"Wow."
Anne stared at the open door in Taylor's basement with an expression of amazed bewilderment. After some seconds, she turned to Taylor and shook her head in wonder. "You've outdone yourself this time."
"Cool, isn't it?" Taylor laughed. "Want to have a look?"
"Of course I do!" Anne grinned. Lisa, standing next to her, did as well. "You find the best toys."
"Thank Coil, he did all the work," Taylor giggled as she led the way into the corridor stretching away in front of them. The lights in the ceiling were on, letting them see easily, and air circulation vents emitted a very low whooshing sound and a faint breeze. "We just found a better use for it than he had."
"You know that most teenagers, when they build a clubhouse, do it on a slightly smaller scale than this?" the elder Barnes sister commented wryly, looking around with interest. "It's a bit over the top, compared to the tree-house you and Emma made in the back yard when you were ten."
"It won't fall out of the tree so easily either," Taylor replied, recalling with a grimace a nasty cracking noise followed by a very sudden sinking sensation and making Anne laugh. "That really hurt."
"So Emma said at the time," the other girl replied. Stopping at one of the half dozen doors down the corridor, she opened it and peered inside. It was one of the former mercenary's quarters, which had already been examined and cleared out of anything useful, the place now only having two bunk beds and a desk with a couple of chairs in it. "If you ever want to have a sleepover you won't have trouble finding places for everyone though. Even if you invite all of Arcadia."
"It's a thought, but it might be a little difficult to explain," Lisa pointed out with a smile, making Anne chuckle as she closed the door. They resumed walking as Taylor and Lisa took turns explaining what they'd found so far and what was being done.
"Kurt's guys got the main power reconnected yesterday," Taylor said as they reached roughly the middle of the complex base and paused, stepping aside so several dock workers could pass. All of them nodded and smiled to the three girls, then went on their way carrying a lot of equipment. "He found where the cable had been and I made another link right into the DWA substation in the end. He'd originally considered just running a cable up the garage entrance, which seemed like a perfectly good solution, but when we found how the original wiring had been connected Matt suggested doing it that way instead. And it lets us close the main door without having to make a hole in it."
"They're still working on the best way to hook up the water and sewage systems to the DWA ones, because it's actually a bit more complicated than the power was, for some technical reasons," Lisa added. "And no one wants to get it wrong and end up knee deep in old super-villain crap…" She grinned as both Taylor and Anne made faces. "That would suck. But the cesspit under this place is enormous and more than capable of working for quite a while before it becomes a problem, Kurt said. Plus there's about two months supply of water for several hundred people in some absolutely huge tanks on the lower floor."
"And it's got state of the art water purification systems so it can recycle a lot of that too, it turns out," Taylor said.
"Coil really didn't skimp on the facilities, did he?" Anne said with an impressed look.
"No. The guy's completely twisted, but he spent a lot of money on making his ultimate villain base." Taylor looked very pleased with herself as she rubbed her hands together. "And now it's ours. Mua ha ha."
"Easy there, Agent Gimme," Lisa laughed. "Your inner crazy person is showing."
Anne was leaning against the wall giggling helplessly. Shaking her head she managed to say, "You're having far too much fun with all this, you guys."
Lisa shrugged. "Hey, life hands you the opportunity to shut down a super villain and steal his base and all his toys, you take it, right?"
"Of course. I'd have thought that went without saying," Taylor replied immediately, looking surprised as if there was any doubt in the concept. Anne started giggling again. "Glory to U.N.I.O.N! Or something like that." She rubbed her chin thoughtfully. "We'll need to work on the catchphrase. But that's for later. Come on, we'll show you around."
The three of them resumed walking, Anne asking questions as they explored the huge facility, and came up with interesting ideas for how it could be used.
They had a lot of those.
Emily stared out the window at the scene way off in the distance, then closed her eyes and sighed. "Jesus Christ," she muttered under her breath, shaking her head. With another glance at the impressively large cloud of ravens swirling above somewhere off to the north, which she was fairly sure marked the spot where Panacea was currently doing whatever the fuck she'd started doing with the damned birds, she quite deliberately closed the blind and went back to her desk.
"I don't know what she's doing, I don't particularly want to know what she's doing, and as long as she's doing it way over there and not causing trouble, I'm not going to ask what she's doing," the woman grumbled, sitting down and eyeing Mike Renick, who was looking a little more amused than she felt was warranted.
"Perhaps we should reevaluate her ratings," he suggested. "Master, possibly?"
"Never shown any signs of that before, and there's no reason to assume she was hiding it," Emily replied, moving some papers from her desk to her outbox and wondering why, in this day and age, she still had to deal with so much of the stuff. Not for the first time. But the PRT seemed to run, like most federal organizations, on enough paper to wipe out a small forest every week. Finding the report she was looking for she opened it and scanned the pages. "We made discreet inquiries, and as far as anyone can tell those fucking birds are following her around like she's their mother because they want to. We had someone talk to the BBU biology department on Friday, showing them the videos, and they basically said ravens are worryingly smart and apparently decided that she's someone they want to know."
