Current Energy: 3
Current Training: None
Boundary Manipulation (7/10) - Complete!
Base Status
The Heap - Current Upgrades:
Tinkertech Walls
Single Layer Magical Barrier
Wednesday, January 26th, 2011
The Heap, Brockton Bay
"Don't worry dear, it's going to be fine." You say playfully to your Master, who at some point in the middle of the night had an epiphany about the ineffable nature of the Gap and drew the energy required from you to complete her acquisition of the power.
"Easy for you to say. What if I make a mistake and accidentally open a hole into... into space, and all the oxygen in Earth's atmosphere gets sucked out, and then whoopsy I killed the human race!" She rants at you while pointedly not using her new power. The revelation that she was using one of the fundamental forces of reality on a conceptual level in order to do something as mundane as travel faster apparently caused her significant distress now that the power was within her grasp.
And yes, technically the scenario she just described was possible, but only if she was exceptionally bad at what she was doing. You obviously choose not to tell her that though. The panic is adorable regardless.
"Hush now. Do you want to do this or not?" You say teasingly.
"I obviously do. Just... if something goes wrong can you... I dunno, fix it?" She says desperately turning a pleading gaze on you.
"I don't know... what time is it again?" You ask rhetorically. You know what time it is. It's six thirty in the morning. An ungodly hour to be doing anything, let alone preventing your Master from accidentally killing her species.
"Emmy!" Your Master whines at you.
"Fine, fine. But only because you're so cute when you pout. Now come on, get to it." You say flippantly, waving with a hand at the empty space in front of your Master. She squints at you briefly, then sighs and turns away from you with a determined set to her face. Then, completely counter to what you would expect from your own use of the ability, she draws her sword.
"Taylor dear, what-" You begin to ask but are cut off when your Master somehow slides her sword into a seam between what is, and what isn't and rips it open with the blade, creating an appropriately sized gap that you can both feel and manipulate with your own power.
You stare at it for a moment, then turn shrewdly towards your Master who is holding her breath as though waiting for something terrible to happen.
"For what reason did you do it that way?" You ask curiously.
"It just felt easier that way?" She asks you with a sharp exhale of relief.
"To... cut causality?" You say incredulously.
"...Yes?" Taylor responds.
You actually don't know what to say to that. You suppose it's possible your Master is using powers she is more familiar with in order to cheat at powers she is less familiar with, but still, as far as you can tell there should be absolutely no synergy between her sword and the Gap.
"Where does it lead to?" You ask after a second, filing away the interaction for later study.
"Nowhere. It just goes to the freaky not-place with all the eyes. Also. Seeing out of this thing is gross." Taylor says with a frown, wrinkling her nose slightly.
"Hm. I suppose we could create another and have you practice connecting them. Then we can-" You start to instruct but stop as the sound of distant screaming reaches your ears.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Comes the banshee like wail of the caucasian man who comes flying out of your Master's first gap only to sprawl across the floor, obviously injured by his own landing and momentum.
You start trying to determine who this is when he is accompanied by two dozen more equally terrified men, several of them with torn clothes and bloody gashes or furrows where they had obviously been tearing at their skin or face with their fingers. Even as the lot of them impact the floor of the garage, they continue to scream, likely waking everyone else in the Heap up, especially Trainwreck, who sleeps in the garage and jolts awake instantly as the noise goes above a certain level.
"The fuck?!" He yells as his suit begins to emit steam and start moving.
"Oh. I remember now. These are the gentlemen who-" You pause as you sense one of your kind attempting to make a connection with one of the men, a connection opening as it asks you to provide free information for it to make use of. Typically you wouldn't interfere, but well, you're reasonably certain these are the Nazi's you flung into the infinite nothing while they were attacking the PRT. You have no interest in seeing any of them trigger.
So, thinking quickly, you seize control of your Master's Gap, and quickly place it over the man's head, destroying the connection your fellow Shard was attempting to make by the simple expedient of removing it's target from any dimension you could typically perceive.
This has the added side effect of turning the man's trigger event into what amounts to a normal seizure but well... you don't care.
