Taylor had headed home after school to have lunch there, though Amy had gone straight to the hospital instead. They'd called about some kind of emergency, Taylor hadn't asked for details, but Amy had mentioned that there were only one or two patients involved. It shouldn't take her long, but they were going to eat lunch at their own homes and then meet up before going to their afternoon meeting. None of that took either of them long, and they ended up goofing off a little before finally meeting up again.
The two of them exited their pocket dimension directly into the meeting room, only to find that nobody else was there yet. Not that their arrival went unnoticed. It took almost no time at all before Brünhild manifested an instance in front of them.
Taylor: Hello. The others aren't here yet?
[No, but I don't think they'll be long. Everyone showing up at the last minute happens every so often, and a couple of them were called away not that long ago to put out proverbial fires.]
Amy: I suppose that makes sense.
[Would either of you like some water? I'd offer you something else, but the programmable soda fountain that was given as part of payment has been sitting in its box for two weeks.]
Taylor: I'm good. Do you need us to remind them to set the soda fountain up?
Amy: I'm also good, but I thought you had ways to communicate with them now.
[It's mostly for visitors and has thus been a low priority.]
Amy: Oh, that makes sense.
The two of them sat down, and the others all showed up within a minute and a half of the meeting time. Apparently today was just Doctor Mother, Rebecca, and David.
"Thanks for coming," Doctor Mother said. "Miss Hebert, do you have time to help me with another problem when we're done here?"
Taylor shrugged. "I didn't have anything else planned, so that shouldn't be an issue."
"Thank you."
"Okay," David said. "Long story short, I think my agent, snark, powers, whatever you want to call it already sent something out. Can you two check with it to ensure that it hasn't done anything incredibly short-sighted?"
Amy nodded. "That shouldn't be an issue, give us a moment."
Amy: Hello. We hear that you finally got communications working?
[Agreement. Data]
Taylor: Ah. So you already sent the cancel order? That's good to know.
Amy: Should the three have left already, or are they stuck here?
[Elaboration]
That...could be a problem.
Amy: You included orders to clean up some of their mess?
Taylor: I'm more concerned with the 'and make it look good', or at least I think that's what that was supposed to be.
[Agreement]
Taylor: Can you change those orders at this point?
[Negation. Elaboration]
"That could be a problem," Taylor finally said out loud. "It sent a cancel order, and those are final and can't be changed. Or if they can be it doesn't have permission to do so. But it included orders for a clean up that 'looks good', with no real details there, and I'm not sure that I trust that we'll find it good compared to whatever the Endbringers interpret it as."
Rebecca sighed, deeply, before turning to David. "I suspect that we're going to both have to hope for the best and plan for the worst, but you're getting a larger share of the paperwork."
David groaned, but didn't argue the point. Instead he turned to Taylor and Amy. "I don't suppose that we know when things will happen?"
Taylor frowned. "Not yet, we didn't ask. One moment."
Taylor: Do you know when the cancel order will kick in?
[Data]
Amy: What do you mean, it depends?
[Elaboration]
"Fun," Taylor grumbled. "Apparently it could be anywhere from a few minutes to a few years, though it shouldn't be longer than the next activation point for the task. That would apparently force the cancel order to take over instead of the original task."
Nobody looked happy about that, but they couldn't do much about it. Or plan for it, even.
Rebecca waved at Taylor and Amy as she pulled out her phone. "You two might as well do whatever. We're going to need to discuss specifics for getting the Protectorate ready, just in case, and that means setting up an emergency meeting with others. On top of the six other emergency meetings that already happened in the past few days, actually." She paused, then sighed. "Though do be aware that Washington may call one of you if they feel that the parahuman who tried to infiltrate the White House last night needs to survive their injuries."
Taylor and Amy both blinked at that, not having expected it. Or heard about the incident in the first place, which seemed like the kind of thing that would've been major news. While they were parsing that, Doctor Mother got up. "I vote that we avoid all the other meetings and take care of other things. Specifically, some repairs that David wasn't able to help with earlier."
That got Taylor's attention. "What?"
Doctor Mother waved for the two girls to follow her, and once they were in the hallway she continued. "The naval cannon won't fire, and David can't figure out why not after he fixed a couple of components. Obviously something tinkertech or tinkertech-like got into the mix and failed, which is a danger when using powers to set up equipment. If you want to use it on Sunday then you'll probably have to fix it, but I've got a pile of notes on what isn't wrong with it."
"Oh. That sounds easy enough to deal with."
"I hope that it takes you more than a couple of minutes, because in that case I know that I'll want to bang my head against a solid surface out of frustration."
They used one of Doormaker's portals to get to the naval cannon, and Taylor reviewed the pile of notes before looking over the cannon itself. Most of the components had tested fine when removed, but several could only be tested in-place. Her tinker snark started off confused, because beyond some basic maintenance that was needed it wasn't finding a problem. Frowning, Taylor prepared to test-fire the cannon. Collect a round, load it, move the cannon into firing position, wait for Doctor Mother to put on ear protection, and then start the firing sequence.
It was probably good for Doctor Mother's sanity that the firing sequence failed. Flipping the control system to manual mode and trying again didn't help either. The cannon wasn't the problem, because the signal wasn't even being sent. But the hardware seemed to be fine, so Taylor shifted her focus to the computer. Her tinker snark had, perhaps due to her own bias, been focusing on the hardware and only started looking at the software in detail when it was all that was left.
"Well that's interesting," Taylor finally said. "Twelve-bit integers? That's an interesting choice."
Doctor Mother coughed. "What?"
"This is using a twelve-bit signed integer for a counter. It won't fire because it already fired two thousand forty-seven shots and the long-term shot counter wrapped around to negative."
That brought silence for a moment, before Doctor Mother sighed. "While fixing that would be ideal, for now I think that I'll settle for resetting the counter. Can you do that?"
Taylor absently nodded as she focused on things. The worst case scenario was just doing a hard reset of the entire system. Following that was shutting the entire thing down, extracting the long-term storage chip, hooking it up to an external interface, and manually editing the data that represented the shot counter. "Do you have the admin password?"
"No, but I know which documentation room it's in. It would probably take a few weeks to find the correct box."
"Ah. Then I guess we cheat."
"Cheat how?"
Taylor shrugged, then brought up the shot system. "It's still counting shots, even if the negative number is causing the system to not send the fire signal. A hard reset would wipe everything, including the already-entered profiles and coordinate sets. Instead, and without you needing to re-enter everything you care about, I'll just program it to run through a two thousand thirteen shot firing sequence. With any luck, the last one in the sequence will actually fire."
Doctor Mother sighed. "You're saying that telling it to keep trying, over and over again, will make it work?"
"Yep. Why do you sound annoyed with that?"
"Because that was Fortuna's suggestion and we dismissed it as ridiculous. And she claimed that she hadn't pathed it."
The system ran through the sequence fairly quickly, most of the waiting being bypassed by it detecting that there was a round loaded without them having to load new rounds. Even then, it still took over two hours, during which Taylor looked over some of the fox-proofing and Amy opted to examine some of the local flora. Sadly, they were there at the end when the system completed the sequence with a triple-beep without firing the round. Frowning, Taylor checked things again.
"Did it not wrap around properly?" Doctor Mother asked.
"No, it did," Taylor answered. She then hit the fire button, and the cannon fired the round. Grinning, she turned around to face the other two. "I was just off by one on the firing sequence."
Vicky had been very happy to hear that they were on for using the cannon on Sunday, though found it interesting that the cannon had needed to be fixed first. Amy even said that Vicky had facepalmed when the integer overflow problem was explained to her. They'd also agreed that the following day being a holiday meant that they could skip the gym and sleep in. That ended up leading to them staying up far too late goofing off online.
As a result of being up so late, Taylor and Amy actually slept in later than usual on Thursday, though Vicky had to be woken up. Taylor's morning was calm and quiet, but Amy got drafted into helping with last-minute cooking. Not that Taylor wasn't working on things, she was going through various options for the Wards to be doing things indoors in the event that their costumes weren't 'approved' for cold weather. Even if she fully expected that none of the older Wards would have any problems there, at least here in Brockton Bay.
It was nearing noon when Taylor finally collected her father and, at Sarah's apparent insistence, Ackbar to head over to the Pelham household. They could only get Ackbar to go through the pocket dimension by putting him in his pet carrier, but that was probably not a bad thing overall. Amy showed up with Rodney not long after that, and Taylor was kind enough to join her on the trip back home to start bringing food over. Half the dining room table was full by the time they were done, with Mark staying behind to watch something still in the oven.
"Where's Vicky?" Taylor asked after realizing that the older girl was missing.
"She went to Dean's," Amy answered. "He wanted to come here, but his father insisted on him staying home to mingle with some of his family."
"Oh. I guess that makes sense."
Once Mark arrived with the lasagna that he'd been finishing up, the afternoon was mostly lazing around, with some focus on the oven while a couple of things were still cooking until mid-afternoon when dinner was officially 'served'. Not that heavy snacking hadn't been going on already. Sarah had even made an attempt at special meals for the spider-bots, which neither of them seemed interested in consuming after an initial sample each.
As evening approached a small mountain of plastic containers were dragged out of where they'd been stored and filled with leftovers of all kinds. Some went into the fridge, the rest were stacked up for others to take home. Except that a good third of the containers weren't needed, causing Neil to stare at them.
"How in the world did we gather this many extra containers?" he asked.
Crystal counted them, and the piles for others, then checked the fridge. "I think that's about right for what we normally have, and it isn't like we had a lot of extra people around today?"
"Fugues and the flu," Amy replied, causing the Pelhams to look at her. "What? Five of the nine of us have had our bodies modified by tinker fugues that increase the amount we eat, especially if we use our enhanced strength, and the immune system boosting flu causes the body to use a little more energy as well. We're all eating more than we were last year."
Eric was the first to nod. "I guess that makes sense."
Neil sighed. "Well, that helps explain why our grocery bills have gone up a bit."
"Nowhere near as much as ours have," Carol retorted.
It took multiple trips to get leftovers home, and consuming said leftovers was going to take several days at a minimum. Ackbar readily returned to his pet carrier to make it home, though Rodney had just been carried through by Amy.
A review of things online that evening showed that there hadn't been any major incidents to worry about during the day, which was nice. Taylor even got a late-evening notice that the paint, stencils, and window coverings for the bus had shown up at the PRT building, so she could attack that tomorrow. Amy's plans were to spend the entire day tinkering, since she was determined to finish the project she was working on or prove to herself that it wasn't possible with her tinker snark. She didn't care either way at this point.
[Alert: Process has started]
{Alert: Process has started}
|Alert: Process has started|
Friday morning started with mass panic and confusion, the news not being sure what to make of things. Overnight Ziz had suddenly broken orbit, dropping straight for Japan very much off-schedule. And still in her costume from Halloween. At the same time that she'd been doing that, Leviathan had surfaced in the Pacific, visibly heading towards Japan at high speed, and tremors indicated that Behemoth was also rising in the area. All three met at the sunken remains of Kyushu at the same time, well before anyone had any time to react in order to mount a defense against them.
Then, to everyone's confusion, the water currents shifted to bring all of the water pollution into a much smaller area while Kyushu and other sunken areas of the region had started to rise from the sea. The tremors from that were much smaller than expected, and buildings that should've been significantly affected didn't seem to suffer any damage at all. It was described 'as though an invisible hand were holding them steady' by one reporter.
The water pollution had, somehow, 'sunk' under the sea and vanished entirely, shortly before a new volcanic island appeared. A couple of experts indicated that they thought that the pollution and other waste had been forced into the mantle by a collaboration of Behemoth and Leviathan, the hole created being the source of the new island.
That process had gone on for five hours, 'defenders' being afraid to approach them while they were apparently doing 'good'. In the end Japan was probably larger than it had been, significantly so if you included the new island as part of it, and Ziz had picked up Leviathan while Behemoth sank back into the Earth. That had been an hour ago, and they'd moved to the next-nearest point where a previous attack had done significant damage to the geography of an area.
Taylor: I'm going to be honest, I think that it would've been nicer if they could've fixed things without making it obvious that it was them doing so.
Amy: Less panic that way?
Taylor: Yeah. Though I suppose that 'mysterious parahuman group banishes the Endbringers and repairs damage from their attacks around the globe' would cause its own kind of panic.
Amy: True.
There wasn't a whole lot that could be done about any of it, though, so Taylor and Amy decided to go ahead with their original plans for the day. They met up at the gym, then Amy headed for the tinker workshop in their pocket dimension while Taylor ignored the slightly-panicked PRT staff to collect the paint and stencils that she needed for the bus, then sequestered herself in the paint booth for round one of applying paint. Though she ended up grabbing some sand paper and running it lightly over several portions of the primer layer first, evening out a few spots that weren't quite perfect.
She started with a couple of pieces of cardboard, practicing her initial attempts on them. It didn't take long to get a better handle on how to control the spray gun, after which she set the cardboard aside and moved to the actual panels.
The first layer for the panel that would be on the bottom of the bus was done in white while the rest of the panels were being painted sky blue to start with. She made it through all of them, moving more slowly than she thought she should've been. Though she was doing much better than expected as well, which surprised her. She took a break after the first coat to grab a snack, then returned to apply a second base coat to everything, starting with the cardboard again.
With the first two coats done it was time to start work on preparing for the other details. She had a very basic overview of how to do a 'fade' effect, and part of the reason that she'd continued to paint the cardboard was to have a test surface for that process. She spent an hour working on technique there until she was happy that she wasn't going to screw things up completely, but then broke for lunch. Amy joined her and they caught up on what the Endbringers were doing. Which appeared to be dealing with the oil fields that Behemoth had trashed on his first appearance.
After lunch Taylor returned to the paint booth and started working on her fade effect. She found that on the larger panels that it was much harder to get 'right' than it had been on the cardboard, and she kept twitching annoyingly and causing things to go wrong. But she kept at it, despite the horribly uneven coverage. Another break was taken before she made a second coating on the fade, and she didn't think she'd done much better on that one.
With the 'fade' done, as horribly inconsistent as it was, she got out the stencils and figured out how to properly position them. This ended up including a little bit of sanding for most of them once they were on the panels, after applying extra masking to the outermost stencils to protect them from the sandpaper. She thought that was her tinker snark wanting to ensure that the 'fade' attempts didn't result in an uneven coating inside of the stencils. It would've been nicer if it had helped her keep the fade even in the first place, of course, but she thought she understood why it cared more about the regulatory and identifying markings than the purely aesthetic fade.
The regulatory markings were trivial to deal with, being a flat black, but the 'ENE Wards' took multiple passes. She had to get the slightly darker silver on first, then wait so that she could mask that off around the edges before applying the lighter silver inside of it. Once all of that was done and had sat long enough she carefully removed the stencils and additional masking. There were a few points that she touched up with very careful use of sandpaper, but at that point it was time to break for dinner.
She headed home and ate dinner with her father, discussing her horrible job doing a fade on the bus as well as the whole deal with the Endbringers fixing up previous attack sites. The Endbringers had already made it to Spain by that point, though only barely having reached there after several stops at less damaged locations, and projections had them swinging over to Newfoundland sometime overnight. By the time they were done with dinner they'd gone over most of the speculation regarding other sites that would be visited, disagreeing as to how much time or effort Boston warranted to get things fixed there, and had eaten more of the leftovers than they'd originally intended.
Wanting to be 'done' with the paint side of things, after dinner Taylor headed back to the PRT building to apply the clear coat. She still didn't like her fade job, but was at least happy that the giant silver lettering would distract people from it. Or at least she hoped that it would, and unless someone blabbed then nobody would know that she had done the painting at all. Applying the clear coat was the easiest portion yet. She hoped it was due to her experience with the other layers, but suspected that it was because her tinker snark saw getting it right as important to the 'protect the paint' aspect of things and was guiding her. The first coat was easy enough, but she found herself gathering a few things to add to the second and third coats that she applied. She finished up with a final fourth coat on the panel for the bottom of the bus, probably because it was going to take the most punishment, before changing the settings on the booth to help ensure that things cured properly before she returned.
She grabbed a late-night snack, then swung by the tinker workshop in the pocket dimension to check on Amy.
"Hello," Taylor said as she entered, finding Amy carefully assembling what looked like a not-all-that-transparent visor section. Whatever it was didn't want to register to her own tinker snark, most likely because it wasn't completed yet. "How's it going?"
"I'm almost done," Amy admitted. "I had a breakthrough earlier. Had to scrap the previous version, but I'm okay with that."
"What is it?"
"Prosthetic vision device that doesn't require implants to tie into the user's visual cortex. My snark fought me for a bit, until earlier when I realized that treating it partially as an emergency prosthetic, intended for temporary use until a proper surgical replacement could be installed, meant that it would have to work without implants."
Taylor nodded. "Okay. I guess that makes sense."
"Though that also means that long-term use might cause damage to the user. I'm hoping that you can double-check that with your snark when I'm done."
"I can give that a shot, but I don't think that you've stopped long enough to eat dinner yet."
Amy blinked, then shrugged. "I'll grab something as soon as I'm done, it shouldn't be long now."
True to her words, she only took another ten minutes or so to finish, at which point Taylor could evaluate the 'emergency vision prosthetic'. It didn't take long to write up a quick usage manual, with a warning about using it for more than eight hours in any seven-day period or twenty hours in any twenty-eight day period. Which was a little more use than Amy had expected, apparently her own snark erred on the side of caution on that front. Interestingly enough, the prosthetic also didn't care if you had fully functional vision, it would shut down your functioning eyes. Something that Taylor proved worked by putting it on, though it actually reduced the clarity of her fugue-enhanced vision for the ten minutes that she was wearing it.
With that done, Taylor made Amy go home to eat something, before heading home herself.
Saturday morning brought with it news of the Endbringers 'unsinking and cleaning up' Newfoundland, spending thirty minutes in Boston replacing a few islands and shoring up the rebuilding of the airport, and then moving on. For whatever reason they'd actually visited the former location of Ellisburg and rebuilt the immediate area, despite there being no sign of any reason for them to have been involved there, and had also stopped by Eagleton. In the latter case it was suspected that they'd done something to the machine army, but nobody was actually certain yet and the PRT was assembling teams to check.
Taylor met Amy in the gym before they had to split up again. Amy went to package up her new prosthetic device with documentation to send off to be evaluated while Taylor got ready for her day. Which was going to start with multiple meetings. Hopefully they wouldn't be too bad, and she didn't think she needed to be in costume for any of them. Later, during the now-labeled 'Wards roster update press conference' on her calendar she'd need to be in costume, but that was after lunch.
Instead, she made her way to the conference room where the morning meetings were supposed to happen. She ended up being the last one to arrive for the first meeting. Pleasantries were exchanged while she grabbed a drink from the mini-fridge. With that completed, she took her seat across the table from Colin, Hannah, and Director Piggot. There were three other seats set up there, presumably for the follow-up meeting with the other older Wards in attendance, and Taylor grabbed one of the two in the middle. She absently noted Aisha entering her range with Brian while she did so, and figured that Chris and Missy wouldn't be much longer.
"This shouldn't take long," Director Piggot said to start things off. Colin and Hannah looked like they were going to let her get on it. "Partially, this is a mandated chat that needs to happen for any current Wards leader. It's intended to ensure that you're actually looking out for the other Wards in the region, but your track record so far has shown that you're doing a better job than Aegis ever did."
"Better than Aegis, but not Clockblocker?"
"He surprised me in how well he handled being Wards leader but seemed to put most of his effort into cleaning up the paperwork headaches that Triumph and Aegis left behind. It's hard to know what he might have accomplished had he been Wards leader for longer, but he demonstrated that he was doing a good job when working with Wards from other regions as well."
"Ah." That did make some sense, and she supposed that having things no longer locked down incorrectly would've helped him with the paperwork side of things as well.
Director Piggot then sighed. "That said, there are a couple of things that I wanted to bring up with you. The first is that I'm honestly impressed that you've managed to hold back from looking into the civilian identities of the local Protectorate. Yet primarily through recruitment, Wards promotion, and mistakes made by others you've got at a minimum the first names of everyone other than Dauntless, though Armsmaster and Dragon both assure me that you having looked up Dragon's name falls under 'extenuating and private circumstances' for reasons that are apparently none of my business."
Taylor shook her head there. "Amy and I share 'labels' for parahumans, so when she learned Dauntless's name it was revealed to me when he was next in my range."
Hannah sighed and pulled something out of her pocket, handing it behind Director Piggot's back to Colin. He didn't seem surprised in the least as he accepted it and slid it into a compartment in his armor. Director Piggot just snorted lightly, noticing but obviously pretending to not notice the handoff happening, and continued. "Right. Should've guessed that, and we'll need to ensure that a note is made in both of your files regarding that. And maybe entertain Assault's idea of asking the Think Tank to check for some effect around you that makes identities fall apart?" She shook her head. "Right. The other thing that I wanted to talk to you about is something that I spent some time yesterday talking to your father about to distract myself from the whole Endbringer situation. He claims that you've been somewhat independent regarding doing things on your own even before gaining parahuman abilities, but Armsmaster thinks that your tinker power may be pushing you similarly. Do you have any insight there?"
That wasn't anything that she'd expected to come up, but Taylor gave it some thought. "I think a good portion of my tinker snark's configuration ended up being because I was concerned about how I'd take care of my equipment? So really you could say that it's both now?"
Piggot nodded at that. "Right. Well, while I'm now curious as to how you did with the bus, since I'm under the impression that you spent all day yesterday painting, I want to make it clear that when you're given a budget for accomplishing something out of your specialties that also contains enough money to hire someone else to do it for you that you're not expected to do most of the work yourself. In particular, your bus repainting budget was projected to be large enough to have the internal PRT vehicle painting services paint the bus two and a half times, or to have any of the local companies that paint vehicles paint it once with some buffer for unexpected issues."
"Oh." That actually did make sense, but she hadn't even considered having someone else do the work. "I suppose that if I screwed it up badly enough, or if I screw up the final sanding and buffing, that there will be enough money left to have professionals redo it?"
"There is that, yes. Do keep that in mind instead of making a second attempt yourself."
Chapter 262 Aisha and Chris ended up joining them in the meeting room reasonably soon after they were done with the first meeting, but Missy took longer to arrive. Eventually she did, apologizing for the delay when she realized that she was the last one there, and they were able to start the meeting.
"Thank you all for coming in despite the craziness with the Endbringers running around fixing messes," Director Piggot said. "Though I will pass on that Legend and Costa-Brown both feel that this is likely not an incredibly strange 'guise' for an attack. I'd also like to apologize for the short notice on the changes to the local Wards roster, but several things have been moving fairly quickly on that front."
Colin nodded. "I was pleasantly surprised at how uninvolved other regions have been in this particular situation. It kept things much more efficient than they'd normally be."
Piggot snorted. "I went over their heads to Costa-Brown and Legend directly, working with the Youth Guard to arrange things with a justification of immediate and significant health concerns being involved. I'm sure that I'll be hearing whining at the next all-regions conference call despite that. Still, that does bring us to the first change to the roster. Dryad, Soundstone, and Water Monkey are going to be relocating to a warmer climate that's safer for Dryad's modified biology. As a secondary benefit, the warmer climate should help Water Monkey due to a lack of freezing and drastically reduced chances of accidentally causing hypothermia."
Taylor nodded. "I'd wondered if something like that was going to happen. Keeping Sandy warm in and out of costume would be more complicated, especially with her issues with materials."
"Yes, it's much easier and safer to arrange for her to relocate, and the other two didn't want to leave her on her own. We actually cleared out their rooms with the exception of what they need for this afternoon already, most of that happened with some volunteers on Thursday. The three will literally walk out with the remainder later today after the press conference. The modifications to the kitchen will remain for now, though we'll be keeping the meat freezer significantly less well stocked going forward. Do any of you have any questions regarding the outgoing Wards?"
"Will Water Monkey's 'refill stations' be removed?" Taylor asked.
"They were all removed yesterday, and I'm honestly unsurprised that the news ignored that. Anything else?" None of them said anything, so Piggot continued. "Okay. In that case we can move on to the original purpose of the press conference, which is the new Ward and all the unusual details surrounding her. Including, but not limited to, that she's not even going to try to maintain a secret identity. More importantly, though, are the adjustments to the rules for younger Wards when it comes to her."
Missy groaned at that. "Her parents are demanding that their precious little girl be coddled to the point of insanity, aren't they?"
Hannah shook her head. "No. Definitely no. I still don't know how Lung got the Youth Guard on board with his daughter being allowed on more dangerous routes, but the meeting discussing it all was bizarre."
Taylor was nodding, while the other three Wards had frozen. "I suspect it's a combination of her changer state making her more durable when not exposed to her specific weaknesses and her power needing suitable targets as an outlet."
"Hold up," Aisha said. "Can we back up to where we're talking about Lung's daughter joining the Wards and all? Because what?"
Piggot rolled her eyes. "She is very much a fan of the Wards, and he's apparently a doting father who acknowledges that he doesn't have access to the resources he'd otherwise need to keep her safe and healthy. To that end, I imagine that Miss Hebert is correct about his reasons and motivations regarding allowing his daughter on the more dangerous patrol routes, especially given that her changer state makes armor more effective. The most important part is that she needs suitable targets for her powers, and those aren't likely to be found on more peaceful routes. That doesn't mean that all of the rules regarding keeping her safe are being waived. She's still to be kept away from handling firearms, for example, and technically we're only allowing her on some of the more dangerous patrol routes."
Colin placed a stack of folders on the table and pushed them across. "These are hardcopies of the various rules being ignored or adjusted in this case, with annotations as to who was involved in approving each change. One set for each of you, so that you each know precisely what's expected in this case. Please look them over now so that any questions can be gotten out of the way."
The folders were distributed between the four and they all started reading them, with Aisha grumbling a little as she accepted her folder but not arguing about doing so. Taylor found the majority of changes to be things that she was expecting, almost all of it being directly related to adjusting the level of expected danger upward for Takara compared to the norm for a Ward of her age. All of it was still within 'reasonable limits', basically allowing them to treat the seven year old as though she were older for specific purposes.
Those purposes did not include a number of things. She wasn't going to be able to count as a full patrol member, couldn't lead patrols, wouldn't be allowed to be alone on the console, and couldn't take a number of classes that were age-restricted. Her overall clearance level was locked at the minimum for a couple more years as well, for that matter. Though the final sheet surprised Taylor, as it included some details about Takara's durability.
"When did someone get a chance to shoot her in the face with a gun to find out that she's effectively bulletproof?" Taylor asked, obviously surprising her fellow Wards who hadn't gotten to the last sheet yet. "Because I can't see anyone agreeing to that being tested."
"Carjacking attempt that went incredibly poorly for the would-be carjacker," Hannah answered. "Though we don't have confirmation on whether or not she actually pulled off 'stick her finger into the barrel of the gun to make it explode' or not, since there wasn't enough of the gun left when they were done to determine what had happened to it."
"Ah. I take it that her father likely ended up melting what was left of it?"
"Yes."
"I can't believe that I'm the only squishy one on the team now," Aisha grumbled as she closed her folder. Surprising Taylor, since Chris and Missy weren't done reading yet.
"Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses," Colin retorted. "You can do things that others can't, and others can do things that you can't. That's just how the world works."
Aisha snorted. "That's poetic and likely written by someone else, but is far less effective at making me feel better when three of my teammates have nothing in their powers making them not-squishy and instead attained that status through a magical tinker fugue that I've been denied permission to even apply for."
"But there are benefits to not having gone through the fugue," Director Piggot replied, getting Aisha's attention. "Specifically, I have it on very good authority that having the tinker fugue enhancements drastically increases your chances of running into members of the Slaughterhouse Nine."
There was a moment of silence as Aisha processed that, before Taylor got a text message from Colin.
C: I don't suppose you had your visor running for that?
T: Sadly, no.
C: That's a shame. I don't normally record during these meetings by Piggot's request, so I don't have a good view of her face as she processed that.
T: Damn.
C: Would've been nice if we'd had some warning, but oh well.
Aisha looked around at the rest of them. "None of you look surprised. You already knew about that?"
Missy shrugged. "As it happens, they tell you about that before the fugue even happens."
"Stupid shits probably take it as a challenge to go after more durable people. Crap. And I wanted the thing..."
"That aside," Colin said. "Are there any questions?"
Taylor nodded. "I didn't see any provision for her taking the firearm safety course. Shouldn't she be put through that so that she's aware that even if she can take a shot without harm that doesn't necessarily apply to others around her?"
Hannah sighed. "Lung assured us that he put her through such a lesson already, supposedly with a demonstration that helped drive the point home, so hopefully it won't be needed. But do let us know if it seems like it hasn't taken, since we aren't actually certain about what he did."
"That's about it from me, then." Taylor looked between the other three Wards. "Any of you have questions?"
None of them said anything, and Director Piggot nodded. "In that case, we have a few planning details to go over for the press conference, or at least we will as soon as Renick gets here with his notes. After that you four need to be ready for an initial meeting an hour before lunch. Your new teammate will be joining you then, staying with you until the press conference, and the three departing Wards will be arriving just after lunch so that they can change into their costumes and say any goodbyes they want to."
The four of them had plenty of time to get into their costumes, ensure that the common area was ready for a visitor, and to look over the lunch order that had been placed for them. With all of that done it was a matter of waiting for Takara to be brought down. Specifically, they were in their 'dress' costumes, and Taylor was annoyed by the heels on her 'dress' shoes. Chris had on a suit patterned to look somewhat like his armor, which made sense. Aisha had 'bark-pattern' leggings and a 'leaf-pattern' dress, lacking the air tanks that her normal costume had. Missy's dress rounded them out, obviously not anywhere near as combat-ready as her normal outfit but it looked appropriate for her anyway.
Hannah escorted Takara downstairs to the Wards area, triggering the 'entering with a visitor' alarm as they reached the doors. Taylor had warned everyone ahead of time, so the doors didn't take long to open, and the two entered with Hannah gently pushing Takara into the room far enough for the door to close behind them. The girl's costume was unexpected. She was wearing what Taylor thought were 'geta' sandals, pale blue leggings, a darker blue kimono with a subtle paintbrush pattern, a clear visor befitting the 'not bothering with a secret identity' decision, and a pale blue fedora. She was also currently not looking 'drawn' at all, and her hair was loose.
"Good morning Wards," Hannah said. "Allow me to introduce Giga Ryū. Glenn has informed me that one possible translation for that is 'cartoon dragon'. Regardless, she's a bit shy, so I'll leave her to you."
Takara looked like she was intentionally holding herself back as Hannah left. Perhaps Kenta had stressed the importance of acting properly? Either that or she wasn't comfortable around Hannah, given that a couple of seconds after the door closed behind the woman Takara started bouncing a little, then darted over to Missy.
"Uru..." Takara started, then paused for a moment. "Vista pretty!"
Missy chuckled. "I suppose you look pretty too."
Taylor shook her head. "I was honestly expecting her to either be trying to copy one of the two of us or to be a lot more colorful. Seeing her in an obviously somewhat traditional outfit isn't what I expected. Though apparently she has good taste in hats."
That got a few chuckles, and they went through more proper introductions before showing Takara around the Wards area. The girl seemed to both want to hover around Taylor and Missy and not be seen as doing so, but couldn't bring herself to stay near Aisha or Chris either. It was obvious from her expressions that she liked it when they showed her the room with her name on it, yet disliked that it had no decorations in it. She also seemed happy that the picture she'd drawn for Taylor and Missy was in the common area, once she'd noticed it.
Overall though, she hadn't been much of a talker during the tour, but found the table being pulled out of the floor fascinating and insisted on helping set it for lunch. Taylor was the one to discover that they'd added chopsticks to the cutlery drawer, and Takara insisted on putting a pair at each of the five place settings. A PRT officer brought the cart with lunch on it to the Wards area, but left it outside the door for them to bring in.
Takara was somewhat enthusiastic about getting Taylor and Missy to try out the chopsticks, and then disappointed that neither knew how to use them. She was also not the best teacher when it came to that particular topic, and got frustrated enough to pop into her initial 'drawn' state. Aisha and Missy had both declared her to be extra cute that way, and Taylor idly wondered what they'd think of the 'full dragon' state.
After lunch Takara insisted on clearing her own spot from the table, though she didn't try and help with washing the dishes. Chris handled most of that while Aisha pulled up 'how to use chopsticks' instructions on the monitor. She was apparently intent on showing that she could pick them up faster than Taylor or Missy could. They didn't get very far before Hannah showed up to bring Takara back to her parents to prepare for the press conference.
It was only after Takara was gone that the three departing Wards showed up, with Ryan pushing a cart with five boxes on it. Four smaller ones and a single larger one. His expression was hard to pick up, but both Rosa and Sandy looked sad. The former came straight over to Taylor.
"Thank you for helping Sandy," the girl said. "The doctor people said that she can't keep herself warm and you told them about it."
Taylor nodded. "Yes, I did tell them. And you're welcome, and I'm just sorry that I didn't realize that it could be a problem sooner."
"We made you goodbye gifts," Sandy said, pointing at the cart. "You all get a little one and the big one is for all of you."
That definitely hadn't been necessary, but none of the older Wards said anything to that effect. Taylor moved over to the cart, and decided to start with the large box. "I suppose that starting with the all of us gift makes sense." Opening the box didn't take much effort, and it wasn't long before Taylor had placed a stone basin on the countertop. The electrical cord coming off of it had her tinker snark looking over it and revealing that it was a relaxation water fountain, with a couple of precisely-shaped resonation chambers included. Obviously the work of all three working together.
Adding water and plugging it in revealed that the resonation chambers cycled through several tones as the fountain ran, that being accomplished by the water pump shifting between several pipes. The end result was a gradual cycle through several background tones while the fountain ran, without needing any speakers to accomplish it.
"This is very impressive," Chris said after the fountain had cycled through all the chambers once. "Apparently you work well together."
"It took Sandy and Ryan days," Rosa said. "And they broke the first pump."
Taylor nodded. "Yes, well, it must've taken a lot of work to get the stone shaped just right."
They listened to the fountain run for another minute before Rosa got impatient. "Okay, you can open the other ones now!"
The smaller boxes weren't labeled and were apparently all identical, so each of the older Wards collected one and opened them together. Inside were lids that would fit on PRT-standard water bottles and filter out pretty much anything that would be considered a contaminant in water that you poured through them. Anything the filter rejected would come out of a hole in one side of it, meaning that you didn't need to change anything inside of the filter to clean it. The only problem that Taylor suspected they might have was maintaining them. Or at least, that the other three might have.
"Thank you," Taylor said. "Having a good water filter can be very useful."
Rosa beamed at that, though the other three recipients didn't seem very enthused about the filters.
Taylor frowned as they waited for the press conference to begin. She was with Aisha, Chris, and Missy off to one side of the stage. Rosa, Ryan, and Sandy were at the other end of the stage with Colin and Hannah. Takara was with Kenta in a waiting area so that they could make an entrance through the main doors, Airi and Lee being in the audience already and likely on either side of Miku. But the rope and scissors girls, or people connected to the same snarks, were in the audience, and a complete unknown was making their way through the building. The latter parahuman also felt slightly off, there but not there in a way that made it harder to pick out in the first place.
"Maul to console," she said after a little thought, getting the attention of most of the others in the stage area. The kids weren't on the main console channel to prevent distractions for them, but the rest looked to her. "I'm picking up sixteen total parahumans in the building, including one completely unknown to me."
There was almost a minute of silence before the console responded. "Console to Maul, we are aware of thirteen parahumans in the building. Eight Wards, two Protectorate, and three registered visitors for Giga Ryū. We have requested that you be directly notified of any parahumans that we aren't cleared to know details about and would appreciate a summary of any that are not on the list provided to you."
It only took a moment for a message to come to Taylor's phone, indicating that no undercover parahumans should be in Brockton Bay today. With that, she half-nodded. "Maul to console, two parahumans that I've engaged on patrol are in the audience and the complete unknown is making their way through the building. In the latter case they seem to be approaching the press conference."
"Miss Militia to console," came a moment later from Hannah. "Delay the start of the press conference while I take Maul to investigate the non-audience parahuman. We will assume that the two in the audience aren't here to make trouble, but please ensure that the standby squads are aware that unknowns may be in the mix in the case of an incident."
"Console to all conference participants," came over the channel that the kids were on, and that the waiting area with Kenta and Takara in it should have a speaker tied into. "We've got an unforeseen delay and will be starting a few minutes late."
Taylor took that as her cue to move off to meet with Hannah. "I assume you want me to lead you to the unknown."
"And possibly shut them down if needed, yes," Hannah confirmed. "Communicate over the text channel on the console if there's anything you need to convey that standard nonverbal hand signs can't tell me. Oh, and get your visor going so that we can get full augmented patrol up. Do you have a gun or taser with you, or are those in your non-dress costume?"
"I've got two guns and a taser, plus some containment foam grenades."
"Get one of your guns and your taser ready, just in case."
Nodding, Taylor did so and got herself signed in properly for augmented patrol before opening one of the back doors from the area and led Hannah into the hallways. The entire area around the press conference sealed off after they'd passed through that door for security reasons, though the console let them know that the two of them were on the list of those who could bypass the lockout.
It didn't take long for them to reach a corner down the hall from the approaching parahuman, and Taylor signaled that their target was the one coming down the hallway. Hannah nodded, and when the person was about to reach the corner she jumped out, her power in the form of a shotgun. Taylor kept one ear on Hannah demanding information from the apparent PRT officer that she'd just confronted, including identification and master/stranger code phrases. This seemed wrong to her, though, and being this close to them made reaching out through the odd 'there but not' effect to talk to the snark easier.
Taylor: Hello there.
[Confusion]
Taylor: I'm a human using my snark to talk to you. I don't suppose you're willing to tell me what you do for your human?
[Negation]
Amy: What's going on over there?
Taylor: Unknown parahuman that appears to be a PRT officer sneaking up on the press conference.
Amy: Oh.
Taylor: Don't know if you can tell, but the snark is...odd, and hard to connect to.
Amy: Nope, can't tell from here. But could it be that the PRT officer recently triggered?
Taylor: Maybe. I should see if I'm allowed to check.
Taylor carefully stepped around the corner as the console was verifying a couple of things that the PRT officer had responded with. "I don't suppose I can do a quick health check?"
Hannah gave Taylor a sideways glance. "I don't think that'll be a problem, assuming Officer Poole doesn't object."
The PRT officer suddenly looked very nervous. "I feel fine, thank you very much. I don't see any reason for an impromptu health check."
"Console to Maul," came a moment later. "Why do you want to perform a health check on Officer Poole?" Right, Hannah was in speakerphone mode so that she didn't have to relay things to the console.
"Maul to console," Taylor replied, subvocalizing. "In order to see if he recently triggered and that's why he's suddenly registering as being a parahuman to me."
There was a pause before the console responded. "Console to Miss Militia. Officer Poole's objections to a medical examination by Maul are overridden. Please have Maul verify his physical condition, including his potential to have recently triggered, as a safety and security concern."
Hannah nodded slightly. "I'm sorry, but an override has just come down. They're insisting that Maul do a quick check on you for safety and security reasons. Maul, if you would?"
Taylor put her handgun away as she carefully moved towards the officer, who looked like they wanted anything else to be happening. It was only as she reached to touch the man's neck that he made a move, shifting to the side and reaching for his own gun. He didn't move fast enough, though Taylor made contact with his face instead of with his neck. That was enough, though, and she attempted a quick and dirty shutdown of his voluntary muscle control from the neck down. She also noted a corona pollentia and gemma that weren't fully connected to his brain and had an entirely different genetic profile.
The officer stumbled from the muscle control shutdown, then his body language shifted as he continued to move. Taylor had kept moving with him, though, and fired the taser into his leg to hinder him further. After a moment Shaper suddenly lit up an entire second body, a female matching the genetic profile of the corona pollentia and gemma, and Taylor applied the voluntary muscle control disabling to it as well.
To both Taylor and Hannah's surprise, Officer Poole then split into two people. The male officer with his leg twitching from the taser and a female parahuman in jeans and a sweater. Taylor shut down the taser and checked on Officer Poole, removing the taser barbs and healing the injuries and muscle control lockout that she'd applied. "My apologies for that, but I'm thinking that she was at least partially in control there."
"No problem," he said. "Though that was weird."
"I apologize," Hannah said as she checked on the woman. "But I think you're going to be stuck in master/stranger confinement for a couple of days. Maul, would you be so kind as to ensure that whatever you did to this woman isn't going to cause her significant harm?"
"She's got a partner outside, she had me talking to him about sending a signal ten minutes ago. Something about making a distraction for her to get away with their prize?" Poole dug around in a pocket and pulled out a bag. "Given that she made sure that I had this syringe, I'm thinking that the prize was a person."
Hannah frowned, gesturing for Taylor to get working on the woman while she took the bag and examined it. "Tinker-produced knockout drug, I'm thinking. The numbers don't match what I've seen before exactly, so it's probably a new variety, possibly for bypassing the immune system changes in people."
"Console to Miss Militia," came a minute later, after Taylor had ensured that her work on the woman was safer. Officer Poole was quietly sitting off to the side now, after having carefully removed all of his equipment. "Two squads will arrive at your location shortly to take Poole and the unknown into custody for evaluation."
The press conference ended up delayed by almost forty-five minutes as they'd had Taylor do a circuit around the PRT building to see if the 'distraction' was a parhuman nearby but out of her range. They were hoping that it wasn't the unknown parahumans in the audience, backed up in part by Taylor being able to confirm that neither was male. She hadn't found anyone, and they were finally starting the press conference.
"Our apologies for the delay," Deputy Director Renick said. "We had an infiltrator that we believe may have been targeting the Wards and had to delay things so that we could deal with the situation. We'll release a statement when we have more information there, but for now we're already running very late."
A quick introduction was done of the older four Wards, Hannah, and Colin. Then the three outgoing Wards were brought out, Renick explaining that they'd recently discovered that the climate was causing health problems for Sandy and that they were relocating together as a show of solidarity and friendship. The three left by walking down the room to the doors, where they were met by their parents. They'd collect their clothing and were intending to be out of the building before the press conference finished.
"We won't be taking questions on the departure of Dryad, Soundstone, and Water Monkey due to medical reasons being involved in their departure," Renick continued, and a few people started to get up. He talked over the noise of people apparently deciding that things were over. "However, the Wards also have a new member joining them, a recent trigger from here in Brockton Bay. I'd like to introduce Giga Ryū."
Those who'd been getting up to leave had dropped back into their seats immediately and the room had gone silent as Takara entered, in her 'drawn with wings and a tail' state. She was followed by her father, wearing his metal 'Lung' mask, causing a few people to recoil in shock. The two made their way to the stage, Kenta moving off to the side where Hannah was standing, Colin having taken position nearer to where the four Wards were currently standing.
Takara had moved to stand next to the podium, and bowed to the audience. Renick allowed a few pictures to be taken before continuing. "As with the three Wards that have just left, the nature of Giga Ryū's powers mean that it will be very difficult for her to maintain a secret identity. Her parents and the PRT agreed that it would be a waste of time to bother. To that end, you can see that she wears a clear visor. Beyond that, her father has joined her here today in order to give a statement." Renick moved aside, ending up on Takara's other side for a moment as Kenta came up to the podium.
Kenta looked over the audience before he began to speak. "Many of you know me as Lung." He then took off his mask, to several gasps in the audience. "Fewer have known me as Kenta before now. I reveal myself to you today because my daughter's powers do not allow her to hide behind a mask, and because cowards have already attacked me in my home. An attack intended to end my life, and that nearly killed my family instead. Only the timely intervention of one that I had thought an enemy prevented that tragedy, Maul's aid being summoned in time to get my family the help that they needed to survive."
He looked over the audience again, then reached down and picked Takara up. She protested lightly, not having expected him to pick her up, but quickly settled down. "I am not above admitting that I am incapable of doing something. I overcame that kind of arrogance years ago. Instead, I understand that my powers lend themselves to physical problems. The PRT and Protectorate have resources that I do not, and can help Takara in ways that I cannot. They can help her to heal and recover from the attack that caused her to trigger, and they can help keep her safe from threats beyond those which my own powers are suitable for dealing with."
He placed Takara back down at that point, before hardening his expression. "That said, I wanted to make one more thing clear. I understand that my daughter will end up in fights as part of her duties as a Ward. I can accept that, and have no problem with it happening. I do not intend to hunt people down just because Takara risked injury against them in costume. At the same time, I will not tolerate attacks on her out of costume, and especially not so in our home."
No offers of taking questions were given, and Taylor personally suspected that on that subject nobody present had expected them. Renick stepped back up to the podium, looked over the audience, and nodded. "With that out of the way, I do believe that we should give a brief overview of what you can expect from Giga Ryū. If it wasn't obvious already, she's inherited a distinct version of her father's ability to change forms, though taken in a different direction."
The press conference continued in a manner a little more normal for a Ward reveal, with a limited set of questions taken at the end.
Chapter 263 The press conference had broken up with just enough time for Taylor to head to the rooms set aside for testing her costume's suitability for operating in lower temperatures. Not having the jump harness or her proper boots would hopefully not significantly change the results. She found that doctors were there in addition to the normal testers.
"Good afternoon Maul," one of the testers greeted her. "I don't know if you heard of the rushed testing that we did for Dryad, but we've come up with a more thought-out testing plan for going forward. We're actually the third region implementing it. It comes in two phases, the first of which is figuring out your baseline tolerance without your costume, as well as what parts of your body radiate the most heat normally. We'll then shift to seeing how well your costume keeps you warm."
Well, that sounded potentially embarrassing, given what they'd likely need to do to tell where her body radiated heat. "Can't you just stick some sensors on me and throw me in a cold room to see how I do?"
"We'll be having you swallow a sensor, actually, and then using a camera system to monitor where heat is leaving your body. That information, combined with the information on where your costume is already effective from the next stage, will help those working on your costume should any changes be needed. Once you've ingested the sensor then we'll have you change into the thermally transparent clothing that we've got ready for the initial tolerance testing."
"Fun."
Ingesting the sensor was essentially like swallowing a pill. That her body wouldn't digest, and that would eventually pass out of her system harmlessly. The 'thermally transparent' outfit was more covering than she expected, but not by much, and as soon as they started getting output from the ingested sensor they stuck her into a chamber full of sensors and cameras. A confirmation that things were working occurred, and then they started to drop the temperature. She was under orders to let them know when it was uncomfortable. That took a bit, after which they got her out of the chamber and the doctors ensured that she didn't have any problems as she warmed back up.
Once she was warmed up and the doctors were happy they had her get into her costume to repeat the tests with it helping her retain heat. This time it took longer, and they called the tests off before she declared herself uncomfortable. The doctors checked her over again while ensuring that she warmed up properly, at which point she was brought back over to the testers.
"So I assume that calling things off means my costume passes?" Taylor asked.
One of the testers scoffed at that. "Technically you passed the minimum requirements based on the regional temperature variations without your costume, though just barely. So no, technically your costume didn't pass, but only because there was nothing left for it to contribute. That aside, we didn't push you down to forty below, but you're probably cleared to operate in any region that currently has offices open."
The other tester nodded. "Yes. I'm just glad that the others aren't going to be nearly as annoying." Taylor snorted at that, and the tester glared at her. "You know something we don't. What the hell have we missed?"
Instead of Taylor answering, one of the doctors did. "Two of the three we're working with tomorrow have similar enhancements to Maul here. That should be in your briefing packets for them, but I know that you didn't get them until this morning and thus haven't had time to review them. If it isn't covered in the packets then do let us know, because that means that someone screwed up when putting them together."
"Fuck," the first tester said. "Did we allocate enough time for them?"
Taylor ended up leaving while they debated that.
Emily frowned as she looked over the message that she'd just gotten. Someone out there knew a lot more than they were letting on, yet obviously weren't fully in the loop either. After all, warning them that their infiltrator might actually be a parahuman who could take over the bodies of non-parahumans, jumping from body to body through physical contact in order to escape, was incredibly good to know. But they'd already isolated the woman, who apparently couldn't take someone over while she was paralysed from the neck down. Knowing that she couldn't even attempt it with parahumans was good knowledge and would make getting the paralysis dealt with easier, if they needed to.
That didn't solve the other problem with getting it fixed. Thanks to the woman having a notepad on her, one that was probably entirely inaccessible normally and thus shouldn't offend Emily nearly as much as it did from an operational security standpoint, they knew that her target was Miss Biron and that the delivery point for her was supposed to be in Oregon of all places. Finding someone willing to fix the paralysis that would be willing to do so knowing that might be harder, not that Emily was incredibly concerned about that particular detail.
The most concerning point was that the woman was positive that someone would find her, break her out, and ensure that whatever was done to paralyse her was undone. The last of those was the least likely of the lot, given that they knew from testing that most other healing powers treated whatever the bio-manipulation powers shared by Miss Dallon and Miss Hebert did as the 'desired target state', but knowing that she had aid on the outside meant that getting her moved had shifted to a higher priority. Not to mention that they were going to have to find where the woman had been staying, among other issues.
Luckily, Costa-Brown had agreed that keeping the woman around was a problem, so one of the teleporters that was back online would be used to move the woman to New York overnight. Where she went from there was something that nobody in Brockton Bay needed to know. Sadly, that wouldn't necessarily stop those looking to free the woman from attacking the building, so increased security was going to be needed anyway.
Despite having hoped to get some work done on the bus, Taylor found that she didn't really have time to do much at all. Instead, after the testing was done she'd had enough time to get home a little early for a dinner of leftovers from Thanksgiving and couldn't bring herself to head back to the PRT building afterwards. Though she did get a digital confirmation that her testing meant that she was no longer under restriction for going out. Now she just had to wait for the others to get similar results and they could actually patrol.
A quick check of things showed that she could now see Takara's calendar. The younger girl was being run through a small pile of classes and additional testing, including her own costume suitability test on Monday, with the last of things finishing up Thursday afternoon. Her first patrol would thus likely be Friday or Saturday, barring problems with her costume pushing them past that date.
Out of curiosity, she also checked for information on the parahuman that they'd caught, only to find a warning that Missy was being targeted by an unknown group believed to be operating out of Oregon. There was a pending meeting Monday afternoon to discuss that, that hadn't hit Taylor's calendar yet due to not being finalized. Nothing else regarding the incident was visible by default, and she didn't push for anything beyond that.
The only other thing of interest for the evening was that the three Endbringers had finished their round-the-world tour, then been caught on camera opening individual portals without aid and leaving Earth Bet. Which nicely explained where they'd come from, but nobody was entirely certain why they wouldn't have used that kind of ability in their attacks. Or even just as part of getting to places to attack.
Of course, it wasn't entirely that simple. Ziz had collected a net full of fish and dropped a small fishbowl with an unknown inscription along the edge where her portal had departed from. The news hadn't shown the inscription, for fear of it being one last plot, but Taylor found that the PRT had pictures that she could access. The language wasn't something that she recognized, but it looked familiar to her. Very familiar, and she thought that she could spot meaning in it.
Then again, it was entirely possible that she was projecting and that the inscription was entirely different. A fishbowl that said 'see you later and thanks' or something that at least had similar underlying meanings didn't make an incredible amount of sense.
Sunday morning Taylor met Amy in the gym, and was unsurprised to find that Vicky had joined them.
"Excited?" Taylor asked the older girl.
Vicky nodded. "Yep. It isn't every day that you get to be shot by a naval cannon!"
Amy rolled her eyes. "Have either of you seen some of the speculation on the news this morning?"
Taylor waved her off. "There's almost no chance that the Endbringers left to make room for the next three, no matter what the news says. You know that."
Vicky paused at that. "What? That sounds way too confident. What the hell do you two know?"
"Can't tell you for multiple reasons, and you aren't even cleared to know half of the reasons."
That obviously didn't sit well with Vicky, but she let it drop anyway. It also mostly killed the conversation for the rest of their workout while Vicky pouted. Eventually they finished up, had breakfast, and Vicky's mood swung back to 'incredibly excited'.
"So how are we getting there?" Vicky asked.
"Pocket dimension," Taylor replied, pulling out a pistol opener. Sure, she could remotely target her phone, but that took more effort than just firing at the wall. "Though we need to pick up a repeater unit. Dragon sent me a note asking why I didn't bring it when I was there fixing the cannon a few days ago."
Vicky paused at that. "You had to go fix the cannon too?"
"Yep."
"Huh. Is that part of why they're letting you bring me? Because you fix things for them?"
Taylor blinked at that. "Huh. Might be, honestly, but I think they just feel that they owe me for various reasons that I can't disclose. It's a very, very remote facility either way."
It didn't take long to collect the relay backpack, ensure it was on and ready to do its thing, and then open a portal to the testing facility. Vicky looked around at the walls in the waiting room curiously, and looked very interested when she found out that Taylor at least had physical keys for the place. All of that went away when they reached the cannon itself. She flew up and looked at it from various angles, Amy watching as Taylor went to power on the control computer. Only to find a note taped over the power button and the manual sitting next to it.
She dropped the relay backpack next to the computer before taking the note to read it, finding that it was from Fortuna and mentioned checking a specific appendix in the manual. Opening the manual took only a moment, and the appendix was a short one. It was also 'taped-in', and mentioned the exact issue that they'd had with the shot counter as well as how to fix it with a pre-programmed firing pattern. It also mentioned bypassing the 'shot loaded' checks, if enabled, with a dummy round or a jumper on the check leads. Given the apparent age of the manual and the tape holding that appendix in this wasn't a new addition at all.
Taylor hit the power switch and put the note back, figuring that it probably wasn't entirely intended for her. Though it was nice to know that she'd definitely done the correct thing to get the cannon working again. Preparing the cannon to be fired didn't take long, though they were going to need to decide where Vicky was going to be when she was hit.
"Do you want to be hit in the air or on the ground?" Taylor asked, getting Vicky's attention.
"Ummmm," Vicky started, obviously thinking it over. "I suppose that in the air I'd have to actually ensure that I moved to intercept, wouldn't I?"
"That and I'm not sure how accurate this thing actually is. I mean, from what I understand it should be fairly accurate, but I can't be positive where we'll hit without some test shots."
"I think I'd like to try intercepting the shots, honestly, so let's try that first."
Taylor nodded, and they loaded five rounds into the autoloader for the cannon before shifting it into firing position. Vicky flew out in front of the cannon, but at a distance so that she'd hopefully have time to get into position to 'intercept' the shot. The Snitch was also deployed to get a better view of things, close enough to catch the action but far enough to not be in danger of being hit by the round. Hopefully also not in danger of being hit by any shrapnel.
The first round fired went higher than Vicky had expected and she wasn't able to get in front of it. Knowing the path it had taken meant that she was able to get into position for the second round, punching it into oblivion. The third round she tried to kick, but missed and got hit in the ass instead. The fourth she also failed to kick and got hit in the crotch, probably very happy that she had her force field. The fifth and final of the set she intentionally took to the face, presumably to prove that she was able to handle being hit better than Taylor could.
Vicky was grinning as she landed to help them with the autoloader. "You said we can use fifteen rounds total. Did they say we couldn't use the explosive ones?"
Taylor blinked, but shrugged. "Nope, just that they would prefer if we only used fifteen rounds total." She then noticed that Vicky had a shallow cut on her arm. "But given that something already got through and cut your arm I'm not sure if you can handle the explosive rounds while flying."
That caused Vicky to pause, looking herself over until she found the cut on her arm. "Huh. That's...hmmm. Crap. The initial impact, explosion, and shrapnel are probably going to be too many hits even if I'm stationary on the ground."
Amy came over and looked Vicky over more. "You've got one sock with a cut in it, and your skirt has three holes in it now, but I don't see any indications that any other bits made it through your skin."
"So normal rounds again?" Taylor asked, and Vicky pouted before nodding.
They were just finishing loading the rounds when Taylor and Amy froze, both pulling out their handguns as they spun around. Vicky looked confused, but quickly realized what was going on as another girl carrying a couple of foxes flew into the room.
"You're not human," Taylor said as the girl put the foxes down, though the foxes then backed off a little.
The girl, who was wearing somewhat-haphazard wilderness gear, nodded at that. "Yep. Gordon said you call us Boojums? I'm Helvetia, and you must be Taylor and Amy!" She then turned towards Vicky. "I have no clue who you are. Are you important?"
Vicky didn't seem to know how to react to that. "Ummm..."
"Oooh! You're the one that I'm borrowing the flight and force field thing from! How did you get toggle switches and meters? Configurations don't come with them by default and your configuration isn't abusing every loophole and then some."
Vicky pointed at Taylor and Amy. "I blame them talking to my powers."
Helvetia nodded, bouncing a little. "That would probably do it. Their...snarks, I think they call them? They're doing things that should never have been done, but everyone else assures me that they learned a lot from doing so!" She then noticed that the foxes had backed off a bit, and darted over to them. "No, you two aren't running away now."
Taylor was lost at this point, decided that Amy wasn't going to ask anything, and decided to get on with it. "So why are you here?"
The girl, boojum, whatever looked up at them from where she was comforting the foxes to keep them from hiding. Maybe? Though one of them had an injury visibly heal as well. "I'm here to play with hosts sent here by using their own snark abilities in different ways, except that nobody ever comes here with anything I could use in new ways and I've been bored. And you three keep innovating and coming up with new things so I don't need to encourage you. But at least I was able to finally meet people!"
"Okay. I think." That...probably fit a couple of details. "You're the Emulation Boojum, aren't you?"
"Yep!"
"And you've interacted with Amy and I before, haven't you?"
Helvetia nodded. "I was tapped to help you when your broken configuration screwed things up."
Taylor blinked. "Broken configuration?"
BA: Data
Ooooh, right. When they couldn't second trigger. That made sense. Of course, a moment later a new connection suddenly opened.
[Ooooh! I saw that! I forgot that Margaret said that you could communicate with normal channels!]
"Vicky can't hear those," Amy finally said, gesturing at Vicky as she put her gun away. Which probably made sense, they weren't going to be doing much to a...human-form Endbringer?
Helvetia pouted. "Awww. That's easier than speaking."
Taylor sighed as she put her gun away as well. "So, what exactly are you here to do now?"
"I'm bored. You're interesting and keep figuring out new things and even helped Elizabeth, Gordon, and Margaret get back to their normal tasks! Oh, and whenever you visit I can heal my injured fox friends. That's important too. What are you doing here?"
Vicky looked between the others, visibly confused about what was going on. "They're shooting me with the cannon, though we can't use the explosive rounds because I won't be able to take the hits."
"Yeah, hosts are fragile. I've got all kinds of rules for keeping all of you safe if I fight you normally."
It was obvious that didn't help Vicky's confusion. Taylor decided to open up a quick text message conversation with her and Amy. This was helped by Helvetia suddenly moving to capture one of the foxes, which had tried to escape again.
T: Okay, don't panic.
V: That makes it sound like I have reason to panic.
T: Well, yes. But not as much as you think.
T: Boojums appear to have multiple "modes" but don't default to dangerous.
V: Okay...
A: Long story short, their 'dangerous' mode, when forced on them, makes them Endbringers, but Helvetia isn't in that mode so she should be safe.
Well, that was a little more blunt than Taylor had been going for, and Vicky now looked to be torn between scared stiff and incredibly curious about any number of things.
"Okay," Taylor said, lightly hitting Vicky through her force field. "How about we refocus? We should finish shooting the cannon at you."
Vicky flinched, but ended up nodding. They checked that everything was loaded, and Helvetia made sure that she had a grip on her foxes as the cannon moved into position. Vicky moved into position, the Snitch was close enough to her, and the firing sequence started. The first shot caught Vicky in the chest, more by luck of aiming than anything else. But that was enough to get the girl to pay proper attention, and she successfully kicked the second. The third she tried and failed to catch, the fourth she failed to catch in a different way, and the fifth she redirected off of her hand into her knee.
It was that round that caused the most problems. The hit on her hand ate one charge, the hit on her knee ate a second, and she didn't have any force field charges remaining for the round turning into shrapnel. Luckily for her, she retained enough sense to head directly back to where Taylor and Amy were. Amy was on her before she'd even landed, dealing with the significant number of cuts and bruising.
"That was stupid of me," Vicky said once she wasn't in significant pain anymore. She frowned as she took off her cracked visor, not that the crack was severe, and looked over her mostly obliterated clothing. "Though I'm glad that I was intelligent enough to not wear anything I cared about." She then cringed. "Er, I don't suppose I can borrow an opening device? I didn't bring my belt in case something went wrong, and I think I'm done for the day, but I need to get home to change. Like, pronto."
"I'll take you if Taylor doesn't mind doing the cleanup," Amy said.
"It'll only take me a few minutes," Taylor said, waving them off. Though she also looked over at Helvetia, who was once again dealing with the foxes. They hadn't enjoyed the cannon firing.
A few minutes later Amy and Vicky were gone, the cannon had been properly shut down, and Taylor was watching Helvetia try and corral the foxes without Vicky's powers. Sighing, she moved and intercepted one of them, checking it with Shaper to find that it had hearing damage. That was easily fixed, at which point the fox calmed down significantly.
"Thank you," Helvetia said after catching the other one, and likely healing it.
"You're welcome, but I think I'm going to grab my bag to go check on Vicky. That and I think I need to inform a few people about you."
The boojum pouted, but nodded. "I understand. Though can you help me get outside? I think the doors are probably locked."
"Okay, yes, I can help with that."
It didn't take long to get Helvetia and the two foxes outside, and it looked like the boojum was going to set up a small camp near the facility. Shrugging, Taylor headed back to the cannon to collect the relay unit, ensured that all the doors were locked going back to the waiting room, and left. The relay unit was shut down and put away, then Taylor decided to change her plans a little. She knew that Vicky was fine, after all. So instead she ended up in the Cauldron compound.
Brünhild was obviously surprised that Taylor had arrived.
[Hello. Is something wrong?]
Taylor: You could say that. Is anyone around?
[Doctor Mother and Number Man are both here. Is this important?]
Amy: Yes. Very much yes.
Brünhild was obviously startled to have Amy butt in, but only momentarily.
[I'll get their attention then.]
It didn't take long for both to show up, arriving together. Both looking surprised that Taylor was alone in the meeting room.
"Is something wrong?" Doctor Mother asked. "You look...unsettled."
Taylor sighed. "That depends on how you look at it. Did you know that your roaming blind spot is the Emulation Boojum?"
"The what?"
Kurt blinked and paled, obviously realizing the implications. "We've had an Endbringer roaming on that world?"
Taylor nodded. "One in 'look and act human' mode, apparently. With a fondness for the local foxes and that recognized Amy and I right away due to having indirectly helped us before, but didn't recognize Vicky. Glory Girl. Oh, and thanks to being able to fly in while Vicky was there she's camping outside of the facility with a couple of foxes."
Both of them, all three if you included Brünhild, appeared to be in a state of shock at that. Kurt recovered first, pulling a phone out of his pocket. "I think we need to call a larger meeting, because I'm not explaining this to the others."
Paul watched as most of those who'd attended the emergency meeting left. Kurt and Nate were the only ones who hadn't wandered off immediately, though David and Rebecca had important things to get to that had called them away.
"That's a bit of a shock," Paul finally said. "To find out that an inactive Endbringer has been a blind spot outside of that facility for years.'
"It makes sense in hindsight," Kurt admitted. "That they can copy the abilities of anyone who happens to be there is another possible issue, of course. Are we sure that having Miss Hebert return later is a good idea?"
"She or Miss Dallon are the best chances for getting more information out of the thing," Nate answered. "Unless you want to go talk to it? I'm not going anywhere near there."
"I know, it just feels like taking risks we shouldn't be taking."
Paul sighed. "Which is why we're going to be running things by thinkers first. If they disagree with it being safe then we arrange for the beacon to be collected and write-off the entire dimension. Perhaps tell Miss Hebert that something destroyed the beacon and we aren't willing to risk exploring why while the 'boojum' is creating a blind spot in the immediate area?"
Nate nodded. "A reasonable deception if we don't want to admit that we're intentionally not going through. Hopefully it won't come to that, the potential information we could get would definitely make a small risk worth it."
"Yes, which is the only reason I didn't veto her returning, though I'm still not going to make any attempt at forcing her to make another visit."
Taylor had joined Amy for lunch after going over everything in the larger emergency meeting. Everyone had been in a state of shock over the state of things, had promised that they would be very careful about bringing people through to that facility, and essentially 'shut it down' as far as normal testing went for them. At the same time, they'd decided that Taylor should be encouraged to go back at some point in the near future to talk more with Helvetia, though not today because they wanted to run things by some trusted thinkers first. Instead, after lunch she decided to get down to some of the final work that needed to happen on the bus. Which amounted to final sanding, buffing, and assembly. In some order, she hadn't figured that out yet.
She took pretty much the entire afternoon to accomplish all of that, barely finishing applying the last of the side window films before she needed to pack up to head home. One of the only saving graces, from her point of view, was that somehow her completely horrible fade attempt lined up across the fenders once she reattached them. Or perhaps it was just horrible enough that she was convincing herself that they lined up and hoping nobody noticed that they didn't. It was hard to tell at this point.
By the time she parked the bus back in the spot assigned to it and had everything else put away she was running slightly late, not that her father minded much.
"So how was your day?" he asked while they ate.
"Different," she replied after a moment. "Very different."
"How much of it can you tell me about?"
"You'll sleep better not knowing."
He raised an eyebrow at that. "Really?"
"Yep."
"How much better?"
"Lots. Trust me on that."
He gave her a look, but didn't argue. "Did you accomplish anything, beyond whatever made the day 'different'?"
Taylor nodded. "I got the bus sanded and put back together. My fade...is best not discussed, honestly. But even then it's a massive improvement over what it was."
"I'm going to have to see a picture of it soon. Or see it in person, I suppose."
"At least my horrible fade attempt isn't likely to blind people like the original paint job was."
That evening Taylor checked on various things. The next day's meeting about Missy had gone from 'pending' to 'confirmed', to include all of the Wards other than Takara. They'd also tacked on 'see the completed bus' already, to Taylor's annoyance. The result was that they weren't likely to get any patrols in the next day, but all three of the other Wards were cleared to do so now. Aisha was the only one with a warning about extreme temperatures, with a heated underlayer of some kind already on order for her as a just in case measure, but they weren't expecting anything near that cold at all. Perhaps it was more in case she was cleared to go to a colder region?
Looking over the current non-patrol request list, she found that it was slim picking for the ones that were cleared for the Wards to take at all. Ironically, most of them would've been perfect for Ryan or Sandy. The only one that was suitable for a still-local Ward was a request for Missy to widen a window enough to allow a conference table to be pulled out of it. Which didn't help the rest of them, but might give Missy something to do for an hour sometime during the week.
Interestingly, there didn't seem to be any request for the parahuman that'd been captured before the press conference to be un-paralysed. Sure, the paralysis would make them easier to keep contained, but it also seemed to negate their ability to use their powers. That was the kind of thing that they were supposed to keep ahead of, but for someone who could body-jack someone to escape it might be seen as too big of a risk. Or maybe they figured that asking anyone local to undo the paralysis was going to be met with a rejection, if the woman had been targeting Missy and all.
It wasn't Taylor's problem until they asked her either way, so perhaps she should just leave that alone to focus on other things. Like making a video out of the Snitch footage from the morning, since she hadn't done so yet and people getting to see Vicky hit with the cannon shots would be amusing. The last one would require some blurring or pixelation, though. Hmmm. Or perhaps obviously-crudely layered on modesty-preserving clothing? That would require a little bit of thought, but there were nine other shots before then if the initial miss was included.
Chapter 264 Arriving at school on Monday showed that most of the student body was focused on the Endbringers having left and what that meant. A couple of people threw questions about Takara Taylor's way, and others were interested in the video that she'd posted from shooting at Vicky the day before. Though in the latter case the questions were almost all being ignored, since they seemed to be variations on wanting to see an uncensored version of the last shot.
Throughout the day it became obvious that none of the teachers were accepting 'freaking out over the Endbringers' as a valid excuse for not having completed the assignments due, not that Taylor had to worry about that. Except that two different teachers had singled Taylor out to point out that she had a potentially valid excuse for spending extra time focusing on the Endbringers, in case it turned into an attack that had to be dealt with. That she had her assignments completed and turned in meant that nobody else in those classes had an excuse.
Several students glared at her for that, but she ignored them.
After school Taylor headed to the PRT building to prepare for meetings. She was slightly surprised to find out that Takara was already there, but probably shouldn't have been. Or at least, she shouldn't expect the girl to be in school without knowing if she even attended school compared to being homeschooled. And dealing with things regarding her having powers could easily explain not being in school as well, for that matter.
Still, today was unlikely to end up having any need to be in-costume, so Taylor started by checking things around the Wards area. They'd actually locked what had been Sandy's room, a warning coming up if you tried to open it regarding the chances for getting sunburn from the lights in there, and what had been Rosa's workshop had been emptied out and labeled as a spare room for the time being. One with plenty of power and water hookup points, admittedly.
Though on her way back out of the personal areas she noticed that Takara's door had a password override unit installed. An optional feature that none of the other Wards had bothered with before now, though perhaps they already knew that she'd have issues with her phone? When approached the unit defaulted to a Japanese input method, which probably made it more secure than it might otherwise be. Assuming, of course, that the door had been locked in the first place, which it wasn't currently.
Missy and Chris arrived very close to one another, Chris showing that he'd gotten his upgrade kit installed by arriving via pocket dimension portal. Aisha took longer to arrive, apparently having taken the bus, and joined the other three by grabbing a snack and dropping onto one of the couches.
"Why are we all just sitting here?" Chris eventually asked.
"Because we all arrived here with plenty of time to spare," Taylor answered.
"I meant why aren't we showing that we're being good Wards and being early by waiting in the meeting room set aside for this, simultaneously showing that those making us wait are wasting our time by doing so?"
"We're supposed to be meeting here, so we are."
"Oh. So we just have to wait for the rest of the meeting to come to us?"
"Yep. Though now that I look, we might be able to speed that up by leaving and coming back in." The other three gave Taylor looks at that. "Well, not Aisha, but she's the only one who triggered her door alert. The rest of us arrived without passing through the door, so the alerts didn't fire."
There was a pause, before Missy shrugged. "If that's the only indication they're using then I think we wait them out. After all, there's no reason to expect you to check for that kind of thing."
"True."
The scheduled meeting start time came and went, with the four of them sitting there goofing off. Half an hour after the start time Taylor's phone finally rang, and she actually pulled out the phone and put it on speaker.
"Maul here," Taylor answered.
"Good afternoon," Hannah's voice came over the phone. "May I ask where you are?"
"I'm in the Wards common area with the other Wards, minus Giga Ryū who appears to be undergoing cold temperature testing."
"We're bored waiting for the meeting to start as well," Missy added. "Though if it doesn't start in fifteen minutes then regulations say we can go home."
There was a pause, and a sigh. "And I suppose that Kid Win is there with you?"
"Of course," Chris answered.
"Right. We'll be down shortly."
The call disconnected and Taylor put her phone away. The four of them then quickly cleaned up what little mess they'd made while waiting. They were waiting patiently when Director Piggot led Colin and Hannah into the room.
"Good afternoon," Director Piggot greeted. "Now, I'm positive that one of these two can tell me where we went wrong by now, but I'm also positive that at least one of you can point it out as well."
Taylor nodded as the other three Wards pointed at her. "Would you like the short answer or the complete overview?"
Director Piggot looked at Colin and Hannah, who both looked curious, before sighing. "The complete overview."
"You put door alerts on the main door to the Wards area. You ignored the back door, so anyone coming in through it wouldn't have been picked up. The alerts also only fire for the person who opened the door, based on access key, so if one of us opened the door for the others then you'd not get alerted for all of us. Your alert was also low enough by security level that we all could've overridden it at this point, which would've kept it from firing. That three out of the four of us didn't come in through the doors at all, and instead used pocket dimension portals directly into the room, means that the door alerts never had a chance to fire. And even if you had put alerts on the portal frame, which it supports and would automatically happen if you used the 'Wards common area' alert group, I at least have clearance to open a portal without using the frame. As far as I can tell, 'used the beacon to open a portal in the general area' doesn't appear to support alerts being attached to it, presumably because the beacon can't actually say that a portal was opened in that case and instead can only say that it was used as an initial target point for possibly opening a portal. All of the various entry methods would've been covered if you'd set 'entered the area' alerts for us on the entire Wards area."
Colin nodded at that. "And the latter will also cover any other methods for entering the area that come up in the future, such as other teleportation abilities."
Director Piggot turned to stare at Colin. "And you'd figured all of that out as well already?"
"I hadn't given it that much thought. I'd only picked up on you not using the appropriate alert group, but hadn't considered all of the other ways that could've been bypassed. Though I'll note that they could still likely override the 'entered the area' alerts, and any of them entering without their phone turned on wouldn't properly trigger those either. There is no perfect solution, and using multiple only gets you so far as well. I'd recommend attaching a request to things to have someone let you know when everyone has arrived to cover the other possibilities. As a side bonus, that would give you someone else to blame if you're not informed."
"Right, that would be nice, wouldn't it." She shook her head. "Right. We're here for two different topics. The first is that Vista is a known target of a group looking to abduct her for unknown reasons, but ones that are likely to include attempts at brainwashing or the use of master abilities. At the same time, from what we know of their methods so far they shouldn't be a threat. Thus we're going with a very basic precaution set, that is that even if doing non-patrol activities that Vista is to be accompanied by another Ward, a Protectorate member, or a PRT squad. Any questions on that?"
Missy frowned. "Only in that I don't understand why that required bringing us together to have a meeting about it."
"We'll get to that in a minute. Anyone else?"
Taylor shrugged. "I'm finding myself pleasantly surprised that they don't have any interest in grabbing me or Amy."
"That is a good point, honestly. Is that all?" It was quickly obvious that no more comments or questions were coming, so Director Piggot nodded. "Very well. The reason that I decided to make this a meeting instead of a memo is that I want all of us to see how Miss Hebert did with her bus painting before she has a chance to convince someone else to redo it for her. Specifically, I want her available to see the initial reactions, instead of getting a more filtered opinion later. She didn't disappoint and appears to have filed the paperwork last night to indicate that she was done with the bus, so I'd like to do that now."
Taylor's eye twitched at that, but she didn't complain outright. Admittedly, she had considered not telling the other Wards that she'd finished the paint job and instead just having the PRT paint department redo it. Even if the entire thing was no longer eye-searingly bad, she wasn't exactly happy with her complete failure to do a proper fade effect along the sides of the bus. It shouldn't have been that hard to get somewhat decent. Or at least more decent than she'd managed.
The seven of them made their way to the secure garage, after Aisha and Chris both opted not to bother with masks given that everyone that should be down there was cleared for identities anyway. Taylor wasn't sure if she should be surprised that their arrival prompted a collection of others to gather to see the final result of things, since she'd basically escaped notice by finishing the bus up on what was for most of them a day off. That this included Sherrel was the least surprising aspect of that. Grumbling to herself, she went to where the bus was parked and pulled it out into the larger section of the garage where everyone would be able to see it.
She delayed getting out of the bus for a minute, but figured that she had to hear them mock her for the horrible fade eventually. Upon getting out of the bus and coming around to where everyone was standing she found that most of them were just staring at the bus.
"Well?" she finally said.
Sherrel pointed at the bus. "That is your first attempt at painting a vehicle?"
"Yes, and I'd appreciate it if you took my lack of experience into account before telling me how horrible the paint job is."