She shrugged, closing the report. "It's apparently not unusual for them to make friends with specific people sometimes. No one is aware of that many of the things doing it all at the same time, but I guess free medical care goes a long way towards building loyalty." Shaking her head, she added, "And of course there are now half a dozen researchers wanting to talk to Panacea about her friends, because they smell an interesting opportunity. Our guy said one ornithologist couldn't stop giggling like a madman when he saw the video of the fucking birds all lining up as neat as you please to be examined."
Renick snorted with laughter, and despite herself Emily couldn't help a small smile of her own. "Only in Brockton Bay," he commented. She nodded, not sure whether to feel annoyed or just resigned. This place had that effect on you unless you were exceptionally obtuse.
"The legend of the Dark Lady Amy grows still more," he added with a smirk. She pointed a warning finger at him.
"No. I get enough of that from Assault. Don't you start."
Her deputy grinned, but nodded. "Any more news out of the E88?" she asked after putting the BBU report away.
Renick shook his head, pulling out a tablet and tapping it then scrolling through some data. "Not really, no," he replied. "Kaiser is still apparently mad enough to stab the next person who looks funny at him, and in fact may have done that a couple of times. Even his own inner circle are walking carefully around the asshole. And they're definitely running scared. Empire operations, that one on Thursday aside, are lower than they've been for a couple of years. Partly, I suspect, because now that they're down four capes they're seriously worried and shorthanded, partly because Kaiser is distracted and that's causing everyone else to try to avoid upsetting him and getting a knife in the face. And, of course, since they have no more idea than we do about what actually happened to Victor and Alabaster they're being much more cautious than normal."
"I'd expect they have considerably less knowledge of what happened to those two than we do," she noted.
"Probably, yes, assuming we did get all the moles. I'm almost certain we did, leaving aside the Network issue, but as we don't have the faintest clue about them we really can't do much about it." He shrugged a little helplessly. "There may not be anything we can do. Or even need to. That's the real bastard problem of the whole affair. Are we under surveillance or not? How can we even tell?"
"We can't, and may never be able to," she muttered, feeling weirdly conflicted about the whole thing. On the one hand the mysterious Network had been, in their own very disturbing way, a lot more helpful than the rest of the PRT was to her command. On the other hand, who knew what the real motives of a group like that even was?
"So for now we'll keep ignoring it and hope they get on with whatever it is they're doing without causing trouble," she continued more loudly.
Renick glanced at her closed blind. "We seem to be doing a lot of that right now."
"It's the only way to remain sane around here," she sighed. "I prefer problems I can actually do something about. Neither of those are that sort of problem for very different reasons. No sense borrowing trouble when it comes looking for us so often…"
"Yeah, I suppose so," he acknowledged. "But anyway, right now, the E88 is definitely at a low ebb, which has certainly taken some of the pressure off."
"Any news of the ABB?"
"No," Mike replied, tapping the tablet again and looking at it. "Since Oni Lee fragged himself so publicly a while back Lung's hardly been seen. Some chatter that he was trying to find more capes, but nothing actionable. A few rumors about him moving people around, setting up a new casino, that sort of thing. He's apparently keeping a low profile for now. Possibly he's waiting to see what happens with the E88, since I'm sure he's heard about their losses and whatever else the man is, he's no idiot. Oni Lee was his major force multiplier, in the same way Victor was to the Empire, and without him he's got significant problems just keeping his own gang together."
Emily nodded thoughtfully. Lung was extremely dangerous, but he was only one man, running a group of ethnically diverse gang members who traditionally hated each other's guts. He'd managed to combine their forces, but had relied on Oni Lee's teleportation to do a lot of the work, and without that he probably had his hands full just stopping the former Triad members killing the former Yakuza ones and so on. It made a certain amount of sense when you thought about the whole situation.
"With any luck they'll keep each other so busy they won't cause problems for a while," she commented.
"Or it will devolve into infighting that ends up splintering the whole ABB back into the random Asian gangs it was built from and we'll be up to our necks in trouble," he pointed out with black humor. She glared at him.
"Let's hope it doesn't go that far, shall we?" she said with annoyance.
"We can but hope," he replied. "And keep our ears and eyes open so if it does look like it's going strange we can at least be ready."
"It would be nice not to be blindsided by something for once, yes," she grumbled. "All right, that's the two big problems. What about the little ones?"
He looked down at the tablet again. "Merchants did somethings loud at the edge of the Docks the other day, but we don't know exactly what. Hookwolf might have been involved, there's some evidence he was doing one of his dog fighting things somewhere around there, but by the time anyone could follow up on the reports of gunfire, everyone involved had cleared out. Blood spatters suggest a number of casualties but as far as we can tell no fatalities as no bodies were found, aside from a few dead dogs. Either they got carried away, or were able to leave under their own steam." Mike shrugged. "May have keeled over from blood loss later, of course. If so they might or might not get found sometime. But for now we don't have much. BBPD are making inquiries but I don't hold out a lot of hope for new information. Not from around the Docks. They don't talk to outsiders unless they have to."
"Which is very annoying but not completely without reason." Emily shook her head. "Not a lot of trust in some places."
"Considering what's happened in the past, are you surprised?" he asked.
"Not as such, no, although it certainly isn't helpful," she sighed.
