Fucks Given:0', and 'Too Busy for Speeches'. She ended the video as she was turning to leave the stage. A quick watch of the full thing was followed by sending a copy to Amy.

Amy finished her video a couple minutes later, possibly being less used to the editing programs. She sent her video to Taylor, and then they watched each other's. Amy had opted to start her video with footage from the back, as though she'd had a camera running there. Which was accurate enough to not cause anyone to question it. She'd then jumped to different cameras that had better angles as appropriate, as though she'd stitched the footage together from multiple sources. She hadn't bothered to label people like Taylor had, but had instead put up 'points' in the corner. Five points for a silent entry and ten for a successful sneak attack, followed by docking ten for not delivering a pre-asskicking one-liner. One point per foot Dennis traveled, three points for the spin on Dean. Fifteen for hitting Ethan, two docked for it being off-center.

'Keeping it simple' earned five points, but a single point was docked for the contraction making it difficult to count words. The simple, no-nonsense exit earned ten points, and the overall shortness of the entire start to finish was another ten. After that a tally was put up, alongside three others. Dennis had lost points for getting his ass kicked but recovered a third of them for his rolling landing and recovery. Dean lost points for situational awareness and aerodynamics, and Ethan broke even on the impact with Dean because he didn't dodge, but he did catch Dean well enough to keep both of them from falling to the floor from the impact.

"I have no clue how you did that," Amy noted as she watched Taylor's. "But it's obviously rendered and thus a wonderful way to keep people from questioning things. You'll have to show me how that works later."

Taylor nodded. "It's just a rendering filter, nothing complicated. I almost wish that I'd thought about points for things, but it's obviously arbitrary so I'm not sure what values I'd have assigned anything."

"I was inspired by a couple of other people's similar assignments and basically copied what they did for the points."

"Ah. Shall we upload them?"

"Of course."

That didn't take long, nor did posting links in the appropriate thread before they went to eat. It didn't take long for others to jump in and start discussing them, though most of the initial comments were on how unfair it was that Taylor obviously had access to bullshit-tier software capable of generating a three-dimensional rendering from camera feeds. They didn't know how anyone was supposed to be able to compete with that. Amy was called out on cribbing the various point values from other videos, but people liked her 'combination of multiple points of view', even if it wasn't 'bullshit-tier reconstruction'.

By the time they'd finished eating and were heading to get into costumes there were a couple of people that had stated an intention to see how accurate Taylor's video was and were asking for every bit of raw footage people could find in support of that, even those taken from angles that were seen as useless for other purposes. Amy thought that was hilarious, giving Taylor 'bonus points' for making people on PHO waste their time.

Amy had to head home to put on her costume, while Taylor just had to head to her room in the Wards area. They then met back up in the Wards common area to wait for a PRT officer to collect them for today's trip.

Dennis yawned as he returned from the bathroom, frowning as he noticed the notification light blinking on his phone. He picked it up and unlocked it to see what kind of notification it was, only to find several waiting for him. Grumbling, he skimmed the first few, all of them relating to initial Protectorate work now that he'd transitioned. Luckily he didn't have to worry about relocating until the summer, since he was still in school. Then he got to the last couple, new videos posted to a thread he was monitoring.

He considered things, then decided that he wasn't likely getting back to sleep after waking up enough to read the notifications and switched to PHO. He ended up looking at a couple of messages that'd been sent to him, then dug up the thread from the promotion ceremony. It'd grown by eight pages since he'd last looked at it, and three pages in he found the first of the new videos. They weren't exactly impressive edits, and the comments on them agreed, up until he found the ones posted by Taylor and Amy.

Amy's had been posted first, so he watched it first. He recognized the point values from other videos made up the day before, though her mix of angles was a massive improvement over anything he'd seen so far. Nodding, since she'd at least done a better job than most, he moved on to Taylor's video. Which started out simple enough, but he blinked when it shifted to a rendered appearance. He didn't know why she'd do that, at least until the camera broke free of any real-world camera. It didn't take much to figure out that she didn't want to reveal that she had essentially photorealistic modeling of things around her when her visor was recording.

When he was done watching the video he shook his head. It'd been amusing, but anyone trying to use his ass as an actual 'weak point' was going to be disappointed. There was extra armor and padding there, which was why there wasn't a clock. Taylor had targeted it specifically because it could take the hit. At the same time, he now had new footage to 'creatively edit'. Perhaps he could overlay some 'points' of his own onto things?

Chapter 233 It turned out that today's trip was a bit further to the West than the previous day's trip had been. Their phones jumped three hours when they arrived at their destination, as they'd landed in Fresno. That meant that they were ferried over to the hospital well before dawn, but that didn't stop the local parahumans from having a security cordon set up. Also different today was that they were met by a nurse instead of by a doctor.

"Good morning," the nurse greeted. "I'm Kaye Fowler, but just call me Kaye or Nurse Kaye as most of the staff are more likely to hunt my mother down if you ask for 'Nurse Fowler'."

"Morning," Taylor and Amy chorused.

"I apologize if I'm a bit blunt, but we've got a number of people who are barely hanging on in the emergency room. Unless you have something important to ask before we begin?"

"We should be fine waiting until the worst cases are dealt with," Amy replied, and a couple minutes later they were in the emergency room.

Kaye hadn't been exaggerating when she said that some of the people were barely hanging on, Taylor stabilizing people quickly while Amy did the more complicated work behind her. They probably should've started with Fresno, if this was the kind of thing that was going on out here, instead of sending them to Pittsburgh the day before. Still, it didn't take too long before Taylor had at least stabilized everyone in dire straits, at which point she joined Amy in dealing with the deeper corrections.

They ended up working through to the local lunchtime before anyone thought to force them to take a break, a literal stack of pizzas having been ordered while they were working.

"We don't dare subject you to the cafeteria," Kaye explained as Taylor and Amy each claimed an entire pizza. "Not since we got thinker aid in our menu, anyway. We're now well known for having some of the healthiest hospital food around, along with the blandest." She grinned at that. "It's amazing how much work people put into their recovery when needed, and the local businesses see a lot of people stopping in for a bite of 'proper food' when they're released."

"That sounds counterproductive," Taylor noted between bites of pizza. "Wouldn't that make it harder to get those who have nothing they can do to speed up their recovery to eat their meals?"

"We've ended up specializing a bit, our normal patient load has work to do to get better. You're here instead of at one of our partner hospitals that take on those who need to take it easier to recover and heal because we had the room and they didn't. The thinker helped our partners with their menus as well, sacrificing a little bit of healthy for a lot more taste."

Taylor rolled her eyes at that, even if she somewhat approved of the tactic, and resumed devouring her large pizza. She might need to split another with Amy afterwards as well. Either that or slap a 'reserved' note on a box for after they finished with the emergency room patients.

"So have you two heard about the issues that the tobacco industry is having?" Kaye asked after finishing her slice of pizza.

"I hadn't heard of anything," Amy admitted, Taylor nodding agreement. Then Amy frowned, apparently having realized something. "Wait, it would be treating nicotine as a poison, wouldn't it?"

The woman grinned. "Yep. Specifically, one that causes a mild 'allergic reaction' as it 'fights it off'. A number of other compounds normally found in cigarette smoke seem to add to it."

Taylor ran a quick check online. "I don't think any of this has hit the news. Either that or they've not made a big deal of it? Well, I see a note about cigarette sales dropping, but it doesn't link it to the flu strain beyond 'people smoke less when sick'."

"I think the tobacco companies are hoping that it's a temporary setback, but we ran tests on it and think that the entire industry is going to collapse because people can't smoke anymore."

Taylor: Think we should tell Riley that she may have toppled an entire industry?

Amy: That might've been in her plans.

Taylor: Given how much thought she seems to have put into the long-term effects? She only cared about giving herself a challenge. I think it's only worked out so well because she worked the kinks out in planning for the Nine and similar. We're lucky it hasn't been ten times as deadly.

Amy: Point. Might as well let her know. You want to do that?

Taylor: Sure.

It only took a moment to compose a message, though Taylor sent it to Amanda and Jacob as well. Shortly after that she and Amy split a third pizza, then got back to work on healing people. An hour and a half later they'd cleared the emergency patients and sat down for a few minutes with the hospital staff to determine how to deal with the rest of the patients. It was decided that those who just wanted to get over the flu would be left for last and any money they'd paid would be refunded if they didn't get to them, after which the girls started on those who needed assistance to get over things, even if they weren't in critical condition.

Some of the day's interesting patients included a woman with a chunk of titanium 'patching' an ulcer, a man that seemed to have picked up a retrovirus that had either changed everything except his left foot or had only finished with his left foot before he picked up the flu, and a young boy that appeared to have had his sweat glands altered to generate a mild contact poison, which was causing him skin problems due to the altered genetics and the poison now causing him to have a reaction. Most of the rest had mild infections that would take far too long to clear out without assistance, though Amy did end up removing a couple of pacemakers and fixing up a prosthetic for a veteran that didn't want his leg regrown.

They'd made it halfway through the patients that had paid to get things over with sooner than the normal progression would normally take before they stopped for dinner. There was a little bit of leftover pizza available, but for dinner the hospital had ordered in plates of sandwiches and bags of chips. The two hadn't discussed much at that point, beyond talking about various patients, and Kaye had gone off-shift by then as well. They were going to spend another hour or so going through patients before calling it a very late night, at least for them.

Taylor was thinking about the schedule for the week as they cleaned up. They had the following day off, in fact the PRT had blocked out the entire day over a month ago to ensure that all the Wards took it off. Then Tuesday through Thursday were blocked off for normal Wards work, instead being set up for therapy sessions. Which normally didn't block everything out, barring the parahuman talk anyway, except that parents were permitted to be around for this set of sessions. Which itself sounded almost ridiculous, since five out of seven Wards in the region didn't have to worry about their identities. But rules were rules, and they couldn't just give Aisha and Chris time off due to them being the only non-outed Wards.

Taylor: I just realized, did they invite you to be around for my session with Jessica on Wednesday?

Amy: No, just as they likely didn't invite you to be around for my session with her on Friday. Though I think they're going to drag Vicky and I out to the Rig for that one, if only because they hold most of Vicky's out there.

Taylor: I suppose that makes sense.

They easily made it through the rest of the patients, though one of them got yelled at by one of the doctors after they found out that he was only moving around due to overdosing on painkillers, meaning that he should've been in an earlier group. After that, the two made their way back home, though Taylor slipped through the PRT building to drop off the healing costume there. It was close to one in the morning by the time both of them had dropped into bed, but it'd been a day well spent.

Monday morning came far too soon for Taylor, her phone ringing waking her up instead of letting her sleep in. She grumbled a little as she connected to the phone, which moved the ringing from outside of her head to inside of it, then mentally prodded the answer button. "Hello Missy. Why are you waking me up?"

"Because it's well past time to be up and I'm bored," Missy replied. "Why were you still asleep?"

"Yesterday Amy and I were in California, and worked after a late dinner their time before coming back here."

"Oh. Can you get back there easily? Because it's raining both here and in Miami and I was hoping to find somewhere to do stuff outside."

Taylor grumbled as she got out of bed, since now that she was awake she had things she was going to need to deal with anyway. "Not easily without the PRT's help, but there's a beacon in Los Angeles. Shouldn't you know about that one already?"

There was a pause, probably while Missy looked things up, before the other girl continued. "Huh. It is on the list. But the air quality sucks this week, so it would probably be more annoying than anything else."

"I still want to know why you're calling me about this."

"Because I'm not allowed to go 'gallivanting across the country' without someone else with me."

Ah, right. That had come up before, hadn't it. "Well I'm going to need time to properly wake up. If I come up with anything then I'll let you know."

Missy sounded disappointed at that. "Okay. I guess."

Half an hour later Taylor was watching the news, partially wondering what kinds of drugs some people were on. Apparently their actions in Pittsburgh had come to light the previous day, which was spawning protests today. Except that the news also knew that they'd been in Fresno, even if most of the protesters hadn't figured that one out yet. But the people protesting had split into multiple factions, each focusing on a different 'issue'.

The most common were those protesting the choice of location, claiming unfair favoritism in who was healed due to geographical limitations. This boiled down to 'they should be healing people here, where the important people are, and not there where nobody cares' type arguments. All combined, it boiled down to 'they should be everywhere at the same time' and the news was treating that as the ridiculous claim it was.

The next most common were those protesting the girls healing people at all, specifically those working on the basis that the government shouldn't be encouraging them to interact with others in 'unnatural ways'. They extended this to anyone using powers to heal someone, so they weren't calling out just the two of them. Funnily enough, when asked, several of those groups also wanted the government to stop allowing the flu to spread in the first place, solidly establishing them as unrealistic crazies that had no clue how anything worked. Which meant that they had no credibility beyond numbers, and their numbers weren't that good.

Then there were the people protesting that the two were being paid for their time, at all. Trust fund or otherwise didn't matter to them, just that money was going to the two. When asked why they shouldn't get paid when doctors are, by doctors in at least one case, the general answer seemed to be 'because they have powers', which none of the doctors agreed with. Though one person talking to a reporter had taken the angle that they didn't have medical degrees and thus shouldn't be treated as medical professionals. Said person had seemed shocked when informed that licensed medical professionals had checked the healing afterwards, and then apologized for being an idiot and flipped off the others protesting. Their former fellows hadn't agreed with the point of view.

Lastly, there were two known groups protesting that the government was allowing the two to heal anyone after the various non-healing things they'd done, specifically using Louise as an example. Apparently cosmetic procedures were the things of the devil in general for one of the two groups, and the other claimed that their willingness to do the cosmetic stuff at all had to be their contact with the Endbringers warping them to the detriment of all mankind. Instead both groups had essentially stated that they should, somehow, explain to 'normal, upstanding people' how to heal those suffering and then probably go kill themselves to save the world from their warped minds.

"I have no clue what I want to do today," Taylor grumbled as she collected her breakfast dishes. "But I'm fairly certain it isn't going to involve going out in public."

She'd made it to the kitchen before a message came in on her phone, causing her to blink.

Scotty's private beach forecast: Sunny with zero chance of idiots.

"Huh," she said a moment later. "I suppose that would be a safe place to unwind."

Taylor: Hey Amy.

Amy: Want to gripe about the idiots on the news?

Taylor: Nah. They're idiots. But Missy woke me up wanting to find somewhere to do stuff outside, and there happens to be a private beach available that the idiots can't find.

Amy: We could actually go swimming, in a natural body of water, without fearing that we'd be attacked at any moment. With the only downside being that we pretty much have to bring our own food and drink?

Taylor: Yep.

Amy: I'm in.

Amy: Well, unless Carol and Mark object, but I can't see them doing so.

Shaking her head, Taylor fired a message off to Missy, then went to check with her father. She wasn't expecting him to object either.

Taylor had ended up making a quick run to the store in order to purchase some bagged ice and a pile of drinks to put in a cooler that Missy had dug out of a closet and was cleaning. Vicky had decided that she wasn't missing a private beach and was helping Amy make a pile of sandwiches, apparently aiming to ensure that Mark had to go shopping again if they wanted to have any bread left in the house. They were also going to bring individual serving bags of chips that were sitting around waiting to expire, even if the selection was going to be crap.

After everyone was ready and changed into swimwear, not to mention prepared quick bags with things like towels, they started meeting up. Missy had made her way to the Wards area long enough for Taylor to 'pick her up', though Taylor also grabbed her scout drone as well, at which point the cooler the younger girl had cleaned up was filled straight from where Taylor had put the ice and drinks in the back of the minivan. Amy and Vicky joined them shortly after that and dropped the sandwiches off to one side of the cooler while Taylor opened the portal, at which point Vicky dragged the cooler into the hut.

"Where are we?" Missy asked as Amy directed Vicky to put the cooler down where they'd previously noted a point for one. "My phone works, but I've got no location data beyond 'the beach'."

"And that's where we are," Taylor answered, unclipping her utility belt and hanging it on a support post. It had too much useful stuff to have been left behind, like first aid kits and her pistol-style opener. She dropped her tablet on one of the tables with a charging mat built in and set it to receiving the scout drone's data, then set up a program for it to scan the area. A spiral path around the area to get a good map of the place, then it would return and float over the hut when it was done.

Vicky looked outside once the cooler was situated, then grinned and flew off into the air to take a look around. She actually flew off far enough to be out of range of snark senses, but Taylor didn't care too much. Instead she dropped her visor next to the tablet and headed outside with the bag containing her towel. There was a beach with water to swim in and she didn't feel like wasting time getting to that part of the day. She took just enough time to make sure the towel was readily available, then slipped out of her flip-flops and walked to the water. It was a comfortable temperature, and with that confirmed she headed right in.

It took a minute for Amy and Missy to realize that Taylor was already in the water, but they quickly moved to follow her once they did. They swam for a bit, but almost thirty minutes later Vicky returned.

"Where the hell are we?" Vicky asked once she'd joined them in the water. "I took a very good look around but couldn't spot any signs of civilization. That shouldn't be possible, especially as I can't see a place as nice as this not having been found by anyone else."

Amy rolled her eyes. "I believe we're about eight degrees south and sixty eight degrees west. I can't be certain of that for a number of reasons."

Taylor raised an eyebrow. "I don't recall figuring that out?"

"I took notes on our first visit because I was curious about the likely day/night differences from back home. It isn't terribly accurate, but we shouldn't be significantly off as far as sunrise and sunset are concerned here. The best part for today is that there's no chance of idiots finding us while we relax."

Vicky seemed doubtful there, but didn't argue the point.

Fortuna sighed at the stupidity of some people. She was running a path to find those wishing to act out a desire to kill Miss Dallon or Miss Hebert, a bypass on the path to stopping those wishing to kill any Ward so as to get past the blurry aspect around the two girls. She'd opted to keep it to 'find' so that she could decide if they were worth dealing with, and if so come up with creative ways to deal with them, but that meant she actually saw what they were doing.

She wished that it hadn't become necessary, but there were enough people doing things that were far too dangerous to innocents. Rebecca had all but insisted after the 'trapped shed' incident, but agreed that letting those with no hope of causing real trouble make their attempts was a valid response. It gave the girls an outlet, at least, which was something that they all agreed was useful. Annoying to see how little thought was being put into some of the attacks, but still a useful outlet.

This time she'd come across a woman who had set up on a rooftop and appeared to be preparing for an attempt at firing rockets into Arcadia from half a mile away. The woman had left down the fire escape a couple minutes prior, unaware that she'd been spotted before getting into a car with out of state plates. There were a number of ways to handle the situation as it currently stood, such as calling in an anonymous tip to the police or dropping a hint into the PRT's system. Sabotaging the launchers was another possibility, of course, but that could result in damage to the building and harm the innocents that lived inside of it.

Fortuna stood there for several minutes going over options when she got an urge to look down to the street. Blinking, she grinned and activated the jump harness she was wearing, jumping down to the sidewalk in front of the man coming down the street.

"What the hell?" the man, Brad Meadows, yelled as she landed. He also almost dropped his umbrella, but managed to keep himself mostly dry.

"Good morning Mister Meadows," Fortuna greeted, tipping her fedora at him and ignoring some of the water that flowed off of it. "Might I have a moment of your time?"

He visibly checked his surroundings, but didn't run. He also wasn't foolish enough to attack her, which was nice. Reputations could be so useful. "I suppose."

She gestured to the building. "I'd like to bring your attention to the building that I just came off of. It seems that someone has decided to prepare to fire rockets from the roof of it, likely at Arcadia. I suspect as part of an attempt to harm Miss Dallon or Miss Hebert. I'm a busy woman and don't believe that I have time to properly deal with them, but then I saw you coming down the street and thought that you and your friends might like to handle things."

His eyes narrowed. "Really now. And why me?"

"Entirely because you were in the right place at the right time. If Lung had been walking down the street instead then I'd likely be making him the same offer, though I suspect that he wouldn't have remained nearly as calm as you have. I merely ask that damage to the building and injuries to its inhabitants be kept to a minimum. The one using the rooftop isn't native to the area."

"Of course they aren't. None of the locals are that stupid." He paused, looking thoughtful. "Okay, some of the locals are, but only when they're drunk, and that doesn't lend itself to planning across multiple days. How did they get things up there?"

"I haven't taken the time to check, but it couldn't be that difficult if they accomplished it."

"True, true. Okay, I think I can swing this easily enough. You sure you don't care about the one setting up, just the building and those who live in it?"

Fortuna grinned at that. "If I were concerned about keeping someone from using them to make a point, as it were, then I'd simply call the police, Mister Meadows. My problem was a desire to come up with something more...memorable."

Brad grinned for a moment, then looked around nervously again. "I don't think that will be a problem."

"Then have a nice day, and I look forward to seeing what you come up with."

She left him to make a phone call, heading for a good spot to get up to roof level. Sure, she could ask Doormaker to get her across town, but she had half an hour to get there and nothing else was pressing right now. Instead she was thinking about how to handle things. Perhaps, to be fair, she should intentionally point some of the 'ABB' capes at the next person that needed correcting?

Coming up with a way to possibly approach Kenta without him going into a blind panic at the sight of her, without using her power for a quick solution, was a decent distraction. There were several possible ways, but the devil was going to be in the details.

"Dean thinks you're a liar," Vicky said with a half-assed point at Amy as they ate lunch on the beach. "Either that or you got your math wrong."

Amy blinked at that. "What?"

"Your coordinates. He says that what you gave would put us decidedly inland and hundreds of feet above sea level. Which we very obviously aren't."

"Ah. No, I'm positive I got them right, but if he's just using the latitude and longitude then he's going to have problems."

Vicky and Missy stared at Amy, before Missy sighed. "Okay then, what are we missing?"

Taylor snickered. "You do realize that if we were anywhere on Earth Bet then our phones would have at least a rough idea of where we were due to satellites, right?"

There was a moment of silence as the two looked around with more wonder than they had before. Vicky grinned after a moment. "Holy crap, I thought that the pocket dimensions could only exit onto Bet?"

"Apparently it's more that they can only be opened to places where beacons or opening devices are and most people don't have access to other dimensions."

Amy grinned. "We've got some generous friends that apparently felt we needed safe places to unwind, possibly as unofficial payment for some help we've been giving them. They put a beacon and one of Dragon's cross-dimensional cellular relay systems under the hut, though I personally feel that they use the place to unwind as well. There are too many signs that point at the hut not being constructed recently."

Missy looked around again, a grin forming on her face. "So, I don't suppose that we can take a pile of pictures to post on PHO to see how far they go to try and figure out where we are?"

Taylor pointed at the scout drone. "Thanks to the drone we can do some incredible 'flyby' shots of the entire area. I already had it map it all out, mostly out of curiosity. I've even had it recording since it came back. Though having a detailed three-dimensional model of the area to post for them to examine would probably make them more likely to assume that it's all computer-generated."

"But if we take real pictures with our phones, with and without us in them, from all over the area? I mean, even without Vicky flying around I can get us to the other islands easily enough because there's nobody else out here. We could build an entire album of photos for PHO to over-analyse in an hour. Throw in a flyover video or two on top of that for added fun and then see how crazy the theories get?"