"As I was saying. These are the Nazi's from the PRT building. I honestly forgot about them." You say with a shrug as you allow the spasming man to fall free of the Gap and into the pile of panting idiots who are only now beginning to regain their sense of up and down.
"...Damn. Should we...?" Trainwreck asks casually, scratching his head with a yawn.
"Yeah, we should call the PRT." Your Master says with a sigh, raising a palm to her face and rubbing at it tiredly.
"I was gonna say put em back in the thing, but yeah I guess we could do that too." Trainwreck answers with a smirk.
You say nothing, even though you concur - because it actually causes you physical pain to agree with Trainwreck. And from the way he turns his knowing gaze on you, he knows it.
"Taylor?!" "I'm here!" Danny and Aspirant shout as they burst into the room, Aspirant in his larger more muscled form and Danny with a lead pipe in hand.
"It's fine, false alarm. It's just all the Nazi's Emmy forgot about." Taylor says, the hand on her face moving to the side to knead at her temple.
"You forgot about them too." You point out with a pout.
"And yet, with only a day of having the ability to free them, I did." She deadpans at you.
"By mistake!" You fire back, offended. Quietly, you take control of the Gap your Master has left open and slip it into your clothes for later during the debate.
Waste not, want not and all that.
Wednesday, January 26th, 2011
Brockton General Hospital, Brockton Bay
"Why are we doing this again?" You ask your Master.
"Because." Taylor says mulishly, eliciting a sigh from you.
You are presently on the roof of the hospital, having once again spent some odd thirty minutes to heal the majority of the patients. Apparently the Doctors here had made the obvious assumption that your Master would return at some point, and thus, had been asking the patients if they would allow Parahuman healing ahead of time.
The fact that this still benefited Panacea, allowing her to march from room to room without waiting for consent was only apparent to them after the fact.
"It isn't as though you actually need her for anything. I'm sure we could find someone who can heal themself somewhere in the multiverse!" You complain.
"It isn't about that." Taylor says with a frown.
"I just don't like leaving things like this. I still don't really get why she hates me so much." She continues.
"Because you apparently don't understand 'go away' and 'leave me alone'," Panacea says as she steps into view on the roof.
"Look can we just talk? I really want to get along with you. Vicky is like, one of my only friends besides my team who..." Taylor pauses to think for a second obviously trying to parse what she wants to say.
"Trainwreck once propositioned me for sex, and Aspirant spends hours at a time examining his blood oxygen levels like a Buddhist monk with a biology degree." You say bluntly.
"...Yeah. That. So I'd really like to get along with you okay?" Taylor says honestly.
Panacea - Amy you suppose - stares at her for a few seconds, then shrugs and withdraws a cigarette from her robes, which she then proceeds to light and smoke.
"Should you be smoking?" Taylor asks hesitantly.
"Are you going to stop me? I'm not talking to you if I can't smoke at the same time. You have until Vicky gets here to pick me up." She says bluntly.
You decide not to inform the girl that her beloved sister has already passed the duty of ferrying her home to Taylor in order to be able to spend the time with her Boyfriend.
"Okay... um," Taylor mutters then stops, obviously not sure what to say at this point. Then her eyes catch on the facade of the tallest building in the city, glinting in the mid-afternoon sun.
"It's kind of crazy that the Medhall building wasn't damaged at all during the fighting." She blurts out, obviously latching onto the first thing that she could think of saying.
"The CEO died and his wife went missing. I hear his kid inherited the whole thing. They wanted to pay me to do a tour of all the shelters." Panacea says with a shrug that says 'sometimes your whole family disappears. It happens.' with all the empathy of a starving shark.
"...How was it?" Taylor asks hesitantly.
"Didn't go. Carol thought it made more sense for me to be somewhere safe until things calmed down." Amy answers with only the slightest of scowls as she says her mothers name.
Your Master wisely chooses not to comment on, or ask about, that particular verbal tic.
"Things are calm though. All the gangs are gone basically. There's just the Undersiders and... Uber and Leet I think?" Taylor offers. Amy shoots her a scathing look and takes a long drag on her cigarette before answering.
"The Merchants have reorganized under Whirlygig - dumb name - and the ABB have broken up into two dozens mini-yakuza that try to murder each other nightly. The Empire is still around you know - they just don't have any Parahumans except... Rune I think?" Amy muses aloud, seemingly taking some subtle pressure in the downcast expression your Master takes on as she continues to list the many problems still within the city.