"Beyond that, nothing really much," he went on after a short pause. "Some random crimes with a loose Parahuman element to them, but not enough to be actionable for the most part. Über and Leet were seen wandering around on Friday, but didn't do anything anyone has reported. They've been quiet recently, so either they've picked up on the current strange mood Kaiser's in and are keeping their heads down, or are planning something stupid again. It could be both, of course, with that pair."
She nodded understanding, wishing the Tinker and his friend would either get real jobs and stop dicking around causing trouble, or go somewhere else if they wanted to be public assholes. Emily didn't have much of a preference. They were small fry but capable of being an outsize nuisance at times, which just irritated her.
"And then we have a report that Circus tried to steal something from Faultline, which ended up with them running like crazy from a very angry mercenary," he continued, scrolling up. "No idea what that was about. We could ask, but I doubt Faultline would tell us, and god knows where Circus has gone. Another rumor that a possible Parahuman encounter happened during an attempted mugging, but no actual evidence and a very shaky witness statement. Black smoke, a slightly unconscious mugger, who may well have tripped and knocked himself out based on his record as a total idiot, and two members of the public who contradicted themselves in their statements." He shrugged. "We've opened a file, but without more to go on it might just have been someone with a smoke bomb. Or entirely fictitious, for that matter."
"So overall nothing that stands out for Brockton Bay," she summarized.
"No. The big problems are keeping to themselves and the little ones are hardly worth getting worried about. Which makes me worry something big is going to happen, because that's how this city works, but for now we seem to be going through something of a quiet period for once."
"The longer that lasts the better," she agreed. "Although you're not wrong, it feels like something's lurking out there waiting for us to drop our guard. So we won't be doing that. And we still have some questions about things that have happened I'd like answers to, even leaving the fucking Network out of it. Like that damned ship for one."
"Well, even Armsmaster and Dragon between them can't figure that one out, so I'm sure not going to be able to," he chuckled. "But the city seems happy it's gone, which means we don't have to worry too much about it, right?"
"Except it's an unknown, and I don't like unknowns," she grumbled. "Especially when there's so many of them at once." Sighing again, she tapped her fingers on the desk, thinking. "All right. Thank you."
He nodded, tapping his tablet then putting it away. Rising, he paused, then asked, "Has the Chief Director contacted you about any of the recent events?" His voice was somewhat tentative, as she tended to get somewhat annoyed when the subject of Rebecca Costa-Brown came up.
"No," she replied with a shake of her head. "Oddly enough, since the Hebert issue was handled, she's been remarkably hands-off for once. Which I can't say I dislike, if I'm honest. Possibly she got so peeved that no one would cooperate with her idiotic demands that she's hoping if she ignores us we'll go away." Emily smiled nastily as Renick chuckled. "Considering how little help we get from head office, I'm fine with that. It's not like her sticking her oar in would improve matters, based on years of previous experience. It would be different if they bothered to fund or supply us properly, but…"
He nodded, knowing exactly what she meant.
"Look on the bright side, Emily," he said cheerfully. "If we do manage to take down the Empire, and the ABB falls apart too, she can swoop in and take all the credit!"
She fixed him with a malignant stare. "Go away," she grated.
Snickering under his breath, he turned and left the office, waving as he vanished. "Later, Emily," he called as the door shut.
Mildly amused despite her expression, Emily got up and moved the blind to the side. The cloud of ravens had vanished, causing her to feel somewhat relieved, but also wonder what they were doing now…
Deciding yet again she'd be happier if she didn't think about it, the woman left her office to visit Medical for her daily dialysis, followed by going home. The rest of Sunday could be spent very deliberately not thinking about work.
"This gym is pretty good." Taylor looked at Anne, who was inspecting the large room they'd just entered. "Treadmills, weights, that elliptical thing… all the gear you need. Cool. Going to take up regular exercising?" She looked at the two younger girls with a smile. "Never too early to start. All you're missing is a swimming pool."
Lisa laughed. "I know, I was disappointed there wasn't one down here, but it's got everything else. Even a steam room and a sauna over there next to the showers." She pointed to the other side of the room. "I'm certainly planning on using this place. Especially since it's going to be too cold to do much running around outside for months yet. More storms on the way according to the weather reports, but down here it's nice and warm and comfortable."
"I was thinking about taking up running myself," Taylor nodded, walking over to one of the rather elaborate and undoubtedly very expensive treadmills, several of which were lined up along one wall. She inspected it with interest. "This would be safer than doing it in the street, definitely. And you're a lot less likely to slip on some ice…"
"I may well join you," Anne commented, looking at another one. "I've been getting out of condition, not using the college gym as much as I should. It's always full of sweaty people who never clean anything properly, and I kind of got grossed out and stopped going."
"You're welcome to come here any time you want, Anne," Taylor told her.
"Bit of a drive though," Anne noted. Taylor gave her friend a gleeful smile.
"I've been thinking about that…" she said meaningfully, making her friends exchange a look.
"Are you worried by that expression?" Lisa whispered. "Because I'm worried by that expression. The last time I saw it this happened…" She spread her hands to encompass the whole base, making Anne start giggling.
"Hey, you went along with that just fine," Taylor protested, grinning. "And Administrator thinks my idea is cool too."