Vicky was nodding with a massive grin on her face. "Even better if they notice that there doesn't seem to be any sign of how we got here."

Amy was grinning as well. "So we take some time off from swimming and prepare to confuse the hell out of PHO after lunch? Works for me."

They ended up setting up a flyby that wouldn't have any of them in the shot with the scout drone, then took pictures with their phones from all over the general area. Vicky did her own flyby as well, this time with the other three on the beach, and Missy helped Amy and Taylor get to the other nearby islands without having to swim over. The four then enjoyed the beach some more, before eating the other half of the sandwiches for dinner as the sun started to set. They did another flyby with the scout drone and took more pictures, then cleaned up and headed back to Bet.

All four ended up sitting in the Wards area, being a convenient place to do so, as they gathered their pictures and videos to post on PHO. All four uploaded things to the album created, but when everything was ready they then voted for Taylor to post it all on PHO. She whined about them singling her out, while preparing an initial post. It wasn't that big of a deal, after all. But she didn't post it as 'Maul', since she'd been out of costume.

"Huh," Missy said after she'd made the thread. "They haven't tagged your personal account as being a verified Ward, or even as a parahuman?"

Taylor shrugged. "I didn't ask them to, so why would they? Did they tag your personal account that way?"

"I'm not supposed to have a personal account yet, they make an official exception to the minimum age rules for Wards because the PRT monitors the usage of a Ward's account."

"Oh. I suppose that makes sense. But you've got one anyway, right?"

"Duh. But nobody should know that it's me, so it hasn't got any tags at all. And I'm not stupid enough to ask for any, revealing that I'm too young in the process. They'd just lock the account for a couple of years instead."

"I wonder how long it'll be before someone posts that the beach is impossible," Vicky mused. "Though the reaction from everyone at school tomorrow should be fun too."

Topic: Beach Trip In: Boards ► General BookLoverBB (Original Poster) (Verified PRT Family) (Jacob's Niece)
Posted On Oct 10th 2011:
Good evening PHO! Today was a little rainy at home, and in Miami for that matter, so Amy and I needed to find a better place to relax after our weekend healing people. Luckily we're allowed to use a private beach where it wasn't raining.

Still, I can see from the various tracking threads that people were wondering where Amy and I were, even if only from the point of view of if we were healing again today. Missy and Vicky joined us, and we ended up taking a bunch of pictures and even a few videos. The other three then 'voluntold' me to make the thread for it all.

So, there are a number of things to show you:

First up, an initial flyby of the area just after lunch. Because we'd kinda forgotten to do something like this before lunch. Vicky then did another flyby on her own.

To get videos out of the way, later we did another flyby as the sun was setting.

We've also posted an album of pictures from all over the general area here. The place was quite beautiful, and more importantly it was both quiet and private. Very relaxing, not having to watch out for people looking to attack us.

Sadly for all of you, I'm not going to tell you where the beach is. In part because then people will try to visit it, which will make it nowhere near as relaxing the next time I want to visit it.

Chapter 234 Tuesday morning Taylor resisted checking on the PHO thread right away, instead starting by checking news sites for signs of possible trouble from protesters or similar. It didn't take long to determine that nobody had started anything in Brockton Bay, which hopefully meant that getting to school wouldn't be a problem. With that confirmed, at least as far as she could, she moved to the PHO thread. Which had exploded overnight. Did any of these people sleep?

At a quick glance, it'd taken people almost three hours to spot that there were things wrong with the location. Though that was probably aided by it taking two hours before someone noted that the Earth was pretty well mapped out, so the geographical features shouldn't be that hard to figure out the location of. Couple that with all of the other clues, like the plants and fish, it would probably take an hour or two to figure out where the island was. In a mocking way that implied that she was an idiot for thinking that they wouldn't be able to find out where the private beach was with that much picture and video evidence, even if the location metadata was stripped from everything. Four hours in that person had quoted their own post and apologized for being arrogant.

One of the first things that was seen as odd about the area was that the water was too clean. They followed that with there being zero signs of a boat landing point anywhere nearby, though admitted that with Missy and Vicky there it wouldn't have been difficult to get to and from shore without needing to land a boat. Then several people pointed out that the vegetation wasn't anything that they could identify, and extracted stills of some fish weren't coming up in any database of marine wildlife. They'd had to assume that the entire area was 'constructed' at that point, possibly with Taylor and Amy modifying the local plants and fish, and shifted to other means of locating it.

Their next attempt was focused almost entirely on the Sun. Two groups worked on it. The first ignored the picture timestamps and compared the Sun's position in the sky across the multiple videos, figured out by shadows and where it reflected off of the water when it wasn't directly visible. Somehow they'd combined all of that to determine that the beach was between five and thirteen degrees south of the equator, blaming a lack of detail in the posted footage for being unable to get any better than that. The other group had checked the timestamps on the posted pictures, found them to be incredibly consistent and thus unlikely to be faked, and ran calculations based on them and the position of the Sun across things. Again blaming a lack of details for the inaccuracy, they'd figured out that if the timestamps were correct then they were between sixty three and seventy degrees west.

The combination of the two had resulted in a number of people calling bullshit, because the 'sea level island' couldn't be in the middle of Brazil, which was hundreds of feet above sea level. The fact that several data points didn't quite match what people were expecting, introducing what were being termed as massive inaccuracies in the locating of the beach, just made it worse. The largest rant along those lines had silenced the thread for twenty minutes, pointing out that in order for many of their calculations to be that far off that either the entire area was faked incredibly well or the sea level and axial tilt of the planet had to be wrong.

The next poster after the rant had brought up the possibility that the sea level and axial tilt of the planet could be wrong because they weren't taken on Earth Bet. Which obviously meant that they weren't taken on Earth Aleph either, because the two were known to be far too similar for a change of that significance. But being an alternate Earth would explain the plants and wildlife being 'wrong', and if it was one without humans than the sea would be lacking in things like human-originating pollutants. They also asked the obvious question, that being how the four reached an alternate Earth.

Taylor found the thread to be quite interesting after that point, and was still reading it when she met up with Amy and Missy in the gym.

"Morning," Missy greeted. "You see how much the thread exploded last night?"

Taylor nodded. "Yeah. I'm reading the discussion from after they realized it wasn't Earth Bet. Apparently it could be massively illegal for us to have been there, but only if we used Haywire's tech to get there and back. Though finding someone who built a portal device to reach a 'perfect vacation spot' is the leading theory as to how the beach was located in the first place."

"How did the beacon get there anyway?"

"Can't tell you. A combination of other people's secrets and honest lack of knowledge. I know who gave me the beacon code, but that's another secret."

The younger girl pouted at that, but didn't argue that she should be told any of the secrets. Instead they started getting into a discussion about how crazy it was that the thread had figured out that the planet was the wrong one, and how they'd figured it out, as well as the various possible legal issues. That cross-dimensional travel was only illegal if you were using Haywire's technology, and that applied specifically to Earth Aleph at that, was an interesting additional detail.

Taylor suspected that Cauldron had a hand in that particular distinction, in order to prevent issues from using Doormaker's portals, but wasn't actually positive. The push had come from Aleph in the first place, after all, so some of the specifics made sense there, and a more controlled method of trade between the two might actually be desired by both sides. Keeping it to the specific, known to be problematic method would make sense from that point of view.

When they'd finished their workout, and their breakfast, they opted to 'walk' to school despite the very light rain that was projected to clear up in the next hour. If only to not need to worry about getting vehicles away from the building at the end of the day. Missy crunched space over the rooftops, though they stopped part of the way to wonder what was going on in the distance. Looked like quite the commotion. Shrugging, they continued on, since it wasn't their problem to deal with.

Colin looked over the scene. "So there were thirty-six bystanders but not a single one of them saw who did this?"

"That's correct," the BBPD officer replied. "Obviously a parahuman was involved."

Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, Colin turned back to the woman that'd been impaled to the wall by a number of blades. Getting her off of the wall was going to be tricky, since several live explosive rounds were arrayed around her. Most of the scene indicated to him that Kaiser had been involved, and some marks on the ground indicated Hookwolf had been present with him, but the woman was freely admitting that she'd been planning on attacking Arcadia as soon as 'the tainted bitches' showed up. "Yes, well. Shame that there's no good evidence as to which parahuman, or parahumans, were involved."

"That's just what I was thinking. Whoever it was might get away with it entirely."

"Well, nothing much to be done there. Getting her down without causing damage to the surrounding buildings might be a bit of a problem, though. Going to be tricky, and probably won't be too pleasant for her."

The discussion when the three girls got to school was focused on their 'bullshit day at the beach', as well as how unfair it was that it hadn't been posted in the Brockton Bay boards. It seemed that most of the student body had initially missed it until the tracking threads had picked up on it and linked to it. That led to a number of students finding themselves playing catch-up on it as a result, except that they needed to sleep and thus couldn't. The healing done over the weekend and the various protest groups were being ignored, though there was an occasional mention of the promotion ceremony.

Interestingly, despite them showing up, nobody wanted to talk to them about the beach or how they got there. Perhaps because they knew that they wouldn't get straight answers. As evidenced by at least one person bringing up the idea and being told that it would get them nowhere, as the girls passed them in the hall. Though the person who originally brought up asking them did admit that they'd be stupid to give up the secret to a getaway that nice. That didn't stop other questions, though.

"Hey Taylor," one boy called out. "Did you really kick Clockblocker across the stage?"

Taylor rolled her eyes at that one. "No, didn't you see the footage? I got him maybe a quarter of the way. If I'd kicked him hard enough to get all the way across then I'd have had to stick around long enough to heal him. Well, either that or I'd have had to extract my boot from his ass, which would be worse."

Amy snorted at that. "Good one."

"Thank you."

It wasn't until lunchtime that they found out what the commotion they'd spotted on the way in was, when someone checked the local news and found an article about the woman. That very completely derailed discussion about the beach for the time being, because 'some crazy was going to blow up the school' was a lot more relevant than 'a few students have access to a really private beach'. For now, anyway.

"Interesting," Taylor noted as she read the article.

Amy raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"Three dozen bystanders and piles of physical evidence, yet nobody saw who stopped the woman and there are no leads."

"Oh. That is interesting."

"It's 'regrettable' that they likely won't be able to track those responsible for the woman's condition down, and apparently she's already declined healing from us on the basis that we're 'tainted'. They've filed that as a general desire to not be healed by parahumans, as that's the easier paperwork when we're the only parahuman healers available in the area anyway."

Amy nodded. "Sounds reasonable to me. Not like they usually drag parahuman healers in from other areas anyway, preferring to bring people to the healers. Though I suppose that might be changing, we'll have to see."

Louise sighed. "Why would it be changing?"

Taylor looked at the girl. "Think about where Amy and I were healing over the weekend."

There was a moment of silence before Louise groaned and Dennis dropped his head to the table, though Taylor assumed that the latter was an act. Then again, it was entirely possible that he hadn't considered their jumping around the country as being a likely sign that other healers would start moving around as well. It was possible to overlook details like that.

"Do you think they'll be checking more of the area for people that want to attack the school?" Karen asked from the next table over. "Since some of you obviously have more connections than the rest of us."

Missy nodded. "Almost certainly, and probably all the other schools just in case. I'd be shocked if they hadn't already brought out specialized equipment to sweep the area. They'll probably do so at least twice a day for months now."

Taylor grinned. "And I wouldn't want to be the idiot that sold the woman the rocket launcher system she apparently had. Backtracking that is going to be a priority, since it was purchased to be used on a school."

"That's three passes around each school," Dragon reported as she recalled the drones. "Nothing significant found on the explosives front, though there's an apartment near Immaculata with a dozen guns locked up in a gun safe."

"I believe I know the one you're referring to," Colin replied. "Jonathan is a collector and generally doesn't keep ammunition on hand for anything other than the handguns. Or the firing pins installed in the larger guns, for that matter."

"Do I want to know how you're aware of the man and his collection?"

"He's a former PRT officer, retired from field work after taking one too many bullets. Panacea healed him up after his knees were shot out almost two years ago now, but he decided that he wasn't cut out for field work anymore. He occasionally comes back to run firearms lessons, but spends more time wandering the country looking for rare guns. I'm one of several people in town that he trusted with keys to his apartment, though Hannah's more likely to swing by when he isn't around."

"Ah." That made a lot of sense, and now she knew who he was talking about. Though she hadn't been aware that the man collected guns. "In that case I won't flag it as a problem location, and will make sure that it's noted as not being a problem for Trevor's morning scans."

"Thank you for that."

Taylor and Amy had both lucked out and gotten out of class early at the end of the day, though ten minutes apart from one another. Not that they had much to do that afternoon, but it made it easier to escape the area without anyone wondering why they didn't see them leaving. They didn't bother meeting up with one another, instead they both headed home to spend some time to themselves.

Upon checking the mail, Taylor found that there was an envelope addressed to her from the city. Eyebrow raised in curiosity, she opened it to find that it was notice of a fine for a hundred dollars and one cent, apparently for littering. Specifically, for the mess she'd made of the trailer that she'd blown apart. A note had been included informing her that she didn't have to worry about being sued over the 'damage to private property' as it had been used to illegally prevent her from passing, not to mention that the owner had been very adamant about not wanting to annoy her. At the same time, a couple of lawyers for the group had decided to be petty and essentially force the court's hands in regards to the fine.

"To that end we've had to charge more than the minimum of one hundred dollars," Taylor read aloud, snorting as she looked back to the amount they'd chosen. "Right."

A quick review of things told her that she could contest the fine, since it was under two hundred and fifty dollars she could request community service cleaning up litter in an area in lieu of paying it, or she could just pay it and be done with it. It didn't take long to check and find that the PRT was allowed to process fine payments, apparently a streamlining of things for when parahumans in costume accumulated fines. Even better, she could pay it online in the PRT system.

Ten minutes later she'd paid the fine with store credit, surprised that was even a thing. She followed that with looking over her homework and deciding to get a little further ahead on things.

"We appear to have hit a dead end," Officer Lecce reported. "Very dead. We're going to need..."

"What do you mean that it's a dead end?" Chief Taggart interrupted. "The idiot woman got a receipt from these people and we know they were all there an hour ago."

"And we've got four corpses. We need a team down here to start collecting evidence, because there's no obvious cause of death for any of them and it looks like someone pinned notes to the bodies. Notes that I'm not letting anyone here touch, because I didn't come equipped for a murder scene."

"Ah. Sorry about interrupting you, I'll send out whoever's available. We were planning on using this group to pin their suppliers, after all."

"I'm more concerned with how someone beat us to them. I thought that we knew who supplied the woman was more secure than this would imply. I'm hoping that the notes say that someone else had a beef with them and it was mere coincidence that they targeted them today, but I get the feeling that it wasn't."

There was a pause before the chief responded. "Okay, yes, you've got a point there. I'll get people looking into that too. Hopefully from both ends."

Wednesday morning Taylor decided to make a show of things, driving the minivan to the gym and parking in the lot there. She entered the gym the 'normal' way and met Amy there, they discussed the crazy things people had come up with in the beach trip thread, then both left the gym and took the minivan to school. Missy and Vicky hadn't joined them, but that wasn't a problem. One person had tried to break a window when they were stopped at a light, but when the bat just bounced off they'd run for it.

Amy had pouted, not having even had time to get her seatbelt off before the man had run off.

Once they'd entered the school, they found that people were crowding around those with smartphones, apparently looking at a new video that'd been posted. It didn't take long to find out that someone had captured a video of Louise and Mrs. Fairburn fighting off three larger men only half an hour previous. Then apparently sent links off to friends in order to show it off before even reaching the school.

"Think she was aiming for that guy's eye?" Amy wondered. "I mean, she hit it perfectly with the tip of her tail, but I don't think she could actually see his face."

Taylor shrugged. "I'm thinking it was a lucky hit that she'll take credit for if asked, but who knows. She did a good job, but it was obvious that Mrs. Fairburn there is much better at things. Moves quite well for her age, and was aware enough to give Louise corrections in the middle of it all. I'm more interested in why the person making the recording and the half dozen others I counted watching weren't helping. What is it with people standing by and doing nothing?"

"I don't think we're doing anything about that problem anytime soon."

"It's still annoying."

"Yes, people are generally stupid like that. Not much we can do about it."

At lunchtime Taylor had helped Louise with a muscle that she'd pulled that morning, but left the bruises. Apparently keeping the bruises was at Mrs. Fairburn's direction today, but the pulled muscle was causing Louise problems. Not much else of note had happened, beyond the flood of people wanting to question Louise about everything relating to the fight that morning, and at the end of the day Amy slipped away with a pocket dimension portal while Taylor hopped into the minivan and headed home to pick up her father. He met her there, leaving his car in the driveway and getting into the passenger seat of the van, and then they headed to the PRT building.

"So did they say why you're coming along today?" Taylor asked along the way.

Her father shrugged. "I'm led to believe that it's a general status update on your therapy progress that isn't them telling me things behind your back. Something new that the Youth Guard pushed for, above and beyond getting calls about warning signs and such. Brockton Bay is the fourth region adopting it, though they're basing it off of the general policies already in place for those on parole-style terms. I asked Mark about that and he admitted he and Carol have to visit every third or fourth time Vicky goes in for therapy, and they want them there for Amy later this week."

"Ah." She supposed it made sense that they'd be doing more chatting with Carol and Mark since then.

"They'll probably also have a PRT representative talking to me about other things in a face to face discussion instead of over the phone while you're in the initial session, either to cover sensitive topics or to encourage me to ask things I wouldn't otherwise. Can't be wasting their time by asking if they're going to be sitting with me no matter what, or at least that's my impression."

"That this lets you see the Wards area is just a bonus, right?"

"Yep, and the person who called about scheduling a few weeks ago made a big deal about all the new things that've gone in there this year."

Well, that made Taylor wish that they'd been a little more up-front about it with the Wards a few weeks ago, but there wasn't much she could do about it now. Other than fill out a form or two asking if there was something she or Dennis missed or if they'd been intentionally kept in the dark, anyway. She did that as she was heading for the secure parking lot entrance, having been sent a message telling her that someone would be there to meet them in order to play guide and escort for her father.

Thinking about that, and the other Wards, she realized that Chris probably had the hardest time getting his parents in without anyone realizing something was up. Missy and the three kids were all outed and could just walk in the front door with their parents while Aisha's guardian was a Protectorate member and regularly used the secret entrances anyway. She wondered if it would be like back when she and her father were coming in and they'd first used the gym entrance, only without needing someone waiting on the other side of the door to open it for them since Chris could open it himself.

Her father was intrigued when she opened the garage door and found the garage layout somewhat sensible. True to the message that Taylor had gotten, a PRT officer was leaning against the wall next to the door to the stairs when she pulled into the Wards garage. She parked in her spot, her father snorting when he realized that it was actually labeled, and the two of them got out of the van.

"Good afternoon Miss Hebert, Mister Hebert," the officer greeted. "I'm Nick Spiker. Miss Hebert, Doctor Yamada is expecting you, unless you have some reason to hold off going straight up there?"

Taylor shrugged, then gestured at her father. "Not much of one, unless he wants to see my room in the Wards area. I don't believe that you're on the access list for the door."

"Yeah, I'm not cleared for the rooms of female Wards in the first place, and rumor has it your door is even more locked down for some reason."

"She obviously keeps a cabinet full of powers in there," Danny quipped, causing Taylor to facepalm. "I mean, she needs something to talk to when nobody else is around, right?"

Officer Spiker snorted at that. "Good one. Might have to pass one along."

"More seriously, I don't need to see my daughter's collection of tinkertech toys in the mess she has to be keeping them in, given how many she has these days."

"Whatever," Taylor said, heading for the stairwell door. "You two have fun."

A few minutes later she'd made her way up the corner stairwell and entered the therapy area. She noted that the door to the rest of the floor was set up to be fully visible today, and would likely be how her father would be brought in later. Jessica was waiting in the inner office.

"Good afternoon," Jessica greeted.

"Hi," Taylor replied, dropping her visor onto a shelf as she took in some of the adjustments that had been made to the room since her last visit. "Is that a punching bag?"

"Not all of us can take a hit like you can, but due to that it's become obvious that allowing certain parahumans an outlet for aggression is a good thing during sessions, instead of aiming for before and/or after session trips to the local room full of junk. I'm led to believe that the addition would've happened sooner, but sourcing enough brute-rated punching bags was an initial hurdle. The new cabinet includes a number of things normally used with younger parahumans, which had been put into storage once Miss Biron was old enough to not need them. The top third is locked because it contains things deemed likely to cause tinkers to be too distracted if they have free access to them during sessions."

"Huh. Okay. I suppose that all makes sense."

"Now then, I'd like to get started so that we can be done well before Miss Biron shows up. Where would you like to sit today?"

Danny sat there in the room with Nick, amused that he knew more about what some of the features of the Wards area, garage included, were for than the officer did. Then again, he doubted that many people had pocket dimensions and would be using the doorways for them, and not everyone could recognize a meat locker on sight. Actually, wasn't there something about the pocket dimensions only working for parahumans? That would help explain things.

"So why are you playing guide and escort today?" he finally asked the officer. "Especially if you aren't all that well informed?"

Nick rolled his eyes. "Wards room duty is one of the few things I don't normally get downstairs. I frequently pull guard duty when others are loading things into the junkyard, and for some reason I'm often standing there while those not cleared for Wards identities clean up messes or repair equipment. Your girl and her friend are some of the neatest tinkers in the system, though. I don't think I've had to watch anyone cleaning up after them in the tinker labs. I've had to sit there guarding the door while they cleaned up after Water Monkey's messes in the 'visiting tinker' area twice already, and she's had her own workshop since her first day. Both times because she'd broken something in her own workshop, or so I was told."

"I'm not sure, but I think that's because they aren't normal for tinkers in the first place."

"Rumor has it that Armsmaster, Reknit, and Wrench Wraith all clean up after themselves as well, so perhaps they're not all that odd. And Dragon started her entrance by cleaning up after others, getting the container ship out of the shipping channel. But it seems like every time we get visiting tinkers passing through the area they leave that lab a horrible mess. Taking ten minutes to restock the supply bins is wonderful by comparison."

"Ahh. I can see how that would be a nice change of pace."

They sat there in silence for a couple of minutes, before Nick sighed. "So do you have any questions for me? In general?"

Danny shrugged. "Not really, no."

"None at all? Not even things you'd normally be reluctant to waste our time with?"

"I pester Jacob for most of those, when I don't just call Director Piggot directly."

The officer stared at him for a moment. "Seriously?"

"Yep. Not like you're cleared for half the stuff I want to ask about anyway. I couldn't even ask Director Piggot about some of it at first, though that's been cleared up since."

"Oh." He frowned, then after a couple of minutes sat up straighter. "I don't suppose you want to see some of the videos we've got on file regarding your daughter's antics?"

Danny blinked. "How many could you possibly have?"

"These days she patrols with a sensor system set that records everything by default. What do you think?"

"Okay, you win that argument. What've you got?"