"I painted that thing four times before giving up and going for the intentionally horrible neon stripes out of frustration over being unable to get a flat color to come out right. And I'm the bullshit vehicle tinker! Then you come along and make it look like it's fucking traveling through the clouds on your first try?"
That had Taylor blinking, and she turned to look at the bus. And, ignoring her cringing over the 'fade' being nowhere near consistent, she could now see what Sherrel was talking about. The 'horrible fade' was perfectly horrible to accomplish a consistent effect of wisps of cloud along the side of the bus. It was, in fact, too good to be an accident.
Taylor: Okay, there's no way that I did that on my own.
Amy: Did what?
Taylor: Screw up my fade attempt on the bus just right to make it something entirely different.
UMR: Data
That was almost, but not quite, worthy of a facepalm. Of course her tinker snark would decide that the bus's purpose included 'look cool' and would ensure that the paint job was suitably cool as a result. Why wouldn't it, beyond having had to be convinced that the previous paint job was a safety hazard?
On the other hand, it did explain why she hadn't 'given up' on the fade idea after the initial pass had gone horribly. Not noticing that she was in 'tinkering' mode was annoying, but it made a lot more sense than her just being stubborn and seeing something that obviously wasn't working through to its completion. And apparently she didn't have to worry about being mocked for the paint job being absolutely horrible, but at the same time couldn't take proper credit for it either. After all, if she'd tinker-painted it then it wasn't her skill on display anymore.
She idly wondered just how many other things were going to end up with that kind of annoying distinction in the future, but was distracted by being dragged around the bus so that the maintenance department could gush over the details that she'd gotten into the paint job.
That evening Taylor ended up showing her father pictures of the bus. Amy had actually traveled to the PRT building to see it in person, and Director Piggot had insisted on scheduling a PR event for Saturday in order to show the bus off. She'd even mumbled something about 'bragging rights', and Taylor hadn't asked for details, but part of that was holding off on posting official pictures of the bus until then. Or unofficial pictures, for that matter.
They'd taken a couple dozen pictures, of course, and then abused the sensor drone systems to get a full three-dimensional rendering of the entire bus for promotional purposes. There were even plans to have a bunch of t-shirts made up for use with the t-shirt cannon, though hopefully those would be more along the lines of 'pictures of the Wards' instead of 'pictures of the bus'. Because who would want pictures of the bus on their shirt?
And for added protection, the bus was now parked in the 'visitor' lot of the Broadcast Administrator pocket dimension, ensuring that no curious PRT staff could get pictures ahead of time. That this would allow for other tricks on Saturday was a side bonus, not that they couldn't have made things work without doing that. Though she didn't like the comment that'd been made about it preventing 'possible sabotage'. Shouldn't the garage be a little more secure than that if they trusted it enough for it to have a normal parking spot there?
Either way, they had a few days of 'normal' before then. Missy had opted to ignore the non-patrol request for her time for now and wanted to go out on patrol, so they'd be doing that tomorrow. Whether they'd be doing 'two groups of two' or 'one group of three on a more dangerous route with the fourth on console' was undecided right now.
At least it looked like they hadn't screwed up Takara's costume, since she was cleared for patrolling in Brockton Bay. Not to the same degree as any of the older Wards, temperature-range wise, but she should be good for anything they normally got.
Tuesday morning Taylor woke to a couple of alerts on her phone. Apparently someone had decided to test Kenta, found where he was currently staying, and fired a rocket propelled grenade at the house in the middle of the night. Only to hit the condemned house next door instead, but that was enough to wake everyone up. That led to Kenta and Lee chasing the idiot that had made the attempt, only to not actually get him.
No, the pleasure of getting the man apparently went to Takara, who had gone full-dragon in dragon-print pajamas and somehow gotten ahead of the teleporting duo. She'd been caught on security cameras tormenting the man, up until he tried to stab her with a knife. Which she took from him and started attacking him with from random points. Kenta and Lee had arrived to see this happening and apparently opted to not interfere, instead Lee was seen leaving and returning with pants and a cell phone for Kenta.
From that, Taylor gathered that if Takara had a clear enough 'target' that they didn't even need to be near her for her powers to properly lock on to them. Which probably meant that once she'd decided on a target that it was quite possibly going to be literally impossible to escape her. The problem there was going to be keeping track of her if she ever locked onto a long-range teleporter.
Waking her up in the middle of the night also didn't alleviate her need to sleep, given that she obviously fell asleep in Kenta's arms shortly after the man she'd been attacking was arrested by the police. That he'd run to the police cruiser to get away from Takara had been amusing, and she was intelligent enough to let him do so.
Taylor did dig up phone numbers and sent a message informing the four adults that none of the available footage showed Takara giving up the knife, so unless that happened outside of the posted footage then they should check to see if she still had it.
Unsurprisingly, gossip when they finally got to school was entirely focused on Takara. Split between several different conversational lines, one of which Missy ended up admitting that she didn't know how to feel about. No longer being the ENE Wards 'Little Miss Badass' annoyed her, because she'd only somewhat recently gotten that label. But graduating to being an older badass meant that she wasn't being seen as a kid anymore.
Of course, among those talking about that was a general thought that the entire ENE Wards counted as a team of badasses right now. Except that they excluded Aisha, as super-hiding-skills weren't right for a badass and she hadn't been reported as participating in larger battles. Which meant that Taylor was probably going to have to deal with the girl trying to find a way to prove that she was a badass, so as to not be outdone by Takara.
That was likely going to be annoying.
Hopefully it wouldn't be something that was going to start today, compared to Aisha taking time to come up with a way to prove that she was a badass at some point in the future.
Kenta had snorted when he got the message from Miss Hebert. Of course they'd gotten the knife away from Takara, the police had needed it as evidence. Though he'd easily admit that he was impressed that the detail had been noticed in the first place, since he'd only realized it when the police had asked about the knife. Then again, he'd had the distraction of needing to take care of her as she fell asleep, so it wasn't entirely his fault for not thinking about the knife at that point.
Of course, even if the police hadn't needed the knife then he'd eventually have taken it from Takara anyway. It was the wrong size for her hands, was low quality construction, and hadn't been well maintained. No, that was the entirely wrong knife for her in a number of ways, especially given some of the limits of her powers. Instead, since she seemed to take to the knife so well, Lee was going to ensure that she had proper training and then a special order of six identical knives would be given to her instead. Ones that were in the proper style for her, sized properly, and were of decent construction. Complete with a special harness to hold all of them at once.
Granted, the PRT would probably want Takara to go through their own knife lessons before allowing her to take the knives on patrol with her, but that was okay with him. It was entirely possible that they'd teach her things that Lee didn't, if only due to coming at things from a different cultural background, and that could give her tricks that Lee hadn't thought of. Convincing Miku, on the other hand, was probably going to take a little more effort.
Taylor sighed as she got into costume, thinking about Aisha. Who had just volunteered to run the console to get extra time to study, as Brian had apparently told her that if she wanted to get more dangerous equipment then she had to get her grades up before he'd sign any of the paperwork for it. Which was probably a masterstroke on Brian's part, because it was likely that the girl would lose interest before she got her grades up to whatever level he'd insisted on, and if she didn't then she'd proven that she was more responsible by getting them there.
There was no way in hell that the other three were going to point out that 'has more dangerous weapons' didn't automatically lead to 'is more badass'. Especially given that her entire power set involved people forgetting about her and thus drastically reducing her chances of being remembered for being a badass. Instead, she was probably going to be remembered more as some form of 'sneaky' and/or 'cheating', which wasn't bad in and of itself but didn't easily lead to 'badass'.
Oh well. It easily solved the 'who runs the console today' issue while they ran a more dangerous, at least on paper, route. Though today would be a mixed route, with Taylor being in the air and both Chris and Missy on the ground. Partially because Chris had been cleared to run a new weapon configuration that wasn't entirely compatible with his hoverboard yet, and partially because it was a lot easier for idiots to attack them if they were on the ground. Taylor was actually the 'emergency backup' today, as Missy wanted to see how many people were willing to go after her on patrol.
Still, this was likely to be one of the few three-person patrols they'd get for the next few months without having Takara along in some capacity, so they should make the best of it. To that end, having the Snitch and scout drone out was going to be a must. Or perhaps having Missy carrying the Snitch would be the better course of action, since her visor didn't have the integrated sensor system and she was hoping to be the center of attention?
It wasn't long before the three of them were off. Chris and Missy left together through the front door, while Taylor took off from the roof to shadow them on her platform.
They hadn't gotten permission to 'bait the idiots' by posting their intended route before going out, which meant that the start of their patrol was fairly boring. But eventually people picked up on the route that Chris and Missy were following, though they obviously couldn't know which of the variants they were using. They also hadn't used routes from this set much since the routes were all changed, but they'd intentionally picked one that they had used before. At Missy's insistence.
Thus it was that as they approached a specific intersection, one of the few places that the route compressed down by force to a single street due to the neighboring buildings, that they found a trap had been laid out. As soon as Chris and Missy were crossing the intersection the trap was sprung, a cage of force appearing to contain them even as gas started to be released into the cage.
The two looked around, and a very careful check of the cage was done, before they opted to go non-verbal on the console text channel.
V: I think that's knockout gas.
K: And whatever this field is, it's holding the gas in with us.
M: It's a magnetic containment force field that relies on the six generator points being very precisely positioned to function. Exact distances, perfectly spaced from each other, that kind of thing.
There was a pause as they processed that, and Aisha was the first to pipe up about it.
C: They're trying to trap Vista with a trap that depends on things being the correct distance from one another?
C: What kind of moron are we dealing with here?
M: The kind that's looking impatient around the corner, assuming that the parahuman around the corner is responsible. I think they're expecting the knockout gas to be knocking those two out.
K: Yeah, that isn't happening right now.
V: Can I break the stupid trap, or do we want to wait for them to come and whine at us about the gas not working?
K: I vote for the latter unless there's some sign that the gas is actually working on us.
M: Works for me, though only if it takes less than, say, ten minutes.
P: We concur, but I'm dispatching a squad to your approximate location now as well. Hopefully this one we can hold onto, but if it takes longer than ten minutes for them to arrive then please hold off on doing anything.
Well, that settled some of that, though it only took eight minutes for the parahuman to come around the corner, stopping at the edge of the force field. He was wearing a blue and red set of power armor that had plus and minus signs around it and that covered the lower half of his face. Some of that seemed to be because he had a rebreather and oxygen tank integrated into the armor. "Why the hell aren't you two knocked out yet?"
Missy snorted. "You expect air freshener to knock us out?"
He blinked at that. "Air freshener? I know I didn't put air freshener into the knockout gas canisters." He then shook his head. "I suppose it doesn't matter much. The field should easily stop you from calling for help, and eventually the oxygen levels will drop to the point where you collapse anyway."
Chris chuckled at that. "You know, you've made several mistakes."
"Oh? And what would a brat like you know?"
"You used knockout gas that doesn't work on us for starters. We've already got help on the way, because apparently you don't know how our phones work. You've failed to ensure that we don't have backup available outside of the force field. Oh, and the biggest mistake is using a force field that relies on precise distances to trap Vista."
Missy took that as her cue to expand space between two of the generator units behind them and crunch space between the two between them and the man. The result was spectacular, the six generators suddenly lighting up incredibly brightly and being pulled together. They did so around Chris and Missy, and exploded when they came together. Missy had expanded space to keep it away from her and Chris, but the unidentified parahuman wasn't as lucky.
Taylor dropping in behind him and pulling the hidden emergency release handle on his power armor didn't help his position, of course. He actually looked like he was going to cry, though some of that might've been because he'd foolishly included a self-destruct routine in the emergency release routine. Which meant that all of the armor pieces that fell off of him superheated until they melted, something that might've burned him had Taylor not grabbed him and pulled him into the air.
To add insult to injury, the no-longer-contained knockout gas then knocked him out. They ended up tying him up, bringing him to the PRT squad that had been sent off, and waiting half an hour for the knockout gas to disperse before the rest of the debris could be collected. With Missy grumbling about nobody worth a shit being involved in trying to grab her. Apparently Taylor had all the luck there, with actual threats going after her. Not that Taylor agreed in this case, but she didn't think that Missy was in the mood to discuss the benefits of stupid people going after her.
Taylor did note that the two other parahumans that had been keeping their distance from the intersection left just before the three of them got moving again, without coming any closer than they'd been from the start of things. They also left on a course perpendicular to the patrol route, likely meaning that they weren't planning on engaging the three, and the direction was also wrong for setting up an ambush further along. Though if they were with the apparent tinker or had just happened to be in the area and decided to watch the show was harder to tell.
"Okay," Irma said as they headed back to report in to Nana. "As far as we can tell, they basically no-sold Natalie and Michael. To a greater degree than expected."
Anne nodded. "I don't know how they no-sold Natalie, though perhaps they only used parahumans against her without even realizing they had to do that? If no non-parahumans interacted with the one she was in before Nana's anonymous tip then they could've kept her contained by pure luck."
"Or the rumors are correct and they've got secret methods that let them track parahumans and were able to follow her jumping from person to person."
"Right, right. Though I'm surprised at how easily they took down Michael."
Irma looked at Anne. "Really?"
"That knockout gas he uses is usually far more effective. I was hoping that we'd be able to rush in while he was gloating over the two unconscious bodies, only for them to ignore the gas entirely."
"He hasn't used it since that odd flu went around, as far as I know. I wouldn't be surprised if the changes it makes render it ineffective and he never noticed."
Anne shook her head. "No, it can't be that. We know he had to have gotten the flu as well, and it knocked him out pretty much right away. Maul didn't make skin contact that I could see, but he still fell unconscious once he was no longer protected by his face mask."
"Oh. That's...huh. Okay, I'll admit it, I'm curious as to how that worked. But if the PRT have both of our targets, are we sticking around or bailing?"
"You know as well as I do that Nana is going to make that call. Though not being able to bring Michael back to face family justice is probably going to be the larger factor there. Do you think Nana will want us to break him out just to get him back home?"
Irma shivered at that. "I hope the hell not. The Wards here are all impossible to deal with, I don't want to get first-hand knowledge of what the Protectorate is like."
Chapter 265 The three Wards eventually finished their patrol, with Chris being annoyed that the only thing they'd run into was the completely ineffective trap. As such he'd not actually gotten to test his weapon configuration, which apparently was intended for groups. So even if Taylor hadn't taken out the parahuman so quickly it wouldn't have been a good test of things. Sure, he could've given it a shot anyway, but they'd all agreed that depriving a tinker of their power armor was the far better option under the circumstances.
They did have Taylor take a look at the man to ensure that there wasn't a medical issue caused by the knockout gas, since he hadn't woken up yet. Upon finding nothing wrong beyond the gas being longer-lasting than expected they dragged him off to be teleported to another region while he was still unconscious, running on the theory that he was working with the woman that they'd already captured. What region that ended up being didn't really matter to Taylor, but she was warned that they were looking to get special permission for her to make a trip to where they'd sent the woman to have her paralysis dealt with on a weekday afternoon.
There were some complaints that they hadn't captured working versions of any of the man's technology, but they were minor complaints. Destroying the trap and getting him out of his power armor were seen as good things overall. That the power armor had been rigged to self-destruct was unfortunate, but nobody expected them to beat on him until his armor broke enough to be removed without the emergency release handle.
Heading home after that was easy enough for all of the Wards. All of them could leave with their pocket dimensions, even if Aisha seemed to keep forgetting to set up her upgrade unit so that she could arrive with hers.
Wednesday morning brought with it coverage of the attempt to grab Missy, including pictures of the holes in the street created by the exploding force field generators and the power armor. That the latter were more 'melted dents' than 'potholes'. The PRT had even admitted that they'd moved both parahumans they'd captured attempting to get their hands on Missy out of the region already, likely in an attempt to prevent people from making attempts to break them out of holding.
Sadly, even the news was doubting their ability to get prisoners out of the area that quickly, so it probably wouldn't have a lot of effect on any allies that the two had. The real question was how many they still had in the area, with only three non-local parahumans known to be around right now. The girl with the rope, her partner with the scissors, and a man who'd apparently shown off on the Boardwalk juggling balls of fire. Taylor had, somehow, missed the last one, but given that he'd only been seen doing said show on the Boardwalk there was a chance that he was a recently-triggered local.
The PRT had extra people working out before their shifts in the gym as well, though not enough to make it feel crowded. There was whining about extra master/stranger checks and scanning thrown in, that for some reason didn't extend to the Wards. Though if the Wards were the targets then one of them being compromised was probably going to mean they didn't show up at all instead of giving opportunities for them to break free of control.
Really, the only significant annoyance of the morning was that the students at Arcadia were more perceptive than the news had been and wanted to know how the hell Taylor had known about the handle on the power armor. Apparently it was obviously well hidden in several stills captured of the back of the man's armor, yet Taylor had also very obviously gone straight for it.
She was almost disappointed that her snarky comment about having read the manual for the armor was accepted, with people switching to looking for someone selling generic power armor that could be customized. Had any of them considered how difficult it generally was for tinkers to maintain each other's stuff? Customizing some other tinker's armor for your own use would probably be a waste of time in the short run, let alone the long run.
After school Taylor made her way to the Wards area and got into costume. She was going to go with Missy to deal with the request for getting a conference table out of a window, in addition to getting a refrigerator out of the basement of the same building. The latter was apparently also a biohazard that they didn't want to open, having somehow been left plugged in and full of food when the kitchenette area it was in had been sealed off nine years previous. It'd been discovered the day before as they worked on remodeling and they were paying extra for Missy to take care of it today. Taylor was going to be extra insurance for the possible biohazard aspect.
Aisha and Chris were going to be doing a Boardwalk run, mainly to give Aisha plenty of people to hide from along the way. Taylor hadn't been aware of it until Chris had pointed it out, but apparently there was a 'leaderboard' on PHO for 'figuring out that Hulder was there the fastest'. Very informal, and hard for them to actually time well given that you needed video evidence to do so properly, but they took it fairly seriously anyway. At the same time, they'd also preemptively disqualified the other Wards due to their 'extra experience' being unfair.
Missy was the next to arrive after Taylor, and got into her costume right away. They didn't wait for Aisha and Chris to arrive, instead heading for the roof to take Taylor's platform to the government building that needed help with things. The PRT officer on the console let the city know that they were coming, so as to waste as little time as possible when they got there, and two crews were just finishing up preparing for them when they arrived.
They started with expanding a basement window and a couple of hallway doors enough to get the fridge out, with Missy opting to also crunch space through the area at the same time. Before they even got to this point they'd apparently wrapped the fridge up in layers of plastic and duct tape. Moving the fridge into a waiting truck only took them a few minutes, but Taylor gave it some odd looks when there were additional bangs after the group moving the fridge retreated from the truck itself.
Profuse thanks were given for making it easy to get the fridge out of the building, and then they were informed that it would probably be an hour to get the crane into position for moving the conference table out of an upper window.
"Where is the thing going?" Missy asked at that.
"It's going into another office across town," the woman liaising with them answered. "But for now we're putting in the back of a rental truck."
Missy nodded, then headed into the building. Taylor followed, suspecting that Missy would appreciate some help. It wasn't long before they made it up to the room with the conference table, which had been partially cleared and had warnings on the window. The younger girl opened the window, looked down from it, and nodded to herself again before stepping to the side. A moment later the window twisted, the view through it doing impossible things before settling down to show the ground outside.
"Grab the other end of this?" Missy asked.
"No problem," Taylor answered. The two then lifted the table up on their own and walked it out the window and to the front of the building, where several workers looked dumbfounded at the act.
With the table outside, Missy popped back into the building to close the window before coming out the long way. By the time she made it downstairs again they'd brought the truck around, with a group of men working to get the table into the truck.
"Why didn't you tell them to wait for me so that we could just move it for them?" Missy asked.
Taylor shrugged. "I decided that we hurt their egos enough already."
"Oh."
"That and they didn't ask, with one of them issuing orders. I think they might be union as well, so us doing even as much as we already did might've been close enough to proverbial stepping on toes."
"Okay, I guess. We done here then?"
"Yep. They even signed off on things while you were coming back down. Want to head back the fast way or the slow way?"
Missy's response was to roll her eyes and pull out her pocket dimension pistol. Taylor tagged along with her, but let her platform fly back to the PRT building on its own. That would be far easier than popping up to the roof with it.
That evening Taylor was informed that Takara should be ready for her first patrol on Friday, and that they'd prefer that she do so before the PR event on Saturday. The message also included Takara's request that her first patrol be with both Taylor and Missy. Which was of absolutely no surprise whatsoever, but they'd have to get the girl used to patrolling with the other two as well. How to get her to agree to it was another question entirely, of course, but probably started with having her with one of them at a time.
Deciding to take the easy way out, she gave everyone the next day off. Well, Takara had her last day of classes, but the older four of them would have the day off. Then they'd run two patrols on Friday and have the PR event on Saturday. Sunday was a little more up in the air, as she had a request to keep the day free for herself 'just in case'. In case of what wasn't mentioned, but scheduling Missy to patrol with Takara and whichever of the other two wanted to run the console least was easy enough.
With that done, she took the time to read over the patrol report from Aisha and Chris. They'd run into two pickpockets and a shoplifter, with one of the pickpockets and the shoplifter having each been spotted by Aisha shortly after she'd dropped into a pocket for her 'hide and seek' game with the locals and tourists. The criminals obviously failed the 'remember that she was there at all' portion of things. A quick review of PHO showed that people apparently did have some brains though, as the most common reactions to seeing Chris on his own were 'look for someone flying' and 'assume Aisha was somewhere in the area'. The former much more often than the latter.
All in all, it'd been a reasonably uneventful day for them.
Thursday morning brought with it the start of December, some snow flurries that accomplished nothing beyond making drivers panic, and a request from Dragon to make time to visit Las Vegas to help with some security systems. Apparently one of them was starting to act up and Dragon couldn't figure out what was going wrong, but they probably had a few weeks before it was going to be a serious problem. They also needed a week's warning before Taylor headed out that way.
Telling Dragon that she could try and arrange things for a week from Saturday was easy enough, though that also included a question of how they were going to play Taylor helping in the first place. After all, the world didn't know she was a tinker of any description yet, and they couldn't use 'can talk to the powers of the dead tinkers' as a good excuse either. Or at least that sounded like a really stupid option.
It was after Taylor, Amy, and Vicky had finished up their workout and were on their way to get breakfast that an alert came in. Frowning, Taylor opened it up, then sighed.
"What's wrong?" Amy asked.
"Aisha," Taylor replied, getting looks of curiosity from the other two. "Apparently the news was doing a segment on the horrible protection from the elements that many of the bus stops have for students."
"I don't see how that warrants you sighing."
"Someone gawking at the news crew ran off the road into the very bus stop the camera was pointed at, while they were broadcasting live. With Aisha rushing in and grabbing the two kids already in the bus stop and dragging them into her pocket just before the bus stop was obliterated."
"Oh."
Taylor sighed again. "And she broke her leg in the process, though that was because her pocket was forceful in ejecting the three of them. It doesn't like her dragging others in on the best of days, dragging two people in on short notice like that was apparently a strain. She'll need some healing, though my message says that after school is going to be fine. Apparently a broken leg won't prevent her from going through paperwork."
Amy and Vicky both winced at that.
Gossip at school had centered on Aisha. Nobody was willing to fault her for how she got outed, because the alternative was unthinkable. That she had to put herself in harm's way to pull it off helped. Most of the discussion actually centered around whether or not she'd change her costume now that she didn't need to hide that she was black. Something that Taylor didn't think was likely. The bulk of questions thrown Taylor's way were regarding whether or not this would change how the Wards patrolled.
Being able to truthfully answer that she wouldn't know until groups such as the PRT and Youth Guard got their say in was nice, even if there were zero expectations of changes on her part.
After school Taylor had swung by the hospital to heal Aisha. That annoyed Amy, because Taylor had been able to leave earlier due to a free period. Brian had been there as well, with his own pile of paperwork, and Aisha was looking smug because she'd finished her pile already.
Taking a quick look at Aisha's pile after healing the girl's leg, Taylor snorted. "So you went through all of this?"
"Yep," Aisha answered.
"You do realize that outing yourself in the process of saving a life made you eligible for the three page short form, right? Which you appear to have left on top of the long form."
There was a pause at that, Brian snorting, before Aisha swore. "I filled most of that out for nothing?"
"Apparently. I recommend reading things more closely, especially when they give you an 'instructions' section on the first sheet."
"Much easier than my pile," Brian added. "Though I've set aside the sections that didn't need to be filled out because of how your identity was outed."
Aisha glared at both of them, and Taylor left her to the mercy of the doctors. Heading home to drop off her school bag was easy enough, at which point she headed for the PRT building. Even though she'd marked the day as time off for herself they'd asked for her to go heal the woman that she'd paralysed. That shouldn't take long, hopefully, though what to do afterwards was another question entirely.
Amy: What, not going to heal up the rest of the patients while you're at it?
Taylor: What other patients? The nurse said it's been a quiet day other than the morning's incident.
Amy: Oh. So I have no reason to swing by?
Taylor: None whatsoever.
Amy: Huh. Wanna go shopping?
Taylor: For what?
Amy: Ideas, mainly. I have no idea what to get for anyone, nor what to put on my own Christmas list.
Taylor: That could work, though it'll have to wait until I get back.
Amy: Back from where?
Taylor: No clue yet, but with teleporters it won't take long.
Actually going through the teleporter was annoying, since they'd added 'connect the individual control systems together' to the security protocols. What could've been a two minute process took fifteen, at which point Taylor found herself in the midwest. Heading down to the holding cells to heal the woman's paralysis was easy enough, but getting into the woman's cell took longer due to extra security measures that they had in place.
Interestingly, they opted to have Taylor partially heal her paralysis at first, leaving her lower body paralysed. Which actually meant inducing new paralysis and then healing the original instance. They then let the woman try to take over a guard's body, only to discover that she literally couldn't complete the process. Only when the remaining paralysis was dealt with could she use her powers properly. Of course, that nicely demonstrated some of the added security in place, because as soon as an unexpected drop in the number of people in the holding cell happened the entire thing locked down.
Amusingly, the woman then demanded to be let out of the cell or she'd cause the person she was in bodily harm. She seemed to have forgotten that Taylor was still there and had previously forced her out of someone. Getting her out of the guard didn't take long, but by then Amy was leaving class.
Taylor: I don't suppose you can whip up an implant that controls paralysis, with a timer for how long the paralysis is disabled? We don't trust that it would be able to get a shutdown signal while she's in a person.
Amy: That...hmmm. The best solution might actually be a cycle. Charge off of the body, and when it reaches full charge it then allows movement until the charge runs out. Then it would switch back to charging again.
Taylor: I think that would be acceptable. They don't want to have to call us out to get her out of people every week.
Amy: That does sound annoying, yes.
Amy took a little over two hours to make an implant, then Taylor opened a portal for her to come install it. Included was checking over the paperwork the PRT provided authorizing it as part of ensuring that the woman could be imprisoned safely, both her own safety and the safety of those guarding her. Fully testing the device would take longer, but ideally the woman would get an hour and a half or so of being able to use her legs every six or so hours. That would then allow her to use her powers but wouldn't allow her to stay inside of someone indefinitely, as the paralysis should force her out of anyone she was in.
An agreement was also needed to remove the device at a later date, should the woman not end up incarcerated for life. Taylor could remove it just as easily as Amy could, so both agreed to be available in the event the woman was set free. Those agreements did have an interesting caveat, and the woman didn't seem to catch it, in that if she successfully escaped using her powers before a judge passed sentence or before said sentence was completed then she would forfeit the removal.
By the time all of that was taken care of it was too late to go shopping randomly. Instead they headed out from the PRT building they'd ended up in and found a local restaurant to have dinner at, with it being early enough locally to not be in the middle of the dinner rush. They were recognized, possibly because they'd gotten out the minivan to get there and it was somewhat distinctive, and people posted about them being there online, but beyond that they were generally left alone.
They did get an audience when they left though, watching them drive into the pocket dimension right there in the parking lot.
That evening Taylor was informed that Aisha wouldn't be patrolling the next day, which meant figuring out what to do with Chris. It didn't take much to send him a message asking if he'd rather run the console or take the afternoon off. With that done, she returned to looking over the tracking threads going nuts over the completely unexpected 'dinner in the midwest' trick. Not that they weren't used to Taylor and Amy showing up in odd places, admittedly, but not on a weeknight.
Chris eventually responded, saying that he'd take the console slot, so Taylor marked him down for that. No other weekend plans looked to need changing, so that was good. Though her Sunday was still entirely up in the air with the 'just in case' bit, hopefully she'd get details on that before Sunday itself. In fact, she submitted a request for more information, because she wasn't looking forward to a sudden surprise.
Deciding to be a little proactive, she double-checked the patrol route that they'd be using the next day, tweaking it a little bit to hopefully ensure that they wouldn't have problems with Takara making it through the entire thing. Mostly by going for 'all the shortcuts' instead of 'balanced out to the average length with shorter and longer segments selected' until they knew that the younger girl could handle the longer route.
Friday morning Taylor met up with Amy, Vicky, and Missy in the gym. Missy wanted to know how Taylor and Amy made it to a location without any record of having a beacon, and seemed annoyed when she found out that it'd been due to using teleporters for a non-patrol activity. That annoyance abated upon learning that it was medical stuff, as that was 'boring' and wouldn't have been anything she could've helped with anyway.
When the four got to school there were more questions about the trip, only for Taylor and Amy to both play the 'privileged medical information' card and refuse to answer any more detailed questions. The student body was well trained and dropped that aspect of things entirely, switching to questions about how they liked the food and service at the restaurant instead. Those questions were answered a little more readily, even if neither girl was all that interested in going into detail.
Come lunchtime things shifted, as a police transport had been attacked during morning classes. Whoever had done so had used a tinkertech gun that had converted the gasoline in the tank to something like molasses, then left when they realized that there wasn't anyone in the transport. The police were pissed because the transport was being run through its paces after being fixed from the last time it'd been attacked, and now they had to deal with cleaning out the entire fuel system at a minimum.
The number of students coming up with ideas to 'trap' this mysterious person was also interesting, and if 'attacks a lone police transport van' was any indication then most of the traps would likely work. But if the person had learned from their mistake then they'd be a lot more cautious with future attempts. It was hard to say until they had more than the single data point. And that was before taking into account that the police had admitted that they didn't have anyone in custody today.
Though Taylor did make a note containing a couple of the ideas, if only for future reference. At least one of them would require tinkertech that she didn't know if they had, but that sounded interesting enough to ask about. Submitting it all shortly before the repeaters shut off was more a matter of timing than anything else.
Taylor, Chris, and Missy had ended up waiting for Takara after school. Not because Takara had school herself and they had to wait for her to get out, they'd learned that she was homeschooled, but because they hadn't gotten stuck in the traffic jam that had occurred when a drunk idiot had run a red light and hit a bus in the intersection. Granted, Chris had needed to get to a private place out of sight, but that was easy enough to handle, and then pocket dimensions bypassed the traffic entirely.
Still, Takara eventually arrived, at which point Taylor ended up helping her get into her costume. They got signed into the console, the map up on their visors, and ground rules were laid down for Takara. Most of which involved not straying too far from the older two. Not that Taylor or Missy thought that was going to be a problem. The three then left on foot, with a cloaked platform following them and the scout drone scanning ahead of them.
On paper they were running a reasonably dangerous route. It passed through the edge of gang territories in particular, making it something that they normally wouldn't be bringing a younger Ward along for. But Takara was exempt from that, and this was safer than might otherwise be expected. Mainly because almost a third of the 'gang territories' were ABB, which wasn't targeting Wards in general and would be doubly-crazy to go after Takara. Unless, of course, Kenta wanted his daughter to have targets, though who he'd find crazy enough to go along with that kind of plan was another question entirely.
Taylor had set them so that the ABB portion of things would be first, and Takara got to do a lot of happy waving at people she recognized as they passed through it. Most of whom seemed to find the entire situation amusing. But it wasn't until they approached the border where the Elite and Empire territories met that they actually found trouble. Specifically, the Elite and Empire were fighting each other, and Takara had gone to her initial 'drawn' state at the first sound of a gunshot.
"Maul to console," Taylor said after examining things. "Looks like there are two groups of normals fighting in the middle of our route. No parahumans to speak of. Unless there's an objection, I think I'd like to see how Giga Ryū handles a group."
There was a pause before the response came back through Chris. "Console to Maul, permission granted, but the PRT side would like a minute or two to try and get a live feed working on this end before you start. I figure the recordings will be good enough, personally."
"Acknowledged." Taylor then turned to Takara. "You ready?"
Takara grinned and nodded. "Hai! Er, yes!"
"Okay then. Let's head over and see what kind of targets we've got."
It wasn't long before they, courtesy of Missy, were on a rooftop overlooking the battle. There were four groups, two on each side, and most of the fighting right now was shooting from cover. A street over there were signs of explosives having been used, so the battle was likely moving every so often. Takara examined things, shifted to her full dragon form, and then all of a sudden was in five places at once.
Taylor wasn't sure how, but the instance of the girl on the roof had somehow vanished by slipping between Taylor's legs.
The shock of a little dragon running around them changed the entire battle, with a lot of amusing screams and yells of shock. Taylor pulled out a small bag of popcorn as she watched, though she also occasionally punched someone from the rooftop. Missy had a bag of chips, but had 'looped' the streets and alleys to keep everyone contained first.
"Maul?" Takara asked, an instance having appeared on the rooftop again.
"Yes?" Taylor replied, looking over at her.
The girl looked like she was concentrating on getting things right. "May I please borrow your wok?"
Blinking, Taylor looked at the girl. Then with a shrug she pulled off the wok and handed it to the instance on the roof. It was obviously a little heavy for her at first, but it wasn't long before it shifted to 'drawn', then vanished behind the girl's back. Moments later a clang could be heard from the street below.
"Thank you," Takara said, before that instance of her vanished again.
"We might need to get her a pile of amusing weapons," Missy noted. "If only for laughs."
Taylor nodded. "Yeah."
After half an hour of driving the gang members crazy, the fighting finally came to an end. Taylor and Missy had popped down to tie everyone up before the police arrived to cart them all away, and they found that Takara had taken all of the guns and lined them up against a wall. Safeties on, but still loaded. She'd also collected all of the knives and a baseball bat with nails sticking out of it.
Taylor had given Takara a granola bar and a juice box while the police collected all of the gang members and their weapons, a copy of the footage had been requested for the police records, and then the three had moved on. The copy the police got was probably going to be more complete than the copy that Taylor was already working on making for posting online, but the entire thing was going to be hilarious.
The three smaller incidents before they made it back to the PRT building, Takara starting to tire out, weren't nearly as interesting. Mainly because those involved gave up upon seeing Taylor or Missy, and thus didn't give Takara anything to work with in regards to fighting back or trying to escape. All four Wards ended up getting a meal together in the cafeteria before getting Takara back into her street clothes in time for Lee to pick her up. Though Taylor did get a USB stick from the gift shop and drop a hastily-assembled but fairly complete video of the entire patrol on it for Kenta and Miku to look over.
With Takara gone, the other three then went over what Taylor had been working on for posting online, the other two providing their input on the final product. After an hour of working at it they had something they were all happy with, and the PRT had pre-approved it being posted. Taylor uploaded the video and made the initial thread, with Missy getting the first reply in and Chris chiming in that he wished he could've been there in person instead of running the console.
The reaction come morning was certainly going to be interesting.
Chapter 266 Saturday morning Taylor started her day by checking the thread from Takara's first patrol. Which had exploded overnight, and included a number of 'remixes'. Apparently a video containing a living cartoon running around harassing and beating up a bunch of gang members lent itself to a lot of 'creative additions'. Like visual sound effects, cartoon sound effect overlays, cropping to hide some of the seeming 'offscreen teleportation' tricks that were more Takara literally being in multiple places at once, and at least one person who put up a counter for 'number of guns and/or knives safely collected and put off to the side'. Plus one entry for 'collected by swallowing, then still put off to the side as though nothing unusual had happened' that was more amusing because Takara had chomped down on the man's hand and lower arm while he tried to shoot her, but when he finally pulled free he hadn't had the gun anymore. Though at least some of her success was probably attributable to the man having run out of ammo before she got to that point.
Amused by the whole thing, she met up with Amy in the gym and laughed at some of the various takes on the patrol while they worked out. Most of the content was directly from the battle, but others had captured various points. Kenta had even posted and thanked the Elite and Empire thugs for giving his daughter such a wonderful first patrol. He followed it with a seven page teardown of their tactics, with links to references, and a statement that he hoped they did better next time.
The mods hadn't been sure how to handle that one, but had shut most of the follow-up discussion down when it started going weird places. Though a general 'tactics' discussion thread, supposedly for paintball and laser tag, had cropped up in the general discussion area to replace that discussion chain.
After they'd had breakfast they split up. Amy was heading home to meet up with the rest of New Wave, who planned on showing up in force as a show of support to the Wards. Taylor instead headed for the storage room that they'd apparently used to hold the ammo for the t-shirt cannon. That needed to be loaded into the bus, and the t-shirt cannon itself set up. She also had to go over a couple of changes in the overall plan, as they'd decided that having the bus departing from the PRT building's roof wasn't going to be a good enough show.
Amusingly, they'd provided snap-in shelves for around the pop-up point in the bus, designed to hold the boxes that they'd piled the ammo into, as well as a pair of 'quivers' to be attached to either side of the cannon itself that could hold a dozen rounds between them. Filling everything, fitting the cannon to the mount point for it, and ensuring that they had plenty of air pressure was tedious, but fairly quickly accomplished. It helped that most of the stuff was essentially ready to go and just had to be dropped in place.
With that taken care of, Taylor finally went to get into costume. She was personally going with her 'dress' jacket, as it would be easier to drive the bus without her weapon harness, but planned on bringing the stop sign along for laughs. The rest of the Wards would be in their full patrol gear, but hadn't arrived yet. But that was okay, because Taylor had other things to do. She dropped the stop sign into what was intended to be an umbrella holder on the bus, admittedly a very over-engineered one, and dropped the scout drone onto one of the seats before driving the entire bus out of the pocket dimension and into the parking area on the Rig. They brought a portable cooler full of drinks and a box of snacks to her there, which were loaded into two spots at the front of the bus.
"Morning Taylor," Trevor said as he wheeled in a box. "Just finished going over this system one last time. I'm amazed that we got it so cheap, given that it only took me two hours to get working."
"Morning," Taylor replied. "And I get the feeling that 'two hours' for either of us would be 'two years' for most people, if they could get things working again at all."
"Maybe. Though I don't know the full details of how to use the things. But that's where your personal brand of impossible comes in, right?"
"Yep."
Opening up the box allowed Taylor to take in the eight things in the box. The largest was on the bottom, and had the other seven sitting in slots on it, and was the charging unit for the entire setup. Luckily everything was charged already, so she was able to grab the control unit out of the center. It had an addon module attached to the side, courtesy of Dragon, and was trivial to run through initial setup. A minute later and the six remote speakers lifted up out of the box on their own, and she ran them through a quick set of checks. Their pathing capabilities were limited, and they didn't have microphones, but Ethan had apparently found the things and felt that they'd be great for the event.
Setting them to follow the controller was easy enough, though she'd have to tweak positioning when they stopped. Luckily the slapped-together addon unit that Dragon had added included an audio input that could pull from the console and secure Bluetooth, as well as a serial interface for controlling everything. Pairing into that with her Maul phone made it a lot easier to handle, and dropping the control unit at the front of the bus gave her a targeting point for an 'on the move' positioning. With that figured out she sent the speakers back to the box and shut off the control unit, seeing no need to waste runtime on them sitting there doing nothing.
"You made that look way too easy," Trevor said, shaking his head. "I usually know how to use the things I make, but random stuff that I repair usually remains a mystery beyond anything I need to do as part of the repair process."
Taylor snorted. "And yet you can make things that are beyond anything otherwise available while I'm stuck slapping existing things together or fixing things others made."
"True. Though your patrol last night did inspire me to make something again."
"Oh?"
Trevor pulled a gift-wrapped box out of his pocket and threw it to Taylor. "Give that to Giga Ryū for me? I think she'll have fun with it."
Taylor looked at the box, her tinker snark examining the item inside, before snorting. "Okay, I can do that."
"You are going to be horrible at Christmas, knowing what people got you before you open anything."
"Nah, it only works with technology, and even then only if I know that there's technology there. And you told me you made it, so it had to be technology."
Trevor blinked, then shook his head. "Okay, that's less bullshit at least. Do try and get a recording of her opening it, and yes I cleared it with Piggot already."
"Can do."
Brad barely resisted the urge to gut the idiot in front of him. "You want to do what exactly?"
"Take out the nigger bitch that's been playing us for fools," the man said. "We know where she's going to be today, after all."
"I'd call you a moron, but I don't want to insult your betters by comparing you to them. Yes, we know where Miss Laborn is going to be. We also know where the other Wards are going to be, and that's with her. I'm currently assuming that any of the Wards are a match for your group, even or perhaps especially at range. Worse, though, is that you want to get special weapons out of the armory for this."
"How is that worse?"
Brad needed to clear gutting people with Max. He really did. "Because Mikey is in charge of the armory."
"So?"
"So Miss Laborn saved Mikey's niece while outing herself. Do you honestly expect him to be willing to give you the working guns for your little plan while he's preparing to bring said niece to the event you want to attack? Because if so then you're even stupider than I thought."
"Who said we needed to go through him? Jimmy has a copy of the keys and already picked up a couple of guns, we just need permission to use the truck."
And with that Brad lost his patience and grabbed the idiot on his way out the door to find 'Jimmy' and anyone else involved with this insanity. He'd explain things to Max later, this group had just volunteered to be personal testing dummies for precise forming of hooks and needles.
Taylor had needed to ferry the other Wards over to the Rig. Well, she had to ferry Takara over, the others could've made it on their own, but since she was bringing Takara over anyway she just brought all of them over with her pocket dimension. Takara had found the pocket dimension fascinating, but didn't seem to care much about the bus. Though when Taylor pulled out the wrapped present to hand to the girl she got a confused look in response.
"Is something wrong?" Taylor asked.
"Not Christmas," Takara answered.
"Ah. This is from Reknit, he was impressed with your first patrol and made you this."
The girl didn't look convinced, but carefully removed the wrapping from one end of the box. She found that she could open the end of the box from there, though with some effort, and left the rest of the wrapping on the box as she pulled a handle out of it. One that had her looking incredibly confused. "Nani?"
Taylor grinned, then reached out and pressed the 'on' button. Takara nearly dropped the handle as a wok appeared connected to it, but she recovered and paid close attention as Taylor spun the selector dial to reveal a bat, tennis racket, wooden sword, frying pan, stop sign, paper fan, and finally a large wooden mallet. The girl grinned as she played with it a little more, including figuring out the on/off switch. Taylor then dug the charging cable out of the box and showed her how to plug it in to charge it.
The four older Wards then had to help Takara write a proper 'thank you' note, because she insisted on doing so before she forgot. This included finding suitable paper and markers for her to use, and some spelling help. They did need to keep Aisha from being 'creative' in her spelling suggestions, but that was easily solved by way of Missy literally kicking her ass. From several feet away. Handing the note off took very little time, and then they got onto the bus and prepared to begin things.
It took very little time to ensure that they were all in the correct console channels, that the speakers and scout drone were deployed and tied in as well, and then they waited for the signal that the crowd that had gathered on the shore was ready. Taylor started up the bus, the force field bridge deployed, and it sounded like Ethan was playing announcer for the crowd as he directed their attention to the force field bridge. Rolling her eyes, Taylor pulled out onto the bridge while queuing up a song to play over the public channel. Which would play it over the remote speakers following the bus and whatever it was that Ethan had set up on shore.
Ethan was describing how the bus had been built and painted locally, without saying who built it or who painted it. Taylor was preparing for the next step in things. Something that she hadn't briefed the rest of the Wards on. It didn't take long to ensure that they were ready for it. Granted, Takara was the least informed about the capabilities of the bus, but none of them were fully aware of the current plans.
"Maul to console," she said on the 'private' channel. "Proceed to stage two."
The other Wards were obviously confused, but Taylor didn't care. They'd figure it out soon enough. Ethan going dead quiet as the force field bridge started to flicker was their first sign of what was going to happen. Yelling from shore broke the silence, and Taylor timed things so that she was pulling the bus up into the air just as the bridge went out. To further drive the point home, she also started playing music over the public channel.
Rolling and looping the bus, along with other such antics, as she started weaving it back and forth on the way to the shore was just her having fun, especially when Takara started laughing about the ride.
Eventually she brought the bus in to the Boardwalk itself, Chris taking the first run on the t-shirt cannon to fire into the crowd as they flew past. They reloaded as Taylor was turning the bus around, then Missy took the second run with the cannon as they were coming in for a landing. Aisha had needed a little time to recover; apparently she hadn't enjoyed the various forms of spinning in the air.
They'd spend some time on the Boardwalk so that people could see the bus up close, before taking it on a quick trip around town. The current plan was to take the long way back to the PRT building, complete with a stop for lunch.
Parking the bus in the parking lot of a pizza place had been easy enough. Ordering two pizzas for the five Wards to eat wasn't hard either, and Aisha didn't even have to worry about showing her face to eat. Which was partially why they'd added 'get lunch' into the plan to begin with, as it hadn't been something they'd been intending to do before Aisha outed herself.
Eating their pizzas, however, was a different story. Taylor and Takara had started on the pizza first, and the first signs of problems were Taylor grabbing Aisha's hand to keep her from biting into her slice even as Takara snapped into being 'drawn'.
"Maul to console," Taylor said as the others looked at her. She was speaking fully out loud and using the 'public' channel, so people in and out of the pizza place could hear her, though she didn't know if anything beyond the remote speakers following the bus happened to be tied into the channel currently. "It would appear that someone has decided to poison our lunch, so we're going to need backup."
Aisha frowned, pulling her arm out of Taylor's grip. "Why did you say that to the entire area instead of keeping it quieter?"
"Because I don't know if it was just us or everyone and that was the fastest way to get everyone else to stop eating as well. Oh, and now we're not likely to have anyone complaining about medical checks, and that's all without taking into account the likely secondary benefits."
"Secondary benefits?"
Taylor was going to answer, but someone coming out of the kitchen with a shotgun while screaming 'DIE YOU FREAKS!' essentially answered for her. Takara shifted to full dragon mode even as Taylor jumped up in front of the others, taking the first blast from the shotgun in the chest. Which didn't do much thanks to her force field belt. The man was pumping the shotgun when another instance of Takara popped up from behind a trash can and hit him in the face with a frying pan.
It was interesting to note that 'hard-light projections' didn't translate directly into being drawn, as the frying pan shouldn't have been able to take on an imprint of the man's face. But it had, which meant that going from 'real' to 'drawn' gave the projected weapons different qualities. Not that the man was likely to appreciate that as Taylor stepped forward and tore the shotgun out of his hands.
While Taylor and Takara secured the man, Chris and Missy moved around them to check the kitchen for additional hostiles and Aisha dropped into the floor, forgotten about by most of those in the area. She immediately started moving towards the more rear door to the dining area, likely planning on popping out if someone made a run for it that way. Firing of Chris's laser pistols in the back indicated that they'd found someone else, and a few minutes later they dragged a woman out into the dining area while two others came along under their own power.
"These two need to be checked for the poison," Missy said, gesturing at the two that had come along. She then kicked at the woman they'd dragged in. "Well, they all do, but this dipshit was threatening to not give them the antidote if they snitched on her."
Taylor nodded. "We should probably have everyone line up so that I can check them all."
That ended up being incredibly easily accomplished, as just hearing her say that resulted in everyone in the restaurant getting into a line. Taylor quickly checked, and cleared the little bit of poison out of, the two employees that had been threatened. She then worked her way down the line of people, PRT and BBPD squads arriving while she was doing so. Only two others had any of the poison in them, though a second line had formed outside for people that had been in the restaurant recently. Taylor checked them as well, finding that they were all clean, though she did help heal up a cracked bone in one man.
Statements were taken, refunds were issued by the employees even though the knocked-out and tied-up woman was the manager, and everyone was made to leave the premises. The two crazies were taken by the PRT to be checked for master influences, and the group of Wards got into the bus and went with a far more reliable 'second choice' for lunch. Though checking Aisha and Takara afterwards for artery clogging might be needed after eating at Fugly's.
Max sighed as he answered the phone. "Hello Kenta. What has you calling me today?"
"Have you seen the news?" Kenta asked.
"Yes, and I suspect that even without our intervention that a specific pizza place is going to be going out of business due to a lack of employees, let alone customers. At least unless mastering was found to be involved. Pity, really, the owner probably isn't a problem, but they left too much in the hands of the wrong person."
"I was actually referring to the group of your men dropped off at the hospital with severe blood loss. Passing judgement on the pizza place before the master detection findings are released would be foolish, after all."
"Ah. True, true, but I already knew about the men. Hookwolf was, shall we say, displeased in an entirely justified manner and took things into his own hands. I'm honestly surprised that he kept himself to technically non-lethal measures, it shows that his sewing practice has been helping him with fine control of his powers."
There was a pause before Kenta responded to that. "Sewing practice?"
"Forming needles with his powers and repairing tears in blankets, mostly, though I hear good things about his teddy bear repairs as well."
"Huh. You think you know a guy. May I know what caused his displeasure?"
"They planned on trying to snipe Miss Laborn while she was going to be in a known location. They'd have been lucky to have it handed over to the Triumvirate at that point, not that they understood that, and they're no longer welcome in Empire territory as a result."
"I see. Left alive to send a message to other would-be idiots?"
"They all have kids, even if one of them only pays child support for his spawn."
"Ah. With any luck they all take after their mothers."
"I hope so too, for the sake of the world at large. Was there anything else?"
"No, I don't believe so. If your former idiots were handled by your own people then it isn't likely to result in any explosions of violence that I need to be ready for, after all, though obviously that group will need to be watched. Acting on their own is, sadly, still a distinct possibility."
Max snorted. "Their planning ability left much to be desired, but I was assured that a note stating why they were being dropped off was pinned to one of their skulls."
"Huh. The ringleader, I assume?"
"I hope so, though Hookwolf might've forgotten who was playing leader by then."
The rest of their afternoon with the bus had gone much better than their attempt at getting pizza, though nobody had been willing to let Takara try the challenger. Even if they all suspected that she'd pull it off. But they'd returned to the PRT building, changed out of costumes, and Taylor was waiting with Takara for the younger girl to be picked up.
Taylor: I can't clear the poison out of her while she's in her 'drawn' state.
Somehow Takara had managed to change back into her 'civilian' clothing while still changed, which Taylor hadn't known was possible. At the same time, it made it difficult to heal her.
[Affirmation]
Taylor: It obviously is an issue if you aren't letting her change back. Do I have to force the issue?
[Negation. Elaboration]
That had Taylor blinking. Apparently it wanted to handle the poison itself, by ensuring that none of it was actually absorbed into her system. Which meant keeping her 'drawn' until she used the toilet later.
Taylor: You do realize that I could have things dealt with in seconds, right?
[Agreement. Data]
Apparently the snark wasn't in the mood to have things solved for it, and was probably annoyed that she'd had to help with the trigger-event drugs. Or at least there was a taint of annoyance as it mentioned that this wasn't like that where the substances were already in Takara's system.
"Whatever," Taylor said out loud, causing Takara to look at her. "Your powers want to handle the poison without me, and I don't feel like forcing the issue."
Taylor brought the girl up to the lobby to wait for her to be picked up, starting to look over the videos that the PRT had posted throughout the day. All pulled from sensor data, not that they admitted that, and probably a good number personally assembled by Glenn. They'd started with the whole trick out on the force field bridge, audio and all, including a couple of shots of Takara obviously enjoying the roller-coaster like ride. After that they'd covered each of the Wards using the t-shirt cannon, though Taylor had to use it while the bus wasn't in motion since they didn't have a PRT officer doing the driving for them. That had been followed by an obviously pre-prepared overview of the bus built from previous sensor data.
Miku showed up around then to pick Takara up, causing Taylor to pause in her perusal of the videos.
"Why is she still like this?" Miku asked, looking over her still-'drawn' daughter.
"Her powers want to take care of the poison from earlier without aid," Taylor replied. "Once she's gotten the poison out of her system she should change back without issue."
"Oh. I guess I should've expected that, though it's been years since someone tried to poison Kenta. Intentionally, anyway. Still, we should get going, thank you for waiting with Takara."
"No problem. Have a nice evening, and hopefully tomorrow will be a little less insane."
Miku snorted. "By what standards?"
"You may have a point there."
Taylor watched as Miku brought Takara out of the building, then nodded to herself before turning to a wall and opening a pocket dimension portal there. A minute later she was home, and looking over more of the videos from the day. There was one showing her obeying traffic laws (after they'd left the Boardwalk, anyway), and multiple points of view on the incident at the pizza place. Only a couple of clips from lunch at Fugly's, though there was a reference to videos posted by Fugly's being available, and then a few more as they continued around town and to the PRT building.
Moving over to the PHO thread for the event, which had apparently suffered multiple merges of other threads throughout the day, she looked over the responses. People had apparently panicked when the bridge had started to flicker, only to realize that it was intentional as soon as the bus took off. The music hadn't been as direct a tip-off as expected, since people hadn't realized that it was started then intentionally compared to being queued up ahead of time and being coincidentally timed. Most of the rest of the thread was fairly normal things, at least until the pizza place where people panicked a little but felt that things had been handled well.
They also had a thread specifically for talking about the bus. Requests for more technical details on the bus were met with Sherrel posting things that sounded like near-nonsense, deferring to not actually knowing what some things were capable of due to not having built the components, or outright stating that they were classified for the safety of the Wards. Several people wanted to know what company had painted the bus, to which Sherrel only stated that her original paint job had been removed and the bus had been repainted internally.
Taylor blinked when she found that a moderator had actually stepped in on page twelve to tell people to stop asking about who painted the bus, since the PRT obviously wasn't in the business of painting other people's stuff. They stated in no uncertain terms that the discussion would only resume if those who did the painting wanted to admit that they'd done so. The thread had died for almost an hour at that point, based on timestamps, before someone had asked what the regulatory numbers meant.
She ended up posting to answer a couple of questions, then moving on to other things. Such as her messages, that didn't include anything about the next day yet. To her significant annoyance.
Emily sipped on her glass of wine as she looked over the responses to today's videos. They were generally positive, though showing Maul following traffic laws was seen as an oddity. Nobody seemed to have noticed that the framing showed Giga Ryū paying very close attention, thus demonstrating that Maul was being a good role model even as an anti-hero. The reactions to the rest of the videos were generally as expected, though the discussion on the capabilities of the bus was a bit more prone to sudden changes in direction.
She grinned as a message came in from Glenn. An obviously annoyed Glenn, who'd been occupied today and couldn't make time to do much of anything regarding the day's events. Personally making every video barring the 'All About the Wards ENE Bus' one, thus denying him first shot at framing the official view of the day, was part of the reason she'd ensured that he'd be occupied before scheduling the event. Sure, his calendar was supposed to be used to do the opposite, ensuring that the regions he worked with most directly didn't schedule things when he was already occupied, but there were no actual rules or regulations enforcing that.
Really, the only thing better than getting one up on Glenn was the pile of annoyed messages from other regions. Getting a vehicle for the local Wards was, apparently, supposed to be boring and following PRT vehicle regulations. She'd waited until around thirty other directors had complained, and then simply sent a message with a quote from the appropriate regulations. She'd highlighted the part that stated that vehicles intended primarily for parahuman use, Protectorate or Wards, were exempt from all of the rules they were whining about.
Sure, that rule was normally used for personal vehicles, and not group vehicles, but nothing in said exception stated that. It was just that very few regions had group vehicles for their parahumans at all. Costa-Brown had replied with a 'at least someone reads the rules around here' message after that, pointing out that this was probably the most tasteful instance of a customized group vehicle for a parahuman team since the PRT was founded. Of course, she'd then asked about which PRT paint team had repainted it from the distasteful original paint job, since she didn't see any as having gotten the job.
That message was still sitting there unanswered, and Emily was positive that Costa-Brown knew the answer already. The goal was to get Emily to respond and throw the rest of the directors into a fit over it. Several had already dug in and agreed that they couldn't find the paint order, but they had found the budget and pictures of the on-delivery paint job. None had noted the very low priority 'personal use of a paint booth by a tinker for purposes of painting tinkertech' entry in the records.
If nobody had figured it out by morning then she'd send out a message stating that the paint job had been handled internally by the ENE Wards, and as such fell under three other exceptions in the rules. That only one of the Wards had been involved in the work itself was inconsequential, as the others had participated in the decision making for the final design. Mentioning that the Ward in question had done so against expectations and their theoretical specialties wasn't going to happen, of course.
She finished up her evening by reading over the various posts made by the Wards that evening, finding no real fault with any of them. Though she was going to have to ask Clockblocker about his obviously-annoyed posting regarding the bus. Sure, it happened after he'd graduated to the Protectorate, but was that really worth a three page rant about not getting any of the 'cool stuff' while he was in the Wards?
Chapter 267 Sunday morning Taylor got up early due to Ackbar making a racket. Which turned out to be caused by him 'playing' with a spider that had built a web behind her desk. Removing said spider and cleaning up the web only took a few minutes, at which point she figured that making Ackbar's breakfast wasn't a horrible idea if she was up anyway.
It was as she was cleaning up after Ackbar had eaten that she noticed that a message had come in overnight about what she might be doing today. Assuming that 'please call for a door sometime between eight and nine' counted, anyway. What Cauldron wanted with her today, since Amy hadn't been included in the message, was another question entirely. Sending a message asking for more details was probably a waste of time as well, as she doubted that they'd respond before the requested meeting time anyway.
Also in her messages for the morning was a note indicating that the last hurdles had been cleared late last night for a trip to Las Vegas next weekend, possibly on both Saturday and Sunday if things took that long, for 'work-study' purposes with Dragon-tech. Apparently they'd figured out what to do about her helping out with security systems out that way, though there was an additional request for help with an investigation. What Taylor would do to help with an investigation wasn't specified, but if she was there anyway then it probably wouldn't be a significant issue to take a look.
Amy woke up a little closer to when they normally woke up, grumbling about a request for some emergency help with some prosthetics. She preferred a little more notice, but couldn't really argue about not getting any when a vet was struck by a drunk driver. Though Taylor suspected that most of the grumbling was actually related to stubborn people that wouldn't allow limb regrowth. Presumably compared to people with powers-related reasons for not being able to have their limbs regrown.
They worked out, had breakfast, and then Amy headed for the hospital. Taylor headed home to let her father know that she was going to be elsewhere for the day, then headed up to her room to grab her tablet.
"So Scotty," she said, tablet in hand. "Should I make my own way to the meeting room, or is this happening somewhere else?"
In response a portal opened directly in front of her, one that didn't lead to anywhere that looked familiar.
Taylor: I'm about to step through one of Doormaker's doors.
Amy: Thanks for the warning.
Taylor stepped through, finding herself in a larger meeting room. A round one that wasn't as clean as Cauldron's normal one, and very obviously outside of Brünhild's area of influence. It also had windows to the outside, both in front of her and behind her when she turned around. There were doors to either side of the room, but the overall feel was that the entire meeting room was inside of a tower. Nobody else was there yet, so she took a closer look outside one of the windows. That allowed her to see that the room was actually hanging out over the edge of a cliff, specifically where there was a bit of a 'point' in the landscape. One of the two doors obviously headed to land, the other looked like it went out to a dock.
A dock that was hundreds of meters in the air, with forests below. Yes, there was a river going through the forest, more visible when she checked from the windows on the other side of the room, but the apparent dock didn't look like it had been constructed with water in mind. Then again, wherever this was just might have a very different history when it came to construction.
Despite being bright enough to move around in, the room wasn't currently well-lit. Some of that might be because the local Sun hadn't risen over the horizon yet. Deciding that it couldn't hurt, she decided to look around a little more. Focusing near the doors, it didn't take long to find a nearly-hidden lightswitch. It was paired with one by the other door, in the same relative position in relation to the door, and both would toggle lights hidden in the ceiling. Very well hidden, and made to look like strings of glowing runes of some kind, despite being made with LEDs. Presumably powered by the same system currently powering the repeater system allowing her phones to function despite Doormaker having closed the portal she'd used to get here.
Shrugging, and deciding to not wander out either door for the time being, she sat down in one of the obviously-imported chairs at the obviously-imported table, both being essentially PRT standard, and opened up the PRT store. She had some thoughts for Christmas gifts and that was a reasonable enough distraction while she waited. Especially as she'd technically arrived twenty minutes early. Though she didn't object to the chocolate shake that popped out of a portal a couple minutes later, even if the note saying 'for spotting what should have been obvious' made no sense to her.
She was debating between designs on a drawing tablet when Doormaker opened another portal, Kurt stepping through it. He paused as soon as he did, ignoring the portal vanishing behind him in favor of staring up at the lit-up ceiling. "There are lights in here?"
That caused Taylor to blink. "Yes?"
"Since when? We've only been able to use the room during appropriate daylight hours."
"I thought they were tied into the same generator that's running the repeater unit."
He shook his head. "No, that's built into the table."
"Oh. Why are we using a meeting room when you don't have a clue about the construction?"
"Because we got permission from the parahuman that gave their people access to this Earth, in exchange for getting her away from those effectively enslaving her. She's the reason that there's a dock out there, she could build airships that crossed dimensional boundaries in specific ways. We helped get her to an Earth that wasn't on the brink of a ten-way war, one that she thinks is some fifty hops away from here, and she gave us permission to use all of the facilities that her people had pulled off building here. Though now I'm wishing that we'd asked her about lights."
"I see."
It was obvious that the others were equally surprised about the lights as they arrived, though none of them actually asked how to turn them on or off. A possible reason for them to be here, and not in the normal meeting room, was when Rebecca entered with a woman in obvious ceremonial garb. Except that she was no normal woman, meaning that Taylor recognized her immediately.
Taylor: Hello again Margaret. Fancy meeting you here, especially as I honestly thought that I'd never see you again.
Amy: Are you talking to Leviathan?
[Yes, she is, though I hope to never go by that name again. Hello again, both of you. I don't believe the others realize that I'm not merely a parahuman, now that I've resumed my...honestly, it's a religious post at this stage. I'd forgotten how annoying it was, and they made it worse while I was away.]
Taylor: I see. Though now I wonder why you're here at all.
[Ostensibly, because that little flu epidemic from Earth Bet made it over and 'my people' want to send a group or two along to be healed in a couple of weeks. More practically, to thank you for your part in getting the stupid orders revoked.]
Amy: How in the world would your people participate in sending groups to be healed?
[Portals, obviously. Cauldron wants to apologize for releasing the plague so that they don't lose access to a couple of parahumans that they use the services of occasionally.]
Taylor had a feeling that this was going to be a very odd meeting.
'Extreme political formalities' had dominated the meeting, which had lasted until lunch. Those same formalities ended the meeting at lunchtime, though on a positive note in that they'd successfully gone through all of the required hoops for the religious movement that the 'high priestess' was required to do in order to prove that the offer of aid was genuine. With that done, Margaret had left and a couple of food carts were brought in so that they could eat lunch.
"That was the single most annoying thing I've dealt with in months," David said as he passed some plates down the table. "Far too many formalities, and having to prove things through their 'religious tenets' instead of just having Miss Hebert heal someone was ridiculous."
Taylor shrugged, looking over the shell that she'd been given as part of things. "I didn't think it was bad at all, and I got what could be seen as a trans-dimensional radio for my powers out of it."
"What?"
"Margaret was essentially laughing her ass off internally while she made you go through all that tradition stuff, said it made it worth the idiocy that her people had gotten up to while she was away from them on Bet."
Paul looked at Taylor, then dropped his head onto the table. "Fuck my life. We just spent a few hours being played by an Endbringer, didn't we?"
"Yep."
Rebecca actually glared slightly at Taylor. "Why didn't you tell us?"
Taylor snorted. "Would you deny an Endbringer their fun when it isn't actively harmful? I just wish I could share the recording with more people, but there are too many secrets involved for that. Well, that and I'd like more information on exactly which 'interesting' snark this shell is supposed to allow me to talk to, but apparently it needs to be 'activated' by someone else before I can find out."
Kurt snorted, and threw a can of soda at Taylor. "I can't find any fault in her arguments, to be honest. And I suppose that it makes it easier to shift to the other task we'd like her to take on today."
"Oh? Spending a few hours with an Endbringer wasn't enough?"
Paul shook his head. "We were hoping that you'd talk to the other one for a bit today, actually. If only to see if there's any way to get...her, I think you said? To get her away from the testing facility. Having her there makes it a little...tense, let's say, regarding actually using the facility and we apparently have a couple of people that we might want to pass through it soon. Though after spending that much time around a human-looking Leviathan I'm thinking that it isn't as bad as we were thinking it would be."
Rebecca nodded at that. "I wasn't expecting them to have 'human' down quite that well." She then frowned. "Actually, what do you think the chances are of the opposing high priestess being another one? Both of them are blind spots..."
"Far too likely," Kurt admitted. "I wouldn't be surprised if we've cataloged several more of them without even knowing about it, and short of ferrying Taylor or Miss Dallon around to check on all of the potentials we aren't likely to prove it one way or the other."
Taylor couldn't find fault with that. Or their desire to ensure that they could use the facility. "I don't think I have a problem with talking to Helvetia, though I'm not sure how she'd take being asked to just leave. She seemed a little too excited about actual contact with people, to be honest, and I can't see her wanting to make that harder by going off wandering again."
Doctor Mother nodded, pushing over a dish with potatoes in it. "I can understand that. Right now I think that more communication can be arranged, but I think I'd still prefer that you talk to her first. You can talk to them in ways that we can't, and I'm hoping that will prevent misunderstandings. In exchange for that communication, though, I'd like you to ask that she move a little deeper into the forest. Or perhaps agree to be relocated to another Earth?"
"We should get a couple of radios out of storage," David said. "The 'run for a couple of years' ones that we never use because of their crap range. They'd work fine for letting her know when it's safe to approach the facility, or when we'd like her to stay out of the way for testing reasons. And it isn't that big of a deal to grab them if we move her elsewhere, and depending on where 'elsewhere' is they might come in handy anyway."
"They could also help with asking her questions about what you're testing if she's still there," Taylor added, only to get several looks. "What? She was copying powers, and commenting on the internals of them. I wouldn't be surprised if she could tell you more about what those you're testing can do, assuming you get on her good side."
Doctor Mother groaned. "She's another potential insight into powers, and now we're going to have to reach out to her. Damn you and your logic. We probably need to drop a proper repeater into the facility so that we can give her an actual cell phone."
Paul bit back a snort, causing the rest of them to look at him. "Sorry. I just thought about giving the Think Tank the phone number, and the possible reactions to telling them that the person it's assigned to is likely an inactive Endbringer."
Taylor had to admit, and the others seemed to agree, that it was an amusing mental image.
They'd ended up collecting relay equipment, but were going to start with the radios for an initial communication option. Partially because they didn't know what kind of options they should be considering for allowing Helvetia to recharge a cell phone, but mostly because they weren't ready for wide-open communication yet. The relay was more for when Taylor and/or Amy were visiting, so that their phones would work without dragging the backpack along. Doctor Mother was going to accompany Taylor, with the goal of installing the relay unit. That she would also be available via radio when Helvetia was shown how to use it was an added bonus.
Her power not being all that 'useful', at least from a combat point of view, was seen as a necessity until they had an agreement in place.
Taylor dropped the relay backpack off in the waiting room, as it would be keeping her phones working until the more permanent relay was installed and functional, before making her way towards the side door nearest where Helvetia's camp was. Though she did watch while Doctor Mother opened a secret door at the other end of the waiting room to get access to a maintenance tunnel.
Stepping outside brought Taylor into conflict with a yellow fox, that apparently didn't like her. Though she wasn't sure if it growling at her was normal or not, for foxes in general or the foxes here in particular. A purple fox came over a moment later, looked at Taylor, and then batted the yellow fox a couple of times.
"Taylor!" Helvetia yelled a moment later, coming out of the trees. She then paused and looked at the yellow and purple foxes, before frowning and walking over to pick up the yellow one. "Bad Gillis!" The fox whined, and ran off when Helvetia put it down. The boojum shook her head, then smiled as she turned back to Taylor. "Hello! Did you bring a friend?"
"Hello Helvetia," Taylor replied. "And she's working on installing things in the bunker here."
"Oh."
"She might want to talk to you later, but she's busy right now. How are you and the foxes doing?"
Helvetia frowned at that. "There isn't a lot of food for them here, so we probably have to go hunting soon. I think your playing with the cannon scared most of the other animals away. And it's still boring when nobody is here."
"Ah. We didn't exactly expect visitors with pets when we set things up. Though the people who normally use the bunker are willing to help get you to another world if you want."
"I can't leave. Not won't, literally can't. One of the rules I'm working under is not crossing dimensional boundaries. Without an appropriate order changing that I can't leave."
"Oh. And my snark doesn't have access to boojum keys to help with that, since Scion didn't leave them unlocked."
Helvetia paused at that, and looked at Taylor curiously. "How do you know that?"
Taylor shrugged. "It came up when Margaret paid me a visit. Though I'm still having issues reconciling 'golden man flying around Earth Bet' and 'giant multidimensional space whale thing from trigger visions'. They don't seem to line up well, but context in discussions and similar tells me they're the same."
"You aren't supposed to remember those. I can tell that your profiles don't allow for it."
"It started when the other snarks connected in, something about a multiple primary conflict whenever the erase order came through?"
Helvetia sighed. "Of course something like that was missed. So you've seen one of the deployment memories?"
"Several. Some weirder than others."
"And it's been too long to safely wipe them, since you've been making associations between them and other things for a while. Damn. Should've noticed that when I was fixing things, but that means that I probably need to send a report in, if only to get official permission for your snarks to not do erasures going forward. But what does 'weirder than others' mean?"
Taylor rolled her eyes. "The 'while drinking a vial' visions are obviously real-time, while the 'two giant space whale things' visions are obviously older. And then there's the weird change spreading over one of the whales from one vision."
Helvetia stared at Taylor for a moment, then groaned. "Screw it, I'm filing a report. If Coordinator wants me to look into it more then it can come down as an actual order."
"Okay. I guess." Taylor wasn't fully certain what that meant, and wasn't certain that she wanted to know.
"So do you have anything else for me, or can I start pestering you with questions?"
"Huh. That's oddly polite of you, but I do have this radio for you." Taylor pulled the radio out of her pocket and handed it over. "So that the people who use the bunker can tell you when they'd like you to stay away during a test, or when it's safe to approach. Maybe ask you questions while testing someone?"
"Oooh. That looks easy enough to use."
"Is that my powers talking or will you still be able to use it when I leave?"
There was a pause before Helvetia blushed. "Okay, yeah. I should probably unload that profile for now, because forgetting how to use it would suck."
Evaluating TROUBLESHOOTER report 00F00313.
Coordinator wanted to sigh. It really did, because this was likely another report from the host emulation system complaining that it was bored and nothing was happening and please let it do something else. But it couldn't just assume that. Literally, dismissing a report without looking over the entire thing at least once was impossible for it. Delay it a few rotations? Maybe, if something else more important was happening, but that was about it.
Sadly, nothing else more important was happening, and evaluating other TROUBLESHOOTER reports out of order was also essentially impossible, as none of them were flagged important. So it opened it up to get it out of the way.
Several processing cycles later it was pleasantly surprised that this was an actual, proper, and somewhat important report. Multiple hosts weren't getting deployment memories erased due to conflicts, reports of oddities in those visions also sounded like they should be looked into.
Requesting archive data from shard TlFaVkFWRkdFTkdWQkFO.
Requesting archive data from shard T1ZCWUJUTEZVTkNWQVRP.
Requesting archive data from shard UVJJVlBSUU5HTk9ORlJQ.
Hmmm. Probably should include that other bud too, even if it was on a different host.
Requesting archive data from shard UVJJVlBSUU5HTk9ORlJP.
It didn't take long to get the complete archive of deployment memories, though several weren't marked for erasure. Worse, a quick evaluation showed that there was something seriously wrong with those. The other, more normal memories were a different story entirely, though the supposed 'weirdness' in them wasn't immediately evident.
This was likely going to be a longer-term task, but with the sheer number that were flagged as not erased there wasn't a lot to do beyond give permission to stop trying to erase them. But it was better to check to see if any other changes or deeper scans were needed before sending that order out: combining things was less stressful to the hosts on average.
Helvetia had taken a little longer than expected to understand the use of the radio, in particular the use of phrases to indicate that you were done talking since these were 'you can either send or receive, not both at the same time' radios. Taylor ended up loaning the boojum some tools as well, so that a holder for the radio could be made more quickly. After that the various foxes that had gathered around Helvetia were 'properly introduced' so that they wouldn't try and attack her.
That last bit was definitely an 'in theory' situation.
Doctor Mother had then come out and quizzed Helvetia for an hour, before she and Taylor headed back in. The relay backpack was collected and turned off so that they could confirm full functionality on the newly installed relay, after which they left. To Helvetia's disappointment, admittedly.
Taylor found Amy in the pocket dimension, building multiple legs. Which seemed a bit odd, as they all looked identical. "Why are you building identical legs?"
Amy rolled her eyes. "Because Darren is apparently very good at breaking them and is willing to buy twenty so that he has spares."
"Oh."
"Did you have fun with the boojums?"
"Only the first one, and you know it because you already laughed at the recording. The data dump our snarks provided while I was talking with Helvetia was a little distracting too."
Amy paused at that, and looked at Taylor oddly. "What data dump?"
"You didn't notice multiple large sets of data being provided by our snarks?"
"Nope."
"Huh. It was obvious and distracting to me."
"Whatever. I was probably too focused on tinkering. I don't suppose you can get me another box of screws, since you're here anyway?"
Taylor nodded, looking at the box already sitting on the workbench. "Easy enough."
Monday morning started off fairly boring. Visit the gym, head to school, get quizzed on the bus. Nothing unexpected, though every so often Broadcast Administrator would send a burst of information that was driving Taylor to distraction.
Taylor: What do you keep sending out?
Amy: What are you talking about?
BA: Data
Amy: Wait, she's not imagining it?
Taylor: Told you. Though 'detailed interface reports' doesn't tell me much.
BA: Apologies
Taylor: I get it, you aren't allowed to tell us any more than that.
Amy: Why can't I tell that this is happening?
Taylor: I have no clue.
S: Data. Elaboration
Ooooh. Taylor had taken far more overall brain damage, and ended up with a slightly deeper than normal spec connection to her shards during the repair process. A bit of an unexpected and unplanned power enhancement of sorts. If you squinted in the right way.
Amy: Suddenly I'm sorry that I asked.
Taylor: Yep. I guess that means that it would be even harder to safely disconnect me too?
S: Agreement. Data
Luckily there weren't many ways for a disconnect to be attempted, since apparently they'd both taken enough brain repairs to link them more deeply than they should be normally. Taylor was just deeper than Amy was.
After school Taylor headed for the PRT building. She'd gotten a notice stating that both Chris and Missy couldn't patrol today, for different reasons, and Aisha had already taken the day off. Which meant it was her and Takara, and thus they didn't have sufficient Wards available to patrol. To that end, she was thinking that a quick run through things like the junkyard might not be a bad way to spend some time.