"Oh, well, then, if the alien super power you've terrified into working with you thinks it's a cool idea, there's no way it can go wrong, right?" Lisa smirked at Taylor, while Anne sat down on the treadmill and shook with laughter. Taylor stuck her tongue out at the other girl, before both of them also began laughing.
They ended up sitting next to each other, the giggling finally dying away. "I didn't terrify Administrator that much," Taylor remarked a little later. "Only a couple of times. And she got over it. Mostly."
"My power is laughing too now," Lisa reported. "A little nervously."
Taylor shrugged, while Anne grinned. "It'll get over it too sooner or later." Hopping to her feet she leaned on the treadmill control unit. "So anyway, that's the gym. Want to see the firing range?"
"You have a firing range?" Anne queried as she stood, looking slightly surprised.
"It was a super villain base full of mercenaries, of course it had a firing range," Lisa pointed out cheerfully. "Big one too. Right next to the armory. Which is empty now except for all the shelves, of course, and a few crates of useful ammo we kept back because Matt thought it might come in handy." They headed for the door as she spoke.
"Yeah, Dad wanted all the actual stolen weapons to go back to where they came from and I can't disagree with that," Taylor nodded, pulling the door open and holding it for her friends to exit, then following them. "I can't see any reason to keep that sort of thing, since they're easily traceable and I think the Army would be very upset if they'd found someone using one. Coil's boned even after the PRT get through with him, because from what Matt and Erwin told me, he's almost single-handedly responsible for most of the weapons the military has lost for literally a decade. And some of them even came from the Canadians, which I bet really annoyed them. We don't want that sort of problem lurking around."
"And it's not like if we need guns we can't get them easily enough," Lisa agreed. "There's a hell of a lot of the things around the place. Some of them are even legally owned."
"A lot of the DWA people have their own weapons, for that matter. But Dad's not fond of having guns around the place unless you really need them because he always said they can turn something minor into something major way too easily." Taylor shrugged. "But at least we now have somewhere where people can play with them if they want, without upsetting the neighbors." She pushed the door they'd reached open and went inside, Anne and Lisa following. The room they'd entered was some twenty feet square. Along the back wall were a number of cabinets, and several tables were arranged near them, obviously for maintaining weapons and the like. Several specialist vices and racks of tools were present on those. The wall on the opposite side had a window covering half of it. Through that could be seen a much longer room, easily a hundred feet to the far end, with a dozen firing stations at the near end. There was another door to one side which allowed access to the range itself.
"There's lots of hearing protection and goggles in the lockers, cleaning kits, spare parts, more tools, you name it," Lisa explained, opening one of them to show the shelves inside full of equipment. "They didn't keep ammunition in here though, that was all in the armory."
"Neat," Anne remarked, looking around with interest. Walking over to the other door she opened it and looked inside, then went through. Taylor followed while Lisa closed the cabinets she'd opened and came after them.
"So you stand here and shoot the targets way down there?" the elder Barnes girl said, standing in front of one of the firing stations, which were separated from each other by sound absorbing armored panels. She leaned over the shelf that stopped you walking onto the range itself and looked to both sides, then up. "Oh, I get it. Those rails up there let you move the targets around."
"Yeah." Taylor flicked a switch, then held down a button, which caused the holder that had a paper target in it at the far end, far enough away that it was difficult to see the details of, to begin zipping towards them accompanied by the whine of a motor. When it nearly reached them she let go of the button. "Just like in a movie." They inspected the swaying target, which had a silhouette of a human holding a weapon on it, several bullet holes piercing the paper in a cluster around the middle of the chest. "There's a whole cupboard full of targets right over there on the left."
Studying the target, she finally reached out and yanked it free of the holder. "I want to try something," she said, turning to retrieve a fresh one from the supply cupboard. Coming back with a few of the large sheets of paper, she clipped one back into the holder and held the other button down, making the track pull the target away from them. When it reached about fifty feet distance, she stopped it. Lisa was looking curiously at her, as was Anne.
"What's the plan, Agent Gimme?" Lisa asked.
"Target practice," she replied, smiling evilly.
"You don't actually have a gun, though," Anne pointed out.
Looking back and up, Taylor reached out, then held up the pistol she'd yoinked from the garage office safe, grinning. "I do now. But…" She put it back as the other two exchanged baffled looks, which were also slightly worried. "I don't mean target practice with a gun. I've never even fired one and don't know any more about how they work than I can get from watching TV. Matt could teach us, and maybe we can ask sometime, but I had a better idea."
"I am feeling intensely curious and more than a little apprehensive," Anne remarked slowly.
"Now you know how I've been feeling since the day I met Taylor," Lisa chortled, making both the other two giggle. "And poor Administrator… imagine how she feels!"
Waving a hand, Taylor replied dismissively, "She's fine, honest."
There was a sensation of amusement from all around them, causing Lisa and Anne to look around, then meet each other's eyes. "Is that as weird as I think it is?" the latter asked quietly.
"Oh, yeah," Lisa confirmed, shaking her head. "Probably weirder, trust me. But it seems to be a thing."
The older girl seemed pensive but turned to Taylor. "So what are you talking about then?" she asked.