Missy had arrived a couple of minutes before Taylor and her father had left, but they hadn't crossed paths with each other. In fact, 'leaving' had been done through the pocket dimension door in the garage area. Danny hadn't even gotten into the minivan. They exited into the house downstairs, neither caring if people wondered how they'd gotten home. Even if she'd checked and found that the tracking threads were trying to figure out if her visibly driving around today was abnormal or just their inability to keep track of her incredibly distinct minivan.

"So," her father said once the portal had closed behind them. "Jessica seems to think that you're doing well, even if you're horrible to work with because you know her tricks as well if not better than she does at times."

Taylor shrugged. "It doesn't surprise me that psychologists are some of the hardest people to give therapy to."

"Though I am somewhat concerned about her wanting you to make more attempts at entering confined spaces. Intentionally provoking reactions like that seems like a horrible idea."

"Yeah, except that with parahumans you have the added problem of our trigger events being a potential liability. I'm not at risk of second-triggering and coming out with who knows what changes to my powers, but anyone who finds out that I freeze up in those conditions could very well try and use that against me. Amy's trigger was a lot tamer and doesn't cause her to freeze up nearly as badly, though I think it's part of why she gets jumpy when I'm hurt."

He nodded. "Okay, I can see that. And overcoming the 'freeze up' reaction is intended to keep you safer in this case, more than just to get you over your trigger event."

"Yep."

"Which means that I'm still concerned, but in a very different way. Should I be seeing if suitably sized boxes are available at work?"

"Please don't."

He snorted. "Okay. I suppose we should think about what we're doing for dinner. Any preferences?"

"They were serving pasta at school today, so I think I'd like to skip it for dinner."

"Perhaps some pork, then? I think I took some out a couple days ago."

She thought about that for a moment before nodding. "That sounds workable. But do we have suitable potatoes for baking? I think I was down to 'a little too small' in the bag I've been pulling from for Ackbar."

"I...don't know. I haven't checked the supply "

It turned out that they didn't, and the few potatoes still in the bag for Ackbar had other issues, so Taylor ended up running to the store to purchase a new bag, plus some butter. Which she'd later discover made the tracking threads go nuts, because they'd missed her returning home and all.

Chapter 235 Thursday morning Amy was annoyed as a drunk driver had slammed into a telephone pole at the end of their street, knocking out power. It should be up before the end of the school day, but the lack of electricity had screwed up their entire morning. Vicky was also annoyed, but that was tempered by Amy bringing her along to the gym and, by extension, granting access to the PRT cafeterias for breakfast. Missy hadn't joined them, but it wasn't expected to rain and Taylor wasn't in the mood to take the minivan to school. So the mopeds were pulled out, Vicky flying as the other two roof-hopped.

Their arrival was met with a couple of glares. Not because people were unhappy with them specifically, but because Taylor and Amy were ignoring that the temperature had dropped and didn't have heavier jackets on, leaving some of the other students obviously jealous. They did their best to ignore the glares and headed to homeroom.

The only other thing of note to happen that morning was several students arriving late, justified by the bus they'd been on having a mechanical failure. They didn't know what the failure was, only that it'd stopped to pick someone up and then couldn't get moving again. A combination of needing to get another bus out there and the traffic problems from the original bus being stuck had made the students late.

Shortly before lunch was supposed to start the fire alarms went off. People panicked a bit when they saw actual smoke coming out of a window, at least until it got around that it'd been an accident in one of the science labs. School was called off early so that they could lock the building down to deal with cleanup, and security escorted groups of students to their lockers to get their things. Taylor and Amy stuck around long enough to heal up the four students and one teacher that were injured in the accident, though only the student who'd made the mistake had anything worse than smoke inhalation. They then ignored the 'head back in to visit lockers' dance and just left, as had several other students who had their own vehicles and didn't need to get a jacket from a locker.

They made a quick stop for something to eat together before going their separate ways. Amy wanted to see if she could figure out how much longer the power was going to be out at her house. On the other hand, Taylor ensured that she had everything she needed and stayed in the pocket dimension to get some work done. Something that it took Amy almost half an hour to notice.

Amy: What are you doing in there?

Taylor: I think the less informed would call it 'tinkering'.

Amy: That was a wonderful non-answer.

Taylor: I know.

Regardless of any curiosity, Amy didn't bother to check on what Taylor was doing. Which left Taylor free to work on things for the rest of the afternoon, finishing the last of things up an hour or so before dinner. She double-checked that everything looked to be working, then parked the minivan in the PRT lot for half an hour. Amy wandered through to see what she was up to then, but it was far too late for her to tell because Taylor had put everything away already.

After that Taylor got a call from her father, asking if she wanted Chinese for dinner. She said that would be great, and then offered to pick it up since the minivan was already 'out' and all. That and she felt that swinging by a gas station would be a good idea. She had a better route to pick things up by leaving straight from the PRT building, so her father accepted before calling to place their order.

The attendant at the gas station seemed surprised that she was filling up like any other vehicle might, and probably took a picture or two while she wasn't looking in his direction, but she was fine with that. Or at least had gotten used to it by now, anyway. She had more trouble with the girl at the counter of the Chinese restaurant, right up until the owner realized that she was giving Taylor a hard time for being a parahuman. He fired the girl on the spot, citing that the Heberts were valued customers and didn't deserve to deal with bigots, then insisted on giving Taylor an extra serving of beef teriyaki for the trouble.

The trip home was uneventful after that, though Taylor raised an eyebrow when she found her father on the phone when she got home. Apparently with the owner of the restaurant, which was interesting because she hadn't said anything to her father.

"Jun should've called me earlier," he explained when he was done. "Though perhaps he thought that since the Dockworkers are actually hiring now that we wouldn't be able to help out others. But there are enough family members who aren't cut out for working in and around the docks, which I had to remind him after he apologized for how his former employee was treating you."

Taylor half-nodded at that. "So you've helped him with hiring before?"

"Yeah, though most of the time it's been temporary help for when someone hires them out for a larger event. But I think he still uses the delivery driver I found for him last year after his daughter moved out of town."

"Ah."

They got out plates and ate dinner, then when they were done Taylor realized that she still hadn't fed Ackbar. Looking over the remains of the chinese food, she decided to see how the spider-bot liked the little soy sauce packets. She mixed some in with the potatoes, and on a whim also added the last bit of rice. The entire mixture was then brought upstairs, though since she was carrying it she was careful about opening her bedroom door. Ackbar didn't try and pounce today, so she put the bowl down without issue.

The reason Ackbar hadn't pounced seemed to be that he was investigating a box that was sitting on her bed. Since her father hadn't mentioned anything she assumed that Doormaker had delivered it for her. Shrugging, she opened it up and found that inside was a gift basket. The card indicated that it was from three different Border Patrol offices. Pulling the basket out, she found that it was somewhat evenly split between gift cards, candy, and ammunition. At least they'd gotten the latter correct enough for her PRT-issued handgun, though a third of it wouldn't work with projecting the bullets. Then again, projecting bullets was usually overkill for shooting at normal people, so that might not be a bad thing. Though whether she'd ever want to use hollow-point bullets was a different question entirely.

She'd identified all of the gift cards and where they could be used by the time Ackbar was done eating, and was mildly amused that most of them were for places along the border between the US and Mexico. Apparently they were hoping that she'd be around more often to help. Cleaning up after Ackbar, who seemed to have had no problem with the soy sauce packets and leftover rice, only took a couple of minutes. She put away the ammunition and candy, then laid down to go over Wards things for the next day. They'd added a meeting into the mix, and non-patrol tasks were still incredibly limited.

Eventually she decided that it would be best to do minimal planning for the next day, or the weekend in general, and see what the meeting was about. There were also 'potential requests' in the queue for her and Missy for the weekend, presumably possible traveling across the country, that were difficult to plan around until she knew what they were. Which meant going through everything on short notice, but that was okay.

Friday morning Amy and Vicky were both in better moods than they'd been in the day before when they met up in the gym, though with a slight nervous undercurrent. Taylor noticed it first in Amy, but once she looked for it she could also see it in Vicky. She figured that was probably because the two were nervous about Carol and Mark being in the room for some of the therapist discussions that afternoon, but didn't bring it up. When Missy joined them she either didn't see it or was pretending not to see it, and thus didn't bring it up either.

"What are we doing this afternoon," Missy asked Taylor while they were getting breakfast afterwards.

Taylor shrugged. "Not sure yet. I decided to not make specific plans until after the meeting that's on the calendar."

Missy blinked, and Taylor thought she was checking the calendar for herself. After a moment the girl nodded. "Okay, yeah. I should've checked the general calendar and not just my personal one."

"I've got them aggregated together by default at this point. And I've got a second view that's all of the Wards calendars together."

"I tried that once and didn't like it because I was getting alerts for everything. Then again, you're Wards leader now, so I suppose you need to pay as much attention to the general calendar as you do your own. Is there anything else I've missed that I should be aware of?"

"I'm possibly busy out of town over the weekend, but I don't have details or confirmations yet. That might be due to the meeting later."

Originally the day's topic of discussion at Arcadia had been the weekend, as a general kind of 'what people are doing' thing. That changed shortly into lunch, when several people found news articles online talking about two crime scenes from that morning, both somewhat close to the school. One had been found by the Protectorate and had four people setting up to try and attack the school, likely as classes were letting out. The other had been called in to the police, who'd arrived on the scene at the same time the Protectorate was also alerting the police to it. That one featured a corpse who'd been stabbed to death inside of a sniper nest with a view of the school. The latter was interesting because the room had been locked from the inside and had 'mysterious, unidentifiable dust' mentioned.

"How is it that none of these people has done even the most basic research into their targets?" Taylor wondered.

Vicky snorted at that. "They probably did research, rationalized it all away as fake information intended to discourage attackers, and set out to prove all of it wrong."

Taylor found that hard to argue, all things considered. "New question: What are they smoking to be that delusional?"

That started up a somewhat lively debate over what could possibly cause them to be that delusional, drugs or otherwise. They came to absolutely no consensus by the end of lunch, but that was okay with them.

At the end of the day an announcement was made that sweeps of the area around the school as well as emergency checks of the buses serving the stop at the school were being done and that students shouldn't venture outside until the all-clear was given. Taylor rolled her eyes and headed for a restroom. A couple minutes later she'd dropped her school bag off at home and a minute after that she was in the Wards area. Missy joined her shortly after that, and Amy had made it home by then as well. An hour later Aisha and Chris finally showed up, only a few minutes before the three youngest were dropped off.

"You two couldn't have offered a lift?" Chris asked.

"I'd think that would be too risky for any non-outed parahuman," Missy noted. "Did you want to scream that you're a Ward to the world?"

Chris just sighed and went to get into costume, even though he couldn't possibly be sure that he'd need to. Then again, he might've been taking cues from Taylor and Missy, who were both in costume. Aisha had gone for a snack instead. Twenty minutes later the seven Wards had gathered in a conference room and were waiting for someone else to show up and tell them why they were meeting in the first place.

Eventually Director Piggot limped into the room with Colin, both of whom looked annoyed. Taylor made to get up to help the director, but was waved off. At the same time she started her visor sensors up, just so that she'd have a recording of anything important.

"Sorry about the wait," Director Piggot said as she sat down. "I was delayed by my own stupidity." She then looked around the room. "Take it from me, the sets of stackable chairs in most of these conference rooms are not safe to lean back in. The legs have a tendency to buckle when you're on just two of them."

It took a minute for Colin to set up the projector, after which Director Piggot started the meeting proper. "Now then, I apologize for the short notice of this meeting, but several things came up at once. Also, I'm letting you all know now that I want to speak with Maul in private at the end of things, in relation to requests for her time that the rest of you aren't necessarily cleared for." She looked around and got a couple of nods. "That said, I think I'll start with Maul, and extend a general note of thanks from other regions for her work in making a differences page for paperwork requirements across regions. Other staff have been tasked with making PRT and Protectorate variants and keeping all three up to date, as well as checking them for any glaring inconsistencies that should be squashed in one way or another."

"Do I want to know what inspired that?" Aisha asked.

Taylor shrugged. "With all the moving around that's possible now I thought it made sense to look up ahead of time, if only in case I was put in charge of Wards elsewhere. I might've gone overboard with making the comparison page, but it wasn't that much more difficult than a personal reference version."

"Regardless," Director Piggot said. "Thank you. It's something that probably should've been made as part of the planning for moving parahumans around in the first place, especially as you are currently the only Wards leader in the system who could assemble the original list. A number of the requirements were region-locked at lower security levels." She then brought up a slide on the projector, which had a screenshot of the parahuman assistance request system. "Moving on, there are still concerns about the local parahuman request board, and Protectorate members are handling almost all requests at this point in time because of it. But we've made it so that trusted individuals in specific city departments can put requests in that the Wards can take, though it may be a few days before they do. Other 'vetted' individuals and groups will be added going forward. You can see the highlighted icon here indicating a vetted source."

Aisha snorted. "Is there actually a request for a parahuman to buy a drink from a vending machine?"

Director Piggot stared at Aisha and nodded seriously. "Indeed. The last three parahumans to purchase anything from that vending machine got sick and they want to compare items purchased by a normal human to those purchased by a parahuman."

"Seriously?"

"No, it's just a test entry." She then flipped to another slide, showing scheduling for the following Friday through Sunday. "Moving on. I've blocked out the entirety of next weekend for Wards activities in town. If Maul can arrange for out of town trips for those cleared for them then those can still go forward, but we generally don't want Wards out and about during Panacea's healing weekend. Further, Maul, you likely need to ensure that you get patrols dealt with in the middle of the week as a result of that."

Taylor nodded. "Makes sense." She also noted that she was the only one not showing on the screen, presumably because nobody was going to tell her to not be helping out in some fashion. But mentioning that didn't seem like an exceptionally productive thing right now. "Though I thought that we were still running low on cross-region requests?"

Director Piggot nodded. "I think we've mostly gotten that cleared up, since someone leaked details of just why the Youth Guard was called on another Wards leader on Wednesday. Hopefully more requests we can take will start coming in again now." She then sighed, and flipped to the next slide, which had a couple of graphs on it. "Next up, too many idiots have been arrested as of late. In the past few years the courts have been giving those arrested for relatively minor bigotry against parahumans community service, specifically cleaning up after parahuman battles. But as you can see from the graphs, there's been a sharp decline in cleanup tasks in the past few months."

"Are we supposed to do anything with this knowledge?" Missy asked.

"Officially this is just a notice. Do with it what you will." She then looked around the table. "Does anyone have any questions on any of this?" Nobody said anything, so she turned to Colin. "I believe you had at least one thing you wanted to talk to them about?"

Colin nodded. "I do." He then brought up his own slide. "This is a picture of a secure locker, used to store certain kinds of items off-site. We've installed them in a number of places around the city as possible resupply points, if you're cleared to use anything stored in a given locker then you can find it on the map application. Notably, there is one on the roof of every school in the city. Our three newest Wards can't use anything contained within them yet, but earlier today I arranged to put all three through containment foam lessons, in addition to some knifework."

"When?" Ryan asked.

"Tomorrow. You can thank Wrench Wraith and Water Monkey for that, since we currently think that containment foam may work as an alternative liquid for Water Monkey's technology but need to run her through things before they can test that. Getting Dryad and Soundstone included was trivial once the initial class was approved."

"None of that is on their calendars," Taylor noted.

Colin turned to her, went to say something, then paused. A moment later he nodded. "My apologies, I appear to have forgotten to add them to the entry." Taylor got an alert a moment later, indicating that the three had training pretty much all day the next day. Colin then looked over everyone again. "Now then, these lockers, and their contents, are not toys. We wanted to be certain that basic tools were available in case various points in the city were attacked in the future, your permission to access them can and will be revoked if you abuse them."

Everyone nodded, and he smiled slightly as he shut down the projector. "Thank you. Now then, as mentioned before, we have a couple of things to discuss with Maul, so the rest of you are dismissed."

There was some mild grumbling, but the other Wards left. Colin locked the door behind them, then activated the privacy field just in case.

Director Piggot sighed. "You may have noticed that there are some requests for your time this weekend. I wanted to run a couple of them past you before approving them on my end."

"I had seen that, and was curious. Does any of this have to do with the requests for Vista?"

"No, I'll likely be denying the out of region requests for her for tomorrow since they haven't gotten back to me on safety concerns. Sunday might still be permitted if she's willing. Your requests, at least for tomorrow, are in part a little odd. The first one is to travel to a test facility to help try and cause spider-bots to trigger."

"Ah. Riley finally got that through the system?"

"Apparently. Do you have any problems with the request?"

Taylor shook her head. "Not really. No clue if I'll be of any help, that'll probably depend at least in part on the snarks, but I can give it a try."

"Okay. I'll approve that one. I think the next one was intended to go hand in hand with it, on the basis that if you were already there then bringing your father through for his requested fugue would be a decent use of the facility in question. Obviously Miss Dallon would need to agree as well, but unless you have any objections to working on your father?"

"No, I'm pretty much the last one in the group on the 'working on family' front. Wouldn't be fair to back out, and it'll make my father safer."

"I expected that one to be less of a problem. Lastly, there's a single request for your time on Sunday. A trusted research team would like to visit the beach you spent some time on recently, hoping to collect samples for study. It's been cleared by Costa-Brown and Legend, but the final choice on whether or not it's possibly acceptable is currently up to you."

That surprised Taylor. "Huh. Just to take samples?"

Colin nodded. "Examining the flora, and possibly fauna if any can be safely captured, of a significantly divergent Earth has become a significant topic of discussion since people figured out that you weren't on Earth Bet. I believe there were over a thousand requests for obtaining samples that were whittled down to a half dozen individuals. Originally Vista was included as a potential for handling the request, since she was with you, but we've since been informed that she doesn't actually have the beacon code required."

"Ah. That makes sense, given where I got the code from."

Director Piggot scowled at that. "I've been instructed to not ask about that detail, which annoys me. Still, if you're willing to play escort then I can approve that request."

Taylor thought about that for a moment. On one hand, that would involve revealing that she had access to at least one pocket dimension. But that wasn't exactly a large secret, at least internally to the PRT, and she expected it to get out eventually anyway. Not that she expected a small group of researchers interested in getting samples from another version of Earth would care nearly as much as the average person did. "I guess I don't see a problem with it. Would they be coming here or would I be going to pick them up?"

Director Piggot looked at Colin, who seemed to be unprepared for the question as well. He frowned, and was obviously looking things up. It took him a minute before he nodded slightly. "It looks like the plan would be for them to travel here tomorrow so that you could bring them over on Sunday. You'd then return them here and they'd leave on their own, though there's likely to be significant amounts of equipment involved."

"Okay, that makes things a little easier. Though hopefully they don't need 'solid ground' for the equipment, since there's more sand than anything else where I'd be opening things up to. Well, unless they can use the equipment entirely in the hut."

"I'm sure they can deal with that," Director Piggot said. "And that concludes the official part of the meeting. Unofficially, earlier today a challenge was put out to all regions. First one to positively identify the one responsible for the immune system replacing plague gets their choice of three items from a list. If you have any information on where it came from I'm willing to spend one of those three on being permitted to have an official Wards vehicle for going to and from events with."

Taylor raised an eyebrow. "I'm curious about what other things are on your list of options."

"More restricted tinkertech available, increased operational budget for a year, first pick on parahumans looking to leave their regions for a year, and bumped priority on various upgrades are the ones that matter. We already get most of the others by virtue of our resident parahumans, or already have them in one case. And being put into the queue for a tinker fugue is a bit meaningless, of course."

"What kind of vehicle would it be? A large van or a small bus?"

Director Piggot shrugged. "I'm thinking it would be a good project for Wrench Wraith. If I give her free enough reign then maybe she'll cool off."

Taylor blinked at that. "Cool off?"

"She might've recently discovered that I vetoed all of the good names people came up with for her when she joined, leaving her with the bottom of the barrel ones. A bit of minor revenge for all the trouble she'd caused with the Merchants, though I think she's at least understanding about why I did it."

"Oh."

"So, do you know anything about who released the plague?"

"Ah, yes. I'm honestly surprised that it isn't known yet."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Shouldn't my uncle have submitted a report about Riley releasing the thing by now?"

The two adults stared at Taylor, jaws slightly dropped. She found it amusing. Director Piggot recovered first, if you could call dropping her head down onto the table 'recovering'.

Colin took a couple of deep breaths. "It's obvious in hindsight, isn't it?"

"Incredibly," Director Piggot confirmed, before sitting back up. "Thank you for pointing out the incredibly obvious answer. I think we'd bought too much into the 'released to counter the Nine' angle to even consider that the Nine were directly responsible. Though do you know why she did it?"

Taylor shrugged. "To give herself a challenge going forward."

There was grumbling about that.

They'd taken care of all of the scheduling changes and filed the 'who released the plague' form, suitably restricted due to what the answer was. Taylor had headed back for the Wards area, because they still had to decide what they were doing for the evening. She also had to plan out the weekend if she was going to be otherwise occupied.

She'd just entered the Wards area again when Rosa noticed her and came over. "Taylor?"

Taylor looked down at the girl. "Yeah?"

"Am I allowed to come in and build stuff next weekend?"

Looking down at the girl, Taylor wondered why that hadn't been asked in the meeting. Then again, even now she looked nervous. A quick double-checking of things showed that schedule lockouts didn't include not being in the building, just patrols and non-patrol tasks inside of Brockton Bay. "You should be fine to come in and tinker."

Rosa beamed. "Thank you!"

Taylor moved to the kitchen to grab a drink while Rosa headed for her workshop, then went over to the other gathered Wards. Which currently didn't include Sandy, who was in her room. Possibly changing, since she'd been in civilian clothing during the meeting.

"I suppose that for today we're doing at least one patrol," Taylor said, getting a couple of nods. "Any requests for the weekend? I'm busy tomorrow and at least part of Sunday, and there are possible requests for Vista on Sunday as well."

"Can we have tomorrow off and cram patrols into Sunday?" Chris asked.

"I suppose that the three of you can do that, though it would likely be you and Aisha going out twice. Once with Ryan and once with Sandy."

"Works for me," Aisha said. "I certainly won't complain about being able to sleep in tomorrow."

Taylor looked at Chris, who nodded. "Okay then. I'll put that down. What shall we do tonight? With the PRT on console we could run two patrols, or one of us can stay behind and the other five go out since Rosa seems to have decided that she doesn't want to put down her tinkering long enough to try and patrol tonight."

"She broke her water guns," Ryan noted, causing Chris to nod in agreement. "She needs to make them stronger."

"Ah. That would explain things."

"I vote for one big patrol," Missy said. "With Aisha or Chris staying behind, since they'll be patrolling Sunday anyway."

"I'll run the console," Aisha volunteered. "With you three out there I'll be able to spend most of the time on PHO anyway."

Taylor rolled her eyes, but looked over at Chris and Missy. Both of them shrugged, apparently not wanting to argue that. "Okay then." She then looked back towards the personal rooms. "But it seems like I need to check up on Sandy, because she doesn't seem to be doing much moving around right now."

