Unison 1.4
Taylor saw the light of the teleport fade, leaving her in a deserted back alley near a local library. Her armour dissolved into silver light, leaving her wearing clothes sufficient to not make a passerby look at her twice. It was a cold day, and so Taylor's scarf, hoodie, and gloves would not be particuarly suspicious. She kept the hood up, and looked down.
She could have done this in an image partition, but Excalibur was too busy with trying to make sense of Taylor's powers to keep watch for her. Thus, using an image partition for web browsing meant sacrificing a training partition. Two simulations were constantly going on in Taylor's partitions - one focusing on the use of protection spells, the other flight.
There were three main types of defensive spells. Shield spells were more powerful than barriers, being capable of withstanding more damage, but were limited in area. Barriers were the next most powerful. Unlike the triangular Panzerschild, the standard Belkan barrier type spell was semi-spherical and quicker to cast. Some device meisters had experimented with a device subsystem to cast this spell automatically, but outside of unison devices the computational requirements were too high.
The final type, the field, was the most common. Field-type defensive spells, such as her Knight's Armour, were the sole universal factor of magical combat. Every known system of magic advanced enough to maintain one during combat would assume one was present at any time. They were simple to maintain, powerful, and covered the entire body.
Taylor knew all of this because she had sat through a lecture and practical demonstration of it from Excalibur in image training. Even now, she was defending from phantom attacks with shields and barriers in an image partition, trying to last as long as she could against her virtual attackers.
She arrived at the library and slipped inside. Nobody gave her a second look as she found a reasonably isolated computer and set to work. She had three priorities today - a general brush up on the Brockton Bay cape scene, looking for someone who could help Excalibur, and looking up capes with self proclaimed magical abilities. Given that you indeed do magic, it wasn't safe to assume that these guys were crackpots.
Taylor had already been researching the cape scene in her home town, after getting her powers, but she had been taking it at a somewhat sedate pace. Whilst Excalibur scoured the internet for capes who could help her, Taylor looked at local villains to try and see who she'd be up against. Excalibur provided help here too, being an advanced AI capable of tremendous multitasking. She started to mix local threats into Taylor's image training, as Taylor familiarised herself with their powersets. Obviously, what was known about each villain was incomplete at best; but there were plenty of recorded fights for Excalibur to analyse.
Taylor truthfully could have done this back at the ship fragment, but she'd wanted something familiar. Going to the library to browse the internet for cape-related knowledge was a comforting part of her routine. She had everybody in the library tagged with bugs, and her face hadn't been caught on camera.
"That looks awfully like a spell sigil, Excalibur," Taylor said via telepathy. She hadn't had to look far to find a real mage amongst capes. Myriddin, leader of the Chicago protectorate, seemed to be using a bizarre form of magic. His spells - and that was what they were - used a geometrically insane sigil that even Excalibur could make no sense of.
None of her other leads on that front panned out - and the only name Excalibur could come up with for help was Dragon. With only publicly available knowledge to work off of, Excalibur could only deduce so much about the capabilities of tinkers. Perhaps Panacea might be able to adjust Taylor's appearance, but she wouldn't be able to fix Excalibur.
Taylor left the library glad that she'd come, but both dejected and mystified. She shouldn't have expected to just find a solution like that, but still she'd hoped... well, it didn't matter now. She transformed some distance away from the library, and shot up into the sky. The sun was setting as Taylor flew out over the bay; fading sunlight reflected on the water through gaps in the ship graveyard.
She stayed out on the bay, flying low above the water, until the sun had gone down and her way was lit by her own magic. She sat on the side of a rusted ship, looking up at the stars and wondering. She'd been able to put it off, but tomorrow she had to either face her dad or run. If a solution existed for her problem, it was not going to be achieved in a single day.
The purple light of Excalibur's magic enveloped her, and Taylor found herself once more in a fragment of a starship. Thankfully this room seemed to have had an independent environmental system, so she didn't have to worry about air. If she didn't go home tomorrow, she'd have to find some way to make some money. She could perhaps raid gang stash houses and the like, but she wasn't sure how sustainable that would be, or that it wouldn't draw her into a larger conflict.
Going home meant letting her dad know about her condition, it meant having to deal with the fact that her dad would make her be a Ward. It meant dealing with the fact that she had a bunch of extra dimensional - or possibly alien - tinkertech that she might not be able to pass of as being part of her power.
Taylor curled up in her sleeping bag, afraid of what tomorrow would bring.
Do you return home tomorrow?
[x] Yes, you go home and tell your dad everything.
[x] Yes, you go home and don't tell your dad about magic or Excalibur's origins.
[x] No, you don't.
What do you focus on in image training? Choose any combination of image training options. Image training vote is by plan - XP will be divided equally amongst choices.
[x] Use of your armed device in melee combat
[x] Protection spells
[x] Flight
[x] Shooting Spells