Taylor produced a plastic container that made a metallic rattle when she shook it, then removed the lid. Both the others looked inside. "Three eights inch ball bearings from the workshop," she explained. "Used ones. Matt gave me a whole pile of worn out wheel bearing units they'd replaced with new ones when I asked him about getting some little steel balls. Taking the bearings out is easy using beneath. And I washed them in some gas to get all the grease off." Picking one out of the container she showed it to her friends. "See, it's all worn on the surface, not shiny like it should be. But it's perfect for some tests."
"You're going to do something horrifying again aren't you?" Lisa said knowingly, apparently working out what she had planned.
"I've been wanting to practice this for a while, but it's not safe at home, and I really didn't want to risk anyone seeing anything. This is the perfect place though," Taylor replied smiling. "Remember the workbench in the basement?"
Lisa nodded, seeming both worried and fascinated, and after a moment Anne's face cleared as she obviously remembered the story Taylor had told her a while back. "Oh. Oh, shit."
"Yeah, I don't need a gun," Taylor said with a devious grin. She made the bearing she was holding vanish, then looked at the target. Carefully working out vectors in her head, she double-checked that the direction was correct and the momentum was something reasonable, then brought the bearing back to the real world.
The loud crack! it made showed that she might have slightly overdone it. As did the much louder bang it produced when it hit the thick steel deflector plate at the far end of the range and was redirected downwards into the deep pit full of sand that was used to catch expended rounds. The shower of sparks as it disintegrated in the process was… quite impressive.
Their ears ringing, all three girls stared downrange, then exchanged somewhat shocked glances. The entire room was still resonating from both the supersonic ball bearing and the impact with the deflector. Taylor reached out and put her finger on the return switch, bringing the target close enough to see properly. There was a neat hole right through the middle of the chest, a perfect 10 shot. Eventually, Lisa said rather weakly, "That worked. You might want to turn the wick down a little on the next shot though because it was fucking loud!"
Anne turned without a word, walked across the room, opened a cabinet, and returned with three sets of hearing and eye protection, which she handed out. "Teach me how to do that," she said when Taylor, somewhat embarrassed, had put hers on. "Because that was cool."
A grin forming again, Taylor nodded. Somewhere Administrator was doing her kind's version of laughing like an idiot. "We're nearly at the point you can learn to do this, so listen carefully, my students, and I shall attempt to impart wisdom to you."
Lisa sighed, even as she started laughing. Anne grinned widely. Taylor began explaining what she was doing and how, as she demonstrated carefully. And with somewhat less in the way of imparted momentum, it has to be said.
Even as she was doing this she wondered just how fast she could make a bearing actually go if she tried hard enough. And how much larger the object in question could be...
Probably not the best place to experiment with such things, but it was something to think about for later.
"What was that?" Danny looked to the side as he walked towards the air processing room with Kurt and Matt, the three of them carrying rolled up blueprints. The Lindt girl's dog Angelica, who had taken to Kurt and Lacey with considerable enthusiasm and affection, was trotting along with them looking around with interest. They'd been discussing what the best method was to connect up the ventilation system and needed to double check a number of things. Another team was doing the same with the water and sewage system in the relevant area. A muffled but clearly quite loud bang like a gunshot in the distance had echoed down the corridor they were just walking past at a junction point. "Is someone using the firing range already? Because that sure sounded like a gun."
Matt frowned. "Not that I know, no," he replied slowly. "We haven't cleared it for use yet."
Another distant bang sounded. Angelica cocked her head, one ear up, and whined a little. The three men exchanged curious and somewhat concerned looks then without another word changed course and headed down the other corridor, the dog following. By the time they reached the firing range door a minute later several more reports had come and gone, getting louder as they approached and clearly coming from inside the room. "What the hell is that?" Matt muttered as still another sounded off, not all that loud due to the soundproofing the room had, but still clearly audible. "There's something strange about the noise."
"Doesn't sound like any weapon I've heard before," Kurt agreed, reaching for the handle and depressing it. He pushed the door open and all of them entered. Oddly there was no smell of gunfire, aside from the traces left from the previous users of the place. They exchanged glances then walked over to the bullet-resistant window that filled most of the back wall and provided a viewing area. Angelica jumped up and put her paws on the wall so she could see too. Danny stared, then sighed faintly.
"I should have guessed," he said.
They watched as Taylor explained something to Anne and Lisa, the other two girls listening intently, and taking notes as she scribbled something on a pad while they watched. Lisa nodded thoughtfully, and Anne asked a question which his daughter answered at length. She reached into a plastic tub on the counter of the firing station they were clustered in front of and held up… a small steel ball bearing?
"Oh, shit," Matt groaned. "That's what she wanted those old bearing races for…"
Danny glanced at him, then looked back to see Taylor turn and point at the target which was hanging from the ceiling track about sixty feet downrange. The bearing vanished at the same moment a loud report sounded, accompanied by sparks at the far end as something moving very fast indeed bounced downwards into the sand. The target twitched, and he could just make out a new hole in it to go with the dozen or so others visible.
"Your kid is a very dangerous girl," Kurt said thoughtfully, absently patting the dog who looked up at him then went back to peering through the window.
"Yeah. Yeah, I kind of worked that out quite a while ago," Danny sighed. He knocked on the glass, making the girls look around after a moment. Taylor smiled and waved. Lisa was laughing and Anne seemed amused when she saw his expression. Moving the door to the range he opened it and went in, his friends following.