She got up and headed down the hall, absently noting Aisha moving over to the console. Reaching Sandy's room, she knocked and got a muffled response. Frowning, she opened the door slightly. "Are you okay in there?" There was no response, so she opened the door further, only to find that Sandy had fallen asleep.

Taylor: Fair warning, I'm about to check to see if Sandy is just tired or if something is wrong with her.

Amy: Thanks for the warning.

With a sigh, she walked over and flipped her striker switch. Reaching down, she touched Sandy's shoulder. There weren't any obvious significant problems, though Taylor frowned after a moment. She then opened a message to Sandy's mother, letting her know that Sandy needed to spend more time outside in the sun, or perhaps needed to sleep under a sunlamp just in case. The lights in the room had been replaced with ones that did a good enough job of simulating sunlight, so she left the girl to rest and carefully closed the door. Heading back to the others, she noticed them looking at her expectantly.

"Change of plans," Taylor said, gesturing behind her. "Sandy fell asleep, so she's not going out tonight."

"Is she okay?" Ryan asked.

"She needs to spend more time in the sun, but the lights in her room are close enough for now. I let her mother know. The four of us can still go out, do a mixed patrol route. Maybe if I stay in the air someone will be stupid enough to start something?"

Chapter 236 Sadly, patrolling had been quite boring, beyond a few enthusiastic cape fans wanting pictures. Though one kid had gotten their hands on a laser pointer and discovered that Ryan's internals did funny things to the light. Both in an amusing manner and in a 'that looks impossible' manner. At least for the few minutes they were allowed to point the laser pointer at him before their mother took the laser pointer away. Sandy had been woken up when they'd returned and Taylor was assured that the girl would be spending more time out in the sun going forward. Either that or she'd be sleeping with the sun lamp on.

Saturday morning Taylor woke to final confirmation of things for the day, which included either bringing her father along for the initial trip to the building that housed the Vancouver beacon or picking him up after lunch, or possibly have Amy pick up him if she didn't want to participate in the morning spider-bot antics. She'd need to double-check which way he wanted to do things, because she didn't know if he wanted to hang out while they tried to make spider-bots trigger. She was curious about how customs checks worked with this transportation method, though, and submitted a question to that effect. Only once she was done with that did she bother getting out of bed to use the bathroom.

After a quick check with her father, who decided that he'd like to see the spider-bots, she met with Amy in the gym.

"So you joining us this morning?" Taylor asked.

"Might as well. It isn't like it'll be easy to ignore the attempts anyway, so being there in person will at least give me better context."

"Okay then. I guess that makes it a good thing that my father decided to tag along for the morning as well."

Amy blinked at that. "Why?"

"You can't pick him up on your way over if you're going for the morning."

"Oh. Yeah. That makes sense."

They went through their workout, ate a second breakfast, and then departed right from the cafeteria. Several PRT officers thought that was great, if the chuckles they heard as they entered the portal were anything to go by. The two of them then split up, heading back to their own homes since they weren't expected in Vancouver for at least another hour.

"So the first goal is to try and get some spider-bots to trigger," Danny noted while they waited. "Like you did with Ackbar, right?"

Taylor nodded. "Yep."

"So are you bringing Ackbar along as a reference point?"

That had her blinking. "Um. Huh. That might not be a horrible idea, honestly. If only so that his snark can explain how it connected to a spider-bot to whatever other snarks Riley has crammed in things."

It took a few minutes to get Ackbar into his pet carrier, most of which was ensuring that today's glowing traps weren't going to cause problems.

Amy: Why are you slamming Ackbar's snark?

Taylor: Disarming his traps so that I can bring him along to help teach other snarks how to work with spider-bots.

Amy: Oooh. That's not a bad idea. I should bring Rodney too.

Taylor: Er, why?

Amy: Because Ackbar likes trying to teach Rodney how to use powers and that could be a good motivator for his snark to help out?

Taylor: That...whatever. Doubt it will help, but I guess it can't hurt.

Taylor resisted the urge to shake her head as she brought Ackbar downstairs. She put the carrier down near the door they'd installed the opener in, then dropped back down onto the couch.

"Apparently Amy is going to bring Rodney," she said after a moment.

Her father blinked. "Why?"

"To inspire Ackbar's snark to teach others, I think. Which I don't expect to be necessary, but whatever."

"Oh." He shrugged. "I was half expecting something about Rodney getting lonely or something like that."

"Who knows. Maybe she just doesn't want to use that excuse?"

"Maybe."

Taylor took a few minutes to look over Wards things for the day, mainly verifying that her previous scheduling had been left alone. She was starting to consider the coming week when a new message interrupted her.

"Huh," she said as she read the message.

"What is it?" her father asked.

"Apparently you're the biggest hurdle to dealing with customs going to Vancouver. Without you I could essentially just go due to being considered a government employee through the PRT. But to bring you along we'll need to stop by a PRT or Protectorate facility for a customs check, and you'll need your passport." She paused at that. "Do you have a valid passport?"

"This probably would've happened a week ago, but my new one hadn't shown up until Thursday."

"Ah. Okay, that makes sense. Do you want to get going so that we can get customs headaches out of the way?"

He nodded and got up. "Might as well."

"I'm told that we can use literally any PRT or Protectorate facility in the country for the customs checks in either direction. Do you have any preferences?"

It took a moment before he grinned. "I'm thinking 'absurd' is the best way to handle this. You can get to Miami easily enough, right?"

"Yes, but El Paso might be more absurd in its own way."

"True. Maybe we can swing through there on the way back?"

Taylor shrugged. "Works for me."

"Good morning Mother," Big Theresa greeted as Taylor and her father stepped out of the portal in Vancouver. Amy might've joined them, except that she'd forgotten about needing to pass through customs herself and was taking care of that now.

"Good morning," Taylor replied, looking around. They were obviously in the tinker facility that she'd previously visited, though it was laid out very differently today.

"How are you today?" her father asked.

"I'm doing well," Theresa replied. "Aside from some minor bureaucratic issues, anyway."

"Nothing that's going to cause problems today, I hope?"

"No, nothing of the sort there. I was reminded this morning that since I'm no longer hiding from the public that I'm years behind on my Protectorate and Guild physicals. They want me to run through those in the next two weeks."

Taylor sighed. "It's too bad that Amy and I can't help with that, not being licensed doctors."

Theresa shrugged. "I should've seen it coming, to be honest." She then smiled as Amy arrived. "Ah, good morning Amy. Now that you're here I can hand off a couple of things I was asked to pass along."

It only took a minute for Theresa to fetch a secure box, from which two packages were produced. They were clearly labeled for the two girls, each taking one. Taylor opened hers and flipped through the contents. "Why do I need new identification and debit cards?"

"They cover you for traveling around on Earth Aleph, at least in the United States. You're lucky, they don't normally issue concealed carry permits that are valid over there, but I think they're hoping that you'll be willing to help out with parahuman issues every so often and believe that having firepower available could help. Your debit cards pull directly from your personal accounts over there. You've got existing funds, but Amy will need to actively move money into her account, instructions for moving funds around are included."

Taylor looked at Theresa, who was grinning, and then at her father, who appeared to be stunned. She then looked back down at the paperwork, and noted a balance sheet for the debit card, updated three days previous. "How the hell did I end up rich on Aleph?"

"Payouts from shared patent information and your contributions to parahuman psychology, mainly, though your Dragon-tech shares also bring money in. There's a summary of deposits on the next sheet."

Amy frowned as she looked over her package. "How many laws does traveling to Aleph break?"

"Using the beacons or point to point teleporter systems you'd be breaking six laws, but only if you leave from Canada and not from the United States, and most of that is actually customs related. Those methods only allow you to enter Aleph at well defined points, and only allow you to return to Bet at similarly well defined points, even if with pocket dimensions you can leave from any suitable surface, so they don't run afoul of treaties. Especially as they aren't using Haywire's technology."

Danny sighed. "Teleporter systems?"

Theresa nodded. "I was able to help them build one fully functional unit, and they're working on building more on their own. It allows for far more direct shipping of their regular containment foam order, which is the bulk of the Dragon-tech income over there currently, not to mention delivery of my own orders of hard to obtain raw materials for other projects. Though if the teleporter unit is needed to get the girls home then they'll need to travel a bit, since I believe they've left it in New Mexico and their recent visit landed them in Florida."

"Ah."

Further discussion on the subject was halted by the portal doorway opening again, with Riley emerging pushing a cart. "Hello everyone."

"Morning," Taylor said, looking at the cart. It had four spider-bot cages, but only two snarks. "Did you bring extra spider-bots to keep the others company?"

Riley blinked, then looked at the cart. "No? Four spider-bots with parahuman bits."

"Ah. Only two of them have snarks."

"Fuck. I must've screwed up two of them. Which two still have possible powers?"

"The top two," Amy answered.

Riley pouted. "Awww. I wanted to see what Arachnid's powers did to a spider-bot. She turned into a human/spider hybrid and I was hoping for something cool. Or what would happen when Moll's powers were used by a spider-bot. Instead we've just got Rockfinger and Slingshot."

Taylor and Amy put their documentation away while Riley let the spider-bots out. All six of them, once she'd noticed the carriers with Ackbar and Rodney. The latter she looked over as though to ensure that they were being taken care of properly, but didn't say anything else about. Though it was obvious that she wasn't happy when the spider-bots formed up into two groups, Ackbar and Rodney trying to keep between the other four spider-bots and the girls.

Danny and Theresa had sat off to the side on folding chairs and just seemed amused, and Taylor wondered if it was in part because Ackbar and Rodney had cloth coverings while the other four had exposed internal mechanics.

"So should we work with both at the same time or try for one at a time?" Amy asked.

"I vote we work with both at once," Taylor said after a moment. "If only because I have no clue how long this will take."

"Oooh. Good point. We have other things to do this afternoon."

Riley shrugged, obviously not caring either way, so Taylor reached out to the two snarks.

Taylor: Hello there.

[Confusion]{Confusion}

Amy: Yes, we can talk to you, and no, you aren't connected to a normal human anymore.

Taylor: But that doesn't mean you can't do anything about it.

She brought Ackbar's snark into the mix.

Taylor: We even have another snark that already figured out how to adapt to these bodies.

|Query|

Amy: These other two snarks are now connected to spider-bots and we thought that you might be able to help them adjust.

|Data. Elaboration|

{Query}

|Correction|

[Data]

|Negation|

Taylor leaned against the wall while the snarks chatted. Amy ended up sitting down on the floor and letting Rodney climb into her lap, but Ackbar had decided to drop a web onto the floor instead. That meant that Riley's attention was almost entirely on Ackbar and not on the two other spider-bots that hadn't triggered.

Then again, this was probably going to take a while, so focusing on the spider-bot using powers was probably going to remain the more interesting route for a bit.

It was approaching time for lunch when they had a sudden breakthrough, and it was Riley's doing. She'd been documenting Ackbar's webs, trying to see if she could figure out what they might do based on the way they'd been laid out. Which was fine, until she'd slipped up and stepped on one of the outer lines while trying to get a better look at the inner lines. She'd been launched across the room towards the group of four spider-bots.

[Destination]

Taylor stared at the two Jabberwocks, finding that they seemed to be unusually inactive. At least compared to when she'd seen them previously. Larger, as well, as much as that applied.

{Agreement}

Actually, one of the two seemed to be...adjusting to something, perhaps? Bits of snarks that didn't belong were sitting on the surface, but were being pulled in, changing as they vanished into the mass.

[Trajectory]

Telling exactly what was happening was problematic, there was far too much context missing.

{Agreement}

Though for some reason the 'color' of that Jabberwock started to change, incredibly subtly, spreading from one of the out of place snarks. But without any actual change in appearance? Just considering how to properly describe what she was 'seeing' was giving her a headache.

|Affirmation|

BA: DisagreementS: DisagreementUMR: Disagreement[Disagreement]

A moment later a web of energy fired from one of the spider-bots, specifically the one with the more 'settled' snark. Riley passed through the web, deflecting slightly to one side before visibly circling around to come back at the web from the other side. She was fired back through the web at a different angle and at a slightly faster velocity. Showing that she was doing a good job of keeping her cool, she tried to adjust to land on her feet.

Sadly, her new trajectory had her landing at the far side of another one of Ackbar's webs. She lost her footing immediately upon touching down as her feet were pulled out from under her, sending her back across the floor at high speed. Taylor idly wondered at the chances of the girl being sent straight back at the spider-bots. Then again, Ackbar had been setting up 'defenses' from them, so it seemed, so maybe that was to be expected?

[Destination]

This time the two Jabberwocks looked a lot like they had in the past. One more active than the other.

{Agreement}

But she could tell that the 'color' change she'd seen in the previous vision had completed in that Jabberwock. It was subtle enough that she'd never have noticed without having seen it in action a moment ago, but now that she knew to look for it she found it to almost be obvious.

[Trajectory]

Well, not entirely complete, it looked like one snark just came off without the change. Maybe it was only complete from this angle? Or perhaps it only applied to snarks still attached to the whole? She didn't have enough information.

{Agreement}

Whatever the reasoning, now that she was aware of it she found the entire concept oddly disquieting. She couldn't explain why she found it disquieting, but she did.

|Affirmation|

BA: DisagreementS: DisagreementUMR: Disagreement[Disagreement]

Snapping back to reality, the other spider-bot's snark had settled, and it slammed a leg down onto the ground. The floor fractured in several places, pieces floating up into the air just above the floor. Riley impacted one such piece, with a loud crack that had Taylor flinching. At the speed the girl had been going that would've hurt, enhancements or no, and could very well have caused actual serious damage.

Taylor: Sorry, but I need to disarm things.

|Understanding|

It took only a moment to shut down all of Ackbar's remaining webs as Taylor and Amy moved over to check on Riley. Taylor made it first, by virtue of having been upright and not having a spider-bot on her lap to contend with. She flipped her striker switch and touched Riley's face, only to flinch and start patching things up.

"That's not good," she said after a moment, focusing on her tinker snark for possible solutions to things. It wasn't optimistic, from what she could tell. "I think that shattered some of her enhancements. Her lower spine is in shreds. I've stopped the internal bleeding, but I don't know how to fix things."

Amy made it over at that point and checked for herself, though likely with her own tinker snark. "It's definitely not going to be easy. The bottom half of her spine needs to be rebuilt from scratch, and it was integrated with her enhancements in a way that probably needs her help to recreate."

Nodding, Taylor double-checked that she'd at least dealt with the pressing, life-threatening injuries. Deciding that she had, she prodded Riley awake again.

"Ugh," Riley groaned. "Wha happened?"

"You stepped in the wrong spot and caused the spider-bots to trigger," Taylor answered, holding Riley down from getting up. "And got seriously injured in the process. Don't move too much, your spine is partially shattered. I stopped the internal bleeding and patched a couple of things up, but you're not even sitting without some serious work."

Riley groaned again, but didn't argue. A moment later a drone came over, one with a stretcher attached, and they shifted the girl onto it. Carefully.

"I think we need to put the spider-bots into their carriers," Theresa said, looking at the mess that the incident had made of the floor. "Then decide what to do about things."

They'd ended up eating while discussing what to do about Riley. She insisted that she could still help with Danny today, even if she was less mobile. At no time did she imply that she'd need significant help with her own injuries, just time and materials that she didn't have with her. Like her waldo rig, that she'd previously used when tweaking her own enhancements in the past, but wasn't available in the facility.

Taylor thought her father was right to question things, but he admitted that if Riley was going to be waiting on supplies for a few days then it made sense to not let her injuries hold them back. He wasn't entirely happy with the idea, but she wasn't going to be doing much else while she waited for things anyway and the others would be able to easily bring things to her when needed during the fugue.

In the end they prepared for the fugue, carefully placing Riley onto one of the five operating tables available so that they could get the stretcher bot out of the way. Adjustments to the operating table let Riley be sitting up slightly so that she could see better than she'd have been able to on the largely static stretcher as well. A second table was placed in the middle of the room and the remaining three were left in the storage closet.

Danny had gotten changed into a hospital gown, and Theresa had ensured that Taylor and Amy were fully aware of what was where, including the extra raw materials in a refrigeration unit. It was then that she asked that they find something to do for Riley, including forwarding a message to them from Amanda asking them to do so even if Riley didn't like it. Even if it was as simple as rebuilding the spine without enhancements for the time being. Taylor suspected that Amanda didn't want Riley unable to move around on her own, but didn't say anything.

It wasn't long after that before the building was locked down and they got to work.

Fortuna slid out from under the car she'd spent a few minutes working on. The clutch cable had been weakened due to age already, and she'd accelerated that process significantly. If she'd done things correctly and their plans didn't change then it would fail in the middle of the night in Pennsylvania, well away from others. She scheduled a general tip to be sent to the appropriate police offices about the vehicle in a couple of days, meaning that when an officer stopped to assist them they'd be likely to find that the trunk was full of explosives.

Picking up the creeper, she slipped around the RV parked next to the car and prepared to deal with the truck on the other side of it. Friends of the people in the car, she had a much simpler solution for delaying them. Placing the creeper down, she got onto it and slid under the truck. It was the work of a second to loosen the jury-rigged drain plug on their differential an extra half turn from where it was already loose. The cheapskates hadn't been willing to spend the couple of dollars needed to get a proper replacement and it would've bitten them just after they'd arrived in Brockton Bay originally. Now it would do so sooner.

A minute later she'd dropped the creeper back in the garage she'd borrowed it from, with a note explaining that it was moved because it'd been borrowed. Said note also pointed out that she'd tightened down a couple of things on it that had been coming loose, which meant that the man who ran the garage wouldn't hurt himself in a couple of weeks when it fell apart. That meant that the food truck that he'd be working on wouldn't be kept in the shop for another week and Paul wouldn't have to hunt further for the treat he'd be looking for around then.

She idly wondered if anyone really understood just how many little things she did to keep things running smoothly, even as she collected two packages of gelatin and a funnel from storage. Oh, and she should probably pick up a few things for Doormaker to deliver, if only to be amusingly mysterious.

Taylor groaned as they came out of the fugue state, and wondered why it was so late. She looked over at the operating table that her father had been on, only to find it empty. Which had her confused. She looked around and saw an additional table had been pulled out, and had a body on it, but said body couldn't be her father's. Not unless they'd decided that he needed to become a much younger she, anyway. And for that matter, it seemed that was where Riley's snark was sitting now.

"What the hell did we do this time?" Amy asked, obviously confused as well.

"I believe we built Riley a new body," Theresa answered from where she was also recovering from the fugue state.

Taylor blinked at that. That was the obvious answer, wasn't it? Though Riley didn't seem to be waking up yet, and her old body didn't look like they'd done much to it, which was odd. Frowning, she moved over to what was apparently Riley's new body and touched it, blinking when Shaper fed her information on it.

"Woah," Amy said. "What the hell?"

"That's one way of handling any number of problems," Taylor noted. "But it's a bit more extreme than expected."

"We made her brain removable. That's a bit more than just 'extreme', isn't it?"

"That depends on whether or not we made it able to be put back into her original body, I think. Though at least we moved her key crystal into the brain box, probably because we didn't have a spare on hand."

Amy blinked at that, and moved over to Riley's original body. Sure enough, she found that the back of the skull had been heavily modified and an interface for the brain box had been installed. Though the spinal column hadn't been fully repaired yet, but they'd at least partially reassembled it.

More concerning was the fact that Taylor couldn't find an obvious reason for why Riley wasn't moving around. Focusing on her tinker snark, in case it was a technology problem and not a biological one, wasn't helping either. Frowning, she decided to try a different tactic, reaching over and pinching the girl's ear.

"OW!" Riley exclaimed as she jumped up. "What the hell?"

"Apparently you were just sleeping," Taylor answered. "Be careful with the new body, would you? And please don't do whatever it is that releases your brain, at least until we look over whatever documentation we wrote." She then looked around the room. "Also, where the hell did my father end up?"

"He appears to have gotten dressed and is waiting in the other room," Theresa answered. "And I think I have something Riley can wear until she gets clothing more suitable for her new body. It'll take me a minute to fetch it. We'll meet you where we ate lunch, since I know that I'm hungry enough for dinner."

"Why do I need..." Riley started, then apparently actually paid attention to her body. "Holy crap, I'm tall!"

"You're the normal height for your age," Amy said in response to that while Taylor was leaving the room.

It didn't take long for Taylor to find her father, who was sitting with a bag of chips and staring at his phone. His prepared pile of post-fugue goodies was on the table next to him. He tapped on the phone a couple of times, scowling.

"Something wrong?" Taylor asked as she moved over to him.

He looked up at her and smiled slightly. "Only a lack of instruction, I think. Can't figure out how to connect myself to the phone."

"Ah. That I can help with. You have to put your brain in pairing mode first."

It took a few minutes to run him through that, as well as checking that everything else seemed to have gone okay and walking him through other things, like sleep mode. Theresa had apparently found clothing that worked well enough for Riley during that time and the others joined them for a slightly late dinner, with Riley's difficulty in adapting to a suddenly differently proportioned body providing most of the during-dinner entertainment.

When they were done eating the girls returned to the operating room itself, Taylor and Amy having read the documentation to the point where they knew what needed to be done now. Amy took the lead, since what they'd done was more 'implant and prosthetic' than anything else.

"Okay," Amy said, lifting Riley's old head up. "I'm going to show you things on this body, but all of this should be identical on both. It isn't obvious, but there's now a hidden door on the back of the head. Taylor and I can trigger it with biological control, but normally you'll trigger it with the transmitter in your brain box." A moment later the back of the head 'popped open', splitting down the middle as an opening was revealed. "We didn't have room for a system to let you move yourself over, so you need assistance to change bodies until you have something external to aid you. There's barely enough room for the emergency life support system for while your brain is disconnected."

It took almost an hour to go over everything with Riley, including the things that had to be done for maintenance of the body she wasn't in. Theresa had come along during that portion and volunteered to help build storage pods for Riley to use to help with that, since she had a basic design that should be easily modified for this purpose. During all of that, Taylor had written up a much more basic instruction manual for Amanda and Jacob. She figured they were the most likely ones to be making the swap for Riley, after all. Whether or not Joey got a copy was going to be left up to them and Riley.

Packing everything up didn't take long, nor did shoving things into pocket dimensions as appropriate. Theresa had drones do actual cleaning of the room after that, though there was some grumbling about needing supplies to fix the floor from the damage done by the spider-bots. Which just improved Riley's mood, all things considered, since she liked the idea of genuinely destructive spider-bots. She even seemed happy that three of them working together, accidentally or otherwise, had seriously injured her and was sad that they didn't have facilities available for her to make a special treat for the spider-bots.

Riley left first, the rest of them shaking their heads once the portal closed.

"Did anyone warn her mother?" Danny asked.

"I sent pictures and Mother sent documentation on things," Theresa answered.

"Good. That isn't something that should be dropped on her without warning. Now then, I suppose we need to head through customs on the way home?"

Taylor nodded. "Yep. Did you want to pass through El Paso for that?"