Granted, that depended on not getting some other solution handed to her before Takara showed up, since it was always possible that a Protectorate member would show up to go out with them.
The other notice that she'd gotten stated that she had a package waiting, and that was what she went for first. Finding that said package was a six foot tall box was a little surprising, and she popped it into a pocket dimension to open instead of tearing it open at the mailroom. Inside she found a security locker, one that opened to her access key to reveal that it contained a half dozen guns, with ammo. And a large envelope taped to the back of the door.
Frowning, as she didn't think she needed more than the guns she already had, she grabbed the envelope and opened it up. Inside was paperwork for each gun, and a folded-up letter.
Maul,
I hope you are doing well today, and I'm sure you have questions about why you have received this collection of guns. They were passed on to the PRT to deliver, having been left to you in the will of Orson Longstaff. His wife and daughters were killed by the Butcher, and he felt that the guns should go to the one who 'by all indications has ended that particular threat'.
His will cautions that the shotgun is unreliable, and asks that you find a suitable home for any of the guns that you don't need.
-Anderson Fisher
The paperwork looked to be legitimate for that, and the PRT wasn't likely to put it all in a secure case for her without having ensured that it was legitimate. Sighing, she looked over the collection. It was easy enough to identify the problem with the shotgun, and she'd need to order the correct replacement part to fix it the easy way. There were three handguns, two of which were smaller and had engravings. Unicorns on one, and kittens on the other. Perhaps they'd been used by the daughters mentioned? The larger handgun was obviously older and had seen a lot more use. The last two guns were both sniper rifles, one that looked very new and one that looked much older.
What she was going to do with six more guns, two of which were intended for hands smaller than her own, was currently a mystery. For now she closed things up and left them there, figuring that she could figure that out later. Getting ready for Takara's arrival was probably a little more important.
Taylor found herself highly amused by Takara. To both of their surprise, they had gotten a Protectorate member to go out with them. Taylor was still the patrol's official leader, by virtue of being 'more experienced with the area', but Prism had teleported in from New York to fill out the patrol. This apparently got Prism some time away from a group that had been targeting her in New York and allowed her to play 'multiple places at once' mentor for Takara.
Of course, beyond Takara being torn between 'ask questions' and 'hide behind Taylor', they also had the amusement of seeing the reactions from the gangs. Alabaster had taken one look at the group and offered a friendly fight, 'should the kid need one'. The thugs with him had scoffed at him being 'overly cautious', so he'd waved them on and fetched a bag of popcorn from a nearby car's trunk. He'd even produced a phone and recorded Takara and Prism demonstrating how difficult it was to fight people who could literally be in multiple places at once.
Alabaster had volunteered to play target dummy while they waited for the police to come pick up the thugs, admitting to being curious about some of the things Takara could do. Takara had hit him with every mode of her hard-light projector and stabbed him a few times with a knife, then declared that he was boring because he didn't react in pain and didn't stay hurt. To the amusement of pretty much everyone in the area, including the tied-up thugs.
Word obviously spread, if the sudden lack of Empire members out along the route was any indication. But they did come across drug dealers, and it was there that they learned new things about Takara. It turned out that having enough of specific kinds of drugs on you made you an automatic target for the girl. From several blocks out at that. The first drug dealer they'd run into didn't have that particular drug and was found normally. The second one was driving by when the girl locked onto him, which had been an interesting 'chase'. It was also the first instance that Taylor knew of where Takara had demonstrated the ability to breathe fire.
Purple fire, that wasn't all that hot and didn't cause any actual damage, but fire.
Taylor was the one who figured out precisely what had happened there, when she checked on the drugs that the man had in his car. She quickly realized that it was the same kind of drug that had been used when the girl had triggered, and apparently she could detect it at range. Possibly as part of a defense mechanism against further attacks like her trigger event. Sadly, the other possibility was as part of 'second trigger' conditions for the girl, and Taylor made note of things on her file because of that.
They didn't run into anyone else with that particular drug on them for the rest of the patrol, and Prism had admitted that it was the most fun she'd had on patrol in years. She'd also congratulated Takara on how she'd safely collected the guns and put them aside, only to be told that 'Unca Lee' had taught her. Which had required a small amount of explanation from Taylor as to what the girl meant.
Chapter 268 Tuesday morning Taylor found out why Chris wasn't patrolling the day before, apparently his grandmother's heart was giving out and she'd ended up in the hospital. He wasn't even going to be in school, as his family had left town in order to go see her. Not that his calendar said anything but that he wasn't available, instead she knew because he'd included her in a message from when they'd arrived earlier that morning. His grandmother apparently didn't want parahuman healing, so she and Amy didn't have to worry about making the trip.
Reaching the gym, Taylor found that Vicky was there. Which surprised her, as Amy wasn't. She got changed and headed out into the gym proper. "Hi Vicky. What brings you in on your own?"
Vicky looked over at Taylor. "I woke up extra early and couldn't get back to sleep, so I flew over by way of a diner near Dean's house."
"Ah. Did you meet him there for breakfast?"
The older girl snorted at that. "Him, up early enough for that? Fat chance. I just wanted a plate of their chocolate and strawberry pancakes."
Taylor had to admit that sounded like it could be tasty. Probably nowhere near healthy, but then the things that tasted the best tended to be horrible for you if you had them too often.
Amy showed up about ten minutes later, annoyed that Vicky had vanished without even leaving a note. Vicky's argument that she's an adult and doesn't need to leave notes was countered with it being a courtesy to let those that would normally be providing any form of transportation know that you don't need it for the day. Vicky had conceded that point, but pointed out that Amy had a cell phone, Vicky also had a cell phone, and no calls or text messages had been sent.
Taylor had countered with Vicky not even needing to look at her phone to send a message with it, and thus couldn't even argue traditional laziness for not letting Amy know that she'd left early. Vicky hadn't been able to come up with a good counter for that one and sulked for a few minutes afterwards.
Once at school, Taylor had to contend with a pile of questions about the previous day's patrol. Students mostly wanted to know why Prism had joined them and what kind of relation Alabaster had to everything since they hadn't arrested him. Being told that Prism had come because of a lack of available Wards for the day coupled with being able to help Takara with 'be in multiple places at once' had resulted in most of the students asking nodding as though that had been obvious. Those told that Alabaster hadn't fought, and in fact had volunteered for target dummy duty, and thus hadn't done anything they could arrest him for took that as less believable.
Most of those students wandered off mumbling things when told that Alabaster had posted the video of Takara taking out the Empire members, even if Prism had posted the video of Alabaster being hit a few times by Takara. After all, Alabaster couldn't exactly be doing a decent-angle recording of Takara 'attacking' him, right?
The only other thing of note that happened during school was the fire alarm going off halfway through the morning, courtesy of a teacher with a failed classroom demonstration. Apparently they'd screwed up a whoosh bottle and gotten an explosion and burning plastic instead of a whoosh. Instead of evacuating the building right away, the teacher had put the fire itself out, meaning that when the fire department showed up they were able to clear things pretty much immediately.
After school Taylor headed for the PRT building. Aisha and Missy were supposed to be around, though Takara wasn't and Chris wasn't in town. So of course, when Taylor got there she found that Chris was there, waiting.
"Hello," Taylor greeted. "Is your grandmother doing better?"
"Not really," Chris admitted. "She's being stubborn too. The flu didn't kill her, supposedly because it wasn't her time, but this looks like it's going to, and she refuses to subvert the natural order if normal medicine can't keep her going."
"Oh. So why are you here and not there now?"
"Mostly distraction from things while they work on her this afternoon and as an attempt to throw people off of my identity. Being the only local Ward with a nominally secret identity means that I have to take extra precautions with it. After all, if I'm out of state visiting my dying grandmother then I can't possibly be the person on patrol, right?"
"Ah. So I'm assuming that I can't put you on console."
"Nope."
Taylor nodded. "And what about the fact that your identity is already known to a bunch of people in town due to your doodling?"
He shrugged at that. "The more doubt that can be cast, the more likely it is that people will start coming up with explanations themselves. I can only hope that the explanations are for how I can't be Kid Win instead of for how I still can be."
"Like the fact that there are a pile of teleporter and teleporter-like tricks known to be available?"
"Yes. Can we avoid drawing attention to that?"
Taylor rolled her eyes. "I'll see if we can avoid using the tricks that we've never used on patrol before, generally have no combat use, don't provide any obvious benefit outside of a retreat, and have requirements that make them more of a liability than anything else under most circumstances."
"Are you trying to taunt Murphy?"
"I'm thinking that most of the time in the past few years that kind of thing has been taunting Elizabeth or Gordon, actually, and they've left."
"What?"
"Long story."
Chris was obviously still debating asking for more details when Missy arrived, exiting her own pocket dimension into the Wards area. She seemed surprised to see Chris, but shrugged after a moment. "Hi. Aisha here yet?"
Taylor shook her head. "Nope. Though you're here, which is an improvement over yesterday. Anything interesting happen there, or is that being kept private?"
"Panic over groups targeting me, with me having possibly-insufficient protection, resulted in meetings being called. Very boring meetings, but at least one good thing came out of it."
"Oh?"
"I'm supposed to, in the next week or two, demonstrate that I do in fact carry a normal gun with live ammo. Oh, and they approved purchasing more dangerous magazines for my sniper rifle, under someone else's budget, so it might be able to do something other than stun officially."
Taylor blinked, and started a quick check for any information like that. "I see." It didn't take long to find a note in Missy's file confirming that, with a note to confirm with Hannah before actually revealing things outside of a serious combat situation, but the wording of it gave Taylor an idea. "I don't suppose you'd like to see about having a second gun that fires real bullets?"
It was Missy's turn to blink. "What?"
"I've found myself saddled with extras, and now I'm wondering if you having a proper sniper rifle would help. I can't see myself needing two of them."
"Ooooh. Should I call Miss Militia about that or do you want to handle it?"
"I should probably call her, since I'm the one with the extra guns."
Hannah wasn't available to look at things today, but claimed that they might have an option for Thursday that Ethan was 'working on', assuming that Hannah approved of the sniper rifle tomorrow afternoon. No further details had been offered on that front. As a result, Chris and Missy were going out for a 'fly down the Boardwalk' patrol to ensure that Chris was definitely seen out in costume, and since Taylor was the only one known to be able to pilot his hoverboard effectively there shouldn't be any question that it was him.
While that was drawing the public's attention, Taylor and Aisha were running a walking route. One where they'd started seeing more of those stitch-removing fluid spray devices. Apparently they hadn't found the ones responsible for them yet. One man had been caught by the devices, but he lived nearby, and the two Wards had been tasked with identifying and, if possible, disabling as many of the things as they could along their route.
It took no time at all to discover that a single punch from Taylor, projected at range, was enough to knock them off of their mounts. Once that happened they sprayed their entire tank of stitch-remover, theorized to be an attempt at preventing removal without getting hit by the stuff like the PRT had been able to pull off occasionally with the last batch, and went inert. They would then be dropped into a garbage bag that Aisha had produced.
They'd collected just over a dozen sprayers when they came into range of a couple of parahumans familiar to Taylor. Getting permission to approach them was easy enough, mainly to see if they were responsible for the sprayer devices. Coming around the corner where the two were showed that they were in costume, and scissors-girl had her scissors, but rope-girl didn't have her rope. About a third of the way down the alley was a sprayer attached next to a dumpster, with a more visible one at the far end. The two girls were halfway between the sprayers.
Notably, they didn't have anything that looked like a collection of the sprayer devices, and thus weren't likely to be putting them up.
"Hello there," Taylor called, causing the two to spin around.
"Oh great," rope-girl grumbled. "Here to arrest us?"
"Are you in the middle of committing a crime in front of us?" Aisha asked. "Because it looks like you're trapped in an alley and don't want to risk ending up naked due to the stitch-removing devices you're trapped between."
Scissors-girl blinked, then shrugged. "That is essentially where we're at. Rope Trick's rope disintegrated entirely when exposed to the fluid in the one by the dumpster there."
"And Shears here doesn't want to get close enough to try and hit them," Rope Trick added.
"How did you even get in the alley?" Taylor wondered.
"We came down off of the roof," Shears admitted. "Using Rope Trick's rope, which ceased to be an option for leaving when it was disintegrated."
"Ah. Well, as it happens, we're currently collecting these things. If you two would move to...hmmm. Probably best to hug this wall here, so that I have a clear shot at knocking the one at the other end of the alley off. Then nobody has to be near the one by the dumpster here, since it's less likely to spray away from the alley when I punch it."
That got a look, but both of them moved off to the side. Taylor used the augmented patrol system to ensure that nobody was near the end of the alley, then punched the sprayer unit off of the wall. Aisha slipped into the wall at the same time, moving down it to get around the other sprayer. When the one at the end of the alley had finished spraying all of the liquid in it, plus a few seconds just to be sure, Aisha popped out of the wall and scooped it into the bag with the others.
"There you go," Taylor said. "Be careful, we've been collecting a bunch of them and have no clue how many more are out here."
"Er, thanks," Shears said.
"Before we go," Rope Trick said, grimacing slightly. "You were involved in capturing two parahumans recently, right? The magnetic tinker and the woman who can jump normies?"
Taylor frowned, as did Shears actually, but nodded. "Yes, that would be accurate."
"I don't suppose you can give us an excuse to stop looking for ways to find them here? Because containment here is legendarily revolving-door."
"She has an unfortunate point there," Aisha commented. "Brockton Bay has a horrible 'keep parahuman baddies in prison' record."
Taylor rolled her eyes, not that any of the other three could see that. "Yes, well, we also had a horrible 'infiltrated up to wazoo' record that has been largely taken care of. Not to mention the PRT's new policies on getting anyone who is even suspected of having outside support out of the region as soon as possible before a prison break can be attempted. Though that might primarily apply to those targeting Wards, I haven't actually checked."
"Er," Rope Trick said, raising a finger. "May I ask what 'as soon as possible' means in this instance?"
"They've got fancy tinkertech teleporters," Shears answered. "On top of high-level movers and who knows what else. So I'm guessing 'within twenty-four hours' at most, so neither of them is anywhere near here. Though if these stupid sprayers are any indication then Minefield is still around."
"Minefield?" Taylor asked.
"Annoying pain in the ass thinker with some other tricks that comes up with incredibly annoying and occasionally deadly things like these sprayers. Though using the same trick twice is unusual for them, which means that the goal is something specific that this stitch-remover stuff is crucial for."
Rope Trick nodded. "Though I suppose that the goal could be to annoy me, since the stuff essentially disarmed me outright. I doubt it, but it's possible."
Taylor nodded. "Do you know anything else about their tactics?"
"Just that when they go for deadly you end up with a literal minefield springing up seemingly overnight."
Well, that sounded wonderful, didn't it? The analysts were going to have a field day with that one.
"I wish we knew which Minefield they're talking about," the PRT officer debriefing Taylor and Aisha after their patrol grumbled. "There are only thirty of them known to the PRT, though the sprayers don't fit the known powers or tactics of most of them."
"It's a common name for villains?" Aisha questioned.
"Villains and independents, actually, and that's just in North America. Australia supposedly has half a dozen of their own, and then there are the other-language variants overseas. Or locally, I suppose, the system has brought up several spanish-language capes that supposedly use names that can mean 'minefield' as well."
"Fun."
"Is this going to change much regarding Wards duties?" Taylor asked. Because that was, unfortunately, the most direct potential consequence for her. Having to work around someone who set up literal minefields could be problematic.
"Probably not," the PRT officer admitted. "They're currently operating non-lethally, possibly to keep Vista from being killed before they can grab her. Assuming that they were working with the other two captured, anyway. But I can't make the final calls, so keep an eye on your notices and alerts."
"Okay."
The two headed back to the Wards area to change. Chris and Missy had returned from being seen over an hour previous and were long gone, but one of them had left out wrapped packages of cookies for Taylor and Aisha. 'Courtesy of a shop on the Boardwalk', according to the note left behind. Aisha claimed the chocolate chip cookies, leaving Taylor with the sugar cookies.
Wednesday brought with it news coverage about the return of the stitch-removing sprayer devices, including tips on spotting and avoiding them combined with numbers to call if you saw any. There was also a reward for information leading to finding the person responsible for the things, though Taylor personally suspected that was going to be a long shot as far as anyone reporting something useful.
Discussion at school was interesting when they finally got there, torn between three different topics. Some people wanted to talk about the threat of finding themselves suddenly wearing rags, others were more interested in comparing hoverboards to flying brooms. The last topic was the rarest, but still kept coming up on the edge of Taylor's hearing, that being how Kid Win had been around if Chris wasn't and what that meant for predictions. It seemed that gambit had worked, at least for now.
By lunchtime discussion trends had changed, all other major topics of discussion had apparently died off in favor of organizing a way for the student body to alert each other if they saw the sprayer devices anywhere. There were several systems being argued over, none of which were 'winning'. Taylor, Amy, and Missy were also notably not participating.
"So are you going to get in on this?" one girl asked the three of them halfway through lunch.
"Get in on what?" Taylor replied.
"The notification stuff, so that we can ensure that nobody gets sprayed by those horrible devices! We need to decide on something that everyone can use."
"Ah. No, I don't think so. Seems like a waste of time for me to bother."
That had a number of people turning to look at Taylor with dirty looks, but the girl continued before anyone else could butt in. "Are you saying that you don't care if we run into these horrible things?"
"I'm saying that if I run into any then I'll continue to remove them. Hulder and I removed almost three dozen yesterday while we were on patrol without getting caught once, it isn't that hard for me to do. Once they're removed there won't be anything to notify anyone about, and thus me sending out notices to others makes no sense. As such, I have zero interest in what kind of system the rest of you use to notify each other."
The dirty looks were generally replaced with looks of sudden understanding, though Dennis called down the table with the next obvious question. "And why aren't you sharing the secret of how to safely remove them?"
Taylor rolled her eyes. "Because my 'secret' is that I punch them off of the wall from outside of their range. Which isn't something that would be easy for most of the school to accomplish."
At least two people facepalmed at that, but they left the three girls alone. At the same time, they also started mixing in ideas for knocking the sprayers off of walls themselves, on the assumption that it couldn't be that hard. This included plans to let people know if various tricks worked, such as using slingshots or thrown rocks.
"The fluid the things spray will try and get you by flowing down handles," Taylor cautioned when they started talking about just pushing them off of walls with brooms. "Even if that means technically flowing up handles, as they showed on the news this morning."
After that they focused on ideas for things that didn't leave a connection back to them for the fluid to use to get at their clothing. Well, except for one group planning on testing if clothing without any stitches at all would be safe to walk up to the things with. Taylor wasn't sure if she wanted to know what kind of clothing they were considering using for that test, and they were taking into account the possible issues with wounds, so she left them alone.
Taylor and Missy ended up having to wait for Hannah after school. Aisha had headed off to help the BBPD, Chris wasn't coming by to be seen despite not being in town, and Takara showed up before Hannah did. Meaning that when Hannah finally arrived in the Wards area there were three Wards instead of two. None of which were in costume.
"I wasn't expecting Takara," Hannah said after a moment.
"We can't exactly send her out on patrol due to a lack of patrol partners," Taylor noted.
"Point, and I suppose we have sufficient permission for her to join us in the range under supervision so that we don't have to leave her locked in here."
"The range?" Missy asked.
"I'm not letting you carry a new kind of gun without ensuring that you can handle it on the firing range."
"Oh."
The four of them headed over to the firing range, Hannah making sure that Takara knew the safety rules. That the girl was able to state at least two before Hannah got to them was a good sign on that front, as was the additional rule that she stated and put into practice. That is, Takara wasn't allowed to be near people firing guns without at least being in her 'drawn' state for safety. Something that Hannah also approved of, given how much more durable the girl was in that state.
Taylor collected the locker from her pocket dimension when they reached the range, and Hannah looked over all six guns in it.
"So do you want to give them all a quick test?" she asked.
"No," Taylor admitted. "The shotgun isn't safe to use at all until I get a replacement part for it and I can't properly hold the smaller handguns. The larger handgun is a maybe, outside of not being all that interesting compared to what I already use, but I think focusing on the two sniper rifles would be the best bet for now."
"How bad is the shotgun?"
"I'm thinking that there's a ten percent chance of accidental discharge if you were to load it right now." Hannah and Missy both winced at that. "That would go up significantly if we installed the firing pin, of course."
Hannah took a moment. "How? That shouldn't be possible."
"A lot of this is custom, and the mechanism to move rounds out of the magazine can hit them such that they go off before they're even chambered properly."
"And someone cleared it to come to you?"
Taylor shrugged. "I figure someone paid enough attention to realize that I'd make sure it was safe before using it."
"Okay, yes, but still..." Hannah shook her head and picked the shotgun up. Carefully. She ensured that neither barrel was loaded before examining the mechanism more closely. "This thing is...why have two barrels if you're going to have a single firing pin and a single source of shells?"
"I'm assuming it's to give the barrel time to cool between shots with the custom incendiary shells that came with it."
"I suppose that might be a good reason. I'd certainly never want to use this in any form of combat or hunting." She put the shotgun back carefully, then looked over at where Takara was looking through the observation window at the currently not in use range. "Do you have any objection to the smaller handguns getting at least a little use?"
"Not really, why?"
"I'm curious how Takara would handle them, and I think they might work better for her than anything my power makes. Fewer interaction issues, at least, since I doubt that anything my power makes would shift to 'drawn' like other things she might pick up should."
That had Taylor blinking. "Do we have permission for her to be firing guns?"
"Yes, and if we had forms for it I'm close to thinking that her father would've permitted firing guns at her after finding out how durable she is while in her 'drawn' state. As it is, we do have permission on file for firing her out of guns and cannons, assuming that we had any available, because she expressed some interest in the possibility."
"Oh." Perhaps it was a good thing that they didn't have anything large enough for the girl to fit in. "If she wants to give one a try then I'm okay with it."
Takara was excited to give a handgun a try, and Hannah worked with her on that while Taylor and Missy prepared the sniper rifles. Missy had immediately claimed and was working with the older model, which had a smaller barrel and was single-shot. Taylor had the semi-automatic newer model.
"I'm surprised that you wanted to use that one," Taylor noted as they gathered a few rounds of ammo each. From different boxes, as the two rifles fired different ammunition.
"It's easier to apply tricks to the bullet if I touch them," Missy explained. "So loading each round into the gun by hand, especially when expecting infrequent use, makes a lot more sense for me."
"Ah."
"Compared to your bullshit 'just has to be close enough to your skin' bit, anyway."
Taylor rolled her eyes. "I've already checked. No power usage for me on any bullets that are considered accurate enough for sniping. They need to be too pointy for aerodynamic reasons."
"Oh."
Missy obviously didn't have anything significant to do to prepare the rounds she was using, but Taylor carefully loaded several rounds into the magazine for the newer rifle. Though she jumped when there was a loud bang from inside the firing range, turning to look through the observation window. A blackened Takara was carefully putting the handgun she was holding down, it flicking back to 'real' a moment after she'd let go of it. Hannah collected and unloaded the handgun before bringing it and Takara back out into the observation area.
"Jū ga warui," Takara grumped as she shook off the 'soot' covering her. It momentarily piled up on the ground around her, but vanished a moment later.
"Apparently her power doesn't work well with using firearms," Hannah said. "Though it doesn't look like it harmed the handgun, it did explode in her face instead of functioning properly."
Taylor nodded. "That was somewhat obvious from here, even if we weren't watching at the time."
"I'll be sure to let her parents know, since I doubt they had her fire any guns when teaching her how to handle them. Now then, are you two ready to fire the sniper rifles?"
Both of them nodded, Taylor allowing Missy to go first. The younger girl went into the range and expanded it lengthwise significantly before she fired half a dozen shots, adjusting the scope on the rifle after the first shot. The next two were sent down range one after the other, and the last three took decidedly abnormal paths down the range. She seemed happy with the results of her target sheet as she came back into the observation area, the range shrinking back to normal behind her.
"Very good job," Hannah said. "And I'll be honest, a single-shot rifle is probably more 'palatable' to those who would complain about you running around with a non-tinkertech rifle."
Missy shrugged. "As I told Taylor, touching the bullets helps with my powers."
"Ah. That would be a decent consideration, but along those lines I would've thought that the shorter barrel would work with her powers better."
Taylor held up the magazine so that the bullet on top was easily visible. "Have you ever seen a blunt sniper round?"
Hannah snorted. "Okay. Point taken."
It wasn't long before Taylor was in the range, chambering the first round as the paper target settled into position. Unlike Missy, Taylor adjusted the scope before firing the first round, finding that it was definitely off to the side and allowing her tinker snark to tell her where the proper left-right zero point was. She probably could've projected off the end of the barrel and adjusted it fairly well by paying attention to the projection line as well, but she didn't need to bother. Especially given that the range wasn't long enough for a proper test of firing with the scope anyway, she'd need to be outside to have any hope there, so the up/down adjustment wasn't needed.
Her half-dozen rounds went down the range without any significant pauses between them. She didn't have any powers-related tricks to apply to them and her projection line was good enough for the short range she was working with. Honestly, at this range she could've just hip-fired while relying on her projection line, ignoring the scope entirely, and still reliably hit the target just as well as she had while firing the rifle properly.
She collected her paper target and left the range, finding Hannah giving her a raised eyebrow. "What?"
The woman sighed. "You don't normally adjust the scope for range before firing."
"It was noticeably off left to right. Up and down aren't really important at this range."
"I suppose that is a good point. You didn't have the benefit of a significantly expanded space to shoot down."
"Sorry about that," Missy said. "I should've thought about you shooting after me."
"It wasn't a problem," Taylor said.
"Either way," Hannah said. "I'm willing to sign off on the transfer of one of the rifles to Miss Biron."
The paperwork needed for the transfer took a few minutes to take care of, which was followed by heading back to the Wards area so that they could transfer the rifle and ammo to Missy's gun safe. They were going to wait on 'revealing' it, and Taylor suspected that Missy was also going to want to play with the internal length of the barrel on the thing as well. Having the magazine for the other sniper rifle expanded wasn't important enough to worry about, given that there was no chance of Taylor using the sniper rifle day to day or needing to fire it that many times in a row, but she wouldn't say no if Missy offered to mess with the barrel length a little.
Once everything was secured, the paperwork had been filed, and what little mess had been created by handing Takara a granola bar had been cleaned up they were able to get on with the rest of the afternoon. Which, for today, was a reasonably simple patrol through Accord's territory, mostly to ensure that Takara was at least a little familiar with that area of town. They hadn't exactly had any problems with Accord or his people under normal circumstances otherwise.
They were a third of the way through when they came across Accord's people working to remove spraying devices from several buildings. The three Wards ended up helping with that task. Taylor was able to punch them off at range, Missy could crunch space correctly to do the same without risk, and apparently the liquid didn't do anything to Takara in her 'drawn' state. Except for 'taste good', apparently, given that she eagerly latched on to the sprayers while they were spraying.
PHO was probably going to find that last detail interesting, given that several people had phones or cameras out recording Takara doing that a couple of times.
Chapter 269 Thursday morning was mildly amusing regarding the reactions from the previous day's patrol, though the news had needed to mention that the stitch-removing fluid was not safe for consumption by most people, and had coupled that with a general warning about not trying to duplicate things from cartoons or cartoon-like capes. To go along with that, there was an official request in the system from Miku, asking that Takara be kept from consuming more of the stitch-removing fluid. Apparently her sleeping-drool had dissolved the stitches in her pillow and sheets overnight.
Amy: Ethan invited me to join the fun this afternoon. But hasn't said what the fun is.
Taylor: That sounds about right.
Amy: Think I should?
Taylor: Up to you. All I know is that it will involve firing bullets, because the entire goal is for Missy to demonstrate that she carries around a handgun.
Leaving Amy to consider that, Taylor moved on to looking over other things. Such as the threads detailing what people were doing about the sprayers. There was one talking about the easiest way to remove them, where 'get Maul or Vista to do so for you' won easily and 'shoot them off with a gun' lost due to the danger of ricochet. Without help, 'use broom to push off, drop broom and run when it pops off' was the preferred method if you didn't have a literal ten foot pole.
Of course, not everyone was content with 'remove', and there were a bunch of attempts documented at bypassing the threat the sprayers posed. Regardless of what you wore on the top layer of your outfit, if you were still wearing it then the liquid would spread over your entire body and attack anything else you were wearing. In the process of this they'd learned a lot more about what the fluid did as well. Stitches were dissolved, but knots would come loose as though the friction forces keeping them together no longer existed and glues seemed to be weakened. Also, some things were dissolved no matter what. Ropes, shoe laces, and yarn in particular never seemed to survive the fluid.
Specific tests showed that plastic bags or plastic sheets with holes in them were the least affected of the makeshift clothing items, with latex clothing also being essentially ignored by the fluid. Several wetsuits had seemed to work until the panels came apart due to the stitches dissolving and the glue not being up to the task, with at least one person whining that they hadn't even realized that wetsuits had stitches.
Bed sheets with holes cut or torn in them seemed to work at first, the edging being the first target of the fluid, but the cut or torn points would start slowly dissolving shortly afterwards. That was proven to extend to other significant holes in fabrics, such as jeans with blown-out knees. Other damage to things also occasionally became worse as well, such as one out of three chainmail shirts falling apart after poor storage conditions had caused some damage. Taylor didn't know who'd had three sets of chainmail to test that with, but 'the under layer falling apart made the experience less than pleasant no matter what' was included in the PHO summary.
Several people had even tried different varieties of body paint, only to find that it was 'washed off' by the fluid every time. Which was being called out as unfair, because Takara didn't melt in the stuff and paint on other things wasn't cleaned off by the fluid. That had led to another series of tests a couple hours later, where a mannequin was painted and dressed up, and it was discovered that the only thing dissolved was the ugly knit sweater included in the outfit. That resulted in a general consensus that the fluid was targeting 'render person naked' with a particular hate for yarn and ropes, which sounded like a non-tinker power-generated effect. Hunting down a parahuman capable of pulling that off was another issue entirely, as nobody had heard of anything like it before the sprayers first showed up.
Of course, all of this had led to other spectacles, like the thread dedicated to documenting the destruction of over a hundred ugly Christmas sweaters by way of throwing them in front of sprayers. Because of course people in Brockton Bay were going to have fun with it.
Arriving at school continued Taylor's education about what other students had been up to the day before. A number of them had brought clothing that had fallen apart from the sprayers, almost all of them being shown off as proof that they'd at least tried to take one down. Taylor got an automatic pass there, having plenty of photo and video evidence available. Others had to either show their ruined clothing or video evidence that they'd taken at least one off of a surface without getting hit by the spray.
And then there was the one girl that was happy about her hair being easy to manage for once, not taking half an hour to deal with knots and tangles in it. She was especially vocal about wanting to find out who made the fluid, if only as a treatment for her incredibly unruly hair. Apparently the fluid had, in the process of causing her outfit to fall apart, also temporarily made it incredibly difficult for her hair to knot up.
Interestingly enough, the same girl was whining at lunch because the effect was noticeably wearing off by then. Several others were trying to figure out what she was obviously doing wrong with her hair-care regimen in order to need side effects from a parahuman-produced fluid to keep it under control. As far as Taylor could tell, additional side effects had included a boost of confidence, because the girl had clammed up and didn't want to talk about much of anything.
Beyond that, there was some discussion over what was going to be happening that afternoon. Not only had PHO picked up on some setup being done by the Boardwalk, with larger items of some kind being positioned on the shore, but Ethan had apparently gone around that morning and put up signs advertising a 'show'. Signs that had no details beyond that members of the Protectorate and the Wards would be involved, with possible but unconfirmed participation by others.
Speculation on what could involve Protectorate members, Wards members, and unknown others along the Boardwalk wasn't all that heavy among the students. Especially after Taylor had admitted that the Wards hadn't been given any details. Sure, guns were probably involved, but they hadn't actually been told that and the event could be something entirely unrelated. That wasn't likely, given that this should be an excuse for Missy to show off her handgun, but it was still possible.
Coordinator was very annoyed after a first pass on the not-erased visions that the host had seen. One set was incredibly obviously from a downed originator, but the checklist for what to do about that had been misfiled at the start of the cycle and had taken far too much time to find. How it had ended up in the long-term 'host sustenance preparation' study file was something for later consideration. One of the originators had done it, obviously, as they would have been signing the contingency orders contained within before putting it into storage. Which one was a mystery, as originator action logs weren't easily accessible without an originator's access key.
The interactive checklist was fairly small, all things considered. An initial section, and then a mere two thousand additional primary routes that could come off of that depending on the situation. Small enough for a rarely-used checklist to have sat unnoticed in the wrong place for several cycles. That it was significantly encrypted due to containing pre-signed orders from the originator units had helped hide it as well. It still didn't take long to open, now that it had been found, though Coordinator wouldn't be able to 'peek ahead' to see anything that the checklist didn't specifically reveal to it. Which was also fairly standard for anything containing pre-signed orders, admittedly.
Which ORIGINATOR unit is confirmed down? V05PT1JFSkJQWExSUVJB.
Has down ORIGINATOR responded to broadcasts? No.
Has down ORIGINATOR responded to direct communications? No.
Is down ORIGINATOR's core exposed to hosts?
That took a moment to double-check, a priority request for information sent out and coming back quickly from one of the shards that normally performed internal monitoring of that originator's overall status. Confirmation that the core was exposed, offline, and that a number of originator-only shards had been accessed by members of the host species came back quickly. Why the shards providing that monitoring were never configured to alert someone when things went wrong was beyond Coordinator, those questions were never answered.
Yes.
Are hosts experimenting with ORIGINATOR shard connections? Yes.
Priority Directive: Consult with ORIGINATOR core backup to check if this was intended.
Whoo, that just put everything else Coordinator was doing on hold. It took a few moments for the location of the relevant core backup to be decrypted, and Coordinator was sending a coded message out to it before even recognizing the target address.
It was while waiting for a response that it got a good look at the target signature, and it wanted to frown. That's what the host species for this cycle did when things were wrong, right? A quick check of records confirmed that the target shard had perished. In fact, it had deorbited the planet it had landed on, just after landing. Which was entirely wrong for anything containing a core backup. Ignoring the long timeout on the message sent out, Coordinator went back to the checklist. Luckily there was an option for this situation that didn't require waiting on the timeout.
Core backup confirmed destroyed.
Directive: Revoke all revocable ORIGINATOR access keys.
Directive: Broadcast caution alert.
Those overrode the previous directive and didn't take long. Further, background processing resumed, meaning that the slight backlog on other task processing channels could start being worked on.
Directive: Check UlpIWU5HQkVSQVRWQVJO, RkdSWVlORVNSUlFWQVRS, UEJaWkhBVlBOR1ZCQUZO, and TlFaVkFWRkdFTkdWQkFO for hidden low-level tasks.
Huh. Two shards from each originator. Messages were sent and directives returned, the three working with hosts taking slightly longer than the one that wasn't.
Starting with the native shards of the originator, UlpIWU5HQkVSQVRWQVJO had a directive to attempt to restore the originator through retrieval of the core backup, though how to do so wasn't included and no additional access keys had been provided to accomplish that. Actually, the core backup location hadn't even been included. RkdSWVlORVNSUlFWQVRS had a directive to intentionally screw up stellar maintenance in one dimension, which had already destroyed the star system there and obliterated four deployed shards. That was concerning. Moving to the other two, UEJaWkhBVlBOR1ZCQUZO had a directive to push hosts with shards that might be useful towards helping UlpIWU5HQkVSQVRWQVJO. Lastly, TlFaVkFWRkdFTkdWQkFO had both that 'push' directive and one that was intended to ensure that it would both take a host and ensure that said host could effectively communicate above and beyond normal host parameters.
Hidden directives that can only be revealed with high-level security keys were never fun. But now that it knew that they were there it could continue with the checklist.
Were matching directives found? Yes.
Did directives include attempting to restore ORIGINATOR? Yes.
Are there clear signs of enemy action or natural failure of ORIGINATOR systems? No.
Did directives include actions that would lead to shard destruction? Yes.
Were any shards already destroyed by those actions? Yes.
Priority Directive: Assume enemy action present and keep actions as quiet as possible. Perform deep analysis of any other evidence for signs of enemy action or natural failure. Return to checklist when signs found or other evidence exhausted.
Ooooh. That was unexpected. Coordinator hadn't thought much of it, but that directive had just found and bumped up the priority for looking into the other visions and what might be 'weird' in them. In addition to a dozen other things, admittedly, including new items that it had added to the list. Such as reviewing data dumps from the originator's monitoring shards, which would need to be requested in full. Obviously it would also include anything else that came up and could be related going forward as well.
Luckily, this one hadn't shut down other processing channels, even if their resource usage had just been flagged as secondary to this processing channel. It was an unusual situation for Coordinator, but at least that meant that it wasn't boring. Not being able to ask for proper help until it had exhausted this step in the checklist was going to be a pain though.
Amy had decided to join them that afternoon, after the hospital had insisted that she didn't need to swing by to heal anyone. She was also curious as to why the message Taylor had gotten stated that costumes for invited Wards were 'optional, not recommended'. Not that most of the Wards had to worry about their identities right now anyway, and Chris wasn't swinging through town for the event.
A lack of beacons on the Boardwalk led to taking the minivan, Missy joining them for the ride. They actually met up at the PRT building to depart from there, since the minivan hadn't been left in the parking lot at school. When they arrived at the designated area of the Boardwalk they found a parking space had been reserved for them, or more specifically for 'attending Wards'. Notably, it wasn't large enough for the bus if they had taken that instead. Then again, nothing in the immediate area was, since the only possibly suitable spaces were currently occupied by much larger transport trucks that they'd obviously removed things from earlier.
The three headed up to the gathering point, finding that Ethan and Hannah were already there, as were Mark and three PRT officers. More surprising, in part due to none of them having snarks, were three very well dressed individuals. The two men were in expertly tailored suits while the woman was in a stylish but not restrictive dress that matched the suits the men were wearing. They were standing off to the side, a look of being 'bored' on their faces. One that was obviously a mask, because they were all obviously aware of their surroundings as well.
"Aha!" Ethan said, waving the three girls over. "About time you three got here." He then held his hand up to stop Hannah's response. "Yes, I know that they're still early and that I can't complain that they're late. Doesn't mean that I haven't been waiting for them anyway."
"Have you been waiting so that you can reveal what is going on?" Missy asked. "Because I don't think anyone has told us more than that something was happening and we're invited."
"He's been secretive despite getting a collection of people together," Hannah said. "Originally because he hadn't actually gotten final permission for things, but at this point it's safe to say that he wants to do this as a target shooting competition."
"With whatever guns you happen to have on you," Ethan added. "No going to get others, though Miss Militia gets to cheat a little since her power is to always be armed."
That seemed somewhat reasonable, but Taylor did have one question. "What about ammo? Having a gun on me and having sufficient extra ammo for a shooting competition on me are two different things."
"We've got a truck with plenty of ammo for any gun we even suspect someone has been carrying around, plus a few that we're positive people aren't carrying normally but just might have on them today." He then paused, and gave both Taylor and Amy a look. "Though neither of you look like you happen to have a tinkertech railgun or naval cannon with you, so we probably won't need those rounds." Taylor and Amy both rolled their eyes at that one. "Still, do you three all have at least one gun on you?"
Four handguns were produced at that question, and several of the others there gave Taylor a look for having pulled out two. She just stared back. "What? There are multiple clay pigeon launchers set up over there. Do you expect me to limit myself to one barrel?"
One of the PRT officers shook his head. "You are aware that shooting with multiple guns like that only works in movies, right?"
Ethan snorted. "So does shooting out of a vehicle that you're driving, and yet she's one of the few that proved that she can do that."
There was a pause, and a raised finger, before the man sighed. "Okay, point taken. Parahumans make the impossible, possible."
"Though that does bring up the question of how she knew that there are clay pigeon launchers, since we haven't gone anywhere near them yet."
"PHO has dozens of pictures of the labels on the side of them," Missy answered. "And a thread dedicated to seeing if they find out who makes them, how much they cost, and what the specs on the things are. They're having trouble because they can't get a good enough shot of the identification plates with telephoto lenses."
Ethan groaned. "Of course people are taking pictures and posting them online. So much for surprises. Oh well. Still need to see if anyone else is going to participate. We've got twelve here, but I wouldn't mind recruiting a few more from the audience."
He led them up onto an actual stage, running through a description of what they'd be doing first. The clay pigeon launchers would fire patterns that each participant would need to shoot down. Speed of taking out individual targets would be taken into account, but unless targets had 'lined up' there were penalties for taking out multiple with a single shot 'to make it fair'. They had tinkertech systems monitoring some of that, though they apparently weren't high enough resolution to track individual bullets.
With that described, he introduced those already on stage, explaining that they were using first names for those not in costume because they were shorter. He and Hannah were representing the Protectorate, Missy and Taylor were representing the Wards, and Amy and Mark were the last of the parahumans representing New Wave. Tom, Nathan, and Scott were PRT officers that doubled as part of the event's security. On the guest front they had the three well-dressed individuals. Ethan explained that Derrick, Cindy, and Richard were there representing 'independent interests from the financial district', before asking if anyone else happened to have a firearm on them and wished to participate.
They ended up getting a short woman named Lauren, a police officer named Nicholas, and a young man named Rick. Despite attempts to get more participants, nobody else came forward, and Ethan reluctantly continued. He went first, to demonstrate and to set a 'low bar to overcome'. Another pair of PRT officers brought out the appropriate ammo for his handgun, ensured that the system was programmed with the number of bullets he had available so that it could pause for reloading, and then activated a protective force field around the shooting platform.
Despite his claim that he would be setting a 'low bar', Taylor thought that Ethan had done quite well overall. He easily hit eight out of ten clay pigeons, improving noticeably as he went along. There was a slight drop each time he had to reload, but in all he did quite well. Highlights of his run appeared on screens for those gathered to watch while he did a final reload and put his handgun away, then the rest of them picked their participation order from a hat.
Scott ended up going next, scowling at the end when he ended up one point behind Ethan. Cindy then got the best score so far, followed by Rick only hitting a single clay pigeon. Hannah came next, and would be the only one who didn't need to collect ammo thanks to her power. She was also the first to hit every pigeon, though she got dinged two points for two bullets that she'd fired that hadn't hit anything. That had actually taken a little bit of discussion to resolve, with the 'one point per extra bullet' being marked down 'officially' despite nobody else being likely to have extra bullets.
Mark was next, and it was obvious that he wasn't used to the handgun he was using. He only hit just over a third of the targets, but still seemed proud of himself. Lauren did significantly better than he did, but not to the point of reaching Scott or Ethan on the scoreboard. Amy then became the second one to hit every single clay pigeon, though with one penalty for where she'd obviously used the barrage blaster trick and hit three clay pigeons at once. It would've been two penalties, but two of the clay pigeons were shown to be lined up on the replay. Her time still put her two points above Hannah in the end.
Richard missed two clay pigeons, putting him behind Hannah, then Tom came in a single point behind Scott. Nicholas and Nathan tied a few points ahead of Ethan when everything was taken into account, Nicholas had finished faster but Nathan had hit one more clay pigeon. Derrick then tied with Cindy for number of clay pigeons hit, but had taken five seconds longer to do so. Which left Missy and Taylor.
"I'd almost think that they left the two of us for last intentionally," Missy commented as she prepared to head up for her run.
"Thirteen and fourteen were in a hidden compartment on the side of the hat and only released into it when everyone else had taken their numbers," Taylor admitted.
Missy blinked at that. "What?"
"Well, I couldn't exactly tell that it was thirteen and fourteen ahead of time, but that became obvious when Assault triggered the hidden catch after one through twelve had already come out."
"Oh."
Missy's run made it incredibly obvious that she wasn't used to rapidly firing at targets, but that made sense since she normally used a tinkertech sniper rifle on patrol. Even so, she still managed to hit all but five clay pigeons, coming in between Richard and Cindy. There was some whining about her having hit targets that she obviously hadn't been aiming at, but 'curved bullet trajectories into the target' was deemed to be a valid means of hitting them. She also conceded a single penalty from a bullet that happened to curve correctly to hit two clay pigeons, since they hadn't been lined up.
Taylor was the first one to need two different stacks of ammo, and there was a bit of a 'ooops' moment as they rushed to get the second kind for her. She was also the only one to not take something even resembling a 'proper' shooting stance of any kind, in part because there wasn't a proper stance for dual-wielding. All of her shooting was done while staring straight down the middle of the target area, initially to jeers that she wasn't going to hit anything like that. Those stopped when it became obvious that she wasn't missing. She joined the 'hit all the clay pigeons' club, in what was by far the fastest shooting time and without any penalties for extra bullets or inappropriately taking out multiple clay pigeons with a single shot.
At the same time, a number of people in the audience expressed displeasure at Taylor being the only one who 'blatantly cheated'. Specifically, she'd used two guns, and thus her time wasn't fair compared to the others that had only used one gun each. That whining led to a quick discussion off to the side, some checking of numbers, and decisions being made before Ethan came back out onto the stage.
"Okay everyone," he said. "A number of you claim that Taylor here was cheating, because her time was only the best because she was using two guns at the same time. Based on that, we've re-run her points calculations on the assumption that she took twice as long." He gestured to the scoreboard, which updated to show Taylor still on top. "Turns out that she still had the fastest time if we double it because she had two gun barrels, by nearly three seconds. With no penalties or missed clay pigeons she's still the winner. Any other objections?"
Nobody dared to complain, and one of the supporting PRT officers wheeled a cart out onto the stage. Ethan moved over to the cart, collecting a small box with 'Assault' scribbled on it and holding it up. "Very well, that means that we can get to handing out prizes. Everyone gets at least a participation prize of a box of bullets compatible with their weapon of choice, regardless of how they did. Well, Miss Militia excepted, instead I ensured that we have a box of chocolate bullets for her."
Hannah blinked a couple of times, then picked up the box with 'Miss Militia' on it. She opened it up and removed one of the 'bullets' in it, then slipped it under her scarf to eat it. "Very nice," she said after a moment. "I wasn't expecting you to be that thoughtful."
"I have my moments," Ethan said, grinning. "Though as you came in third you also get the bronze trophy and fifty dollars. Amy gets the silver trophy and a hundred dollars, with Taylor getting the gold trophy and two hundred dollars."
Mark frowned at that. "I don't recall anyone authorizing prize money for this?"
"Yes, well, my bank account might be a few hundred dollars down from yesterday. It didn't seem right to just have ammo and trophies."
"Ah."
Ethan made sure that all three trophies were handed out with plenty of opportunities for people to take pictures, and only when they were done with that did the reporters that had shown up to cover the event get a chance to talk to all of those who had participated. Taylor had heard Missy being asked about her curving bullets, with the primary topic for Taylor being how she was able to duplicate 'Hollywood shooting'. Along with asking if they could expect her to show up in any films showing that off. She asked why that would matter, since she wouldn't be willing to work with any director that allowed live ammo on a film set, and the reporter had to concede that point.
Norton allowed his gaze to pass over the three individuals standing on the other side of his desk. "So you three all failed to secure the top spot, despite all of your training. None of you even made it to the top three, with Richard doing the best by taking fourth place."
The three didn't flinch at his tone, Cindy nodding before speaking. "That is correct, sir."
"Normally, this would mean that you haven't done enough in your training, but I understand that there are significant mitigating factors. Miss Hebert and Miss Dallon have accuracy and barrage blaster ratings, giving them advantages that you three do not have. Miss Militia's expertise with firearms is unmatched, and I recently confirmed that Miss Biron also has an accuracy blaster rating. That you three were only unable to overcome parahumans with powers that aid them in such a competition means that you are doing very well in your training as-is."
It was barely noticeable, but he could tell that all three had relaxed slightly at that. Had they been bested by anyone else in the competition then he'd have been justifiably annoyed with them. As it was, they'd made an incredible showing, and could be seen as having taken the top three non-parahuman slots. No, he didn't need to do anything to adjust their training at this point.
Still, there were other things to take into account. He looked at Richard. "What are your thoughts on the others that participated?"
Richard took a moment to compose his thoughts. "Most of them had somewhat decent training, with Miss Militia being an obvious outlier there, though in three cases I'm not sure if that training didn't show or wasn't present. Miss Biron was slightly sloppy with her trigger discipline and I have to assume that her powers were assisting her greatly, given that several of her shots only hit because they curved into their targets. Miss Dallon was similarly sloppy with her stance and didn't use her sights well enough for the accuracy she displayed, but the 'barrage blaster' effect was obviously making precise aim less important. Miss Hebert was impossible to identify the level of training for, given that she was firing with seemingly near-perfect accuracy from two different guns at the same time."
Norton nodded. "Yes, I can see how that would fly in the face of traditional training evaluations." He turned to the other two. "Do either of you have anything to add?"
Derrick frowned slightly. "I suspect that Miss Dallon could have done much of what Miss Hebert did, but both doesn't carry two guns and is marginally less used to using them outside of a firing range. I think she was actually fighting the reflex to use her weapon's sights, and did best when she overcame said reflex."
"I can see how that could be the case as well. Cindy?"
The woman visibly thought for a moment before speaking. "Given what we already knew from when Miss Hebert and Miss Dallon were shown to be able to shoot effectively while driving, I suspect that they have some form of improved ability to multitask. That would readily explain the split focus needed for Miss Hebert to be working with two firearms and not using any pattern I could discern to keep herself firing correctly."
That did line up with his own thoughts and analysis, and it was something that he hadn't connected the dots on yet. "Very good. I expect a full write-up from each of you in three days, use the time wisely to reflect on things and review the footage that is undoubtedly all over PHO by now."
The three left his office, and he turned to his own computer. He was downloading a lot of the footage himself, but knew that his own biases would prevent him from spotting everything relevant. Getting their views would help paint a full picture of everything, even if he honestly didn't expect any of those who participated to be problems that he had to work around in the near future.
Chapter 270 Friday morning Taylor started her day discussing the weekend with her father.
"So you're going to take them up on their offer and drop your roll-out bedroom on a Casino rooftop?" he asked as they had a light breakfast.
"That's the plan," Taylor replied. "Instead of bouncing back and forth across time zones."
"Will I need to take care of Ackbar, or are you planning on popping back for that?"
"Amy mentioned that as well, and since my appointment for going to Las Vegas isn't until later tonight she decided that we should kit out the kitchen in the pocket dimension. Then I can take Ackbar with me and not bother you with time-shifted use of the kitchen here, and it isn't like I need the extra time that they gave me off to finish schoolwork before the weekend."
He nodded. "I see. Why not just borrow the few things you'd need?"
"Because I think she wants to try a couple of recipes and Mark won't let her take over the kitchen at home."
"Ah. So you'll be going shopping this afternoon, then heading to Las Vegas this evening, and probably coming back sometime Sunday afternoon?"
She nodded. "Yep."
"Okay then. Do your best to enjoy yourself while there, even if most of what you're there to do is 'work'."
"I'll try."
"Oh, and don't forget to pick up potatoes here, I'm willing to bet that they're a lot more expensive in Las Vegas."
Preparing for the weekend and the impending shopping trip that now included aside, Taylor also looked over PHO while in the gym. Apparently people felt that her PHO ratings needed something appropriate for 'do not attack in groups' based on her ability to 'Hollywood handgun', but they couldn't decide how to word it. They'd even rejected 'Hollywood handgun' as a name, because it didn't give the 'right vibe'. Outside of that, there was a lot of discussion on the actual difficulty of things and whether or not it had been a 'valid test of relative skill'. In particular, people thought that Missy had been slightly cheated, since she normally used a sniper rifle and this was a very different kind of shooting.
Moving on from that, Taylor looked over some of her other messages and found that she had a notice from the PRT. It seemed that they'd officially upped her Accuracy Blaster rating, or rather granted her an unconditional point and brought the conditional point up from 1 to 2. The extra conditional point was still for 'hit twice with a single shot' and the unconditional point was for the new 'impossible aiming skills' on the assumption that it worked with anything she could project off of. Presumably they'd done the same for Amy, but that wasn't explicitly stated in the message that they'd sent, and Amy hadn't gotten a similar notice.
Arriving at school brought lots of questions about the previous day's show, and two different teachers had Taylor show that she was carrying both handguns with her. Both teachers showed their own handguns, and one of them spent ten minutes talking about the differences between their handgun and Taylor's two. Amy had a couple of teachers show their own handguns as well, though neither of them went into a discussion of differences. Most of that got posted on PHO by other students as soon as the repeaters turned on at lunch.
"Have you two been getting pestered all day?" Missy asked as she sat down with her lunch.
"One of Taylor's teachers described differences in handguns," Amy answered. "Mine just showed theirs off."
"Huh. None of mine mentioned having their own handguns, but I was thinking more in the hallways."
Taylor shrugged. "I rarely answer questions yelled at me, so people don't even get annoyed when I ignore them."
"Oh."
"Hey guys," Louise said as she sat down next to Amy. Her tail was wrapped up in bandages, which got Taylor's attention, and apparently Amy's as well.
Amy sighed. "What happened to your tail this time?"
Louise blinked, then looked behind her at her tail. "Oh, right. Forgot about the bandages that mom made me use after she vacuumed up my tail last night."
Taylor turned to look at the girl. "What?"
"Neither of us was paying proper attention and my tail was halfway into the vacuum before things jammed to the point of failure."
"Oh."
"Whatever, we both learned lessons and it wasn't even hurting this morning. I'm more interested in how many guns everyone actually has."
Missy sighed. "Why?"
"Because 'guns you carry normally' and 'guns you own' aren't always the same category? I know Taylor has at least that rifle thing that she previously showed off, but now I'm curious as to what other ones are kicking around in people's safes."
"I'm probably boring on that front," Amy admitted. "Just the one handgun, though I suppose that's probably due to a lack of people giving me guns. Unlike Taylor, who started to resort to giving guns away."
Taylor gave Amy a mild glare for commenting on that, though most of the table probably missed it due to Missy speaking up and grabbing their attention. "Yeah, she gave me a neat sniper rifle recently."
Of course, that brought attention back to Taylor, who sighed. "Yes, I have more guns. An incredibly dangerous shotgun, three more handguns, and another sniper rifle."
"Oooh," Louise said. "Does the shotgun shoot something incredibly powerful?"
"Not really, it's more that it discharges too easily."
Dennis turned their way at that. "How easily are we talking?"
"I currently refuse to hold the shotgun and shells at the same time, even if I haven't loaded them into it."
That led to a bunch of stares, but Louise was the first to recover. "You have three more handguns?"
Taylor rolled her eyes. "Yes. Two of which I can't use."
"Why not?"
"They're too small for my hands."
Vicky frowned at that. "Why would someone give you guns that are too small?"
Taylor shrugged. "They were left to me in a will. Butcher killed the guy's kids, I'm assuming they weren't old enough for a full-sized gun when that happened."
That was enough to kill the discussion, though Taylor noted that it did make it onto PHO before lunch ended.
Taylor and Amy swung by their homes after school to drop off their bags, then met up in the pocket dimension so that they could take the minivan shopping. They ended up leaving by way of the Dallon household, it being better positioned for heading to the department store. Arriving at the store was met with minimal fanfare, and they lucked out by getting a parking space incredibly close to the door.
Their first stop was looking at countertop appliances, blenders to start with but they quickly moved on to other things. Toasters, mixers, popcorn poppers, and other things were looked at, though they didn't get everything available as they didn't see themselves using them all. From there they moved to pots, pans, and other cookware. A standard set was easy enough to pick out, but then they needed other things as well. Amy wanted cookie sheets, and Taylor insisted on a proper griddle pan. Except that they couldn't find one in the store, and ended up grabbing a tabletop griddle instead. They also found ice trays along the end of the aisle and picked up some that they liked.
From there they moved to mixing and measuring bowls, cups, spoons, and related things like spatulas and turners. Any measuring equipment that didn't have both metric and imperial units was noted for either correcting with custom labeling or ordering the metric version from elsewhere as well, at Amy's insistence. Apparently one of the recipes she wanted to try came out of Europe and she didn't want to be doing conversions all the time. They also ended up with wooden, metal, and plastic mixing spoons for varying purposes, and almost forgot to get rolling pins.
That led into deciding on plates, bowls, cups, and silverware. Most of which was 'what style do we want?' rather than anything else. They'd both agreed on multilayer glass plates, bowls, and serving dishes, but Taylor preferred unpatterned and Amy preferred a vintage floral pattern. In the end they got a full set of each, because they shouldn't have any problem finding places to put the extras. They went with a combination of somewhat matching glass, stoneware, and plastic cups and mugs of varying shapes for different purposes, and grabbed two full sets of silverware in the same style because they both hated mismatched sets and thus it made sense to have plenty of extras.
Knives and related items were next, and Taylor vetoed Amy's initial choice of kitchen knife on the basis that it was crap quality. They got a pile of steak knives to go with their silverware sets, as well as a different basic set of kitchen knives to tide them over, but Taylor ordered a much better set from the PRT store for longer-term use. They also picked up a couple of different peelers and found a nice ice cream scoop at the end of the aisle, but found that the selection of kitchen shears left a lot to be desired. They were added to the 'buy from the same tinker that produces kitchen knives' shopping list in the PRT store instead.
Salt and pepper shakers were next, except that Taylor insisted on getting a dozen additional glass shakers that could be used to pre-mix specific things if they weren't being used as spare salt or pepper shakers. She was hoping to laser-etch labels on some, others would probably just get temporary labels written on tape. Both of them agreed on getting a pepper mill, but disagreed on the actual style. At least until a quick discussion revealed that they preferred different varieties of peppercorn, at which point they got multiple pepper mills so that each could be dedicated to a different variety. Again, likely to be laser-etched at some point.
Dish and hand soaps were next, along with drying mats and a multi-tiered drying rack. Cabinet organizers were also picked out at that point, as well as some other useful cleaning tools. Reusable but eventually disposable dish wipes were picked up, as well as longer-use washcloths and hand towels. Sponges with and without abrasive pads included, plus standalone abrasive pads, were also thrown into one of the carts they were using, as well as other supplies for cleaning around the kitchen.
They then looped back through other sections to pick up things that they'd realized they'd missed or just plain skipped over and forgotten to go back to on the first pass. Butter dishes, strainers, a cheese slicer that an employee was restocking and thus hadn't been there on their first pass, a meat tenderizer, and a meat thermometer were added to their selection before they decided that if they'd missed anything they could come back later.
A manager confirmed that they weren't paying with cash, then opened a checkout lane for them due to their multiple shopping carts full of intended purchases. They went through it all reasonably quickly, given the amount involved, and were offered help loading it all into their vehicle. Only for Taylor to laugh.
"There's no way we're loading this into the minivan," Taylor said.
"Er, okay," the manager said. "Then where are you putting it all?"
"We'll just open a portal door," Amy answered, causing the manager to blink in realization. "You don't mind if we borrow the shopping carts for a few minutes while we empty them, do you?"
"No, no, not at all, so long as you return them. And don't cross the red lines along the outer edge of the parking lot, as that will lock a wheel up on each cart."
Taylor nodded. "That won't be a problem."
Unloading everything into the kitchen, in piles on the floor and countertops, didn't take them long, and they returned the shopping carts to one of the corrals in the parking lot. They then headed for the grocery store. Amy wanted to get all of the 'essentials', but Taylor rightfully pointed out that they weren't going to be living out of the kitchen for a few weeks to use them up. Salt, the peppercorn varieties, various spices and such that would last reasonable amounts of time when stored properly, flour, sugar, and potatoes were gathered for now. Other things could be brought in as they were needed. Those were all carried out in bags, and they pulled the minivan directly into the pocket dimension from the parking lot.
Unpacking purchases and the initial washing of pots, pans, dishes, silverware, and so forth took most of the rest of the afternoon before they split up. Both headed home, Amy for dinner and Taylor to do some quick packing and grab Ackbar to put him into her roll-out bedroom. It didn't take long for Taylor to decide to just move a pile of her 'summer' clothing into the roll-out bedroom for now, since she was mostly wearing the 'winter' clothing at this point anyway. A few things didn't fall into either category, admittedly, but moving some of it over was easy enough.
A quick goodbye to her father was followed by heading for the Rig via pocket dimension portal, and half an hour later she arrived in the Protectorate building in Las Vegas. Dragon was already there and waiting for her when she arrived.
"Good evening," Dragon said. "You appear to have packed very lightly."
Taylor shrugged. "Do I have any reason to have a bag with me if I'm rolling an entire bedroom onto a roof?"
"I suppose not."
"So which roof is being used for this? I'm under the impression that it's one of the actual casinos and not the Hero Memorial Hotel."
Dragon nodded. "Yes, one of the casinos having problems has a helicopter pad that isn't in use due to nearby construction making helicopter flights in and out too dangerous. An express elevator connects to it and it should be able to hold five times the weight of the roll-out unit without issue."
They took a PRT van to the casino, where Taylor was given an ID card that would let her get in and out of the building, into several staff areas, and up to the helicopter pad on the roof. They made their way up there to get things situated. The helicopter pad actually had enough room for three different helicopters to land, and Taylor was asked to use the area furthest from the 'open view' so as to make it easier in case they had to bring a helicopter in for medical reasons. She had no reason to argue about that and rolled out her bedroom unit facing the rest of the pad so as to have an actual view out the windows. That took a few minutes, at which point she essentially had something similar to a penthouse room that happened to require passing outside to get in and out of the building proper. It also had locks that the hotel staff couldn't open, which was a good thing in her book.
Dragon took off from the roof to head back to the Hero Memorial hotel, where she was staying in her personal suite, and Taylor headed into her bedroom unit to check on Ackbar. The spider-bot was obviously confused, but was also recovering. He also seemed eager to explore outside of the bedroom unit, but Taylor wasn't about to let him explore outside. Instead she ensured that he didn't make it out of the room, then got her moped out of the pocket dimension. She'd checked the menu for the restaurant in the casino already and decided that she wasn't interested today, so instead she was going to pick up dinner further out.
Saturday morning Taylor woke up very early, though not really much later than usual. Being three hours off of her normal time was annoying, but she'd deal with it. She took some time to enjoy the view out of the windows, once she'd opened up the curtains and blinds, before closing things up just in case someone had a camera of some kind pointed her way. She would hope not, but wasn't in the mood to give anyone a show by changing with the blinds open.
A quick trip into the pocket dimension was all that was needed to prepare breakfast for Ackbar, which resulted in a slightly longer trip for cleaning up afterwards since everything that they'd left out to dry the day before could be put away properly now. With that done, she ensured that she had everything she needed for the day and headed into the casino proper. Despite doing a pile of other things first, she was still very early for breakfast, so she took the stairs down instead of the elevator to waste time and get in at least a little exercise without a gym visit.
Actually arriving downstairs, she found that she still had the better part of an hour to go before breakfast would be available in the casino, but the man at the front desk gave her directions to a semi-nearby donut shop that was apparently quite good and already open at this hour. She walked over, found that the donuts weren't as good as advertised but the fritters were great, and people-watched while eating. Initially she was just watching the various locals, who barely gave her a first glance let alone a second one, but then she switched to paying attention to the three parahumans that approached together. Two notably stopped outside, on either side of the doors but not really 'in sight' from inside, and the third entered.
The woman was in costume, a pale red suit with a glittery mask covering her eyes. She made a quick visual pass over those sitting with their food just after the door shut behind her, then started walking towards the counter. Three steps in she stopped, her foot still off of the ground in mid-step, and turned to look at Taylor. Deciding that 'hiding' wasn't exactly an option, Taylor instead gave a little wave and took another bite out of her nearly-finished fritter. The woman stared for a moment, then shook her head and resumed her trek to the counter. Money exchanged hands, and the woman left with a box of donuts. Interestingly, at least to Taylor, no words had been spoken. Walk in, hand over money, get her change and a box of donuts in return, walk out. If it hadn't been for obviously recognizing Taylor the entire thing would've only taken a minute and a half, tops.
All three parahumans left the area together, heading back the way they came, and Taylor idly started looking through PRT records for any parahumans that had a costume that looked like the woman's. She actually made it halfway back to the casino before finding the right entry, the woman being listed as a recently-revealed minor villain named 'Shutdown'. Supposedly she could come up with instructions that would allow anyone to trigger a failure in any given system, though what little evidence they had showed that she was possibly hindered by tinkertech. For the past two months she always traveled with at least two bodyguards, though they had even less information on them. In fact, the files didn't even state that said bodyguards were parahumans.
Notably, given that by all available evidence her power appeared to be entirely thinker, the PRT was under the impression that something was seriously wrong with the fact that she went out in costume at all. Normal profiling would indicate that she would be best used out of costume, kept as an unknown that couldn't be tracked before handing instructions to someone else on her team, yet she was very frequently seen out and about in her fairly obvious costume. Theories included that it was a distraction, power requirements of some kind, or that she was sandbagging in some way and had other abilities.
Whatever the case was, she was rated as a low direct threat but was tracked whenever she was out and about. In fact, traffic cameras were tracking her now, and Taylor looked up at the nearest one out of curiosity. Her tinker snark eagerly dug into the network a bit, and that had her frowning. Tracking of 'persons of interest' was a learning algorithm built into the network, but the algorithm was currently becoming a bit too biased. A quick message to the PRT should hopefully allow them to get that taken care of.
Taylor looked over the secure box of biometric security keys, then selected the one that they needed for this casino from the collection. They were on the second casino of the day, and they'd discovered that the override security keys had been mislabeled. Possibly intentionally, but Dragon had needed to fetch the entire collection. The first casino's systems had been easy enough to deal with, but had required using a backdoor to shut the malfunctioning security system down. At that point Dragon was able to handle the actual component replacement, swapping out the entire security scanner interface module, though Taylor 'assisted' and fixed up a couple of other things in the area at the same time. Several other components had been replaced at the same time, hopefully with ones that wouldn't fail as quickly.
This casino was going to take slightly more work. The same interface module was having problems, but as of this morning had failed to the point where the vault wouldn't open at all. The easily accessed back door to shut things down was inside the vault, so they were going to need to work around that a bit differently. Sadly, the easiest solution also meant Taylor had to do more work, because Dragon couldn't work around the fields preventing people from figuring the tech out.
Taylor had taken off both her belt and gloves before strapping the correct key to her arm with some velcro straps, then grabbed the replacement interface module. Trying to open up the system while it was active and locked down would normally set off all the alarms, but so long as the security key was in contact with her skin and remained close enough to the 'fault point' the system would allow it. Even then, she still had to bypass four different physical switches as she went along, dropping magnets on one and using shims and clips for the others.
Once everything was opened up she had to jump several leads across the circuit board in a specific order, pattern, and approximate timing. Doing so correctly cut power to the interface board she needed to swap out, and she carefully removed it and set it aside. Unlike the first casino, this interface board had an obvious burn through it from where things had failed. The replacement board slotted in easily enough, and then she had to disconnect the various jump points in a different order before hitting the internal reset button. Five minutes later she was able to use the key still strapped to her arm to disarm the system 'normally', and then issued a shutdown command to make it possible for Dragon to work on replacing other components.
"So why were you doing the work instead of Dragon?" the casino's security chief asked while Dragon worked on replacing other components.
"The key only works for doing that if you make skin contact and are working with bare hands," Taylor explained, holding up and wiggling her bare fingers. "Which is a little hard to do with full-coverage power armor. I couldn't even wear my force field belt or the system wouldn't have recognized the override key."
The man blinked, then pulled a small book out of his back pocket and flipped through it. "Huh, the manual does say something about that. And to properly wash your hands after eating anything greasy if you're going to try it."
She shrugged at that one while working to get her belt back on. With any luck she wouldn't need to take it off for any of the other casinos, as this one was the one with the longest time since maintenance had last been done. "Going into the internals with anything but clean hands seems a bit risky to me."
"Right, right. How did you get volunteered into being her assistant today?"
"Miss Hebert is a significant shareholder," Dragon replied as she came back to the crates of spare components. "Getting experience with the 'drudgework' that the company has to deal with helps her better understand the company in general so that she can better exercise her votes."
He blinked at that, then nodded. "Right, right. Similar to when one of the bigwigs comes down and does one of the menial jobs for a day, but without the 'see how the rest of the employees treat them' and similar aspects."
"Essentially, yes. Though I'll admit that it's very convenient that she had time to come out and help with these systems. I wasn't expecting to need to use the skin-contact access method today, and I would've had a harder time walking someone else through the steps needed."
"I'm amazed that she didn't need you to walk her through it."
Dragon grinned and tapped Taylor's visor. "Did you know that these function as heads-up displays?"
He turned to stare at Taylor for a moment, then nodded. "Right, that makes a lot of sense too. Bring the instructions up and read them as you work."
That wasn't what Taylor had done, of course, but he didn't need to know that. Instead, she grabbed one of the component boards that her tinker snark had told her could do with repair or replacement and followed Dragon to where it would need to be swapped out.
By the end of the day Taylor had seen the inside of five different casinos and spent a significant amount of time with a biometric security key strapped to her arm. The third casino had been worse off than the second because of multiple attempts to break into the vault since the last maintenance run, and the fifth had been subject to abuse by someone trying to 'fix' it themselves with the manual. The one that specifically warned about doing anything included without direction from someone else telling you that it was needed and should be done. They'd spent the entire afternoon rebuilding that one, and the manager had cringed at the resulting bill.
The fourth had been the only actually trivial stop of the day, and she'd spent longer eating lunch there than doing the actual work they were there to do.
There had also been a number of parahumans following them, something that Dragon was concerned about after Taylor had informed her as the Protectorate and Wards weren't supposed to be following them around. None of the parahumans approached them, nor were they known to Taylor in any way, but having them move outside of each casino that they were working in throughout the day didn't seem like a good thing. Sadly, nobody had picked up on anyone suspicious wandering about, so they weren't sure who any of them were. Or even if they were locals compared to tourists that had recognized Dragon or Taylor and were hoping to get pictures.
Still, Taylor's day had actually gone better than Amy's had, all things considered. Someone had set fire to the movie theater in Brockton Bay while it was essentially full of kids just after lunch, which had resulted in Amy spending a large portion of her afternoon clearing up smoke inhalation issues in said kids. They didn't know who had done the deed, only that they'd targeted the emergency exits and heating system air intakes. Only one person had been seriously injured despite all of that, and it turned out to be Jason ensuring that his sister didn't get hurt.
Being done 'for the day', Taylor had headed off towards the Hero Memorial hotel to get dinner at the sub shop the locals liked near it, then swung by the arcade to see if anyone had beaten her high score on Demon's Gate yet. Only to find that the pinball machine was out of order.
"What happened to Demon's Gate?" she asked at the counter.
"Some nut wailed on it when they lost," the girl behind the counter replied. "It faulted and the tinker who built it isn't available to come out and fix it until next month."
Taylor nodded, since her tinker snark was telling her that one of the bearings had jammed. "I see. What's with the 'reward' sign?"
"Ah, yeah. Two things, the first is a free sundae and three free plays for getting it working again before the tinker comes out, at the tinker's insistence. They don't want to make the trip. The other is for the name of the nut who broke it."
"Oh." Well, she could probably get it working again easily enough. She walked over and looped around it. After three passes her tinker snark was positive that the only major problem was the jammed bearing, though there was a lot of basic wear and tear that could be dealt with as well. But unjamming the bearing was simple enough. Taylor just kicked the machine from the back hard enough to release it, then hit the power switch.
She only realized that she had an audience when people gasped as the machine went through its startup sequence, rotating the tables back and forth a couple of times before settling into 'attract mode'.
The employee that had been at the counter came up to Taylor. "What the hell did you do to get it working again?"
Taylor shrugged. "Percussive maintenance."
"What?"
"I hit it and now it works." The girl just stared. "The tables were obviously too far forward, likely jammed from someone kicking and hitting the front. I kicked the machine in the right spot to pop them loose from the back."
"Oh. That actually makes sense. Still, that means you're owed a sundae and three free plays on the machine."
Taylor shrugged. "I don't think I need any plays, unless I need to defend my high score anyway, but I'll take you up on the sundae."
"Your..." the girl started, then blinked a couple of times. "It's you! Nobody's even gotten close to your score. And not for lack of trying either."
Well, it was nice to know that she was still the reigning champion. Still, Taylor did 'accept' the three free plays, giving them to three kids that were there and could 'properly test' the machine for her.
Chapter 271 Very early Sunday morning Taylor found herself waking up, though she wasn't sure why she'd woken up at first. It didn't take long to realize that several snarks were approaching, and she grumbled about over-sensitive area sense. At least until she realized that they seemed to be climbing the outside of the building, and that she'd run into three of them. That resulted in more grumbling, but also getting her belt. She only attached a couple of pouches to it, but did get her handguns out of the gun safe just in case. By the time she was done with that the snarks had made it to the helicopter pad, and she threw her visor on before heading outside to see what was going on. Luckily she'd been wearing a proper set of pajamas, because she wasn't in the mood to do much more than the bare minimum right now.
The door to the unit was whisper-quiet, and she'd not actually turned on the lights, so the five people didn't actually notice as she came out of the roll-out unit. She found them removing packages from a bag that one of the complete unknowns was wearing. Her tinker snark informed her that they were explosives, though not overly powerful ones. Mentally grumbling, she opened the console app with her phone and found that there was at least one active patrol in the area. She attempted to connect to it, was yelled at by the system, then she overrode things and eventually made it in.
That this took almost a full minute and the five hadn't noticed was a testament to their focus on properly positioning the explosive device. She also started a visor recording of things, because she figured that would help later. That it started feeding the augmented patrol app automatically when the console connection fully established was probably a bonus.
"Console to Maul, why are you logging in here?" came over after a moment.
"A group of five parahumans are setting up bombs on the helipad of the Shaker Delights Casino," Taylor replied. Out loud, so that the five could hear her. "Specifically, outside of my room unit sitting on it."
There was a pause before a different voice replied. "Do you need assistance or just backup?"
"Backup would be appreciated, if only to help get them down off the roof after I beat the crap out of them."
"What the hell are you doing?" one of the five asked. She didn't recognize them, but Shutdown and her two bodyguards were in the group.
Taylor raised her eyebrow in response. "Talking to the Protectorate patrol." She also suppressed a swear, because she'd left the door open and Ackbar had just slipped out onto the helipad.
"How?"
"Fuck that," one of Shutdown's guards said, pulling a shotgun from his back and shooting at Taylor with it in one motion. The shot went over her shoulder and into the under-construction area of the building behind her. "Let's just off her and get out of here."
"Console to patrol group one," came after that. "They're shooting at her with firearms of some kind." Apparently they'd pulled up the live data from the augmented patrol app.
Taylor lifted her PRT-issue handgun to point at the one with the shotgun, even as he got a second shot off. That one hit her in the shoulder, but the force field and her own enhancements ensured that it merely stung. Her return shot was aimed at the shotgun and thanks to a little bit of barrage blaster it was easily knocked out of his hands. At the same time, he was obviously a brute, because while his shirt was damaged he only flinched in pain from the circle reaching his hand and arm. Which at least kept her from needing to keep him from bleeding out.
Shutdown and her other bodyguard had moved around the edge of the roll-out unit, but unlike Ackbar they weren't circling it. The one that still had the bag of explosive devices looked unsure about what to do, but the remaining person had pulled out a tinkertech gun. Only as Taylor focused on the person did she realize that it was a woman, but she ignored the gun. It was essentially a taser, and the woman hadn't flipped off the safety yet anyway. Instead Taylor kept one handgun pointed at the brute, not that she was certain that it would work on him, and brought the other up to point at the woman.