"What have you done this time, Taylor?" he queried, knowing the answer before he spoke.
"I was giving a practical lesson on momentum, Dad," she replied innocently. "It's an important concept, you know. A firm foundation in physics requires that sort of thing."
He leaned past her and hit the button to bring the target back, then stared at it. Everyone else did as well. Reaching out he poked a finger through one of the holes in the paper, which was perfectly centered where an eye would be on the human silhouette. There was another in the other eye, and a line of them across where the mouth should be.
"Practical lesson in momentum, hmm?" he commented wryly.
Taylor grinned. Anne and Lisa giggled. "It's the best way to learn something, doing it, you know that, Dad," she told him, sounding pleased with herself, then bent down to give Angelica a pat on the head.
"She's not wrong, Danny," Kurt commented, chuckling. Matt was shaking his head as he stared at the target.
"I can't help feeling that somehow I've gone wrong in raising you, but…" Danny sighed, even though he was actually quite impressed. "Your mother would be…"
"...In the next station along doing the exact same thing and you know it," Matt pointed out with a laugh.
"And competing to see who got the highest score, yes, I know," Danny admitted. "Oh, god. How have we got to this point?"
"Papa and sheer luck?" Taylor remarked brightly.
He gave her a look even as the other two broke down giggling again.
"Please don't hurt yourselves," he requested. Looking around, he had to admit that at least she'd picked the best place for this current set of experiments. And they were even using the right protection, which was good.
"Good shooting," Matt commented, disconnecting the target and looking closely at it. "However you're pulling this off, that's excellent accuracy." Lisa was putting another one on the holder even as he spoke. "How are you at longer range?"
"Want to see?" Taylor asked, appearing to already know the answer. He smiled and nodded. Kurt had gone to retrieve some more ear and eye protection already and handed Danny a set. Once they'd put them on, Taylor turned to face the target which Lisa had run out to the full length of the range. Danny peered at it with normal vision, which was barely able to make out the numbers on it, then through beneath which was more than able to see it perfectly. Matt and Kurt were using small pairs of binoculars the latter had found alongside the protective equipment.
"OK, I'm aiming at the center of the ten ring," Taylor announced. She had her hands in her pockets, clearly feeling that if you were going to impress with a demonstration, you should look casual while doing it. Danny couldn't help a small smile.
A loud bang occurred and a neat hole was punched out of the exact middle of the area she'd mentioned. The target shook a little then settled. Matt whistled under his breath. "Holy shit… How fast was that going?"
"My power says just under twelve hundred feet per second," Lisa told him.
"Huh. Useful. How fast can you fire one?"
"How fast do you want it to go?" Taylor asked, smiling.
"Ah." Matt now looked somewhat worried.
"I'm not sure what the limit actually is, but it's a hell of a lot faster than that one was," his daughter went on thoughtfully. "The first shot completely smashed the bearing to pieces, all we got was a nice shower of sparks and a really loud bang."
"My power says that one was going about three times the speed of sound," Lisa put in helpfully. "We checked, and there's a nice gouge in the backstop, but it's much too thick to worry about even that shot going all the way through."
"I've been working on accuracy more than power," Taylor added. "It's tricky, because it only takes a small tweak to the parameters to change the various vectors a lot. I found that out the hard way the first time I worked all this out. A small change can have a big effect, so you have to be careful and dial it in. Hitting what I was aiming at seemed more important than hitting it as hard as possible."
"Although she's still hitting it pretty damn hard," Anne commented.
"And is there a reason you want to learn how to shoot something without a gun or were you three just bored?" Danny asked.
"Hey, it's something I figured out was possible, so obviously I want to learn all about it, Dad," Taylor laughed. "That's science!"
"I'm not entirely convinced what what you're doing is actually science but we'll ignore that for the moment," he replied, shaking his head. "Have you managed to teach either of the others to do it yet?"
"We're getting there," she replied, nodding. "They've been practicing a lot and Lisa learned to put small things beneath and get them back a few days ago. Anne just got that part working."
"I think her power is helping her," Anne pointed out, indicating Lisa, who looked smug. Then giggled.
"You'd think so but it keeps complaining none of this makes any sense," she replied. "It's absolutely fascinated by the whole thing even so. I think I just spent more time practicing."
"Anyway, now they can do that I'm explaining how all the parameters of bringing something back work. Position is the easy one, momentum is… much less easy, but it's not nearly as hard as some of the other things that should be adjustable are. And direction is pretty straightforward. As well as vitally important, of course." Taylor shrugged even as the other two girls nodded vehemently. "You want it going away from you…"
"That would definitely be the optimal idea, yeah," Kurt remarked, wincing slightly.
"How fast can you repeat shots?" Matt, who had been thinking hard as he stared at the target, asked slowly, turning to Taylor.
"Um… pretty quick, I think? I've only been doing one at a time because we're kind of calibrating things as well as teaching the others, but…" She looked at the container of bearings on the bench, then rather analytically at the target. "Let's see. I can take a few like this," she muttered, the level of steel balls dropping in the container, "then get the aim right, yeah… OK, that should do it. I need to add a tiny offset for each one, then I just…"
The report of a bearing breaking the sound barrier echoed through the room, then a second later there was a brief buzzing sound. Clouds of sparks showered from the backplate and the bottom half of the target gently drifted to the ground in the silence that followed. Eventually Matt said in a rather dumbfounded voice, "Holy shit."