"Honolulu would be better staffed for that at this point in the day," Theresa noted. "They got their beacon online this morning. You passing through would be a good test, as I haven't had time to do so myself yet. Would you like the code?"

Taylor looked at her father, who was grinning. "I'm thinking the answer is yes, if only so that my father can have a truly ridiculous story about today's travels."

Obtaining and entering the code hadn't taken long. Amy had joined them, finding the choice of customs office amusing as well.

Riley had gotten a hug and an examination from her mother, luckily able to leave her original body alone for the night. It would need some work in the morning, such as her using it long enough to eat a meal, but that was fine. Instead she headed for her room, only to find a shopping bag waiting on her bed. Frowning, since her mother had commented about not finding out about things in time to do any shopping, she carefully looked into the bag.

Shockingly, she found sleepwear, a change of clothing, several sets of underwear, and a folded note inside. All of the clothing appeared to be perfect for her new body, which was somewhat disturbing. Who the hell knew her new sizes with enough notice to go shopping for her? Frowning again, she opened the note.

Good evening Riley,

It will be easier for you to go shopping with your mother tomorrow with fitting clothing, so I decided to be nice and pick up some for you. I didn't bother to include a receipt so that you could exchange them for the correct sizes as I know they're correct already.

My budget wasn't large enough to replace your bed. Have fun with that.

Blinking, she read the note a second time. There was no signature, but she looked at her bed. It wasn't the largest bed, since she'd never really 'upgraded' after stunting her growth. And that led to her groaning.

"I'm gonna need a bigger bed."

Chapter 237 Sunday morning Taylor woke up at her usual time, only to find that for a change her father was up before her. She made her way downstairs to find him making pancakes. "Morning."

He looked over at her, and she noticed that he had the half-visor on. "Morning. I'd forgotten about the 'need less sleep' effect of things. At least until I woke up an hour ago."

She nodded. "I find that being able to check on things just by grabbing a visor while still in bed helps with the urge to just get up and do things."

"That's less than useful when you're woken up by a need to piss."

"True."

Taylor wasn't about to complain about pancakes while she reviewed Wards leader stuff. Before going to bed she'd 'approved' four out of five potential requests for Missy to help move more buildings today. The last one she'd declined on the basis of it not having any safety information specified, which stuck out as odd if she was being honest with herself. Given that they'd applauded her for that and resubmitted it with safety information for her approval this morning, though, she was now assuming that it'd been a test and she'd passed it.

She approved the new version of the request, and sent a message to Missy to point out that one more request was available if she wanted to take it. Following that, she checked for other requests that could possibly be taken, but found that she was the only one qualified to handle the only request from the city so far. Apparently they wanted someone to use something like the Snitch to check a couple of tunnels for damage, and Chris didn't have anything suitable for that in his bag of tricks right now. Though she did send him a message letting him know that if he came up with something then he could probably grab some of the requests as they came in, because she didn't think this was a one-off thing.

Feeding Ackbar didn't take long, though she debated over whether or not to bring him along for the day. If only because she was curious how he'd handle sand. Realizing that she wasn't sure if he could swim, and that finding out on another Earth while scientist types were collecting samples was likely a poor choice, she decided that it would be best if he stayed home for the day. To that end she cleaned up after his breakfast and brought him back upstairs before getting ready for the day herself.

It appeared that Amy was sleeping in, so Taylor ended up working out alone. When she was done with that, including a mild annoyance at the lack of proper maple syrup in the cafeteria, she headed up to the conference room where she'd be meeting with the group wanting to collect samples on the alternate Earth. Not that said group had shown up yet by the time she got there. Grumbling a bit, she slapped a notification alert on the door and headed down to the Wards area instead, deciding that she might as well ensure that she had her platform, the Snitch, and the scout drone ready to go. She even popped back home long enough to get her tablet.

She'd gotten everything set up and ready to go in the Shaper-linked pocket dimension long before others showed up in the conference room. That included picking up a lunch to go in one of the cafeterias after realizing that she was going to be escorting a half dozen scientists that were not going to want to leave the other Earth until they had to. Bringing her own lunch just made sense under those circumstances.

Arriving back at the conference room, she found eight people inside of it, which was one more than expected. "Morning. I'd like to note that my approved list of researchers is only seven people long and there are eight people here. What gives?"

"I'm here to run a check on everyone returning for possible medical issues," a woman in the corner replied. "Which brings up the question of if you have any way to let me know that you're returning?"

Taylor nodded. That made sense. "There's a repeater unit there that allows at least PRT compatible cell phones to function. Worst case scenario is probably that I send a message to you. Though I'm not sure what kind of medical issues you're expecting."

"Different planet, different microbes at a minimum. Who knows what they could do to others, and we can't use your beach trip group as a sample since there wasn't a standard immune system in the lot of you."

"I'm certain that people without enhanced immune systems have visited there before, if only because the hut gives me the impression of predating the process that would give them enhanced immune systems in the first place."

The woman shrugged. "Doesn't matter. Procedures exist for good reason, in my opinion."

"Okay." Taylor looked over the rest of them. "So where is your equipment?"

"It was brought directly to the room that the portal equipment is installed in," a man replied.

"Good. Hopefully it won't be impacted too badly by sand. I suppose that I should get a phone number or two at a minimum for when we're returning, discuss how we're going to be dealing with staying in contact with each other, and then we can head out."

Contact information was gathered and decisions were made regarding how to stay in touch with each other. If all their phones worked they'd use them, calling each other as needed, otherwise they had a dozen handheld radios in one of their kit boxes. With that taken care of, they headed to the 'visitor arrival' pocket dimension portal room. The entire group looked on with interest as Taylor used the finger pad to open the portal, then they loaded the equipment into the pocket dimension. Then the interest was in the opening of the portal to the hut, followed by unloading everything from the pocket dimension.

It turned out that all of their phones worked fine, so the radios were left packed. Tarps and stands were extracted from a couple of boxes and set up on the beach to provide a non-sand working surface for a few things, but that was handled by the group of researchers. Taylor deployed the scout drone to do some more passes on the area, linked to her tablet which she left on one of the charging points in the hut, then stripped down to the swimsuit she'd put on after her workout. She had no interest in the actual sample collection, after all, but it was a nice day on the beach and she had no reason not to get some swimming in.

Missy carefully examined the route that they wanted to take across town with the old outpost building. She'd realized after the last time that she'd been stupid in how she'd manipulated space, and now she was especially happy to have come to the realization. Instead of trying to widen and compress the streets, taking into account the twists and turns, she could skip the entire issue by manipulating space over the town. She'd done that kind of thing before, and it was far easier than dealing with more than a single turn on the ground.

Worse, the recommended route had twelve turns and a bridge involved and would require two stops to shift police barriers so as to not block all traffic across town. Fuck that, she wanted to get all five buildings moved today, and that wasn't going to happen if she spent hours here. So she bounced up to a rooftop, then over to another. Frowning, she decided that wasn't going to work and compressed space to get up onto a clocktower. Once there she nodded to herself, looking between where the outpost was sitting ready to get started and to the lot on the other side of town where it was to end up.

Fifteen seconds later she'd connected the two. The driver of the truck was obviously quick on the uptake, getting moving almost immediately. Twenty minutes later they were done, and Missy was on her way back to teleport to her next stop. With any luck she'd finish the next one just as quickly and could justify doing some quick shopping at the third one, since one of the threads on PHO recommended a pet store in the area and she hoped to find a couple of things for Midnight there that nobody seemed to carry in Brockton Bay.

Taylor sighed as she sat on the beach. She'd had to stop swimming for a bit so that she could pay more attention to helping the research team move around. More specifically, she was directing her platform back and forth across the water so that equipment and people could visit other landmasses in the area. Which not only wasn't unexpected, it was why she'd ensured that the platform was available in the first place. But none of the research team could fly it around, so she was doing so for them.

Doing so from the beach was easy enough, especially with the snitch following along and linked to her phone. So far they hadn't wanted to move anything too large off of the island with the hut, so there hadn't been multiple trips for equipment and the person or people looking to use them. Yet. She wouldn't put it past them to want to try and get one of the two larger pieces of equipment over the water eventually.

"Goddammit," came from further down the beach, where one researcher was trying to catch a fish. Taylor rolled her eyes at the man's tactics. They obviously weren't working, and she didn't expect that to change anytime soon.

Eventually the other researchers were spread far and wide, so Taylor brought her platform back to the beach while she grabbed a couple of tanks from one of the boxes still in the hut, as well as a net. She stepped onto the platform with them and flew out over the water, filling the tanks first and then flipping upside down while holding the net. Within two minutes she'd captured one fish, then five minutes later she'd caught a second. She then did a pass on a tree where a bird that'd been pestering them off and on all day was currently resting and snatched it with the net when it tried to fly off. It hadn't been fast enough.

"There you go," Taylor said as she hopped off of the platform back at the beach, holding out the net with the bird in it for the researcher to take. "You can stop making a fool of yourself trying to catch fish with your bare hands now."

With that done, she left him to it and went back to swimming for the time being.

It was mid-afternoon by the time the researchers collectively realized that they, unlike Taylor, hadn't thought to bring lunch. Which meant that they had to gather all of the equipment and samples back at the hut, including Taylor running her platform around to collect those that were further afield. That took almost an hour on its own, followed by more time packing everything back up as needed, before she opened up the portal to the Shaper-linked pocket dimension. She ensured that the lone researcher left behind was ready for them to return while helping drag all the equipment out of the hut, and when she opened the portal back to the PRT building they were welcomed by a group of people in hazmat suits.

Taylor helped unload the equipment, then left them to it. She'd checked and she wasn't required to go through that dance. Instead she closed the portal, debated dropping things off in the Wards area, and decided that could wait. Instead she went home to take a shower. Once she was done with that and had gotten dressed again she sat down to look over what the other Wards were up to.

Missy had apparently completed all five building moves, spent some time shopping, and was already home for the day. The morning patrol with Ryan had gone fine, but they were still in the middle of the afternoon patrol. Chris was acting as patrol leader and was taking them on a longer route, his notes justifying it as getting Sandy more time in the sun. Taylor couldn't really argue against that, though it looked like Aisha might be annoyed at the extra walking. She'd filed at least one complaint about it so far.

Dealing with that complaint had only taken a minute, responding with what amounted to 'suck it up, or are you that out of shape?' in more polite language. The route was still within guidelines for a walking route without assistance, even if it was nearing the maximum length, and had been approved by the PRT before they'd left. She'd then looked over options for the next day. Rosa thought she was ready to try a first patrol, so Taylor put herself down as working with Rosa to ensure that she was good for a patrol attempt on Tuesday. She left the other two kids off for the day, since they'd run patrols today already. For that matter, she put the other three down as 'optional' for the day as well, figuring that Aisha at least would appreciate the time to recover from the 'far too much walking'.

That was followed by scheduling an 'all Wards' exercise day for a week from Tuesday. It was a combination of ensuring that Aisha wasn't slacking off and giving the three youngest a chance to use the gym. Sadly, she had to wait that long due to needing time to allow for the gym to be 'reserved' for them, which needed at least a week's notice due to how many people needed to be warned about it. Well, that and she needed time for parents to object, if they wanted to. She didn't think that likely, of course, but the rules for younger Wards weren't something she could just change.

With any luck she'd be able to take Rosa out on her first patrol on Tuesday, but she couldn't finalize that until she'd sat down with the girl to go over her equipment. Either way, she put Missy and Aisha down for patrolling with Sandy. If Rosa was ready then Chris would join them, if only to be extra tinker support, otherwise Taylor would take the console and have Chris try and help Rosa with any issues she'd had with her equipment.

"Being Wards leader requires way too much planning," Taylor grumbled. She pretty much had to have Ryan patrolling Wednesday, but she didn't want to cover too much until she knew what Rosa's situation was. Or for that matter what other non-patrol tasks came in that they could attempt.

Sighing, she then got her things together to review stuff for school. Sure, she thought she was caught up well enough, but better safe than sorry there. Though Amy had been called to the hospital and was causing some distractions as well. Why the hell had the idiots thought it was a good idea to 'race' power saws?

On Monday morning Taylor woke up to find that the researchers she'd escorted the day before had made the news already. Primarily because they'd almost lost the bird that she'd caught for them and someone had spotted things as a side effect. Snorting, she moved on, marking Aisha's acceptance of the complaint resolution as reviewed by her and looking over a message from Number Man. He'd apologized for the lack of access to the computer in the Florida house, but apparently it was a 'work' machine used as a relay point for him. But he claimed to have set up a second one over the weekend and a wireless access point that their stuff could connect through, but they'd need to download 'compatibility apps' to enable talking to Aleph networks.

He'd also apologized for likely starting a flu epidemic on Aleph, because he'd gone out shopping for the equipment without thinking. That was probably going to be 'fun' to deal with.

Confirmation that Director Piggot had 'won' thanks to the information about Riley was also sitting in her inbox in the form of Sherrel wanting an opinion on the new vehicle for the Wards. Apparently the woman was leaning towards a flying one, but wasn't sure if Taylor would prefer that it be ground-bound. Responding with 'flying would be nice, but can you make a bus that can take off?' was either the most inspired thing she'd done recently or the most idiotic. Only time would tell.

Vicky joined Amy for the gym that morning, though Missy didn't show up. Both of the Dallons appeared to be annoyed, though if Taylor had to guess then she'd assume that Amy was annoyed about Vicky being annoyed.

"Something wrong?" Taylor asked.

"She didn't like hanging around the hospital yesterday," Amy answered. "Claimed that you should've invited us to go to the beach, especially after I told her that you got some swimming in."

Taylor snorted. "The researchers probably would've had her chasing birds. They whined that I only caught one for them. I only grabbed it because it'd been annoying us."

That seemed to take Vicky by surprise. "Really?"

"I had to stop swimming to ferry them around to other bits of land with my platform too. They wanted a copy of the sensor drone data as well for that matter, though I submitted that through the PRT system for 'sanitizing' to happen. I don't think they want the researchers to know just how detailed things actually are there."

"But how did you catch one?"

"Flying platform."

"Oh. That feels incredibly obvious in hindsight."

They ended up taking the minivan to school, though Amy frowned when Taylor shut off the engine. "Did something just beep?"

Taylor nodded. "Yep."

"Why?"

"Because it works better to boot it up when the van stops."

Amy didn't seem to understand, but Taylor was out of the minivan before clarification was asked for. The three of them headed inside, Amy obviously deciding that Taylor was being sneaky about what had beeped, and Vicky split off to go to her own homeroom. The other two didn't make it very far before they were found by Louise.

"Hey you two," the girl said, waving her left hand. Her right arm appeared to be in a sling, and it looked like her tail was in a makeshift wrap as well.

"What happened to you?" Amy asked.

"I fell out of a tree, but my tail got caught in branches on the way down."

Taylor blinked. "And why were you in the tree?"

"I wanted to get the frisbee out of it and wasn't about to let an eight year old climb it instead."

"Oh. That makes sense."

"I just didn't expect to need the fire department to need to cut the branch with my tail wedged in it off of the tree for me."

Taylor and Amy both winced, and Amy held her hand out. "Did you want a quick heal?"

Louise nodded and held her hand out for Amy to take. "Yes, thank you. My tail in particular has been painful to move."

Repairing the strained muscles along the entire length of the tail, as well as the bruised muscles and cracked ulna in her right arm, didn't take long. 'Tightening' the connection point between the tail and the rest of the girl's spine was a bit trickier, as part of the pain might've been that having been pulled a little too much, and Amy actually adjusted the durability enhancements a bit. Over the coming days they'd extend themselves further outward from the tailbone. It wouldn't be as good as if they put the girl through a proper fugue with Riley, but it should improve things if that much force was put on the tail again in the future.

"I cleared out the wood fragments you swallowed too," Amy said as she let go of Louise's hand. "Though I'm not sure how you pulled that off without bruising your face."

Louise blushed at that. "I, er, might've bitten down on a branch to stop myself from yelling too loudly after my neighbor told me I was being too loud. It didn't work out well."

"I suppose that would do it."

At the end of the school day Taylor decided to further screw with people and left via pocket dimension instead of by taking the minivan. She'd return for the minivan itself later. Instead, she'd dropped her schoolbag at home before heading to the Wards area to prepare to look over Rosa's equipment.

Amy: You forgot that you came in the minivan, didn't you.

Taylor: Nope. I'll take it home later.

Amy: Really?

Taylor: Yeah. Won't be a problem.

Amy: ...mind if I use it?

Taylor: Go for it. My plans are pretty much all in the PRT building anyway.

Since she had time it seemed like a good idea to get the scout drone and platform out of the pocket dimension. The former into her room, the latter she opened up for a few minutes for some quick maintenance before she brought it up to the roof.

Interestingly, Rosa arrived at the PRT building via the secure garage, apparently riding with Sherrel. They pulled clear to the inner secure garage and looped around through the building to the Wards area. The two of them entered the actual Wards area together, only for Rosa to stop when she saw Taylor there.

"You scheduled a review of the brat's stuff?" Sherrel asked.

Taylor nodded. "Yep. I checked and I'm qualified to do so."

"Probably better qualified than I am. Armsmaster declined to join us, said something about a lack of familiarity and conflicting specialties."

"Ah." Turning to Rosa, Taylor noted that she seemed nervous. "Don't worry about it. Either your stuff is ready or it isn't, and you probably get to show some of it off either way."

Rosa nodded, and Sherrel walked forward. "Okay kid, enough being nervous. I don't have all afternoon, so let's check your gear. If some of it passes muster then it needs to be installed, after all."

They started with the stuff that Sherrel had already cleared, which was basically the water resupply stuff. Three styles of 'base unit' were already made on that front. One for attaching at the PRT building, a couple of desalination style units that pulled off bullshit to run on water they collected after the initial startup, and a smaller but mobile unit designed to hook onto a fire hydrant. The latter was labeled as for emergencies only, such as if an actual fire was being helped with, and the desalination versions had drinking fountains built in. Presumably so that they had another reason to exist.

Following those were the ground and air based automatic resupply tanks. Rosa, Sherrel, and presumably Chris had contributed there. Six semi-autonomous units that would hunt down the nearest resupply unit, fill up, and then hunt down Rosa. Or, more accurately, the storage system Rosa would be wearing. The two flying units sacrificed capacity for being able to ignore most obstacles to move around out in the open. All but one of the ground units could also be ridden by Rosa, controlled by a system in the gloves she had. Taylor had marked one of the flying units as unacceptable due to a faulty lift unit, since it wouldn't be able to take off with a full tank, but the other five units passed her tinker snark's examination.

"You should consider a daisy-chain system," Taylor noted when she was done with those. "Even if it's just one larger tank unit that you can ride and can be refilled by the other units, so you don't have to disconnect."

Rosa's eyes had gone wide, but Sherrel had merely had the girl make note of the idea instead of trying to build it right then and there. Not to mention expanded on it. "You should probably consider a direct hookup option for a fire hose to feed things too. I'll get you a fire hose or five to play with."

Of course, having examined the resupply units, the next step was to examine the storage system that Rosa would be wearing. She'd made three copies, and they all spread water storage out over her body. They had batteries, but those seemed to be intended to jumpstart some of the same tricks the desalination units did to get power directly from the water they stored. The amount stored was barely enough to do anything with, but when one of the hoses from the resupply tanks was connected she could pull straight from that reserve instead.

Designed to connect to that were three different styles of water gun, with spares already made. One of each could be connected, all at the same time, with holster points for them present, but only one could be used at a time without overloading the minimal power generation. The first was basically designed to be like a fire hose, except that it obviously put out less water because Rosa couldn't handle an actual fire hose. The second was more of a needle stream, very high pressure but almost no area. It might be good for trying to cut through things. But it was the last that was the weirdest. Taylor's tinker snark insisted that it formed five kilograms of water into a one liter sphere, then fired it at speed without recoil. The sphere would maintain its shape and size until it made contact with something, at which point the effect would cancel out.

She had no clue how the hell that had any hope of working, but apparently it would.

Two of the four sets of guns were fine, but there were flaws in the other two sets that caused Taylor to mark them as not suitable for patrolling. Rosa seemed to have been expecting that, especially as those two sets had been together at one end of the workbench. Taylor suspected that the girl had originally had problems with all of them and had only gotten around to fixing two of the sets before saying she was ready for patrolling. But that was fine, since she only needed one working set to be permitted to go on patrol in the first place.

"I think you're good," Taylor said after looking over everything. "Provided we can get at least one water supply unit in place for you, anyway."

"I'm in agreement with her," Sherrel added. "Though I'm somewhat embarrassed that I missed the problematic lifting unit. Sorry about that."

"I think that falls more on Kid Win? Regardless, it shouldn't be a problem, she has other units."

Rosa didn't seem to care about the one unusable resupply unit, instead she was bouncing up and down in excitement. Sherrel chuckled at that before moving over to the base unit that would be attached to the building. "Well, we should see about getting this hooked up and run through everything for a quick test run. Then maybe I can drop one of the desalination versions along the shore for you?"

The three of them brought that base unit outside and hooked it up to the building in a location that maintenance crews had already prepared for it. That was followed by bringing out one of the flying resupply tanks while Rosa was in a full setup. 'Get water' was triggered and the tank filled up, then it came over and attached to Rosa's unit. She drove around the building once, then they tested the three water guns. Watching the 'water bomb' one had Taylor wanting to call bullshit on the universe, but she resisted. Everything worked, and they headed back inside.

Taylor helped load one of the desalination units onto Sherrel's truck, but wasn't going to be helping set it up. Instead she ended up sitting down with Rosa and showing her where the problem was on the flying resupply unit. They didn't fix it, in part due to not having a replacement metal strip for the inside of the lift unit, but Rosa understood the problem when she saw the crack in the metal strip.

"So," Taylor said once they were done with that. "Shall we call your mother to get you home?"

Rosa shook her head. "I'm sleeping over at Sandy's house tonight because mommy's working late."

"Ah. I guess I can call there instead."

"I can call."

"But I have an idea and need to ask if they're ok with it. Trust me, I think you'll like it. Give me a minute to check on things."

Rosa nodded, and Taylor started with Amy. Sure, she could ask to borrow the ambulance, and would if there was a good reason to, but that wasn't the only option.

Taylor: So, what are you up to over there?

Amy: Failing to find anything.

Taylor: So you don't need the minivan to drag stuff home?

Amy: Not really, no. Do you need it?

Taylor: I'm thinking that I'll give Rosa a ride to Sandy's house, if Zelda is happy with that plan.

Amy: Ah. Let me know, I'm sure I can slip out of the store long enough to find a place to drop it into the pocket dimension for you.

Rolling her eyes, Taylor switched to calling Zelda.

"Hello Taylor," Zelda answered after a couple of rings.

"Hi Zelda," Taylor replied. "We're done and Rosa is cleared for patrol. Would you like me to drop her off?"

"That would be great, if it won't be any trouble for you."

"It shouldn't be."

"We're home, so you can swing by when you're ready."

"Then we'll leave shortly. See you soon."

"Thank you for going to the trouble, see you when you arrive here."

