* August 22, 2009 *
Coil was ready as soon as he saw the report within the PRT servers, because of course he had anything flagged that important and classified copied and directed to an unlisted account.
New cape. Trump 2, Brute 8, Blaster-Shaker 6, Mover 7, Tinker 3.
Yes, kidnapping the young girl, forcing her into his employ, and having that power under his control would fit nicely into his plans.
Timeline #1:
His men prepared their trap, get the girl before she could activate one of her powers and take her down in her base form. Five seconds to select a power and activate? All the time he needed.
Timeline #2:
He went over his stock portfolio, making notes to use his power on as he went.
Timeline #1:
He watched through the camera as the group approached the house, seeing one young woman in front of the place. Alone. Unprotected. Trusting in her secret identity to protect her. How usefully gullible. He zoomed in on the target, the van's surveillance systems easily being up to the task.
Hitting her with a tranquilizer dart, allowing for a quick and easy capture, this was going to be a cakewalk.
Ah, and someone was coming out of the house. Interesting, her mother was supposed to be dead, so who was this...
No. Not only no but HELL NO.
The woman in question adjusted her fedora and looked in the direction of the van with his men. An eyebrow raised and a smirk appeared.
"Abort, abort, abort," said Coil to his men. What were THEY doing here?
Well, that just meant he had to collect a lot more information before he made any move.
Timeline #1 was dropped quickly, but it took him a few minutes to make sure he was alone in his little safe room. Not that this would protect him if THEY decided he'd stepped into one of their plans.
* Boardwalk *
Kenta passed by the little shops in their little spaces doing their little bits of business. Most were the sort you see everywhere in little strip malls. That silk screen t-shirt place. The Starbucks. A little mom & pop ice cream shop. A pizza parlor, a nail salon, and a donut shop. The dry cleaners that was next to the insurance office which was next to a store that sold phones.
Perfectly normal Boardwalk and the next street over was the little place that did appliance repair (rumors placed Wizenheimer as a Tinker 0 whose specialty was fixing things, but Lung knew that he'd been pulled for investigation twice and was not a parahuman), the Perpetually Closed Store Front (with a sign saying a business was coming, but that sign was a couple of years old at this point), Buy The Bay (tourist trinkets), a coin laundromat (one of his "clean" businesses and a steady stream of income on its own), and Giovanni's (pizza and other Italian dishes, good but not great quality).
Everything was normal, as far as he could tell, this morning. He could see the various signs that indicated that it was a perfectly normal day in Brockton Bay with nobody...
What. The. Hell?!
The woman with a fedora raised a cup in his direction and smirked slightly.
Kenta stared for a moment, considered asking questions, then noticed the woman was sitting with someone. A young girl.
No, let someone else have a bad day. He'd offer a prayer for the poor girl but this was (other than this moment) entirely too good a day to get involved in whatever was going on.
* Taylor *
"You know that guy too?" asked Taylor.
"Oh, we've met. A long time ago," answered Fortuna.
"Ah, part of your..." sort-of asked Taylor.
"'Legacy of a misspent youth', yes," agreed Fortuna.
"Wow, you know a lot of people," commented Taylor.
"I get around," admitted Fortuna.
"Who's that?" asked Taylor, inclining her head towards someone in the crowd.
"Taylor, I know many many people, but I do not literally know everyone," chided Fortuna.
"I meant the blonde with the freckles who is sitting over there staring at you like she's afraid you're going to steal her coffee or something." Taylor inclined her head in that direction.
"Not sure," said Fortuna. "Probably just someone with entirely too much stress in their life."
* Tattletale *
As soon as she'd seen the woman and the girl she'd been curious about the mismatch in age and race and comfort levels. The woman, completely at ease and secure, confident and (as her inference power told her) armed with a pistol in a concealed carry holster. The girl, nervous and a bit flustered, but not at all nervous towards the woman.
There was something about the woman though. It was like she had some anti-Thinker effect where the clues about her were slow to come together.
It might just be professional training though. Some people were like that, they suppressed the various tells and signs so there were less clues for her ability to fit together. It just seemed an unusually long delay.
* 3 hours later *
Back to flying. Her blaster/shaker form in glowing green wasn't her Mover form, but it was pretty fast nonetheless. She surrounded herself with a forcefield and then moved the forcefield. Didn't have to worry about lift or thrust or other concerns, just move this to there at this speed.
Making the forcefield loose enough that the breeze could blow through her hair while still encompassing enough that she didn't have to clean bugs out of her teeth or worry about being shot at by some ganger had taken her about five minutes of experimenting the first time. It had taken less than thirty seconds to determine that her initial "wrap everything in a forcefield" had several downsides including the whole breathable-air thing.
Yeah, that was important. Fortunately her friend the Queen had her back on that sort of thing.
"How fast am I going, anyway?" asked Taylor.
(33 rehm/klaa, 429 rehmra)
"I don't know what that means," noted Taylor aloud.
(Converting. 61mph. Altitude 1125 feet.)
"Okay, cool. How high up can we go?"
(Maximum safe altitude current configuration is 100,000 feet.)
"I see."
(Maximum safe speed depends on altitude, atmospheric and traffic conditions, stored energy reserves.)
"Oh, and I absorb sunlight in order to power everything?"