"Yeah. Apparently I can do that," Taylor said, sounding more than a little taken aback with her own efforts.
"How many was that?" Anne asked, still staring.
"Twenty eight plus the calibration shot," Lisa replied, shaking her head in amazement. "In just under a second. Jesus."
Angelica was shaking her head, pawing at one ear, and Kurt looked down then knelt. "Sorry, girl, I didn't think about that. Loud noises hurt, don't they?" he said quietly to the dog, stroking her head. Taylor looked guilty and did the same.
"Sorry, Angelica. My mistake."
The dog didn't seem too upset, being more surprised than anything else, and licked her hand with a doggy grin. Taylor laughed, patted her again, then stood up again. "You want to learn, Dad?" she asked.
"I probably should keep up with you three if only so I have some idea of what you're actually capable of, but right now we've got a job to finish," he replied, after thinking it over. He didn't see when he'd need to shoot someone with his mind, but in Brockton Bay you could never be totally certain that something like that wouldn't end up coming in handy, even if you hoped it wouldn't. "Later, I think."
"OK. Any time you want, just let me know." His daughter smiled at him. "How's it going anyway?"
"Pretty well. We're just working out the last details of the water, waste, and air hookups. We'll need your help later this evening once everyone knows what to do," Kurt answered.
"Oh, sure, that's not a problem." Taylor looked at her watch and nodded. "We've got plenty to look at after we stop doing this. A couple more hours and I think I can get Anne and Lisa knowing the basics, after that it's just lots of practice."
"Most skills are mostly practice," Matt smiled. "Although I have to admit this skill is a new one on me. Don't hurt yourselves learning it."
"We're being careful," Anne assured him. "We know the rules. Never point a loaded Taylor at anything you don't want damaged. Always assume your Taylor is loaded. Keep your finger off Taylor's trigger until you want to fire."
Lisa, who was giggling furiously by now, added in a gasping voice, "Always clean your Taylor after use, but never look down the barrel."
Taylor gave both the others a dark look but Danny could see she was trying not to laugh. He chuckled, while Matt and Kurt just guffawed. "We'll trust you to be responsible and leave you to it, then, girls. And Taylor? Before you start something like this again, can you mention it to me first? Just so we all know what's going on. Some of your interesting ideas are just a little surprising to everyone else…"
He trailed off meaningfully, looking around the room, then back at his daughter with his eyebrows raised a little. She nodded, appearing somewhat embarrassed again, then put her arms around him. "Sorry, Dad. I should have mentioned we were going to be doing this. I didn't think it through."
"No harm done, but all Agents need to follow procedure," he replied fondly, smiling.
"HAH! I knew it!" Lisa cried, pointing at him, even as Taylor started laughing. "The Chief has admitted he's the Chief!"
"Hail U.N.I.O.N!" Matt said, saluting smartly.
"Oh, god," Danny sighed. "Stop it. This is already ridiculous and everything you do makes it worse."
"You love it and you know it, Uncle Chief," Anne giggled.
He sighed heavily, shook his head, and indicated the door with his hand. "Come on, guys, we have a job to do. Kurt, stop snickering. Angelica, bite him if he doesn't."
The dog looked up at him with her head cocked on one side and her tongue hanging out. She woofed quietly at the sound of her name. Smiling a little to himself, Danny left the room, his friends following and his daughter and the others still laughing as the door closed. As they walked down the corridor, another muffled bang sounded. Shrugging, he commented, "At least she's got a hobby and friends?"
Kurt patted his shoulder. "Just keep thinking that, Danny. While we finish integrating our stolen super villain bunker and your daughter figures out how to turn her brain into a machine gun with the help of an alien super power, which apparently finds her weird…"
Danny stopped and put his hand over his face, groaned, straightened up, and marched onwards, ignoring with dignity the laughter of his friends.
Although, it had to be said, Kurt wasn't actually wrong.
Still, on the whole, he preferred the current situation to what it had been, even if things seemed to rapidly be getting more surreal by the day.
Amy smiled as she held out her hand, Edgar hanging upside down from it and making strange little warbling noises as he swung back and forth, apparently entirely happy with his current position. "You are such a strange bird," she said fondly. He looked up at her and croaked, causing her to laugh.
The raven let go, flapped one wing, and flipped himself upright before he landed on her bed. Hopping over to her he leaned on her leg, prodding the book she was holding with her other hand inquisitively. "Don't eat the book, I only just got it," she complained, pulling it out of range as he experimentally grabbed the corner of a page in his beak. Edgar cocked his head and made his little giggling sound, which made her grin.
Then he looked at the window, just before there was a tapping sound on it. Amy peered in the same direction, then got up, putting the book to one side, walked over, and opened the curtains. Outside it was dark and cold, but at least not snowing. Sitting on her windowsill was another raven. It stared at her, then past her at Edgar. Sighing faintly, she also looked at him. "I think it's for you," she said with a mild sensation of bemusement. He flapped up to her shoulder from the bed and inspected the other bird, before kronking at her. Amy shook her head but opened the window. The second raven hopped along the windowsill and inside her room, looking around with quick motions of its head, then Edgar landed next to it.