Nodding as the call ended, Taylor walked over to the pocket dimension portal doorway. "Come on Rosa, let's get you to Sandy's house."

"How?" Rosa asked.

Taylor grinned and opened the pocket dimension. "To start with, we use this portal."

The younger girl was curious about the pocket dimension, and looked over the things stored in it while Taylor took advantage of her recent work. It only took a moment to connect to the beacon in the minivan in order to trigger the internal opener that she'd installed, though some ducking was needed when she led Rosa back out of the pocket dimension directly into the minivan.

Amy: What the hell?

Taylor: Turns out you don't need to drop the minivan off for me, I've got it covered.

Amy: ...

Chapter 238 Tuesday morning Amy was still grumbling about Taylor having installed beacons and internal openers in the minivan and ambulance without telling her. Except that she couldn't exactly complain because she'd intentionally not asked about what Taylor had been doing, hoping to figure it out on her own. Further, complaining about having touched the ambulance without asking was stupid because she liked the idea and had no problem with it.

So she grumbled but didn't complain.

Vicky found the whole thing hilarious up until they didn't give her access to the beacons in the two vehicles. At which point she shifted from finding it hilarious to merely finding it funny with an undercurrent of mild annoyance, though Taylor didn't know why the girl thought she should be able to get to vehicles she wasn't even able to drive. She could see Carol or Mark wanting access to the ambulance, for example, but Vicky seemed to just want the potential shortcut.

"What are they annoyed about?" Missy asked as they worked out at the gym.

"I installed beacons in vehicles and didn't tell Amy," Taylor replied. "Then neither of us would add Vicky to them when Amy found out about them."

"Oh. But she isn't allowed to drive them anyway?"

"Exactly."

Missy shrugged. "So what are we doing this afternoon?"

"Chris and I are taking Rosa out for her first patrol, while you and Aisha take Sandy out for one. If for some reason the universe decides that things should actually go to plan then the routes I selected should have us crossing paths once."

"You're taking her out on her first patrol? Do you want her to be dealing with idiots attacking you?"

"I have to balance several things, and the extra tinker support on her first patrol outweighs the potential risk that me being on the patrol might cause."

"Oh. That makes sense."

A quick 'walk' to school had been followed by a day of boredom. Taylor had no interest in the gossip surrounding a couple having been discovered to be cheating on each other, a view that Amy shared. Both Missy and Vicky seemed to find the story far too amusing, but were luckily easily ignored at lunch. Amy and Vicky left with Dean, probably for appearances sake, while Taylor and Missy had gone straight for their pocket dimensions to leave. Both swung home to drop off school bags before meeting up in the Wards area.

"I suppose it's a good thing that Lucia and Zelda want to take Rosa and Sandy out to dinner tonight," Taylor mused.

Missy obviously didn't understand that. "Why is that a good thing?"

"Because regulations say that we can't leave something cooking entirely unattended. Which I'd be more likely to ignore if the oven wasn't linked to an alarm that would turn it off and alert someone within thirty minutes of the area being empty while it's on."

"Oh."

"In other news, there's a request for you to help with moving antique furniture in city hall on Thursday if you're up for it. Apparently they don't want to dismantle things just to work with rugs. Then there would be the follow-up job of helping to move it all back next Wednesday."

Missy thought about that for a minute before shrugging. "Might as well help out."

Taylor nodded. "I'll mark those down for you then. So far there's nothing for you to possibly do out of town this weekend, but I'll keep looking."

"Don't bother, I've been told that we're visiting my grandmother since I have 'nothing better to do anyway'. Pain in the ass."

"Ah. Good to know."

It wasn't too long before Chris and Dennis arrived on a bus together, though Dennis went straight for the roof and a likely short hop over to the Rig while Chris came to the Wards area. Upon entering, he looked around and saw that Taylor and Missy were both there.

"Ahem," he said, clearing his throat. He then pointed dramatically at the two. "YOU BASTARDS!"

Taylor blinked, and assumed Missy was doing similarly. "What?"

"Dennis insisted. He found a price for pocket dimensions and decided that he'd be better off saving up to buy a brand new luxury car or five. Though I won't object if you have any tips for getting my hands on one without spending insane amounts of money?"

"Tinker collaborations," Missy answered. "That's basically how I got mine, even if things were a bit less useful than we'd hoped, and I believe Taylor and Amy got theirs as a result of a fugue."

"That was our first one, anyway," Taylor agreed, which caused the other two to look at her. "What? Multiple powers leads to multiple places to put pocket dimensions."

Chris groaned at that. "You are extra bullshit. Any chance of putting a good word in for me?"

"We can try, but no promises. I'm not sure your specialty is anything they want to try and incorporate into things."

"It's worth a shot. If I get one then I could rub it in Dennis's face too, which would be a bonus."

Taylor considered that. "I think I'll include that in the message I send. It might actually help your case."

"Wait, seriously?"

Missy nodded. "Yeah, I can see that helping. Might not be enough, of course."

"Huh."

Chris headed to his room to get changed while Taylor sent off a message to Joey. She followed that up by starting up the holographic projector so that she could show today's routes with it. Luckily she was doing a Boardwalk, safe but show off route for Rosa to start with, since the route she'd chosen for the other three passed through a small park. Getting Rosa's water tanks through there would be problematic, so reviewing all routes for suitability with a ground-based vehicle was going to have to happen.

Eventually Rosa and Sandy were dropped off, but Aisha hadn't shown up yet. Frowning when she realized that, Taylor sent a message to the girl. The two younger Wards hadn't made it downstairs before the response came back, apparently Brian had elected to pick Aisha up and then hit a pothole hard enough to pop his tire off of the rim. She had since caught a bus and would be in shortly.

"So," Taylor said once everyone other than Aisha was 'in costume'. Rosa was probably going to need a visit with Glenn if she wasn't going for full power armor anymore, but what she had was good enough for now. "PRT staff are playing console for us today, so we can run two patrols. Chris and I will be going with Rosa, since tinker support is preferred for her first patrol, leaving Missy and Aisha to patrol with Sandy."

It took a moment, but both younger Wards seemed to realize that they wouldn't be patrolling together at the same time. Both pouted, but neither argued the point. Taylor nodded, then gestured at the map. "I've laid out two mixed patrol routes. I'll be taking the lead through the boardwalk, and plan on doing so from the air in an overwatch position. Missy, I don't know if you want to play patrol leader or if you'd like to hand that to Aisha."

Missy sighed. "I'll take leader, if only to save the poor console operator's sanity. Aisha decided that she doesn't like having to remember anything."

It was telling that the other three all nodded their heads at that. Apparently Taylor was going to have to consider talking to Aisha as well. Though she had an idea for that. "I think I want to pick up something before you three head out. Regardless, if you look here, the two routes I've chosen cross each other on their return runs. They actually function as alternate return runs for each other if desired. If nothing goes wrong we may be able to meet up for a few minutes at the crossover point."

Chris snorted at that. "Which means we've got no hope of meeting up until we're back here."

Missy punched him in the shoulder. "Don't taunt higher powers like that."

"What?"

"Just don't."

Taylor shook her head. "Any questions?"

Rosa raised her hand, and Taylor nodded to her. "How do I get my tanks outside?"

"We'll have to get them up the elevator."

"But I can't get the big ones out the door."

Taylor blinked at that. "Oh. That would complicate things, wouldn't it? Luckily we have other options available."

Missy sighed. "Yeah, yeah. I can help her get stuff out to the elevator."

"I was actually talking about unlocking the wall and swinging it out, which anyone with SL5 or better can do while the door to one of the workshops is open. But if you want to use your powers instead then I won't stop you."

Chris and Missy looked interested in that information, and Taylor gave a quick demonstration. She then left the other four to getting Rosa's stuff out to the elevator while she fetched office supplies. Aisha arrived while they were doing that and went straight for getting into costume, something Taylor discovered when she got back. Still, it didn't take long before she was ready, and Taylor intercepted her.

"Hello Aisha," Taylor said, grinning.

Aisha looked at Taylor and winced. "Oh hell, what now?"

"What has you worried?"

"That grin is what Brian gets whenever he has something for me that I'm not going to like."

"Ah." Taylor handed a small bag to Aisha, who looked perplexed. "I have a task for you. Contained within that bag is a brand new notepad and a pack of pens. Missy may be patrol leader, but I want a written summary of things from you when you get back. I'll be comparing it to her report later."

Aisha looked in the bag, then back up at Taylor. "What?"

"I heard that you've decided that you aren't willing to put in the effort in to even attempt to take notes on patrol and rely entirely on asking the console to take all your notes for you. So I've decided that you need to learn to take notes of your own. If you give it to me handwritten or digitally is up to you, but I'm preemptively eliminating any excuses you might have by handing you the notepad and pens."

The girl looked back down at the bag, then back at Taylor again. "You can't make me do this, can you?"

"Nope. But if you don't then my next step is to talk to your brother about it."

"You bitch."

David stumbled just after one of his meters had filled. The meter had flashed and vanished, followed by what seemed to be all of his brute and regeneration abilities coming online simultaneously. One of which activated automatically, healing him of several injuries before deactivating. He started to ponder what that meant, only to decide that it could wait until after he'd finished in the bathroom.

By the time he was done with his more physical concerns he had a new item to ponder. A new meter had appeared, as though to replace the old one. But this time the symbol was almost immediately recognizable to him. A dot with curved lines above it and a lock symbol screamed 'secure communications' to him, and the bar was already a third full. The other symbols started shifting shortly after that, to ones that made far more sense to him. Timers appeared for each bar as well, though some were indicating 'time to completion' and others were indicating 'time to resource exhaustion'. Resource icons also appeared next to the 'completion' bars, presumably indicating what resources were needed for that repair task.

It didn't take long to notice that the 'secure communications' bar was the next one likely to complete, by a long shot. At the same time, he'd fired up a thinker ability to aid him long enough to determine that it would be mid to late November before it was complete. And that assumed that the resources needed were available in suitable quantities, he was running low on a couple of them already and seemed to recall that they were less commonly 'topped up'. If he got stuck waiting on resources then it could take even longer.

With a sigh, he went to grab his phone from where he'd left it on the kitchen counter. He had a meeting to arrange, though they still probably didn't need to bring Miss Dallon or Miss Hebert in yet.

Rosa seemed to be having fun as they went down the Boardwalk, though it probably would've been nicer if they'd gotten her first patrol out during much warmer weather. It was too chilly out for 'cool down with a blast of water', and there wasn't a whole lot else Rosa could do to show off her stuff right now. Which didn't stop people from wanting to ask her questions, though she was only answering ones about her tech. Everything else seemed to cause her to shut down out of shyness, and Chris was doing his best to keep people from crowding her.

Taylor, on the other hand, was using the Snitch and scout drone to scan the area, looking out for possible threats. So far the only issue had been someone who had decided to shoot at the scout drone itself with an improvised net gun. Twice, after they'd missed the first time and the drone had come back around for another pass later. The second time they'd hit it, only to find out that the scout drone's propulsion system was stronger than the net.

At the same time, she was keeping an eye on information from the other patrol. They were running a slightly more dangerous route, probably the equal of the Boardwalk while Taylor was involved if there were still idiots running around. Keeping said eye was harder while not on their console channel, of course, but watching the map for their progress helped. That and a couple of details had come through. Aisha had grabbed someone who had fought back, for example, and might have a pulled muscle as a result. Which Taylor knew about thanks to a warning about it from Missy.

Somewhat expectedly, they weren't currently on track for a meetup while on patrol. Though it seemed to be the opposite of what Taylor had been expecting. Rosa had kept her water tank moving even while talking to people, which meant that they were running faster than expected, while the other group was moving much more slowly than expected for whatever reason. Not stopping frequently, just moving more slowly than anticipated. The combination meant that the other group would be lagging behind at the crossover point.

Oh well. They'd meet up back at the PRT building either way.

Missy rolled her eyes as Sandy focused on fixing the curbs along the route. Apparently she'd fixed one outside of her house a couple days ago and thought that doing so in general was a good thing, at least for the granite curbing. Which the route they were moving along had a lot of, most of it in bad condition. Sure, the city would probably be delighted, but it was annoying and made the patrol that much more boring. Luckily, Sandy hadn't noticed that there was a granite curb in similar need of repair on the other side of the street, or they'd be moving even more slowly.

At the same time, Missy wasn't saying anything because it was actually good practice for the girl and they were still moving. That and grabbing control of the curbing had been what had let her trip up that purse snatcher by lifting the edge of the curb up. Though Missy thought the intent had been to grab him, not trip him. It'd worked either way, which was what mattered in this case. Luckily, Sandy was getting faster at the repairs as they moved along, coupled with the park they were going to hit soon not having curbing.

"Hey Vista," Aisha called, waving her phone a little.

"What now?" Missy asked, wondering what the girl wanted to complain about this time.

"Do you know a good contact email for the city? I want to suggest that they escort Sandy around for this in the future."

Oh. Huh. That wasn't a bad idea. "I think that would fall under the public works department? Do they have an email posted on their website?"

"I can check, but I can't find a paving thing on here. That's what this would probably fall under, right?"

"Ah. Hmmm. Let me take a look." Missy brought up the city's website and looked for herself. It didn't take long to determine that the city's website sucked, but she found the public works department subsite easily enough. It took a few minutes, but she eventually stumbled upon a frequently asked question regarding getting a street repaved. Which indicated that the highway division of the public works department was apparently responsible for all streets. "Apparently you probably want the highway division."

"Well that sounds counterintuitive."

Missy shrugged. "I'm sure there's a good reason for it. Not sure what it is, but I'm sure it exists. But they do have their own email address, and if I'm wrong they can probably point you to the right place."

"Whatever."

Taylor sighed as they moved Rosa's water tank into the building. Things had gone well, up until a group had decided to set something up that would need water. Specifically, they decided to set up a fire to see how Rosa dealt with putting it out. Which was a wonderful idea, except that they'd done so in an alley and set two buildings on fire. Sure, Rosa had done a good job of helping put the fire out, and they'd aborted the rest of the patrol afterwards, but it'd been annoying to deal with. It'd also delayed them long enough for the other patrol group to have reached the PRT building almost an hour ago.

On the other hand, the fire department had shown significant interest in Rosa's guns and had volunteered to send their mechanic over to work with her in the hope that she could help out with their equipment. Taylor had needed to pass that up the chain, of course, but it was a potential source of non-patrol tasks for the girl. Though they might end up dragging Colin or Sherrel in to supervise on top of everything else. Then again, mixing Sherrel's skills with Rosa's on a fire engine could work out well.

Luckily, from Taylor's point of view anyway, they didn't need to get the water tank back to the Wards area. The PRT had a small storage area for it, and any other large Wards items, just inside of the building. Sure, they'd need to plan out how Rosa would get it in and out of the Wards area for maintenance, but that could wait for another day. On paper it was currently safer to not need a higher security level individual available for her to get it out of the building. That three of the four older Wards had said security level was irrelevant.

"About time you came back," Aisha said when the three finally entered the Wards area. She was already in civvies. "I emailed you the stupid notes you wanted me to take, by the way."

"I noticed," Taylor admitted. "I read them, and Missy's report, on the way back here. Your notes were just barely detailed enough. I noticed that they dropped in quality after your injury. Doesn't your phone have spell check?"

"It does, but I installed a 'gangsta' language file that overwrote English because the person who made it sucks and I haven't figured out how to change it back yet. Then I was typing while in pain and said 'fuck it' to fixing the mistakes."

"Ah. Speaking of which, did you want me to take a look at the injury?"

Aisha nodded and held out a hand. "Please?"

It only took a moment to deal with the bruising, which appeared to be the actual problem and not a pulled muscle like Missy had assumed. Or that Aisha had assumed and told Missy at the time, perhaps. "There you go. Anything else before I get changed?"

"Do you know why normal streets are fixed by the highway division of the public works department?"

"That's easy," Chris said from the kitchen, where he'd grabbed a quick drink. "In the context of government, all public roads are highways, even if normal usage doesn't look at the word that way."

Aisha blinked at that. "What? That's stupid!"

Taylor rolled her eyes as she went to get changed. She wasn't in the mood for that argument.

It wasn't long after arriving home that Taylor figured out that her father had decided to not cook. Freshly obtained pizza was waiting for her. At the same time she wondered why he was grumbling.

"Is something wrong?" she asked between bites of her pizza.

Her father sighed. "They figured out that I'm now stronger than normal at work and drafted me into the reserve pool for some of the jobs that require strength. Which means running me through the safety trainings for all of them."

"Oh. And you can't decline?"

"I'm one of the ones that pushed for office staff to be on the reserve lists for anything they were qualified for in the first place."

"Ah. Hoist by your own petard?"

"Yep."

"Then you only have yourself to blame."

She finished her dinner and made a bowl for Ackbar, but didn't make it upstairs before her father interrupted her. "By the way, Ben and Garnet have apparently been accepted as volunteers for extra protection this weekend. Though I'm less certain about Garnet's motivations, don't be surprised if they're around."

Taylor nodded. "Thanks for the heads up."

"No problem."

She resumed her trek upstairs to feed Ackbar at that.

Taylor: I hear that Ben and Garnet are planning on helping with security over the weekend.

Amy: Really? Huh. Nobody told me.

Taylor: I think my father only knows because he's been keeping in contact with both of them for different reasons.

Amy: Ah. Though I hope they give Carol sufficient warning. Oh, do you happen to have any spiders kicking around?

Taylor: Possibly, in the basement. Why?

Amy: I've been spending the afternoon trying to figure out the best way to make strands of spider silk due to a request that came in, but we apparently don't have any spiders in the house for a quick check.

Taylor: Ah. I can take a look, but no promises.

It didn't take long to make sure that Ackbar was set with his meal before Taylor headed down to the basement. A little digging was required, but she found a couple of spiders and was able to get her hand on one of them with a little effort. Use of Shaper then let her keep the spider from moving.

Taylor: How's that?

Amy: Great, thanks. I can see where I had things wrong now.

Taylor: No problem.

Wednesday morning started with Taylor checking her messages and finding that her requested 'water tank' flag for local Wards patrol routes had been approved, as had her list of routes that should have it and the current conditions for it to be added to other routes going forward. Those went above and beyond what would normally be needed for walking, but not to the point of needing to be on streets where an actual motor vehicle would be permitted. Pedestrian barriers and stairs were the major blocks to the water tank, in the end. She'd based everything on map data, of course, but that should be fine and they could tweak things later if needed. Besides, their map data was really good these days.

Riley had sent a message talking about a few things, such as her dislike of buying entire wardrobes and the Nine's upcoming plans. On the latter subject she'd wanted to know if Taylor wanted 'inside information' on them. She responded to say that she was putting down Brockton Bay every time from now on, just because, and thus only cared if it was likely to directly affect her. Her uncle had also sent her a message to let her know that their next run had been scheduled, but he wanted to know if she'd be willing to work with their newest member for a bit if they could 'sneak him into Brockton Bay' for a day.

Taylor's response was that he was welcome to arrange for that with Director Piggot, because she wasn't touching the topic.

Lastly on the interesting front, there was a new request for nanotube harnesses in the queue that had come up on her list of possible non-patrol activities. Low priority, fifteen variants with minor differences for pre-production testing of some kind, requested by an independent tinker in California and approved by Colin all of half an hour previous. Which meant that he was already up and working, which shouldn't surprise her.

After she'd gone through all of that she finally got out of bed for the day.

"PHO has decided that Brockton Bay still has its idiot quota," Vicky said as they worked out.

Missy snorted. "Really?"

"Yep. Locals set that fire on the Boardwalk, after all. As such they've decided that the local brand of idiocy has been changed, but not the total number of idiots."

Taylor rolled her eyes at that comment. "Like there was any doubt? If we can get it to settle down into a tolerable brand of idiocy then everyone will be happy. Except the idiots, but they don't count in this case."

"How many people have asked you to bring them to the beach through private messages on PHO?"

"Zero."

That caused a moment of silence, before Amy spoke up. She sounded jealous. "Zero? How the hell did you pull that off? I've gotten at least fifty a day since the thread was posted."

"Does anyone check their preferences? There are settings for who is allowed to send you private messages. When I started getting more than five junk messages a day I decided enough was enough and flipped it to staff and authorized individuals only to prevent regular members from contacting me. They haven't implemented the 'people with these tags' option I suggested, but that likely requires programming work."

There was a couple minutes of silence after that, before Vicky swore. "You can turn off email alerts! Why the hell don't they make that more obvious?"

"Like by putting it on the settings page with all of your other options? What's next, telling me that you didn't know you can change the number of posts you see per page?"

The silence that followed that was telling.

By lunchtime Taylor and Missy were both annoyed with the questions they were being asked about Rosa. Missy because she was entirely out of the loop for most of them, and Taylor because while she knew some of the answers they weren't things she should be revealing in the first place. Which wouldn't be as bad in either case if the gossip system hadn't apparently had a complete failure, rendering any distribution of their stated inability to answer seemingly impossible. Either that or the student body had decided that they could wear the two down by repeatedly asking.

If it was the latter, they were in for major disappointment.

As a result of that, at the end of the day the two vanished into pocket dimensions as soon as they could do so out of sight. They met up in the Wards area fifteen minutes later.

"So what's the plan this afternoon?" Missy asked.

Taylor shrugged. "Ryan needs to patrol. I was going to get Sandy another day out, but I've got a message saying that there was a problem at school so she won't be available. Probably means that I have to get her patrolling again tomorrow. I didn't have Rosa coming in because I thought Sandy was. Which means that we can have someone on console."

"I'll volunteer for that."

"Really?"

"Yep."

"Huh. Okay. I'm the only one with a suitable non-patrol task at all available, so I can handle that while Aisha and Chris go out with Ryan."

Missy pouted at that. "Why do you get the non-patrol task?"

Taylor shrugged. "Because I can make carbon nanotube harnesses through the manipulation of plants."

"Oh. Tinkering non-patrol tasks. That's different. Pouting withdrawn."

"The other option I have is using the Snitch to scan tunnels for the city."

Missy rolled her eyes at that, but didn't say anything. Neither of them got into costume, since they didn't need to for what they'd be doing. Aisha and Chris showed up on the bus together today, though Ryan was probably going to be a bit longer.

Aisha complained as soon as she heard the plans. "I'm walking again. That's not fair!"

Taylor raised an eyebrow at that. "You're ground-bound as a cape. Plus, had something not happened at school with Sandy you could've been patrolling with her again today. And tomorrow Missy isn't available at all, so Sandy will still likely need patrol partners."

"Objection withdrawn so long as I can volunteer for the console tomorrow."

"I think that can be arranged."

Taylor ended up leaving the others to do their thing while she downloaded the plans for the nanotube harnesses and headed for the greenhouse room. Each harness connected to the same things, but routed specific lines differently. Possibly because the tinker wanted to test different connection pathway sets for whatever reason. It was somewhat annoying, but she worked her way through all of the variations, ensured they were bagged and properly labeled, and safely packed in a box.