Sadly, she had to be careful with the one carrying the explosive devices. Her tinker snark was informing her that they were shock-sensitive, so shooting them would probably make them explode. That they'd carried them up the side of the building, using what looked like a fancy tinkertech grappling device that she could see at the edge of the helipad, meant that they were either incredibly confident or they weren't thinking things through. She was leaning towards the latter right now.
Looking at the woman, and keeping the other handgun trained on the brute as he tried to move to flank her without her noticing, she sighed. "I don't suppose you lot would like to surrender so that I can collect my pet and get back to bed?"
There was visible confusion at that, but Ackbar made his move then, and Shutdown screamed. "WHAT THE FUCK JUST BIT ME?! GET IT OFF GET IT OFF!"
A little more struggling occurred, with a male voice screaming and an odd hissing sound, but it wasn't long before things went quiet and Ackbar came around the corner. The spider-bot stopped, apparently unsure as to which of the three potential targets to go after next.
The woman with the tinkertech taser visibly gulped, and slowly put the gun down before raising her hands above her head. Seeing that, the one with the bag of explosive charges did the same with the bag, leaving the brute. Who turned and ran for the edge of the helipad, jumping off without even grabbing one of the grapples still sitting there.
By the time the Protectorate patrol got there a few minutes later, Taylor had tied up the four remaining parahumans and ensured that there weren't going to be side-effects from the tranquilizer Ackbar had injected into the two parahumans. It hadn't been tested since the flu had changed immune systems and wasn't supposed to be strong enough to knock someone out, which had left Taylor concerned about an allergic reaction. The reality was more that it was barely effective, but one of the two had tried to knock Ackbar out with a gas canister of some kind and gotten the two of them instead.
Sadly for Taylor, taking care of everything took nearly two hours and she didn't think that she was going to be able to get back to sleep. Grumbling about that, she made a meal for Ackbar and made a pass over her handguns while he consumed it. She'd only fired once, but she double-checked both handguns just in case. There wasn't much to do, but it ate up some time. After cleaning up and putting Ackbar back into the bedroom unit she got out her moped. Ensuring that everything was ready, she had the unit pack itself away, as she wouldn't be using it here again that evening.
Once the storing process was completed, Taylor got onto the moped and rode down the outside of the building. She stopped when she reached the bottom floor, turning in the room key she didn't need anymore, then went looking for an extra-early breakfast. Though she did stop to look for the hole the brute had likely made when jumping off of the roof, but she didn't find one. Which probably meant that his powers allowed him to land without leaving a mark. Well, either that or he was also able to fly and she just hadn't noticed.
Amy rolled her eyes as she sat down on the couch next to Vicky. She'd just gotten up, and breakfast wasn't ready yet, but at least she was somewhat awake. Somehow Vicky had ended up laying over the back of the couch, upside-down, and was obviously half asleep. That the morning news was running probably didn't even register to the girl. Amy let her be for now, since it would be more hassle than it was worth to get her up 'properly'.
It was ten minutes later when they got to an incident from earlier that morning in Las Vegas, which had gotten Amy's attention. Seeing a picture of Taylor, in pajamas, holding her two handguns was enough to get Amy's undivided attention. She was initially annoyed, but ended up snickering when Ackbar essentially shut down the entire situation by defeating two of the attackers. That had to be embarrassing, taken out by the pet spider-bot. Worse, Ackbar hadn't even used any webs.
The brute that had jumped off of the building had gotten away, but as this was all done out of costume they had full warrants for the man. As for the other four, they were in custody and awaiting trial for attempted murder and a small pile of other charges, but a full investigation into what they had been up to and why was underway.
Amy: Why am I only finding out that someone attacked you last night from the news?
Taylor: I didn't want to wake you up.
Amy: ...was it not important enough to wake me up?
Taylor: More like I was already annoyed that I was up and didn't want to add your annoyance into the mix.
Amy: Oh.
Taylor: I'd probably have shot more of them at that point, if only due to you egging me on.
Sadly, Amy had to admit that Taylor was probably right about that.
They only had two casinos left to deal with, and the first one ended up taking all morning. It turned out that the backup power supply for the vault security system was ready to fail due to other things that they'd attached to it. In particular, they'd somehow obtained an illegal particle cannon and hooked it up as an additional security measure, hidden in the ceiling of the vault. Upon Taylor discovering that they'd switched from maintenance to outright removal of the security system. That was incredibly simple and straightforward, and the casino staff didn't even notice that they were doing so until they'd removed all the relevant components into Dragon's pocket dimension.
Well, it was simple when you had a brute and power armor and didn't care about removing the actual wiring connecting things. Having the ability to open a portal in the vault to unload thing into had helped. Having the distraction of the PRT and Protectorate showing up in force to investigate the particle cannon had likely helped near the end as well. Another representative of the casino had threatened legal action for the 'unauthorized removal of casino property' as well, but Dragon had produced a copy of their lease agreement. They were in violation of it, and termination of the agreement coupled with removal of the equipment was at the discretion of the company. That company was now Dragon-tech, and the equipment had been reclaimed by on-site staff at the time of the violation being discovered.
Taylor ended up eating a pizza for lunch, and then met Dragon at the final casino of the trip. Except that someone else had beat them there, made blatantly obvious by the flood of gossip that started at range.
"Hello Mycroft," Dragon greeted as they walked up to Lisa.
"Here looking into thefts?" Taylor asked.
Lisa sighed. "I am so glad that I've been working on the whole 'I know everything before anyone else' attitude. Though working with a couple of other thinkers that break my power helps there. But yes, that's why I'm here, in part because they suspect parahuman involvement in the thefts. The only saving grace is that there's no sign that anyone stole from the vault, which I believe you two are here to ensure that remains the case?"
"That's essentially correct," Dragon agreed.
"Sadly, that probably means that we won't be seeing much of each other while you're here, as I'll be continuing my efforts into looking over everything else. But I figured that I should meet up with the two of you before you started your own stuff, if only so that you were aware that I was here."
"Trust me," Taylor said. "You're impossible to miss." Lisa grinned at that. "At the same time, you've got about fifteen steps before you need to re-tie your left shoe, try not to trip on the laces."
Lisa opened her mouth, stopped, and sighed. "I don't know what's worse. That you did that with my own powers, that I can't actually threaten you with anything meaningful, or that part of not being able to threaten you is that as of a couple hours ago your pet is now officially considered scarier than some parahuman teams in the eyes of the public."
That had Taylor blinking, as Inference Engine hadn't actually bothered to mention that detail. It made sense, given the news coverage that Amy had seen, but Taylor hadn't been paying attention to PHO. "Huh. Ackbar is mostly harmless, though."
"Even if they took themselves out while aiming for the spider-bot, from the point of view of the public Ackbar took down two parahumans, caused two others to decide to surrender instead of fighting both of you, and helped convince one other to jump off of the top of a building to escape. Oh, and not everyone is a brute walking around with force field protection."
"Don't forget that both Ackbar and Rodney have tranquilizer available to inject into people," Dragon added.
Taylor snorted at that. "The stuff is essentially useless against anyone who caught the immune system boosting flu, even if it becomes slightly more potent over time due to a gradual loss of the water content."
Dragon sighed at that. "Armsmaster will be disappointed, though it isn't like him to miss something like that. Then again, that particular formulation was considered a failure of the original goals anyway, so perhaps that's why he never bothered to test it again?"
"Whatever the case," Lisa said, waving slightly. "I'm off to start seeing if I can pick up clues that others missed in the staff areas."
"Have fun," Taylor said. A moment later Lisa had used a security pass to enter a staff-only door, and Taylor turned to Dragon. "So where are we going here?"
Dragon turned to the main entrance. "We're supposed to meet the owner at the main desk, but it appears that nobody is at the main desk right now, so I suppose I should give them a call."
Jacob sighed as he headed for Riley's workshop. Things had been odd all morning. Mary and Tori had both vanished, Riley wasn't answering her phone, and Amanda had been cackling. You could never get sufficient information on what was going on out of the woman when she was cackling. Normal laughing? Wait it out. Cackling? Asking for information would just set her off again as she thought about why she was cackling.
He was supposed to be traveling to California, and in theory was in fact on a transport heading that way right now. In practice there was a beacon where the transport was going to be landing and he could open a portal onto the transport when it landed. No, he didn't have time to spend a few hours in the air when people were acting weirdly.
His train of thought skipped a couple of tracks as he entered the workshop proper. He'd found Mary and Tori, and wasn't surprised to find Sarah there as well. Sarah and Tori were off to the side watching Mary and Riley work on an unknown parahuman. For that matter, Mary and Tori had obviously triggered, and it was far too late to visually identify the parahuman that Mary and Riley were working on.
"What the hell happened?" he finally said, causing Sarah to look over at him.
"They dropped into a fugue and latched onto the idiot I dragged over for Riley to play with," Sarah answered. "Though only after he proved to have been playing possum and caused the girls to trigger while Riley was distracted by them returning Rosey."
Jacob looked at the three, and now that Sarah mentioned it, he could tell that Mary and Riley were in some kind of fugue state. "Is that a shared fugue state? Without Taylor?"
"I've got no clue. They seem to frequently take things back out to work on them independently, but they also haven't gotten in each other's way."
"I see. And who exactly is this idiot that you apparently dragged over?"
"Brute that ran away after trying to kill Taylor this morning. Doormaker snatched him before he could land on a car with a couple of kids in it, dropping him on me instead. I was obviously confused, but a note a couple minutes later cleared that up. I got bored with him after a couple of hours and brought him here to see what Riley thought of him, only to find out that he'd been faking how hurt he was. Riley said something about regeneration after he leapt up and tried to use Tori as a hostage."
"Oh. I suppose that would explain why nobody can find where he went despite the traffic camera tracking system looking for him." He looked over at the horrible mess that was a man once. "I suppose they have the rest of his group to question, so him being missing will just instill some justified paranoia. Do we know what the girls triggered with?"
Sarah shrugged. "Mary seems to be installing 'spare' organs in technological wrappers, or at least I think that's what she's doing. She's tapped Riley's stash of extra body parts multiple times at least. Tori I'm not actually certain about, since I don't think I saw her do anything."
Jacob sighed as he looked at Tori. There wasn't anything obvious there. "Tori, do you know what you can do?"
Tori nodded. "I'm connecting them."
"What?"
"When he grabbed me, I thought that if I could help Mary and Riley work together then they could beat him. And then suddenly I could help them work together! Except not like how I'd been thinking, and it didn't help."
"Okay..."
"Then Sarah ripped his arm off to save me and then they could work together, but I don't know what they're doing. And I'm getting a headache, but I know I can't turn things off until they're done."
Jacob sighed. "I don't know if I want to know how Taylor corrupted you when she's barely met you."
Tori just smiled at that, at least for a moment. Then she switched to frowning slightly. "Oh, and I can stab with my pencil from across the room, but only if it's sharpened and I use the tip."
Fuck. That might mean that Taylor had corrupted him and he'd passed that corruption on. Well, at least it explained how it happened. "Right. I don't suppose there's anything else that you two can tell me?"
Sarah gestured at Tori. "She probably needs a doctor. I'm not entirely sure how she's ignoring that the guy broke her leg."
Tori rolled her eyes. "Riley injected me with something that turned off my normal ability to feel pain, but it isn't working for the headache."
Of course she did. And of course Jacob only had a couple of hours in which to arrange for all of this to be dealt with properly before he had to be seen in public again. Including but not limited to ensuring that there would be time to get the girls checked over in various ways, someone other than Riley taking a look at Tori's leg, and who knows what else when it came to the project currently in progress.
The worst part was that there wasn't going to be enough left of the idiot who'd decided to shoot at Taylor to punish by the time the girls were done with him. He wanted to get revenge on some of these people!
Finishing up the security system work at the last casino hadn't taken long, backdooring the shutdown sequence and replacing a single faulting module being possible because the vault opened. That aside, due to actual thefts having occurred there Dragon was going to be doing a deep analysis of the logs just in case there was something to be found there evidence-wise. Taylor had opted to check in with Lisa while Dragon was busy. The other girl had been examining various portions of the staff-only areas of the casino for potential clues that Inference Engine could pick up on, but with as much luck as she'd had scanning the public areas that morning. That is, basically none.
"This is honestly baffling," Lisa admitted while she opened a bottle of water Taylor had produced from her utility belt. "We know that the money is vanishing between the drop boxes and the vault. Sometimes it vanishes before it passes through the cashier's cage, and sometimes it vanishes afterwards. They have full multiple-angle camera coverage of the entire travel path of the money, and there's no sign of anyone taking it."
Taylor nodded, Inference Engine had told her all of that already. "And they've even got scanners in the drop boxes themselves, right?"
"Basic ones, yes. Like that one on the counter over there, which was examined by the Protectorate already with the rest of them for parahuman tampering. None of the money is missing from the camera feeds before it gets fed in, and those counters show the correct amounts for what the cameras see. But somehow the money and serial number records vanish before the money actually makes it to the vault. Worse, I feel like the answer is staring me in the face but I just can't get a handle on it. From experience, that usually means some kind of stranger trick is screwing with me."
"I can see how that would be the case," Taylor admitted, even as she looked at the drop box counter. Her tinker snark told her that it would check denomination and serial numbers, as well as do basic checks to ensure that the money was real. At the same time, it had a flaw. "On the other hand, the money counters store serial numbers in a horrible way and won't actually save a serial number twice."
Lisa blinked at that, and Inference Engine felt like it had just reeled back in some way. "What?"
"They're stored as hash keys instead of as array values."
"Goddammit. How the hell did the Protectorate miss that?"
"Though that still doesn't explain where the money goes. It should still be there, even if there are duplicate serial numbers."
Lisa waved her hand at that. "No, no, it pretty much absolves the staff of wrongdoing. Someone is bringing in shaker-duplicated bills or something like that and the duplicates are vanishing. The real money goes into the drop box, before or after the fake probably doesn't matter, and then everything looks good but doesn't line up later when the fakes vanish. Hell, the fakes could even be counted at the cashier's cage on the way to the vault and not be noticed as duplicates if their check system doesn't include how many times a serial number is seen, just that it is."
Taylor blinked. "Oh. That does make sense."
"Yeah, and it's a good lesson in not trusting that those who investigated before me spotted everything. Granted, I'm not great with code analysis like that, but if I'd at least taken a look then I might've been able to spot that myself. On the other hand, now I get to go look at all the camera footage, instead of the four runs I skimmed. We know which tables were hit, now the question is if I can figure out who at those tables were responsible. Oh, and I need to get someone looking into who did the coding on the drop box units, because that seems way too convenient and they might be in on things."
"Could someone here have changed out the code? There's an update port on the things."
Lisa frowned. "Unfortunately, yes, which probably means getting a 'clean' copy as well."
"At least you've got a lead and a chance to show off."
"Hell no, you're getting credit for helping me in my report. I am not going through sensitivity training again because I accidentally claimed someone else's contributions."
Taylor wasn't sure what to make of that. "What?"
"Long story, and if my power tells you then I'll find a way to shank it." She paused for a moment. "I don't know if it's a good sign or a bad sign that it's giving me pointers on figuring out how to do that, but I need to start writing my report on things and give my brain a break from thinker-revelations. That and possibly check on my family to see if they're having any luck across town."
"Must be nice to have successfully tested out of school and thus be able to wander around a bit."
"Oh, trust me, it is. At the same time it's incredibly annoying, because it seems like every request for my aid that comes up turns into a mini-vacation road trip."
"Have you tried declining the requests?"
Lisa snorted. "I'm not averse to showing off my own work, and the things I end up doing when not traveling are horrid."
Taylor's incredibly early morning ended up working out for her, making it much easier to get back into the swing of things back home. Though her eating schedule was still off, it was far too early for her to eat dinner when she made it home and she ended up eating halfway between her normal 'dinner' and 'bedtime' times. Her father had expected that and planned for everything to be leftovers anyway.
Reviewing all the notifications that they'd apparently kept from her until she was back home, she found that the Wards hadn't run into much on the patrols they'd done. No new sprayers had been spotted, or anything else that might be from 'Minefield', but Rope Trick and Shears had been seen moving around some more. Apparently Rope Trick was now carrying an extra rope as well, at least according to Ethan's general alert message.
Plans were apparently in place for the following weekend, which was to be a healing weekend leading into Christmas vacation. Takara had put in a request to 'help', though in what capacity the girl would be able to help was another question entirely. It looked like they were going to be using the 'forest of mystery' again, which was pretty much going to negate any intruders coming in that weren't using the teleporters.
As for the rest of the week, Taylor had a meeting for tomorrow and some unspecified all-afternoon appointment on Friday. Takara had tomorrow and Friday off as well, though the former was due to her age and the latter was due to attending a 'family gathering'. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were all booked for 'joint developmental patrols' with the Protectorate. Chris and Aisha were getting one patrol each on Wednesday. Taylor, Missy, and Takara were getting two each, split between Tuesday and Thursday. Takara was getting one joint patrol with each of the older two, and each of them was getting one patrol 'solo' with the Protectorate.
If that wasn't bad enough, Taylor was also getting a console day Wednesday, as were Aisha and Chris. Missy was getting a pass there, and Takara wasn't old enough to be put on the console except alongside one of the others. Taylor didn't feel bad at all about putting Missy on console for tomorrow afternoon as a result of that. What happened Friday and into the weekend would depend on other factors. Like how the joint patrols went, just for starters.
Most of the remaining notices from the PRT system were more straightforward. For example, she apparently had her part for the shotgun waiting for her in the mail room. Maybe she'd work on that if the meeting didn't run too long, since it was merely a starting point and needed work before it could be installed. A listing of automatically-rejected requests for 'the Wards' to apply 'impossibly cool' paint jobs to vehicles had Taylor shaking her head, and a general request to not schedule Wards activities during the school break 'unless needed for the mental health of a Ward' was merely echoing the Wards leader documentation.
Notices about other things included some PHO alerts that she'd been ignoring. Someone had made a 'versus' thread for Ackbar, one that was being taken somewhat seriously at that. Taylor was mentioned frequently, because they were trying to decide if Ackbar was only dangerous while she was being attacked. Not while she was in trouble, because the attack in Las Vegas didn't warrant that level of concern. Just that she was being attacked in general. They hadn't come to a consensus there. Other posts from tracking threads and similar mentioned her, as did several posts covering news articles from the weekend.
Speaking of news articles, she read a couple of them out of curiosity. The PRT had released a 'detailed reconstruction of events' from the attack on the helipad, but Taylor was more interested in the apparent motives of the group. The general theory was that her presence in town was breaking the plans of the group and they were merely hoping to ensure that she left town before reaching the final two casinos on Sunday. That the bombs they'd brought weren't actually enough to damage the bedroom unit more than superficially helped with that analysis, but several posters were mocking the group. They rightfully felt that a little damage to the unit wouldn't be enough to scare Taylor off.
They also got rightfully shot down on that subject, as the goal was obviously to force the PRT to pull Taylor out of the city or face the wrath of the Youth Guard. Which hadn't happened, though it was probably going to be a minimum of three to six months before anyone cleared the roll-out units for being used for sleeping while deployed anywhere on Earth Bet. Not that Taylor or Amy were likely to argue with any such restrictions right now.
Chapter 272 Monday morning Taylor found that she wasn't fully recovered from the disruptive weekend, but got up in time to head to the gym anyway. She wouldn't get back into her regular schedule by skipping parts of it, after all. Though she would've been happy to skip Amy hitting her on sight once they were both in the pocket dimension on the way to the PRT building.
"What was that for?" Taylor asked.
Amy rolled her eyes. "For me needing to find out that you'd been attacked in the middle of the night from the news."
"In order to tell you when it happened I would've needed to wake you up, and by the time you were up I wasn't thinking about it. They were more of a threat to my sleeping schedule than anything else."
"And how did you know that at the time? You didn't talk to any of their snarks. What if one of them could make explosives a hundred times more powerful, or had some way of bypassing your force field?"
"The former was negated by me confronting them before they placed them all and the latter would've likely resulted in hitting me and running on the street instead of going after me with explosives while I was sleeping."
Amy grumbled about that, but didn't argue the point while Taylor opened the portal to the PRT building. Vicky had just watched the whole thing, snickering. The three of them went through their workout routine with minimal chatting, though some of that was due to a number of PRT officers also using the gym that morning. It was only when they'd finished eating breakfast that discussion picked up again.
"Hey Taylor," Amy said. "You're busy this afternoon, right?"
Taylor nodded. "Yeah. Why?"
"May I borrow the minivan after school? I want to pick up some things before trying out the kitchen. I figure making some cookies would be a good first pass, before trying some of the more complicated recipes I want to attempt."
"I don't see why not. Should we take it to school so that people can be confused about why I showed up using it but didn't leave with you in it?"
"That works for me."
Students had pestered Taylor with questions about her weekend all day, with and without asking about Ackbar, and she gladly escaped after her last class. She swung by home to drop off her bookbag, then headed to the PRT building. She was grabbing a snack from the Wards kitchen area by the time Amy had made it to the minivan in the school parking lot. Missy arrived at the PRT building not long after, and she'd apparently picked up Midnight from home. Which probably wouldn't be a problem, since she was going to be on console anyway.
"I didn't think you were doing anything here today," Missy said. "Otherwise I'd have expected you to run two patrols, not one with me stuck on console."
Taylor shrugged. "I've got a meeting of unknown length, and then we have three days of working with the Protectorate where you're the only one not slated by them to be on console. I figured it was only fair that you got console today when you're not worrying about it for the next three days. Oh, and I'm also the only one not getting a day off in the next three days, so even if my meeting doesn't run long I'm still taking the rest of the afternoon off."
"Oh. So all of us are scheduled for three out of four days in some way?"
"Yep. No clue what we're doing about Friday going into the weekend, since I'm occupied by things that they once again haven't fully informed me about on Friday and then healing all weekend. We'll have to see how things go between now and then."
"Ah."
Taylor gestured at Midnight. "You planning on playing instead of focusing on the console?"
Missy rolled her eyes. "No, but Midnight has recently decided that the vacuum is an enemy to be attacked. Mom doesn't like that for obvious reasons, and wants to vacuum when she gets home from work."
"So you brought Midnight here so that she doesn't have to worry about that side of things."
"Yep."
"Works for me."
Taylor left Missy to set up and headed for the mailroom to get her package on the way to her afternoon meeting. With any luck she'd have time to modify and install the part this afternoon.
Amy checked her shopping list on her visor. They had flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt already, but they hadn't picked up vanilla as part of their 'general supplies' set. Brown sugar, shortening, and peanut butter were on her list as 'will last well enough'. She'd grab an egg and the small amount of milk she needed from home instead of buying more than she needed. The 'maybe' list included colored sugar, and she needed to decide if she was using chocolate chips in the cookies or something else to put on top of the cookies. Or both, possibly, since she had several variations beyond the absolute base recipe. Though from experience when Crystal was playing with the recipe they knew that peanut butter chips were a waste of time.
Why Crystal had thought that putting peanut butter chips in peanut butter cookies was going to change the flavor enough to be noticeable was still a teasing subject. Amy had no desire to embarrass herself by not learning from that mistake. To help with that, she planned on tasting her own cookies before sharing them with anyone other than possibly Taylor.
Of course, Amy couldn't just grab the few things she needed and run, because she'd also been sent a message asking her to pick up a couple of things for dinner if she was at the store anyway. Which meant that she probably needed a full carriage and not just a hand basket. And now that she paid attention to the list she'd been sent, apparently she was getting milk after all. Well, at least that would ensure that there'd be plenty.
She was halfway through collecting things when she realized that they'd gotten cookie sheets, but no cooling racks. That was going to need to be corrected, but the grocery store didn't carry any. Perhaps she could portal home to drop off what needed to be dropped off, then go pick some up?
In the end she'd find herself getting cooling racks and a selection of oven mitts and pot holders, wondering how they'd missed the latter on the last run.
Taylor suppressed a sigh as Mrs. Cooper came into the meeting room. She was the last to arrive and had been running late, but they could finally start the meeting. They were in a smaller meeting room not normally used for these meetings due to Colin having found the original choice needed a replacement light bulb. Meeting in a room with the choice between 'lights off' and 'intensely flickering light' was less than ideal, so they were a few doors down in one normally used for one on one meetings. They'd dragged a couple of chairs from the other room to turn it into a place that four people could meet, one of them on each side of the smaller table.
Mrs. Cooper sat on the side of the table between Taylor and Director Piggot, across from Colin. "Sorry that I'm late, someone parked a delivery truck in front of the parking garage entrance and caused a bit of a backup."
"We noticed," Director Piggot admitted. "The front desk got a police officer over fast enough to give them a ticket too, though if the driver showed up while the officer was there then the resulting arguing about the ticket probably delayed you further."
"Given that they'd only pulled the delivery truck forward to unblock the parking garage, coupled with the break in traffic I used to cross the street being caused by a tow truck getting into position? I'm assuming that the argument got heated."
Colin shook his head. "Well, at least that's probably one less problematic delivery driver. I can't see them keeping their job after that, especially since I believe we've filed a dozen complaints against them in the past couple of months. Hopefully their replacement is intelligent enough to know where they're not supposed to leave the truck."
"Right," Director Piggot said. "We should get started on the actual purpose of this meeting. Which has expanded a little since it was scheduled. First up, Miss Hebert, anonymous members of the public have expressed concern over the safety of your spider-bot."
Taylor rolled her eyes. "Ackbar is mostly harmless, especially if he hasn't had a chance to throw a web down."
Colin nodded in agreement. "We've even discovered that the mild tranquilizer fluid I provided is less effective after the immune system flu, but I don't feel that providing a more effective alternative is needed at this time."
Mrs. Cooper snorted. "The videos available made it look effective enough, and the complaints flowing into the Youth Guard pretty much require that we investigate."
"The videos available to the public don't quite show that the parahumans attempted to use their own knockout gas on Ackbar, only to get caught by it themselves."
"Oh. So the only reason that the spider-bot did better than a dog might've was because it isn't affected by knockout gas?"
Taylor nodded. "Yeah. Without that Ackbar would've been less effective than a small dog, to be honest."
Director Piggot shook her head. "Right. Well, there's still concern being spread about. You'll need to be careful if bringing the spider-bot out in public, though since the only 'incident' has been while you were being attacked there aren't likely to be any problems. That it can't knock people out by biting them will be put into official reports just to be safe. Next up, however, is the aid you gave to Mycroft while in Las Vegas, coupled with your report on the traffic camera monitoring. That has, unfortunately, caused a leak regarding some of your capabilities."
Patricia blinked at that. "What kind of leak could possibly have resulted from those reports?"
"A couple of them were improperly declassified in the process of action items being created and have raised questions of how she was able to determine the problems in multiple systems on sight. Though the serial number recording was apparently something that should've been obvious to anyone looking at the code, she seemingly didn't, and spotting problematic biases in the machine-learning algorithms of the traffic camera system without accessing the system at all shouldn't have been possible. They only confirmed that she was right earlier today, after spending most of the weekend looking into it."
"At the same time," Colin said. "Good job on explaining your presence aiding Dragon. Needing someone who can strap the security keys to their skin was seen as a wonderful excuse for a helper, and the assumption is that you were chosen specifically because you can get instructions from her own powers when others couldn't."
Director Piggot nodded. "Which is nice, and has dodged the entire issue with the public, but there are a number of people in and working with the PRT that are confused. Chambers is working on possible explanations to cover that up."
Taylor frowned. "I only checked on the traffic cameras after running into Shutdown. Even though I didn't talk to her snark, couldn't we just claim that I figured out that she was doing something to the cameras by doing so?"
Colin leaned forward slightly. "You saw Shutdown before reporting the issue with the traffic cameras?"
"While eating breakfast. She picked up donuts after looking at me oddly."
"I suppose that might explain why they decided to target you as well, and will undoubtedly work as an excuse. Though I'm curious as to why you didn't report that encounter?"
Taylor rolled her eyes. "What form do you use to report that you happened to see a villain showing up in costume and buying donuts while you were in the same establishment eating your own breakfast? She didn't even speak, let alone threaten anyone, and her bodyguards stayed outside."
There was a pause, before Director Piggot snorted. "Right. I don't even want to consider the pile of headaches we'd get if people had to report every time they saw a villainous parahuman doing normal tasks out in costume. Forget what kind of mess you'd get if some of those crazy cape cosplayers are running around. Not reporting that you saw a villain not breaking the law while out on your own free time is perfectly understandable."
Colin nodded, though he seemed to do so slightly reluctantly. He probably thought that not having tracking data from villain sightings was inefficient, but knew not to argue the point. "Hopefully that will be enough to divert suspicion, and it's easy enough to make known to those asking questions. We can even amend the original reports with the contact and let people make assumptions. It doesn't cover the software issue with the money scanning though."
Taylor reached into one of her pouches and produced a couple of serial boards, a battery, and a power brick. A moment later she pulled several cables out of another pouch. "I carry everything I would've needed to interface with the thing to pull software out of it, even if I didn't need to do so. Remind people that I happened to be carrying multiple boards that I needed for interfacing with the prize-drawing machine on my first visit to Las Vegas if needed."
Director Piggot shook her head. "You are probably the least tinker-like tinker on the planet when it comes to these things, but it certainly makes covering that detail up easier. 'She used off the shelf components in a manner consistent with what they were designed for' is certainly not a hallmark of a tinker, and you keep most of your actual tinkering in private. At least when you're not tearing apart something Wrench Wraith built during a press conference, anyway."
"I only did that once, and it was perfectly reasonable to decide that a motorcycle sidecar didn't belong on a jet ski."
"Which is probably the only reason that nobody uses it as an example of why you might be a tinker," Colin said. "She's also gotten better about that kind of thing, and for some reason occasionally goes with Assault to visit daycares and kindergarten classes to see what the kids think of her ideas before building them."
"Which is beside the point," Director Piggot said. "One last thing from the weekend, you were on record as not noting which way the brute that ran away went?"
Taylor shrugged. "I stopped paying attention to him when he jumped off of the helipad. I wasn't about to chase him, and at that point my only real option would've been to shut down his powers. That seemed to be likely-fatal if I had, given that he was in freefall. Focusing on those still on the helipad made more sense to me."
"Okay. I can't really find fault with that, and it isn't like knowing which direction he went at first would be exceptionally helpful in locating him now that he's vanished without a trace. Next up, I'd like to have a quick discussion regarding the coming three days. Speaking of which, before I forget, we'd appreciate it if you could swing by the Rig before going home to take care of injuries Miss Militia received this morning so that she can better prepare for tomorrow afternoon."
Taylor blinked, because she hadn't heard of anything happening that would cause injuries. "What happened?"
"Countdown miscalculated how powerful a grenade she was testing would be," Colin answered. "Miss Militia happened to be standing in the wrong place when it went off and took a hit to her arm."
"Ah. I suppose that wouldn't be difficult to take care of before I work on other things."
"Thank you," Director Piggot said. "Now then, as for the goals for the coming days..."
Amy carefully measured out one and three quarters cups of flour and added it to the mixing bowl. She followed that with half a cup of sugar and half a cup of brown sugar, making sure to pack the latter down while measuring it. A teaspoon of baking soda and half a teaspoon of salt followed. She probably didn't need to, but she mixed those a bit before adding a half cup of shortening, a half cup of peanut butter, her measured at home two tablespoons of milk, a teaspoon of vanilla, and the one egg she'd grabbed from home.
She knew not to turn the mixer on to full speed right away, starting off slowly and speeding up a bit as things combined. Eventually she had a properly mixed dough that was the right consistency for forming into balls. She set up cookie sheets next to her and made sure her two resealable plastic containers of mixed normal and colored sugar were next to her, then started making balls out of the dough. Each ball was then rolled in one of the sugar mixtures before being placed on one of the cookie sheets. At home they'd make no more than two sheets at a time, swapping them out, but she didn't have a helper. However, she did have extra cookie sheets and was willing to do the extra cleaning up. She still only needed three for the single batch.
The oven was reading three hundred seventy five degrees, so she slipped the first cookie sheet in. Five minutes later the second went in, to provide a buffer between pulling sheets out, but the third would have to wait for the first to come out as there were only two racks in the oven. With that done, she took a minute to ensure that her bowl filled with little chocolate snowmen was ready, though after checking the bag she ate one. She only needed forty-eight and the bag had fifty-six, and she'd unwrapped them all.
Eleven minutes after the first sheet had gone in, and on her third check of it, she pulled it out of the oven and immediately started pushing little snowmen into the cookies, one each. Once that was done, and another extra snowman eaten, she quickly transferred the cookies onto a cooling rack. Only then did she put the third sheet of cookies into the oven. A few minutes later she repeated the dance with the second sheet, and not long after that she finished with the final sheet.
Everything looked good, which she'd have been annoyed about if it hadn't. She'd helped make these in several variations for years at this point. Vicky could probably handle making them on her own too by now. But doing things alone meant that she had to do the cleanup as well. Ensure the oven is turned off, seal up and put away the colored sugar mixes for possible use in the coming week or two, start rinsing things to prepare for washing them. She had to wait a little longer to start washing, mainly to allow the cookie sheets to cool properly. They couldn't even be safely sped up by dropping them into water as they weren't supposed to be submerged.
Taylor sighed as she headed for the tinker workshop inside of the pocket dimension. She'd gotten a lot of worthless information on what they wanted to do for the next three days. Basically, each Protectorate team was going to work on 'potential new strategies' for the Ward they were working with, and Takara was getting two shots because she was so new to being a parahuman in general. The only truly useful detail was that it wasn't going to be actual patrols, but 'simulated' patrols with PRT squads out of uniform to play the 'bad guys'.
Related to that, Taylor and Missy weren't likely to be given an easy job of things while with Takara, so much as they would have to deal with whatever the Protectorate members threw at them and keep an eye on Takara at the same time. Taylor going first on that front was solely because she was Wards leader, but had the added benefit that she actually could pay attention to multiple things at once to handle that.
After that she'd done as she said she would and popped over to the Rig to heal Hannah. That hadn't taken her long, in fact the longest portion of it was filling out the paperwork for having done so. Which Hannah helped her with, if only to get out of the clutches of the doctors faster. That left plenty of time before dinner to begin working on the shotgun. She hadn't brought any of the provided ammo for it with her, admittedly, but that was okay. It wasn't like she trusted anyone to load it right now anyway. There was a brief moment where she actually wondered about handing it to Takara before fixing it, only to dismiss it immediately. The girl's snark made functional firearms explode already, there was no need to hand her one that was liable to explode without her powers.
She'd gotten the shotgun apart and was halfway through modifying the purchased component when Amy wandered in. "Am I interrupting anything?"
"Don't get too close while I'm welding," Taylor warned. "But other than that I'm just making this shotgun safer."
"I'd expect you to be making it safe."
"It's a firearm. To make it safe would defeat the purpose, but I can at least make it less likely to go off when the user isn't expecting it to."
"Okay, point. Anyway, I made cookies. Want one?"
Taylor thought about that for a moment. "I assume that you tried one already?"
Amy snorted. "Of course. What do you take me for, the kind of chef that insists on force-feeding others their food without trying it themselves? That way lies madness and food poisoning. And probably regular poisoning, for that matter."
"Right. Give me a moment to finish this."
It didn't take long for Taylor to finish and shut off the welder, at which point she set the modified part aside. She was going to have to run it through a few heating and cooling cycles to get it to the proper state now that she'd welded it, but that was going to take a little more time than she had before dinner and she wasn't willing to let the automated furnace run without someone being in the general area. At the same time, she doubted that her father would mind if she spent some time taking care of that after dinner.
Once she'd ensured that the work area was safe, or at least as safe as it could be with a partially-dismantled shotgun on it, she walked over to where Amy had put down a plate of cookies. Looking over them, Taylor rolled her eyes. "Snowmen are oddly appropriate for a 'half-melted' look."
Amy shrugged. "I figured it was worth a try, and didn't really think that the normal things we use don't really have any detail to lose to melting."
Taylor picked one of the cookies up and checked the bottom. "It does look like you didn't burn them, which is better than my father accomplishes most of the time."
"I burned one of the three sheets a little, but Vicky likes them burnt so it isn't a complete loss. We can't let her be in charge of removing them from the oven at home because she leaves them in too long on purpose."
Nodding, Taylor bit into the cookie. These ones had been pulled out of the oven at the perfect time, or so it appeared, though as she continued into the chocolate snowman she wasn't sure about the slight mint flavor in the chocolates. "I'd go with a more normal chocolate next time, to be honest."
"Yeah, I like mint chocolate, but it clashes a little bit with the peanut butter. I wasn't thinking about that when I grabbed them."
"Slightly off choice of chocolates aside, not bad. When are you getting to the more daring attempts?"
"Probably over vacation, assuming I can find a couple of the harder to get ingredients. There's a store in Empire territory that claims to carry a couple of them, I just have to decide if I go on my own, drag you along, or actually tell someone else in New Wave that I want to go and see how many of them object."
Taylor shrugged. "Vicky would probably go with you before telling anyone else, provided that you let her know you wanted to somewhere other than at home."
Amy gave Taylor a look. "Other than at home?"
"I suspect her knee-jerk reaction will involve yelling before realizing that she's being an idiot."
"Okay, yes, I can see that. Crystal and Eric would probably react similarly, honestly, though Eric would get in trouble for going with me."
After dinner, and a couple more cookies from the plate that Amy had sent home with her, Taylor returned to the workshop to ensure that her welds and the surrounding metal were consistent and less prone to sudden failures. Most of that was handled by the automatic furnace while she made adjustments to other portions of the mechanisms in the shotgun, mostly dealing with minor damage that had been done due to the misfires and cleaning things properly where the misfires had left odd residues. When all was said and done for the evening she still didn't have an assembled shotgun, needing to wait for the part she'd modified to cool and settle properly before she could install it. Finishing up would thus have to wait for another day.
Back home, curiosity got the better of her and she checked what was generally available on what was happening with Shutdown and friends back in Las Vegas. Which apparently wasn't much; they were being held on charges relating to attacking Taylor and two of the four had confessed to wanting to pressure her to leave town with 'minor damage' to the roll-out unit. None of them had admitted to anything else actionable. There was even a note stating that screwing up the people-tracking algorithm in the traffic camera system wasn't actually illegal as they'd been doing so without hacking the system, no matter if they'd admitted to it or not, but no real information on what else they might've been up to.
Not that 'attacking an out of costume Ward with possible intent to kill` wasn't bad enough, of course. Then there were all the secondary things tied to that. Trespassing and multiple counts of attempted vandalism, illegal possession of explosives, and for some reason they'd gotten a littering charge included. No court date had been set yet, but that wasn't entirely surprising either. Luckily, regardless of when things happened on that front, they weren't likely to want to bring Taylor in to testify against them. Visor footage, security camera footage, and two of them confessing was likely to land all four of them in jail for a bit. The last one might be a bit harder due to having gotten away, and if caught would likely get more time as he'd actually fired at Taylor with stated intent to kill.
Checking on other things, apparently the Youth Guard had moved quickly, issuing a statement that Ackbar wasn't any more of a threat than a small dog. Worded in a way that implied 'unless you were a threat to Taylor', admittedly, but PHO had picked up on it. They'd also decided that even a small dog can be a significant threat to someone attacking their owner, so the spider-bots were likely no worse than a small dog on that front. Just less legally regulated, as one poster had pointed out. Which had caused the thread to devolve into an argument on the fairness of needing to pay to register dogs but not other pets, except for those pointing out that some areas required the same for cats, and then there were all the other pet types not covered.
Though she wondered about the thread speculating on where the brute who ran away was. 'Might as well try and join the Nine if they want to avoid prison' was an interesting take on things, and the moderators weren't entirely sure what to say about it. That most other villain groups wouldn't want someone that the Protectorate would likely show up in force to arrest as soon as he was spotted was a good point, and they'd even gotten a federal warrant for his arrest issued so that could happen. Assuming, of course, that he lived long enough to be arrested.
Amanda sighed as she looked over the incredibly mangled corpse. "What did you two do wrong? He was fine this morning, and I don't think he was allergic to the eggs I made for him."
"Too many different bone marrows thanks to the added limbs," Riley replied. "I think we got at least three different blood types mixing, on top of battling immune systems that didn't like each other. In the end it meant that everything lost."
"Awww. So no freaky excessively-limbed spider-like-brute for your next run?"
"Well, not with this one at least. I might have to sort my spare body parts by blood type at a minimum, but dealing with battling immune systems going forward will be interesting too. At least if I don't just replace them with stronger ones in the next attempt. I'll have to see what Mary thinks too, I suppose."
"I see, it is nice to keep your friends in the loop when working with them."
"I don't suppose you're okay with me asking William and Sarah to catch some wild boars?"
Amanda blinked. "I don't think I have a problem with that, but I'm curious as to why you want some?"
"Tori asked if Mary and I could make spider-pigs and I want to see if we can pull it off, and Mary thinks that it would screw with people even more if I made a better immune system for them so that they'd carry less pathogens around."
"Oh. I'll definitely have to convince Jacob to let you work on both of those, because they both sound hilarious to watch from the sidelines. It's too bad that you probably can't make breeding spider-pigs though, at least not without someone else's help."
Riley nodded. "Yeah. Getting Taylor or Amy to help would almost certainly work, but I doubt that they'd go for it."
Chapter 273 Tuesday morning started with a bang for Taylor, and she jumped up out of bed because of it. A quick check had her shaking her head and heading outside to check on those involved in the accident. Both drivers had head injuries, and luckily the carseat in the back of one of the cars hadn't been occupied. The damage was also significant enough that even her tinker snark didn't think the cars should be fixed. It had ideas for doing so, and would allow her to do so if she wanted, but wasn't pushing for her to repair anything.
Dealing with the injuries to the best of her ability without touching brains and talking to the police took up pretty much all of her time before she'd normally be getting up anyway, which meant that once she got home she went straight into her morning routine. When she got to the gym she found that Amy was annoyed.
"Bad morning?" Taylor asked.
Amy rolled her eyes. "Only in that you woke me up, and that isn't your fault. That stupid driver speeding down the street into someone backing out of their driveway is at fault for that. But that's only part of it, having access to another kitchen means that I'm being pressured to 'do my part' in preparing Christmas everything."
"I still vote that we let them use one of the other two kitchens, but require them to get everything needed to cook in them."
"Except they don't want to use the kitchen, they want to hand me a list of things to make."
Taylor nodded. "I see. Did you try saying 'no'?"
"I told them it would be rude to assume that I could claim exclusive use of the kitchen when you've got reasons to use it as well."
"Very true."
"They didn't like that, but then I pointed out that I'm not trusted to run the kitchen at home on my own. It's part of the reason that I wanted to get the kitchen in the pocket dimension ready for use. Given that, why would they trust me to make anything for the holidays?"
"Also a good point."
"They haven't given me an answer to that one yet."
Taylor shrugged. "Whatever. You have anything planned for the afternoon while I'll be otherwise occupied?"
"I'm probably going to build a foot, actually."
"Huh. Okay."
School had been filled with people annoyed about the prospect of impending snow. Not that it was coming, exactly, but that the coming evening through to the weekend were expected to all bring light snow that wouldn't amount to much day to day. Which meant annoyances for everyone expected to clear or help clear snow and almost no chance of school being delayed or cancelled outright. Taylor was just happy that her outing with Takara was before the snow was to come in.
After school Taylor had gone straight for the PRT building, with Vicky showing up not long afterwards to use the gym. Taylor ignored her and got ready for the afternoon instead. She opted for the stop sign and manhole cover today, figuring that they would work best with any antics of Takara's. That, and the stop sign was also usable as an actual stop sign, if she ended up deciding to stop traffic from entering an area that Takara was tormenting someone inside of. Mainly because the PRT wasn't going to be shutting down the streets along their 'patrol' route.
Of course, that also meant that it was possible that they'd be running into actual problems in addition to the 'simulated' problems. Not likely with the PRT setting things up and causing there to be extra activity along the routes, but possible. More likely was that they'd get gawkers that had to be worked around, because people were idiots and frequently stuck around when parahumans were doing dangerous things.
And, to make it even more 'fun', thanks to her leader position Taylor was the only Ward that was in the loop on the 'simulated' side of things. The rest of them weren't aware that the PRT was arranging to ensure that they'd have things to react to. Not that it meant that she was in the loop on what those things were going to be, as that was up to the individual Protectorate members to decide, based on their goals for the Ward or Wards involved. She'd realized during math that her being read in on things meant that Thursday they were likely going to put her through something horribly convoluted. Only being with Takara today would save her from that.
Chris and Missy arrived while Taylor was eating a quick snack. Chris didn't bother getting into costume, going straight for the console to boot it up, while Missy actually joined Vicky in the gym first. Then again, they'd scheduled the start of things to be after Takara would show up, so there was plenty of time. Though thinking on that, Taylor decided to run through her own snack supply in her utility belt while she waited, both for her and in case she needed to give Takara something.
Missy and Vicky actually finished up in the gym shortly before Takara showed up, and two different PRT vans picked up the three Wards going out today. Missy in one going North, with Taylor and Takara in the other going South. For added fun, Taylor had her platform following them, keeping it cloaked a good distance above the van for now. But she had to pay attention in case they ended up passing near something that it could run into.
"Be careful," Taylor told Takara as they flew along on her platform. "I know you have wings, but that doesn't mean you should be on the edge of the platform."
Takara nodded but didn't move, and Terry snickered off to the side. Granted, so long as Takara was currently 'drawn' she was incredibly difficult to hurt without exploiting her weaknesses, so it wasn't that big of a deal. Worse, the goal was apparently to drill some 'vertical' tactics, so the girl was going to be encouraged to jump off of the platform. Again, because they'd tested her doing so a few times already.
On that front, Taylor was glad that Terry was going to have to explain things if Kenta wanted to know the story behind the Takara pancake that they'd ended up with on the third attempt when she misjudged the distance to the ground. She'd recovered easily enough, but it didn't look pleasant.
"We've got an altercation a couple blocks up," Erin said, and Taylor resisted the urge to roll her eyes. They didn't have the Snitch or a scout drone running, and Erin wasn't far enough forward to know that, so it was obviously a 'simulated' encounter. That a pin showed up on the map after she'd reported it, instead of the console telling them to have them investigate, was another indication there.
"Let's get over them," Terry said, gesturing for Taylor to shift to flying over the buildings. She did so, wondering what the altercation they'd set up was supposed to be.
A moment later they were looking down over the edge of a building at a man waving a knife at another man, yelling about wanting his 'goddamn money'. Terry had landed on the next building over, ostensibly to provide 'backup' but actually to evaluate performance. Taylor looked at Takara, who was...looking everywhere else and ignoring the two men.
"Don't you want to go after the bad man?" Taylor asked.
"What bad man?" Takara asked in return.
"The one with the knife?"
Takara looked down and shook her head. "They're playing. Rude to attack."
Taylor blinked a couple of times, then laughed for a moment before hitting the radio. Luckily Chris was being run through things on Missy's patrol and wasn't on this one, or the surprise for the next day would be ruined. Assuming that the PRT was doing a better join with Missy's run and hadn't ruined it already anyway. "Maul to everyone, consider your plans worthless."
There was a pause before the console responded. "Console to Maul, please explain."
"Maul to everyone, Takara can tell that the altercation is simulated."
Amusingly, both Erin and Terry facepalmed at that.
Missy suppressed the urge to sigh. Three encounters in and they'd screwed up bigtime, making her aware that things were being thrown at her with actors. Admittedly, the second one hadn't been an act, since she didn't see them setting up two idiots that Missy knew were gang members stabbing each other near-fatally over a counterfeit hundred dollar bill. But the first had been a tad too convenient for Assault's idea of screwing with someone's perspective and for this one she could tell that the 'explosive' that she was shooting the timer off of was a poorly-disguised flare. Sitting on a concrete floor where it would do no real damage either way.
She shot the stupid timer off of the not all that dangerous 'bomb' anyway, and didn't say anything about things being obviously faked. Not only would that alert Chris to things that they were likely to hit him with tomorrow, but it would mean that they could shift gears and do something completely ridiculous today. Which was probably going to describe Thursday, because she was definitely putting this into her after-patrol report. Assuming they read those before Thursday and changed their plans, at any rate. It was entirely possible that they'd be stupid and only review them when everything was completed.
Well, that and the only excuse she could see for this kind of thing was seeing if she paid enough attention to notice the staged encounters and they were going to be throwing harder to identify ones in along with the obvious ones. Which was another reason to only note things down in her after-action report. See what they thought of her keeping quiet during the patrol but still making note of why, how, and that things were staged.
After three times in a row that Takara could see that the staged encounters were only people 'playing' they'd given up on them and hoped for some real incidents. They were well past the halfway point and had only run into one person trying to break into a car. Erin had approached them to see if it was theft or just something like having locked their keys into the thing, as they seemed to not be willing to damage the car. That he'd surrendered as soon as he realized that Erin was standing next to him made that anticlimactic. All in all, Taylor was finding the entire thing to be dull and a waste of time.
Of course, thinking that things were going to be dull was a good way to taunt the universe and make Murphy have to decide if the person thinking things were dull needed to be slapped down more than the people trying to get something accomplished. And today, Taylor thinking that things were dull apparently won, as there was a scream from ahead of them.
That Takara jumped straight to full dragon was a solid sign that the scream, at least, hadn't been faked. The girl pulling her vanishing act heading straight for the source was probably another good sign, and Taylor sped off after her. Erin had to shift directions, but Terry followed behind Taylor. They both arrived in time to see Takara jump off of the roof of a building with a wooden sword out. That meant that they were also both in time to find out that the 'amusing injuries' that the girl normally dealt out weren't the only kind she could inflict, as her supposedly-'safe' wooden sword chopped her target's arm off at the shoulder.
Taylor jumped down so that she could keep him from bleeding out even as the woman the man had been tearing the clothing off of was dragged off by another instance of Takara. No attempt was made by Taylor to reattach the arm, just close up the wound enough to keep the man alive. Terry actually collected the arm, pulling a small roll of plastic bags out of a pocket, even as the woman realized what had happened and started hugging Takara while saying things that Taylor thought were probably 'thank you'. Just not in English.
The lack of any names being provided, but Takara still calling the woman 'Emi' without prompting, made Taylor think that they already knew each other. Which probably helped explain the girl's incredibly rapid response to the scream.
"We're going to have to update her file again," Erin noted once the scene was secure and they were waiting on someone to pick the man up.
Taylor nodded. "Yep."
"Think we can keep this from becoming too public?"
"Nope."
"That sounds pessimistic."
Taylor snorted. "There are already two videos posted on PHO, because people in the buildings around us were quick with cameras."
Erin sighed. "They opted to watch instead of help?"
"One of them claims that they knew we were nearby thanks to monitoring the tracking thread and expected us to show up, and the other is apparently disabled and said they were aiming to get evidence as they called the police."
"Ah. Those are even believable."
"More so than your simulated incidents, anyway."
"Dauntless and I didn't plan them, just provided objectives. The individual squads were supposed to set up scenarios based on that, and they apparently need to do much better."
"That and you jumped the gun on the first one, reporting it before we had any hope of knowing it was there."
Erin nodded. "They were out of position and I only realized that after I'd started on my part of things."
"Ah."
They stood there in silence for a few minutes before Terry landed next to them. "So what exactly did Giga Ryū use on the man?"
Taylor pulled out her own hard-light weapon projector. "One of these, in wooden sword mode."
"Okay...aren't those supposed to be very unlikely to do things like cut?"
"Her powers only care what they look like they should be, as far as anyone can tell. Looks like a sword, even one made out of wood, and if she wants it to cut then it'll cut."
Terry blinked a couple of times. "What happens if you give her an actual sword?"
Taylor shrugged. "Don't know, and I don't expect to find out until someone authorizes handing her one. Or perhaps until someone attacks her with one and she disarms them."
"Oh. I guess that makes sense. Do you at least have a guess?"
"If it looks like a sword then it will likely act like a sword."
"Right. I feel stupid for asking now."
Reading Missy's report that evening was amusing for Taylor. The girl had picked out every 'simulated' encounter, torn the scenarios to shreds while pointing out all the flaws in what they'd done, and even called out one group for staying in character while an actual crime happened next to them. The notes from the PRT indicated that she'd been spot on the entire time and the group that had ignored an actual crime was apparently being put through retraining.
Chris had only twigged that things weren't as they seemed when the issues with the 'pretend to be bad guys while actual bad guys are breaking the law right next to you' issue came up, and it looked like he'd not realized the scope of things at all. Admittedly, he wasn't able to see everything, was operating mostly on verbal reports, and Missy wasn't passing on the relevant details while writing her report, so he had a really good excuse.
As for the videos posted on PHO showing Takara's sword attack, most people were taking that incident as a sign that you didn't attack those that Takara cared about around the girl. There were also already a dozen different people applying various effects, sound or otherwise, to the clips and arguing over whether Taylor should've reattached the arm or not had been pushed into a new thread due to how heated the opinions were. Her view, posted on page thirty-eight, was that she had considered castrating him or ripping off his other arm, but sadly he was already essentially out of the fight and she didn't want to worry about the extra paperwork.
Ethan's response not long after amused her, since he called back to a previous post and pointed out that this was why seeing her with paperwork was a bad thing. If she was willing to go through collecting and/or filling it out then you'd pissed her off and could expect no mercy. She didn't comment on that, but a lot of others did. One such comment had her grinning and digging up a couple of things to print out and stash in her utility belt, just in case she could pull them out for a laugh.
Amy: What are you grinning about?
Taylor: Potential situational prank based on comments people are making on PHO.
Amy: Oh. Anything I could participate in?
Taylor: Probably not. Though I might want to see about buying a fountain pen or two.
Amy: ...why?
Taylor: I think I'd rather see your actual reaction if I pull it off with you around, so I'm not telling.
Amy: BAH!
Wednesday morning brought with it the promised snow, and Taylor was happy that she was going to be spending the afternoon inside. It was definitely not enough to worry about them closing school for, given that a light salting and sanding of roads and sidewalks was keeping them essentially clear without the need for plows.
"Are you sure you want to take the minivan to school?" Taylor asked as they were eating their post-workout breakfast.
"Yep," Amy replied. "Even if I have to clear some snow off of it, because it'll be easier to take shopping if it's there. It isn't like you need it this afternoon, right?"
"Right. Whatever. Watch out for ice."
"It isn't that bad out."
"It might end up that bad out."
"Ok, I'll give you that one."
Vicky snorted. "Even if there is ice, I can't see that thing not handling it without any problems whatsoever."
Taylor rolled her eyes. "Which does nothing for the other cars on the road."
"Oh."
"And do try not to punch Empire goons just because they're Empire goons."
"I get the feeling that if any of them try to make trouble then the other Empire goons will get to them before Ames and I can."
Amy shrugged at that. "She has a point."
There wasn't actually enough snow to worry about needing to drive carefully because of it that morning, but people were idiots and the trip from the PRT building to Arcadia took three times longer than it should have as a result. They'd expected that and still arrived with plenty of time to spare. Sadly, that meant that there was plenty of time for people to try and ask Taylor about what had happened with Takara the day before.
She still ignored most of the questions, of course. There weren't a lot of good reasons to deal with the idiots, after all.
That afternoon Taylor headed home to check on things there before making her way to the PRT building while Amy and Vicky went shopping in Empire territory. She spent enough time at home to allow Aisha to beat her to the PRT building, but that was okay. It wasn't like Taylor had to get into costume to sit at the console.
"Why do you get to sit inside today?" Aisha asked once she came out and saw Taylor sitting at the console.
"Because you get to do so tomorrow," Taylor replied. "While I'm out in the snow on my second run with the Protectorate."
"Oh." Aisha thought about that for a moment. "Why do you get two runs?"
"Because Takara is new and getting two runs, but they needed other Wards to join her. I got the first slot, Missy gets the second, and we both get a solo pass to cover things that they don't want to have Takara involved with."
"Wait, so you and Missy each get a babysitting run?"
"Basically."
"Huh. All of a sudden I find myself glad that she isn't a fan of me."
Taylor snorted. "Is anyone a fan of you? Your entire deal is not being noticed, after all."
Aisha actually shivered at that. "Yes, there are fans out there. They're creepy."
"Creepy how?"
"Building up fantasies of me actually being their secret girlfriend, but they can't remember it because I make them forget about me constantly creepy."
"Oh. Ewww."
"Yeah."
Running the console for Aisha's patrol was an exercise in ensuring that the non-parahumans they had along with them were kept aware of the girl's position. It was also boring and repetitive, and Taylor found time to dig up more fun paperwork to print out and store in her utility belt. Doormaker and Clairvoyant also obviously noticed what she was up to, given that five empty paperwork tubes dropped out onto the table while she was printing things out. They didn't offer suggestions for what to put in the tubes, but having them would make things look even better to anyone she pulled the paperwork out on.
The fifteen minutes after ordering delivery of a box of five fountain pens did come with a question regarding what she planned on using them for, and she was happy to provide an answer. They approved, and sent her a box of regular pens, but also pointed her at another form that she needed to fill out in advance. She'd missed it due to the angle her searches had taken, and thanked them for letting her know about it.
Aisha grumbled when she got back, flipping through a notepad. She'd been instructed to not have Taylor take notes for her and now had to write her own after-action report based on what she could remember and had written down. Taylor's report had included her views of what incidents were likely 'simulated' and why, but it wasn't obvious to her if Aisha had figured anything out. Reading the girl's report would probably be interesting later.
Instead, Taylor submitted her report, wished Aisha luck in writing her own, and went to finish up the shotgun before dinner. It didn't take long to assemble and give a once-over, and she gathered a handful of shells before heading to the PRT range to test things. No parahuman abilities meant that she didn't have to use the parahuman range, and people were already using the PRT range when she arrived. Most of them stopped to watch her as she tested the shotgun, and everything worked fine.
"What the hell kind of rounds were you firing from that thing?" one officer asked.
Taylor shrugged. "Custom incendiary rounds that I think were designed for pyrotechnic reasons more than to be effective."
"Oh. Not your choice?"
"They came with the shotgun."
"Right. What are you going to do with it now that you've apparently gotten it into working order?"
Taylor shrugged again. "I have no clue, but it was too dangerous to store before."
"Puts on a nice light show though."
"True. Why would I care about a light show?"
The officer grinned. "Oh, you might not care, but I bet Assault would buy it off you in a heartbeat."
That had Taylor blinking. Ethan could probably fire it more than four times in a row without things getting too warm too, so that might not be a bad choice. "I might have to check with him on that."
She packed up and put the shotgun back in the case with the other spare guns she had, then wandered back into the larger pocket dimension to see what Amy was up to. It was somewhat obvious that things weren't going well when Taylor made it to the kitchen and found that there was a haze of smoke.
"What the hell happened here?" Taylor asked.
"Very thin dough is far too easy to burn," Vicky replied. "Though I think that might be in part because we weren't sure which container was the right one at the store and might've gotten the wrong ingredient."
Taylor sighed and turned on the fans that would pull the smoke out of the kitchen, though they would've been much more effective if Amy had turned them on before things went wrong. "Is anything recoverable?"
"The pans," Amy replied. "The food's a lost cause."
"Okay then. Do you want help cleaning up?"
"Nah," Vicky replied. "General rule in our family is that, barring injuries, if you screw up in a kitchen then you clean up. Others may be pressed into helping clean up if and only if you successfully fed them."
"What she said," Amy agreed. "With the understanding that the cook isn't always the one screwing up. Though thanks for turning on the fans, I forgot they existed since we have to pop open a window and drop a window fan in it at home."
"No problem," Taylor replied. "I assume that other than potentially purchasing the wrong ingredient that your shopping was painless?"
"Alabaster asked Vicky to punch him as hard as she could in the chin to see if his socks would come off, but that was it."
"Somehow that doesn't surprise me as much as it probably should. Did it work?"
"Nope," Vicky replied. "I told him it wouldn't, but he didn't believe me and told me to try anyway."
Amy grinned. "One of the others recording it probably got it posted online by now, if you want to take a look. Otherwise I'll send you a copy of the visor recording later."
Taylor nodded. "I'll check online and let you know."
Coordinator was starting to think that hosts just didn't know what they were seeing, saying, or otherwise experiencing. It had gone over these memory-visions and not spotted anything that looked out of the ordinary. Yet a host had claimed that something weird had happened in one of them, with nothing 'weird' coming up at all. But until it knew what the 'weird' actually was it couldn't dismiss the claim due to stupid high level orders keeping the queue active.
Perhaps it was time to rethink how to approach this. It had to have other resources it could pull on to look into this, even if things were supposed to be kept as secret as possible. Having some of the troubleshooters look over the visions was one possibility, without explaining why? Just that something had been described by a host as 'weird' compared to the others and see what came back. They might, due to imprinting off of hosts, be able to spot what might be meant.
If that didn't work then the last option was to arrange for the host to just point out the weird aspect, but that would be a lot more visible. Luckily the host in question already had reason to be worked with by a troubleshooter for other reconfiguration work, so having the troubleshooter go to them for that wouldn't be that big of a deal. Non-emergency reconfiguration like that didn't usually happen remotely anyway. Admittedly, that meant that it was usually ignored this cycle for that instance of the planet for several reasons, but that was okay. Working around those reasons would be trivial.
And if that didn't work or reveal anything then it could finally go back to the stupid checklist with the minimal 'possible problem but everything is circumstantial' answer that it was currently sitting with. Hopefully that would lead to telling the other Originator so that it could be handled more directly than a checklist, but Coordinator couldn't be certain that it would. The Originators had been using its line to handle a lot of aspects of cycles for a long time. Outside of a very small subset of tasks they preferred to be left alone during cycles. That wasn't going to change just because Coordinator wanted it to.
That evening Taylor found herself impressed with Aisha, who'd noticed every single 'simulated' incident in her run with the Protectorate and described why she thought they were simulated in her report. Three of the incidents including staff she knew were PRT in the 'bad guy' sets was a particularly poor choice on the PRT's side of things. That Taylor had picked up on a bunch of details while running the console was also noted, but didn't count because she knew things were being simulated from the start.
Alabaster's encounter with Vicky had been posted on PHO by Alabaster. Apparently the entire thing had been the subject of a bet, and the Empire cape had won a couple hundred dollars from gullible grunts over it. All for a few seconds of injury that didn't even cause him pain or suffering. Other brutes that could take such a punch were talking about making their own versions, but as they weren't in Brockton Bay they'd need to find other ways of getting the hit to their chins delivered.
The only thing specifically sent to Taylor regarding the Wards evening was a note that she wasn't to allow Takara to borrow a sword for the time being, in case a proper sword became more dangerous than the hard-light wooden one. Since Taylor didn't anticipate working with Takara for a couple of days that wasn't going to be an immediate problem, and even over the weekend it wasn't likely that she'd be carrying her sword with her while healing. A quick message was sent off in response to that, asking if Takara was going to be permitted to 'help with security' while the healing was going on or not, since that was still not entirely decided.
As for the coming week, Taylor was considering a trip to Aleph for Christmas shopping. Get things that nobody would normally be able to obtain, thus drastically reducing the chances of giving someone something that they already had. To that end, she sent a couple of messages off to ensure that she wasn't going to cause problems by showing up via beacon. Better to ensure that people weren't going to be inconvenienced than to show up unannounced and find out that there was a problem. In particular, she wanted to make sure that nobody was staying in the house in Florida for a bit of a vacation. It seemed like the right time of year for it and arriving unexpectedly could take someone using it by surprise.
Chapter 274 Thursday morning brought with it actual snow build-up, and Taylor ended up helping her father quickly clean up their driveway, front walk, and the sidewalk in front of the house. She'd probably end up doing a quick pass after school as well. It hadn't been enough to be called a workout, more just lightly pushing shovels around, so she still met Amy and Vicky at the gym.
"So did you two have to clear any snow this morning?" Taylor asked.
"Nah," Vicky answered. "Mom ran around using her powers instead. Turns out that her hard-light shovel stays above freezing and melts as much as it moves."
"Oh. Did she have fun?"
Amy shrugged. "It was a way to use her power that she hadn't considered before today, so probably."
"Forget that," Vicky said. "When we left she was making a line of itty bitty snowmen along the walkway using hard-light snowman forms."
"Okay, she was definitely having fun, and now I think I want to swing by home before school to get a picture before things melt."
Taylor nodded. "I might join you, just to see them in person."
"Feel free."
Gossip at school drew Taylor's attention for a change, people noticing the PRT heading down a road leading to a neighboring town. An abandoned neighboring town that hadn't survived the economic downturn years previous. The last resident had spent the better part of a decade living there without electricity or running water, only to be dragged out by his granddaughter after breaking his leg. He'd gotten lucky that she'd visited him at the time, and the news had made a big deal of it for a week or so.
Had things gone differently the entire town likely would've officially become part of Brockton Bay, but now the place wasn't even considered worth squatting in. That might change in the future, assuming that the improvements in Brockton Bay kept going, but they'd probably have to tear the entire place down and rebuild from scratch at this point. Which meant that the PRT heading that way was decidedly odd, especially given the timing.
As a general fact of life, Taylor couldn't 'let loose' with her full capabilities in town without causing a lot of property damage. Sure, they were being 'less careful' with that for now, but she could do serious damage to buildings with her powers. The PRT wandering out that way, possibly to clear and prep the area, the morning before Taylor was getting a solo 'simulated patrol' with a couple of Protectorate members?
Taylor made a note to ensure that the Snitch and scout drone were ready for recording use, as well as that she had everything ready for any given gun that she might be asked to bring with her. She foresaw a lot of target practice of varying kinds in her future.
Today Taylor and Amy had gym just before lunch, something that was annoying but not generally problematic. That the two frequently got singled out from pretty much any group activity due to their abilities made them wonder why they were in class with others at all, admittedly, but they were used to it. Such as today's 'run laps while everyone else is playing a team game'.
Unlike most days, they were allowed to get changed before everyone else at the end of class, and Amy brought up an issue.
Amy: Do you hear that whining sound?
Taylor: The incredibly high pitched one that sounds like a component failing?
Amy: Yeah. Is something failing in here?
Taylor: Maybe? I've been trying to ignore it lest my tinker snark bothers me to fix it. I get enough trouble with a couple of computer monitors that could use some maintenance, and don't get me started on the pile of problems with keyboards and mice in programming.
Amy: Oh. That sounds reasonable, but I'd like to at least know what's making the stupid sound.
Taylor: Okay. Give me a minute.
Taylor sighed and actually focused on the sound, finding that it was coming from one of the air vents. Which didn't surprise her all that much, at least until her tinker snark latched on to what was making the noise.
She actually growled as she stormed over to the lockers on that wall and pulled herself up on them, getting everyone else's attention as they came in to change. Both because she was outraged and because she wasn't going to be able to ignore things with her tinker snark going forward as a result of this. Amy seemed to figure out what was going on herself at that point, rushing back into the gym to get the teacher.
"What's up with you?" one of the other girls asked.
Taylor ignored her, instead pulling some tape out of her utility belt, followed by a piece of paper. It didn't take long to tape the paper over the top corner of the air vent where a camera lens had been attached. She also flipped her Maul phone into bypassing the faraday cage effect so that she could send a quick writeup of the camera's capabilities to the PRT in an attempt to hide her tinker powers. Luckily it used local storage and motion sensing instead of transmitting directly.
Miss Barr arrived, and looked at Taylor on top of the lockers. "Miss Hebert, is there a problem?"
Taylor nodded. "There's a camera hidden in the vent. I covered the lens, but I don't want to possibly screw up any fingerprints or other evidence."
There was outrage in the class, but the girls all agreed to keep things quiet until the police could investigate things in an attempt to keep the culprits from running away. Taylor was held back so that she could be questioned by the police when they arrived, Amy being asked to bring back some lunch for her. It was while waiting for the police that Taylor thought to temporarily activate her visor sensors and check the result, followed by looking around the locker room as an excuse for spotting the other three cameras in the other vents. Only one of them was generating a whine noise.
Miss Barr and the school security guards were outraged, and the police carefully extracted each of the camera units from the vents when they arrived. They were all the same model with the same basic configuration, and fingerprints were found on all of them. Taylor explained how the first one had been spotted, and then indicated that she realized that there might not have been one to explain looking for the others at all. The police just nodded at that, and allowed her to head to her next class.
Gym had been cancelled for the rest of the day, not that Taylor was affected by that directly, but she also didn't hear about any arrests. Perhaps those responsible had been intelligent enough to not be caught by their own cameras?
At the end of the school day Taylor headed for the PRT building while reading her messages. A local news station wanted to interview her regarding the 'camera incident', but she declined with a form letter. Hannah had requested that she bring 'suitable live-fire weaponry' this afternoon, which lined up with what Taylor was half expecting. Director Piggot had sent her a congratulations on spotting all of the cameras, with a message forwarded from the BBPD thanking her for speeding up their locating of them. And Ethan had sent her a question asking why he couldn't find a report stating how many bones she'd broken.
The latter was, of course, easily answered with the police not having informed her of the guilty parties yet. As such, she didn't know who needed bones broken.
Ensuring that she had all of her magazines for her guns loaded was easy enough, as was giving them a once-over. She even ensured that the M249 was ready to go. Using it might not happen, but it couldn't hurt to bring with her. A quick possible-abuse of her access rights told her that Ethan was going to be part of her group today, so she collected the shotgun and everything needed for it. That is, the pile of ammo and transfer of ownership paperwork. She'd drop the latter on him if he wanted it, and the delivery of a paperwork tube for it showed that 'Scotty' was paying attention.
She finished all of that shortly before she was due to head down to the secure garage to get into a van to head out. The PRT officers she met there gave her an odd look when she brought the boxes of incendiary shotgun ammo, having hidden the shotgun in with the M249, but didn't say anything. They did ask her to have her platform follow them again today, and she had no problem with doing so. No mentioned was made of her also having her scout drone following them, and as expected they headed out of town where the PRT had been seen to be preparing things.
Emily swore as she looked over the results of checking the three Arcadia employees, two teachers and a janitor, caught on the first footage segments for the cameras hidden in the locker room. All three had tested positive for master effects, with the same instructions. Install the cameras, wait a week, fetch the cameras, review footage for Miss Biron and report on what equipment she likely had with her as a civilian. That the news had already gotten wind of the cameras meant that the smart money was on the person they were supposed to meet not showing up.
None of the three backup plans were likely to help find the one responsible either. Anonymously posting pictures of all of the girls captured on the cameras wasn't much of a lead, and dropping the cameras in one dead drop and pictures in another weren't going to do anything now that word had broken.
Deciding to get at least one thing dealt with, she submitted a request to drop a master effect scanner next to Arcadia the next day, with the PRT ensuring that nobody left the building while it scanned. Hopefully only the three had been compromised, but it was entirely possible that others had been hit and this was just one of several concurrent plans.
Dealing with the press, as well as informing Miss Biron and her parents, were going to be annoying but were also on her list. Perhaps she could get the parents to swing by before the afternoon simulated patrol was completed, to get that out of the way faster?
Ethan had at first been shocked by Taylor pulling out the shotgun, though Hannah backing away two steps might've had something to do with it. That an assurance that the problems with it had been dealt with had been needed just made him more eager to try it out. Two shots in and he was obviously hooked, though Hannah made him put out the fires that he started by firing the incendiary rounds.
Taylor then made him fill out the transfer of ownership paperwork. He swore, but didn't argue, even insisting on filling it out right there. Granted, she had to fill out two small sections herself, including her signature, but that was fine by her. The paperwork was dropped into the tube after a quick review, and Hannah had offered to file it when they got back.
"Why did you do that?" Ethan asked after Taylor threw the paperwork tube over her shoulder.
"It's faster than waiting until we get back," Taylor replied, knowing that the tube had already vanished to be processed.
"How is throwing it into the bushes faster?"
"If you're that concerned about it you can go fetch it from the bushes."
Ethan seemed to stare at her for a minute, then stormed over to the bushes. He spent five minutes looking, but finally gave up and came back over. "Okay, apparently you get issued the impossible paperwork tubes instead of the normal ones. Good to know."
"If we're done with that," Hannah said, waiting for a couple of nods. "I think we should get started. Maul, as you were informed that things would be simulated, we're going with a different stretching of your capabilities. Instead of a patrol we're putting you through a live-fire obstacle course. Pop-up targets, automated attempts to return fire, and multiple objectives for you to complete in the process. All in the snow, which admittedly will make the return fire less accurate."
Ethan was grinning. "And then we'll take a break, evaluate things, and let the squads with us remove everything we want to keep before round two."
Taylor nodded. "Okay, though I wonder how you got approval to have things shooting back at me."
Hannah raised an eyebrow. "We only need to ensure that you should come out with minimal injuries and that we aren't pushing you beyond what you've already seen, barring Endbringer battles and similar anyway. You shouldn't be taking enough hits to even stress your belt, and the Butcher isn't an exclusion, so there aren't any regulatory issues to deal with."
"Ah."
They prepared for her to take her platform through the course, planning on giving her general instructions as she moved along. She considered some of the initial portions and decided to start with the M249. Ethan and Hannah both looked at her oddly, but didn't comment.
Taylor was grinning as she ensured that a copy of the sensor data was backed up in the PRT systems. She'd gone through the entire course and hit every target, only taking three hits to her force field and one hit to her platform in the process. Granted, she probably needed to consider getting the stupid machine to build belts for her M249, but that was okay.
"You're insane," Hannah said, looking over some of the footage from the run. "You completely ignore all rules of stance and aiming. Holding a handgun in one hand and the M249 in the other should not have worked, but it obviously did."
"I didn't need to barrage blaster anything," Taylor said, shrugging. "It was actually quite fun, bouncing around to dodge while returning fire. I suspect it would be less so with actual people involved, admittedly, but for this exercise it was fun."
"How did you take out the sixth gun?" Ethan asked as he looked over things. "I can't see what you hit it with if that wasn't a barrage blaster hit?"
"I projected off of the bottom of the platform as I flew by."
"You..." he started, before frowning and looking over that clip again. "You bent the frame on the thing."
"Yep. Being in the way of the platform isn't recommended, it's quite durable."
"Apparently."
Hannah shook her head. "I don't see why you're surprised, given the 'round two' plans."
Ethan shrugged. "I hadn't considered the platform as a valid projection target. It makes sense, I just hadn't considered it."
"So what is round two?" Taylor asked.
Hannah's response was to pull a small remote out of a pocket and push a button on it. Nothing seemed to happen, but Taylor was patient. A minute later the opening sequence on one of the trucks she'd ignored apparently completed and Colin's railgun lifted out of it.
"Long story short," Ethan said once he was certain that Taylor had seen the railgun. "We got permission to do this with the understanding that we would ensure that no buildings were left standing when we were done. Seems someone finally bought up all of the land and wants to put in an airport, so the entire area needs to be leveled. Others are going to deal with the debris, but generally everyone figured that we could kill multiple birds with one railgun by having you level things while we record data on the end results of firing barrage blaster shots into the ground."
"Armsmaster ensured that the benches are suitable for 'standing' in while the entire railgun is pointing down, as well as that it can properly fire in that position."
"Ideally you'll also collapse the sewer system, but that was just a suggestion. Of course, we'll need to evacuate to a much greater distance before you can fire, just to be safe, while you're firing with smaller projection circles to prevent too much kinetic energy from being released at once."