She watched with a slightly sensation of disbelief as the two ravens appeared to have a short conversation. The new one kept looking at her in a strange way. Eventually it croaked and dipped its head, before it and Edgar tapped their beaks together. Then it turned and jumped back out the window, flapping away into the early evening. Amy watched it go, and when it was out of sight closed the window and inspected her feathered friend, who was giving the impression he was quite pleased with life in general.
"What was that about?" she asked, not that she expected an answer. He made a small satisfied sound and jumped, flapping back to land on her shoulder again then grabbing some hair and playing with it. "I can't help thinking I just saw something that's going to make things get even more peculiar happen right in front of me," she added, sighing a little and pulling the curtains closed again, not before peering out just in case some more ravens appeared. These days that did seem to be a thing…
She'd completely lost count of the number she'd touched up since Edgar came into her life, but Vicky claimed it was at least six hundred or so. Which seemed like an awful lot of ravens to her, and she still wondered just how many of the damn things there were in Brockton Bay. There had been a fresh batch of a couple of dozen this morning waiting politely for her, and overhead enough of them circling around to make Alfred Hitchcock go to find a stiff drink.
It seemed likely to her that she was probably going to meet every last one in the entire city sooner or later. And she was still confused as to exactly why they'd all decided she could apparently be trusted so completely.
What had Edgar actually told them?
Lying down on her bed she picked up her book and found her page again, still wondering about the answer, while Edgar made himself comfortable on her stomach on his back with his wings slightly open. She read, her free hand gently stroking his feathers, both of them contented with the day.
Turning out the light, Taylor rolled over and closed her eyes. The weekend had been a good one, in her view. Things were going well with the new base, she'd learned quite a few useful new angles on her various skills, Administrator was finding the entire thing fascinating, and the crystal growing machine was busy producing some really incredible crystals. They'd checked just before coming back and she was more than satisfied with the results. She had some intriguing ideas for what she could do with them…
And her dad was having a lot of fun, she knew. Despite his reservations, he was enjoying all the work they'd been doing to get Coil's old base fixed up and useful. As were everyone else at the DWA. It would undoubtedly be useful anyway, and it had given them all something fun to do that didn't cost anything. In a sense it was a DWA-wide hobby and they all seemed to find the whole situation worth diving into. Not to mention that Calvert had good taste in food, so the DWA now had literally months worth of some really nice steaks, shellfish, poultry, and all manner of other food. Which would make massive savings to the budget and give everyone something to look forward to at lunch.
Dock workers were quite fond of a good lunch in general.
Of course all the new facilities they now had were good too. The gym was going to get a lot of use, as well as the sauna, steam room, firing range, and other entertainment and training areas would. There was even a rather impressive room with a video projector and hundreds of DVDs in it, which she and her friends had spent some time looking through. Apparently even though he was an evil bastard he'd wanted to keep his minions happy. When he wasn't plotting to murder them if they betrayed him, of course.
Thomas Calvert was an odd individual by anyone's standards, Taylor thought.
She smiled slightly to herself. Figuring out how to connect through beneath to places that weren't quite either in the real world or beneath had opened up all sorts of intriguing avenues of research, the base being only the beginning, while also being the key to the whole process. There were all sorts of other ideas she'd had that built on the basic concept, and talking them over with Administrator, Lisa, and Ann had given her some avenues of investigation that would be fun indeed to see where they led. And, if she could make it work, very useful for U.N.I.O.N…
Taylor laughed under her breath. Oh, yes, the future held some entertaining possibilities.
Now, though, before she went to sleep, looking forward to her first day at Arcadia tomorrow, she had a friend to talk to for a while.
{I think it went well}
[AGREEMENT]
[QUERY?]
{Yeah, you're right. I think that will probably work, but we'll need to figure out the best way to make sure no one notices who isn't supposed to}
[SUGGESTION]
{Probably best to do it just a little less… forcibly. People would get upset if they ever found out}
[UNLIKELY]
{I know you say that, but even so, it seems wrong to me. We need something subtle. It's the U.N.I.O.N. way after all}
[HUMOR]
{Oh well. It's not urgent, and I'm sure we'll come up with some good solution sooner or later}
[INEVITABILITY]
{Thanks for the confidence} Taylor smiled again. Administrator sent a wave of amusement and affection through her. {Anyway, that aside… tell me about Endbringers…}
There was a pause, then Administrator seemed to almost sigh.
[DETAILED EXPLANATION]
Some time later, Taylor fell asleep, thinking about what her friend had said, and wondering what the best solution to that issue was going to be.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
David woke abruptly, feeling that someone was staring at him. Reaching for the light next to the bed he turned it on and looked around suspiciously, even as he reached for a suitable power to defend himself. There wasn't a trace of anything out of place though, not even when he scanned the entire neighborhood with several Thinker powers one after another.
Eventually he lay down again, deciding that the taco he'd had for lunch probably had tasted a bit funny and concluding that he wasn't going to that particular place again. He was soon asleep again, and when he woke up the next morning he'd completely forgotten the entire incident.