Once the box was dropped off she checked to ensure that the patrol hadn't run into major problems, then declared herself done for the day and left. But instead of going home she swung by to see if she could help Amy with her spider-silk project. Apparently there were a couple of annoying problems with rigging things up and it would hopefully be less annoying to just help figure them out in person.

Chapter 239 Thursday morning Taylor found out what had gone on at school to keep Sandy from patrolling, based on it having hit the news. Rosa had apparently been teased by a couple of other kids, one of whom had pulled on the girl's tail, and Sandy had trapped their feet in rocks in retaliation. They'd had to call Zelda in to get Sandy to release them. Related, Taylor had a message saying that Sandy wouldn't be patrolling today either, and would instead be spending time after school removing all the rocks and stones from the playground. Presumably to make this kind of retaliation harder, though whether Sandy had figured that out was debatable.

Well, they'd have to see if Rosa or Ryan showed up despite not being listed to do anything. If so they could run an extra patrol with one of them, otherwise she and Chris could run through a more dangerous area. Aisha was going to be on console either way, and probably asked to take notes despite everyone else that could be patrol leader having built-in Bluetooth. Taylor suspected that half of volunteering for console duty was because she'd have nothing significant to do, after all.

Taylor grumbled about plans changing on short notice, but knew she couldn't do much about it other than keep moving forward with things. Instead she got ready for her day, figuring that she'd deal with last minute scheduling when she knew who was available for things. That and she was hoping that someone recruited an older Ward to give them a little bit more flexibility in things. She didn't think that Amy was willing to join up just for more possible chances to maybe punch people.

Okay, Amy would totally join up for that reason, if they still had enough local idiots of the correct variety to punch.

Outside of Louise starting to carry things with her tail, apparently in an attempt to train it up to be stronger if today's choice of a small weight was an indication, there wasn't a whole lot of note going on at school. Though Taylor did have to deal with having taken the minivan in, and decided that today wasn't a good day for 'leave it behind and see if anyone notices that she picked it up later'. Besides, she couldn't confuse Amy with that now.

After a little bit of a headache in getting to the minivan, Taylor was able to easily get out of the parking lot and on her way to the PRT building. Amy, Missy, and Vicky had joined her for the trip to the PRT building. Missy had to change into her costume and head over to city hall, Amy was planning on tinkering, and Vicky apparently had some forms she needed to fill out in person relating to her probationary period. In the latter case, she'd even called ahead to ensure that someone would be available to bring her upstairs.

"What are you looking to build anyway?" Taylor asked. "Since I don't think you're solving your silk problems with implants or prosthetics."

Amy shrugged. "For some reason I've got a request for a box of hands."

"Oh. Are there at least variations?"

"Left and right, different sizes. As close to normal human limits as possible. They didn't even ask for me to make coverings for them."

"Huh."

Missy seemed surprised about that. "Just a box of prosthetic hands?"

Amy shrugged. "They've been working on figuring out how to make things without me, on the basis that if I'm involved then things will almost always be regrown instead. Prosthetics are safer than most of the things that've come up for regrowing limbs."

"I've never heard of tinkertech that could regrow limbs."

Taylor saw Vicky shudder in the rearview mirror. "Yeah, there are good reasons for that one. The last one someone tested with Amy there to check the results worked great, but had a tendency to raise the dead as zombies that would attack anyone nearby in an ever-increasing radius the entire time it was turned on."

Missy turned to stare at Vicky. "What?"

"It only got the recently dead, and they only stayed animated for an hour or so after the machine was turned off. The choice of testing location was...less than ideal."

"Less than ideal?"

"I'm fairly certain that it was the last time the PRT approved testing of something like that in a Children's hospital. The only good thing was that they couldn't open the morgue doors."

"Oh."

Missy had gotten into her costume and left right away, leaving Taylor to wait for Aisha, Chris, and word on whether they'd be seeing Rosa or Ryan today. So far nobody had responded to the messages she'd sent on that front, which could mean 'waiting to see if either was dropped off'. Plus fifteen minutes after their usual drop-off time, most likely. Which promised to be annoying. She decided to pass the time by looking over the various routes she and Chris could possibly take, with or without one of the two kids.

Aisha arrived before Chris, dropped off by Brian. She was in a bad mood when she arrived, grumbling about her brother not letting her have any fun. Taylor wasn't sure if she wanted to know what that was all about, and simply watched as the girl collected a snack and then dropped onto the couch. Console duty didn't require being in costume, after all. At least not unless you expected visitors to come through, anyway. Chris arrived not long afterwards, though he looked to be limping when he came in.

"What happened to you?" Taylor asked.

He shrugged. "Lost my temper and kicked someone."

"I can't see how that would make you limp."

"Ah. I might have overdone it a tad and broken my shoe, making it uncomfortable to walk. I'm just glad that I have another pair of shoes at home, though I probably need to go shopping over the weekend."

"Oh. Did you at least kick them for a good reason?"

He grinned. "They were being a bigot on the bus, and I kicked them hard enough to get them off of the bus."

"I suppose that counts."

She let him go and get changed, wandering over to check on why Aisha hadn't commented on that conversation. It didn't take much effort to determine that the headphones the girl had put on meant that she couldn't hear anything going on around her. Taylor considered taking advantage of that to amuse herself, but the girl was working on her homework. It would be especially rude to interrupt her while she worked.

Chris eventually returned and grabbed a snack of his own, at which point they essentially settled in to wait. About five minutes after the kids would normally arrive Chris looked around. "Sandy running late?"

Taylor shook her head. "Sandy isn't coming in today, trouble at school, but I got nothing back when I sent messages asking if Ryan or Rosa was going to be coming by. I figure if they aren't here in ten minutes or so then the two of us go out on one of the flying routes. Unless you want to walk instead, of course."

"Flying routes are good. All routes are boring these days, of course, but at least on a flying route people are less likely to notice us coming."

"Maybe you can hope that some more idiots have shown up to take potshots at me?"

"I can dream."

"So what do we do now that we're here?" Jason asked his brother after they'd gotten off of the bus into town. "Since we've got squat with us and all."

"We rent a van so that we have room to sleep in the back for a couple of nights," Nathan responded. "Then we start working on ensuring that our information on where people live is correct. We didn't bring the gear in case we're spotted, but Tim should get here with it on Sunday."

"And you're sure that you're right about those weaknesses?"

"Capes are crazy, so I can only be reasonably confident. That's why we've got two backup plans built in."

"Right, right." Jason looked around. "So, where do we rent a van from?"

Nathan opened his mouth, then paused. After a moment he sighed. "I have no clue. Guess we'll need to ask someone."

Neither of the kids had shown up, so they'd roused Aisha from her music and headed out. They'd picked the most dangerous aerial route permitted, and so far had run into nothing of interest. Taylor even had the Snitch out to help look for trouble, but they weren't finding anything worth interrupting. Apparently the gangs were all in 'calm down leading up to the weekend' mode, and they might've cleared out the idiots.

It was oddly depressing.

"Console to Maul," Aisha said about two thirds of the way through the patrol. Taylor hadn't been able to have her take notes on anything because nothing was happening. "Do you know why basic masks are made available in the gyms only accessible to those cleared for identities? We're discussing that in the console chat room after New York ran out, but none of us can figure it out."

Taylor had to admit that it was a good question, and made very little sense. "Maul to console, I honestly don't know, but now you've got me curious."

The question about the gyms was a good one, and going through documentation and permissions was a wonderful distraction from the absolute nothing happening on patrol. Not that it was obvious as to why things were done that way, beyond 'the regulations say that they should be stocked'. But if New York had run out then there was obviously use of the things. More annoyingly, the regulations had existed before the current system had existed, so the history of them wasn't easily tracked. She was starting to wonder if it'd been required when things were done differently, and then nobody ever bothered to clean up the regulations to not require it anymore.

It was only after they'd made it back that she'd finished slogging through the barely-indexed archives and found an answer. PRT staff could only get at the private gyms if cleared for the local Ward or Protectorate identities, either through local granting or system-wide access. But parahumans were permitted to use them in general. A visiting parahuman using the gyms could use the masks and would trigger alerts to indicate that locals might wish to do so themselves, in addition to Protectorate members being encouraged to use them when working with Wards for whatever reason.

She also checked and found that she and Amy were on a list of those who wouldn't set alarms off for others due to their clearance levels nationwide, even if they were in Protectorate gyms. Which they apparently had official access to if they wanted to use them, something that she hadn't expected. Though the list was a double-edged sword, apparently also negating being alerted to the presence of others. The other three non-PRT people on the list were all parahumans that Taylor recognized as being outed as well, and a quick check showed that they all had some way of identifying other parahumans. A pile of PRT staff had been flagged similarly, though there didn't seem to be any patterns there.

A quick summary of the important bits was written up and dropped into the general 'information for Wards' mail group as a general note to all Wards that were interested. It seemed to be rare that a Wards leader found something suitable to send to the thing, since this was the first message she was aware of that had gone to it since she'd become a Ward. Then again, how often did people find things that were of interest across all departments that wasn't going to go through more official channels?

Ten minutes later she was disabused of that notion, having gotten three different 'how did you send that?' messages in response. She'd gotten the address out of the all-region Wards leader handbook. Sure, it was only mentioned on the bottom of page twenty-three, with a warning about abusing it, but still. It was there. A quick check showed that it'd been there for over two years. That nobody else had noticed the thing didn't seem like a good indication of how well other Wards leaders read the documentation.

Rebecca paused as an alert came up. Checking it, she found that the all-Wards mail group created for Wards leaders to send messages to all regions had been used for the first time. It was about time, they'd made the thing two years ago. She checked and found that the message had come from the ENE region, and then brought up the betting pool document.

"Huh," she said after comparing a few things. "Albuquerque won. Good for them."

It didn't take long to send out the notice congratulating them, followed by disabling her alert on the use of the list now that she didn't need to know about it for betting purposes. With that done, she moved back to looking over the various thoughts on what strategies might possibly work on each of the seventeen mystery Endbringers. Which was, of course, entirely guesswork, because they had only the most vague descriptions of the things.

Then again, with some agents that was all you needed.

Taylor had been invited to join the Dallons for dinner, and had accepted upon finding out that her father was planning on leftovers anyway. Amy had apparently had a productive afternoon, but Vicky was in a bad mood.

"I can't believe I had to go through all of that today," the older girl whined. "Most of the things they made me read were things I already knew and won't matter in a few weeks anyway. Making me sign off on each individual one when I was done was just annoying as well."

"Because you needed to have it all cleared for the weekend," Carol yelled from the other room. "So shut up and deal with it."

Vicky glared in Carol's general direction. "Nobody will tell me what changed for the weekend to make things different either. Probably some bullshit new rule, but still."

Amy shrugged. "Brockton General has told people that I won't be by tomorrow afternoon. They told me that I should swing by anyway, but that they won't be allowing me to stick around all afternoon. No more than half an hour, until I clear the critical cases, or until Injury Magnet stops absorbing injuries. Whichever is longest."

Taylor blinked at that. "Really?"

"Yep."

"Huh."

"Dragon has something she wants these two for anyway," Mark said as he carried some plates into the room. "Expects it to take a good portion of the afternoon."

That wasn't something Taylor had been aware of. "Really?"

"Yep. Asked that we not tell you what though, and she only let us adults know about an hour ago."

Well, that was annoying, but short of abusing her status as Dragon's 'Mother' there wasn't much that Taylor could do about that. Some days being responsible sucked.

Friday morning Taylor found out that there was a protest at the hospital over Amy not being there for a significant time prior to people coming in for healing over the weekend. Which was silly, as there was nothing saying that she had to show up to heal the locals in the first place, even if had been something that she did. Even then, most of the time there was little to nothing that couldn't wait until later, and if a large-scale emergency happened then Amy would show up regardless of if she'd been told not to already.

The news coverage was obviously trying to be impartial about things, but Taylor felt that there was an undertone of 'these people are idiots'. Or maybe she was projecting her own thoughts onto the coverage and getting that back because of it. In either case, protesting things and thus preventing, or at least discouraging, others from getting to the hospital was essentially achieving the opposite of what they wanted anyway. Less injured people there meant less reason for Amy to show up at all.

"They're morons," was Vicky's view when they met up in the gym. "I think they feel that it's their right to have access to parahuman healing, ignoring the fact that they're demanding time from individuals that are also minors. Assuming they're even considering that Taylor could help, anyway."

"It's marginally better than protesting that I shouldn't heal at all," Amy noted. "If only because it could be argued that they're doing so from a concern for their own well being. Possibly."

"Still stupid."

"Not arguing that. It's just ever so slightly less stupid."

Taylor shrugged. "Personally, I think I like the ones that don't want us healing at all more than these ones."

The other three girls all turned to stare at her, but it was Missy who decided to finally enter the conversation to ask the obvious question. "Why?"

"They're more likely to put themselves in a position where I can punch them."

The looks of realization that generated were wonderful.

Taylor joined Amy for a trip over to the hospital after school, mainly so that one of them could keep Jason company while the other dealt with things. Granted, she detoured through the Wards area to pick up her healing costume and to drop a sign that basically said 'unless you came to tinker, please go home' in the common area first. Mainly to see if anyone noticed and commented on it.

"Good afternoon you two," a nurse Taylor wasn't familiar with greeted them on their arrival. "We're going to hold off on letting you two get started for the moment, despite the few patients in the emergency room that could use parahuman healing."

That surprised both of them, but Amy seemed offended on top of it. "What?"

"Injury Magnet's parents recently discovered that he's been hiding problems when he doesn't pick up injuries for long enough. They still don't know exactly what kinds of urges he gets, but based on how his powers work we all think that it involves hurting others so that he can pick up the injuries. As such, we'd like to ensure that a few patients are available for him to pull from when he arrives, and they're all stable enough for the wait."

"Oh."

"We're working on alternate ways for him to use his powers, but keeping you two from healing people long enough for him to pull injuries from them is a simple stopgap measure for the time being."

Amy nodded, obviously deciding that things hadn't been an insult to her. Or Taylor, perhaps. "Ah. Okay. I guess that makes sense."

They'd ended up sitting down and going over the current list of patients in order to determine which ones Amy would be healing and which she'd be leaving alone. Unlike most days, today they opted to not prioritise things for Amy, allowing her to determine a likely order to visit the individual patients. Unsurprisingly, the emergency room was first, but then the rest were prioritized more by age than by severity of injury.

That hadn't taken all that long, at which point they grabbed snacks and waited for Jason to show up. Eventually he showed up, apparently delayed in part due to the protesters. Amy went to deal with the emergency room patients while Taylor went to Jason, but for some reason they'd brought him in on a stretcher. None of the injuries in the hospital should leave him that incapacitated.

Taylor: Holy crap. It looks like someone tried to kill him and just barely didn't. What did the person he pulled all this off of start with?

Amy: I don't know, but if they aren't here then someone needs to start looking for them.

Taylor: That's a good point.

"Nurse?" Taylor called as she worked on Jason's large list of injuries. Which weren't coming back, implying that the one he'd gotten them from was likely out of range now, or at least that they weren't in critical condition anymore. Sadly, that could mean that they were already dead. "Can you see about having someone check the area for someone with severe, life-threatening injuries? Possibly along Injury Magnet's approach route?"

The nurse nodded and hurried out of the room, and ten minutes later they dragged in a woman who'd apparently been left for dead in a dumpster a few blocks over. That seemed quick, until Taylor found out that Jason's mother had called in the emergency when he'd acquired the injuries further away from the hospital than expected. Since she knew where they'd been and the range of the effect there hadn't been nearly as much of an area to search.

Thanks to the situation with the woman and the extent of her injuries they hadn't gotten to any of the non-emergency patients before the time the hospital was allowing had run out, though they did finish healing the woman and Jason. Amy tried to argue that the time spent on the unexpected emergency shouldn't count, but the hospital staff pointed out that the rest of the problems were easily solved with traditional medical techniques. They'd then pointed out that making the city dependent on her for fast healing, by expectation or otherwise, was both a bad thing and part of the cause of the protests.

In the end, the hospital staff won that battle, and the two girls dropped their costumes off. They'd barely finished doing so when a message was sent to both of them by Dragon.

D: I've got some show and tell for you two, can you meet me at the tinker facility?

T: I think we were both wondering when you were going to get in touch.

A: I'll second that. We'll be over shortly.

It didn't take long for the two to meet back up in the Shaper-linked pocket dimension, from which they connected to the tinker facility. Dragon was waiting for them there.

"Good afternoon," Dragon greeted. "I assume that at least one of your parents mentioned that I wanted some of your time this afternoon?"

"Yeah," Taylor answered. "Along with a statement that you'd asked for us to be kept out of the loop beyond that."

"It's nice to know that they kept the secret." A moment later a pocket dimension portal opened up behind Dragon. Not in the doorway that the two girls had just come out of. And it was a familiar color. "We'll need to get you set up with the remote opening software for your phones, I've got updates for your other openers as well. Sadly, targeting your location based on your phone requires five cellular base stations or access to at least three beacons in the same dimension for triangulation purposes. But you can still remotely operate the interface with the upgrade so as to use existing beacons or openers."

They followed Dragon into the pocket dimension. It was immediately obvious that this was the Broadcast Administrator linked pocket dimension, and they'd arrived in the 'private' parking area. Currently devoid of vehicles, of course, but there was a layer of a slightly rubbery material on the ground with lines painted to indicate parking spaces. Against the outer edge of the pocket dimension were numbers, marking off sections of the border wall.

"You can probably tell that work has been finished," Dragon explained. "Though we adjusted a number of things as we moved along. For example, setting up a number of predefined entry and exit points for you, some of which you can see marked here. A remote terminal for the actual internal opening device is off to the side there, and there are similar terminals at many of the border access points. Other changes included putting in higher-end equipment when the requested equipment wasn't available."

Taylor rolled her eyes at that. "And how much of that was it being intentionally not available to provide an excuse to upgrade?"

Dragon grinned. "Interestingly enough, only about ten percent of it. The power generation system originally chosen was found to not work inside of a pocket dimension, and priority PRT orders had used up the ready stock of a number of items when the crews got to the point of needing them."

They were brought on a tour of everything, Dragon pointing out where things had been adjusted from the original plans for various reasons. Most of it being minor things, but there were some larger changes as well. Ductwork and piping had apparently been found to be unworkable in the original plan when they'd tried to put it into practice, for example, and they'd redesigned it from the ground up. They also got an overview of the control systems for it all, the software needed was installed on their phones, and they tested several functions themselves. Another change that was useful was the integration of beacons into the 'roll-out' units, complete with software to automatically target them with a portal opening so that they could be rolled back in properly. An access key system controlled who could trigger that from the units themselves.

After all of that, they were then each shown their personal pocket dimension spaces in the tinker snarks. Which had been a lot simpler due to the much smaller size. Apparently the rest of the Dallons would be getting theirs completed in the coming week, with Missy following a week or two later. That all four were somewhat frequently using their pocket dimensions as a shortcut between locations was apparently slowing things down slightly, if only for safety reasons.

"Here are your key crystals," Dragon said after they'd returned to the tinker facility, providing each of them with a box. "Along with the upgrade kits for your other opening devices. I've included an addon module for the cellular relay unit to enable tracking it in case of emergency as well, I'd appreciate it if you'd install that before using the unit on otherwise unconnected Earths."

"I suppose that's reasonable enough," Taylor agreed. "You got the beacon-like tracking working?"

"Yes. Your larger pocket dimension contains one of the endpoints, as does mine. Other endpoints are in a couple of my facilities here on Earth Bet, allowing for tracking into pocket dimensions as well."

They took a quick look through the boxes before Amy sighed. "I suppose we finally need to consider doing actual furniture shopping."

Taylor grimaced at that. "Yeah, I suppose. But I wouldn't call it a high priority."

"True."

"There is one more thing," Dragon said, getting their attention. "We'd like to run the field hospital setup through its paces this weekend, if you're okay with that. Connect the teleporter endpoints to multiple locations where people would be gathered, bring them to you that way, and then send them home."

That had Taylor blinking. "Is that why they didn't bother having Amy clear out Brockton General?"

"Not really. If you don't want to test the field hospital then we'll be doing the same thing with a smaller military facility. A combination of the military wanting to stress test their own purchased portable teleporters and there being a number of veterans in the patient list for the weekend, though we're more interested in stress testing your field hospital setup. Either way there won't be an easily attacked location being used. There are concerns about groups that might be aiming to rally a quick response for any hospital you two might be in this weekend."

"Oh. I guess that makes more sense than suddenly not using a hospital that'd been expecting to be used." Taylor then looked at Amy. "I'm thinking it's your call more than mine, even if I'll be helping out."

Amy gave it some thought, and eventually shrugged. "I can't see much difference between the field hospital and a military base. Might as well give it a test, at least then we'll hopefully know if anything needs tweaking before actual emergency use of it."

Dragon nodded. "That was our thought as well. I'll ensure that things are ready for the morning, and let the military know that they'll need to test their own units themselves. Do you two have any other questions for me?"

Taylor looked at Amy, who shook her head. She turned back to Dragon. "I don't suppose you know where we'll be setting up, beyond 'not here'?"

"I believe that the plan for tomorrow is to use the parking lot of a recently closed strip mall in Montana, bringing a beacon there for targeting purposes. But that could change overnight, I'll make sure that you're kept in the loop in the morning. Sunday is still up in the air for reasons I can't tell you about right now."

"Okay. I think that covers everything for now."

They'd taken the time to run through the various installs in the other pocket dimensions, testing them as well, and then practiced with the remote control interfaces. Being able to open the doorways as though from inside the pocket dimensions even when they weren't present was actually a good thing, because it meant that they no longer needed to find a wall when close enough to a beacon. At a minimum that would make leaving the beach easier.

After all of that they'd headed home for dinner, only to find out that Taylor and her father had been invited to eat with New Wave on short notice. He'd accepted on their behalf, so they met up with Amy in the Shaper-linked pocket dimension and then exited in the Pelham household.

"I so want one of those," Eric whined as the portal closed behind them.

"You can't afford one," Sarah called from the other room. "I checked, though I'm hoping to eventually get a bulk discount for the lot of us."

Dinner had been called on short notice. Vicky apparently had a date with Dean, and Crystal wasn't home, so it was three Pelhams, three Dallons, and two Heberts for the evening. Discussion was light, after which they moved into the living room for an actual discussion.

"So," Carol said. "New Wave and the PRT received a joint request for Amy and/or Taylor to visit hospitals last week, and another came in today. For the first we aren't sure if it was intentional, but an official request from the Alaskan government for the two to visit has turned into a legal case. Requesting that they come to heal when there are stalled criminal charges against them for healing Alaskan citizens here is something that we're hoping to use to negate all the similarly 'stalled' cases that don't have jurisdiction until the girls set foot in the relevant states."

"Though the PRT seems to want to use it as justification towards interstate charges against parahumans related to their powers needing to be filed exclusively at the federal level," Sarah added. "Which would negate a lot of things."