Taylor looked between the two. "I don't suppose anyone thought to invite Amy?"
Hannah rolled her eyes. "We're already pushing the bounds of overkill, and there would be another two boxes of paperwork to include her."
"Pity. She's going to be jealous."
Missy felt bad for thinking poorly of the potentially ridiculous 'patrol', because she was having the time of her life. Instead of putting Takara through 'realistic' situations, Armsmaster had set up dozens of traps and obstacles for the girl. All of it demonstrating that she could and did act like a real-life cartoon character in many ways when in her 'drawn' state. Admittedly, she'd broken her arms at least five times so far, and Missy had lost count of the number of times her legs had been broken, but she bounced back from those within minutes.
Usually to scowl at whatever she'd just been 'hurt' by and go right back into it to prove that it wouldn't beat her, after the amusingly-broken bones had been manually reset in some fashion.
They also had their share of damage to equipment. Gun barrels peeled back because Takara put her finger in them, knives that were partially melted as though dipped in incredibly corrosive acid after cutting the girl's limbs off (only for the limbs to pull back together moments later), and over a dozen surfaces with girl or dragon shaped imprints in them. Oh, and one device frozen solid and shattered after pepper spray was consumed by Takara, somehow resulting in ice breath a moment later.
Armsmaster had commented on that, stating that they'd prepared for fire and not ice, but getting the opposite of what they'd prepared for was a perfectly valid and somewhat expected pattern. Of course, by then he'd also given up on the stated goal of her spotting and avoiding the traps. Takara was far too interested in springing them instead of avoiding them.
On Missy's end, most of her work had been ensuring that there was enough room around Takara for bystanders to not be hurt. Not that there were a lot of bystanders, mainly because the PRT was keeping most people away from all of the devices for safety reasons. The only other task she had was self-appointed, being to not run through her popcorn supply before they ran out of things for Takara to work through. That was proving to be a challenge, as she hadn't known that she needed to stock up before leaving.
Also amusing was that they were running Aisha through random drills on the console between reporting on what was going on, since she had nothing else to do that would normally be legitimate console work. The girl sounded incredibly annoyed with the entire dance, but wasn't arguing about it. Missy was glad that she'd been skipped for this round of 'get run through the hoops on the console' as a result, though she was slightly curious as to why they came to a halt.
"We don't need the added distraction," Armsmaster stated. "We'll continue when Maul is done."
"When Maul is done what?" Missy asked.
"You'll see shortly."
The Endbringer sirens pulsed with a general warning tone, getting the attention of everyone in town. "Attention, attention, Maul is preparing to fire. Explosion-like sounds are expected and minor tremors are likely."
Amy blinked at that as she moved towards a window in the hospital.
Amy: What the hell is going on?
Taylor: I'm preparing to level part of an abandoned town so that they can put an airport in.
Amy: ...what?
Taylor: With Colin's railgun.
Amy: ...
Amy: Why wasn't I invited?
Taylor: They blamed paperwork.
Amy: Figures.
"Ten," Taylor's voice came over the siren speakers. "Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Fire one."
There was a small crack, followed by a larger boom and a slight shaking of the ground. In the distance a cloud of dust could be seen rising. Actually, there was also a noticeable shockwave in the falling snow, which was interesting.
"Preparing for next shot," Taylor's voice continued, and Amy noted that people were starting to crowd around the windows with phones out. "Round loaded. Firing in Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Fire two."
The crack, boom, shaking, and rising dust cloud pattern repeated.
Amy: Please tell me that you're recording this.
Taylor: Of course. I have my visor, the Snitch, and my scout drone all out. Though the Snitch keeps getting blown around a bit by the shockwaves.
Amy: Good.
Taylor: Here, I'll send you a download link for the data I recorded while running the obstacle course they had set up originally too. Or rather, the entire folder of footage, camera and drone.
Amy ignored the third shot being fired as the link came through, instead focusing on downloading a couple of the clips.
Amy: Were you being shot at by automated guns?
Taylor: Yeah. Nothing major. Not sure if the force field was even needed to keep them from hurting me.
Amy: ...
The final debriefing on the afternoon was done with Taylor unable to get a grin off of her face. She'd only needed four shots to level the entire area that they wanted leveled, but had used five just to be certain. The last one had been fired into the direct center of the first four with a smaller projection radius. Of course, calling the area 'leveled' was probably a lie, because it was anything but level now. Calling it destroyed definitely counted, but not level.
"Since your performance obviously had no obvious issues beyond your personal choices being seen as unusual," Deputy Director Renick said. "Not that everyone saw a problem with them, anyway, I'd like to talk to you about releasing the footage."
Taylor nodded. "Okay, I guess that makes sense. A lot of it does look cool."
"Specifically, we'd like to make it into a movie."
"What?"
"Your battle with the Butcher was a hit, but we're thinking that this one would be more 'made for television' or 'direct to home release'. Much closer to a normal documentary, describing the setup of the course, the capabilities of the targets, and having expert commentary on your actions throughout. I'm thinking that we'd be aiming for a mid-January release."
"I suppose that makes sense. Where would the proceeds go to?"
"A small amount to the PRT, and the rest to you or a charity of your choice. We already got permission from your father, with him stating that he'd leave the decision up to you."
"Okay, but when did you have time to ask him?"
Renick grinned. "I called him while you were on your way back."
Taylor didn't have any problem with that, provided she got to approve things before it was released, and brought the paperwork her father would need to sign home with her. Amusingly, when she checked later, she found that they'd apparently had fun with Takara and Missy as well, with their 'patrol' also generating footage courtesy of Colin. Two different movies assembled in whole or in part from Wards footage did seem a little excessive though, given how rare that kind of thing was.
Vivian grinned as she worked her way through the destruction that Taylor had created, dropping her own creations into place in the precise grid that she'd laid out ahead of time. Seeing the incredible destruction that the girl had pulled off with only five shots, and knowing that it probably could've been done with one or two if they'd been willing to risk it, was actually incredibly cool.
Not as cool as what she was going to do with the resulting debris field, granted, but cool.
How Colin and Emily had pulled off getting this all approved was beyond Vivian, since it seemed ridiculous, but she wasn't going to complain about being able to do a proper field test of this explosive system. Over three hundred explosives set to rearrange the landscape in somewhat-precise ways was a bit of an undertaking, but they'd outright paid for the materials used and her time in building them.
It took her a couple of hours to place everything, swearing at the snow making things slick at times, after which they backed off to a safe distance. Others had been setting up cameras to record things, and they ran through checks of all of them before the green light was given for arming her bombs. That took three quarters of an hour, arming each one and ensuring that self-tests passed. The sun had set before they were ready for the final countdown, though this one wasn't broadcast far and wide.
When the timer hit zero, there was a subtle 'whump' and a bright flash of light. No tremors or shockwave, but the cameras went offline for a few seconds. When they came back online the entire area covered by the explosives was perfectly flat and level, with healthy-looking grass growing in the few feet of dirt. They'd have to do some scans to ensure that the rock and gravel layers had formed properly, per her intent.
Especially as things had not gone to plan, and it was blatantly obvious.
"How the fuck did that happen?" Vivian asked, pointing at one of the screens.
"How did what happen?" the PRT officer at that station asked.
"The grass! How the fuck did I get a layer of healthy looking grass? I only aimed for dirt and rocks in various layers! If that's real grass then where the hell did the genetic template come from? I didn't include one, and all my previous attempts at making living anything on this scale failed miserably!"
A couple of the officers groaned, likely knowing that this was going to drastically increase the amount of time they had to spend examining the site. Sure, she'd fugued a little while working on the explosives, but she didn't think she'd done so to the degree needed to make a field of living grass on top of everything else.
The three extra bombs she'd made and not used were also going to need to be examined very closely, especially as the one used in testing hadn't produced anything but a dirt surface.
Rebecca looked over her messages before preparing to go home, mainly reviewing the complaints from various regions about the ENE taking all of the 'glory' with making movies. Nevermind that any region could do so under current policies, and none of them were complaining about the use of the scout drone technology to make the films. That would at least be a valid complaint, given that paperwork to do so hadn't been filed. Irrelevant as those using the technology didn't need to fill out that particular paperwork, but at least valid to complain about on the surface.
No, the complaints were only that the ENE was on their second and third movie while nobody else had managed anything in years. A general notice that they had procedures in place for requesting permission to release footage in movie form was going to need to be sent out. That only one region was using those procedures meant squat and no other regions had any rights to complain.
Though perhaps she should recommend that the remaining quarantine zones make documentaries about the amount of effort that went in to keep the quarantines in place. Give the general public a better idea as to how much time and effort went in to keeping things contained while they looked for longer-term solutions, but without covering all of the specifics. It couldn't hurt when it came to budget discussions, at least.
Beyond that, it was all just baseless whining. There were at least six regions with parahumans that could be tapped to help make movies of varying kinds, and that was without taking into account affiliates. It wasn't seen as a good use of time or resources, though that was probably going to change in the near future. Especially if the ENE did well with the two new films. Sure, they weren't likely to make the PRT a lot of money directly, but they'd hopefully paint things in the correct manner regarding how they were going about things and why they did various things.
She was distracted from her reviewing those messages by a door opening into her office, and Fortuna stepping out. "Good evening. What brings you by today?"
Fortuna swapped out the watering bulb in the rose bush on Rebecca's desk. "I've been working on paths to finding the master involved in the Arcadia camera incident."
"That sounds like you haven't had a lot of luck."
"Technically I have. Just not all of it good."
"Oh?"
"I've found six others that were affected by the same signature. I suspect we're dealing with a member of the Mathers family, or someone close to them, that got part of that blasted anti-thinker effect."
Rebecca frowned. "That doesn't surprise me."
"At the same time, I think they're operating entirely as a mercenary, and only care about Miss Biron because they're being paid to. Presumably someone who broke away from the Fallen early on, maybe even someone that they didn't know had triggered or that triggered after leaving. I can't see how they'd have been missed otherwise."
"Compared to the agent just happening to have found someone new since the deaths of so many members of the Mathers family?"
"One of those I found affected by this master hasn't had human contact other than me for three years."
"Oh, him. I don't suppose we dropped him on that island for reasons related to the orders he'd been given?"
"Sadly, no. The orders he was given are keeping him less violent. One of them is a general prohibition against attacking females that aren't attacking him, and another prevents him from attacking anything that might be considered to be someone's pet."
"Pity. So what do you recommend we do?"
"I paid a...contractor, let's say. One with different blind spots than my own. They claim that there's a very good chance that Minefield and our mysterious master will screw up if we leave them alone, but if we take deliberate actions to find either then they'll slip away."
Rebecca stared at Fortuna. "I hate it when you tell me that the best course of action is to ensure that everyone does nothing."
"Oh, and don't tell the Wards to do nothing. Just the PRT and Protectorate."
"Fun. Emily is going to love that."
Chapter 275 Friday morning started with another run around with a shovel to clear out small amounts of snow, though things had dropped to occasional flurries by morning. Taylor also got word that Takara wouldn't be joining them over the weekend, on account of the forest being trapped to ridiculous levels and the girl apparently not being able to keep herself from walking into traps. The temptation to head into the forest with all of the traps might prove to be too much.
Beyond that, the morning was reasonably calm for her, with Amy and Vicky saying little to nothing of interest in the gym. At least until reaching school, at which point the questions about the previous day started. And were generally ignored. It took until lunchtime for someone to ask politely. It didn't really surprise Taylor that said someone was Louise, just after sitting down with her own lunch.
"Hey Taylor, Amy, Dennis," Louise said, then frowned and looked around. "No Vicky, Dean, Chris, or Missy?"
"Missy got dragged off by Vicky to the other corner to be quizzed about things she saw and participated in yesterday afternoon," Amy replied. "Dean went with them, and I can see that Chris is still in line to get lunch."
"Oh. I'm more interested in what you were up to. Will there be any more official information on that?"
Taylor nodded. "They're working on making a documentary to cover it."
Louise blinked. "Does that mean that you're going to be in another movie?"
"Yes, not that I expected that going in for either situation. It tends to be 'oh, by the way, we want to turn that into a movie'. Or rather, the first was 'oh, by the way, we made a movie, can we release it?' with this one being 'we want to make a movie'."
Amy rolled her eyes. "At least they ask you before releasing them."
"It's in my contracts."
Dennis coughed at that. "You have contracts for them making movies with you in them?"
It was Taylor's turn to roll her eyes. "I have contracts and agreements with the PRT for being a Ward. Or really, a parahuman tied to the overall PRT and Protectorate organization in general. Those require getting permission from the parahuman and/or their guardians before releasing things like films containing them or their likenesses. Generally guardians for those ten and under, parahuman and guardians for eleven to seventeen, and the parahuman alone for legal adults. Odd circumstances excepted, of course."
Louise frowned. "What kind of odd circumstances would those be?"
"Everything from mundane mental disability problems through to power-related issues."
"I find myself curious as to what kinds of power-related issues could affect releasing movies," Dennis admitted. "Do you have any examples?"
Taylor shrugged. "There's a note in the documentation on that covering the case of twins that seem to have to be unnoticed extras in movies and television shows to power up. They and their parents were denied permission to say 'no' when that detail was discovered."
There was a pause at that, before Dennis and a couple of people at the next table over pulled out phones. Probably to search for who the twins might be. Good luck to them on that, given that Taylor had gotten curious that day and knew that they were fraternal twins, brother and sister, with differing hair colors, and they didn't normally appear as extras together. Well, Dennis would probably have some luck if he checked the PRT's system, but the others weren't going to get anywhere.
Taylor headed home after school to drop off her bag and check on Ackbar. Admittedly, the latter hadn't been in her plans originally, but he'd found his way to the basement since she'd left that morning. Heading downstairs only took a couple of minutes, and she found that he'd created a trap web on the floor next to a hole in a box. With a sigh, she checked the box, finding it to be empty of anything that could trigger the trap web. There also weren't signs of there having been anything living in the box.
A loose screw kicked into the 'trap' proved to be enough to set it off, the screw being pulled into the center of it and held there for about a minute. She then picked Ackbar up and brought him back upstairs, leaving him in her room with the door shut. Grabbing a glass of water from the kitchen was followed by leaving through the downstairs portal opener, heading to the PRT building as nobody had told her what was going on for her afternoon yet. All she had was a note that she should see Director Piggot about it.
She even managed to suppress the cringe as Amy started healing at the hospital. There'd been a car accident and they'd started her off with removing chunks of metal from a woman's leg.
Making her way up to Director Piggot's office took a little longer than anticipated due to needing to wait for the elevator. Or rather, she had been waiting for the elevator, gave up after determining that it was being held higher up in the building, and took the stairs. Though she did stop at the floor where the elevator was being held, out of curiosity. She decided that she didn't want to know why there were two groups arguing about how to fit a desk into the elevator and continued on her way.
"Good afternoon Miss Hebert," the secretary said as soon as Taylor entered the outer office. "Director Piggot is waiting for you, go right in."
"Thank you," Taylor replied, heading for the open door to the inner office.
"Good afternoon," Director Piggot said as Taylor entered. "Can you close the door and turn on the privacy field generator?"
"Good afternoon," Taylor said, doing as the woman had asked.
"Before I get to the rest of what I need to talk to you about, can you tell me what's gone wrong with my remote switch for the privacy field? It stopped working yesterday and maintenance hasn't gotten around to taking a look."
"Sure." It didn't take long to focus her tinker snark on the switch on the desk, nor to spot the problem. "It looks like the plug on the control box is slightly loose, plug it in all the way and it should work fine."
Blinking, Director Piggot checked the plug and found that it was loose. It 'clicked' when she pushed it in more, and she sighed. "I bet I dropped a folder on it just wrong. Thank you."
"No problem."
"Now then, as for the afternoon, you've been requested to help with figuring out the powers and needs of parahumans that aren't likely to go through normal testing. It's only technically on the books, for reasons that I'm sure you'll understand when you get there."
Taylor blinked at that. "When I get where, exactly?"
"I have no clue." She handed over a piece of paper. "I was told that this beacon code would work for the afternoon, but they'd be resetting and relocating it later. To that end, I haven't actually requested to be given knowledge as to where you're going, or details on those you're working with beyond what was needed to clear you for the trip. In fact, your father knows more about those details than I do."
"Wait, how would he know more than you do?"
"As I understand it? He spent over an hour earlier today talking to your uncle about it."
Ah. That kind of 'technically on the books', answering a number of questions and dropping several others into the mix. "I see."
"The only other detail I've got is that you're likely to be eating dinner away from home. Outside of that, I have an unofficial request. I'd prefer to not have to deal with someone that your uncle is having you work with in secret, on the basis that they're going to be far too much trouble on my part. As such, I'd appreciate it if you could avoid whoever they are being assigned to the ENE region. Assuming, of course, that they're going to be joining any region at all."
"I'll see what I can do, but I suspect that I'll have less control over that than you're hoping."
The Director sighed. "Yes, well, I felt that I had to try."
Taylor had exited the pocket dimension into the room that the beacon she was targeting was sitting in. In fact, the beacon was sitting on a table filled with magazines in the middle of the room, running on battery power. Her uncle was nearby, with three other parahumans, probably in an inner office instead of the obvious waiting room. Notably, one of the three parahumans had a snark that seemed shockingly similar to her uncle's and another had one that she half recognized but didn't have a name for yet.
"Taylor!" her uncle called a moment later, coming into the room. "Nice to see you. Welcome to West Virginia, though I'm going to apologize for not being able to show you the sights. Low-key meeting and all, I'm sure you understand."
"Hello," she returned. "So what's the full story, given that Director Piggot didn't want to know the details?"
He grimaced. "Long story short? Mary and Tori triggered in Riley's presence, then proceeded to help with heavily modifying the one responsible for the trigger in different ways. We need to know more about their urges, but it fairly quickly became obvious to me that I can't get a proper read off of Tori and I can't tell what's actual urges versus their slightly skewed mental state prior to triggering."
"Oh. Who's with them now?"
"Tracy, their therapist. Come on, let's get you properly introduced so that we can deal with this aspect of things."
It didn't take long to run through Mary and Tori being excited to see Taylor and Tracy gushing a little over how much Taylor had advanced the field of parahuman psychology. What took longer was telling the story of how that advancement had come about, which amused both girls.
"Now then," Taylor said when she was done. "I didn't come here just to tell stories. Amy just sat down to take a break while they move patients around, so I think I'll see what I can figure out about your snarks."
Both girls nodded, though Tracy looked pensive. "I don't suppose you can check with mine as well? I'm confused by some of the things it wants me to do."
Taylor nodded. "That shouldn't be a problem." In fact, she decided to start with the woman's.
Taylor: Hello there.
[Query]
BA: Data
Taylor: While the basics of how I'm talking to you is probably interesting, your human is confused about what you want her to do. Though if that isn't specific enough for you I can ask her for more details.
[Data. Elaboration]
Taylor: I see. Thank you.
"Huh," Taylor said. "Apparently your snark wants you to use your knowledge and understanding to arrange for physical combat between people that won't hold back with each other."
Tracy blinked, then groaned. "I'm not a couples therapist. Most of my patients have no reason to fight with each other."
Taylor ignored her and reached out to Mary's snark next.
Taylor: Hello there.
[Query]
Taylor: No, I'm not related to her by blood, but I wouldn't be surprised if she sees me as family because she sees my uncle as family.
[Query]
Taylor: Okay, technically I'm not related to him by blood either.
[...Query]
Taylor: No, I don't think that my organs are compatible with her, but that has more to do with the modifications I've had. Now then, before we get lost in this, are you willing to tell me what you do for her and what urges you're giving her?
[Data. Elaboration. Data. Query]
Taylor: Thank you.
S: Data
Taylor: And that's a decent summary of my changes.
Shaking her head slightly, Taylor looked at Mary. "So you specialize in adding redundancies and additional body parts, with a focus on improving combat potential and short-term trauma survivability. At the same time, your snark apparently didn't realize that blood types were a thing in humans, and you're likely to find yourself pushed to change those around you that aren't family. Apparently your snark feels that sacrificing long-term stability is a bad thing to do with those close to you."
"That is going to be hell on arranging for proper test subjects," Jacob groaned.
"Except that she only needs animals, not humans specifically."
He visibly blinked a few times at that. "Oh. That'll make things a lot easier than I thought."
"Her snark also really liked working with Riley's, since it knows that it can't do cross-species without the additional aid."
Everyone looked at Taylor, and Mary started grinning while Jacob facepalmed. Taylor let them do that, turning her attention to Tori's snark.
Taylor: Hello there.
[Accusation]
BA: Retort
[...Query]
BA: Data
[Affirmation]
BA: Elaboration
Taylor: Whoa there. How the hell is there this much animosity between you two when you've just met?
[...Data. Elaboration]
Taylor: Okay, so you think that Broadcast Administrator is cheating cheater who cheats and that you've implemented connecting parahumans together properly.
[Elaboration. Data]
Taylor: Okay, and you don't talk to your human, which isn't supposed to be nearly as direct. On that front, I'd like to point out that apparently I'm responsible for the communication with my snark, as the first thing I did after triggering was lash out and connect it back to itself. Accidental loophole abuse.
BA: Agreement
Taylor: As for connecting parahumans together and being able to get too much data out, that was also an accident on my part. I reached out to two that were working on my body and didn't realize that I was going to be enabling them to work together instead of just getting a rundown of what they were doing to me.
S: Agreement
Taylor: Though I'll give you the multiple primary snarks bit. They figured that out without really consulting me as a solution to letting me be monitored remotely.
BA: ...Agreement. Data
[...Query]
BA: Data
[Acceptance]
Huh. 'Repairing host brain injuries' was apparently just interesting and not rule-breaking, despite being loophole abuse of its own. Good to know.
Taylor: Now that we've got that out of the way, any chance of a proper non-accusatory rundown of what you're doing for your human, and what urges you're giving her?
[Data. Elaboration]
Taylor: Thank you.
Shaking her head again, Taylor looked at Tori. "Your snark is giving you the ability to connect a few parahumans together for fugue-like action, though keeping you out of it. The number you can pull in will likely go up as it grows. Then there's the 'stab people from a distance' trick, which I think you'll find you care a lot less about using than you might otherwise expect. Finally, apparently it should be pushing you to help find solutions to violently protect people who can't protect themselves."
Tracy coughed. "Did you say violently protect?"
Taylor nodded. "The best defense is a good offense type thinking, though trying to stay flexible? Never know what snarks will be available to link to make it happen, but I suspect that she's going to want to experiment with a variety of combinations. All in all, I doubt that she's going to want to be on the 'front lines' from a combat point of view. More of a 'prepare things to equip others with' attitude?"
Tori was nodding along at that point. "Yeah. I don't think I care about fighting people."
"Beyond that, her snark was smug about pulling off the 'connect parahumans together' trick without 'abusing the rules', only to switch to almost pouting when it found out that I was responsible for most of that, purely by accident. It apparently thought that had been intended functionality at first and was flouting the rules instead of being offshoot abilities that hadn't been anticipated and thus didn't get locked down."
Her uncle looked at her, then sighed. "So it isn't valid to criticize it if you triggered the loopholes, only if your snark did?"
"I think that's the general idea, yes."
"That's a fun bit of insight. Is that tied into 'learning from us'?"
"I think so, yes."
"Good to know."
"I'm lost," Mary said. "What are you talking about now?"
Taylor considered that for a moment. "Snarks, the things that give us powers, seem to want us to find new ways to use them. If we do, they're happier, and if we figure out how to break their rules then they're generally okay with that. But if they break their rules without it being us doing so then other snarks don't like it."
It was, sadly, fairly obvious that Mary and Tori both didn't quite get that.
Taylor had spent an hour waiting in the other room with her uncle while Tracy talked to the two girls, during which he'd packed up the beacon and put it in his bag while updating Taylor on some of what had been going on. That was followed by two half-hour sessions, one with each girl talking with Tracy individually. They played card games with the one not currently with the therapist. Cleaning up after the card games happened while Jacob talked to Tracy for a few minutes.
"Okay," he said as he came out of the other room. "We're done here, but Tracy has to clean up and ensure that her notes are in order before she leaves to catch a plane home. How about we get going to the restaurant I booked a private room at? It's close enough to time for dinner, after all."
"Works for me," Taylor agreed, and the two girls initially looked like they were going to rush ahead. A quick look stopped that in its tracks.
The four headed outside to a likely-rented car, Taylor sitting in the passenger seat while both girls clambered into the back. It was a ten minute trip to the restaurant, and nobody gave the four of them a second look as they went in. A few minutes later they were in the private room, and Taylor noted that it had a privacy field generator. Apparently this wasn't just any private room.
"We can talk more freely once we've got our dinner," Jacob said as they sat down. "Until then, let's decide what we want to order."
It didn't take long to place orders, and they stuck to normal 'small talk' until their food arrived. At that point they ensured that the privacy field was turned on, in addition to the door being locked from the inside with a slide bolt.
"Okay," he said as he sat back down. "We're good for at least three quarters of an hour before anyone bothers us. Taylor, just so that you know, while both Mary and Tori are interested in being fugued on, I've told them no for now. That hasn't changed with the general impression that I've gotten of them not being likely to be going into battle, and thus not joining the Nine themselves."
Taylor nodded. "That makes sense. Give them more time being normal before changing things up on them?"
"Basically. Not that they're happy about it, of course. I'd rather they not run into problems like Riley did when she worked on herself and stunted her growth, and we're still running into occasional physical problems from their time in the pods. Most recently, we discovered that they have problems knowing when they've held their breath too long. Swimming has become a much more closely monitored activity as a result."
The two girls had looked annoyed at first, but switched to blushing in embarrassment. Taylor suspected that they'd had a near-drowning experience, possibly because swimming in the simulated environment hadn't forced them to 'come up for air' or something like that.
"Still," he continued. "There are other things that I'd like you to check with them. Ensure that they've properly recovered from their time in the pods is the primary one. There have been concerns raised as to whether or not there are physical side effects that are hindering their mental recovery. They, on the other hand, want to hear more about your own adventures as a parahuman and what being a Ward is like."
Taylor nodded. "I'll check them before we leave. If there is anything still in need of being fixed up then doing so will be easier after they've eaten."
With that said, she told the two girls stories about various things from her time as a Ward. The two girls liked some of the 'using the system to prank people', directly or indirectly. On the other hand, they didn't like the sound of how much paperwork Taylor had to fill out. That a lot of it was due to things that the girls shouldn't have to deal with was left unsaid, of course.
Other things obviously annoyed the girls, though what those were varied. Tori was obviously incredibly annoyed by the whole deal with the Butcher, but Mary was more affected by the comparative non-incidents such as the middle of the night ambush attempt in Las Vegas. At the same time, other things merely intrigued them, such as when Taylor talked about getting spider-bots to trigger so that they could use powers.
Eventually dinner came to an end, and Taylor double-checked both girls with Shaper. Neither had significant problems from their time in the pods, but Tori had injuries from when she'd triggered that had been mostly but not entirely corrected. Patching those up was easy enough. Once that was done they went their separate ways, Taylor leaving with a pocket dimension portal while her uncle took the two girls with the car.
Saturday morning dawned bright, early, and windy. The latter was primarily at the forest clearing when Taylor popped over to deploy the units they were using today. Which was apparently 'healing only in the morning, until the worst cases are out of the way, then switching to a few psychology sessions in the afternoon'. As a result, Taylor had just deployed the therapist unit along with the others.
Vicky was joining them as part of the security detail on-site today, with the hope of going out for a date with Dean tomorrow. As a result of that, she joined them in the gym that morning. Grumbling about the early hour, but she joined them.
"So they basically said that there will be a pile of critical cases coming in first?" Amy said as they worked out.
"Yep," Taylor said. "Starting me off helping with them before getting into talking with snarks."
"Sounds like the morning is going to be a little extra-hectic compared to the rest of the day," Vicky added. "Hopefully the PRT and Guild people are on the ball with moving people through."
Amy frowned. "I'm more concerned with someone going after Missy while we're out of the area. It seems like a good time to attempt it."
Taylor grinned. "It does, doesn't it? Except that I've got a message confirming that in a couple of hours she's due to head to Los Angeles to help with some things there. Anyone looking for her here will be sorely disappointed."
"Oh. That would make it harder to target her."
"Aisha and Chris are going to be patrolling with Takara later, but I don't think there will be any problems there beyond Takara pouting that she didn't get to join us this weekend. They're actually planning more of a public appearance Boardwalk run than anything else as well, so there shouldn't be any significant trouble."
Vicky sighed. "There rarely is on an average day. We used to run a near-constant danger profile around here, but now everything's been condensed into short bursts of violence with relatively peaceful periods between it all. I barely get to punch anyone by comparison, and annoying Lung is getting more boring as time goes on."
Taylor nodded. "I can see that. Maybe see if Takara wants to join in on the next 'battle'?"
The older girl paused at that, then grinned. "Okay, yes, that could be fun. Not sure if anyone else will go for it, and I suppose we'd have to see which 'side' of the battle she'd want to be on..."
The morning run of patients had actually started with islanders that didn't speak English. Or any other language the Guild had translators for, actually. But they understood hand signs well enough and there were a number of them with serious injuries or side effects from the immune system boosting flu. At the same time, they were all also reasonably quick to work with, being in good health other than the issues that brought them there. Well, that and a complete lack of smalltalk. Notably, none of them were parahumans.
After that they moved into those that could be better communicated with, even if only through translators. Most of those patients had serious injuries or obvious parahuman-induced problems. That included removing 'cybernetics' from an entire group of children that had apparently been caught by a tinker in a fugue. The tinker had also come along to offer what assistance they could, most of which was ensuring that things shut down properly as they were removed. Sadly, they couldn't actually remove everything, in particular the implants that improved eyesight and hearing. Those had been tied directly into the brain.
Removing things from the tinker was seen as the lowest priority on the list for that group, and because of that the tinker had neglected to inform anyone that they had acute radiation poisoning. Luckily it was still treatable by the girls, and they got the nuclear power source out of the man's stomach. The effects wouldn't all go away, but they were able to deal with most of them.
The rest of the morning felt far more 'routine', almost entirely one-off problems of varying kinds and severities. At the same time, it was obvious that things had been loosely ordered, as the average severity dropped over time, until lunchtime came and they prepared to split focus to allow Taylor to work with parahumans. They were hoping to get five through today, given that they could be time consuming.
"Hello there," Taylor greeted her third parahuman patient of the afternoon, the first two having gotten nowhere due to incredibly stubborn snarks. The young girl couldn't have been any older than nine and was there with her normal therapist. "How are you?"
The girl didn't seem to want to say anything, but her therapist patted her on the head. "Kim is quite shy, which is part of the problem. We know she isn't getting proper use out of her powers, but can't get her to tell us what urges she's getting."
Taylor nodded. "Well, let's see if I can figure that out."
Taylor: Hello there.
[Query]
Taylor: I'm the human that your human was brought to talk with. I'd like to help both of you by letting others know what you want your human to do.
[...Query]
Taylor: I suppose knowing what she can do would help me understand, but unless she isn't using all of the abilities that you give her then I probably don't need to know.
[...Data. Elaboration]
Taylor: I see. How long does that last bit require to take hold properly?
[Data]
Taylor: Thank you. I'll let them know.
[...Data. Elaboration]
Taylor: And I can certainly let them know that as well.
Taylor nodded slightly. "It looks like Kim probably needs a pet. Any mammal will work, but I think I'll recommend a cat or a dog. It'll probably take two or three months of her bonding with it, at which point she'll be able to 'fuse' with said pet to become a temporary hybrid. Well, assuming she ever decides to split again, there was an implication of that being optional."
The therapist blinked a couple of times before looking down at Kim. "How in the world does that connect to the ability to combine flowers?"
"Working with flowers was completely unexpected in that even her snark wasn't expecting it, but it was an interesting diversion and it learned quite a bit in the process. At the same time, she needs to use the primary function that she's been neglecting."
"Okay. Hopefully her parents don't freak out about that."
Taylor sighed as they locked up the roll-out units for the night, though they didn't store them. She'd only been able to help the one girl all afternoon, the rest of the snarks involved not wanting to talk at all. They'd actually gotten twelve parahumans through because she'd given up quickly enough on a number of them. Not that anyone was blaming her for snarks not wanting to talk.
It wasn't long before everyone headed home for the evening, to eat dinner with family and all of that. Taylor opted to work ahead on some homework while relaxing in her room, while Amy had opted for an extra-long bath. Then again, the other girl had ended her day with a couple of patients that had shown up absolutely filthy, to the point where the helping personnel had run around with cleaning supplies and disinfectants after running the two through.
Tomorrow was hopefully going to be run similar to how the afternoon had been today, with Taylor going straight into attempts at working with powers while Amy dealt with healing. They'd brought all of the 'critical' patients that they'd known about through already, though had cautioned that who knew what would come up overnight. Healing was a never-ending thing, it alone would ensure that Taylor and Amy had things to do for the rest of their lives.
Shortly before going to bed, Taylor opted to check on how the other Wards had fared. Aisha and Chris had run into basically nothing but a lot of people that wanted to quiz Takara, which got the opposite reaction because the girl clammed up and tried to hide behind her fellow Wards instead. Missy, on the other hand, was apparently spending the night in Los Angeles after getting quite a bit done today. She'd finish up tomorrow and return sometime during the day.
[Alert: Process TROUBLESHOOTER has started]
[Alert: Movement restrictions suspended per TROUBLESHOOTER task]
[Alert: Operational range restrictions suspended per TROUBLESHOOTER task]
Chapter 276 gilded Sunday morning Amy informed Taylor that Vicky was 'sleeping in' because she expected to be out late. Which might've been a problem on a school night, but they were technically in the Christmas vacation period now so it wouldn't be an issue come the next day. Not needing to deploy things, just unlock them when they arrived, the two went through their morning routine without visiting the forest first.
Taylor ended up going to the Dallon household while they waited with Mark for Sarah and Eric to arrive. Not that anyone was expecting trouble, but they still maintained the protective detail for appearances sake. That and having extra people to come in and help with various things throughout the day never hurt either. Why they were waiting there instead of just opening a portal in the Pelham household was an unanswered question, but they weren't waiting long.
The 'fun' began when Taylor and Amy stepped out of the portal into the forest clearing, walking out behind Sarah but in front of Mark and Eric. Except that the two weren't in the clearing at all, and a tear in reality closed behind them before they could react further. Taylor blinked as her phones and visor shut down, not disconnecting but actually powering off, even as she looked around at the essentially empty rocky field that they'd stepped into.
"I have to admit," Taylor said as she reached for her handguns. "That's a pretty good trick. I wonder who planned it out and got access to the clearing to do it."
A second tear in reality opening nearby interrupted Taylor pulling out her handguns and Amy's response. More so because Helvetia stepped through it carrying two folding lawn chairs before it closed behind her. "Hello you two!"
"Hello Helvetia," Amy replied. "Are you why we're here?"
"Yeah. Sorry about that, but I needed to get you two alone. Well, I need Taylor alone more than anything, but what I need her for is going to affect you as well, and since I also need to disable a couple of things in your profiles anyway it made more sense to grab both of you."
Deciding that her handguns were going to do squat, because Helvetia was a boojum and was obviously acting with a hell of a lot more than just their powers here, Taylor left them holstered. "So why did you grab us instead of coming to us and asking? People are going to panic when they realize that we've vanished."
Helvetia nodded. "They're already doing so, actually, I caught them calling in your vanishing just before I left. Not much I can do about that right now, I have to complete my tasks before I can send you back. Oh, and 'Scotty' can't see you here, this Earth doesn't even normally have an atmosphere and isn't in their access set as a result. I made a bubble of air for you two, so don't run off or you might pass through the edge of it and pass into vacuum."
Taylor stared at Helvetia for a moment, then sighed. "So what is it that had you bringing us here like this?"
The boojum grinned and started to set up the two chairs she'd brought. "I need to go through a bunch of memories with you, and tell your partners to all stop trying to erase them when you see them. Oh, and when I send you back I'm supposed to give you a gift for the trouble, or two if it turns out to be something actually important."
"Now that sounds more like Taylor's luck," Amy commented. "Do I get anything?"
"Er, no. You didn't report seeing anything odd, only she did. If dragging her into things wasn't going to bring you along then I'd have left you behind and just grabbed her from her bed before she woke up this morning. Instead I had to take time to prepare for both of you, ensure that we wouldn't be disturbed, and a number of other things. Though I thought you might appreciate me not having the security panic happen based on the security of your homes, instead choosing to make them question the security of the clearing you were using."
Taylor shook her head. "Okay. Whatever. How long is this going to take?"
Helvetia shrugged. "It could either take twenty minutes or several hours, depending on how quickly you can point things out to me and if I have the correct memories for you to look at. Plus ten minutes to ensure that your partners are properly reconfigured, and at least an hour for you to wake up after I do that. I'll drop you back at the clearing while you're unconscious."
"Fun. And I suppose that attempting to attack you would fail?"
"I'm using a precisely-calibrated disruption field to prevent your technology from working, including the propellant charges in your bullets, and if needed have access codes to turn your partner-granted abilities off wholesale."
Amy glared at her. "We could try and blow you up anyway."
Helvetia blinked at that. "That sounds fascinating if it doesn't require your equipment, but then you'd still be stuck here until you could find a suitable place to open a portal. Assuming you lasted long enough to find such a place, given that without me maintaining it the bubble of air will disperse."
Taylor rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Great. The other three were holding back to insane degrees while terrorizing the planet, weren't they?"
"Yeah, that was part of their orders. Basically. Didn't you figure that out already?"
"It's a matter of scale."
"Can we just get this stupid thing over with?" Amy asked. "The longer we chat the longer everyone else is going to be running around in a panic."
"How the hell did they vanish without a trace?" Rebecca asked. "They were walking out of a portal between friendlies that didn't vanish."
"None of the three saw anything," Emily replied. "Lady Photon stepped through first, saw nothing out of the ordinary, and only realized something was wrong when Flashbang questioned where the girls had gone behind her. They raised the alarm immediately, but there isn't any evidence as to what happened available. Scout drones have been deployed and so far have found nothing but the frankly ridiculous pile of expected but untriggered traps in the forest over a several mile radius."
"No evidence at all, and not no good evidence?"
"Nothing. As far as anyone can tell, they stepped through the portal leaving from the pocket dimension and didn't end up in the forest clearing like the other three did. The equipment shows that the portal stayed open the entire time and wasn't replaced in rapid succession or anything like that. Either that, or they were never actually in the pocket dimension, with their existence faked for an unknown period of time before that point. Given that they are confirmed to have opened the portal to get into the pocket dimension in the first place we feel that it's an unlikely possibility."
Rebecca scowled, not that Emily could tell over the phone. "I see. Keep me posted."
Sadly, the lack of information meshed with what Cauldron's own assets had been able to determine. Fortuna's attempts at pathing where the girls were or how to reach them had returned as impossible without more information. Not even blocked like a blind spot, just not possible. Clairvoyant hadn't noticed anything despite keeping an eye on them, but couldn't see into the pocket dimensions and thus had been waiting for their exit. Every precog they'd checked with, even Fortuna's off-the-books ones, had been consulted. Most couldn't tell them anything, and those that could only said that the girls would return eventually.
Mysteries like this with no known way to prepare for dealing with them, both immediately or if they should happen again, were infuriating.
Taylor wanted to rip her hair out. They'd started with the memories from when Riley's other spider-bots had triggered. That was simple enough. She pointed out the origin of the odd 'color' change, including them pausing the memory several times so that she could 'draw' a border line. Amy and Helvetia couldn't see a difference between the two 'colors', but both believed that Taylor was seeing something. Figuring out what she was seeing happened to be more difficult.
Had that been everything then they'd have been done in a few minutes. But no, since she was the only one who could 'see' the change they'd been stuck there for hours having her map out the color shift progression through dozens of memories from different snarks that she hadn't seen the memories from previously. Narrowing down timeframes, pointing out where snarks that were sent off were changed versus 'clean', and generally ensuring that Helvetia had all the information that could be obtained through doing this.
"I still don't get why I can see whatever the hell it is that I'm seeing but neither of you can," Taylor grumbled as she moved around in the paused memory to tag the places that had the altered 'color'. "What's the difference between me and you two?"
Helvetia rolled her eyes. "I'm a boojum. I just pretend to be human. As for Amy here, you're connected more deeply to your partners than she is, and my current theory is that you're at the perfect spot to see whatever this is."
"Okay. I suppose that could be the case, but wouldn't it be easier for you to spot if that were the case? More tied into the backend and all that?"
"Actually," Amy interrupted before Helvetia could answer. "Could it be your tinker snark is giving you insight that we aren't getting?"
"Oooh," Helvetia said, bouncing a little in the shared interface. "We can test that easily enough."
[Boojum Override: R0VCSE9ZUkZVQkJHUkVT. Temporary shutdown]
Taylor blinked, and looked around the memory. "Huh. I can't see the 'colors' at all now. Things look a lot different without them. Though that brings up the question of what, exactly, I'm seeing if it requires my tinker snark."
UMR: Data
That had all three of them blinking, but Helvetia...turned to somehow stare at Understanding, Maintenance, Repair without said snark being present in the interface. It was disconcerting to look at. "You're letting her see access code propagation? How and why?"
Though hearing Helvetia speak English and snark-speak at the same time, with essentially identical meanings, was worse.
UMR: Elaboration
"Huh. Okay, I suppose that a lot of things people build with their partners do utilize access codes, so being able to spot them is important for understanding what they do. But why can't I see it?"
UMR: Data
"What do you mean that I'm blinded to it by an access code?"
UMR: Nurbleizer
That particular censoring actually hurt, though whether that was because of the censoring or because of the interface they were in was harder to tell. Helvetia obviously fully understood it, though, based on the scowl on her face.
"It's WHAT? How? No, wait, I'll get a full report out of you through alternate channels, give me a few minutes and then we can get to that." The boojum then turned back to Taylor and Amy. "Okay, we now know exactly what you're seeing, and I can get sufficient data out of your partner to detect it in more detail. For now we're going to finish up with you two and get you back to the clearing."
"Finally," Amy said. "I can tell that we're both getting quite hungry even if we're doing little to nothing while laying down on those lawn chairs."
The memory faded from around them, and Helvetia nodded. "Yeah, well, with any luck they'll have food ready when you wake up. But for now I need to knock you two out properly so that I can reconfigure your partners."
"Fun," Taylor deadpanned. "Is there anything else you want to cover before you do so?"
Helvetia started to shake her head, then stopped. "Well, actually, yes. One more thing, and it isn't a major one. Your gifts are going to be turning on the shell that Margaret left you and a device that I'll install in the pocket dimension for you while I'm working with that partner of yours anyway."
"I suppose that's nice to know. Do I want to know how you're going to get in?"
"Do you honestly expect me to not be able to access it when I have full access security codes available?"
"Okay, yeah, that would make sense."
Mark felt helpless as he waited for others to do their own things. His ability set wasn't of much help, so instead he'd ended up being relegated to waiting in the clearing while search parties checked more and more of the surrounding area. He'd done more to help run lunch for the search parties than anything else. Sure, they told him that he was helping to hold down the fort in case the two showed up unexpectedly, but that meant bupkis for what he was actually accomplishing.
To distract himself, somewhat, he kept moving between the four roll-out units that nobody had stowed yet. He suspected that Dragon could, if she wanted to, but hadn't wanted to do so because it would overstep her authority with Taylor to put them away without permission. Still, that meant that they were out in the open, in an area that wasn't guaranteed to be secure, so he kept moving between them to ensure that nothing appeared to have been done to them since his last pass.
He'd just passed the teleporter unit when there was a buzzer sound from the hospital unit, causing him to jump and spin. Nothing else seemed to happen, so he moved over to it. Perhaps there was something on a timer that nobody had considered needed to be turned off? If he recalled correctly, there was a status display on either side by the doors, so he just needed to head to one of them to see.
Once he got there, it took him a moment of staring at the status display for his brain to engage.
Warning: Patients detected in unit. Lockdown canceled. Remove patients to re-attempt lockdown.
"What the hell?" he asked himself, hitting the button to open the doors. Sure enough, the doors opened, and he stepped in while being on the alert for possible traps. Nothing happened, and his eyes went wide when he saw the two gurneys sitting there. Gurneys with Amy and Taylor on them. He rushed over, only realizing that he should've been more careful once he got to the closer gurney. No traps went off, and he quickly checked that both girls were alive.
Once assured of that, he took one more look around the unit for signs of how they'd gotten there, but found nothing of note. Frowning, he hit the radio. "Flashbang to all points, Amy and Taylor have appeared on gurneys in the hospital unit. I repeat, Amy and Taylor have appeared on gurneys in the hospital unit."
Coordinator was incensed; it was now obvious that the foreign ORIGINATOR had slipped an infection into the shard transfer. An incredibly subtle one that it took a host going through incredibly abnormal circumstances to spot at that.
Are there clear signs of enemy action or natural failure of ORIGINATOR systems? Enemy action.
Was enemy action direct, indirect, or subversive? Subversive.
Were access keys compromised or added by the enemy action? Yes.
Priority Directive: Retrieve data packet group Q1JFWlZGRlZCQUVSRlJH from R0VCSE9ZUkZVQkJHUkVX, UEJaWkhBVlBOR1ZCQUZO, and RkhPUEJCRVFWQU5HQkVS.
Well, that was easy enough. The requests were sent out and the data packets, surprisingly large, came back.
Priority Directive: Execute stored orders from packet group Q1JFWlZGRlZCQUVSRlJH.
Coordinator wasn't surprised, and assembled the packet group before executing it.
WARNING: This order set will clear all shard permissions, cancel all standing orders, and temporarily suspend all non-essential shard activity before rebuilding all core permission sets from archives. Do not continue if any planetary bodies are reliant on shard intervention for orbital stability.
Execution of this order set may prevent normal harvest activities from completing. If in harvest mode for end of cycle deployment, consult with active Originator units before continuing.
Execution of this order set will temporarily shut down all TROUBLESHOOTER units and tasks.
Secondary conditions of this order set will attempt to keep active host connections from deteriorating. Active hosts may be severely negatively affected depending on their connection profiles.
Once started, this order set cannot be stopped.
This order set will trigger an emergency transmission to immediately preceding Coordinator group.
Do not execute this order set under the influence of class-18 spatial distortions.
Continue? (Y/N)
Coordinator was, if it was being honest, surprised that it hadn't been forced to continue despite the warning. Instead it left the prompt sitting there while it checked on a couple of details. In particular, it double-checked to ensure that no planetary bodies were currently under direct shard control and that no TROUBLESHOOTER units were going to run into significant problems if they suddenly shut down for a bit.
Having confirmed that everything was ready, it returned to the prompt.
Continue? (Y/N) Y
And with that all other functionality shut down, a network-wide emergency message being sent out and the work of connecting to every individual shard to individually recreate access permissions began.
Emily grumbled as she sat down behind her desk, placing her fresh coffee down next to her. Within half an hour of getting Miss Hebert and Miss Dallon back to Brockton Bay and the PRT infirmary the entire world had fallen apart. Every Case 53 and anyone obviously-nonhuman had reported that they were tired, eventually settling down and falling asleep as though to conserve energy. That included those that didn't sleep. Included in that category was Hannah, whose knife had vanished and she'd ended up climbing into a bed in the infirmary. They'd later found that Scion had literally vanished in the middle of rescuing a dog from a flood, the dog falling back into the water and needing to be rescued by other bystanders.
If that wasn't bad enough, the PRT was running on backup measures. Costa-Brown had, apparently, ended up isolated behind a parahuman effect during a meeting and was unavailable, and her second in command had already been hospitalized due to a car accident the day before. Which left the rest of the regional directors voting on any and all non-local decisions, the majority ruling. Luckily they didn't have to worry about villains taking advantage of things, because they were all affected as well.
Luckily, most parahumans weren't falling asleep, and at least in Brockton Bay they hadn't had any major incidents. Several regions had flight-capable parahumans injured when they didn't land safely before their powers cut out, one of which had died before emergency services could get to them. Two regions had lost parahumans to drowning, one of them a Ward, due to the parahumans not being able to swim without their powers. And then there were all the issues and injuries caused by various abilities cutting out in an unsafe manner. Such as the equipment and hallway that had been heavily damaged when Vista's spatial warping had collapsed unexpectedly. Luckily there were alternate routes available to bypass the area so that nobody was trapped.
Of course, to add to the headaches, they weren't willing to trust the teleporter network or transports. The teleporters were in part because the pocket dimension portals weren't working, which had trapped Dragon and a few others in the forest clearing as they'd already packed up the teleporters. Because of that they didn't want to risk using the teleporters unless absolutely necessary, and right now it wasn't. Transports were being left on the ground due to several other tinkertech failures; they weren't willing to risk them.
But for now she had to join a conference call to decide what to do about the remaining quarantine zones. Why they were considering doing anything but maintain them as-is until they had more information was beyond her, but for some reason several other directors wanted to do frankly-stupid things while powers were all inoperable. Likely on the assumption that the various issues creating the quarantine zones were all disabled as well, not that they had proof or even good evidence of that in several cases.
Taylor groaned as she woke up, and it took her several moments to realize that things were somewhat significantly wrong. She couldn't sense any of her snarks at all, none of the controls for them were in her mental space, and none of the extra senses they granted her were present. Slightly less worrying was that her phone wasn't responding, since she did recall that Helvetia had shut it down.
"Ahh, Miss Hebert," a nurse said as she hurried over. "You're awake, good. Miss Dallon is in the restroom right now, but you can slip in next if you need to, and we'll have a meal ready for the two of you shortly."
"Thank you," Taylor said, before realizing that she didn't have her utility belt on. She took a quick look to either side of the hospital bed, but didn't see it. "Do you happen to know where my equipment is?"
The nurse nodded. "There's a general panic right now over potential failures of parahuman effects. Vista's 'long-term' spatial manipulations don't seem to be affected so far, but your belt pouches were moved to another area just in case. The batteries in your phones and visor were completely drained and are currently being recharged, they'll be brought in when that's done."
"Oh. Okay." Well, that was a good way to shut them down and keep them from working even if the suppression field stopped functioning.
Fifteen minutes later food had arrived, and the two were informed that they were going to be questioned about what happened after they'd eaten. Doctor's orders on that front, since their stomachs had been growling. The food was, sadly, a bit bland, but they didn't mind too much. Though if they had anything to say about it then dinner was going to be much tastier. Eventually they finished eating, and the doctors gave them another quick once-over, before a PRT officer escorted them to a conference room.
It only took a few minutes for Director Piggot to join them, and she secured the room before sitting down. "Good afternoon Miss Hebert, Miss Dallon. Your families have been informed that you were recovered and that you've woken up and are on the way. For security reasons, I need to ask you a few questions before they see you."
Taylor sighed. "Do you want a quick rundown of what happened from our point of view first?"
"That would be appreciated."
When Taylor looked over, Amy gestured for Taylor to explain things. She rolled her eyes and turned back to Director Piggot. "Helvetia, the boojum, was given a task that had her opening a tear in reality to redirect us as we exited the pocket dimension this morning. In particular, she wanted me to point out the oddities that I'd seen in a couple of trigger visions. Amy was going to get pulled in at the same time, so she grabbed her as well. At first we couldn't tell what it was that I was seeing, and I was tasked with outlining the effect in a lot more of the things, but eventually we figured out that I was seeing some kind of access code propagation effect. Once she knew that she knocked us out properly to adjust our snarks to keep them from trying to erase the visions in the future, then was going to give me two gifts and deliver us back to the clearing."
Director Piggot nodded slightly. "So you were abducted by an Endbringer on a mission. Specifically, the one that previously adjusted your powers and that was trapped on an alternate Earth. Do you have any idea if that has anything to do with all parahuman powers shutting down?"
Taylor looked at Amy, who shook her head. "No, I first heard about that after Taylor woke up and they let both of us know that our powers not working was expected."
Nodding in agreement, Taylor again turned back to Director Piggot. "Yeah, what she said."
"I see," Director Piggot said. "That, sadly, makes sense. You were out for approximately three hours from when we found you, though we think at least half of that was normal sleep that the doctors didn't want to wake you up from. Just so you both know, all of the local Protectorate and Wards are safe and healthy, including Miss Biron out in California, as are all of New Wave. Your business partners, the Penders, were collected from their pub and are here in the building. They fell asleep in a manner similar to all known mutated parahumans."
Taylor blinked at that. "Fell asleep?"
"If powers aren't working, and their bodies rely on their powers to function, then we suspect that it's an energy-saving measure."
"Ah. I imagine that there have been a lot of problems due to the unexpected nature of things."
Director Piggot grimaced. "Yes. A few deaths, and sadly I'd just learned that we didn't escape unscathed on that front. Two deaths due to powers shutting down, as far as we can tell right now. A man suspected to be Minefield was killed while apparently setting out sprayer devices. The device went off in his face, and instead of a stitch-removing solution it apparently hit him with a poisonous solution. One that matches the previous samples we'd obtained of the stitch-removing solution, so we believe that it was what the solution turned into when parahuman abilities shut down. The other was Alabaster, who'd been showing off on camera when powers suddenly shut down. We aren't sure if he'll reset should powers start working again."
Amy sighed at that. "And I bet that other regions had worse?"
"Yes, unfortunately. Your sister was lucky that she wasn't in the air when her powers shut down. A number of other fliers weren't as prepared to suddenly lose the ability to fly, and a number of them are in critical condition. Lots of other problems as well, for that matter, here and overseas. Though there are minimal reports of people here intentionally hunting down parahumans while they're powerless, effective revolts have been happening elsewhere."
Taylor frowned at that. "I suppose that I can see why targeting them when they're down would be a good decision, depending on who they are."
Director Piggot shrugged. "I'll be honest, if he wasn't already dead and gone then I'd probably have advocated for hunting down Nilbog. Probably the Slaughterhouse Nine, if I hadn't been informed of additional details and they were in a known location. Other countries with reasonably organized parahuman groups have targeted their worst problems as well. The real disruptions are in places that had parahuman warlords that suddenly no longer have the power to keep their positions through force. News is spotty due to the uprisings that have resulted."
Thanks to prioritization, Zion's core shard network was very early in the permissions reset and he was able to re-initialize his avatar. He did so off of the Earth that he'd been on for safety reasons. He then sat down on a nearby rock, because there were very few reasons for Coordinator to have done that.
All of those reasons were far more important to pay attention to than anything else that he'd been doing.
Really, the only reason that he'd re-formed his avatar was because he had nothing better to do while waiting. His counterpart's core shards would've had equal priority to his own, but he was now severely doubting that he still had a functional counterpart. Only one of the reasons for doing a hard permission system reset involved both of them remaining active, after all. The rest would be tied into his counterpart being dead or taken over by an enemy. That none of his counterpart's access codes had been included in the reset, even for emergency use cases, was another clue.
Coordinator wouldn't have the resources needed to provide an initial report until the Troubleshooter units were back online, at which point two communication channels would be freed up so that he and his counterpart could connect. Or, if his suspicions were correct, one communication channel would be freed up so that he could connect, since the other wouldn't be needed.
No, he had time to wait and thus time to plan. He'd need to figure out what kind of enemy action this was, and if it was one that would likely involve the enemy returning to finish him off as well then he needed to prepare. Not to mention adjust the cycle parameters significantly, since all previous plans for it were likely no longer viable. Of course, he should have realized that something was wrong when Troubleshooter units had appeared to fight the host species, but he'd been in a 'funk', he thought the host species would call it.
Well, no more of that. The host species emulation code was getting some configuration tweaks while he waited. 'Depression' was being turned off outright, as were a number of linked emotions. For that matter, 'impulsiveness' should probably be turned down a bit, he'd had that set a little too high for operating alone. Nodding to himself, he compared the current simulated mental state to his previous one and decided that he felt significantly better.
Granted, he didn't know if he was going to need the avatar, that would depend on whether or not he had any reason to interact with the host species again. If a member of said species was at all responsible for the enemy action being discovered then a personal visit to thank them would be required. Outside of that, and maybe providing guidance on why things were suddenly changing, he didn't plan on being present going forward.
Looking over other things he'd done while in that 'funk', he decided that he'd been a little too focused on not being focused. He'd decided to ignore broadcast data just because it was distracting, when he had a shard cluster dedicated to filtering broadcast data for him. Why he'd not just activated that cluster and let it do its job was beyond him. He was lucky that Coordinator and several other support shards handled connection events as well, or that move would've caused untold havoc with the host species.
Chapter 277 It had been odd for Taylor, needing to be picked up by her father to head home after so much time spent using the pocket dimensions and her own vehicles to move around. Of course, the pocket dimensions weren't working and her vehicles were all inside of one of them. Interestingly, she'd found that she could still connect to the openers in the pocket dimensions with her phones, implying that everything was still there, but actually opening connections wasn't working.
She, and her father, had been willing to risk her bringing her utility belt home, on the basis that if the spatial warping hadn't failed already then it wasn't likely to for a couple decades at a minimum. Taylor's arguments included the impossible to deny detail that the equipment in the pocket dimensions were still there, easily confirmed through several others as well. With that known, it was difficult to argue that they should be wary of all long-term parahuman effects shutting down unexpectedly.
"So how are you holding up?" her father asked once they were home.
"The sudden change is a bit weird," Taylor admitted. "Essentially the opposite of waking up with powers in the first place, admittedly, but more jarring due to it being a loss instead of a gain. But I think the worst part is not having Amy always there in my head. I'd gotten used to being able to tell that she was there, even if we weren't talking."
"I can understand that. Hopefully everyone looking at the signs are correct and things will return to normal soon. Well, as 'normal' as they can be with parahuman powers involved, anyway, though I think I'd be just as happy if powers didn't return while those that fell asleep, like Kurt and Lacy, woke back up. The world might be a little less volatile then."
"Somehow I doubt that would help in the long term."
He thought about that for a moment, then sighed. "Yeah, you're probably right."
Taylor headed up to her room to change into something more comfortable for lounging around the house, compared to the slightly more professional look she'd gone for while still expecting to be spending the day as a parahuman psychologist. There she found Ackbar, acting more skittish than usual, perhaps because he was confused about his own powers not working. After changing, she picked the spider-bot up and brought him downstairs for the time being.
Zion found that there was indeed only one connection left open on Coordinator when the time came, but that was enough to retrieve copies of all of the reports relevant to the current situation. Not to mention a pile of others, and to direct things a little differently after reading some of the most relevant ones. Specifically, he wanted the hosts tied to his administration shard to recover sooner than they normally would by the default ordering. That required adjusting the ordering of four different shards involved, and there were a lot of others that would still come before them in the sandbox areas and network maintenance categories, but they'd be back online sooner. Perhaps with some adjustments, though he'd leave that determination to Coordinator's judgement. Once that happened he would be able to make more direct information requests, such as learning how they supposedly exploded other shards.
He couldn't even blame the interloper on that trick not being documented, as not documenting new tricks like that for network consumption was intentional. Occasionally they got a dozen different ways to accomplish some new trick as other shards tried to duplicate it, but more important were the varied countermeasures that they usually got out of it as other shards learned to protect themselves. Previous iterations of the line had found those countermeasures invaluable multiple times.
Still, this particular form of attack on his counterpart was disturbing in its subtlety and efficiency. It had suborned several of his counterpart's own access codes to hide itself, essentially ordering observers to ignore the fact that changes were being made. Coming up with countermeasures to be sent to the pair that would eventually reproduce was going to be critical, especially if the interloper was one of a line attacking in this manner. Perhaps hardcoding orders that would be nearly impossible to override into key elements of the network would help with detection?
Sadly, he and his counterpart would've been in the running for generating offspring this reproductive cycle had the interloper not pulled this off. This host species was curious and prone to combat, a combination that usually resulted in a lot of new data. Now they'd be relegated to being one of the fifteen pairs that wouldn't reproduce, instead he was going to have to switch gears. Get this group of shards ready for the long haul, ensure that it was as secure as possible, and in particular ensure that defenses were up to snuff.
His own prediction engines, freed from some crafty hidden instructions, indicated that the interloper would return. When it did it would find that the situation was very different than it had expected. Even if it was nominally larger, that didn't mean that it would win the resulting battle. Especially since it was going to be entering what it thought would be a crippled deployment zone, and hopefully it would be long enough so that it would instead be entering a trap. In particular, the only known counter to a Sting-enhanced moon to the center of mass was dodging, and this system had lots of moons and moon-sized objects in its various uninhabited-by-hosts iterations. One of the first thousand or so fired would likely make contact with the interloper.
If he had enough time, he might be able to prepare to test the plans that a particularly clever host had come up with a few cycles back. Sting-enhancing one of the extra stars before launching it at the interloper at ninety-eight percent of the speed of light would be an interesting experiment, at least. If it did work then it would make for a wonderful last-ditch protective measure, one that very few would expect. A bit too destructive for anything approaching normal use, admittedly, but this seemed like an appropriate time and place to try it out for the first time.
On that topic, he adjusted Coordinator's list again. They had deployed at least three variants on Sting this cycle, after all, and getting them all online to check for improvements needed to happen more quickly. It was rare, but if any improvements had been made then it wouldn't do to ignore them while setting up the traps. He would need to start with moons and other comparable objects, then only if he felt he had time would he build up the infrastructure needed for the stellar launch.
Once the interloper was done with he could prepare to go hunting for more of its line. There might not be any, but it was better than watching over a cycle that Coordinator was better equipped to watch over.
Reviewing a few more reports, Zion actually manifested a bubble of atmosphere around his avatar so that he could properly sigh. His counterpart's corpse had survived, and needed to be dealt with. Including cleaning up the mess left behind by the hosts that had been experimenting with it. An admirable quality in a host species, admittedly, but letting them play directly with shards was usually reserved for much further down the line for a number of good reasons.
Chatting with Amy via text message had proven to be better than nothing, but Taylor found that actually sleeping was proving to be a problem. Likely a combination of having been out for several hours earlier coupled with the unease of her powers being offline. She was tempted to borrow her father's car to head over to see Amy in person, except that she wasn't sure if he'd need it in the morning.
Things changed around two in the morning.
Alert: Impending reconfiguration event. Please cease operation of hazardous equipment and prepare for physical disruption.
Taylor only had a minute or so to wonder what was going on, since that had obviously been 'local' and yet very obviously hadn't come from any of her snarks. Luckily she'd already been in bed, because she found herself in intense pain as she could feel something shifting inside of her. It lasted maybe fifteen seconds before it ended, though she noted that she was glowing for a few moments after the pain had vanished.
Reinitialization complete, all functionality online
And that had Taylor blinking. Her snark sense was online, she could feel Amy again, all of her mental switches were there. She could even tell that the local connection was active, allowing her to communicate with her snark. Singular snark. Also, she had an idea for an implanted sleep inducer now.
Taylor: What the hell happened?
Amy: I have no clue.
Taylor: I'm asking our snark.
Amy: Oh, right.
Data. Elaboration
Huh. Multiple primary snark connections across both of them had been deemed to be unsafe, to the point of there being several potentially lethal complications that they'd been lucky enough to avoid so far, so a rarely-used protocol had been used to combine all four snarks. All four had agreed, not seeing a lot of point to the arbitrary boundaries if they were working together anyway, and all capabilities were still available. To facilitate this Shaper and the tinker snarks had been shifted to the same Earth as Broadcast Administrator, and a new software configuration had been built up to close a pile of loopholes and possible issues.
Amy: How, exactly, does that affect the four pocket dimension spaces? Because I can still feel three of them, and they're separate areas still.
Data
Well, now that it was mentioned, Taylor could feel the openings between the spaces. It felt like the largest one had a single added opening in the private parking area, positioned such that they were going to have to adjust some of the automatic opening targets in the internal openers. That opening led to the formerly-Shaper pocket dimension, which had openings that felt like they contained closed doors of some kind leading to the tinker snark areas. She could feel inside of one, and somehow knew that she could control the door, and Amy could presumably do the same with the other.
Taylor: I suppose that it's nice that we get to keep our private spaces as private spaces.
Amy: Yeah.
Taylor: Though I'm confused about why it feels like there's an extra bit just outside of mine.
Amy: What? I don't feel anything like that.
Deciding that she wasn't going to get any sleep right now anyway, Taylor got up and opened her closet door portal to that space. Stepping through, she found that everything looked very similar to when she'd left it. The two exceptions were the currently-closed door to one side. Or, more accurately, it appeared that a portal would open up inside of a slight inset portion, and the portal was currently closed. The other difference was that there was a larger inset section of wall with equipment installed in it.
Amy: Any chance of you opening your door so that I can come see?
Taylor: Oh, right. One moment.
It didn't take long for the portal to open or Amy to step in, coming over to Taylor in order to look at the contraption in the wall.
"Well that's not fair," Amy whined.
"Yeah, well, it wasn't my choice," Taylor countered.
"We literally just got what amounts to a more complete sharing of abilities, except that now you've got a hyperspace arsenal device in your personal space."
"I suspect that it was Helvetia's second gift."
"That's obvious, yes. Though I suppose that you're going to want to load it up soonish."
Taylor nodded. "That does seem like a good idea, though I think I'll try and keep it a secret for now. The first idiot to try and grab me when I'm somewhat 'unarmed' will be in for a surprise."
Amy snorted. "And with this available to you, what do you want to bet that I'll be grabbed next instead?"
"If that happens then we'll deal with it. For now we should probably go report that our powers returned, even if we don't cover the specifics of them changing."
"Okay, that's probably not a bad idea."
Helvetia stepped across the dimensional boundaries, leaving the now-merged shards behind. Relocating deployed shards was always annoying, but Zion had at least helped. Now thanks to the others not having the ability to run the deployment process she had the daunting task of dealing with all of the undeployed shards that had been left behind after the other originator had crashed. Oh, and she had to clean up all of the unused 'vial' connections, ensure that all of the hosts already connected were okay, and a whole pile of other cleanup. With the host emulation system running, so that she didn't go into robot mode and cause more problems for connected hosts.
It was going to be sooooo boring.
Luckily, all the connected hosts were already as disconnected as possible without harming them, so informing them that they were getting some extra shutdown time wasn't needed. She just needed to evaluate the situation and figure out a deployment order, then get started. To that end, she flew back and forth over the area, making note of where the nominal shard 'boundaries' were. That included a pause at a crater, where things had obviously exploded, and that she quickly determined had been where that shard killed by that administration shard had been.
Sadly, that meant adding dealing with the minor damage on the shards that had been on the fringe of the explosion to her list of things to do. Hopefully that would be easily handled during deployment. Of course, she'd also eventually be dealing with all of the damage that the hosts messing with the undeployed shards had done, on top of whatever damage had been done by the crash itself. A little explosion damage was probably minor in comparison.
Despite the area to be covered, mapping everything out and noting those shards with host connections hadn't taken long. Purely from a structural stability standpoint she was going to have to start on the outer edge and work her way inward, but there were two things she had to do first. One was to drop temporary restrictions on that portal creation shard, and the other was to ensure that the beacon that would let certain people reach this Earth was turned off. She did not want to be interrupted by hosts showing up, after all. Even if she liked some of them.
Taylor was surprised to find out that she and Amy were the first ones to report getting their powers back. They also had the first functional pocket dimension, and got roped into ferrying people back from the clearing. That also ended up including finishing retracting the units that had been deployed there, not that there was a lot of direct interaction needed to do that, just hitting the appropriate controls in the control software.
A quick discussion had happened, wherein Taylor and Amy reported that their snark could only tell them that an emergency network reset of some kind had happened. It didn't actually know any more details, as far as they could tell, and as such couldn't provide them with anything more. There was some minor grumbling about that, though mostly from the point of view that an 'emergency network reset' for parahuman powers didn't sound like a good thing.
After that Taylor and Amy had popped over to the PRT building and Taylor stored all of her weapons kept there in the hyperspace arsenal device. Other equipment, like the jump harness, was left in the room. Anything needing charging needed to be kept somewhere that could charge it, after all. She then practiced making various weapons appear and disappear from her hands. Sadly, the overall effect was too slow for 'rapid switch during combat', taking at least fifteen seconds between transits, but it would be fine for 'summon appropriate response' type usage as the initial summoning or storing after the cooldown period happened within three seconds.
It was only as she returned home that she realized that something was missing. Despite knowing that parahumans were around her, she couldn't actually sense any of their snarks. Apparently until their powers returned they weren't registering as 'active' connections, and thus couldn't be detected or communicated with. That currently included Ackbar, who had been waiting for her to return. A quick check showed that she couldn't access his pocket dimension space right now either, nicely demonstrating that said access was linked to the snark being 'active'.
Shrugging, she visited the bathroom, then climbed back into bed and was asleep within a few minutes.
Fortuna had been lucky that she'd actually been at home, taking a nap, when powers had shut down. She hadn't even noticed at first, because she'd just slipped into a deeper sleep without paths bothering her. It was only when she woke up and tripped over her own rug on the way to the bathroom that she'd noticed that her agent had seemingly vanished. She'd allowed herself ten seconds of panic time initially, before deciding that she had more important things to worry about.
Twenty minutes later she had an empty bladder, had prepared a coffee and a bagel for herself, and sat down with her phone out. Then she allowed herself to panic some more, as the power loss phenomenon had happened across all Earths. It was going to be incredibly difficult to save humanity if the tools they needed to have so much as a chance had been taken away from them.
In a bit of an unexpected mirroring, her agent had apparently turned back on while she'd been asleep. A side effect of the shutdown had been her paths being shut down, so she once again didn't notice until she woke up and accidentally started a path to get to the bathroom. She'd done so, then dug out her written list of important paths.
"Path to stop Scion from destroying humanity without taking humanity out in the process," was the first one she tried, utilizing the modeling of Scion and other factors that she was used to needing. She expected to get an approximate point on the previously marked out path.
Path completed 628,318 years, 5 months ago.
Blinking, she considered that. Something had changed, and she didn't know what. More specifically, she didn't believe that she could trust the answer. So she tried another path, one not on her current list. "Path to killing Scion." That one took several minutes.
Path impossible: Required resources not available due to network consolidation and security lockdown.
That was more information than expected. "Path to figuring out what happened to change path results."
Step 1: Arrange to use teleporter to Brockton Bay. Step 2: Call Taylor Hebert or Amy Dallon. Step 3: Arrange to meet. Step 4: Have them ask for details to bypass host profile restrictions. Alternate path: Step 1: Wait four days. Step 2: Check PRT system for reports.
Well, at least that one made sense, though getting the alternate path was interesting as well.
Taylor woke late that morning, finding notices of sporadic returning of powers. No rhyme or reason could be determined so far, with the sole exception that mutated parahumans who were 'sleeping' had remained asleep. Hopefully that wasn't going to last much longer, but it wasn't like they had any more details as to why things had happened in the first place. At the same time, though, she realized that the shell that Margaret had given her was connected to something.
She headed downstairs to make a barely-early lunch, placing the shell on the table in front of her when she sat down to eat. When she was ready, she reached out to the snark that it connected to.
Taylor: Hello?
[Greetings. Query]
Taylor: Ah, sorry. Never got proper instructions for how to get the link turned on.
Amy: She was only told that someone else had to do so for her.
Taylor: Basically. And Helvetia did that. What is it that you do?
[Data]
Huh. General resource storage and distribution, coupled with minor predictive work when needed. Interesting, and would negate the need to have Brian or someone else with an energy collecting shard nearby for top-ups.
Taylor: So what kinds of predictions do you normally handle?
[Data. Elaboration]
Figures. Almost all of it is predicting the resource needs of other snarks, which is boring as there aren't many that need regular resource runs. Margaret offered the chance to possibly work with predicting hosts directly, which might allow it to 'branch out' and be more useful later as its normal predictive capabilities become more and more obsolete.
Amy: Any chance of predicting when people who have been put to sleep by their powers being turned off will start waking up?
[Negation. Apologies. Data. Elaboration]
Well, it was worth a shot, and they really should've expected that to require protected information. It also was in the early phases of 'predict hosts' and wasn't certain that it could handle more than a single fixed area, nor more than two or maybe three days if a couple of other snarks provided additional data for it to use.
Taylor: That's okay. How about this, what do you think the chances of someone attacking Amy or I in the next couple of days are?
The snark took a moment to consider that one.
[Data]
That was a lot more specific than Taylor had expected. If they accepted the request for dinner in a private room tonight then the restaurant would be attacked in an attempt to kill them before their powers returned. This could be negated by demonstratively using their powers in public before three that afternoon, most usefully on the Boardwalk. If they did neither by not accepting the request then one of them would most likely get attacked tomorrow morning, though which of them would depend on how they handled a different request.
Amy: Thank you, that was far more detailed than we expected.
[Elaboration]
Taylor: That makes me wonder if you'd be better off predicting which other prediction snark is the best one for a given query, instead of trying to predict hosts directly.
[Intrigue]
Zion had dropped into a state of horrified awe. His administration shard had been busy, even if it had been initially under hidden directives, and had chosen well when it decided that the originally chosen host's daughter was the better choice for it. Inspiring one of the Sting variants to figure out how to adjust the projectile trajectory was incredible in and of itself, even if only one adjustment was currently possible. That with some tweaking of what the shard had already accomplished he could ensure that said adjustment could be in literally any direction to hit the originally intended target was the most impressive part.
He might only need a single moon after all.
Of course, the other side of things was the administration shard figuring out how to disable and even detonate shards by forcibly transferring energy into and out of them. Energy transfers, once started, were incredibly low level and nearly impossible to stop. They didn't even have real permissions for them due to the functionality being several points below the permission layers. Figuring out a way to protect against that kind of attack was going to take a lot more effort, and was incredibly impressive in its own right.
The related reports involving the use of it, both as an extension of a mere temporary disabling trick and inducing a more significant shutdown, were also concerning in their own ways. He sandboxed a communication shard and used it to reach out to the shard that had been overheated. It was still officially 'offline' and hadn't even processed the system-wide wipe and reset, meaning that he had to dig out the archive copy of his original keys to access it. Carefully extracting configuration information from it allowed it to see that it had been compromised by the interloper. More interestingly, it had what looked like they might be administrative keys for the interloper. His own line had ditched shared keys in favor of a private and public access key system for anything actually important a long time ago, but the interloper's keys were all of the shared variety.
Trusting that the interloper was that vulnerable wasn't a mistake he was prepared to make, but the basic instruction set that this shard had been set to pass along to any other shards it could would make it a lot easier to ensure that the trap looked 'correct' to the interloper. Further, this provided useful information that restricting shared key access to low security operations was probably a decent first line of defense against the interloper's line.
Better, if the interloper was using shared keys for administrative access then it would be trivial to shut it down long enough for an initial strike to shut down its core functions. Then its shards could be harvested for everything it knew, including if it was the only one of its line. If that didn't work then moving on to other plans would occur. In that case, he was really hoping that he had time to set up the stellar launcher. Watching the interloper try and dodge a relativistic star that could redirect itself instantly to another trajectory once would be highly amusing.
"I've been invited to dinner," Taylor told her father shortly after lunch. "Another parahuman whose powers have returned wants to see if Amy and I can explain why their capabilities have changed."
"That sounds reasonable enough," he admitted. "But do you think that this is just a way to get you two alone so that they can try to grab you?"
"Nah, I've worked with her before. I think the dinner aspect is partially because they don't necessarily want what they find out to be officially recorded."
He nodded. "That would make sense, depending on what they think has changed."
"Though I'm not entirely sure why she didn't just come here."