"...Oh," Taylor says, falling back on old habits and allowing her face to become perfectly blank as she processes all of that.
"Yeah. 'Oh'. You know Vista is pissed at you right? All the Wards are. How did the whole zombie thing go?" Amy asks bluntly, flicking her cigarette away.
Now, you aren't really all that interested in your Master's friendship with this girl, but you definitely see a chance to spit in her face with that comment.
"Why Panacea, what a good idea! I'm sure the PRT would love for you to examine Miss Militia!" You say instantly, garnering attention from your Master who perks up slightly at your voice.
"Taylor dear, if you would?" You ask her with a malicious grin on your face turned towards Amy. The girl pales slightly as she connects 'visiting a dead woman' with your Master drawing her sword, but doesn't really get the chance to say or do anything before the Gap is open and you push her through it.
"How!?" Amy screeches at you as she checks over Miss Militia, who is apparently being allowed to freely roam the PRT building if not necessarily leave it yet.
"Magic?" Taylor answers with a slight edge of smugness and mocking in her voice. The girl is a saint for her overall patience and willingness to avoid such trifling things as murder - but she isn't above getting her pound of flesh in other, less malign ways.
"Taylor, I would appreciate it if you wouldn't bring people to see me just to prove that you can... you know." Miss Militia says dryly from where she is seated upon an infirmary bed, costume once more donned, although there have been some slight changes to it - most prominently a military officer's dress uniform coat hung about her shoulders like a cloak.
"Well, they probably would have made you see Amy eventually anyway right? How have you been? Any problems?" Taylor asks kindly, all sign of maliciousness absent from her tone.
"Well, I haven't had to sleep yet, so that's about the same. My new power is taking some work though." She says her tone souring slightly.
"What's wrong with it exactly?" You ask as your Master suddenly begins to feel defensive.
"Nothing. It just tends to do things I didn't direct it to do. They're calling it a Shaker effect but mostly it's just..." Miss Militia trails off, gesturing behind you where one of her ghostly soldiers has set about systematically making all the beds in the infirmary. Her face screws up in concentration for a second, and the man disappears, leaving a half-made bed behind.
"Hey! 'Magic' Is not a real answer! What the hell is this? Half her biology is missing! There are blank spots in her DNA where there should be things holding her together! She should be a cancerous ball of flesh begging for death! Not... this!" Amy scowls, flailing her arm towards the older woman.
Miss Militia raises an eyebrow in question at the outburst but doesn't comment, probably having recently become accustomed to being an impossible existence.
"It works for Myrrdin," Taylor says with a half shrug and a renewed smirk.
"No, it doesn't! Everyone thinks he's crazy!" Amy shouts back.
"Eh. It's Magic. I don't have to explain it." Taylor says.
The noise Amy makes in response to this is extremely satisfying.
Wednesday, January 26th, 2011
The Heap, Brockton Bay
When you return to The Heap, it takes your Master all of fifteen minutes to decide that she is no longer satisfied with merely taking things easy while the city devolves into chaos around her.
"Okay. We - I can do barriers, right? Let's start with those." She says decisively. You clap your hands together lightly in delight. Now that your Master could shoulder the energy costs of doing so, you could finally start fixing this dingy old place.
"Well, first we're going to need a very large stone." You say mischievously.
Then you lean in conspiratorially to your Master and whisper; "We should have the boys go find that while we plan. They need to do some bonding anyway."
As you would expect, your Master completely misses the proposed prank - which is exactly what that errand would be - and latches onto the bonding aspect of the exercise, immediately calling for and sending out Trainwreck and Aspirant to seek out a stone with your very exacting specifications and measurements. Ostensibly for Tinkering purposes.
Aspirant merely nods his assent. Trainwreck has the wisdom to flip you off before following after him.
Then you turn to your Master.
"We'll be building a keystone. You can link it to a number of connections at the perimeter of the building, and spread enchantments across the area by laying them upon the stone." You begin to explain, happy in the knowledge that your Master wouldn't be moving forward unprepared.