Carol snorted at that. "That's probably point eight or nine on their list of goals. They want precedent that says that it won't count as 'entering legal jurisdiction' if parahumans enter a state that isn't their home state on official PRT business. Which would make their lives easier. Still, this is entirely informational at this point, until things are dealt with the request is in limbo. The other request came in this afternoon, and is far more interesting. Earth Aleph has requested assistance with a particularly aggressive flu strain. One that sounds very familiar."

Taylor and Amy both nodded at that, causing the others to look at them. Amy rolled her eyes. "Someone wasn't thinking when they visited recently and brought along the immune system upgrade flu as a side effect."

Neil frowned at that. "How were they visiting? I didn't think there was any way to get there now?"

Taylor shook her head. "No, they regularly purchase containment foam from Dragon, and we were told that they have a teleporter unit compatible with the PRT system now. Using Haywire's tech is illegal, but they were very careful with the legal wording and didn't end up negating other options for moving between the two Earths."

Amy dug into one of her pouches and produced her Aleph identification set. "We've even got passports and concealed carry permits for over there. Dragon seems to think that they might want some assistance with specific parahumans, and that was likely before the flu was accidentally released."

Danny, Carol, and Mark all nodded at that, likely having been consulted before the documentation was obtained. Neil, Sarah, and Eric just looked stunned. Eventually they got into details, and decided that the first weekend in November might be a good time to go to Aleph. It would give Taylor and Amy a weekend off after the healing weekend they were about to go through, and it would give Aleph time to plan on how to get people to wherever they were going to be healing.

Evaluating recurring task 00000D012.

Chapter 240 Saturday morning Taylor woke to find information on the beacon they'd set up overnight sitting in an email to her and Amy. Apparently they'd gotten it in place at the strip mall, so that's where they'd be headed for the day, but it was going to be relocated overnight. Which made sense as well, no need to let people figure out where they were today to provide targeting information to attack tomorrow, right?

At the same time, they wanted her or Amy to head over early to 'unload' the relevant roll-out units. Amy wasn't up yet, so Taylor got dressed and used the larger pocket dimension to bounce over to Montana with the emailed information. She found that the beacon was sitting inside of one of Dragon's transports and that there were already people there setting various things up. It didn't take long to direct each roll-out unit into the areas marked for them, after which she unlocked the other controls on them so that they could be prepared by others before heading back home. Though that preparation would mainly amount to them being able to start up the teleporters that they'd be bringing people in through.

With that done, she dealt with the rest of her morning routine. Such as letting Ackbar into the bathroom and grabbing a small pre-workout breakfast. Amy eventually woke up as well, and dragged Vicky to the gym to meet up with Taylor there.

"It's too early," Vicky whined as they started to work out. "Why are we up already?"

Amy rolled her eyes. "Because you told me that you needed to visit the gym this morning."

"I did? Why would I do something that stupid?"

"Because you have an agreement with Mark regarding actually visiting the gym and won't have time later."

"Oh. Right. I forgot about that."

They made it through their workout with minimal complaints after that, had a larger post-workout breakfast, and then split up. Taylor swung by the Wards area to pick up her healing costume, not expecting any fighting to speak of, and the Dallon sisters headed home for their own costumes. Taylor then headed over to the Dallon household, because today's New Wave guard duty was Vicky, Carol, and Neil. Which meant waiting for Carol to be ready and for Neil to show up.

"I didn't say anything last night," Taylor said as they waited. "But I'd have thought that it would be easier to just tap one family or the other each day. Instead of mixing and matching? I mean, trading one ground-bound member for another seems odd."

Amy shrugged. "Due to a mishap in our driveway resulting in minor damage to doors on two cars they had to bring them to the repair shop a couple days ago. No need to let the exposed metal get to the point of rusting and all. They're picking them up today, which is going to be handled by Mark and Sarah. That leaves Carol and Neil as the two available adults since Crystal has other obligations all weekend. Vicky lost to Eric in the coin toss, so he picked tomorrow. I think he wanted to go on a date with his new girlfriend today, but we haven't met her yet."

"Oh. Would it be Nicole? I heard that they've been spending a lot of time together in the past couple of weeks."

Amy and Vicky turned to look at Taylor, though Vicky was the one that spoke first. "What? I hadn't heard that, and I've been digging a little."

Taylor shrugged. "Perhaps people clam up around you because you dig? It wasn't like they told me directly anyway. It was a couple of friends talking about things before class last week. They were hard to ignore, being the only ones in the room talking at the time."

Amy looked between Taylor and Vicky, then snorted. "Figures. Vicky pestered me every night for at least the past week and you're the one that heard something."

Vicky distracted herself with sending messages to ask people about Nicole while they waited, and it wasn't too much longer before Neil showed up. Carol was actually the one who held them up, coming downstairs a few minutes after Neil had arrived. Amy opened up the Shaper pocket dimension, still being in the habit of using that one, and they then stepped through it to get to Montana.

"Huh," Taylor said, looking off to the side after they'd exited. Ben and Garnet had apparently shown up since she'd been by earlier. As had a few other parahumans, for that matter, but she didn't know any of them yet.

"Think we should head over to say good morning?" Amy asked, obviously having noticed as well.

"I suspect that they're gathering for a protection planning meeting, so perhaps send these three over while we ensure that things are set up."

Amy looked between the other three members of New Wave and the group of parahumans. "Yeah, you might have a point there. Especially since you opted for your healing costume instead of a combat costume."

"Being in a semi-random spot that isn't even a hospital, with most people being teleported in and out, doesn't seem conducive to finding myself fighting anything."

"She has a point," Neil agreed. "You two go make sure that the healing side of things is going smoothly, we'll go join the defending side of things. We'll probably meet up again when they bring in lunch."

It would be another forty-five minutes before they started bringing people through. The general pattern was that people would arrive through the teleporters from specific PRT buildings with an appropriate ID tag already on them. They'd be brought through the triage area, from which they'd then be brought into the actual field hospital when Amy or Taylor was ready for a new patient. Then they'd generally walk back to the outgoing teleporters to return to the PRT building that they'd originated at. Occasionally a small transport would drop off a group of people instead, who would enter the line in the triage area.

All in all, it was going to be a busy day.

Nathan wandered the streets without worry, looking for signs of his targets. The gang members around didn't interact with him, and he was perfectly happy to not interact with them. At the same time, he thought it lucky that they were stupid enough to discuss things when complete strangers were around. It wasn't all that useful on its own, of course, but he had enough additional information to make use of what he was hearing. The paranoia and preparedness of the gangs this weekend was actually playing into their plans.

Also interesting was that the gang members felt that he was merely a tourist taking advantage of the local truce. Which he was, just not in any way that they were expecting. But so long as he avoided some of the areas that their research had shown to be 'hot' he was likely to be left alone, and that was his plan. Tim would be arriving the next day, after all, so there was no need to possibly put people on alert for trouble. The false assumption of safety would significantly help with things once Tim arrived with the party favors, after all.

Checking his written directions, he hung a left at the next corner. Rumor had it that a shop nearby had decent snacks and was frequently used as an unofficial 'command post' for the gang. The latter likely because of the former. But it wasn't official, so it was unlikely that he'd be stopped from eating there, and maybe he could pick up some extra information if they were doing the command post thing in the eating area. If they weren't then he'd still grab the snack and hope that people coming or going gave him some clues.

Hopefully Jason was having luck in figuring out the best way to get through town to their likely target locations from the highway. Tim would need to know that in order to reduce the chances of anyone stopping him before he made it all the way in.

Contrary to expectations, they'd had two incidents where people had tried to get to the strip mall with weapons before lunch. Both appeared to be entirely ad-hoc attempts with basically zero planning and an assumption of the strip mall having no security. Neither made it anywhere near the actual field hospital. The first had been intercepted by one of the local parahumans and was a known local troublemaker that was likely intending to break into the closed buildings to search for potential loot, rather than attempting to interrupt the healing. The other had been a bit sneakier, obviously having checked the area enough to have seen the activity, but Ben had found the approach they'd tried to use and decided that it was a likely problem. As such he'd trapped it, which hadn't been expected.

Six teenagers had also attempted to get to the strip mall that morning, none carrying weapons, though they were generally politely turned away. The parking lot was apparently slightly more popular with local teenagers on bikes and skateboards than expected, partially due to the front and rear of the buildings being at different ground heights. Then again, with there no longer being security from the strip mall telling them to not play in the parking lot it probably should've been expected.

"You need to be more careful with your traps," Garnet scolded Ben as they sat down to eat lunch. "Capturing people only for them to need to be healed by the girls here goes against the goals for the day."

Ben rolled his eyes. "It isn't my fault that they ignored their initial injuries and kept going. They set off seventeen minor traps in a row, moving side to side in a perfect pattern to trip more."

"Did anyone check if they were a parahuman?" Neil asked, causing several others at the table to look at him. "What? They were hitting the traps perfectly. What are the odds?"

"Pretty good, since I'd laid them out in offset rows. I think I had over two hundred set up by the time they hit the first ones."

"Oh. Nevermind then."

"So," Carol said after a moment of silence. "Were there any interesting medical issues this morning?"

Amy shrugged. "I think the weirdest was needing to get a girl's hand out of her own stomach. It reattached easily enough once it was out, but still weird."

Taylor nodded. "That was an odd one. I ended up with conjoined twins that needed separating before the immune system flu killed them both, but I think the rest was fairly straightforward stuff. Based on previous weekends I was expecting more troublesome stuff."

"I think they were testing the system with the easy to move patients," Carol said after a moment's thought. "This afternoon, or tomorrow, you can probably expect those that are harder to move around to start filtering through."

Amy sighed. "That would make sense. And here I thought it might be an easy weekend."

It wasn't long before they were done with lunch, had used the restrooms in a storefront that'd been opened up specifically to gain access to the restrooms, and got back to work.

Max entered the room to find Brad going through handwritten sheets of paper. "Any sign of trouble?"

Brad shook his head. "Not yet. A couple dozen likely tourists are wandering around like they own the place, safe in the knowledge of the weekend truce protecting them. The lack of activity at the hospital is confusing some of the grunts, but it makes sense that they'd start holding these things in other cities. Had to tell a couple of idiots that they weren't allowed to shoot each other in hopes of being brought to Panacea as emergency patients just to find out where they are."

"They...what?"

"I made a note that they're of unusually below-average intelligence in their files and shouldn't be trusted with anything important."

"Ah. Good call."

Brad dug through his papers, then handed one to Max. "The good news is that the drug tests are done and we've got a list of what is and isn't problematic with the new immune systems. Interestingly, two that used to be a problem seem to be perfectly safe now. I authorized bonuses for the group that decided to test all the old stuff and not just the previously safe stuff."

Max looked over the sheet, surprised at some of the notes on it. "Really now. That's unexpected. Might have to slip some of this into Medhall's queue so that they can be 'officially' found to be safe. Or perhaps found to be dangerous in ways that aren't obvious when testing for recreational use. Either way would help the recovery from previous issues."

"Adrian said that he was going to be adding them to the testing list as 'hunches' on Monday, after he's compiled the full report on the various trials. He should have that to you by morning."

"Good initiative on his part. Hopefully we'll be the first to officially discover some of this. Do we have production of new stock for the safe enough varieties going yet?"

"Nope. You put a freeze on supplies and production until we knew what we needed going forward. I've got a few people checking what we'll need, but you need to put out the order to start producing again."

"Right, I'd forgotten. I'll have that ready for Monday, no need to possibly cause problems today or tomorrow by having them fire up the labs again. Perhaps get some people on going over them to ensure that they aren't going to explode on us?"

Brad wrote that down and dropped it into a box on the wall. "Will do, as soon as some of my runners return anyway."

By dinnertime they'd seen a lot more 'difficult' cases pass through. Some of which were obviously parahuman-related, others not so much. The first limbs that had needed to be regrown had come in, and someone had been intelligent enough to arrange for extra biomass to be available to use in the procedures. A number of those were older veterans that also got an overall tuneup of sorts. Four even walked, with aid, for the first time in years, having finally decided to get old injuries taken care of.

They'd also had a few cases that they couldn't help with from a medical point of view, like the boy who'd had his arms replaced with mechanical ones. Sure, regrowing his limbs wouldn't be that difficult, but the mechanical arms had been wired into his brain directly and they weren't about to try and remove that. Then again, Amy had been able to replace the buzzsaw hand with a normal hand for him, which he and his father were both appreciative of. So it hadn't been a complete waste of their time to be brought through.

On the security front, the major problem for the afternoon had been an attempt at driving a bus through the security cordon. One that had been stopped cold by Garnet. Unlike Ben's use of traps, Garnet's show had been caught on camera and posted online. It didn't take long for PHO to realize that Lustrum was guarding the strip mall's parking lot, which spawned a few dozen theories as to what was going on there. Up until Costa-Brown posted that it was being used as a remote healing facility, very nicely shutting up the crazies.

A collection of minor attempts to gain access had followed, though at that point it was apparently more along the lines of people wanting to get pictures than anything else. The security group had ended up working quite hard to intercept everyone as a result, and they were all in agreement that being in a new location for the following day would be a good thing. What that location would be wasn't yet known to them though.

By the time they were done eating the local PRT staff had finished cleaning up and powering down everything, which meant that everyone got to watch the automated 'roll-in' system for the three units that had been rolled out of the pocket dimension. One at a time a portal opened up 'behind' the unit, and then arms grabbed it and pulled it into the pocket dimension. The portal would close, and thirty seconds later the next one would open.

"How exactly are we getting back to Brockton Bay?" Ben asked after they'd watched the show. "Since we came in through the teleporters that were just put into storage."

"We were asked to drop you off at the PRT building," Amy answered. "It won't take long."

"Really now. And how are we getting back?"

Amy just grinned as she opened a portal to the Shaper-linked pocket dimension behind her. "Did you think those portals only worked for the larger items?"

Garnet laughed at the look on Ben's face at that, but the group all entered the pocket dimension. Ben and Garnet didn't have time to properly examine the minivan, ambulance, or mopeds before Taylor had the portal to the visitor arrival point of the PRT building open. She exited there before heading down to the Wards area while Amy opened a portal for Neil to get home through, then the Dallons exited into their home.

Down in the Wards area Taylor found that her sign about people going home had two additions. One was 'Water Monkey was here' written on it, the other was a second sheet taped to it. Detailing that Aisha had finished her homework and decided to play 'food tinker'. Burgers were a success, cookies were a failure, and she'd get proper lessons in cleanup in the morning after a scare with using ammonia and bleach.

Sure enough, a check of the calendar showed that a PRT officer was going to be 'assisting' Aisha in cleanup, and a quick look at the kitchen area had Taylor cringing.

Fifteen minutes later Taylor was home describing the day to her father.

Sunday morning Amy made sure that she was up early enough to be the one to get things ready for the morning, citing that it was only fair since Taylor had done so the day before. Apparently today they were going to be using a National Guard facility in Georgia, which probably meant that security problems were going to be far less of a concern over the strip mall from the day before.

This time Vicky didn't join them in the gym, since she wasn't going to be on guard duty. Amy insisted on swinging by the Wards area after their post-workout breakfast so that she could see the mess that Aisha had made the day before. She found it as horrible as Taylor had, then used the doorway in the Wards area to head home. Once both of them were in their costumes, both freshly cleaned from the day before, they met at the Pelham residence. Mark had walked over instead of using portals, and Sarah had ensured that Eric was ready with plenty of time to spare.

Five minutes later they'd stepped out as a group in Georgia, and were immediately approached by a PRT officer and a National Guardsman. The latter stopped first, allowing the PRT officer to approach them.

"Good morning," the PRT officer greeted. "For the second time in the case of Panacea." He tapped his ear, where he had an earpiece likely connected to his phone. "Dragon informs me that all of your identities check out. The PRT is running the inner perimeter around the field hospital itself, which you are currently inside of. The National Guard is running their normal security zone plus patrols around the inner perimeter, and the Protectorate is in charge of the outer parahuman perimeter." They gestured at the National Guardsman. "On that front, Captain Purcell is here to provide escort and briefings for you."

The National Guardsman stepped forward at that point, removing a set of identification cards on lanyards from a pocket. "Before we go anywhere, I have visitor identification for each of you. We prefer that you not wander around the base unescorted, but these will allow you to pass through the base to get to and from the inner perimeter as well as reach restrooms." One card was handed to each of the five, and they all put them on. "Speaking of restrooms, I'd like to start by showing you where the ones we've ensured are available for your use are located, both along the inner and outer perimeters. As a bonus, this will include showing you the preferred path through the base."

They took half an hour to run through the quick tour of sorts, were given phone numbers they could call if the PRT console couldn't handle things, and then split up. Taylor and Amy heading back to the field hospital while the others joined the Protectorate for a security briefing. It didn't seem like Ben or Garnet were present today, but that could very well be due to their histories. Former villains being in any military facility like this would probably be too likely to create problems.

The all-clear was given on readiness of the field hospital, only for Taylor and Amy to be confused when an all-clear on the teleporters being offline was given. They shared a look, wondering what was going on as a general request for all parahumans to remain on the ground came over the radio. It wasn't long before they could hear helicopters approaching, and not long after that they'd apparently landed off to the side of where the field hospital was set up.

Six likely-members of the secret service entered the field hospital a minute later, followed by four gurneys and a doctor.

"Sorry for the lack of advance notice," the doctor said as he approached the girls. "But we've been running on a minimal information doctrine since the President started to have complications from a replacement kidney. He insisted that three active duty soldiers who recently lost limbs be brought in with him."

Well, at least it wasn't a boring start to the day.

Colin sighed as he went over the complete lack of problems from the day before. They were still running occasional checks of key areas with scout drone sensors, but absolutely nothing unexpected had come up. Which on paper was a wonderful thing, but his gut was telling him that they'd missed something important. What that was? He had no clue. But he was fully expecting the proverbial shit to hit the proverbial fan.

Admittedly, the primary reason he was thinking this was because Ethan was not only being absolutely serious, but had volunteered to run extra patrols 'just in case'. Which meant that the man felt that something big was about to go down, but when asked he'd admitted that he didn't know what it was going to be either. Just that something in the back of his head had decided that things were going to be going wrong.

As annoying as it was, Colin trusted that this wasn't an attempt at a joke on Ethan's part. Which meant doing his best to find patterns in the lack of problems from the day before. He'd also requested a check of things by the Think Tank, making a top-priority request as a Protectorate leader. If it came back positive then he'd have his token restored immediately, otherwise he'd need to wait a couple of months before he was allowed to unilaterally make another such request.

He was on his fifth pass over things, still finding nothing, when the Think Tank got back to him. They recommended a high alert state for the entire city, with extra reserves on hand for an attempt at killing someone 'locally important'. Which was above and beyond the level of detail that he'd expected. Though who was 'locally important' was another matter entirely, because he knew of at least two other times that someone 'locally important' was reportedly in danger according to the Think Tank. Once had been an attempt on the local Protectorate leader. The other had turned out to be the owner of a hot dog cart that the region's PRT director liked to get lunch at.

Well, at least he had enough justification to ask for PRT squads to be positioned at key locations. The Mayor's house, the homes of Wards that were around, the Boardwalk. Maybe even try and get a squad at Fugly Bob's? He'd have to see how Emily was feeling about things today.

Taylor watched as the helicopters took off, the President and the three soldiers aboard. That he'd been healed at all was to be kept a secret, though him being present with the three soldiers was expected to be well known by the end of the day. A statement about the President personally wanting to ensure that the recently injured soldiers received the absolute best care available was likely to be released as soon as anyone noticed that he'd visited the base at all, but no mention of him having needed treatment was going to be made before the end of the election next year.

Neither of the two girls wanted to deal with the politics, so they weren't in the mood to argue the point. Instead they waited for the all-clear for the teleporters to be powered on, cleaning up slightly after their first four patients of the day at the same time.

Amy: So, as much as I've previously whined about some of the phone numbers you had, it seems very different now. Even if, as an official PRT employee, you were the 'preferred parahuman' for healing the President himself.

Taylor: Yeah. I honestly wasn't expecting anything like that. Though getting offers to get some training in with the armed forces was interesting on its own, even if it would have to be in a few months after things 'calm down' from this.

Amy: That's true. Unexpected, but true.

Eventually the all-clear was given, parahumans were in the air, and far less politically important patients started flowing through the field hospital. They'd keep the pace up until lunch, at which point they'd take a proper break before the afternoon rush. Though they'd also been informed that they were far ahead of the queue, as far as that went, because they'd not actually taken into account having two healers. So unless they could get enough of the 'waiting list' patients ready and queued up before lunch they'd likely be done early today.

Next time they'd probably check to see if both girls would be healing before figuring out the schedule.

Kenta sighed as he looked over the morning reports from his people. The day before had been quiet, and he was expecting today be similarly quiet now that it had become obvious that Panacea's healing wasn't happening locally. Still, he had Lee and Airi over for the day, just in case something did happen. That Takara enjoyed having both of them around was an added bonus, of course. That between the two of them he and Miku could focus on things other than Takara was even better. Speaking of Miku, she should be back from getting lunch soon, having insisted on picking up the subs that they'd ordered.

Frowning, he checked at the window, wondering who the two men that'd been watching his own house all day were. They hadn't started any trouble, just sat in their van and tried to be 'subtle' about things, but his own people said that they didn't seem to be Empire and he could see that they weren't dressed nearly well enough to be working for Accord. Perhaps the Elite had decided that some information gathering was in order? He wouldn't put it past them to put him under observation when it was 'safe' to do so. Regardless, the van didn't seem to contain anything that his nose told him was problematic.

Oh well. So long as they weren't there tomorrow he'd ignore them. It wasn't like they could learn much when nothing was happening anyway, at least not compared to what they'd be able to tell just by knowing his address. Besides, he already had someone seeing if they could get a name from the rental company that owned the van they were using. If they became a problem later he'd hopefully be able to find at least the one who paid for the rental. Possibly both of them, if the other had been stupid enough to allow themselves to be put down as an additional driver.

For now, though, he saw Miku's car approaching, so he let the curtain fall back into place and headed for the side door to help her bring things in. He saw her roll her eyes, but she didn't object when he grabbed the heavier bag containing the drinks. They headed back in, and he could hear Airi telling Takara to wash up before eating.

Ten minutes later, the five of them were sitting around the table, subs or portions thereof in front of each of them. Kenta turned back towards the front of the house as he heard another vehicle come to a sudden stop. A moment later someone was approaching the house, so he got up to see what was going on. He hadn't gotten far before something smashed through the front window, followed by two other items.

He tried to get between whatever was being thrown into the house and the table, pushing his power to ramp him up faster, but the first exploded before he could. It appeared to be a pipe bomb, shrapnel tearing through the air. The second and third both followed a split second later, exploding almost as one and spreading white powder into the air. He originally thought it an attempt to ensure that he couldn't use his flame, but it quickly became obvious that was at best a secondary plan. The powder was drugs.

"Mama?" came from behind him even as he heard doors slam outside. He looked behind him and saw Takara reaching out to Miku, the only one of the four moving. All were bleeding and coated in the drugs. There was no way for him to get them the help they needed in time, and he knew it.

He saw red as Takara fell over.

[DESTINATION]{DESTINATION}