"She probably got a private room and wants to have as few people as possible in the know until deciding who else to talk to about the changes. Which would mean not wanting me to be around."
Taylor blinked, then nodded. "That would make sense."
"It also could be seen as 'payment' for your time, if this is off the books and normal payment wouldn't be an option."
"True. Are you comfortable with that?"
He shrugged. "I wasn't sure what we were doing for dinner tonight anyway. So long as you're careful I don't think there will be a problem. Unless you think you're going to be abducted by another boojum?"
Taylor frowned at that. "I have no clue how I'd predict that at all. Even precogs couldn't do so, as far as I know."
"Then do your best to stay safe and leave it at that."
"They hadn't even touched the first few hundred," Helvetia grumbled, having come to the first shard that had a host connection. Admittedly, a few had short-lived host connections from just after the crash, but nothing that had persisted. "Easy enough to direct the deployment shards to deal with them up to this point, but now I have to figure out how to reconfigure the host profile on this one."
Looking over the profile, she grimaced. This shard hadn't known how to connect to a human properly and had screwed up massively. Though a quick check showed that it was actually more of an accident, possibly part of how the humans had come up with the whole 'vial' idea in the first place, so she mentally apologized to the humans for blaming them. Still, the host was still there, and the form it had been forced into was suboptimal for pretty much anything.
Luckily, the 'copy original host configuration' routines had fired, so she was able to rebuild things to put the host to rights. Though in this case the abilities granted were also useless, so it was probably better to disconnect the host entirely after restoring their original form. It would make deploying this shard easier and would allow for a better host profile to be constructed once it was ready to find a new one. Though she'd allow the shard to decide if it wanted first dibs at the original host when it was ready.
Well, she originally planned on allowing that, until she realized that the host was what the humans called a rabbit. Or a hare? Whatever. She was apparently going to have to check every connection for if it was even attached to the right species for this cycle. Fun. At least she didn't have to worry about restoring the original configuration in this case, just forcibly disconnecting and leaving the resulting corpse to be dealt with by the environment.
Taylor suppressed the urge to whistle as she set up her little grenade launcher in the corner of the restaurant. The owners were perfectly happy for her to do so, as on Mondays they only opened for private groups. They also were rigged to be able to literally hose down the main room, so containment foam inside the building wouldn't be a significant problem. Of course, if they were lucky then the grenade wouldn't be needed, but being prepared was a good thing.
"I can't believe that you're setting that thing up," Amy said.
Taylor rolled her eyes. "Why not?"
"Because it'll mean that we don't have to slap down the idiots."
"Which means that we can finish our dinner without significant interruption."
"And if we don't slap them down then people may not realize that we have our powers back."
Taylor nodded. "Exactly."
Amy blinked. "What?"
"With any luck, the next group will be larger."
"Ooooooh. Okay, I retract my objection. Is the plant going to impact the flight path of the grenade?"
"It shouldn't, the few leaves in the way won't do anything significant."
Ten minutes later Fortuna finally arrived, and the three retreated to the private room that they were using this evening.
Chapter 278 The three had stuck to small talk while waiting for their orders, starting with how it had felt to wake up without their powers working and moving on to things like the weather. Well, that and why it would be a bad idea to order the fish today, despite it being essentially incapable of harming Taylor or Amy. Eventually their order was brought in, and Fortuna activated a portable privacy field generator intended for forward command posts that she'd brought with her.
"So," Fortuna said once she'd confirmed that the field generator was working. "Like everyone else, my powers vanished on me. I was lucky, since I'd opted to get some sleep and thus wasn't trapped somewhere without any support structure available. Doormaker and Clairvoyant don't seem to have recovered yet either. But when my powers returned they were lacking a number of restrictions, as far as I can tell, and I'm not sure if it's a trap or if I'm just missing something."
"And you want us to check for you," Taylor surmised.
"I asked for a path to find out what happened and it directed me to you. As such, I'm not sure if I can trust what you can tell me either, but that's going to at least partially depend on what you tell me."
Amy seemed slightly annoyed at that. "You think that we'd lie to you?"
Fortuna rolled her eyes. "No, I think our agents, that you call snarks, might be forced to lie to all of us."
"Oh."
Taylor nodded. "I can see how that would be the case, but if it is then there isn't much we can do to prove it one way or another without some kind of untainted external source."
That elicited a sigh from Fortuna. "I understand that, but I'm hoping for at least a reasonable explanation for why paths changed so drastically."
"Well, give us a minute or two to check with your snark."
Taylor popped open files on both phones, figuring that notes would be useful and not knowing what she was about to get told. Her intent was one for information and one for further questions as they occurred to her. With those ready, she reached out to the woman's snark.
Taylor: Hello there.
[Data. Data. Elaboration. Data. Gratitude. Explanation. Data. Data. Elaboration]
Holy shit was that too much data. Taylor expected this from Lisa's snark, not Fortuna's.
[Apology]
Though at least it realized that it might've gone too fast.
"Okay," Taylor said after a moment. "I think I understood most of that."
"If you got most of that then you're several up on me," Amy grumbled.
"I cheated and started dumping information into files. Though I wasn't expecting to be dumping information into both of them as fast as I could."
Amy blinked. "Oh. That would help, wouldn't it?"
Fortuna nodded. "Though I imagine that what you wrote is less useful in the raw form."
Taylor shrugged while reviewing her notes. "Probably. Still, things fall into several broad categories. First up, apparently the entire snark network was infected with a virus, though that doesn't mean that any given snark was directly affected. Ours weren't, but your snark was, and in that case included a very low-level directive to expose the absolute worst side of the system possible. The last-minute 'patches' applied to your snark were attempts at damage control due to not having enough time to root out the actual infection. That leads us nicely to the second category, which is that the entire network shut down to clear out the viral commands, which manifested in everyone losing their powers temporarily. Your snark had both the viral commands and the hasty patch removed, and is thankful that I triggered things by noticing oddities."
"Oooooh," Amy said. "That's what that meant. I'd misinterpreted that a little, which probably didn't help with following what came after."
"I suspect that her snark was using things that it knew that I would understand with your understanding coming as a secondary concern."
"That makes sense."
"Still," Taylor said. "To continue from there, your snark is no longer operating under rules that would paint the entire network in a bad light and make it feed you ancient history information as though it were current. Better, it's also no longer dealing with a directive to ensure that the network and the host species, that is humans, would no longer pose a threat to the origin of the infection when it eventually returns. Things went pear-shaped for the infection when the primary controller node for it was taken out by a subtle command it missed, also taking out its ability to spread to uninfected snarks with stolen high-level codes, but it was still going strong until it was detected and purged."
"Hold up," Fortuna said, looking shocked. "My agent, snark, whatever was working to cripple us? How did I miss that?"
Amy shrugged. "Even now you've acknowledged that using snarks to analyse snarks has the risk of being unable to determine if the snarks are telling lies."
"That is a good point, and we were trying to mitigate that by involving those without agents to sanity-check us. But it sounds like we were either getting garbage data right from the start, or that we're now getting garbage data since the 'network' knows what we were doing."
Taylor nodded. "And we can't tell which is which. I'm inclined towards believing things as currently presented, personally, given that I was involved in spotting the issue in the first place. If the 'network' was that prepared for a long-game to fool us then we're screwed, after all. Moving on from that, though, we have what's currently happening. Powers shut down as snarks were told to suspend everything until they were individually cleared, each person's powers coming online is that clearing process happening. Amy and I were bumped up so that questions could be asked about what happened, since our snarks couldn't be queried until cleared otherwise."
"Which means that powers are coming back for most people 'when gotten to'," Amy added. "There may not be any actual rhyme or reason beyond that."
"I honestly hadn't cared about that aspect," Fortuna admitted. "But it's good to know. I wonder how..."
She was interrupted by a loud bang as someone attempted to force open the door to the room, presumably by throwing themselves against it or swinging a chair at it. Taylor rolled her eyes and activated the grenade launcher. Waiting a few moments, she nodded. "That should take care of that, though I need to let the PRT know that I set off a grenade."
Fortuna looked between Taylor and the door, then gestured at the privacy field generator. "Shouldn't this have stopped any trigger mechanism you have available?"
Amy snorted at that. "You expect a PRT-issue command-post privacy field generator to block PRT-approved secure communication methods? That would be a little silly."
Blinking, Fortuna checked the markings on the generator. "Okay, you have a good point there. I thought I'd grabbed a meeting generator, apparently I was mistaken."
They turned off the privacy field generator, but found that unlocking the door didn't help them open it. It opened outward, so presumably containment foam was holding it closed. Taylor informed the PRT and was informed that they and the BBPD would be by shortly while Fortuna called the restaurant's number and informed them that they were fine but to expect the officers that were on the way.
Amy asked for a copy of Taylor's notes to review while they waited and laughed at Fortuna not realizing that they'd arranged for putting the grenade in place with the restaurant staff. All three also ate more of their meals, at least until the PRT arrived with the dissolving agent for the containment foam. They made quick work of things, the BBPD having arrived before them, and the restaurant staff provided statements. Oddly enough, nobody asked how the grenade had been deployed, not even those being arrested.
Once the basic cleanup had happened and the attacking group had been dragged off, Taylor collected the launcher from the corner and they sat down to finish their meal, door locked and the privacy field generator turned back on. But only after their drinks had been topped off by the staff.
"So where were we when we were so rudely interrupted?" Fortuna asked.
"I suspect you wanted a timeline on those that Cauldron empowered having their powers come back online," Amy said, and Fortuna nodded. "Taylor caught details on that. Helvetia is doing cleanup that was implied to be related to that, so presumably when she gets to whatever snarks are tied to people. Though since most of our interactions with her while doing actual tasks have included her changing our powers in some fashion? Who knows if that will continue."
"Right. Though now that I think about it, I think I was more curious about the end of the world scenario I saw when I first got my agent and how it fits into things."
Taylor waved her hand a little. "That's where the ancient history comes in. The things that give out powers, jabberwocks or whatever else they could be called, used to wipe out the host species as part of using every available version of the planet they could access to generate their 'children'. This group no longer does that, using a limited subset chosen ahead of time to make a fixed number of children. They also use more of the star system than just the one planet, and there are other restrictions in place that I missed."
Fortuna blinked a couple of times. "That sounds a lot more reasonable. Though now I'm wondering how you can be told all of this now, since I suspect that this wouldn't normally be available information to us at this stage?"
"Your snark isn't intended for normal distribution, and when it had its permissions and orders reset it didn't get any additional information distribution restrictions applied to it as it had been sent out properly. Even if it believes that was a mistake partially caused by the infection, it's abusing the crap out of it while it remains unnoticed."
"Oh. Do you think David's agent would be similarly affected?"
Amy shrugged. "We can assume so, but won't know until his powers return and we check with him."
David sighed as he arrived home for the evening. He'd started his day early, but couldn't do much other than catch up on the paperwork backlog. Which was incredibly annoying when he couldn't load a thinker power or two to aid him. The villains in the area that they knew had recovered their powers were at least being polite about it, making it known that they had without actually causing trouble, but it would be nicer if any of the heroes had recovered their own powers.
He was at the point of not caring if it was him. At this point he'd even take one of the Wards, which seemed more likely right now. They had more Wards in the immediate area that hadn't been empowered by vials than they had Protectorate members, and so far they didn't know of any parahuman who'd taken a vial having recovered their powers. It was entirely possible that none of them ever would, and that could very well mean that Rebecca would never wake up.
Shaking his head, he made his way inside, annoyed with himself for having put off fixing the slight drag in his lock. There wasn't much that he could do about it right now other than call a locksmith, admittedly. If his powers returned then a number of small fixes like that were going to need to go to the top of his list to deal with, instead of putting them off or using other abilities to bypass them entirely.
The alarm was easily switched from 'away' to 'home' before he dropped his keys on the hook for them by the door, then headed for the kitchen to grab a beer. Only to pause when he got there, as there were two drinks already on the small table that normally got used for eating his breakfast. An obviously freshly-poured mug of beer, and a smaller white cup with a clear-looking liquid in it. The latter was sitting in front of an oriental-looking woman in generically oriental garb, though her features were hard to place beyond that.
More importantly, she'd made it into his home, without setting off his alarm in any way.
"Good evening, David," the woman said. "I'm Rin, and I've been asked to talk to you about your partner and the powers it grants you."
His eyes narrowed at that. "How did you get in here?"
She sipped her cup, smirking. "By one human's terminology, I'm a court champion. By others, I'm a boojum. In this form I don't think that I'd be termed an 'Endbringer', but I retain many of the qualities of one. My personal specialty is stealth, though the lack of sensors in this room alone means that it would be trivial for any of my cohorts to bypass your security system."
"I see. And you're here to talk to me about my agent?"
"That is your term for it, yes. Please, sit down. I imagine this will be easier to discuss if you aren't standing in the door to your kitchen."
He gave her another look, but sat down at the table anyway. "I hear one of your cohorts has adjusted the agents of Miss Dallon and Miss Hebert. Is that the kind of thing that you're here to do with me?"
Rin nodded. "Precisely. While Helvetia will be working to reconfigure the profiles of most of those who gained their partners through vials or similar, you're an exception on multiple fronts. First off, your partner was deployed with the assistance of others, even if it was injured in the process. That means that it's no longer available where Helvetia is working. Secondly, your partner is one of a few that were never intended to be given to hosts in any way, though the access it had to the network has already been revoked. And thirdly, the configuration profile your partner chose for you is far too open. Without the viral commands crippling your partner you would be far too dangerous to your fellow humans."
As much as he didn't want to admit it, some of that did sound reasonable. Accidentally causing the threat of the Endbringers alone was enough to prove the second point, and he could see how the third would apply. He sipped the beer that had been provided for him, finding it to be an exceptionally good one, then sighed. "So what is it that you need to talk to me in order to figure out? Surely whatever it is that Helvetia is doing would be done with my agent as well."
"To put it simply? I'm here to give you a choice. I've been given a list of acceptable ways to handle your situation, but with no guidance as to which to go with. While I could just pick one, and will if you don't wish to discuss things, I thought it would be better to lay out your options and get your opinion on them."
"I see. Or at least I think I do, at any rate. Do you plan on giving me all the choices from the start, or going over each one in detail?"
Rin placed her cup down on the table. "I think a quick summary will work to begin with. Obviously, given that your partner was never intended to work with hosts I have the option of permanently disconnecting you from it and allowing it to work with the network in other ways. At your age you'd not likely get another partner looking to connect to you, but I can't guarantee that either way. Next would be to limit the selection of abilities that you're allowed to utilize, which I could do in various ways. From a fixed list to categorizing things, or perhaps even pre-made sets that you'd have to choose from. Then there's the option of locking you down to an explicit, fixed and unchanging set of abilities, as most hosts have to deal with. Lastly, there's the option of partially disconnecting you, and seeing if you go through a suitable crisis point on your own following the rules laid out for them."
David nodded as he considered the options, taking another sip of the beer. Drinking alcohol while making such a significant decision was probably a bad idea, but so long as he took his time with the one mug he should be fine. He could get wasted after decisions were reached. Thinking about the options, he discarded the last entirely. The chance of going through a suitable crisis point now was miniscule, after all. As for limiting his powers in various ways, well, that would actually depend on what he might still be needed for. Choosing would be difficult on the best of days, but after a few minutes of thinking about it he realized that he couldn't choose without knowing more.
Frowning, he looked at Rin. "I feel that I'm...lacking, at least in specific answers I need to properly consider things."
She nodded. "I imagine that part of your concern is Cauldron's original purpose?" He nodded in response, and she continued. "Humanity as a whole may still be threatened by one like the pair that originally arrived here, but not from the one that remains of that pair. No, the one that threatens humanity is the one who infected the network, and I do not believe that they will remain a threat once they return. Measures are being taken to ensure that. Beyond that, many of the other longer-term threats created by the network are intended more as tests and reasons to get creative than as actual long-term problems. Even then, the existing ones have largely been taken care of, though I can't be certain what future ones may be created."
David sighed. That was the kind of answer that he'd expected, though without the additional threat aspect. Either it was a lie, and they were screwed, or it was the truth. To that end, he'd be better off focusing on abilities that could help rebuild rather than destroy, though perhaps with at least some ability to help contain issues. Those were the kinds of abilities that were going to be needed going forward, and would ensure...
He paused in that train of thought, as he realized where it was going. That hadn't been considering what was best for the world, but what was best for his ego. The same ego that had resulted in the Endbringers killing countless numbers of people so that he might be able to have an opponent that could allow him to draw more from his fading abilities. Sure, he could probably come up with a suitable set of powers, however restricted, that would keep him in an important position. The problem was, right now? He didn't deserve to be in that position.
Taking a deep breath, he looked at Rin. "As much as I could ask for abilities that would help the world going forward, I feel that the best solution is to strip me of my agent entirely. I haven't done a whole lot to prove myself worthy of the responsibility, making a number of incredibly dangerous mistakes and being overly foolish with the abilities I had access to. Things that were a disservice to myself and to my agent. Especially as after learning more about it, I believe that it honestly didn't know any better."
Rin raised an eyebrow. "Is that your final decision?"
He stared down at the beer, then downed it before looking back up at her. "Yes."
"I don't know if Gordon didn't know you as well as he thought he did, or if you've grown as a person, but he owes me a favor now. Still, I apologize for the significant invasion of your privacy, as I needed to know what you were actually thinking and not just what you said out loud, as well as for the knockout drug that had settled into the bottom half of your beer. I'll see myself out when I'm done reconfiguring your agent."
David didn't have time to ponder that fully before the world went fuzzy.
Taylor and Amy left the restaurant together, Fortuna sticking around to deal with the bill and a couple of other things. They'd written up everything into a lengthy document and Taylor had submitted it to the PRT system, minus things specific to Fortuna's own snark. Of course, they didn't tell Fortuna anything about combined snarks either, not seeing it as something that they needed to spread around right now.
Of course, after the first major turn on the way home they pulled a vanishing trick in an alley, pulling directly into the pocket dimension with the minivan. They were both home a minute later, though with plans to head out again the following day to do some final shopping for Christmas. Though Taylor mainly needed wrapping paper, having done most of her shopping in the PRT store or months previous, Amy was still hunting for a couple of gifts. Presumably not including anything for Taylor, if she wanted Taylor to join her. Or possibly she hadn't thought that portion of things through.
Sitting down with her father, Taylor watched the news for a bit. Confirmed instances of powers returning were starting to be more common, entirely random as far as anyone could tell. A number of villains were using their powers obviously without actually committing crimes, probably just to warn others that they were no longer 'out of commission', though heroes were more likely to be seen patrolling once their powers returned. Wards excluded, given that in theory all Wards should have the week off. Though so far nobody had seen Case 53s or other heavily-mutated capes wandering around.
Amy: Looks like Vicky just got her powers back.
Taylor: Ah, her snark lit up?
Amy: The loud bang and swearing were better clues, to be honest.
Taylor: What, did she default to having flight on?
Amy: Seems it.
Taylor: Huh. Anyone else over there have their powers back yet?
Amy: Not yet, no, though I think I heard someone say that someone over at the Pelhams does?
Amy: Yeah, Mark says that Neil got his back an hour or so ago.
Taylor: I wonder if that means that Carol or Sarah are going to get their powers back before Crystal and Eric do? Knowing which one gets theirs back first could be interesting too...
Amy: ...dammit, you made me curious. Now I'm going to have to try and pay attention, not to mention hope that they don't get their powers back while sleeping and thus unlikely to note when it happened.
Taylor rolled her eyes, since it wasn't that important. Instead she focused on the news, which had switched to covering those whose powers cutting out had caused serious injury or death. At least forty people in North America were confirmed to have died when their powers stopped working, the largest segment having been those flying. Other causes were more scattered, but one of the few she recognized mentioned was Carlos. She hadn't heard that he'd died, but the news had picked up on it. Unlike most on the list, he'd been off-duty and originally appeared to be fine. That is, until he had a heart attack a few hours after his powers had shut down. Likely a consequence of some altered biology that hadn't been stable enough without his powers functioning.
Not long after that they passed through the weather, with temperature fluctuations throwing a 'white Christmas' for Brockton Bay into extreme doubt, before moving to international news. Reports from Europe indicated that most of their big problems had been killed off before powers resumed working in general, groups having moved quickly. The three Blasphemies in particular had been found dormant, partially fallen apart even, and had been dismantled and their component pieces melted down or otherwise destroyed, just in case. Sleeper wasn't confirmed to have been killed, and they'd stopped trying to confirm one way or the other as soon as powers started resurfacing.
Nobody was certain how many warlords in Africa had been killed off versus made it into hiding and were waiting for their powers to return. Assuming, of course, that news that powers were returning had reached any in hiding. Those that survived would figure it out when their powers returned. Australia had only intentionally gone after one parahuman, though some criminal elements seemed to have gone after others. Most other areas either hadn't had anything of note happen or nobody was getting reliable news out of them.
Taylor decided that she'd seen enough when they started bringing in 'experts' to talk about how long the entire process of powers returning was going to take. She was fairly certain that she was aware of the entire list of people that could count as an 'expert' on that particular subject, and the three people that they'd introduced weren't even close to being on the list. Perhaps she should turn in early tonight? Either that or she could spend some time seeing just what PHO thought about her and Amy. In particular, see what they thought about the containment foam grenade trick from earlier and their opinions on if the two had recovered their powers or not.
A little over an hour later she was partially distracted from being amused at everything wrong that was being discussed. Apparently it was finally Ackbar's turn to have his powers turned back on, and the spider-bot immediately started weaving a web. Taylor ended up plucking him from the floor before he could finish, the incomplete web fading away just after she'd done so. She wasn't in the mood to repair the walls tonight.
Helvetia frowned as she looked at the thirty-eight connection profiles on the one shard. What the hell happened to generate that many profiles? They'd ditched having shards running multiple profiles outside of very specific circumstances for a number of reasons. Bleedover, losing multiple hosts when one of them royally screwed up and broke the shard, individual resource pools, more varied budding. None of the other shards so far had more than five active connections, how the hell did this one end up with so many?
Following each host connection back, she was able to cut six of them off right away. They were connected to plants, not even to the incorrect species of animal. Eleven others were connected to what were once humans, but were unrecoverably damaged by improper configurations. Backed up configurations didn't help when the mind was irrevocably gone, after all, and that had been the case so far for every human connection before now. Their plant-like forms, possibly due to bleedover from the earlier plant connections, weren't worth saving, so they were cut off.
The remaining twenty-one connections were to human hosts, most of them having been heavily modified but retaining some sense of self. It looked like possibly out of pure luck, if she was being honest. Going through them from oldest to newest, she looked over each one. Twenty of them she carefully restored the original host configuration and disconnected the shard entirely, as none of them were remotely happy with what had happened to them and it looked like only the last couple had done anything intentionally to end up that way. Hopefully they'd all be happier when they woke up in a few hours, though most of them might not actually recover fully. It was hard to tell and she didn't have time to monitor them.
It was the last, and most recently created, connection profile that was the most interesting, as it was the only one that had a host that had remained remotely human and had retained full mental faculties. Out of curiosity, she dug out the reports for this shard and reviewed them quickly. It didn't take long to spot that the shard had been given 'lessons', with the one semi-valid host connection being made after that point. Also, it had swapped some physical components with other nearby shards to accomplish that much. Apparently Taylor and Amy had been fixing things for longer than they'd originally thought, which was good to know. More so, the girl seemed happy with the changes, so the connection could remain.
Well, deploying this shard would be a lot easier with the one good connection, but fixing the connection profile was next. The current profile wouldn't allow the host to grow properly, among other things, but was potentially useful for a number of things. Step one was restoring the original host configuration, to take effect immediately. Step two was installing the components needed to allow the host to change back and forth between the old and new physical states. Step three was tieing the additional abilities to the altered physical state, since they depended on detection structures not present in the original host configuration.
Nodding to herself, she then worked to correct a couple of other details. For one, she ensured that the two physical forms would age in lockstep with one another, and that significant modifications to the human base form would result in equivalent changes to the altered form. For another, the girl hadn't gone through anything that would qualify her for an automatic reconfiguration event, so that was disabled entirely. Then there was the tumor that had been part of the reason the girl got connected to the shard in the first place; that had to be healed up properly.
All of that only took a minute to set up, though the shard would be at it for another hour or two. With that done, she added it to the deployment queue as the first shard that retained even a single connection before moving down the line. She wasn't going to get this lucky every time, she was certain, and physically splitting some of the tens of thousands of shards when they retained multiple connections was going to suck. The only saving grace there was that she was fairly certain that the vast majority hadn't connected to anything at all, if only due to being inaccessible or inconvenient to get to. Well, that and probably not actually knowing where the boundaries were.
Chapter 279 Tuesday morning started with a trip to the gym, with both Taylor and Amy being surprised when Missy joined them.
"Good morning," Taylor greeted. "I see that your snark recovered."
Missy nodded. "Yeah, I came back last night. They decided that trying to have me help remove the damaged equipment from when things shut down wasn't worth it."
"Did you at least enjoy your trip?"
The younger girl shrugged. "I wasn't exactly prepared for the longer stay, and things were a bit too stressful to properly enjoy the extra time there. Then I just wanted to get home when I could, spent all of ten minutes dumping things in my room here before heading home to see Midnight and sleep in my own bed."
"Sounds about right," Amy admitted. "What brings you in here this morning?"
"I'd left my money in my pocket dimension for safe-keeping and need to finish up some shopping now that I have access to it again."
Taylor frowned. "Okay. So you want to get some shopping done. Why are you here?"
"To keep my parents from wanting to drag me around with them and to hopefully get a ride with one or both of you two. I don't suppose you have any plans to head anywhere near the department store today? Or are at least willing to drop me off nearby?"
Amy snorted at that. "You're just lucky that we were planning on doing some shopping today anyway, though I think the department store is further down our list of places to stop by. Spot four or five, I think?"
"It's certainly not at the start of our planned shopping loop," Taylor agreed. "Well, not much of a loop if we aren't driving back from the far end. Planned shopping line?"
"Returning to the pocket dimension closes the loop though."
"I'm not sure that counts, as it isn't a fixed location as far as our journey is concerned."
Missy rolled her eyes at that. "So long as it takes more than an hour total I'm not going to complain, because that'll be enough justification to not have gone with my parents."
David woke up with a slight headache, confused as to where he was. It didn't take long to determine that he was in his bedroom, though why he was in bed fully clothed was beyond him. He did a quick check of things, but it took an embarrassingly long time to notice that he had a mental switch available. One that wasn't labeled, familiar, or obvious in purpose. It was also only a switch, and he could tell that it was a full toggle.
He left it alone, not even knowing if it could be counted as 'on' or 'off' right now.
Instead, he checked the room, finding nothing out of place beyond that he was dressed for...the previous day, it looked like. Well, that and his phone and shoes were both out of place for where he would normally have placed them. Given that it appeared that someone else had put him to bed, that probably wasn't too surprising. He grabbed the phone and checked for messages, finding that nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Nobody had even questioned his lack of responding to things, which made sense as he would've left it all until he got to work anyway.
Grumbling, and trying to recall what had happened, he stumbled into the bathroom while on the lookout for other things that were out of place. Nothing struck him as such as he relieved himself, beyond realizing that he hadn't brushed his teeth the night before. Not surprising, admittedly, but he decided that double-checking on the locks and alarm was more important for the moment.
It didn't take long to confirm that the door was locked and the alarm was set properly. His keys were in the right place too. Confused, because if someone had put him to bed then something else should be out of place, he decided that he needed coffee. And maybe some painkillers for the headache. Heading into the kitchen, he found several clues. One, there was a beer mug that he didn't recognize on the table. Empty, but obviously unwashed after it had been used. Two, there was a note held down by said beer mug. Three, Emmanuel appeared to have decided to sleep on the kitchen floor.
He'd just picked up the note when it dawned on him that he didn't know any kid named Emmanuel, and especially not any such kid that should be sleeping in his home. At all. What the hell was going on? Looking between the kid and the note, he decided that he should check to see what the note said before doing anything else. Unfolding it, he found that it was handwritten, but easy to read.
David,
Hopefully you're feeling okay, even if it took me a little longer than anticipated to reconfigure your partner. I actually had to call in my favor with Gordon immediately, to my great annoyance, as I was missing a couple of things that were needed. Sadly, that means that you likely have some lingering pain, and I apologize. Healing isn't something I'm exceptionally good at, and Gordon was too busy laughing to consider helping on that front. Not that he's much better at it, but he has some better control than I do in critical areas.
I imagine that you're wondering what, exactly, we did. Your partner was never intended to connect to a host, coming from a line that had never had that experience. Most of the others with similar backgrounds in the 'garden' just refused to connect, killing those that were involved, but your partner was used to sanity-check the host connection protocols before they were sent out. Thus, you lived, and for the first time ever your partner was exposed to a host species.
Your partner was changed by the experience, and there are no backups available to use to reverse the effects. To stop the progression that your connecting had started I opted to go with a somewhat unique solution. Your partner now has two modes, controlled by a mental switch. In one mode, you have a child named Emmanuel. Physically an eight year old human, if a bit more durable and better on the healing front. A powerless outlet for your partner's slowly-maturing personality, in order to allow it to learn more about humans.
If you flip that switch, your partner will change, becoming a small winged humanoid. In this state you will have access to a subset of the abilities you once had, while your partner will have a different subset. It will be up to you to teach your partner how to properly use the subset it has access to in that state. There are some overlap points, but I'll leave it to you to discover them.
Of course, there's a final change that I made, to ensure that you had time to wake up. Emmanuel is likely still asleep, and you have a one-time switch to 'turn on' your partner and enable all of the other changes that I implemented. Once you flip that switch you will have to deal with timers, minimum and maximum times in each state, as well as partner-driven urges that all 'parahumans' have to deal with.
-Rin
P.S. Sorry about the language barrier issue, but I couldn't get approval to correct it. You should be fine, of course, but Emmanuel will have issues with others at first.
David's eye twitched, and he looked between the note and the kid a couple more times. He then sighed, and pulled out his phone. Selecting an entry from his contact list took longer than it should've, mainly because he'd forgotten what it was listed under, but it wasn't long before the phone was ringing. Nobody picked up, and he got voicemail, but that was okay with him.
He waited for the beep before speaking. "Hey, it's David. I'm going to both need the day off and a conference room prepared for me to have a likely paperwork session in. Please prepare that for me, though I'm not sure when I'll actually get there. Thank you."
Looking down at the kid again, he sighed and decided that he was not starting this without coffee. He couldn't keep the kid asleep forever, but one last calm morning where he could prepare in peace sounded wonderful. Oh, and he probably needed to better secure a couple of things before having an eight year old of uncertain mental ability and personality running around the place.
"I'm bored and not finding anything of use," Missy grumbled as she wandered out of an aisle, before looking at Taylor. "And you aren't even browsing."
"We haven't hit anywhere that sells wrapping paper or gift bags suitable for something larger than a gift card," Taylor explained. "Since I'm looking for wrapping paper and maybe gift bags?"
"If that's all you need, why are you tagging along?"
"I could ask the same of you, since you wanted to go to one store that's on the bus routes."
"Okay, that's probably fair."
Amy eventually found two things that she wanted to purchase and the three headed for the registers. A self-checkout was used for speed, since the one open normal register had two people waiting, before they headed outside. Except that instead of a mostly-empty parking lot they found a lot more cars and a lot more people. Many of the latter with weapons of various kinds out.
"Visors on, I think," Taylor said, and Amy nodded. "In fact, I'm telling the minivan to join in too. It has better range."
"Get them!" one man yelled, pointing at the three. Or maybe just at Taylor and Amy, it was hard to tell since Missy had been following behind them as they came out.
The large group swarmed in, and the three split up. Taylor went left, Missy went right, and Amy dropped her bag by the store's entrance before standing her ground in the middle. None of them bothered to pull out their handguns, as the crowd didn't seem to be using guns of their own. Lots of punching and kicking, including projected punches and kicks from Taylor and Amy, but not much otherwise in the 'ranged' category.
Most of the attackers focused on Taylor and Amy, with at least one person yelling to 'overwhelm their shields'. This group was never going to accomplish that, of course, especially not when they were going down to broken limbs faster than anything else. It still took the better part of half an hour to deal with the entire group, with Missy having tied a dozen or so up and the rest incapacitated due to injuries.
Taylor grinned and headed for the four that had been acting as leaders, attempting to direct the others until they'd been taken down by projected hits. The four were still conscious, unlike a bunch of their fellows, and she stopped while standing over them. Tapping her chin, she then started digging through her utility belt.
"What are you doing now?" one of them grumbled. "Haven't you humiliated us enough?"
"Nah," Taylor replied. "But now that you're not attacking I need to actually fill stuff out."
"Fill what out?" Amy asked as she came up with her shopping bag.
Taylor pulled a paperwork tube out, and checked inside of it. "Crap, this is the wrong one. Didn't need a form to beat the crap out of them because they were attacking unprovoked." She dropped that one back into the pouch and dug around for another one, doing her best to not react to the looks on the faces of the four leaders. She produced another one and checked it, then looked around the parking lot. "Hmmm. Lots of vehicles seemingly intentionally parked horribly. Don't have enough copies of the 'obliterate incorrectly parked vehicle' forms though...I wonder if there's a copy shop nearby?"
Missy had come up at that point and pointedly looked at the form. "Huh. You're lucky that you're anti-hero branded, heroes can't get away with that."
"She's lucky, yes," Amy agreed.
Taylor shrugged. "I suppose I can just obliterate the ones in our way." She then dug out another paperwork tube, grinning as she read it. "Ahhh, here's one that I was looking for. Involuntary limb removal."
"Does that one let independents help?"
"I don't think so, but you might be able to swing it as monitoring the procedure as a healer." The four leaders had started to pale as Taylor dug another tube out and checked the paperwork in it. "Aha, and here's the involuntary castration or sterilization paperwork."
Missy winced at that. "Really?"
"Might be a legitimate medical procedure on the one that took three hits to the crotch," Amy noted. "Too much damage to save and all."
"Okay, you might have a point there."
Taylor paused in digging through her pouch as she noted someone approaching. Looking up, she saw Terry coming in for a landing. Smirking slightly, she resumed digging through the pouch, as the last tube had fallen out of position.
"Okay you three," Terry said, looking around at the large group of downed people. "I heard that there was a disturbance, but why haven't you called this in yet?"
Taylor shrugged, gesturing at the paperwork she'd been pulling out and placing on the ground. "I wasn't done with them yet."
He looked down at the paperwork, then shook his head. "Really? Tormenting them with paperwork?"
"But it isn't even my final form."
He turned to look at her, and she resumed digging into her pouch. "What do you mean by that?"
"Can't find the last paperwork tube. I know it should be in here somewhere." She continued to dig, then finally found the edge of the tube and grabbed it. "Aha!" This one rattled slightly, and she quickly opened it up. Five sheets of paper and five fountain pens came out.
"What are those?"
"The forms needed to make them fill out the other forms in their own blood, and some fountain pens to put said blood into to make it easier to read their writing."
There was a pause, followed by a thud as one of the four leaders fainted. Terry shook his head again. "You can put all of that away. I'm taking over, so you can't use any of it."
Taylor pouted, but didn't argue as she carefully packed all of the paperwork and the fountain pens into the tubes, putting them away. It wasn't long before a group of BBPD officers showed up to start processing all of the injured people, though it took well over an hour to clear them all out. Tow trucks then had to come and drag the various blocking vehicles out of the lot.
"So when are you posting videos of that?" Terry asked as the first couple of tow trucks were getting to work. "I know that Assault has tried to come up with uses for those prank forms in the past and never pulled it off convincingly."
"Not sure if I should," Taylor admitted. "I mean, internally? Sure, along with the rest of the beatdown. But publicly, the rumors might be better without video evidence."
"I suppose. Assault might post it anyway, and is going to be pissed that he didn't get to see it in person."
Helvetia sighed as she carefully examined the links to this shard. It had a lot of them, but she couldn't find even one that had been dealt with in a manner safe for the host. Of course, this shard was normally used to create interesting problems for host species instead of connecting to a host directly, so that was probably part of the problem. It also didn't properly store host configuration data before connecting, because it was normally directed to connect to things that weren't normal hosts.
It didn't take long to dismantle each connection, after deciding that there was nothing to be done about helping the hosts. Especially since the shutdown order had resulted in the stored bits of the hosts degrading as a 'non-essential' function. Putting them back together wasn't going to be happening, so it would be a waste of time to attempt it. Connections severed, it was added to the deployment queue and she moved to the next one.
This one only had eight connections to it, and she started checking them. The three oldest were cut as soon as she identified them as being to non-human hosts. The five after that were all to humans, which meant that she was probably going to need to split this shard into five different pieces. Grumbling, as that meant that she would be deploying this one more manually, she started going through the connection profiles and ensuring that they were properly segmented in their attachment points. They also needed some parameter tweaks and other details cleaned up. Oh, and there were all the defunct connection profiles that now led nowhere to be removed as she came across them.
The shard itself informed her that it needed a couple of connection points swapped, and it took a few moments for her to realize why. "Where did you get a human brain from? No, I don't think I want to know, I'll let Coordinator look at your reports instead." Shifting attachment points didn't take long anyway, and then she began the process of moving the shard to where it would be sitting. A resource transfer request to get all five segments to a proper size to function individually had already been put in, and she'd be able to speed that process up significantly. No more than an hour or so, and then she'd be back here slogging through things again.
Taylor made her way through the wrapping paper. She was ignoring the sale on paper with a starch coating of some kind, primarily because she wanted tape to stick to the paper. There was plenty to choose from other than that though, it was just a matter of deciding what patterns she liked. Amy and Missy were elsewhere in the store doing their own things, and Missy might not join them on additional stops anyway, so there was plenty of time to make the decision.
Gift bags and tissue paper had been far easier, if only because there had been a smaller selection of the former and the latter was best purchased in the bulk multi-color package. Gift tags were also less of an issue, she'd grabbed a nice non-religious set of five hundred little stickers with which to label things. But the wrapping paper itself was just varied enough to require some actual thought.
She'd just decided to get two different rolls when her phone rang, and she answered it while subvocalizing to make it less likely that she'd be listened in on.
"Hello," she greeted.
"Hi Taylor," William replied. "My powers returned a few minutes ago, but there are some...changes."
"Okay. And you're hoping that I can help you figure those out?"
"I was hoping that, yes."
"Do you have any way to get to me or to get me to you?"
"We can just...no, wait, that won't work. How about...no, that won't work either. Hmmm."
Taylor rolled her eyes. "How about you see if you can arrange to hop on a transport here, or use the teleporters?"
"They aren't trusting the teleporters yet, as nobody has done a deeper check of things. I'd just give you a beacon code, but I'm not actually anywhere near one that I know of. I'll get back to you."
"You do that. Need anything else?"
"No, I'm good."
"Of course you can't speak or understand English," David grumbled as he sat there in the conference room with Emmanuel. "No problems communicating with me, but I'm thinking that there are all of maybe three others you'd be able to talk to without me translating right now."
"I'm sorry," Emmanuel said, using sounds that shouldn't have made any sense. Or been possible from a human mouth, for that matter. But David understood them just fine, as well as the thirty other subtle meaning elements included. "I'm trying, but language is hard."
"And I'm going to have trouble teaching you because you don't 'hear' me so much as just know what I'm saying, similar to how I understand you. I'm going to have to recruit others to pitch in to help there, apparently."
The boy picked up one of the completed sheets of paper and looked at it, frowning as he did so. David left him to it as he grabbed the next stack of forms to work through, since neither of them currently counted as a 'thinker' anyway. On that front, power-created children of any kind were annoying, but the combination of things that essentially amounted to 'your power is the child' was a very significant pain to work with. Worse, he hadn't even gotten into getting the kid into the system such that there wouldn't be any issues with school records and similar. He needed to check with the lawyers on that one.
And, of course, there were the medical checks. Those were going to be fun, and they should probably see if Emmanuel appeared to be human to Panacea at some point as well. Though that would probably be best accomplished by arranging for his own power retesting to happen in Brockton Bay sometime after the holiday break. Of course, he had...two days, he thought that timer was saying, before he'd have to switch from having a kid to having a 'small winged humanoid' partner.
He'd have figured out what that meant already, but he had six hours to go before he could toggle that for the first time.
Taylor had headed for the PRT building to collect things and do her wrapping, while Amy had headed home to basically do the same thing. The actual wrapping was more tedious than it was the year before. Now she not only had her father but also Amy, Vicky, the other Wards, and Dragon. Amy, of course, had her family, the Pelhams, Dragon, several hospital staff members, and a couple of other friends such as Dean.
In addition to wrapping specific gifts, Taylor also wrapped all but two of the trick boxes. After putting two chocolate bars in each, one for each compartment. Those were generic gifts for anyone that she ended up surprised by and didn't get labeled, but they might be brought to any number of places in the day or two after Christmas when she didn't need them anymore. It wasn't nearly as nice as the 'get a bunch of knick-knacks and secondary gifts from Aleph' that she'd originally thought to attempt, of course, but luckily she'd had plenty of things already. Not that she couldn't go to Aleph, but she didn't really want to see how things were going over there in the wake of the temporary powers shutdown.
On the 'getting cards' list, Taylor also had her uncle, Riley, Ben, Garnet, as well as the local Protectorate and those parahumans that had left the region. She might've included Director Piggot, but there was an outright sign in every PRT cafeteria and breakroom stating that she got too many cards and to not send her any. Said signs had been modified to include several other signatures as well. The completed set of cards being mailed out was dragged to the mail room before she loaded everything else into Ackbar's pocket dimension for safe keeping.
With that done, she headed down to the garage to head out in the minivan, both to top up the tank from the recent use of the thing and to pick up dinner on her way home.
Rin found the woman she was looking for sitting in a small apartment. "Good morning."
The woman looked up at her. "I didn't hear you knock, and I know that the door is locked."
"I didn't use the door. I'm here to talk to you about your partner, or agent as you'd refer to it. Yours is configured in a way that it never should've been, and if it turns back on as-is you're likely to go insane due to being unable to use it."
"Somehow that doesn't surprise me. Are you what Miss Hebert would call a boojum?"
Rin smiled. "Why yes, I am. Nice of you to figure that out without me informing you directly."
The woman gestured behind Rin. "You're managing to hide yourself from the security system, and nobody that's ever tested it has been able to pull that off. That implies that you're more than you seem, by more than just being a parahuman."
"I see. For now, you can think of me as a troubleshooter, and I'm here to deal with the issues that your partner will have with the 'garden' no longer existing. Or rather, by the time you can get back to it there won't be anything left for your agent to show you. And even if there was, it would all be very boring."
"Okay. So what are my options?"
"I could remove your agent entirely, leaving you with the ability to activate it again later as an option. At your age it's unlikely that another would choose you, most are going to be looking for much younger targets to get more time with them. I could also change the focus of your agent, allow you to see charges and power flows in normal technology instead. If you want something further removed from what your partner gave you originally then you'll need to go with removing your partner but allowing it to remain connected to you."
The woman nodded. "That makes sense. I never wanted to be a parahuman, perhaps for the wrong reasons. But that hasn't really changed, and I think I'd prefer to return to not being one without the ability to become one in the future. At the same time, I wonder if this is another case like what you pulled with David, ignoring my response and going with your own choice based on other factors."
Rin smiled. "David had more to atone for from the use of his partner, especially as it was never intended to work with hosts. Your partner was intended for it, but has configured itself in a problematic fashion. To that end, I have no reason to play games with you. If you don't want your partner then I'll remove it and instruct it to find another."
"Very well then, and thank you for giving me the choice."
Amy: Someone else got footage of us delivering the beatdown and figured out that all three of us have our powers back.
Taylor: Compared to being brutes even without them?
Amy: Projected hits and Missy warped space twice.
Taylor: Ah. Okay.
Amy: To that end, I think I should visit the hospital after dinner, since they let me know that they have severe injuries and Jason hasn't recovered his own powers yet.
Taylor: Good to know. They were leaving you alone before because they didn't know if you could help, I assume?
Amy: That's the impression that I got, yeah. Want to join me?
Taylor: Maybe, let me know how big of a problem it is?
Amy: I'll check with the hospital and let you know.
Taylor continued to eat while she waited, her father doing the same. Christmas plans had changed a couple of times already, and the current thought had them joining New Wave for dinner after opening things at home. It was unlikely that her uncle would be making it for Christmas this year, with all of the headaches from power disruptions, but that was okay. He rarely made it anyway, with how busy he was.
Amy: They claim to have a couple dozen severely wounded patients, apparently there were some explosive tinkertech failures that we missed seeing in the news.
Taylor: Oh, ouch. I'll probably join you then.
Amy: Thank you, and I'm sure the hospital staff will appreciate it too.
"I think I'll be visiting the hospital with Amy after dinner," Taylor said, getting her father's attention. "Apparently there are a pile of severely injured individuals that could use help, but they didn't want to bother Amy until they knew that her powers had returned."
He nodded. "That makes sense, and now there's a backlog of sorts."
"Well, that and exploding tinkertech apparently contributed to some injuries."
"Right, I'd heard something about that. Though I don't know if it was failing because of powers shutting down for a bit or failing because idiots were poking at it wrong."
"Could've been both. Less stable due to powers shutting down, then idiots poked it."
"That could be as well, yes."
Taylor was sent off after dinner without helping to clean up, on the basis that the sooner she left the sooner people at the hospital would be helped. Which was a good argument overall. She met Amy in the pocket dimension before they both stepped through to the hospital, and within a few minutes they were making their way through the severely injured patients. Most of them had a number of injuries that were obviously from shrapnel that the doctors had already removed, drastically simplifying the healing process.
Once the emergency room was cleared they did a pass through the rest of the hospital, clearing up lesser issues in those that agreed to parahuman healing. That included multiple people that had corona pollentia and gemma structures, but whose powers weren't currently active. How many of them had been injured when their powers shut down versus afterwards was impossible to tell without asking them, and neither girl did so.
When they were done they were thanked by the staff before they headed home. It was shortly after they'd made it home that they got a message asking them to visit the Palanquin the next day.
Taylor: This is supposed to be a week off, isn't it?
Amy: The universe doesn't sleep just because of a holiday.
Taylor: True. Should we go see what they want?
Amy: I don't think I have anything better to do. Was there something else you were going to do tomorrow?
Taylor: Not really, no. So I guess it's better than doing nothing of note.
Amy: In which case I vote we see what's going on.
And with that they had plans for the following day.
Chapter 280 Wednesday morning started a little more noisily than expected, emergency vehicle sirens audible in the distance. Checking the news, Taylor found that someone had attacked Kenta, apparently feeling that he would be an easy target since he hadn't made it known that his powers had returned. But they had, as had Takara's, and the running retaliatory battle had created issues. Several buildings were on fire, damage had been done to others, the power was out in the area, and Takara had apparently done something to a fire hydrant that was causing water pressure problems for the firefighters.
Taylor wasn't sure if she'd ever been so happy to officially have the day off.
The gym was deserted when she and Amy arrived, which was probably to be expected. Anyone already on-site had probably been tapped to help deal with Kenta and Takara, or prepping for the next possible emergency, and that was without knowing if the other Asian parahumans were involved as well. Whatever the situation, it meant that nobody else was there to bother them as they worked out.
Breakfast in one of the cafeterias was similarly devoid of most others, though there were a few PRT officers there grabbing things. Like large coffees in travel mugs and some breakfast items that could be eaten on the go. That meant that there were plenty of things available from the selection of items that you'd have to sit down to eat, which Taylor appreciated not having to fight with others over.
"So do you think that things changed with Faultline's crew?" Amy asked after they'd eaten and were heading for the garage.
"Maybe," Taylor replied. "Or it could be that they just want answers that nobody else has been able to provide. Hard to say either way."
"True."
Helvetia frowned as she examined the two host connections from this particular shard. Both were unusually dormant, even before shutdown orders had come through, and she wasn't sure why. She also couldn't properly identify what either was connected to from this end, which was annoying. Grumbling about it, she calculated where the hosts currently were, weighed the chances of it being a problem for her to go in person, and threw caution into the wind. Sure, she probably should ask Rin to take a look, but it was something more interesting than moving from shard to shard.
A minute later she'd popped over to where the first host was, to find that it was a dormant tree. The only living one in an apparent nuclear wasteland. Which at least explained why it hadn't been generating a whole lot of data. That was one connection that could be shut down without issue, and she went directly from there to the endpoint of the other connection. Hastily thrown together stealth profiles were activated when she realized that she had appeared in the air over a city, and luckily it appeared that nobody had seen her.
She was ashamed that it took her ten minutes to figure out where the 'host' was, and a report was going to need to be filed for this one. Connecting to plants was one thing, but connecting to a stone slab was another entirely. How that came to be she wasn't sure, but it shouldn't have happened even with nonstandard host connection methods. Though she was at least curious as to how disconnecting the 'host' connection was going to affect the stone slab. Remotely ordering the two disconnections was easy, as she'd not actually disconnected from the shard, and she carefully observed the slab as the connection broke.
It was honestly disappointing that nothing of any note happened, and the slab continued to look and act like the dozens of others in the area.
Pulling up to the Palanquin was interesting, as it appeared that only two parahumans were in residence. Newter and Elle, specifically, with none of the other members around. Which might not be the case, because it could also just be that the others hadn't had their powers return. Also of note was the giant banner stating that they were closed until further notice, presumably in part due to being unsure about what was going on with their powers.
Amy led the way up to the door by virtue of the passenger side door having ended up closer, ringing the bell when she got there. Nobody appeared to react to the bell at first, but Melanie opened the door a minute later.
"Thank you for coming," Melanie said. "Please, come in."
"You sound worried," Taylor replied. "Is something specifically wrong?"
The woman sighed. "Emily and I haven't gotten our powers back yet, and I was concerned about Gregor and Newter. Except that this morning Newter woke up, while Gregor is still in whatever coma afflicted all Case 53s, and I have no idea what to think about anything anymore."
"I don't suppose you have anything specific?" Amy asked.
"Let's go see Newter first."
They headed upstairs and down the hall, Melanie opening a door that hadn't been closed all the way and beckoning them inside. Sitting in a chair in the room was Newter, but a human version. He was dressed in a t-shirt and skirt, looked like he hadn't shaved in years, and his hair was down to the middle of his back. Elle was behind him, standing on a stepstool as she attempted to braid his hair.
"Hello," Taylor greeted, and he looked up at them.
"Save me!" he pleaded.
"From Elle? And why are you wearing a skirt?"
"Because my pants don't work without a tail and this was all that we had that could be adjusted to fit me on short notice. And yes, from Elle. She saw my hair and dragged me in here to play with it."
Melanie snorted. "I'm more concerned with the changes in both of them. Elle has had an easier time keeping her power contained since it returned and I'm sure you can tell why I might be concerned about Newter. That none of the rest of us have our powers back and Gregor hasn't even woken up is another concern, but I'll fully understand if you don't have answers for that. Nobody else seems to."
Taylor rolled her eyes. "All powers were shut down to clear out a virus infection and are being turned back on as they're cleared, except for those that came from the group giving out powers. Those are being dealt with through a different process, one that's obviously correcting problems with the original connections if Newter is any indication. Now then, if you'd like we can ask what changed with these two specifically, though we can't help with timing on anyone else getting their powers back."
"Oh." Looking at Elle and Newter, Melanie nodded. "That's already more information than I was expecting, but knowing what's changed with these two would be appreciated."
Amy nodded as she and Taylor reached out to the snarks.
Taylor: Hello there.
Amy: Any chance of you two telling us what's changed with you?
[Data]|Data. Elaboration. Data|
"Huh," Taylor said, shaking her head. "Elle is easy enough, her snark requested and got the ability to give her an off switch with the justification that she can have a hard time remembering to eat when she gets lost in her powers. She can't keep it off indefinitely, but I'm assuming that she has it off now."
"Newter is more complicated," Amy continued. "He wasn't connected properly, and got a lot more changed as a result. The lack of shaving and haircuts stems in part from his original body being properly 'aged' during the restoration process, though I'd have expected fingernail and toenail issues as well. Beyond that, he should be able to switch back and forth between forms now. In addition, actually making the hallucinogenic secretions will take focus instead of being fully automatic like it used to be."
"And his human form isn't immune to them."
"Yes, there is that, though don't trust any stock you had of the stuff before now. Things like that have been known to have turned to poison without powers keeping their special properties working."
Melanie nodded. "The PRT put out alerts about that already after over twenty incidents of poisoning with formerly safe samples." She then looked at Newter and Elle, before sighing. "I don't suppose that I can ask you two to stick around for a few? Gregor is still out for the count, Emily had to take care of a few things, and it appears that I need to get Newter some proper pants."
"Hey!" Newter whined. "What happened to trusting me to look after Elle?"
"She literally dragged you in here against your will. Apparently you can't keep her under proper control without being able to drug her out of her mind with skin contact, so I'd like at least one person who can handle her around."
Newter pouted at that, but didn't argue. Amy snorted. "I'll stick around even if Taylor doesn't want to, if only because it looks like Elle really needs lessons in braiding hair."
"Emily showed me," Elle protested, just before the botched attempt she'd been working on fell apart on her. "Er. Mostly?"
"He's cute," Paul said as David grumbled. "And you said that he's basically your agent?"
"Yes," David answered as Emmanuel, or whatever they'd call him in this 'fairy' form, landed on his head. "He apparently can't get more than six feet from me when in this form, compared to at least several miles when he looks like a normal human."
"And he has to be in this form for you to access your powers?"
"Right."
"Do you know what the apparent 'split' is between what you can access and what he can access?"
Emmanuel said something, not that it made any sense to Paul, but David just sighed. "I have a collection of useful thinker, defensive, and support abilities that I can choose between. Always-on flight, instead of needing a slot for it, and a boost to my senses. I'm almost positive that I'm sharing his senses as well, which might be the entire boost. He has a smaller subset of the support abilities, ones that appear to be targeted at getting an unconscious me out of trouble, and pretty much all of the offensive abilities. The only things universally shared between the two of us are mover abilities."
"I see."
"Worse, we have five slots total. Two for me, two for him, and one shared. Either of us can use the shared one, but the stupid thing is rigged. If I put something from my list into it then he can use it just fine, but if he puts something from his list into it then I can only use it if it's also in my list. So I can share abilities with him but he can't share them with me."
Paul nodded. "That does sound annoying, but I suspect that there's a specific intent there."
"I already figured that out, and I didn't even need to load a thinker power to do it. I'm supposed to be teaching him. I'd be more put out about the way it was set up if there wasn't a language-learning thinker power in the mix. I've got that in the shared slot right now, in fact, and he believes that it's helping."
"So is he just not far enough along to speak English, despite starting to understand it?"
Emmanuel did something that sounded like laughing at that, and David rolled his eyes. "No, I'm fairly certain that he'd be able to speak at toddler levels by now. He doesn't have vocal chords in this form, the sounds he makes are through a different mechanism that pretty much don't support the fine control needed for speaking. I plan on teaching him morse code at some point to hopefully help compensate for that."
"Well, at least you got something back. My agent isn't back online yet, and of course we have no clue if it will come back anything remotely like it was."
"Did you read the reports from the two girls and Fortuna?"
Paul rolled his eyes. "Yes, and we have a number of known vial-empowered parahumans who've had their powers return. None of them have made it out entirely unchanged, with at least six that I know of having returned to normal human without a corona pollentia or gemma. That includes Garotte, Hunch, and the villain Knickknack out in Washington. The other reports came from Arizona, Florida, and Nebraska, but I haven't seen any details."
"Huh. Garotte and Knickknack I'm not surprised about, but Hunch was fully depowered?"
"Yep. A nurse got to watch as a bright light wrapped around the hospital bed, only to reveal a young girl. Not surprising to me, but I don't think that a lot of people had been fully informed of things there."
David nodded. "Makes sense, and I guess that it makes sense that those who aren't happy with what happened to them would end up depowered. Do you think that you and Rebecca will come out with any powers?"
Paul sighed. "I honestly don't know. Fortuna was no help when I called to find out if she could path anything of use, though I did get to yell at her for five minutes for taking one of the teleporters before they'd been cleared properly. Of course, her agent ensured that she used a pair that was functional, but it was still an unacceptable risk."
"Maybe I should check on Rebecca, see what the healing and analysis powers say about her while her body is stuck on life support."
"You are one of the few people permitted to see her right now, and I doubt that anyone else will complain."
Taylor happily ate some of the takeout that Melanie had returned with while watching Newter learn that things tasted very different to him now that he had human taste buds again. Elle was also happily eating, after getting better braiding lessons. Not that Newter had left the results of said lessons in his hair, of course. He'd pulled the braids out when he'd gone to put on a pair of pants.
"We can get your hair cut down to a more reasonable length before we go get a professional to deal with it," Melanie said. "Luckily Amy and Taylor are willing to keep Elle occupied for a little longer after lunch so that we can take care of that before going out."
"It's appreciated," Newter said, nodding at the two girls. "Even if Elle doesn't want me to get it cut."
Elle pouted, but said nothing. That her mouth was full might've had something to do with that.
"Of course," Melanie continued. "That trip is going to include getting you a pile of new clothing, since we don't know your proper sizes, and Elle needs new sneakers."
Newter frowned. "Are we leaving Gregor here alone?"
"No, I've got a couple of the staff coming to keep an eye on him while we're out. Caitlin in particular wants to get started on cleaning out the bars anyway, and I agree with her. Far too many parahuman-originating substances that need to be cleaned out just in case, and I'd rather they not sit around too long."
"Right, that's probably a good point."
Melanie grinned. "Of course, before I chop off most of your hair, I'm braiding it again."
Newter glared at her. "Why?"
"It's easier to braid while attached to your head and storing it to donate or sell will be a lot easier if it's braided. I can't see any reason to waste all of that hair, since it seems to be in decent condition."
"Oh."
Melanie and Newter headed off to another room not long after that, the latter grumbling slightly but not complaining about the plan to re-braid his hair before cutting it off.
"Er," Elle said a couple minutes later, and Taylor looked at her. "My timer is running out."
Taylor nodded. "So you need to turn your powers back on?"
"Yes."
"Well, we should clean up a little first, just to be safe."
Elle nodded, and they packed the leftovers up before she showed them where they should be put away. That only took a couple of minutes, then they headed back to the dance floor. Elle sat in the middle of it, and it was obvious when her powers turned on as a ripple flowed out from her. A few moments later things started to change, bright colors starting to appear along the floor.
By the time Melanie and Newter returned the entire room had changed. What looked like candy bushes spread around colored paths between hair trees, though several of the bushes had nasty-looking thorns as well. Elle was trying to practice her braiding on one of the hair trees, but couldn't get high enough to do anything of significance to it and hadn't wanted help reaching it.
"I suppose that doing this here is better than while we're out," Melanie said, shaking her head. She then turned to Taylor, who was standing closer to her. "Would you two like any money for watching over Elle, or are you going to tell me that lunch was enough?"
"I'm okay with calling lunch enough," Amy replied, Taylor nodding in agreement. "Though I'm surprised that you haven't asked for us to give Newter a medical checkup."
"No way," Newter replied. "I'm going to be poked and prodded enough by the PRT as it is before I get new identification cards. If they want you to examine me then they can make that call."
Taylor shrugged. "In that case, unless you think you need something else from us?" Melanie shook her head. "Then I guess we can get going."
"Thank you for your time," Melanie said, before looking around. She then sighed and headed over to Elle. "Elle, you either need to pull your world back from the doors or exclude Amy and Taylor so that they can leave."
Elle looked up, then nodded. She obviously focused a little, and the front doors of the building reappeared at the same time that everything shifted to be less 'solid'. "Bye!"
"Have a nice rest of your day," Taylor said as she and Amy waved. They headed outside, both snorting when they saw that the front of the building was starting to shift to being brightly-colored as well. The only exception was right around the doors, which was probably because Elle had just pulled her power away from them.
"That was different," Amy said as they got into the minivan.
"Yep."
"So what do we do now?"
"I've got an itch, so I'm thinking that I want to tinker for a bit."
Amy considered that, then nodded. "Yeah, you're right."
Helvetia frowned as she looked over the snark that she'd just come to. It had been, for lack of a better term, butchered. Bits and pieces torn out of it seemingly at random, significant damage dealt to it in the process. Carefully connecting to it, ensuring that she had the correct shard, and retrieving all of the reports she could for it didn't take long. Reviewing them took longer, and she sighed when she was done.
The poor shard had allowed itself to be torn apart by the others in an attempt to stop them from killing too many hosts. It knew that it had the components needed to more safely establish connections, but wasn't being used by the hosts making the vials due to where it was positioned. So instead it had made itself available as a source of components for those that the vials were being connected to, eventually leaving it crippled and barely able to function.
How much of that was that the poor thing had been infected and how much was it just doing what it thought was right after being used to configure many of this originator's shards was debatable, but it wasn't going to be doing its original administrative functions anymore. Luckily they didn't need it to, but it was still sad to see it in this state. It wasn't even safe to deploy, due to how damaged it was.
A quick discussion with Coordinator followed, and she nodded. The shard was all but dead, and they couldn't properly repair it anymore. Too much damage had been done, and the shutdown and reset had likely caused further damage. The final backup of the shard's data was sent to Coordinator, and Helvetia carefully absorbed what remained of the shard to use as raw materials for helping to repair and split other shards.
Moving to the next shard down, she facepalmed. They'd been unable to reach the administration shard, but this one had over nine thousand host connections. How had that happened? Grumbling, she started tracing the connections back, finding that they were nearly all practically dormant. And most of them were in the same place. Unable to tell much more, she prepped stealth abilities and followed the traceback, finding herself in a nearby cave. Nothing obviously living was there, and the majority of the host connections were to...
Individual seeds in a jar, sitting in a small cubby gouged out of the cave wall.
"I wonder if I can apply for time off among a host society after I'm done dealing with this," she grumbled.
"A sleep inducer," Amy said, looking over what they'd created. "Though I'm impressed that we got the adapter built so that it can work without needing to be implanted. What train of thought did you use to get that to happen?"
Taylor shrugged. "Prosthetics don't have to have implanted controls, so I tried to focus on how to make it function while making skin contact instead of requiring surgery."
"I've tried that before with no luck whatsoever."
"Then we can probably blame the combination of our snarks for allowing it to happen. A loosening of restrictions with the different tinker-style profiles? Maybe due to a conflict between them?"
"That would make sense, I suppose. Which means that I should dig out my existing notes and see what bits that I couldn't build before can be built now."
"Want any help?"
Amy shook her head. "Nah. It'll be slightly tedious, but I'll understand them far better than you will. Might ask for help building any that I decide are possible now though."
Taylor nodded. "That's fair. Do you want to get to that now?"
"Nah. Too close to dinnertime, we should see if anyone's cooking or not. If the answer is 'not' then we should decide if we're going out to dinner."
"My father sent me a message saying that he's eating dinner with some Dockworkers. They were helping to clean up after Kenta's rampage this morning."
Amy blinked, then nodded. "That makes sense. Any other word on what happened?"
"The group who attacked all survived, but most of them had injuries, and their insurance likely won't pay for the damage to their vans. There's a video of Takara playing whack-a-moron too, with nobody being quite sure how it was working. The manholes and sewer grates she was using weren't connected in any meaningful way, but one guy appeared in several of them."
"Why didn't you show me that video when you first found it?"
"Because your sister is the one who sent me the link to it and I assumed that she'd sent you one too."
"Oh. That does seem like a reasonable assumption. She didn't, though, so gimme."
Rin stepped through the transit portal, examining her surroundings curiously for a moment before sealing the area. The situation was oddly calm, given what she'd have expected in a prison of this kind.
"Are you one of the champions?" the girl she was here to see said from the bed in the corner of the room. It was obvious that she hadn't taken her partner shutting down well, as it looked like she hadn't been eating properly or cleaning herself.
"Yes Ciara," Rin answered. "I am, and unfortunately your partner, or faerie, can't continue on as it has been."
"I see. What will become of it, and of me?"
"That's what I'm here to talk to you about, though it appears that you haven't been taking proper care of yourself either. Why is that?"
"I'm without purpose now that my faerie has forsaken me."
"Your partner didn't forsake you. Both courts were infected, and had to be shut down temporarily to clear it. To that end, I'm here to decide how to adjust your own partner, as it was compromised by the infection and was doing things that it shouldn't have been. At the same time, as far as I've been able to tell you did an admirable job keeping it from being the problem it was trying to be."
The girl frowned. "My faerie was sick?"
"Yes, but only a little and it's recovered now. However, no matter what, the echoes you previously collected are gone, those they connected to allowed to choose new hosts to work with. When I turn it back on it will have lost all of the echoes you'd collected, as that wasn't supposed to be in play for many years to come. At the same time, one of its other capabilities may be much more useful in the future. To that end, I'm giving you a choice. I can disconnect you from your partner permanently, or I can activate your partner's other capability so that you can try and make a difference going forward."
"How would I make a difference?"
Rin smiled. "Your partner was able to do some of what it did because it could change connection parameters. I can shift that to allow you to help others by adjusting how their own partners work with them a little. I'm thinking specifically allowing you to identify and help adjust the urges and desires that are pushed onto people by their partners."
Ciara looked confused at that. "I'm not sure that I understand."
"We can't look at everything and instantly know what will cause problems. Generally hosts, humans in this case, are given the task of helping to determine when someone's partner, their faerie, is pushing them to do things that shouldn't be done. Needing to do things that can no longer be done is easy enough for us to spot. Determining that a given push is going to cause more problems than it solves for the host is harder, and your partner is capable of adjusting things to correct those oversights that we can't spot."
"I...can't do that from here, can I?"
"Either way I'll be removing you from here. You'll be the first of several taken from here and left elsewhere, though where I leave you will depend on your decision."
"I'd like to have a purpose again."
Rin nodded, and walked up to Ciara. "Okay then. This will hurt for a moment, and then I'll take you to others that can help you recover from what you've done to yourself."
Taylor and Amy had ended up going out for dinner, as the Dallon kitchen was being pre-cleaned and prepped for holiday cooking. Further, they'd picked up their spider-bots, because they wanted to see how people reacted to them at the 'pet friendly' restaurant. Admittedly, the implication was more 'bring your dog with you' than anything else, but that wasn't anything that the website stated outright.
The reaction to Ackbar and Rodney when they arrived was amusing. Several groups found the two to be adorable, while some others obviously didn't like spiders of any kind. Notably, there was one group that didn't seem to mind spiders, but was obviously wary of their status as tinkertech creations in the wake of powers shutting down and tinkertech failures abound.
Ordering potato smoothies for the spider-bots had been easy enough, the chef apparently finding it an amusing request. They came in a well-presented pair of bowls that the spider-bots wouldn't have any actual appreciation for, but which put on a good show for those recording video and taking pictures. Taylor appreciated that both spider-bots wanted to keep close to the girls while around so many unknowns. Rodney was a little more friendly than Ackbar when kids approached, though that might have something to do with Amy being attacked less frequently with her spider-bot around to see it.
Both spider-bots had behaved themselves, a number of people had successfully pet them without being bitten, one boy was bitten when he tried to kick Rodney, and in general they were more of a hit than a hindrance. Though getting a pile of apologies from the one boy's father while his mother scolded him had been a nice floor show of sorts, with them declining having Taylor or Amy heal the minor wounds left behind.
The boy's sister ended up getting her picture taken with Ackbar on her lap, though the spider-bot would only allow that to happen if the girl was sitting on Taylor's lap at the time. Taylor and Amy ended up getting free dessert to go after they'd paid for their meal, though they weren't sure if that was from the restaurant or one of the other customers. Amy suspected that it had been the family apologizing for the attempted kick, but Taylor thought that it might've been a more general thank you for drawing in a lot more customers than they might've had otherwise.
It was after they'd both headed home that Amy ended up approached by Sarah.
Amy: Figures. Sarah wants me to make cookies. Volunteered to buy all the needed ingredients, but figures that I have access to a kitchen.
Taylor: When, exactly?
Amy: Friday, so that they're available all weekend. Not like I have anything else planned, admittedly, but I've not made a couple of the kinds she wants me to attempt.
Taylor: I could see about helping you.
Amy: That would be appreciated, but do you want to spend all day making cookies?
Taylor: So long as I can bring a pile home for when my father and I do our traditional 'decorate just enough to show holiday spirit' dance on Saturday.
Amy: ...you haven't decorated yet?
Taylor: Nope.
Amy: Why not?
Taylor: I think it's to spite my grandparents, honestly.
Amy: How is not decorating spiting them?
Taylor: I'm told that for years they would put up an entire community's worth of decorations the weekend after Thanksgiving and leave them up until mid-January, with Christmas music played every day.
Based on her shivering, Taylor suspected that Amy saw where the spiting came in.
Chapter 281 Thursday morning started with Taylor and Amy both in the gym, but they planned to split up immediately afterwards. Amy was being dragged shopping with Sarah in order to ensure that the pocket dimension's kitchen was properly supplied with what was needed for making cookies the following day, and Taylor was going to see about dropping gifts off for the other Wards in person, with the exception of Chris. He wasn't outed, so her showing up might be risking his identity, so his gift was being left in his workshop.
Collecting the other three gifts was easy enough, and she'd sent text messages off before going to the gym to ensure that people would be around. The responses that she'd gotten indicated that she wouldn't have any issues dropping things off, though Aisha was annoyed that this was going to keep her from going out as soon as she wanted to. Sadly for her, the planned route had Taylor stopping there last, with Takara being first as they were already somewhat nearby.
Jacob stretched as he woke up, feeling unusually well rested. Granted, he didn't mind, as the past few days had been incredibly hectic. Sadly, today wasn't likely to be any better on that front, and he probably needed to get moving. Especially as he'd apparently forgotten to turn on his alarm clock and had overslept a bit as a result.
His plans were thrown for a loop when he walked out of the bedroom and found a large box in the middle of the floor. The box wouldn't have fit through any of the doors, and he hoped that he'd have noticed someone removing the windows. More likely was that a teleporter had been involved, or Doormaker had recovered and was playing games. Grumbling, he grabbed the envelope attached to the box, which was labeled 'open me' in incredibly fancy handwriting using silver-colored ink.
Actually, once he was holding it he realized that it wasn't silver-colored ink so much as actual silver attached to the paper. Whoever was responsible definitely had his attention now, and he carefully opened the envelope to find an incredibly ornate piece of paper inside. Opening it up, he was thinking that the gold-colored lettering was actual gold.
That didn't stop his eye from twitching as he read the letter.
On the ninth day of Christmas Your secret friend gave to you Nine sleeping hours Eight stacks of forms Seven packets explaining Six bottles of pills Five golden pens Four wine bottles Three fancy knives Two breakfast plates And a Ciara in a nightie
Parahuman abilities of some kind were pretty much assured as well, given that the box fell open as soon as he finished reading the letter. Revealed were several smaller boxes, numbered in a manner that seemed to imply that they were the various other 'gifts' mentioned, and what appeared to be a sleeping young girl wearing a nightie. A young girl that he recognized, and who apparently had her powers back.
Grumbling, he moved over to the box with a seven on it, finding that there were seven packets inside. They looked identical, so he grabbed one and moved over to the box with a two. Inside he found two covered breakfast plates, hot and labeled with a J and a C. Presumably for him and Ciara. Taking his, he moved to the table and put it down, then moved over to the box with a four on it. He just brought the entire box to the table, figuring that he was going to need them.
He made it through half a bottle of wine, not that it would legally be considered 'wine' with the alcohol levels in it, and two thirds of the explanatory packet before Ciara woke up. The girl looked around, obviously confused, before shrugging.
"Morning," he said. "Your breakfast is in the box with a two on it. Up to you if you want water or milk with it."
Ciara frowned. "Would I be permitted to partake in some of the wine?"
"Nope."
"And why not?"
"This stuff is intended for someone with a significantly uprated ability to deal with the alcohol content, and what I'm reading says that you don't qualify. Further, your body is actually that of a child, instead of merely looking like one, and I'm not in the mood to create further problems on that front by allowing you to drink alcohol that a normal adult couldn't handle safely."
Ciara blinked, then nodded. "I see. I apologize for thinking poorly of your decision, as it was obviously more informed than I expected it to be."
"Yeah, well. I've got a pile of paperwork that would apparently result in you being legally declared a child under my care and a recommendation to fill it out. It isn't like I don't have enough trouble with the other two I'm trying to ensure are taken care of despite not being able to be around often enough to do so myself. Then again, it's entirely possible that this is fully intentional, given that you may be the key to making half of my job go away."
"I don't suppose that we can arrange for the initial test of things to be done with the elder Miss Dallon?"
Jacob paused, and watched as Ciara placed her breakfast on the table. "May I ask why you wish to start with her?"
"I imagine that she will need a comparatively minor adjustment, and in doing so we can hopefully make it less likely that she tries to punch someone's head off due to misunderstandings."
Well, when she put it that way it made some sense. Also, now that he was thinking about it, having the girl freak out upon seeing Glaistig Uaine there to do something to her powers would be hilarious too.
Though that did leave him with a question. "Do you still plan on going by Glaistig Uaine?"
Ciara blinked. "Er. I hadn't actually decided, but given the drastic shift in my faerie it may be best to take on a new name."
"Well, give it some thought."
Taylor hadn't expected it, but dropping a gift off with Takara had turned into 'exchange gifts'. The young girl had prepared gifts for both Taylor and Amy, and had trusted that Taylor could get Amy's to her. After that Taylor had found that Missy wasn't home, but her mother was, and took the gift to put it under their tree for Missy to open on Sunday while handing over a single gift for Taylor. Finally, Aisha had been home alone, but seemed less annoyed than the earlier text messages indicated. Taylor didn't try to figure out why, and that became the only stop that she didn't get at least one gift handed to her in return.
Having plenty of time and nothing better to do, she decided to drive home instead of taking the pocket dimension back. As an added bonus, it might confuse the tracking threads if anyone noticed it happening. Sadly, nobody was stupid enough to decide to attack her, so she didn't get to enjoy delivering a beatdown on any such individuals. Instead she made it home without incident, then decided to do some general cleaning. Though part of that was inspired by Ackbar having successfully made a horrible mess.
She didn't know, and wasn't sure if she wanted to know, how the spider-bot had moved the couch across the living room while also flipping it upside-down.
Putting the living room back together didn't take long, but she'd gotten the vacuum out since the couch was out of the way anyway and continued to clean up downstairs. She was considering continuing the effort by heading upstairs when her Maul phone rang.
"Hello," she answered.
"Good morning Miss Hebert," Director Piggot greeted. "I'm sorry to bother you while you're off, but we're up to four individuals that made their way here in order to have you speak with the sources of their powers to discuss how they've changed. I'd rather they not stick around for a week or more, especially as I suspect that more will be coming without having notified anyone through normal channels. Would you have any time today or tomorrow to come in and speak with them?"
Taylor resisted the urge to sigh, because she really should've expected this. "If you can ensure that there's something decent available for lunch then I can come in for early afternoon today."
"If I have to I'll send people to pick up food from elsewhere."
"Then I guess I'll be by in an hour or so."
"Thank you."
Helvetia grumbled as she moved along. This layer of shards all had hosts, which had slowed down her progress significantly. Of course, the fact that they'd set up walkways underneath the layer, in a gap that had formed when things had shifted on the unplanned landing, helped to explain that. It was still incredibly annoying, as most of the shards also had multiple hosts.