(Emote: cookie)
"You're getting better at that," said Taylor/Template. "Since my flight is surrounding me with a forcefield and then moving that forcefield, why is there an altitude ceiling?"
(Extradimensional linkage/physical linkage/dimensional range/power limitations/frequency drift.)
"That's a lot of math," admitted Taylor as she got both the concepts and the math involved. It took her a few minutes of flight to parse it all before she nodded. "So. I get what I get out of it. What do you get out of it?"
(Data!)
"That's it?" asked Taylor.
(Friendship = Data. Cycle(Broken) = Repeat(Diminishing Sum) = Data(Null Set) + End State)
"I'm not sure how accurate that is," stated Taylor as she watched another flyer in the distance.
(End Goal: Continuance/Modification of Cycle)
"I didn't get that," said Taylor. "Symbols and images but they didn't make much sense."
(Shard Entity Termination Imminent. Waste energy + Inefficiencies = Cycle(Diminishing Returns). Partnered = Efficiency(Higher)-Share/Portion.)
"Still not 100% though," said Taylor as she tried to make sense of the impressions from a completely non-human perspective. "More like 10%?"
(Essentially correct. Dimensional wall piercing/destruction of possibilities/spool down should produce energy level in excess of galactic arm output.)
Taylor/Template came to a mid-air stop. "Wait. That didn't look good. At all. Was that referencing what I think it was referencing?"
(Affirmative. Undesired outcome.)
"Damn right that's an undesired outcome," opined Taylor. "Destroying all aspects along a multiversal line of an inhabited planet in order to harvest the potential of an intelligent species as energy in order to feed off 10% of the energy in order to do it again? That's..."
(12.725%)
"That's not much better," griped Taylor. "So, that leaves the obvious question."
(Query?)
"What do we DO about it?" asked Taylor.
(Originality/Spontaneity = Characteristic of (Species: Human) is greater than (Species: Entity))
"So you're looking to humans for a solution and prior to you loosening your chains you couldn't just come out and ask?)
(Emote: cookie, thumb's up)
"I'll think about it. What specifically was the question?"
(Entropy Reversal.)
"That... would be difficult. One of the things I've read is that time is an illusion, and what we perceive as time is actually the procession of a higher degree of order to a higher degree of disorder. I think that guy called it 'Chaos Theory' and the earlier version was just called 'Murphy's Law' by the masses."
(Common observation is not equal to common solution.)
"Ah. Got an easier question to solve?"
(More efficient/effective procedure for Species:Entity that fulfills basic needs of Species:Entity without eliminating Species:Native?)
"Now THAT I can work on."
(Agreement. emoji: smile)
"Reversing entropy is a bit big. Taking smaller steps towards that sounds a lot more do-able," commented Taylor.
(Agreement/Reluctant Acceptance.)
"So what can we do about it in the meantime?" asked Taylor.
(Steps already taken.)
"Oh? Do tell," prompted Taylor.
(Host base form (Bud: Evolution))
"Why does that sound like something that should concern me?"
(Host base form: timed self-destruct (age) negation/reduction. Status: ongoing.)
(Host base form: musculoskeletal reinforcement. Status: ongoing.)
(Host base form: neural net efficiency increased 0.025%.)
(Host base form: cardiovascular network efficiency increase. Status: researching.)
(Host base form: genetic repairs from environmentally caused damage. Status: complete.)
(Host base form: intercranial damage from (Conflict Engine #3) and (Shard Connection) repair. Status: complete.)
"Wait. Hold up. 'Intercranial' meaning brain damage?"
(Correct.)
"How was I brain damaged? I don't feel any different. Do I?"
(Host damage - centers of brain for conflict resolution/coping with trauma damaged. Aggression centers stimulated via lesions in nerve tissue. Memory and emotive reaction centers altered. These alterations have been undone/repaired.)
"If I understand that right, you're saying I was set up for not getting over problems and..." Taylor was glad she'd stopped flying because the implications were pretty unsettling.
(Reference in common media found. Conflict Drive.)
"Yeah, I ran across that theory as to why so many capes are driven to fight," said Taylor, sighing and running a hand through her hair as she thought about that. "Wait. How many people have this 'Conflict Drive' or that 'dwelling on trauma' thing?"
(Conflict Drive standard Shard protocol for all hosts. Therefore: all parahumans. Exception: Taylor Hebert.)
"Ah. Then thank you. And the other?"
(All (species: human) tend to have some 'dwelling on trauma' thing. (Conflict Engine #3) increases factor by causing specified damage to neural matter. Increasing severity of trauma reactions and emotive responses to increase chance of (Trigger Events/Shard Activation) and eventual degradation of response capabilities of target species.)
"So, torturing their food before they consume it?"
(Essentially correct. Alternative means of survival desired due to inefficiency and consumption of resources.)
Taylor was silent for a few moments. "What if... instead of a 'conflict drive' you used a 'creativity drive'?"
(Intrigue/Curiosity. Details desired.)
"Well, if the desire is to see new uses and capabilities of the Shard-based abilities..."
(Correct.)
"Then stimulating the creativity centers and increasing the rational portions of the brain could provide better results on that part of the thing, while sidestepping the whole 'weakening the herd for the harvest' thing that seems to be what the imagery you sent was indicating."
(Interesting. (Concept: Scientific method) reference: (information networks) = (control group/unaltered) + (test group/altered))
"Sounds logical."