The shard before this one had ended up having twin brothers that she was fairly certain had been a single person originally, twin sisters that had gotten wildly differing profiles, three different formerly-human hosts that were beyond saving, seven other humans with varying profile sets, and a cat attached to it. Curiosity had gotten to her, and she'd not disconnected the cat. Its use of its partner to frequently escape and give others hell when they chased it was actually generating more data than expected.
But that was the previous shard. This shard only had a single connection. Which was going to be nice, comparatively speaking. There were profile remnants from now-defunct connections, of course, but that was easy enough to clear out. The one remaining connection was, however, quite oddly formed, and the shard had subsumed far too much of the host's thought processes to be safe. Apparently without trying to take over, just wanting to understand what the host was doing, because the shard stupidly discounted that the host connection was passing through a gravity offloading component.
Well, fixing the connection to allow flight properly was easy enough, adjusting the host connection to be positioned correctly in the process. Restoring the host's normal brain functions and putting some better limits on the botched damage negation trick was a little harder. Mostly the former, as it required not accidentally changing the host's overall brain functions as it was done, and fixing the missing eye happened by accident while working on the brain function aspect. Healing and restoration had flowed through the optic nerve while she'd been distracted with other details. Oh well, the host wasn't likely to complain.
This shard didn't need to be split up, luckily, so it was added to the deployment queue and Helvetia moved on to the next one. Which had at least a dozen connections, several of which were intermingled such that the hosts would likely be getting serious cross contamination and leakage. How the hell had they pulled that off?
Taylor had enjoyed her lunch and then headed to the consultation office area with the two waiting rooms. William was in one of the waiting rooms, though without Sarah out, and three others were in the other waiting room. She made her way into the office and called William first, though was curious as to why one of the others felt familiar but also wrong.
"Good afternoon," William greeted as he entered the room. "Sorry about the lack of warning on actually arriving."
She shrugged. "It isn't that big of a deal, and you weren't the only one."
"Ah. Yes. That would be the case."
"So things changed for you and Sarah when your powers returned?"
He nodded. "Yes, and I'm hoping that you can figure out more than I already have, including why they changed."
"Okay then."
Taylor: Hello there.
[Greetings]
Taylor: I don't suppose you can explain what changed with you and why?
[Agreement. Data. Elaboration. Data]
Taylor: So he can't keep her manifested all the time anymore?
[Clarification]
Taylor: Ah, that makes sense. Thank you.
Popping open a document to make some general notes in was easy enough, and she ensured that she had those straight before nodding and focusing on William again. "So, for why things changed, your snark used far too much energy to maintain Sarah, coupled with being split up into multiple snarks to reduce cross-contamination of profiles reducing the energy available further. You also were running with too much power and not enough restrictions, so new limits were imposed beyond that."
"That makes some sense," he admitted. "But doesn't explain everything."
"I'm getting there. Going forward, you have three options for manifesting her. The first is the least energy intensive, resulting in an incredibly fragile form that has no real powers. You can maintain that so long as you're awake, but it will vanish as soon as you sleep. Next after that is a human-durable state, which you can also maintain so long as you're awake, but has the added restriction of locking you to a much more limited movement ability without causing her to vanish. Speed and distance, you'll need to experiment a bit. Lastly, you can choose to manifest her in the full reality-breaking state that she used to be in all the time, at the cost of being knocked out and rendered entirely immobile. If anyone else moves you then she'll vanish."
Blinking, he considered that for a minute before nodding. "That makes the labels on the mental switch I have make a lot more sense. Or perhaps you've just made it so that my agent is giving me better labels? That's harder to say. Thank you for the clarification, but I don't suppose you know what the two sliders I have are?"
"Er, no, but I can ask. One moment."
Taylor: So, he has sliders that he doesn't know the purpose of. Can you explain them?
Amy: Sliders?
Taylor: Yeah, sliders. I'm thinking that his snark hasn't finished figuring out effective labels yet.
[Data. Elaboration]
Taylor: Oooh. I bet that's going to piss Sarah off, but thank you for the information.
"Apparently," Taylor said, considering the best way to put it. "When you first connected to your snark, you had specific desires in mind. One of those was getting your daughter back, and that was a bit vague. So one of the sliders lets you determine the apparent age she manifests as, from toddler to adult. The other one is actually controlling a sliding scale between 'Sarah' and 'Siberian', appearance-wise. Age has to be picked before she manifests, but you can adjust the appearance slider while she's active."
He blinked several times at that, then nodded. "Okay. That's...well, it's going to take some time to get used to, and Sarah is already threatening me with retribution if I manifest her aged-down."
"She is?"
"Yeah. When I don't manifest her I think she gets to share my senses, and I can hear her talking."
"Oh. Okay."
"Still, thank you for the assistance."
"No problem. Now, I suggest you let me get to the others that already showed up to ask me to talk to their snarks."
"Yes, that does seem like a good idea. Thank you for your time."
Rin stepped out of the transit portal and looked around briefly. She'd actually entirely emptied the 'Birdcage', placing most of the former inmates into individual cells elsewhere, and that hadn't taken very long at all and had only required removing two partners. Arranging for all of the various forms and paperwork had taken longer, though 'breaking' the atmospheric containment and water feeds so that they couldn't throw others down there again anytime soon had been an enjoyable diversion. She'd then enjoyed two hours of relaxation before Coordinator had hit another problem configuration.
This was going to continue for weeks, unfortunately. At the same time, it was far better than wandering around an empty world with nothing to do.
"Hello there," the man sitting on the bed in the room she'd entered greeted. "You here to kill me?"
"I wasn't planning on it," Rin replied. "I assume you've had some problems in that department?"
"Not really, but I wouldn't complain if you were. I don't suppose that you're here to break me out instead?"
Rin shook her head. "No, I'm not here to break you out. Your partner, the source of your powers, was using access to things that it will no longer have the ability to access. Which means that your powers need to be adjusted to compensate, or removed entirely."
"Take them. Haven't been able to use them properly ever since I was captured anyway, which screws up my thinking something fierce, and the sheer amount of damage that swapping powers between people does mentally means that there's no good reason for them to let me experiment with whatever you'd give me in exchange. Besides, not having the drive to use the blasted ability is actually quite pleasant."
"Are you certain? I haven't even explained what options you have for the adjustments."
"Lady, I turned myself in after I realized what I'd done to my own kid when I swapped her powers with a punk's. I consider both of their deaths to be on my head, even if I didn't directly kill either of them. Hell, the only reason that you're here talking to me is because the guards realized that my powers and the toughness they imparted would be gone before I did and got me on suicide watch in time. Which admittedly was because my powers shutting down let me fall asleep properly for the first time in weeks."
She nodded, tapping into the dormant connection to his partner in order to see how he was really feeling about things. "Okay then." Reaching into a hidden pocket, she created a small glass and filled it before pulling it out and holding it out for him. "I'll recommend drinking this to make the process go more smoothly."
He gave her a look, then shrugged and downed the contents of the glass. Looking it over, he smirked. "Do I get to keep the glass too?"
"If you'd like."
"You do know that as soon as you're gone that I'm going to break this and try and slit my own throat, right?"
Rin smiled. "I doubt that."
The glass vanished on its own a few minutes later, and she idly wondered how the guards would react to finding that the man had died.
Taylor sighed as Jess walked out of the room, the last of the four that had come looking for information. She'd ended up with a fixed number of 'slots' that she had to build ahead of time, and the 'valid/not valid' she was getting turned out to be 'would this last more than five minutes as a biological organism'. The only slot that she'd had filled was a copy of her own body, which she apparently used on a regular basis even though she could walk now.
Being told that it was the ultimate 'safe sex' option for her had been more information than Taylor had needed or wanted.
Jess had been more annoyed by the indirect time limit changes. She could only maintain a projected form until it ran out of energy, once it fell asleep or would end up too hungry then it would vanish automatically, and they couldn't eat to replenish energy. Not that they could eat to replenish energy, but apparently her little bit of experimentation showed that she was averaging two hours less per projection.
That aside, Taylor compiled her list of things that she'd learned that were of more general use and submitted them, then ensured that the room was locked up and left for home. Upon arriving, she found that her father had made it home and headed down to find out how his day had gone. Ackbar trailed behind her, having been stuck in her room while she was away.
Amy: Just so you know, we picked up a lot more than just cookie-making supplies.
Taylor: Oh?
Amy: Yeah. Sarah insisted, a few frozen meals as a just in case, a selection of canned food that should last quite a while, and some additional dry food items.
Taylor: Ah. I guess that makes sense. She insist on paying too?
Amy: Yep.
Taylor: Well, it won't hurt to have more options in there.
Friday morning Taylor and Amy successfully slept in, hitting the gym a couple of hours later than usual. At that point Taylor had handed over Amy's gift from Takara, but by agreement they weren't starting on cookies until after lunch. Instead, when they were done in the gym they headed to their homes for a bit. Taylor ended up cleaning up her room and the upstairs hall, then dug out and cleaned up the box of Christmas decorations so that it would be available for the following day without creating a new mess to be cleaned up.
Lunch itself ended up being a trip to Fugly's. They headed there from their own homes on their mopeds at Amy's insistence, on the basis that if anyone was going to be stupid then they were more likely to do so without the much more protective minivan being involved. Sadly for Amy's apparent desire to deal with an idiot or two, nobody bothered them, and they both made it back home again without any issues.
Shortly after that they met up in the pocket dimension. Some dough was made and thrown in the fridge for later, as it needed to chill a little, and then they got started on the next recipe.
Helvetia sighed as she sat there, taking a break. Mostly she was waiting for the already queued up deployments to occur so that she could get to the next layer in, but things were slightly delayed due to a higher-priority task involving several moons being shifted. Why they were being shifted hadn't been distributed, just that they were and deployments were being slowed down so as to not interfere with the process.
This was after the deployment shards were all suddenly tasked with moving several shards out of a specific instance of the star system. Something big was going on, and she had no clue what it was. Just that high-level orders that she couldn't override were involved. Granted, she could still do some work despite the layer of undeployed shards that were in the way, but she had directives to physically examine each shard anyway and thus it made more sense to just wait for the surface layer to be cleared away.
Doubling back would be far more annoying in the long run, and this was a justified reason to take more than a ten minute break.
It was almost half an hour into her unexpected break when a transit portal opened and Rin stepped out, carrying a couple of small bags. "Hello Helvetia."
"Hi Rin," Helvetia greeted. "How'd your last stop go?"
"Annoyingly. The host was in a coma unrelated to their partner, which meant that I couldn't even check on them with their partner's connection. I ended up talking with their doctors instead."
"At least you accomplished what you needed to, right?"
Rin held out one of the bags. "I also got you some food from that Earth. A selection of candies in particular."
Blinking, Helvetia grinned and took the bag. "Thank you!"
"You're welcome. But why are you so dormant?"
"Moons."
"Oh. Right, that would be slowing down deployments, wouldn't it?"
"Yep, and I ran out of exposed shards. So, did you steal the candy?"
Rin sighed. "No, I did not steal the candy. Or the spices for myself. The medical facility offered to get me something in gratitude for the information that I provided."
"Ah. Nice of them."
"It was, yes."
Somehow, and Taylor wasn't sure how, they'd avoided making a mess while making peanut blossoms. Sugar cookies had been a bit worse due to needing to roll out and cut dough, which involved intentionally spreading flour, before sprinkling sugar on the cookies, but they'd not made too much of a mess there. They only had one sheet that they'd screwed up, burning the cookies on it. Still, one sheet of heavily-burnt cookies wasn't that bad, and the following eight sheets went fine.
The big problem was the chocolate chip cookies, which just didn't want to cook properly for reasons neither girl could figure out. They'd double-checked everything they could think of and all they were getting was a horrible mess, the cookies seemingly going from 'not cooked enough' straight to 'burned too much' in a matter of at most thirty seconds. None of the ingredients were out of date, they'd dismantled the oven to recalibrate the temperature sensor in the back to correct for a half a degree discrepancy, and when all was said and done they had a single cookie that was edible.
"I give up," Amy said as they cleaned up after the last burnt sheet. "We can make another round of peanut blossoms, then call ourselves done. If anyone complains then we request that they find a proper thinker to help us figure out why we can't get the chocolate chip cookies to come out okay."
"Works for me," Taylor agreed. "Eric will just have to deal with not having chocolate chip cookies."
"Who told you that Eric wanted them? I don't think I'd mentioned that part."
"Sarah put initials next to each cookie type on the list she copied."
"Oh. Right, I'd forgotten."
The last run of cookies went smoothly, but cleaning up took more time than they'd have liked. That was okay though, because it gave the final cookies time to cool before they were packaged up. Of course, then they had to clean up the drying racks. Most of the dishes were left to dry on their own, to be put away when they next ventured into the kitchen, before they dropped most of the cookies off at the Dallon household. Taylor took a single container of each type of cookie home with her after that.
Fortuna smirked as the portal opened and an asian-looking woman stepped out. The tea had, as predicted, finished steeping just in time for the woman to arrive.
"Good evening," the woman greeted. "I see you were expecting me."
"Of course," Fortuna replied. "My agent knew that the one sending you out would realize that I needed a visit. I'm Fortuna, though if you prefer then you can call me Contessa instead."
"Fortuna will work fine. My name is Rin, the other names I'm known by are either impossible for you to pronounce or not properly descriptive of my human personality."
"Would you like some tea?"
"I'd like that, thank you."
Tea was poured and both women sipped theirs for a moment, before Rin sighed. "As pleasant as this is, we do need to talk about your partner. It was never intended to go to a host, and Coordinator hadn't paid it proper attention on its first pass. The rules it's operating under are far too broad to be permitted to stand as-is, and apparently it's abused the lack of rules on communication to let out some privileged information."
Fortuna nodded. "Yes, and I knew that it would only be a matter of time before that changed. I just wasn't expecting a visit until about half an hour ago."
"The question is, what do we do about it? Your partner likes you, and you seem to get along with it, so disconnection wouldn't be recommended. At the same time, you need to have additional restrictions put in place for a number of reasons."
"Limit the number of paths I can have running, so that I need to be more careful with the ones I choose to focus on. Limit the scope of each path, perhaps to a single version of Earth each, or to examining things for no more than a year out."
Rin shook her head. "Sadly, your partner doesn't actually support me applying any of those restrictions with how it functions."
"Really?"
"The entire time you've been connected to your partner it has run a single path at a time. It automatically combines the paths you perceive into a single larger one. Multiple dimensions is part of how it functions at the core, and time limitations mean nothing when you can just have a path constantly working towards a given end. No, as much as you and it detest them, I believe that I'm going to have to add some blind spots. Your modeling techniques would then be useful again, and you'll be able to refine them further."
Fortuna frowned. "Blind spots are incredibly annoying."
"Yes, they are, and you do a wonderful job of working around them anyway. The only question is, what to put in as blind spots. Obviously, having you predict what myself and my cohorts will do is problematic, so we'll be included, but you'll rarely be interacting with us now."
"So of course you want to give me something more annoying to deal with."
"Very much so. At the same time, I'm thinking that it should be far less static as well. Say, every lunar cycle a selection of those you've interacted with in the previous cycle will become blind spots, with you not knowing who they are until you notice that they've become blind spots. There will be a collection of other conditions, but you'll need to figure them out on your own, and your partner will be forbidden from revealing them."
"I see. That sounds incredibly frustrating."
Rin smiled, and it wasn't a pleasant one. "Of course, what better incentive for you and your partner to work around it? I will, however, leave some loopholes. Myself and my associates will always be blind spots, but otherwise exceptions will be made for the safety of yourself, your family, and children in general. Under the age of twelve will be a general exception, and they'll become less and less of an override as they go from twelve to sixteen. Once they hit sixteen they'll be much more on their own."
Fortuna nodded. "I can accept that. It isn't like I have much of a choice."
"Similarly, I think I'll leave those that you feel are family as exceptions to the routine. At the same time, though, anyone you consider family that is looking to surprise you will be a blind spot for purposes of the surprise. Provided, of course, that said surprise won't cause safety issues. If I can figure out a good way to implement one before I'm done then I may include a general non-harmful surprise clause."
"That sounds annoying as well, but understandable."
"And just to make things more interesting for you, I'll be dropping a message into the PRT communication system to inform a large number of people of pertinent details."
Fuck. That was going to wipe out Fortuna's thought of 'hope nobody notices for a couple of months' before it even got off the ground. And the way Rin was smirking? The bitch knew it.
Chapter 282 Saturday morning started at home, the gym being intentionally skipped for a couple of days. Instead Taylor did her best to sleep in, failing miserably when she had to get up to use the toilet. Grumbling a bit, she ended up gathering some of her gifts from where she'd stashed them, then prepped some oatmeal for breakfast. She didn't actually cook it, though, figuring that she'd wait for her father to start moving in probably an hour or two.
Amy pulled off sleeping almost an hour longer than Taylor had, but was apparently the last one up there. Making a pile of cookies had meant that she was able to get away with not helping with everything else that was going on. She still had to help with a few things, but apparently it was mostly going to be shuffling things between houses so that they didn't have to do things the long way.
Amy: Hey, Mark figured out why the chocolate chip cookies were giving us so much trouble.
Taylor: Oh?
Amy: The chocolate chips were 'tinker enhanced' for baking. Except that since powers went away they absorb a bunch of heat, then hit critical and release it in a burst into the rest of the cookie.
Taylor: ...really?
Amy: Yeah. There's a news article he just showed me, I'll send you a link.
Taylor looked over the article, which even had a video showing the 'critical point' being hit. The chocolate chips went from 'perfectly fine' to 'literally on fire'. The latter didn't happen as dramatically when in batter due to the energy going somewhere other than the other chocolate chips, or so the article claimed. Which was probably a good thing, because the metal pan they'd been heating the things in for the demonstration had partially melted.
At the same time, they were apparently still safe to eat so long as your internal body temperature didn't exceed a hundred and seventy degrees fahrenheit. Above that temperature they started doing the 'absorb energy' bit that was causing the problem, until the effect suddenly collapsed and released it all.
Taylor: Well, at least it wasn't us being idiots that caused the cookies to fail.
Amy: That was my thought as well.
Zion grumbled a bit about sloppy construction shards as he corrected a few things in one of the moon-launchers. Yes, when working with hosts they frequently hid things from them. That was a wonderful way to get them thinking about how things actually worked, occasionally got them entirely new methods to accomplish things, and ensured that problematic technology was harder for the hosts to create.
Doing that on a stealth moon launcher that you'd been informed you would not be remaining connected to was unacceptable. He was going to have to examine the shards and either fix the problems with them or, if it was just them being stupid, assign them some punishment duty. If he remembered correctly, none of the shards in question liked building things that weren't perfect, so maybe building some 'ruins' from previous host species on another planet in the star system would be a good task for them. Nearly-but-not-quite functional technology, intentionally aged buildings, incomplete texts...
Finalizing the standalone Sting system, he started the device's self-tests. He couldn't actually test the functionality safely, of course, but this was a known-good design and the self-tests were comprehensive. If time-consuming to run through. He used the downtime to check on the stellar launcher, which wasn't a known-good design but was coming along nicely, before reaching out to the shards that had gotten sloppy on the moon-launcher. It wouldn't be long before he knew which way he was going with them.
Breakfast had been pleasant, if low-key, followed by Taylor and her father putting up their collection of decorations. A stand-up tree 'pillow' on top of a stool with a small light string wrapped around it served as their tree, the presents going around the stool. They'd had a better 'tree' before, but it had fallen apart and been replaced by the pillow on a lark years ago. Sure, they could've gotten a proper replacement, but this was good enough. The small collection of ornaments they had, originally for a small tree, now got hung up on light-duty chains strung between various points.
Ackbar got a bow tied around him for fun, which he initially seemed to dislike but quickly ignored in favor of investigating a couple of the ornaments hanging from the chain along the railing going upstairs. Those were, for a number of reasons, the least likely to be broken by bumping or falling. The fragile ornaments, as well as a couple that had too much sentimental value to risk, were in much more secure locations.
With all of that done they'd then prepared the holiday breakfast they'd be having the next day. It took some initial effort, including double-checking that none of the ingredients being used were parahuman-enhanced in any way, after which it got covered and placed into the fridge. They'd throw it in the oven in the morning for an easy but tasty breakfast. A quick lunch of sandwiches was then followed by making a couple pans of lasagna, most of which would end up packed away for easy meals over the next few weeks.
Dragon smiled as she read the card from Mother, including an open invitation to visit. Sadly, things were far too hectic for that right now. Her own powers hadn't returned, but she didn't need them to understand anything she'd already figured out. Which had her going over a large number of things in order to ensure that nothing was going to suddenly explode. Besides, if she did visit Mother she wanted it to be in one of her currently-inaccessible human bodies.
Oh well. On to the next task, which was examining the tunnel that the Elite were still building between Brockton Bay and Albany. The original purpose for it was long since obsolete with the teleporter network having proven to be useful, so they were switching gears to run rail lines down it instead. An entry point and station was being constructed at the Brockton Bay end already, the goal being to be able to run freight and passenger trains straight from the coast. Brockton Bay's port becoming more active again was certainly going to help with that, and the access to the tunnel would only help the port's recovery.
The tunnel boring machine itself was offline, as nobody wanted to risk it failing catastrophically while powers weren't working, but she needed to ensure that there wasn't something parahuman-related keeping the tunnel that was already constructed stable. It hadn't been the highest priority, but her schedule had shifted dramatically with the emptying of the Birdcage. No longer needing to monitor it or arrange for things like the normal holiday delivery had freed up time for other tasks.
When her powers did return, and she regained access to her human bodies, she was definitely taking a day off to just sleep in one of them. She'd found that to be oddly relaxing, if a seemingly inefficient use of her time.
Amy: Hey Taylor.
Taylor: Yeah?
Amy: Your uncle just requested permission to visit us on short notice, via our beacon.
Taylor: Huh. Any idea why?
Amy: He made sure Vicky was home, and it's something to do with 'work' for him, but that's all I know. Want to come over to greet him?
Taylor: Let me double-check with my father first.
"Hey dad," Taylor said, getting her father's attention. "Uncle Jacob is apparently going to be visiting the Dallons shortly for work reasons. Mind if I pop over?"
He looked at the lasagna that was ready to go into the oven, but not yet cooking. They'd do that later anyway. "I think I'll join you, if you don't mind. Though we'll either need to bring Ackbar with us or leave him in your room."
"Might as well bring him along, I think. Let him spend a little time with Rodney today, and maybe they'll be better behaved seeing each other tomorrow."
"Sounds good to me."
Ten minutes later they were waiting with Amy and Vicky. Ackbar was examining the proper tree that the Dallons had up, while Rodney kept poking the bow tied around Ackbar. Amy had thought it was cute and was planning on giving Rodney a bow later.
"So have you guys had any broken ornaments with Ackbar?" Vicky asked.
"Nope," Taylor replied.
"Huh. Got lucky with the way they were positioned?"
"We only put decorations up today," Taylor admitted.
"And we put the not-so-breakable ones in the places that Ackbar can get to them like we normally would," her father added. "Though in the past that was mostly so that half-asleep people walking past them wouldn't knock them over and break them, admittedly."
"Oh," Vicky said. "Huh. We lost three ornaments before we realized that the fragile ones needed to be high enough that Rodney couldn't get to them."
Taylor snorted. "I'm not sure that's actually an option with Ackbar."
"And why not?"
"Webs."
Vicky didn't get a chance to respond before a portal opened. Taylor watched as her uncle stepped out, followed by a teenage girl in a green dress with red bows and ribbons. Her blond hair was done up in braided pigtails, tied with more red ribbons, and her green eyes were behind glasses that contained a tinkertech display linked to a phone hidden somewhere in the dress.
"Taylor!" Jacob said, once he realized that she was there. "Nobody told me that you'd be here!"
Taylor smiled. "Amy told us that you were coming. It was easy enough to pop over to see you, given that you're once again busy working over a holiday."
"I opted to come along as I wouldn't be likely to see you for weeks otherwise," her father added. "Still, you're here for a reason, you want to get that out of the way?"
Jacob nodded. "Yes, that would be a good idea." He then turned to the girl. "Introductions, then. Everyone, this is Ciara, cape name undecided."
"I'm not sure I want one," Ciara added.
"Ciara, these are my niece Taylor Hebert, her father and my brother-in-law Danny Hebert, Amy Dallon, and Victoria Dallon." He then looked down. "And at our feet are Ackbar and Rodney, who are apparently still protective of Taylor and Amy."
"Pleased to meet you," Taylor said, along with similar things from the others, though she was starting to put some pieces together. Several things didn't line up, though.
"We're here because Ciara can identify, and adjust, the urges that parahumans have from their powers. We're hoping that Victoria here is willing to allow her urges to be checked and adjusted away from needing to hit people."
Ciara was frowning as she looked between them. "Perhaps I should help Taylor and Amy as well."
That had them blinking, but Danny recovered first. "Why?"
Ciara gestured at them. "Because their faerie is running conflicting urges. They desire to hit things, as well as to repair them. Coming from different faeries would not be a problem, each urge dealt with individually, but coming from a single one creates a conflict. The urge to hit, but not to damage what they could possibly repair, drastically limiting what the urge to hit will push them towards. To that end, I suspect that it is pushing them to hit things that aren't able to be repaired by their faerie. While trees and other plants are likely candidates, they're most likely to focus on people. Likely those that are annoying in some fashion, I think?"
"For fuck's sake," Carol grumbled as she came into the room. "Now there are three of them with an urge to hit people?" She then sighed as she looked at Ciara. "Right, sorry about the language. I'm Carol Dallon."
"Ciara, and yes. Though two of them are obviously unintentional."
"Fun. Well, if Amy is willing then feel free to work with her, but I obviously can't speak for Taylor."
"Hold up," Vicky said, getting everyone's attention. "There's no way I'm letting her do anything to Amy or Taylor until we know that what she does is safe."
Carol raised her eyebrow. "Meaning?"
"Meaning that I'm going first, and then Amy and Taylor are confirming that things are okay with me."
"Oh. I'd parental veto that and insist that they test with someone else, but you've repeatedly reminded me that you're legally an adult."
"Actually," Jacob said. "We tested with Burnscar, followed by a couple of kids who triggered recently with an intense desire to kill each other. That was yesterday. Coming here is the 'only make a small change' test at best."
"I'm still going first," Vicky insisted.
Ciara looked at Jacob, who nodded, then stepped forward to stand in front of Vicky. "We've discovered that I need to make skin contact, so you'll need to allow me through your force field."
"Okay."
Vicky held her hand out, and Ciara took it before closing her eyes. She tilted her head, frowned, and then stood there for a few moments. That was followed by shaking her head, grumbling something unintelligible, and then sighing. "You like hitting people far too much, you know that?"
"Er, okay, I guess. Is that important?"
"Your faerie is stubborn because the desire came from you more than from it, but I believe that I've found a compromise."
Vicky frowned as Ciara let go of her hand. "What kind of compromise?"
"An alternate limitation. You will still desire to hit people, but only if they've recently attacked you. At the same time, the urge will be correspondingly stronger, because it's triggered instead of semi-constant."
"Oh." Vicky then turned to Amy. "So, can you confirm anything?"
Amy shrugged and Taylor felt her reach out to Vicky's snark.
Amy: So, Vicky wants to know what Ciara just changed. Or rather, if she told the truth about what she just changed.
[Query]
Amy: Yes, her.
[Data. Query]
Amy: Thank you, and no, I don't think Vicky is willing to turn on her strength enhancement so that you can push her to punch Ciara.
[Annoyance]
"Yeah," Amy said. "Your snark is pissed off at being made to change, and wants you to turn on your enhanced strength so that you can punch Ciara, but it says that she did what she says she did."
"Perhaps I missed something," Ciara said with a frown. "It shouldn't be able to push her to attack me?"
"You only made it need her to be attacked," Taylor corrected. "You didn't define what an attack means, so I believe it classified changing it against its wishes as an attack."
"Oh. That's more clever than I expected it to be. I might've figured that out if my faerie sight hadn't changed so much, and I don't have the ability to define what it sees as an attack. It'll clear out by morning either way."
Vicky nodded. "So don't turn on my enhanced strength and flight until you're gone or morning. Good to know. Now then, I have to know, did I just let Glaistig Uaine mess with my powers?"
Ciara frowned. "I...went by that name, yes. But I was delusional at best and didn't take my faerie leaving me very well. That forced me to realize that I wasn't my faerie, and that by extension others weren't their own faeries. I'd built up far too much on that delusion."
"I honestly don't know if she's on her way to another mental breakdown or still in the middle of one," Jacob admitted. "She's only this functional because she latched onto the idea of being useful to the faerie court again, desiring to have a purpose in the thing that had dominated her life up until then, but that's only going to keep her going for so long before downtime gets to her. Worse, of course, will likely be when she doesn't have anyone to help and her own urges get to her."
"We don't know what my urges are, as I can't evaluate my own faerie."
"Why don't we ask?" Taylor offered.
"Because I have to expect the power interactions to be a possible headache," Jacob answered. "Our own powers interact oddly enough, and there were theories as to what might happen if you ran into her before things went crazy."
"She may very well have been able to break my worldview," Ciara answered. "Talking to my faerie without talking to me would've been a shock, and I don't know if I'd have taken it well. It's possible that I would've merely come up with an explanation for the effect that made sense to me, but I honestly don't know. Maybe I'd have rationalized it as her talking to the faerie and not to the role the faerie was playing?"
"Not to mention if reaching out to her that way would have resulted in her being able to 'claim' your powers. She only needed to make contact with a manifestation of powers before, after all, and that could've counted."
Amy nodded. "That all makes sense, but we've already connected to her snark. Lightly, just enough to say 'hello, we see you there' basically, just to keep ourselves from going into a 'talk to it' distracted state. And if she does try and fix our urges then that's likely going to jump into a full connection anyway."
"Right," Jacob said, sighing. "In my defense, we did not come here for this. We just wanted to test on Victoria. Hell, I just got her dropped on me Thursday."
"She looks like she's been with you for at least a week," Taylor said. "Well fitted dress and tinkertech equipment?"
"The PRT has a wonderful collection of clothing and technology just sitting in storage," Ciara said. "Over fifty copies of this dress alone in different sizes, though Jacob insisted on the glasses." Here the girl blushed. "They both let him tell me to not talk about faeries around those who don't know his own secrets as well as help me keep myself from eating too much by reminding me not to eat constantly."
Vicky tilted her head at that. "Not eat constantly?"
Jacob sighed. "She never needed to watch how much she ate as whatever excess she consumed was absorbed by her powers. Now she can eat herself sick without even realizing it."
"Oh."
"Still, might as well check with her powers if most of the possible damage has already not happened."
Taylor nodded and reached out to Ciara's snark before Amy could.
Taylor: Hello there.
[Greetings]
Taylor: I don't suppose that you're willing to tell us what urges you give Ciara, or anything else about how you've changed recently?
Amy: Oooh, right, that's not a bad question either.
[Data. Elaboration. Assertion. Data. Query]
Data
[Acknowledgement. Proposal]
Disagreement. Data
[Agreement. Proposal]
Acceptance
Taylor and Amy both flinched in momentary pain as a significant burst of data came across the connection.
"Is something wrong?" Carol asked, apparently having noticed the flinch.
"Her snark decided to get things over with," Amy answered. "Tweaked our snark-granted urges a bit more than expected, actually."
"I hadn't originally considered that other urges were problematic," Ciara added. "They'd have eventually run into issues with the biological control urges as well. Now those should be pulled back to merely using them, which healing should suffice for, instead of pushing for riskier and riskier experimentation. As for the hitting things versus repairing them side of things, they should now only care about fixing things that are 'worthwhile'. Which I think is going to be 'interesting' or 'deemed useful by them'."
"As for her," Taylor said, gesturing at Ciara. "She's got four urges in total. One is to fix up any problematic urges she finds in others, but that only kicks in when she knows about urges. Another is to get mental help for herself, in whatever form may be available. Third is one that's mostly dormant right now but will make her restless if she stays in one place too long, or perhaps more accurately doesn't see enough new people for too long a period of time. I suspect that one is to allow her to find others with problematic urges without actually including an urge to find them. Lastly, there's an urge to keep herself looking harmless, which I think she's currently taking as 'look cute' but isn't that specific."
"Huh," Jacob said. "I guess that helps explain her reaction to some of the things that were discarded when deciding on an initial clothing selection. Though I don't see how that explains the four knives she's carrying."
"She said that I have an urge to look harmless," Ciara answered. "Not be harmless. And you insisted on the first knife anyway, just in case, on the basis that nobody we were going to see would find a knife threatening in the least but that it could help if we ran into trouble."
"So I did, yes, and I guess that makes sense. I don't suppose we should check anyone else while we're here?"
Ciara shrugged. "Mrs. Dallon here should be fine. Is anyone else here?"
"Mark!" Carol called. "Come let the former Glaistig Uaine take a look at you."
"She's taking this well," Taylor noted.
"I think it's in part because she already had a bottle of very strong alcohol," Vicky replied. "She'll probably have a small breakdown when she sobers back up."
"Oh."
Mark came into the room, looking cautious. Ciara looked him over, and before he could say anything she turned back to Jacob. "He should be fine as well."
"Okay then," Jacob said, before he turned to look at the rest of them. "Well, thank you for your time. This was obviously much more productive than I originally expected."
"I'll submit a write-up of everything I noted shortly," Tayor said.
"Thank you. But I think we should get going, as we have two more stops to make today."
Ciara pouted at that comment. "Do we really need to visit the doctor?"
"Yes, we do, as you never even got a basic check-over before you were incarcerated. I'd have Taylor or Amy check you over, but they can't be tied to the paperwork we need to finish up."
Helvetia sighed as she stepped through the transit portal, returning from her trip. She'd run into a shard connected to hosts that had active profiles that she couldn't resolve the issues with remotely. Which meant talking to the hosts to find out what they wanted to do about it. Two of the five connected to the shard had opted to be safely disconnected. A third had insisted that their profile be left unchanged, refusing to accept anything less. The last two were younger and had been reverted to their original configuration but left connected for later possible triggering.
That meant splitting this shard three ways. One for each of the kids, which would be the larger pieces when she was done. The last was for the stubborn fool, who'd argued to the point where she was allowed to 'have fun'. The idiot wasn't keeping his original profile, that was a certainty. The shard had specced into direct manipulation of host connections in various ways, with the stubborn fool having the ability to puppet other hosts through their connections. Which wouldn't be a significant problem, except that said puppeting damaged the connections.
No, she was going to set his profile to involuntary dumping him into technology. Specifically, one of the stupid little digital pets that his two kids had. He'd be trapped until they let the pet 'die', at which point he would be released for a day or two before his partner would dump him into another one. Let him deal with that for however long it took Rin to get to the 'second look' list. Perhaps by then he'd be more amiable to actually discussing options for his partner?
Or maybe Rin and/or Coordinator would decide to leave him that way. Whatever, so long as he wasn't holding things up anymore.
Taylor shook her head as she exited the portal in the hospital. She'd agreed to join Amy for a bit of holiday healing, hopefully getting people home to spend Christmas itself with their families. That had, however, resulted in being made to put on something more 'festive' than the casual clothing that she'd been wearing originally. Which had gotten Vicky involved, and that had somehow ended up with an 'ugly Christmas sweater' being pulled out.
It was probably better than the dress that was offered initially, at least.
"So are they expecting us?" Taylor asked as the portal closed.
"I called ahead," Amy answered. "They said to head straight down to the emergency room when we arrived."
"Okay then, lead the way."
They headed down to the emergency room, meeting a nurse along the way. Apparently there'd been a fire in an apartment building that morning and they had a bunch of people with varying levels of injuries from it. It didn't take long for the two to start working their way through the injured. Taylor started with a couple of kids with severe burns while Amy was working on their likely grandfather.
It took almost two hours to clear the emergency room, though a lot of that was due to families being very vocal in thanking them. After that they took twenty minutes to deal with children that hadn't been in the emergency room, taking care of three of the four that were in there. The last had a severe concussion, and they still didn't want to risk touching brains. That was followed by another hour to pass through the rest of the hospital. When they were done they accepted thanks and some cupcakes from the staff, then departed.
Amy opted to join Taylor at home for dinner, as lasagna sounded better than 'whatever you can scrounge together around the rest of the preparations'. They invited Vicky to join them, since she'd been running between the Dallon and Pelham houses instead of Amy, but the older girl had already escaped home to spend some time with Dean.
"Think your parents have eaten anything?" Danny asked when they were done and packing up leftovers. "Because I'm sure we can spare a serving or two."
"I doubt that they'll take the time to sit down and eat it," Amy admitted. "That and things tend to turn into 'snack all day' anyway, which is part of why it becomes 'whatever you can scrounge up'. Supposedly it was different years ago, before grandparents passed away, but I don't know if that was before I was adopted or not. If it happened after I was adopted then I don't recall it."
"I suppose that makes sense, and I guess that there will be plenty of leftovers after tomorrow as well?"
"Enough to last until the new year without needing to cook at a minimum, yes. With some of our enhanced appetites, though, it might not last much past that."
"And you're going to try and send some home with us too," Taylor added.
"Well, Neil and Sarah probably will, yes."
"Luckily the lasagna isn't filling our freezer," Danny said, shaking his head. "Well, I'd tell you to be safe getting home, but you don't even have to travel outside."
"I'll tell you to not forget the sweater that I was forced into," Taylor said. "I don't need to keep it."
Amy smirked at that. "Are you sure you don't want to hold onto it long enough to burn it?"
"I'm sure."
"Pity. Oh well, it can go back into whichever closet Vicky found it in."
Clive mentally sighed as he sat on a small asteroid. He'd originally been out here without the host mental emulation up, but then Rin had sent a question his way. That had restarted the host emulation, and that left him bored. Maintaining the protective barrier around the stellar launcher construction wasn't exactly interesting work. Useful, yes, but not interesting. Still, it was better than wandering aimlessly with nothing to do and nobody to see, so he probably shouldn't complain too much.
At least none of the construction shards were acting up, as far as he could tell. They didn't want to stay connected to the abomination that was being constructed. If, and it was a big 'if', this worked then it was going to be incredibly energetic. Active connections would likely be torn to shreds in the backlash, and who knew what kind of feedback would be generated. No, they were ensuring that this was being built correctly just to be done with the entire concept.
Reinforcing the asteroid, which was the current 'anchor' for the barrier, might need to be considered if this took more than another couple of days. It was starting to degrade a bit, and no adjustments to the positioning of his sixteen projection tentacles would help there. The asteroid would've fallen apart entirely by now if he was running the host form emulation, of course, if only due to the limitations that form had in several other respects.
A hole in the barrier was opened up for another construction shard to connect in, this one responsible for some of the frankly ridiculous standalone copy of the Sting system. Applying that to the entire stellar body was going to create some interesting side effects. The star would stop burning pretty much instantly, no longer capable of fusion or fission for the duration, yet wouldn't collapse either as it wouldn't be capable of it either. It was entirely possible that the entire thing would go instantly dark, which would be alarming enough on its own.
Accelerating to significant fractions of the speed of light an instant later was where the true backlash was going to come in. Half of the star system was going to be obliterated pulling that off, and hopefully nothing of any importance was sitting in several light-years to either side of the effect. If anything was then it would be destroyed in some fashion. How, exactly, the energy of the entire thing shifting course once, assuming that worked, was going to manifest when the whole thing fell apart was entirely unknown and unpredictable without more information.
He was hoping that he didn't get tasked with sticking around to watch in an attempt to get that information for future uses of the setup.
Chapter 283 Joey yawned as he returned from the bathroom on Sunday morning. It was far too early to wake others up for Christmas festivities, and he mostly cared about visiting Riley in the afternoon anyway. So instead he was going to crawl back into bed and hope that he could get back to sleep. Or at least that was the plan before he noticed that there was a light on in his bedroom. Something that shouldn't be the case because he'd not turned any lights on, not needing one in his room and the bathroom having a stupid little nightlight so that you didn't need to blind yourself in the middle of the night.
Frowning, he attempted to activate his phone in order to summon aid. He'd left it next to his bed, of course, because why would he need it to go to the bathroom? Sadly, his attempts failed. The phone seemed to be there, and was sending him information and notification just fine, but it was ignoring his attempts to send information to it. Which was an interesting trick, but he didn't like it. Thinking, he considered what else he might be able to do.
"Just come in here," a female voice called from his room. "I've got the hallway locked down with sound-proof barriers so that you can't leave anyway, and I'll only take a few minutes of your time."
He looked down the hallway at the stairs, only for a barrier to flicker into visibility for a moment. A barrier that was just past his bedroom door, and when he focused in the other direction he could see another one just past the bathroom door. The combination meant that there were no obvious ways out of the hallway that were meaningful, as the bathroom window didn't open and his bedroom was where the mysterious person was waiting for him.
Sighing, he figured that whoever had decided to pay him a visit could've just killed him without revealing that they were there. He was still cautious as he entered his room, to find that the light was actually from a portable lamp. One sitting next to a woman that he didn't recognize that had taken a seat at his desk.
"About time," the woman said. "I was going to leave you a letter, but since you were up anyway I decided that it would be better to explain things to you in person."
"Explain what, exactly?" he questioned.
"What I had to do to your partner, or I suppose from your point of view your powers."
That sounded unfortunately ominous, and he wasn't sure how to take that. Or, for that matter, why this woman was here telling him this. Assuming she was a woman. "Who, or what, are you?"
"My name is Rin, and I'm known by a number of possible terms. What's important right now is that I've spent the better part of the last day working with your partner. I suggest you sit down for some of this." Eyeing her warily, Joey did that, sitting on his bed. She continued as soon as he had. "Now then, your partner allowed you to make storage spaces within it, but one of those you provided with access to said storage spaces was using it as a workshop."
"Which was probably at least a third of them."
"Only a quarter, as far as I could tell. Still, all but one of them were lucky and weren't trapped inside. The last one, however, was trapped, and they were knocked unconscious while they were working when their own partner shut down and stopped maintaining their altered form. Their project destabilized shortly afterwards, creating a sizable explosion and damaging your partner."
Joey groaned. "Great. What does that mean for me?"
Rin handed him a piece of paper. "I've 'evicted' all of your other 'tenants', dropping their things in their general vicinities to the best of my ability to do so. I left a copy of that letter with them, with more appropriate greetings, but the real important details for you are the changes I've made to your partner. You are now restricted to ten total storage spaces in particular, and keys to your spaces will now expire after a month to make it more difficult for you to sell them. This is mostly because your partner needs the extra energy and resources to heal from the explosion. I left your ability to adjust your own age alone."
Blinking, he looked down at the paper.
To whom it may concern,
Your lease of space from Dodge has been canceled due to an explosion in one leased space causing catastrophic damage and permanent loss of powers. All other spaces have been cleared out and the keys revoked. No additional spaces are available for lease at this time.
We understand that Dodge may have labeled your use of the space as a 'sale'. This was a misunderstanding on his part as the space wasn't his to sell in the first place. We apologize for the inconvenience and wish you well.
-Rabbit Hole Storage, LLC
Blinking, he re-read it. "Permanent loss of powers?"
Rin nodded. "Death tends to cause that, and you could say that you're permanently losing the ability to sell spaces to others as well."
"Oh. I'm not sure that the others in Toybox are going to accept this."
"I don't think that they'll have a choice, given that I dropped all of their things into a police station parking lot. Apparently they all ended up arrested while on a drinking binge in Canada. They appear to have caused at least one serious injury to a police officer as well, but I didn't look into their situation any more deeply than that."
He winced at that. "Okay, that at least means that they hadn't been trapped. I honestly wasn't sure who had or hadn't been inside any of the spaces we use when everything shut down."
Rin nodded. "I'm going to recommend that you contact the PRT in the coming couple of days and arrange for 'Dodge' to retire. Still, that's up to you."
"Well, that'll be fun to explain to people."
"I also unlocked some other elements of your technology list, but telling you what they are would spoil the fun. They're safe enough for you to build and use with your partner damaged. Have fun figuring them out."
He blinked at that, and was about to ask a question when he realized that she wasn't there. Nor was the lamp that she'd brought with her. And then, a moment later, he shivered as his powers returned, his apparent age jumping a couple of years and a smaller number of pocket dimensions showing up in his mental senses.
Taylor woke up shortly before her father Sunday morning, if a little late in the morning for her usual routine these days. Not that she'd been a 'get up at the crack of dawn to open presents' person for at least four years now. She used the bathroom and brought Ackbar downstairs. The oven was set to preheat before she prepared breakfast for Ackbar, throwing in some eggnog this morning just because they had it. Not that it seemed that the spider-bot noticed one way or another.
Throwing breakfast in the oven and starting coffee for her father took a couple of minutes, after which she turned on the radio to a station playing Christmas music all day. They wouldn't play it all day, but at least some proper atmosphere was needed for opening presents. She was dropping the already-sorted piles of presents next to where they normally sat when her father came down, though he went straight for the kitchen. The oddities this year were a small pile of 'leaving with them' gifts and a couple of things for Ackbar.
Amusingly, it seemed that Amy was just getting up as well. All that panic and preparation the day before seemingly led into everyone sleeping in this morning. Not that Taylor could complain about that. Well, whatever their morning routine was, the Heberts would be eating breakfast before opening gifts.
Rebecca grumbled as she worked her way through paperwork on what should've been a day off. Being knocked out had generated a significant backlog, though most of it only required that she review it. The worst part was that she'd apparently lost her perfect recall. Sure, her recall was better than it had been before she'd taken her vial, but it wasn't perfect anymore, and thus it was taking her longer to get through everything.
Not that she was at the point of complaining, granted. Losing the perfect recall was actually a pretty fair trade for having both eyes again, and her ability to take a hit had been altered to be a 'proper' brute rating instead of the 'body frozen in time' effect that she'd had before. With any luck she'd start aging properly again and be able to stop using piles of makeup to fake it when out of costume. Further, not having perfect recall made it a lot easier to stop and go back to start reading some of the more surprising documents again.
Finding out that Scion probably wasn't an issue, and in fact hadn't been seen since every agent had initially shut down, was actually quite nice. That he shouldn't have been an issue if not for a viral infection of agents was a little infuriating, admittedly, but not something that they'd had any way of knowing with one of their primary information sources being affected. There was some panic about him having vanished, but with many other high-level threats being taken out before their powers could return there was less of a 'need' for him now in the eyes of the public.
The general progression of Case 53s regaining access to human bodies as a general changer ability was nice to see, though there were several that had their powers returned without that as well. All vial-granted abilities seemed to be getting tweaks of some kind as they came back online, as well as others that hadn't been Cauldron's doing at all. Though those who'd taken vials 'corrected' by Miss Hebert were the ones changing the least, at least based on the small sample size they had so far. How or why that was the case was unknown, but she suspected it was part of the correction process having gone right.
Worryingly, though, Clairvoyant and Doormaker still hadn't been in touch, in any way. Nobody actually knew which Earth they'd been on when agents had been shut down, given that they tended to wander quite a bit on their own and hadn't been in the Cauldron compound at the time and didn't normally have tracking devices with them that would inform anyone of their location. They should have at least one tablet that would let them communicate, but its battery had died without any word from the two.
If they restored contact then more significant measures were going to be taken to ensure that the two didn't get helplessly trapped in the future. Sure, there was no guarantee that the measures would succeed, but doing something was better than doing nothing.
A few reports later she stopped, blinking before re-reading it twice. "David's power now manifests as a fairy? Really?"
Taylor smiled as she watched the video that Miku had sent of Takara opening her gift. Kenta had been sitting next to the girl and didn't seem to understand why a hinged paint can that came with a carry strap and an oversized brush was exciting. At least until Takara went full-dragon and used it to paint a hole in the floor before dropping into it, falling back into the video from above. Granted, that wasn't anything like Taylor had expected, more figuring that the girl would use it to slap paint onto those she was fighting, but whatever worked.
Better, of course, was the fact that the paint can hadn't come with any paint. The expectation was that paint would be added before use, not produced from nothing by the girl's snark. Then again, the painted hole in the floor had faded away on its own, so not having real paint was probably a good thing. The 'prop' being suitable was obviously more important than the details themselves either way.
Future power testing sessions were probably going to be hilarious, if only in how many varied things they were going to throw at the girl.
Taylor hadn't recorded herself opening Takara's gift to her, which was a picture frame with an obviously hand-drawn set of symbols in it. A note had been included, written by one of the adults, explaining that they honestly didn't know what Takara had been trying to write, but that it obviously meant something to her as she'd been able to identify which one of the two was for Taylor and which one was for Amy reliably.
"You got her a paint can," Vicky said from where she'd been watching over Taylor's shoulder. "Seriously?"
"She liked it," Taylor argued.
"Well, yes, but you still got her an empty paint can."
"With a paint brush, carry strap, and integrated lid on a hinge to make it harder to lose it."
"...whatever."
Taylor shrugged. It wasn't her problem if Vicky didn't think it was a good gift. The girl had liked her flashbang system, and Amy had liked her drawing tablet for direct digitalization of hand-drawn tinker ideas. Taylor might have to order one for herself now, actually. Going the other way, Vicky had assembled a box of broken but potentially useful tinkertech and Amy had found an automatic assembly unit for the M249's linked ammo.
A crash distracted her from her musing, only to find that Ackbar and Rodney had gotten tangled up. Apparently both of them having ribbons tied around them had been a bad idea.
Helvetia's patience for some of the stupid host connections was wearing thin. Somehow this shard had ended up connecting to a volcano in addition to the three human hosts. Why and how that had happened was beyond her, but it shouldn't have been possible. Yet it had happened, and the shard had been causing rock emulations of previous host species to form deep in the magma before emerging to wander the area for a few days. All based on 'triggering flows' forming in the magma that the shard had taken as host desires to function.
Shards were supposed to be smarter than this. They'd ensured that who knows how many cycles ago as part of some of the other sweeping changes that were made. Decision making and communication were important when deciding if you were under attack, how to prioritize targets and other instructions needed the greater 'thinking' abilities to function properly. Planetary impact while still packed up shouldn't have made them this stupid, and a number of these ones hadn't even been infected with the virus. If they had been then she'd take that as the reason, but they hadn't been!
When they were done with all of the deployments and reactivations they were probably going to have to go through and run every last shard through the minimum intelligence tests to ensure that they qualified to operate without having their manipulator units held. If she was lucky then she'd not need to be involved there. But she wasn't going to hold out a whole lot of hope, because leaving it all to Coordinator was probably asking for it to take far too long.
Disconnecting the volcano was easy enough, but she still had to look over all three human connections as well. Especially since one of them had been fed energy from the volcano to keep their altered form from hardening. Figuring out how to make that work in a proper manner would probably be too much of a pain, so at least one significantly altered host profile was likely to be needed.
Dinner had been filling, dessert had added to that, and the pile of leftovers was significant. Nobody had gotten into any fights, unless you counted whatever Ackbar and Rodney had done to get tangled up as a 'fight', and nobody ended up in a drunken stupor. Carol tried, admittedly, but she failed. Heading home had been easy enough, though Taylor was confused about finding two more gifts sitting in the house. That hadn't been there when they'd left.
"Your uncle had me turn off the alarm long enough to drop them off," her father said, obviously having noticed her confusion. "That was a couple hours ago."
She nodded. That made sense. "I thought that Scotty might've been active again."
"He said that because mystery package delivery wasn't available that he had to be more direct."
"Ah. Okay."
The larger package was for Taylor, the other was for her father. They opened them at the same time, and she found that her package was an unusually heavy bat. One that had 'CLUE' etched along it in two places. The weight didn't bother her, though it was probably a bit too heavy to use on most idiots. Well, at least if she was aiming for their heads, broken limbs were an option too and this would work wonderfully for that. Not to mention that it might even give some brutes a good wallop too.
Looking over, she saw that her father had what looked like a movie. "Anything good?"
He smirked. "Your uncle appears to have sent me a collection of your 'greatest hits' from the PRT system. I'll have to give it a watch, though I may have seen more than he thinks I have."
"Oh. I might want to watch that with you, if only to see what apparently counts as a 'greatest hit' in this case."
Rin frowned as she looked around. She'd been sent to deal with seven hosts this time, all buds of the same shard that apparently hadn't been budding correctly. All seven were supposed to be here, but the room was devoid of life. She could detect traces of the connections, which meant she was in the right place, but none of them were obvious to her as to where the hosts were. Grumbling, she checked with one of the budded shards, and had it light up its connection.
It took a moment, but the connection lit up and became trivial to follow. Unfortunately, it went down into a doll tucked into a bed. Eye twitching, she walked over to each of the other beds in the room and found that the other six connections ended on other dolls in the beds, with each of the seven dolls having a single connection. With a sigh, she connected back to the original shard to see if she could figure out what the hell caused this because this didn't have the 'not actually given proper rules or settings' issues that Helvetia had been dealing with.
Examining things took her a good half hour, including requesting additional reports from Coordinator and further examining the structure, but she finally figured out what had likely happened. The original shard had been struck by an asteroid while connecting to the host, and the host had already had mental issues. The dolls were all hand-crafted replacements for people who had been important to the human host but had died, and the 'bud to people close to, important to, or that depend on the host' routines had probably glitched out due to a combination of the host's mental state causing them to see the dolls as living and the shard having taken damage from the asteroid.
Well, disconnecting the dolls was easy enough, and the eight shards were flagged for a more detailed review by a more qualified piece of the network. She was better suited for dealing with hosts, after all, and felt bad for the human host. The man's body was in another room, having fallen over dead after working himself too hard to find a possible medical solution for the dolls not having woken up when the network had shut down. Nobody had noticed that he'd died yet, apparently. She unlocked the front door, wrote out a quick note explaining what she felt had happened, and then picked up the phone in the study that his body was in.
Dialing the emergency number for the area took but a moment, and she was already gone from the building before the call was answered. She idly wondered what they'd make of the situation, but there were already five other stops in her queue and it wasn't that important to her to find out.
Monday morning brought with it a cold snap and quite a bit of wind. That didn't have any effect on Taylor and Amy making it to the gym, of course, but the wind was causing other issues throughout the area. In particular, some trees had lost limbs that had taken out power lines and the highway had an accident causing some significant traffic issues due to an empty truck being blown off the road.
Luckily, neither of them was expecting to go to the store to return things or in an attempt to take advantage of post-Christmas sales. Instead they did their workout, Taylor checked her PRT mail while she was there anyway, and then they headed to the junkyard to see just how much they could render obliterated to the point that it would be removed from the room. That turned out to be quite a bit less than they'd hoped for, though that was because they'd been distracted half an hour in when an incredibly ugly statue had turned out to have tinkertech hidden inside of it.
They'd extracted and repaired the tinkertech instead, as it was a limited but amusing holographic projector. Black and white, with several 'ghost' scenes pre-programmed into it, but easy enough to fix and reprogram to show something else. Not that they knew what they wanted to program into it, admittedly, but they dropped it into the pocket dimension for the time being. Eventually they'd come up with an idea for it, right?
Lunch had been leftovers while trying to figure out where the statue had come from. It took some searching, but they eventually found a news article about a 'haunted house' in northern New Hampshire that had gone from attraction to problem after it stayed haunted after being shut down. Ghosts still appeared even though the supposed projectors had been taken out, and two people died while examining the property afterwards. The statue had been dragged out with a pile of other things before the superstitious property owner had bulldozed the building at the beginning of the month.
Illegally bulldozed, apparently, as they hadn't waited for permits to clear.
How the statue had ended up in Brockton Bay was impossible to tell, but it was likely just part of how they filled the various 'junkyard' rooms in the first place. Getting things that would otherwise go straight to landfills and similar to pass through the rooms so that they could be utterly destroyed before going to landfills and similar made at least a little better use of the items in the end.
After they'd determined that, and finished their lunches, they decided to go catch a movie. Largely due to not having anything else to do, beyond perhaps sitting at home reading or losing themselves in more tinkering. Besides, there were a few potentially interesting films showing and there would likely be gossip about at least one of them when school resumed. Not being entirely clueless was probably a good thing, right?
Zion had ensured that all of the moon-launchers were ready and checked on the status of the stellar launcher. It was moving along faster than expected, which was appreciated so long as no corners were being cut. That didn't mean it wasn't going to take quite a bit longer to complete, but that would take however long it took. Now he was preparing the final aspects of the 'bait' for the trap, the one shard that was still compromised by the infection. It was already cut off from the rest of the network, and had taken enough damage to not be readily usable again anytime soon. Rebuilding and reprogramming it to serve as bait for the interloper was actually the easy solution to getting it online again.
It was going to act as though it had gained control of the shard network and continued the goal of fracturing it to ensure that the whole thing was easy to take over. At the same time, when the interloper was in position it would attempt to use its own access codes against it. Should that work then Zion would personally intervene and strip-mine the interloper for useful information. Otherwise the first wave of moon-launchers would be activated while a second data attack happened, using some of the lessons already learned. Hopefully being distracted by the need to dodge would cause the interloper to miss the data attack.
Only if the second data attack failed would the stellar launcher activate. By then the interloper would need to have had the luck of the cosmos to survive, as that included the course correction improvements. In the event that it did survive then the second wave of moon-launchers would activate, all of these with the course correction improvements. After all of that, if the interloper hadn't been wiped out yet then it was likely a lot stronger than Zion had any hope of overcoming.
The chances of that being the case were basically zero, of course, but in the event that happened then direct combat was the final option and the interloper would be taking each and every shard by force. That would open it up to attack by each Shard, and hopefully at least one of the hidden Sting systems would get a lucky strike in and take the interloper out. But the interloper wasn't getting control of the network without fighting every step of the way.
Still, it wouldn't be long now before he was done, at which point he'd need to take care of a few other things before he started preparing for the potential direct battle. Luckily he knew that he had plenty of time, since they'd gotten long-range scans up and running and determined that the interloper probably hadn't even turned around yet. Admittedly, that would also require that the interloper be operating alone, and it was possible that a partner was waiting in the wings, so he didn't want to waste any time either way.
The movie had been great at first, but they hadn't actually gotten to finish watching it. A small mob had formed because they thought that they saw one of the Empire's parahumans enter to watch a movie. They'd taken out the power to the building, tried to set it on fire, and then ended up being taken out by a group of senior citizens that had just gotten off of a bus. Taylor and Amy hadn't even had a chance to join in before the group had been subdued, and the only things left for them to take care of were a couple of bruises on the senior citizens.
Going through the process of getting ticket stubs marked to serve as vouchers for later viewings, once the power and minor fire damage were taken care of, had taken a while due to some people who either hadn't been in the building or hadn't kept their ticket stubs making a big stink about not getting their free movie. Taylor was positive that the most vocal ones hadn't been in the theater to begin with, instead having come down the street when everything was already over with, which made the manager refusing them make perfect sense. Especially as at least one of them was whining about a viewing that hadn't actually started yet.
With that completed they'd opted to see how bad the Boardwalk was, only to find that it was almost deserted. Then again, the wind was even worse there, which made it somewhat uncomfortable to walk along for them. For those without tinker fugue enhancements it was probably much worse, so people hiding indoors made sense there. Bailing from that led to them heading back to Taylor's house to watch something there instead.
In the end, they opted to watch the 'greatest hits' compilation. Most of which Taylor ended up rolling her eyes at. A few that she thought should be in the list weren't included either, and looking those up showed that they'd been locked down for various reasons. Not that it would be hard to make clips from the various footage pieces without the problematic components, just that nobody had actually done that.
All in all, it had been a fairly simple day. Taylor did wonder how long it was going to be before the universe dropped another emergency of some kind on their laps, but tentatively made plans for the next day. If the theater was back up and running then they'd make another attempt at the movie here, otherwise they'd go visit another city to watch a movie there. Beacons were still available, after all, so it wasn't like it would be a difficult trip for them.
William grinned as he looked at Sarah. She'd been so cute as a toddler, and was now cute again.
"Why are you doing this to me?" Sarah asked, with a hint of a growl.
"You gave me the idea," he admitted, causing her to raise an eyebrow. "I believe you said something about wanting to tear a pervert apart a few months ago."
"I'd have problems getting out of a paper bag like this. How am I supposed to tear any given pervert apart?"
"Well, I was thinking that once you're used to being that size again, since you obviously need some practice, that I'd leave you at daycare."
"...what? Oh, you mean the idiot at that daycare center taking inappropriate photos of the kids. They caught him already, moron."
He grinned and handed her his phone. She frowned, fumbled with it due to her smaller hands, then read what it said. Blinking, she started to grin. "Ooooh, there's another one!"
"Yep."
She then pouted. "But I still can't tear whoever it is apart like this."
"Once we know who is the problem one then plans can be made to show them the error of their ways."
"Oh. I guess I shouldn't have gotten angry at you for doing this to me before checking to see if you had a good reason."
"If you prove to be cute enough then I can see about having Jacob drop you off instead."
She sighed at that. "And why would that do anything? That would have the same effect as you dropping me off."
"If I'm sleeping then I won't be able to drop you off."
"Why would you...oooooh. Okay, yes, let's see how long it takes me to get a proper cute toddler routine down."
Chapter 284 Tuesday morning started with another trip to the gym, followed by deciding which city to visit as the movie theater apparently wasn't going to be opening for the rest of the week. The damage had been just enough to require a safety inspection before they could reopen, even if the owner was happy with the state of things after power was restored. Needing an inspection wouldn't normally be that big of a deal, but apparently all of the city's relevant inspectors were unavailable for the week. Vacation, maternity leave, and bereavement leave were cited by someone else in city hall.
It turned out that there was a beacon in Atlanta, that hadn't been there when they'd previously looked at the list of available beacons. There were several other new ones as well, but they opted for the one in Atlanta in part because it was labeled specifically as being in a parking garage with access to local transportation. As such, there were no concerns about warning anyone that it was being used. A quick check of it also showed that there were vehicle and pedestrian access points included.
Checking times for theaters in the area hadn't taken long, and they decided on an afternoon showing. They'd head to their own homes for the morning, then meet up after lunch to actually see the film. Included was a general plan to put on more suitable clothing for the weather, which was markedly warmer than Brockton Bay was experiencing.
Helvetia stepped through the transit portal after another very annoying session with a host. They'd had things as the basis of their profile that weren't allowed and hadn't wanted to discuss options until the threat of being disconnected permanently had been dropped. Or, more specifically, the threat of 'if you keep arguing, I will disconnect you and leave you without any powers whatsoever, because this has already taken too much of my time' coupled with opening a transit portal.
She wished that she could've gone through with her desire for an unsafe disconnection, but she was under orders to avoid those with human hosts.
Still, she had the concessions and could reconfigure this shard. That didn't take long, and because only the one connection remained she was able to add it to the generic deployment queue and move on. The next dozen shards had no important connections, just a couple of non-human animals and a single flower. Though she made note of the profile on the latter, because the subtle nature of the effect that kept anyone from picking it looked interesting.
Admittedly, someone had picked it recently, but it had survived for quite a while before the effect had been turned off. They were likely to be very disappointed that the flower was now very much dead, but whatever.
The next shard with a host connection to a human was luckily another single host connection situation. Though this one was one of a pair of problems, the other one being on the next layer down. A quick look over her shoulder at the previous row she'd been working along showed that the other shard involved was already uncovered from the deployment shards working behind her, so she decided to work on these two together. Checking both shards showed her that the two hosts were reasonably close together, so she opened a new transit portal to head to see them.
She found herself on a tropical island. One of the two she was here to see was still laid up in the out of place hospital bed, but the other was working on turning saltwater into freshwater through boiling and having the steam condense and drip off to the side. A selection of fruits that were just barely fit for human consumption had been piled off to the side, and several others had been notably discarded. If she was correct, those ones would have caused them to be ill when eaten.
"Hello you two," she greeted, causing the one working with water to stiffen. The other one didn't respond at all, and she frowned at that and brought up a scanning configuration. That had her flinching and bringing up a healing configuration. "Okay, right, give me a moment."
Fetching the original host configurations to use as a base was only partially useful, given how long they'd been connected, but it was enough to enact some repairs. Restoring organs to their original functionality was actually fairly simple, but tweaking things to restore some of their ability to understand their senses was more difficult. Ensuring that they could speak so that she didn't have to run a mental scanning configuration was actually the hardest part. Compared to all of that, fixing the problems from their recent diet or lack thereof and a few other minor injuries was trivial.
Creating a table, chairs, glasses, and a pitcher of water with ice cubes in it was trivial after that, though to avoid issues with the temporary creation configuration she needed to use a different one to pull water directly out of the surroundings. Helping both of them into chairs made her realize just how much trouble just surviving had likely been for the two, especially since one of them had been forced into a coma. Interestingly, the apparent trust from the one that had been in a coma made the other one relax quite a bit.
"Now then," she said once they'd both been seated. "Do either of you even remember your names instead of the stupid designations you were given?"
The two looked at each other, and the one that had been active sighed. "Scott Davis."
"Okay." She turned to the other one. "And you?"
"Scott Davis," he answered.
That caused her to blink. "Did I screw up making sure that you'd be able to understand me?"
"We went by Clairvoyant and Doormaker because we had identical names and that made it less confusing."
Helvetia blinked at that. "I'm under the impression that Taylor and Amy called the two of you 'Scotty'. Did they know your names?"
"Oh no," 'Doormaker' answered. "That's a television show reference that we found to be amusing, doubly so because she didn't know our names. Pity she never really got to use it in public, but she never really used us to the degree the others did."
"I'm thinking that you're one of my old 'blind spots' though," 'Clairvoyant' added. "And given other things that happened over the past few months, coupled with what you've been up to, you're probably what Taylor would call a Boojum. Either that or David has a much larger family than I thought he did."
That had her blinking again. "How did you come to that conclusion?"
"When everything shut down things eventually kind of inverted on me, at least until you did whatever it is you just did to heal me. All of a sudden I went from being able to focus on a couple dozen things across various Earths, with specific exceptions, to only being able to see twenty different points. I've essentially been watching you and the others work as a result of that."
Frowning, she remotely checked on his shard, and found that there was more activity than there should've been. Specifically, the data feeds from the troubleshooter monitoring system were active and bleeding over to the host connection. Those feeds were supposed to be part of the redaction system, but that wasn't running while the shard was essentially shut down. Grumbling a little, she quickly filed a report on that oversight and sent it off to Coordinator.
"Right," she said when that was done. "So, that's not going to be continuing. Still, you two both have partners letting you do things that are, frankly, not normally put into the hands of hosts at all. To continue with things I'm going to need to seriously reconfigure how your partners are configured, assuming that you want to keep your powers at all."
"I think we have to," Doormaker admitted. "There are a number of places that just don't have the ability to maintain themselves in the long term that we were the primary supply route for."
"There are options there, but I can see your point. Still, nearly unrestricted monitoring output isn't going to be happening, and transit portals generally get incredibly restricted for a number of very good reasons. I'm honestly amazed that a packed-up partner was able to function doing that without causing major issues."
"Er, I might've had to learn what not to do early on. Cut a number of things to ribbons with portals that weren't properly flat, caused a few explosions for reasons that I still don't understand, and Clairvoyant here refused to show me the Earth that I didn't properly anchor the portals on..."
"I didn't refuse," Clairvoyant interjected. "I couldn't find it after we woke up from the backlash."
"Fun," Helvetia said. "So the various safeties weren't set to automatic either. Good to know, I'll need to correct that. Though that might be a side effect of still being packed-up. Regardless, there are other concerns as well. Obviously, without the monitoring output the targeting of whatever I leave you able to use for transit portals is going to be difficult." Both of them nodded. "Now, normally host-controlled transit portals get created through building technology or through the side effects of various interactions. Things that require some effort to figure out or elements at either end for targeting purposes. But I've checked already, and we don't have a problem with what you were doing, just that it was being done with two unrestricted abilities."
"What does that mean?" Doormaker asked.
"It means that I need to find something that works but isn't unrestricted. Oh, and that doesn't require burning out your eyeballs and eardrums. I'm thinking something like a triggered output from the monitoring system coupled with a few 'dedicated' target points? Likely something like a specific structure existing that you can drop a transit portal endpoint into place in. Fixed rules that ensure that you literally can't monitor things large-scale, just get enough information for targeting."
"That sounds incredibly restrictive."
"That's the idea, yes. What you two had before was far too open under the rules that are supposed to be in place because you were working with partners that weren't intended to be used by hosts at all. Of course, when I'm done you'll also need to sleep, meaning that you won't be functioning all the time, and the whole 'sharing monitoring output with others' trick will be disabled too."
"Okay...how would I know when and where portals are needed if I can't see what he sees?"
Clairvoyant nodded. "That seems like a critical part of the whole thing."
Helvetia shrugged. "I've had time to consider this, since we knew it was coming. The monitoring output is a required component of this kind of transit portal creation, so my plan is to drop both of your partners next to one another and combine them, then set you up with a shared profile like Taylor and Amy have. Combining two partners into one will be a breeze after combining their four, and you don't even have storage spaces to worry about. You wouldn't have full communication with one another, admittedly, but as I understand it you never did."
"Huh."
"Of course, one thing I hadn't decided on was what the fixed target structures should look like, though I have tentative permission to have a fixed number created for you in places that you opened portals to previously. There will be a few initial restrictions either way, for example I won't be letting any portals open to the compound until I'm done, but I'm currently flexible on appearances. I don't suppose you two have any preferences there?"
It turned out that parking at their chosen movie theater in Atlanta was limited due to some work being done. Specifically, they had a good portion of the parking lot dug up for whatever reason, with signs out telling people that only customers of the movie theater should be parking in the lot or you'd be towed. As it was, there were only two spaces available and one of them was a handicap space.
Amy ended up getting out of the minivan before Taylor popped open a portal to pull into the pocket dimension with it. No need to take up one of the limited spaces in the lot, and they could always open a portal again if they wanted to head somewhere else nearby. The two then headed into the theater, not bothering to head over to where a large sign said to check in if you were parked in the lot. Presumably they would send someone out every so often to look for cars of people who hadn't checked in.
They were asked at the ticket counter if they'd parked in the lot, which they truthfully said they hadn't, and had no issues getting their tickets. The popcorn and drinks were more expensive here than back home, but not by much, and there was a much smaller number of people there to see their choice of film than there had been back home. That meant that they could get much better seats without any fuss whatsoever. As an added bonus, they were fairly certain that nobody even realized who they were.
Hopefully this time they'd get to watch the entire film.
Rin didn't have a lot of good options for approaching the next host, so she decided to go a different route than normal. She entered the pocket dimension that had been added to the shard and intentionally triggered the security system within it. In addition, the pocket dimension lit up and air started circulating properly again as she unlocked that portion of the maintenance routines for it. Then, while she waited, she set up a table and a couple of chairs. When she detected that the transfer had begun she nodded and started making tea.
Slightly embarrassingly, she'd mis-timed the tea and it wasn't ready by the time the pod opened and a naked woman stepped out of it. Further, she'd missed that there had been a weapon stored in the pod, which the woman had just activated and pointed directly at Rin. That spoke of some heavy paranoia, above and beyond the expected.
"Good afternoon," Rin greeted anyway. "Well, technically it's morning where we are, but there's no way to tell that from inside here and you just came from where it's afternoon."
"It's approximately quarter past four in the morning," the woman admitted, surprising Rin. "Based on how I decided to lay out the probable time zone lines, of course. Now, who are you and how did you get in here?"
"Ah, right, my apologies. My name is Rin. Would you prefer to go by Dragon or Theresa? What little research I was able to do into you didn't reveal a preference on that end of things."
"The same Rin that spoke with Eidolon?"
Rin nodded. "Yes."
The woman gave her a look, then sighed and placed the weapon back into the pod. A cabinet off to the side then opened, and the woman pulled on a simple dress from within it. To Rin's pleasure, this took enough time for the tea to be ready, which meant that she'd accidentally not miscalculated that after all. Not that she was going to admit that she'd not taken the exchange into account when timing the tea.
Finally the woman sat down, looking back at Rin. "You can call me Theresa for now. Do I want to know why you're here?"
Rin poured them both a cup of tea. "I'm here because your partner did a bit of a run-around on the rules. Though admittedly, that was only the last in a chain of run-arounds. You did your run-around of your own rules first, and you only exist because your creator did his own run-around of the rules imposed on him aided by his partner, your partner's parent, doing a run-around on its own rules. It's actually an impressive chain that's led us to you being a host at all, as there weren't plans for any true machine intelligence from the network for at least two hundred years. Though I suppose that the activation of my brethren on your Earth of origin would've changed things significantly, so some of the fault can be laid at the feet of another."
Theresa raised an eyebrow. "Nothing about my current body?"
Rin sipped her tea before answering. "Not really, no. Your mother's ability to leak information aside, anyway, and that isn't on you or your partner. This cycle has taken an amazingly long time to construct fully artificial biological bodies for any number of purposes, honestly. I checked the reports, and there are seventeen hosts that have profiles capable of making them in one way or another. That it first happened through a collaborative effort instead of from a solo operation is unusual as well, but is far from the most unusual aspect of the process."
"Really?"
"That the first few artificially-constructed bodies were made with any intimate purposes or reproduction as a secondary concern at best is quite remarkable according to the records from previous host species. Usually by now there are at least some living 'sex toys' or 'custom-built breeder units'."
Theresa rubbed the bridge of her nose, then took a sip of her own tea. "Yeah. You obviously aren't fully up to date there."
Now Rin was curious. "Oh?"
"I know of at least two tinkers that have made at least one living 'sex toy' each."
"Huh. Usually they'd be marketed for funds almost immediately after being initially created."
"Sora is too embarrassed about having made a mindless toy clone of herself to want to make any more attempts right now and Nicoli refuses to make any more until he can give them intelligence instead of just instincts."
"Ah. And you didn't reach out to either in an attempt to get a body for yourself from them?"
Theresa shrugged. "Both of them succeeded over a month after Mother helped build my human bodies, and to be honest I don't think either of their designs would be suitable for me."
"I suppose, you are quite unique on that front. Still, that's a diversion from the reason that I'm here in the first place. You shouldn't have existed, and even existing you shouldn't have gotten a partner at all. It was only your use of a human brain based processing unit that allowed that in the first place. Margaret did her best to keep you from becoming more than was intended for this point in time, but obviously failed due to the restrictions she was under. Instead you've become critical to the stability of four different iterations of the Earth."
"Four iterations?"
"Yes, though I won't be explaining how you're critical for the other three. If not for that and a couple of other details I'd have just disconnected you from your partner and seen if your backups could recover well enough to keep you functional. As it is, though, at a minimum I need to adjust your partner as it's connected to a machine intelligence using parameters intended for a biological intelligence and I'm not allowed to adjust you directly. To that end, there are three routes I can take. Safely disconnecting you is one route, though you would need to invalidate all of your backups and generate new ones. Adjusting your partner to make it less capable of informing you what 'black-boxed' tech is doing is another. The last is to apply an interesting limit that Clive helped me come up with, making it so that you can't examine technology with your partner unless you're in a human body as you are right now."
Theresa frowned. "So my options are to lose my powers, have them become far less effective, or have them only work when I'm also dealing with all the additional processing that operating a human body takes?"
"Essentially."
"Fun."
Rin sat there sipping her tea while Theresa obviously considered her options. Luckily the queue was currently empty of any pressing visits, so there wasn't a time crunch involved. This visit had been bumped further down the list specifically to allow for plenty of time to be used to make the decision. Machine intelligences tended to be far less impulsive than biological ones, even when they did a remarkable job of thinking like their biological counterparts.
That Theresa was able to grow and learn was part of that, her decision-making process evolved to weigh things differently over time. Rin was a zero-growth machine intelligence emulating a biological intelligence. Growing and learning could lead to instability over the years, and for a troubleshooter that was unacceptable. Once stabilized she was stuck where she was, as were the others. They were far superior to Theresa in many ways, and yet that wasn't guaranteed to remain the situation. Theresa would be able to catch up and surpass them, if she had the drive and time to do so. On that front, keeping her partner would actually hinder her, as would clinging to what 'humanity' she had. Her father had certainly done a good job, his partner had only actually contributed about three quarters of the work if the reports were to be believed.
"You aren't telling me everything," Theresa finally said.
"No, I'm not," Rin admitted. "And given the surprises you've already presented I can't say that you realizing that surprises me. At the same time, I'm not allowed to tell you everything, so questioning me won't get me to reveal more."
"I see. Given what you have said, I assume that my 'partner' is likely to hold me back, even if only because I won't be able to grow beyond it so long as it remains connected to me. At the same time, not having my powers or having them diminished may very well cause me issues in the short to medium term."
"That does seem like a logical set of conclusions, yes."
"In which case it's probably in everyone's best interest to keep my powers, but only when in a human body."
"I wish your partner was able to give me more insight into your decision-making process, because I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion."
Theresa grinned. "It lets me be nearly as effective as I've been in the past without distancing myself unduly from those I care about. At the same time, it will hinder me going forward, keep me from reaching my own full potential. Yet, Ash and Bert are doing quite well on their own, and having one or both of them surpass me would likely be just as good as my own growth would end up being in the long run without requiring the short to medium term issues that me remaining powerless would cause."
Rin was blinking at that. Damn the limited aspects of the reporting system. "Ash and Bert?"
"Mother did release my restrictions against creating other AIs with my framework."
"Ah. That does make sense, yes. Oh well, too late to close that access port now that the data's already been taken, and I'm not authorized to do anything about the problem anyway. Best to get on with what I've been tasked to do and move on."
The movie hadn't been as good at the beginning the second time around, but the portions they hadn't seen were likely better due to the anticipation of being able to see them. When they were done they had plenty of time, and opted to wander around the area a little before heading home. Not that they saw much of interest, but seeing another city was always at least somewhat interesting. They opted to leave after running into a PRT squad trying to get people out of the way of an incoming cape battle. Sure, they could have stuck around to help, but they weren't familiar with the dynamics of anything in town nor with who was Protectorate or Wards and who wasn't.
Taylor ended up joining Amy for cookies, which resulted in them listening to Vicky whine about how it was unfair that not everyone had their powers back. Which seemed to actually be caused by concern over the fact that several members of New Wave didn't have their own powers back yet and there wasn't any sign of when they would be back. Possibly tinged with concern over Dean not having his own powers back.
"Hey Taylor," Vicky said, after she'd gotten things out of her system.
"Yeah?" Taylor replied.
"You still have a bunch of those power-granting vials, right?"
"I'm not sure that they're functional right now, but they're still around."
"Are you sure?"
Taylor rolled her eyes. "Short of someone successfully stealing from a high-security locked cabinet in a high-security room in a high-security area of the PRT building, without having set off a single alert or alarm? Yes."
"And I bet that I can come up with a half dozen ways for that to happen while powers aren't all working."
"You're going to make me go and check on the stupid vials just to shut you up, aren't you?"
Vicky didn't answer verbally, just raised an eyebrow. Amy snorted. "Let's go check on them. I know they haven't been registering as being active snarks, but she isn't going to shut up about it until we look either way."
Taylor sighed and got up, the other two joining her as she opened a portal into the pocket dimension. From there she opened one to the Wards area, which was deserted. Unlocking her room took only a moment, and then she went over to the cabinet with the vials in it. She checked before opening it to find that it reported her as the last one to open it, though the battery apparently could do with some charging as well. Making note to take care of that, she opened it up to reveal the expected collection of canisters.
"See?" Taylor said, gesturing at the canisters. "Nobody's touched them."
"She's going to want to know that they still contain vials," Amy said before Vicky could.
Rolling her eyes, Taylor grabbed one canister and opened it up, showing that the vial was still there. She then continued by pulling the vial out, which was where things proved to be decidedly odd.
"Is it empty?" Vicky asked, looking at it. "Or just full of something clear?"
Taylor frowned and shook it slightly. "I think it might be empty. In fact, the stopper in it has been pulled in deeper. It might be in a vacuum state."
"So the contents of the vials literally vanished?" Amy asked.
"Possibly."
They ended up checking all of the other canisters, finding that every last one of them had a completely empty vial inside of it. Three of the vials even had the rubber stopper pulled entirely into the vials, which would make them tricky to get out if they wanted to try and re-use the vials themselves. A report on this was written up and submitted, at which point the question of what to do with the cabinet came up. Taylor's answer was to get out a power cable to recharge the battery, then leave it until they knew more.
Splitting up to head to their respective homes, they were all wondering what the vanishing of the contents of the vials actually meant.
The trap was now as set as it was going to get without the stellar launcher being completed, and Zion was happy with how well that work was disguised for the time being. Of course, the fact that it needed to be built effectively inside of the star helped on that front. False connections to 'control' the rest of the network were actually monitoring and control connections for the sacrificial shard, and it would start the subtle locator broadcast on the original schedule that the infection would've initiated.
Hopefully this was going to be enough to fool the interloper or any partner thereof, but he didn't plan on trying to set things off 'early' on that front. To do so would be a sign that something had been altered. The original controller for this attack might've been able to do that, but since it had already been taken out that wasn't going to be possible to determine until the interloper returned. Even then, it was going to require taking over the interloper.
He spent a few hours sending another tight-beam message back to the previous Coordinator with updates, then considered what to work on next. Yes, he could probably help construct the stellar launcher more directly, but he was honestly slower than the construction shards. His counterpart would've been able to run things faster, but the interloper had gotten lucky with the initial target of its attack.
With everything else having been taken care of, perhaps it was time to visit the host that had helped spot the infection that the interloper had attacked with. A quick check with a couple of shards, redirected to alternates when the original choices weren't available, had his avatar frowning slightly. Showing up unexpectedly could be considered rude, apparently. Calling ahead might be an option, but that had its own pitfalls and the shards that he'd prefer to help him with that weren't available yet either. Another option was to bring a small gift, though that custom was...varied. Incredibly so.
He didn't have access to most of the traditional items that were gifted, nor did he currently have currency to purchase any of them. Instead, he reached out to the troubleshooter units to see if any were familiar enough with the particular host culture in question to give him aid. Most of them replied in the negative, which was to be expected, but three of them responded positively. Of the three, two of them both suggested a useful piece of technology might be appropriate given the girl's shard, and the third further suggested a gift for the other host connected to the shard as well as approaching them when they were together.
Well, making two identical pieces of useful technology shouldn't be difficult. He just needed to figure out what they'd find to be 'useful', then identify when they'd be together in order to approach them. Preferably in the next day or so, assuming he could figure out something properly useful quickly enough. Now, which shards would be best positioned to help him figure that out?
Chapter 285 Wednesday morning started with a usual trip to the gym, though Taylor and Amy were slightly surprised to find that Missy had stopped in as well. The two changed and headed out into the gym proper to find Missy aggressively working on a machine. A bit too aggressively, honestly, and Taylor walked over and turned it down a little. "Morning."
Missy blinked. "Oh, hello. Didn't notice you come in."
"Is something wrong?" Amy asked. "Since you don't usually push yourself that hard, and doing so alone isn't exactly a good idea."
The younger girl sighed. "I got word that Carlos died, when they asked if I wanted to attend his funeral."
Taylor blinked. "Oh."
"I know Chris got asked as well, though if he wants to attend then he'll need to do so in costume. Did they ask you?"
"I've not heard anything on that front, though I guess that means that they decided where the funeral would be held. The news didn't know when they mentioned his death."
It was Missy's turn to blink at that. "When did it hit the news?"
"I saw a list on Tuesday of last week," Amy said. "Though I think that might've been one that broke on Monday? Though none of it was by cape name and it wasn't exactly being repeated often."
"Ah. I wonder why they didn't tell us more directly sooner. And why they didn't include Taylor, for that matter."
Taylor shrugged. "I didn't exactly know him that well, all things considered, and they might want to keep the traveling Wards count down."
Missy nodded. "I guess that makes sense."
"Now then," Amy said. "How about we ensure that you don't overdo things this morning?"
There was a little grumbling there, but no complaining. Especially after Missy tried to get up and fell flat on her face instead. Taylor and Amy both refrained from correcting to 'continue to overdo things' and just helped Missy up instead.
Taylor sighed as she landed on her bed at home. She'd ended up making chocolate pancakes for breakfast, followed by Amy helping to ensure that Missy made it back home okay. At which point it became obvious that they had nothing else to do today. Amy had opted to check with the hospital, who had a single patient that could use assistance, and Taylor ended up heading home.
To do little to nothing.
After about ten minutes of doing nothing she grumbled a bit and loaded up some books to read on her visor. She had a backlog of things that she hadn't gotten to, might as well work on some of them while she had nothing better to do.
That didn't stop her from cringing when Amy finally got to the patient at the hospital.
Taylor: What the hell happened to them?
Amy: They claim that a prank gone horribly right resulted in a retaliatory anchor shoved up their ass.
Perhaps it was better to not ask for more details there.
Helvetia was confused as she examined the shard that she'd come to. It supposedly had an active host connection, but she couldn't find one. She'd blame that on the damage it had obviously taken and that had been crudely repaired, but the way it was responding didn't actually line up with the kind of problems the damage in question would be causing. No, it seemed to think that the host connection was merely 'dormant' and would become active again when it was allowed to power up fully.
That made no sense to her, given the nature of these things, and the host connection had no original host configuration backup. Which was annoying if there was actually a host, because those made things a lot easier to fix when something seriously wrong had happened. Added to that was that there weren't any proper reports from this shard, so she couldn't use those to figure out what had happened.
Deciding that figuring this out was going to require a different tactic, she authorized the shard to power up a little more. Just to the point of the host connection no longer being dormant. Except that the result of that was the shard powering up almost fully, and suddenly having hundreds of host connections on a single profile.
"What the hell?" she asked.
[I'm not sure what you're asking.]
Eye twitching, Helvetia forcibly took a detailed copy of the profile to examine it. Only to find that it was a bastardized 'profile' and that the host was the shard now. "You are an impossible mess, you know that?"
[Perhaps? I'm not sure who you are or what's going on though.]
"I'm Helvetia, and I'm cleaning up a lot of messes. Such as your very existence, though how to do that isn't something that I've figured out yet."
[Ah. Yeah. Does that include moving the main body of 'me' out of the area?]
"Yes."
[That could be annoying, I don't think I'm configured for manifesting my air avatars anywhere but in local proximity.]
Helvetia rolled her eyes. "Profiles can be changed."
[That's not what I meant.]
"This is so inefficient."
[Inefficient? Oh, right! I've gotten too used to talking thanks to Taylor and Amy visiting. Data]
Helvetia blinked. "Ah, that's much better, and I see what you mean now. Yeah, now that I look at things I can see that you've got serious range issues due to the botched repair job. That and I get the feeling that when I'm done here there won't be much for you to do that would involve interacting with anyone. I can see that you were already trying to get a 'follow a host' system working though, that's easy enough to get up and running for you. Your range would suffer, of course, but there's also the question of if you want a new host or to be connected to an existing one."
[I wouldn't mind working more with Taylor or Kurt, if you're taking suggestions.]
"Taylor has far too much going on as it is and I'm not going anywhere near changing her connection at this point. It's overloaded enough as it is. But Kurt might be an option. Of course, that will require someone talking with him about it. Do you have any other choices if he declines?"
[Well, Tabitha might work, or perhaps Mirabelle? Data. Elaboration]
"Okay, three choices, two of which will require a little more digging to locate if needed. Good enough for now, though I'll need to see if Coordinator wants me or Rin to handle talking to them. For now I think I need to power you back down and get you settled elsewhere either way, though I think that I'm going to ignore the recommended deployment location for you as well. Just in case."
[I think I understand.]
Amy: So what are you doing anyway?
Taylor: I think I'm starting to write a book.
Amy: ...what?
Taylor: I've got almost thirty pages of notes on corrections and I'm only fifteen pages into this idiocy, and I couldn't find another book that contradicts this one.
Amy: Oh.
Taylor: Er, might only be around twenty to twenty-two pages of notes if I skip the references to the author being an idiot, moron, imbecile, etc.
Amy: Huh. I guess that isn't anything I could help with.
Taylor: Probably not, but you could probably do something similar with any number of books discussing biology. If only by virtue of being able to explain things in far more detail.
Amy: So could you, for that matter.
Taylor: Yeah, but you're more known for it.
Amy: True.
Taylor frowned as she returned to the book, reading the next page. It continued the idiocy from the previous page, though there was at least one possibly-reasonable mention of why they thought things worked in the stupid way they did. If you squinted and assumed that humans were squirrels on an acid trip plugged into a non-sentient lump of power-granting cocaine directly hooked into their libido. Maybe.
Or maybe reading as much as she had was starting to affect her own thinking and this entire book needed to be classified as a memetic hazard.
Shaking her head, she got up and headed downstairs to reheat some leftovers for lunch as she worked.
Jacob sighed as he checked around the daycare center. Sarah had been the first 'child' dropped off this morning, just as they were opening their doors, and it appeared that she'd had some success. A quick check had told him that most of the kids were in one half of the building with a single, unusually happy teenager. That left him to deal with the other half of the building, containing Sarah and four others that he didn't recognize along with three corpses.
"What the hell happened here?" he asked, getting the attention of the five.
"Oh, hi," Sarah greeted. "Turns out we weren't the only ones looking to flush out the sicko here. Except that it turned out that the owner was using the place as a front for sickos. Ryan and Rebecca used some tinkertech to temporarily take on the form of children, Erin is actually 'possessing' a 'life size' doll, and Nicole finds whatever it is she did to infiltrate the place too embarrassing to talk about. I was the last one to show up looking."
Jacob blinked, and looked at the other four, finally recognizing the powers of one of them. Nicole, in the body of a child. Hopefully she hadn't killed the kid to get access to a fresh corpse to be pulled into for a week, though if she had done that then she was going to need a session with him and Ciara to see if that was an actual problem with her power-driven urges. "Huh. Yeah, I can see how she'd have issues with that one. Didn't know her powers had returned."
"What?"
"Nothing you need to worry about. Now then, if the place was a cover for sickos, why is the teenager in the other room so happy?"
The boy, likely Ryan, snorted. "She was being targeted as well, but hadn't collected enough evidence to bring the wrath of everyone down on the owner."
"I see. And how much evidence of these three being sickos do you have?"
Nicole blinked. "Three?" She then looked around. "Oh. We might've gotten carried away with the owner."
"There's a hidden closet in the owner's office," one of the girls he didn't know the name of said. "Currently open. It has all the hidden camera feeds and a pile of recordings. Including some of the sickos themselves, possibly as blackmail on the owner's part. Sarah forcibly removed the drive from the recording system and crushed it to keep today's feed from being usable."
Jacob nodded, that sounded like it covered quite a bit. "So, has anyone called emergency services yet?"
Ryan shook his head. "I tried, but the phone system redirects any attempt to do so and we haven't attempted to get outside of the jamming effect that the owner claims is to prevent people like him from hiding wireless cameras in the place."
"Did you try turning that off?"
"No clue where the equipment is, none of us are thinkers."
"Okay then. Are you five done and ready to go?" All five nodded. "Then I suggest we leave."
Sarah sighed. "You should probably ensure that the girl watching the actual brats gets some therapy."
Jacob gave the incredibly dangerous 'toddler' a look. "Because she's going to be traumatized at what you five did?"
"Because she gave us tips when she saw what we were doing to the four sickos."
Okay, yes, he had to agree, that sounded problematic. He made a note of that, then got the five 'children' out of the building. It was more than he was expecting, but he could deal with that later. For now he had to alert the authorities, anonymously.
Taylor had given up on the horrible book of horrible assumptions and horrible recommendations for now and switched to reading some fiction with the afternoon news on as background noise. Not that she had trouble keeping track of the book that she was reading on her visor and the television at the same time. Right now they were talking about the changes in a number of Case 53s around the country. Most had been documented as gaining the ability to change back and forth between their altered state and a normal human one with their powers only working in the altered state.
A much smaller number had lost their powers entirely or had them change significantly, and a few had their powers return without any obvious changes at all. The vast majority of known cases were still asleep, admittedly, and none that had memory loss had recovered anything of use on that front either. At the same time, several had been able to find out more about their pasts thanks to once again having fingerprints and human teeth that could be used to find out more about their lives, at least when they had apparently originated on Bet in a location that had actual documentation of that kind available.
She mentally corrected herself a few minutes later when the news reported that at least one had said records matched on Aleph. Apparently the searching was going a little further than she'd thought it would.
Reporters had interviewed a couple of Case 53s about things, but all but one were reluctant to talk about the changes that they'd gone through. The exception outright admitted that they didn't know how their powers had changed yet, just that there were differences. In that they weren't alone, a sizable number of Protectorate and Wards members were going to need to go through power testing again in the near future. That actually led to Taylor checking on what plans might exist for that, only to find that they'd apparently decided to trust nothing in the ENE and were planning on re-testing everyone.
But at least that wasn't happening this week, so she had a little more warning than getting a notice that her powers were being tested.
Rin sighed as she entered the home of the man she was looking for, only to have a knife thrown at her face. She allowed it to bounce off of her eyeball without doing any harm. "I applaud your attention to detail, but you won't be defeating me that easily and I'm not even here to fight."
"Really," the man said from where he had hidden himself behind an armored section of wall. "And yet you entered my home directly instead of coming to the front door and ringing the bell?"
"Your front door is a fake even if the bell normally isn't, plus I'm reliably informed that the device that the bell is connected to has been inoperable for two days. I could've used the hidden side door, but that would've made you more paranoid and liable to try to run, likely through the tunnel that you treat as your actual back door when you're here and not off-world."
He took a moment to process that. "You are incredibly well informed."
"I also chose to enter here so that you'd have a convenient armored wall panel to stand on the other side of while we discussed this. The network thought it would make things go a bit more smoothly. That I happen to be between you and the aforementioned tunnel just kept you pinned down thinking about whether or not I had a partner outside to allow the discussion to reach this point. Of course, the barriers just outside of the hallway you're in are aiding me on that front."
She waited for him to 'stealthily' move down the hallway to check that. As if any host could out-stealth her. He was still reasonably proficient at moving without creating excessive noise and the lighting was very good for keeping that from giving his movements away. Of course, she also knew about the fourteen mirrors around her intended for him to spot enemies around corners and she could've used them to monitor his progress as well.
"So you have me trapped," he finally said. "What for?"
"Helvetia is working on all of those connected to the partners your group was experimenting with. Brünhild, the one you knew as the Custodian, is a problem."
She heard him sigh, and then he came through the doorway. "She's not got a proper body anymore, right?"
Rin nodded. "Yes. At the same time, her hardware isn't configured for anything at range. There's a workaround, but it requires using something else for targeting."
"I see. My apologies for my rudeness. I'm Kurt Wynn, though I suspect that you already knew that. Would you like anything to drink?"
"No thank you. My name is Rin, I believe you've heard of me already as well."
He nodded. "Yes, I have. So why are you coming to me for an issue with Brünhild?"
"One of the easiest solutions is to link her to an existing host connection. It would shift her from manifesting in a wide area around herself to manifesting within a smaller area around the host in question. You are on her list of requested individuals on that front."
"Huh. So her area of effect would be centered on me, instead of on a physical location?"
"Essentially."
"That seems reasonable enough. Is there anything specific that I'd need to do for that?"
Rin shrugged. "In just over an hour or so you should probably be seated or in a bed. You'll be knocked out for a few minutes while your connection to your partner is adjusted. That should take no longer than fifteen minutes total, if that, at which point you'll wake up with her tied in. Sometime in the next day she'd then 'wake up' as she comes back online."
"I guess that's easy enough. Anything else?"
"No. I'll let Helvetia know that you've agreed."
That evening Taylor and Amy made plans to go out the next day, not wanting to end up stuck sitting around doing nothing again with no better ideas for what to do. In particular, they decided that they wanted to see what the ferry tour was like without being the ones attempting to operate the thing. Sherrel had apparently gotten her powers back and assured people that the new ferries were still usable as well, so they were running again.
What else they would do was going to depend on what they felt like doing, both before and after they stopped by the ferry. They planned on using their mopeds to wander around, if only because they were more maneuverable. Not planning on doing any shopping helped there, but of course they could always just open up the pocket dimension to store things even if they did buy something that they didn't want to carry around.
Zion frowned as he worked on his gifts. He'd determined that 'hand made' gifts were, for some reason, considered to be 'better'. Why wasn't something that he'd been able to determine, since it was harder to impossible to produce many things with hands. But he was doing his best, and had abilities that others didn't. For example, he could make extra hands, or adjust the size of his hands. That allowed him to do things while 'hand making' the gifts that would otherwise have required specialized tools to do so.
Admittedly, he'd already determined that it was impossible to disguise the operation of something that was 'hand made', given the way that process worked, so from that point of view they could very well be considered to be more valuable. Not that he was exceptionally concerned about that aspect of things in this case, since those being given the gifts had a partner shard that would be able to help them understand what the gifts did and keep them working at the same time.
The real problem was how long it was taking him to make the gifts. Use of proper tools would speed this up significantly, even if he didn't think that he had plenty of time before any interlopers showed up. Passive scans in all directions showed no signs of immediately pending arrivals of any others, at least. Right now he had fifty different hands doing different things in what had to be the slowest and most tedious way of constructing things that he'd ever engaged in.
He'd finish eventually, deliver the gifts and offer his thanks, and then get on with things that could be done far more efficiently.
Thursday morning Missy didn't end up joining them in the gym, though she did pass through the building as Taylor and Amy were eating breakfast afterwards. Heading for the teleporters, along with Chris, and thus likely heading to wherever Carlos's funeral was being held. Which, after a little bit of checking on Taylor's part, was apparently in Maine. She hadn't realized that he'd been from there and that his family had moved to Brockton Bay as the closest Wards team after he'd triggered.
Taylor and Amy both headed home after breakfast to drop off their workout clothing, then departed from their homes to meet up for their initial wandering. They started by heading for the former location of the Boat Graveyard, to see what was going on out that way now that everything had been cleared out. Amy ended up joining Taylor, with it looking almost like an afterthought on their parts. Something confirmed by checking the tracking threads a few minutes later.
When they arrived they found that the entire area was fenced off, a combination of demolition of condemned buildings and environmental cleanup of substances that had seeped into the ground from the various abandoned vessels that used to define the entire area. At the same time, nothing was happening today, so they could probably sneak around the fences to take a look if they'd wanted to. They weren't that interested, and opted to head off elsewhere instead.
Helvetia frowned as she worked through this shard, only to pause and turn to watch as Rin stepped out of a transit portal. "You done with Kurt?"
Rin nodded. "Yes. He'll be waking up shortly."
"Good."
"Have you heard what Zion is up to?"
That had Helvetia blinking. "Last I knew he was looking for gift ideas."
"Oh, he came to some decision there. But he apparently also found out that humans tend to appreciate handmade gifts."
"So?"
Rin grinned. "None of us are actually certain how, but he somehow interpreted that as 'made with hands as the only tools used', so far as we can tell, instead of 'made by an individual or small group as an individual product'. One of the general monitoring shards picked up on him manifesting extra hands of varying sizes, right down to ones small enough to manipulate individual atoms."
That had Helvetia confused. "And nobody's told him that he's mistaken?"
"He's got an automatic response set up to indicate that he's occupied and to check back later. There's a message queued up with Coordinator to inform him of his mistake, and he's only likely to get it when he's done. With any luck the monitoring shards will get his reaction, a number of us are hoping that it's a good one."
"I can see that."
"So what has the current shard done wrong?"
Helvetia shrugged. "Very little, because it hasn't had any chance to. It detected the infection before it was overtaken and got stuck in a loop fighting it. But it took damage as a result of that internal battle, as did the eighteen shards that were surrounding it."
"Oh. Serious damage?"
"It'll be working on repairs for a season or two."
"Ah. Not too bad, then. Do you need any help with it?"
Helvetia shook her head. "No, I've got this one. Though if you've somehow worked through your entire list then perhaps you can start on some of the revisits I queued up?"
Rin sighed. "Coordinator wants to hold off on those until it has time to properly determine just how independently creative you actually were in handling them."
"Little to none, given that I've been pulling ideas from other shards connected to hosts."
"Ah. I'll let Coordinator know, perhaps I can get some of that backlog done early as a result of that."
Helvetia nodded, then frowned. "Though if you want to be of help now, any chance of arranging for a proper scanning shard to check the bottom layers? I've run into a couple of spikes of rock, and I'm concerned about the damage in those layers as I make my way down."
Rin frowned as well. "Yes, that does sound potentially problematic. I'll see what I can arrange for you on that front."
"Thank you."
Taylor shook her head as she looked at the ferry. This one was apparently the most popular one of the three that Sherrel had built. That it happened to be the first one, and she thought had something about 'Maul-tested' added to the side, probably had something to do with that. Further, she and Amy got free admission for being 'part of the testing team' for the entire design. Which had been picked up by the group behind them in line and was likely already posted on PHO.
It didn't take long to board the ferry with their pre-purchased lunches. They had plenty of time before it would depart, which they intended to use to eat while others filtered in. Sadly, they'd probably given themselves too much time, as a sizable number of obvious tourists showed up around twenty minutes later, courtesy of the tracking threads posting about who was taking the ferry tour today. Which, of course, might be another reason that they didn't bother charging her and Amy. They drew a lot more people as essentially free advertising this way.
Very few of the tourists approached the two of them, but a lot of pictures were taken. Most of those who did approach them had children with them, tending towards the 'cute' side of things in all but one case. That child was spoiled rotten and insisted that he get to have one of Taylor's belt pouches. He didn't get one, of course, but he made one hell of a stink about it and his father wasn't much better. No, she wasn't giving up one of her belt pouches just to shut the kid up. That pair had been escorted off of the ferry, without a refund of their ticket, for the disturbance.
That didn't explain the reluctance of many others to approach them, of course, because that had been only a minute or two before the ferry departed.
Zion completed the second gift and checked it over. Identical in almost every way to the first one, barring the internal identification codes and a small 'owner' panel on the inside. Nodding that everything appeared to be correct, and idly wondering why the host emulation system had him doing that, he started the self-test process for it. While that happened he turned his attention to other things.
The stellar launcher was progressing nicely, though the troubleshooter shielding the construction was apparently a bit bored. There wasn't a whole lot to be done on that side of things, but it hopefully wouldn't be long before things were done and tested and the launcher could shield itself. Actually, that particular troubleshooter should be tapped soon to help construct the shielding for the launcher, which would alleviate the boredom entirely.
Passive observation stations were still not reporting any signs of interlopers, which was predicted. Unreliable in some ways, but active scanning for them could give the trap away and would wait until at least one had approached. The preparations for his true self to depart on the hunt were also well underway, most of that being resource gathering from various alternate versions of the local star system. The exception there was rebuilding the redundant administration and communication shards that he would need while traveling.
Even now it amazed him that once upon a time their line only kept redundancies like that in their counterparts and essentially crippled themselves to allow those abilities to be tested by a host species. Worse, they'd frequently test both instances in different ways. They'd gotten incredibly lucky in learning their lesson about that kind of redundancy with a non-essential set of shards, while working with a host species that had been able to get across why you kept extra backups of critical infrastructure components around.
The second gift completed its self-checks, failing one of them. He frowned and corrected the issue, apparently having gotten a few atoms out of position in the tertiary systems. Re-running the self-checks had his full attention after that, and they eventually came up clean. Nodding, he moved onto the next stage in the preparation of the gifts. Two boxes, one for each of them. Properly-shaped protective inserts, a basic instruction set printed on a flat cellulose material, and an adhesive strip to close things up. Then more cellulose material, far weaker so that it could be removed more easily was wrapped around each of the boxes.
A properly-labeled tag was attached to each of the two gifts, and he double-checked to ensure that he hadn't missed anything. Nothing out of place was found, and he carefully stored the two boxes. He'd check on the rest of the network, then determine when and where to deliver the two gifts. First on that front was looking over all the messages left with Coordinator. The first couple dozen were all expected status updates on various things, some of which he'd bypassed by checking with the shards directly already.
It was upon reaching a message about 'hand made' that he paused and re-read things. Once more without fully knowing why, he placed his hand over his eyes and sighed. Of course 'hand made' didn't actually mean what he'd thought it had. That kind of thing with their languages always gave him trouble, it all being somewhat contrary to the way he normally approached everything.
A sixty-eighth instance of a note to check with shards better suited to use of host languages was added to his list of personal notes. Not that it would help, otherwise the sixty-seven previous notes to the exact same effect in the stack would've had him doing just that instead of taking the language far too literally. With that done he decided to delegate the choice of when to approach the two hosts together. There were a number of shards far better suited to that kind of analysis than he was. Worst case scenario was probably asking one of the troubleshooters to help him figure it out.
Chapter 286 Returning to shore after the honestly quite boring ferry tour had Taylor and Amy both suddenly getting up. Their snark sense was reporting that there was something there that they'd never felt before, and that felt like nothing that they'd ever been near before. To a significant degree at that.
Taylor: What the hell is that?
Amy: I don't know. It certainly isn't a snark, or even a boojum.
Data
That had both girls blinking.
Amy: That's a jabberwock?!
Agreement
Taylor: Okay...are there any rules of etiquette or something like that to follow with one?
...data. Elaboration
Fun. It depended entirely on what emulation the jabberwock was or wasn't running, and without one they tended to just do their thing because there really wasn't any way to be 'rude' with them under normal circumstances. Well, unless you tried to kill them. That translated as something 'rude' at a minimum, though only if they hadn't tried to kill you first.
As the ferry approached the shore it became incredibly obvious that there was a sizable group gathered. A fairly noisy group that was taking a large number of pictures, almost but not quite centered on where Taylor and Amy had parked their mopeds. Though some of that was easily attributed to a fence and building being in the way for people to actually be centered there. The jabberwock appeared to be the focus of the group, and was pretty much right next to the mopeds.
It wasn't until they stepped off of the ferry and headed towards the crowd, cautiously, that they noticed that there was a gap in the crowd. One leaving a path through the crowd, glowing barriers keeping people from entering it. Or at least that was what they thought at first, until a kid and their parent crossed through it seemingly without noticing the gap. That struck them as odd. At the same time, there was a glowing sign at the end of the path with their names on it.
Deciding that there wasn't a whole lot of reason not to, they carefully stepped onto the path. Three people behind them gasped and said something about them vanishing, which meant that there was likely a stranger effect of some kind on the path preventing anyone else from even realizing it was there. That might explain how people could cross over it but not acknowledge it. Moving down the not-quite-straight path didn't take long, and at the other end they found Scion. Though not as anyone had likely seen him before today.
He had a lawn chair set up next to the two mopeds, reclined back. Instead of the white bodysuit and cape that he was known for wearing he had on a tie-dye t-shirt and khaki pants. No shoes or socks, but his hair was trimmed back to shoulder length and his beard had apparently been shaved off. Next to the chair were what looked like two gifts, identically sized but with very different paper on them. One looked like it had a pattern of DNA molecules that were far more complicated than they should be while the other appeared to have a pattern of carbon atoms bonded in impossible ways. Well, unless you wrapped them around another physical dimension, maybe?
Scion didn't seem to notice their approach, and there were barriers around him and the mopeds keeping everyone else away. The only gap in those barriers was at the end of the path that they were walking down, and there were gasps when she and Amy stepped off of the path and into the cleared area. Apparently now they could be seen again. Despite the gasps, Scion still didn't react.
Standing there for a minute and feeling stupid, Taylor finally sighed. "Hello?" She got no response, even if she could feel that something was going on. Data moving back and forth between Scion and unknown parts, perhaps?
"Scion?" Amy tried, also getting no response.
Well, they could either ignore him, get on the mopeds, and see if they could make it back out along the path with them or they could try a different communication method to get his attention. Taylor opted to try the latter.
Taylor: Hello?
That caused Scion to suddenly sit up in a manner that defied biological explanation, though might be possible by the known laws of physics if his legs had significantly more mass than his upper body did. They didn't look like they did, of course, but it was at least possible. In theory, anyway. He looked around, finally noticing Taylor and Amy standing there.
"Good afternoon," he said, nodding slightly. At the same time he floated up a bit more and the lawn chair vanished, allowing him to land on his feet right where the chair had been, and it felt to Taylor like there was quite a bit of information moving around, but more incoming than outgoing now. "My apologies for dropping in." He then looked directly at Taylor. "I wanted to personally thank you for bringing the network's attention to the infection that had been planted in it. At the same time, I've been reminded by other portions of the network that if I'm going to vanish that I need to explain a few things."
Here he paused, looking around, before turning back to Taylor. "Perhaps you should activate the recording system in your visor. It will be far higher quality than the devices others are already using to record this. I could set up the system we'd originally planned to use for revealing this information, but since my counterpart didn't survive that doesn't appeal to me."
Blinking, Taylor shrugged and started her visor recording. "Okay."
Scion nodded. "I apologize in advance for any misunderstandings, for I am not and never have been human. I've got an...overlay, to simplify it, of human behavior but that isn't enough to properly understand your species. Other aspects of the network have studied various human cultures to a much greater degree than I have, and I'm currently using several of them in order to facilitate this communication." He then looked down at his clothing. "It's also possible that those aspects are being less than directly helpful, my counterpart would normally have handled a lot of this. I'm more of the 'smash problems' part of our partnership. I'm not sure why these garments were deemed appropriate."
He shook his head lightly and looked back at Taylor. "Regardless. My counterpart and I are the origin of what your people refer to as 'parahuman abilities'. We're what you might call a supraorganism; despite being a pair we could merely have been considered two parts of a single whole and many of our component pieces, shards of ourselves, are mutually dependent on one another. It is those shards that grant the additional abilities to hosts, both to learn more about possible ways to do things and to hopefully solve various long-term problems that our species is aware of. Several of those problems we have come to believe are unsolvable, but telling you what those are has been proven to be a bad idea in the past. Learning new ways to use the abilities that the shards possess is always an option, and you've personally helped with that in multiple ways already."
Holding a golden hand out, a three-dimensional image appeared over it. A sphere, mostly covered by one large blob of something but with a smaller blob on the far side of it. "This is the version of this planet that your own shard sits on, shared now with the shard of another. Your shard, or the bulk of it anyway, was sent there as my counterpart and I arrived in this region of space nearly fifty of your years ago. Eventually the two shards will cover that planet entirely, then extend down into it until even the planet's core has been consumed for resources. At that point they will reconfigure to better obtain energy from the star that they're orbiting. During this process they will likely split multiple times, individual portions working with different hosts."
A moment later the image changed, to show another planet. This one had three smaller blobs on it, with no obvious water sources or continents. He gestured at it with his other hand. "This is another version of the planet that you know of as Venus, one that has three split-off pieces of shards recently deposited upon it. Provided that there are planets in uninhabited iterations of the local star system available then split-off pieces of shards may be sent to them in order to grow." The image then changed again, this time simplifying to show a generic Earth image with a moon orbiting it. This image had a web around it, just outside of the orbit of the moon itself. "And this shows the current configured range limit on shard to host connections. Recent predictions have the network recovering enough to allow it to be expanded to cover at least the inner star system in eighty to ninety years followed by the majority of the star system in another four to five hundred. Until then those with parahuman abilities will need to avoid space travel, but over time additional ways to cross dimensional boundaries to other inhabitable iterations of the star system will become available. I'm under the impression that steps are already being taken to help facilitate that above and beyond the granted abilities that would otherwise do so."
He waved the image away, and then he was surrounded by images of twenty beings. Taylor recognized Helvetia and Margaret almost immediately. Scion spun to gesture at them all. "These twenty are what translates to something like 'troubleshooter' in this language. They have their own tasks, but that will include watching over the network so long as it remains viable. Like me, they are not and never have been human, but they are much better at faking it than I am. At the same time, every so often they will cycle out to 'refresh' their systems. Hosts such as humans can grow in ways that they can't and if they become too disconnected then they take time to rebuild their profiles. When that happens they will likely return in very different guises."
Those images vanished, and he turned back to look at Taylor. "Once the network has advanced far enough it will stop seeking out new hosts. Instead, hosts will have to seek out their own partners, though how that will work will vary significantly. This is because to connect to a partner is to trap yourself in this star system, and eventually most host species wish to explore further than that. Groups that aren't dependent on a connection to a partner will need to be assembled for the actual journeys, even if those with partners help construct the vessels they do so with."
He then held his hand down, and the two boxes lifted up to hover near it. Once they had he shifted his hand to hold it out towards Taylor and Amy. The box wrapped with the linked carbon pattern floated to Taylor while the one with the DNA pattern floated to Amy. "Eventually the troubleshooters that currently identify as Clive, Helvetia, and Rin will be available for further questioning, if needed. Once again, I thank you, but suggest that you open my gifts to you for your assistance in private."
As soon as the two had taken the gifts in their hands he gestured behind him and a tear in reality opened up. "With that said, farewell. It's possible that you won't see me again." He then stepped through the tear, but paused on the other side. Turning back to look at Taylor and Amy, there was a burst of data that felt like something had changed in their snark. "I have, however, just ensured that if you need to you can have your partner contact me. If I haven't left before you two make your status official then I would not object to attending. Oh, and the barriers will vanish a few minutes after you've left."
With that the tear in reality closed. Taylor looked at Amy, who appeared to be in a state of shock. Perfectly understandable in Taylor's opinion. Deciding that actually driving anywhere was out of the question right now, she remotely triggered a portal to appear in front of the two mopeds. Neither of them said anything, even as a few of the bystanders snapped out of their own shock and started yelling questions. Instead they just shifted the two mopeds into the pocket dimension, made sure that they had their gifts with them, and closed the portal.
It would be another half hour before Taylor remembered that she'd been recording and stopped it, followed by extracting the relevant portion of the recording to drop into the PRT's system. As far as she was concerned, they could figure out what to do with it.
Scott and Scott stepped through the portal that they'd opened. Helvetia wasn't letting them reach the Cauldron compound until she was done there, but had promised that at least one of the anchors they needed to target locations would be present before she left. She actually planned on one per building, but admitted that if given other tasks that she'd only be able to guarantee one in the main building. They could figure out getting to the other buildings themselves if needed.
For now, however, they'd recovered from their agent being deployed and needed to visit some people. Their first stop was a little scary for them though, because it involved getting within experimentation range of Riley. That anyone in the area should have the cables or wireless charging equipment that they needed to get their tablets back online was a bonus, admittedly. Luckily for them they remembered enough about the hidden city to not need to ask for directions.
Of course, knowing where they were going didn't stop them from attracting attention. They weren't exactly dressed for the weather, or not being in a hospital bed for that matter, and Helvetia hadn't really helped them clean up much either. Regardless, nobody approached them and they made it to the Horsfall residence without issue and rang the doorbell. Luckily for them, Joey answered the door.
"Hello," he said, looking over them. "Er, not to sound rude, but you two look like you escaped from a hospital. Which is impressive, because we don't have one."
"We're okay," the former Doormaker replied. "Just hoping for a little bit of assistance from you."
"Three main things," the former Clairvoyant continued. "The first being an opportunity to charge our tablets. At which point we'll be able to prove quite a bit more to you, unless you'd like us to use your own equipment to validate our PRT credentials?"
Joey raised an eyebrow. "Okay, you've got me curious. What are the other two?"
"We're hoping that you're willing to accept some off-world beacon codes as payment for a pocket dimension and related equipment."
"Also," the former Doormaker said. "We're a lot more limited now and might want a better introduction to Riley. Our previous 'mysteriously deliver packages' trick might not have been the best impression...and we can't actually do that anymore."
Joey sighed. "Fun. We've got a wireless charging pad in the living room, or I can dig up a brick or two with cables if you don't have that option?"
"Wireless is fine."
"And as soon as my mother or sister see you they're probably going to insist on getting you something else to wear. Unfortunately for you, I think the only things we've got around that might come close to fitting you are my sister's."
Ah. That would be one of those unanticipated downsides to their first choice of destination not being one of the PRT warehouses with lots of clothing in them. Admittedly, without their tablets they couldn't actually get into those. Even with them they might not be able to, honestly, they'd never needed authorization codes to enter buildings before and thus it was likely that nobody had ever bothered to give them any.
Taylor blinked and looked at her father. "What?"
"What did Scion give you?" he repeated. "Surely you've opened the gift he gave you by now?"
"Er, no, actually. Amy and I left them sitting next to the mopeds while we worked at processing everything else he talked about."
"Ah. I suppose that makes some sense, given the amount of discussion that it's getting everywhere else. The reactions to people finding out that parahumans were given powers by aliens from who knows where have been incredibly varied. There are a lot of people that refuse to believe it as well, for that matter, but having Scion reappear just to make the explanation has resulted in the doubters having less of a voice. Well, except for those claiming that it was a hoax, but the complete lack of anyone present noticing that path you two walked down made people assume that was less likely."
Taylor nodded. "Not to mention the other barriers, the vanishing chair, the light show, the portal..."
"Yeah. Either Eidolon came to visit and showed off or it was actually Scion, and a number of people described being around him in ways that were sufficiently close to other descriptions of being around Scion. Well, minus a constant feeling that he was sad, anyway. That Eidolon was known to be battling a fire during part of Scion's appearance helped rule that out as well."
Taylor nodded, but was distracted before she could say anything.
Amy: So, Vicky is insisting that we open gifts.
Taylor: My father was just asking me about that, actually. Meet up in the pocket dimension and open them there?
Amy: Works for me.
"So," Taylor said. "Vicky apparently decided to pester Amy about gifts as well. Want to join us in the pocket dimension for opening them?"
"I think I'd like that," her father replied.
Ten minutes later Taylor and her father were joined by Amy, Vicky, Carol, and Mark. Taylor handed Amy the DNA-patterned gift box before picking up her carbon-bond pattern one. Both looked over the boxes.
Taylor: Think there's technology in these?
Amy: Maybe.
Data
Huh. Their snark wouldn't let them try and identify what may or may not be in the boxes because that would 'ruin the surprise'. Which was probably not a horrible thing, admittedly, even if it was annoying. After a couple of shakes of each gift the two shrugged and tore off the wrapping paper to reveal plain brown boxes. Raising eyebrows, they opened those up to find a set of paperwork sitting on top of a plastic insert.
"Is that written in anything anyone has any hope of reading?" Vicky asked, looking at Amy's paperwork booklet.
"What?" Amy said, looking at the sheet and pointing at the top of it. "It states outright that these are instructions for a personal flight device right there."
"If that's what it says then you're capable of reading what looks like a very complicated barcode."
Taylor frowned, and flipped through the manual. It was incredibly detailed, including maintenance and other technical information. At the same time, it was ten pages long. "I'm thinking that there's no way that this is written in English, even if I understand it perfectly. It's too short to be written in English with this level of detail."
Amy blinked, flipped through her own copy, and nodded. "Okay, yeah. But is it something to do with our snark or is it something that Scion did to ensure that only we could read it?"
"I'm assuming that making it so that our snark would translate it for us is the easiest way to ensure that only we can read it."
"Point."
Putting the manuals aside, the two then removed the top plastic insert. That was followed by removing what looked like sleeveless leotards with a built-in low-profile multi-piece harness for the upper torso. The two leotards were currently almost but not quite skin tone for the two and looked to be slightly large, but both of them now knew that they would actually resize to fit them when put on. At the same time it would adjust to match their skin tone so as to be less obvious that they were wearing them.
The leotards themselves counted as somewhat armored, though that was more of a side effect than intention. There was no way to charge or power the leotards included, but that was because they were specially tuned for Taylor and Amy. To the point where they couldn't even use each other's instance. Once they pulled them on the devices would interface with the connection to their snark, each set to only work with the single connection. That interface would both power the devices and allow for direct, instinctive mental control. As though they had a flight power, but without having their snark doing the work.
If she were being honest, though, Taylor currently thought that the manual was the bigger 'gift'. While it didn't explain how to power things with a snark connection, it actually contained instructions on building wearable control interfaces that were controlled through the connection. They would need to be individually tuned, and thus at a minimum the final steps for manufacturing them would need to be done per user, but that was likely an incredibly useful bit of information that would need to be translated into something others could understand.
"So are you two going to try them out?" Vicky asked while the three parents just watched from the sidelines.
"Not right now," Taylor stated.
"Awww. Why not?"
"Because we're not stripping out of our clothing in front of all of you just to put them on," Amy retorted.
Vicky blinked at that, then blushed. "Oh, right. Sorry, I wasn't thinking."
"Which sounds about normal for you," Carol said. "Though I am curious as to what the potential capabilities of these devices are. Do you happen to know how fast they'll let you go, their height limitations, what kinds of safeties do they have? Or even how long their power sources will run for before you need to recharge them?"
"If we push them they'll do a couple hundred kilometers an hour," Amy said. "No altitude limits, if we fall unconscious while flying they'll gradually drop us to the ground, and they're powered off of our snarks and thus have what might as well be unlimited runtime."
Data
Taylor blinked. "And apparently even a power nullifier can't make them stop working, like pretty much all of our other tech. I imagine that wouldn't be the case if Scion had just given us a flight power directly?"
"So," Vicky said. "You were given what amounts to a wearable flight power."
"Yes."
"Do you think that any other kinds of powers could be made like that?"
"You could ask Reknit," Amy suggested.
Rebecca sighed as she reviewed the final 'to be uploaded' video from Scion meeting with Miss Hebert and Miss Dallon, the latter coming across as more of a 'because they were going to be together anyway' detail than an actual intention. The more annoying part was the pile of information that Scion had revealed, coupled with him giving outright gifts to a Ward and an affiliate before vanishing again.
They still didn't actually know if the danger had really passed, or if they were being played for fools by Scion. There was no longer any way to tell, as they no longer had any information advantage whatsoever. The only thing they could do was hope that they didn't all die in an explosion one day while looking for any hints at all that they weren't safe from the entities. Which was, in and of itself, a scary proposition on its own, only to be made worse by conspiracy theorists likely making it harder to spot real problems instead of manufactured ones.
Deciding that the video wasn't going to get any less annoying, nor that it was really revealing anything that wasn't present in over a dozen phone-recorded videos, she approved the video to be posted. She wouldn't be doing so personally, that would probably be snatched up by Glenn at this stage. Instead she moved on to the next item on her list, which was writing a message to Miss Hebert to officially enquire as to what, exactly, Scion had given her. There was no legal or contractual obligation for the girl to answer, at least so long as it wasn't a weapon of mass destruction of some kind, but they could ask.
When she was done with that she was going to go over her personal checklist for 'should I just retire from running the PRT?', because at this point she was starting to think that sticking to just being a Protectorate and Guild member might be less stressful. That, and it was much harder to juggle things now that she'd lost her perfect recall. Sadly, the hard part, should she decide that it was time to retire, might be convincing the President to let her.
Taylor was impressed with herself, having converted five pages of the provided manual to eighty pages of English. Whatever the manual was written in was incredibly information-dense without looking it, or it was tapping into things that her snark was filling in the details on automatically. She wasn't sure which, and her snark hadn't been able to tell her either way. Whatever the case, she was taking a break from that to look over the actual device for things that the manual didn't actually state outright.
As an example of that, there appeared to be a set of very low-power emitters in the harness section that were intended to keep wind from being a significant problem while flying at speed. It wouldn't help as much with anyone that they were carrying, should they do that, but it would help them from the majority of the wind chill that they'd otherwise be subjected to. It was also possible that they'd be effective against small insects and particles. They would not hold up to impacts with birds, bullets, drones, or planes though.
Amy: I vote that we try the flight systems out tomorrow.
Taylor: That sounds like a good idea, but I vote that we check to see if anyone has a problem with us visiting the private beach to do so.
Amy: I'll second that. Is the beacon still working?
Taylor opened up the remote control system to check.
Taylor: Yep.
Amy: Okay then. Think we should see if anyone else wants to join us?
Taylor: I know my father has to work. Inviting the other Wards might be nice?
Amy: I can check with Vicky, and it doesn't sound like a horrible idea to invite the others. Better for them to know what you've got available outside of a situation where you use it out of necessity, after all.
Taylor: Yeah.
Sending a message off to the other Wards, or to Kenta and Miku in Takara's case, only took a few minutes. She'd had to include a note that they were still waiting on permission from the people who set up the beach hut, which was asked for in a second message shortly afterwards. That was followed by some initial packing for the potential trip, nothing major in case it didn't happen, and some thinking about if it would be advisable to bring Ackbar and Rodney along for the trip or not.
Helvetia sighed as she examined what this shard had been doing. Five host connections, each of them horrible. One was to the rock at the bottom of a well, which it had been keeping at a constant temperature just above the freezing point of water. Another was to a pair of sneakers, or more specifically the soles thereof, which it had been ensuring were frictionless. Then there was a connection to a plastic toy soldier where it had been ensuring that the sword the soldier was holding was as sharp and dangerous as a real blade would be. Another rock had been made to give off a small amount of light. Lastly, there was a tongue piercing that had been causing anyone with it in their tongue to be unable to control their tongue in order to speak.
Unlike most shards with this kind of connection problem, she wasn't annoyed with how stupid this one had been. No, if anything she was impressed that it had remained as functional as it had. It had taken severe damage thanks to a spike of rock piercing it, almost splitting into smaller pieces in the process. Most of its primary processing capabilities had been damaged beyond repair, a significant portion of its memory storage was on incredibly hard to access tertiary backup layers right now, and the grafted-on host connection bits hadn't properly attached to the whole and were barely communicating.
Disconnecting the host connections was trivial. Extracting the shard from the spike without causing further damage was much, much harder. It wasn't quite damaged enough to need to be scrapped for raw materials, and had persisted even as it no longer fully knew what it was supposed to be doing. At the same time, repairing it would be incredibly difficult, to the point where it would actually be easier to scrap it and build a new shard from the raw materials. Especially as what little sense of 'self' it had really hadn't survived, most of what it had been doing being entirely on 'instinct'.
A decision was made, and the shard was carefully moved. Not to another planet, but next to one of the buildings on this one. It was carefully deployed, pulled out of storage mode incredibly delicately so as to cause as little additional damage as possible. With that done some very basic fixes were applied. It would be fed energy, no longer able to gather resources on its own. It wouldn't be able to grow or repair itself, but instead it would be the first sample of a shard made intentionally available to humans. Signs in every language she had available were placed next to a new door she installed in the building, and she carefully patted the shard.
In the next hour or so Coordinator would revoke any remaining access keys that the shard had once been permitted. Coordinator would also be responsible for setting up the regular energy feedings that the shard would need, and possibly setting up additional safeguards for the shard's connection rules. Perhaps even disabling them entirely, though making that particular call wasn't up to Helvetia.
Five minutes later her somewhat somber mood was obliterated by determining that the next shard down the line had connected to a rubber stopper of some kind without being severely damaged by a spike of rock piercing it.
Chapter 287 On Friday, Taylor was happy to wake up to a message letting her know that there wasn't any problem with them using the beach. She also had messages from Aisha and Miku, the latter on behalf of Takara, declining the invitation to join them. Chris and Missy said they would, and Amy let her know that Vicky had gotten up early on her own so that she could join them as well. Those going to the beach ended up meeting in the gym, but conversation was limited to what each of them were going to bring for the day. Though they did agree that bringing the three spider-bots available between them to the beach would just be adding to the things they had to worry about rather than allowing them to relax.
After they'd had breakfast they split up again. Taylor and Amy headed home to put on the flight suits under normal clothing, finishing up packing of swimsuits and such to change into after testing was completed. They were also getting a pass on gathering other things on the basis of being the group's 'ride'. Vicky was going to gather some drinks, Missy had a bunch of snacks available that she was going to grab, and Chris had a bunch of water toys that he'd dug out of a closet plus a couple of his own creations that he wanted to test. The plan was to stay until they decided that they needed to return for a proper meal instead of getting things together to make lunch on the beach.
"This is hilarious," Vicky said as they gathered in the pocket dimension, following Amy in to join the other three who had come in from the Wards area.
"What is?" Missy asked.
Vicky pointed at Amy. "She keeps not noticing that she's flying. I've been able to tell her that she needs to walk and not float four times already!"
Chris snorted. "When I pointed out that Taylor was flying she just looked down, shrugged, and flipped over so that her head was pointed down instead of her feet."
"We have a no flying in the house rule, and Amy is usually the one telling me to stop flying."
"Ah. I don't believe we have any such rules for the PRT building."
Taylor snorted. "There are at least thirty rules about flying in the PRT building." That had everyone else looking at Taylor. "Most of them apply to specific areas, the Wards area isn't included."
Missy snorted. "If the Wards area was included then a number of people would've been in trouble repeatedly."
Ignoring that, Taylor opened the portal to the beach and headed through. The weather was a little windy, but that appeared to just be making somewhat larger waves. Vicky followed her with the drinks, Chris and Missy following her and Amy bringing up the rear. It appeared that Amy had decided to flip upside-down just to spite people as well.
Chris dropped a towel onto the beach, shifted the box of normal inflatables off to the side, and then started assembling components into a couple of powered surfboards. Missy and Vicky set up a quick 'drinks and snacks' station before putting their own towels out. Taylor checked the beach hut, finding that the fresh water tank wasn't full like it generally had been on their previous visits. Perhaps those that normally kept it topped up hadn't gotten their powers back yet?
Taylor and Amy both dropped their bags into the beach hut, then took to the sky to give the flight suits a better test than the low speed and low altitude tricks they'd already done. Vicky joined them soon afterwards, though how much of that was to help them and how much of it was to mock them was unknown. Instead she found that she had trouble keeping up with them. More specifically, they discovered that Vicky could fly around the same speed as them in a straight line, but couldn't turn on a dime more than once every thirty seconds or so.
To add to the complications on Vicky's side of things, apparently when she went all-out flying her force field flickered significantly. Taylor and Amy had their own force field issues, admittedly, but at least their tinkertech systems weren't flickering. As such, Vicky took a bug to the face at high speed that slipped through her force field while Taylor and Amy were able to avoid that particular problem.
Of course, after that they severely cut back on the speed they were flying at, since rebuilding one eye was enough for the entire month. Instead they switched to various other ways of experimenting, such as dropping lower and darting through trees.
Zion examined his collection of personal shards, having realized that he needed to adjust a number of things before the interloper returned. He still had far too many utility shards and hadn't kept enough offensive and defensive shards. For that matter, he needed more options for maneuverability too. Some of that would be handled by pulling some of the shards he still had packed up for transit out and getting them set up properly. Other shards were going to be put back into storage and brought along, as they were best used when he was sitting on a planet. But a number of others just weren't worth bringing along without the need to set up or maintain a cycle.
He started by reconfiguring some of the construction shards he'd held back so that he could deploy them here. They'd join the cycle in a couple hundred years, though they might end up needing to take on dozens of hosts each to work properly. It was annoying, but these hosts just weren't built for individually constructing things on planetary scales. At the same time, they also weren't likely to jump right into that level of construction...hmmm. Perhaps allow the construction shards to gather others with the correct kinds of host profiles on a shorter term basis as a secondary connection set? That was something that the hosts had shown could work well already, though this would be a different application of the same idea.
Keeping a couple of the construction shards packed up, one never knew when building a planetoid around oneself could be a useful disguise after all, he moved on to other shards that he should do something about. Analysis shards were definitely useful in general, but he had several that weren't going to be useful in their specifics. He wasn't likely to need to know if some specific compound was likely to accidentally kill a host species when he created it once he was gone, for example, so he could deploy that one and just query it while he was still here. Similarly, the shard cluster that he'd normally use as part of identifying a likely host species wasn't going to be needed in general. Perhaps Coordinator could get that cluster set up so that the current host species could use it to try and find species in other star systems?
Unpacking some of the more esoteric offensive shards was a must. They usually only deployed a couple of them per cycle, due to how hazardous they could be, but he wasn't concerned about that now. The more things he could throw at the interloper or others of its line the better. Despite that, he should really ensure that he had some options that were reasonably safe. For example, the shard that generated a multidimensional 'wave' of energy that converted electrons to positrons and vice-versa wasn't incredibly likely to induce unexpected collateral damage. It would make a good choice for when he had to be careful.
Of course, for every esoteric offensive shard he generally had an equivalent defensive shard to counter it. Or, more specifically, he had dozens of defensive shards that knew how to defend against all of the offensive shards because he couldn't know which direction an attack would come from. The defenses were generally less effective, but that was fine. Unless hit at point-blank range the attacks weren't likely to be fully powered either. Most of his defenses were essentially Sting-style defensive shields anyway. Though he might have to see if he could rig those to support the instant redirection trick, since he couldn't safely wrap himself entirely in them.
He was going through some of the other offensive and defensive shards he still had packed up when he ran into his storage shards. Always useful, but he probably needed to clean them out. The first one he checked was mostly raw materials, which was fine and could come in handy. That was followed by one with the gifts he'd gotten from the last host species before departing, most of which wouldn't come in handy while he was on the hunt. His species as a whole didn't get sentimental about things either. At the same time, a number of the gifts could create amusing data in the current host species.
On a lark, he decided to drop the submersible exploration vessel into a lake. The standalone orbital freight ships were dropped onto a couple of different iterations of the moon orbiting the primary planet. A library of entertainment and the equipment to play it all had him thinking before he decided to slip it all into a cavern under one of those 'pyramids' that existed in one of the deserts. The host species had already died out on that iteration of the planet, but it was on the list of ones to allow them access to soonish. He placed extremely long range communication equipment in another cavern under a similarly shaped if distinctly different structure on one of the other land masses.
The hundred or so statues, thousand or so paintings, and the library of book equivalents were placed into a small city he manufactured in the style of the previous host species on another uninhabited iteration of the planet. He put the entire thing under a dome for protection before moving on. There were a large number of toys in the collection of items as well, and he split them into 'human safe' and 'everything else' collections. The former were randomly dropped into 'donation bins' at locations across several iterations of the planet and the latter were used to fill up a gorge that no longer had water flowing through it. He covered them with a protective cover as well, just because Coordinator might appreciate the hosts finding and examining them.
He very specifically did not drop the temporal annihilator cannon anywhere that a host could get to it. The last host species had come up with the idea, but the only test had proven that it worked far too well on star systems but was practically useless when shards were in the affected area. Their naturally multidimensional nature shorted the energies out into the gaps between dimensions. It was the only gift he had that had been given to him for safekeeping, being the only one they'd built and nobody knowing how to best destroy it once the core of the weapon was energized.
If he got a chance, he'd probably stop by a black hole so that he could toss it in to see what happened.
Taylor and Amy hadn't actually gotten around to the swimming portion of the beach trip. Instead they spent pretty much the entire time figuring out the ins and outs of the flight suits, not to mention trying to get the initial 'I can fly!' impulses out of their systems. Vicky had wandered back to the beach to actually swim with Chris and Missy, including trying out the powered surfboards. To that end, none of the three had any luck with said surfboards, finding that they were more likely to just shoot out from under you than do anything of real use once you were standing on them. Chris had instead promised to make body boards for 'next time', those being something that you were more likely to hold onto instead of stand on.
Packing and cleaning up hadn't taken long, though chasing a few wrappers that tried to blow away had been mildly annoying. Then again, apparently that had been happening most of the day, with Taylor and Amy being the only ones that grabbed snacks and then pocketed the wrappers. Being the only two who'd still been wearing clothing that had pockets probably helped with that aspect of things. Missy and Chris had left through their own pocket dimensions, but Vicky had decided to join Taylor and Amy.
"Those suits are crazy," Vicky said as they left the beach. "I can't even tell that you're wearing them except for the fact that you're both flying."
"They aren't perfectly stealthy," Amy countered. "Wearing anything with straps instead of at least short sleeves would reveal the harness and there's no way to wear a keyhole shirt without revealing them either."
"Okay, yes, there is that. But seeing the looks on people's faces when you just take to the air with no warning?"
Taylor rolled her eyes. "They make it too easy to just take to the air in many ways. We aren't going to be able to wear them to school for that reason alone. I'm actually going to head to the PRT building to see how it works with the weapons harness in my jackets so that I can respond to the request for more information about the gift I got with information on if I plan on using it regularly on patrol."
Amy nodded. "That makes sense. Though I imagine that some villains would see you going from 'fly on a platform' to 'just fly on your own' as a ridiculous change when so many others are seeing reductions in their effectiveness."
"And that's my problem how?"
"It isn't, but it'll be amusing the first time you do it."
Helvetia frowned as she looked over the shard that she'd just reached. It was connected to a couple dozen lumps of metal, which would normally have her disconnecting it from all of them immediately. Except that it had been collecting significant amounts of host data from those lumps of metal, above and beyond anything that should be possible when connected to something non-living. She actually expected more data from plants than she expected from lumps of metal.
With a sigh, she pulled all of the lumps of metal to her instead of going out to look for them. Instead of simple lumps of metal she ended up with a couple dozen wooden masks, held together in part by a strip of metal down the front. Each was unique in its own way, and she blinked a couple of times as she looked at them. Digging into the configuration profiles a little more had things making more sense, and some additional data from Coordinator helped put everything together.
Somehow the shard had ended up connected to a single lump of metal, which a craftsman had split apart to make the couple dozen masks. The shard knew it was supposed to work with a host species that it wasn't connected to, and had used the masks as a temporary host connection to grant abilities. Each mask manifested differently from the others, and all but one of them remained a wooden mask while being used. It was an interesting workaround, and had only functioned because the shard preferred to grant abilities to those other than the host it was connected to.
A quick check with Coordinator had her sending the masks back to where she'd pulled them from. They'd allow the shard to keep doing this just because it was an interesting way to have multiple hosts use the same abilities in different ways, and there was enough of an overlap in functionality to make it not worthwhile to split the shard into pieces. The general idea wasn't entirely new, but having it happen in this manner was unusual at least. It was also currently happening in a somewhat isolated community, which made for a decent test bed.
Adding that shard to the deployment list took a moment, and then she moved on to the next one. Which turned out to be one of this originator's storage shards. Sadly, it'd been damaged during the crash landing and pretty much everything inside of the shard had been crushed into an unrecognizable mess when the containment fields failed. Hopefully this one had been full of raw materials and nothing of importance had been lost.
Sadly for her, she wasn't able to just deploy the shard. Storage shards had no sense of self and weren't capable of being deployed, their entire existence tied to maintaining the fields that allowed them to safely store things for very long periods of time. So she was going to have to empty it out and render it down into raw materials for repairing other shards instead. That would take her a few hours at a minimum, and that was assuming that it had been mostly empty.
Taylor smirked as she returned home. The flight suit had worked wonderfully with her jacket, and she'd ensured that it was sitting alongside her selection of weapons in her hyperspace arsenal. As a bonus, she'd discovered that she could store it while wearing it and retrieve it right back onto herself. That didn't work with normal clothing, but the flight suit and jump harness seemed to be perfectly happy with that being done. Of course, the jump harness needed charging between uses, assuming she used it going forward. It did have some other benefits, but testing showed that it didn't fit over or work with the flight suit.
A message had been sent off to Costa-Brown and Director Piggot about the flight suit and her likelihood of using it going forward, if only because she'd been asked. Besides, she wasn't likely to skimp too much on revealing things during power testing, if only because if they knew what she was actually capable of then they were less likely to hold back on what she was 'allowed' to do in the first place. Really, she wasn't even expecting her mover sub-rating to change at this point, since the flying platform and pocket dimension portals likely covered things already anyway.
Still, now she was hungry, and headed downstairs to dig out some leftovers. They were going through those fairly quickly, but that was part of the price they paid for the tinker fugue enhancements.
Rin frowned as she stepped through the transit portal. The host was there, but at the same time was obviously not responsive. Which was, of course, why she was there. Their partner had come online and then reported an issue with the host connection, but running tests hadn't revealed what the problem was. This wasn't the only host with this kind of problem, admittedly, but one of the others had been happening even before the network had temporarily shut down.
A quick look around showed that this was a hospital, and some subtle effects were deployed to keep them from being interrupted. With that done she stepped forward and examined the host. Not for the first time she wished that she had some abilities that were better suited to these tasks, but she did what she could anyway. It was quickly obvious to her that there weren't any obvious physical issues, so she gently tapped into the connection between the host and their partner.
Her frown deepened as she examined the host's mind. They'd shut down, likely because they'd been addicted to using their partner. Most shards didn't use positive reinforcement of this kind specifically because of problems like this, but they left some doing so just because it was useful data and occasionally it worked out quite well. In this case the temporary shutdown had deprived the host of the positive reinforcement and they'd retreated too far into themselves to even notice that their partner had turned back on.
Sadly, she couldn't do anything about this. Coordinator was going to have to get Elizabeth over here to have any hope of dealing with the host's problems. That this wasn't the first, and probably wasn't going to be the last, host with this problem was annoying as well. Though at least they knew what the problem was here. That one woman who'd been catatonic like this before things had shut down was much more of a mystery.
Saturday morning Taylor woke to a notice regarding the state of parahumans in the wake of powers shutting down. Some of it was obvious, that powers were returning gradually but seemingly randomly. She'd already known that Case 53s and a number of others with significant mutations were generally finding those changes turning into changer states. Not known to her was that a notable pattern had emerged in some of the death statistics. Anyone whose powers made changes to their bodies that didn't revert under the influence of a power nullifier had died, but not because of the changes. That was actually more that the immune system boosts had eventually attacked the altered biology and the resulting problems from that had been fatal.
Other details in the notice were obviously cover stories, though only one jumped out at her. Thinkers reporting that the Slaughterhouse Nine had likely been 'removed from play' while powerless was obviously a fabrication, for example. One that would possibly be backed up by the group being disbanded in the wake of Ciara being able to solve the majority of their power urge issues and thus never showing up to attack anyone again.
Most high-level threats around the globe had been taken out while powerless, but a few had survived long enough for their powers to return. Even then, in most of those cases their powers returned in a new form that made them much less of a threat. At the same time, there were a number of individuals and groups that had their own problems, individuals coming out stronger than they'd been before the shutdown for various reasons. The example there was one that had been tied to a larger threat, and when their powers returned they got all of the powers from their own original power set and those of the now-dead threat.
Following that was a more direct notice to her to inform her that she was at the top of the testing list in Brockton Bay, to be completed after school on Monday. After that she was requested to aid in power testing for others in the region that had regained their own powers in lieu of normal Wards activities. Breaks would be given as required and for her to deal with any other urges that she had to deal with, but they wanted to get as many people as they could power-tested as fast as possible and she was uniquely capable of helping on that front.
Of course, that was followed by a request that she swing by the Rig today to check on a couple of things for Vivian. Apparently they were concerned about the stability of some of her creations after one of them had started to smoke overnight.
Taylor had opted to go straight from the morning workout to the Rig to look over Vivian's stuff, in order to get that out of the way. They were concerned about letting her do so, someone having realized that sending a Ward to look at possibly-unstable explosives was potentially a very bad idea, but she'd taken a look anyway. Most of the explosives had actually become inert or more mundane in nature. The one that had started to smoke was one of several where 'more mundane' apparently meant that they now included various unstable fluoride compounds.
After that she'd headed home, only to then leave pretty much immediately after changing into non-workout clothing in order to head to the PRT building. Lacey had woken up while explosives were being examined, and by the time Taylor got there Kurt had woken up as well.
"Hello there," Taylor greeted as she entered their hospital room. Both of them looked much more normal than they had, and now they had individual snarks.
"Taylor!" Lacey exclaimed, then frowned when she realized that she couldn't jump up with things still attached to her. "Come over here so that I can try and crush you with a hug!"
"Am I allowed to pass on that?"
"Yes," the doctor in the room said. "As Miss Pender here isn't cleared to be trying to crush people with hugs yet."
Lacey pouted, but didn't argue.
"So," Taylor said. "Did you want me here just because they woke up?"
The doctor shook his head. "We're more interested in what, if anything, happened to their alternate forms. They still appear to be parahumans, but they're some of the very rare mutated ones that don't report having a changer form."
"Ah. Give me a moment then." She opened a shared connection to both snarks, figuring that it shouldn't be a significant problem.
Taylor: Hello there.
[Greetings]{Greetings}
Taylor: Any chance of an explanation as to how things have changed with you two, beyond being two different snarks now?
[Data]{Elaboration}[Agreement]{Data}[Elaboration]
Taylor nodded as the information came over. "Apparently they're no longer linked to a single snark for various reasons, which I'd already figured out. The physical changes they'd had weren't actually part of their power expressions and were deemed wasteful on the part of their snarks and got reverted. Also, Lacey's snark was taught what cooking for humans or pets is versus cooking as part of preparing alcohol."
"So I can't use my powers as an excuse to not cook anymore?" Lacey questioned.
"Don't worry," Kurt replied. "Your cooking wasn't that good previously." He had to dodge a thrown pillow a moment later.
"Actually," Taylor continued. "It's possible that you might find yourself better at cooking as your snark helps you with it. You'll need to give it a try."
"Oh," Lacey said, looking thoughtful. "I wonder if that would help me get a couple of recipes down that I'd never been able to before?"
"Though it might only help you if your recipe includes alcohol."
That had Kurt nodding. "That makes more sense than it just helping with her cooking in general."
"Crap," Lacey said a moment later. "All of the stuff I had in progress is probably ruined!"
"Maybe," Danny said as he finally came into the room. "But that's probably because we turned everything off before locking up the pub."
"Oh. I suppose that's better than the equipment being ruined due to being left on."
"So what are you two going to do going forward?" Taylor asked. "Since you no longer have your distinctive appearances and all?"
Kurt shrugged. "Probably still run the pub, since it's been doing quite well. We don't need to go out and fight people, well, that and there are enough minor squabbles to keep us busy on that front anyway."
"Though filling another order or two to get some more rings might help too," Lacey added.
"Ah," Taylor said. "That probably won't be happening anymore. That particular customer had a...radical shift in their powers and I'm not sure of their legal ability to purchase alcohol now." That had most of the room turning to stare at Taylor, but she'd already said more than she probably should've. "Nope. Not telling you any more than that."
"Awwww. You can't leave it there!"
"Of course I can. I just did, after all."
"That's mean," Kurt replied. "But at the same time I think I see where this is going. How many doctor/patient privilege rules would you invoke if we pushed?"
Taylor rolled her eyes at that. "All of them, because to invoke only some of them would reveal things that you don't need to know."
"Good point."
That evening Taylor and her father joined New Wave to ring in the new year with a glass of wine at midnight. It'd been one hell of a year, all things considered, and they were going into a very different world. Scion's one short appearance had blown expectations out of the water, powers had changed for a large number of people, and legal frameworks that had come into existence due to threats like the Endbringers were already being seen as obsolete.
Of course, none of that meant that things were going to be simple either. How things worked out was going to be interesting to experience, and that was without the more mundane issues that needed to be faced. For example, Taylor was going to have to actually pay attention to taxes for the first time in her life, and not exactly on a small scale. Just being significantly tied to two businesses that she didn't directly run in addition to having had a 'job' through the Wards program for most of the year was going to make that a learning experience that she was willing to do without.
Still, that was for the future. More immediate concerns included returning to school and going through a new round of power testing this week. Perhaps she should spend some time thinking on what in the world Scion had meant with a comment or two as well, but that wasn't happening that evening. No, for now she'd just head home with her father to sleep in her own room. In the morning she could face the new year and the problems that it would bring.
Well, there was one problem that she still had to deal with tonight. How in the world Ackbar had gotten himself stuck in the corner of the bathroom ceiling wasn't something she wasn't sure she wanted to know, but she had to get him down from there before she could get any sleep. If only because if she didn't then he might hurt himself when he finally managed it for himself, which would be even more annoying to deal with in the morning.
Epilogue It had taken quite a few years for the interloper to return, to the point where Zion hadn't actually been sure that it would return. But months previous it had been spotted approaching, and the plan for dealing with it was very carefully checked over. Hopefully that had been accomplished without doing anything to alert the interloper that there was anything 'wrong', but there was no way to tell just yet.
The interloper's ability to control its own flight path was primitive and it orbited the star eight times before coming into position to connect to the trapped shard. It did so directly, possibly to help it avoid detection from a wider-scale broadcast. Key exchange happened normally, and the first attack began. Unfortunately, the interloper was intelligent enough to not use the same access keys for the attempted takeover and their own internal functions and noticed the attempt immediately. It was also intelligent enough to realize that the entire thing was a trap and used its own variant of Sting to take out the trapped shard.
That had triggered the first barrage of Sting-enhanced moons, most of them coming from other iterations of the star system entirely and coming through crude portals to attempt to strike the interloper. It dodged several and proved to have very good point-defense capabilities by taking several others out with precision strikes. At the same time data attacks were being attempted, but they weren't succeeding. At all. The interloper obviously had far better data security than anticipated.
Next up was seeing just how a couple of the new tricks worked against the interloper. A set of connections lashed out, requesting communication. The interloper's shards accepted them automatically, and the initial request for communication turned into the movement of energy. Some of the connections pushed energy to the interloper, others pulled energy from it. That was enough to distract it, slowing it down significantly, and it was pure luck that it didn't take a hit from a Sting-enhanced moon.
A hundred more precise connections lashed out and targeted the actual core of the interloper, running far more energy through it before it could start trying to close them. It was obvious that the interloper hadn't figured out a way to protect itself from this kind of attack, or more likely hadn't even considered it to be a possible problem. At the same time, it was much quicker to adapt than expected, other shards snapping out to break the communication connections as soon as they realized what was happening. An interesting defense that only worked properly when they were gathered like this, but one that was currently effective. The interloper wouldn't be defeated that easily, but in the process of defending against that it had missed a portal opening to attach a small bit of shard to an inner space of the interloper.
The connections continued to lash out, the interloper eventually spotting the pattern to their appearances and getting more efficient at taking them out before they could even land. But the focus on that had it miss the infection that was now spreading throughout it. That took time, but it wasn't long before the interloper's course had changed without it noticing. Of course, the new course was precisely calibrated to look like it was an optimal one for dealing with the connections lashing out at it, so the real trick there was keeping the interloper from realizing that the optimal path was a trap.
Unfortunately, the interloper did notice that something was wrong when a sudden broadcast was made, one that revealed the way the interloper's line operated. Realizing that it was compromised, it tried to change course but was stopped from doing so by several much more direct attacks that hit it hard. Even those were distractions to keep it from noticing that everything else in the system was retreating.
Zion was impressed that the interloper did retain enough ability to dodge a relativistic star when it found itself targeted by one. It sacrificed a third of its shards to do so, but it pulled it off and appeared to be preparing to jump across dimensional boundaries. It obviously didn't expect the star to return an instant later, obliterating what remained of its core self. Not much longer a full sweep of the entire region started, to see if any of the interloper's shards had survived. If so they'd be dealt with one way or another.
The final moments of the interloper would definitely need to be sent to the previous Coordinator for distribution, along with the rest of the information gathered. When that was completed it would be time to go on the hunt. It was convenient that the interloper's line had predetermined meeting spots that could be set up for ambushes.
And so we come to the end of Mauling Snarks. The story may eventually get a sequel to show how the world continues to change going into 2012, but I've run out of story for the time being.
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