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A Spark of Hope (Worm/Jumpchain)

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After returning home from the hospital, Taylor wakes up to find herself with powers that call themselves Celestial Forge, and claim to be able to not just let her forge things worthy of being called the artifacts of the gods, but to give her the strength to wield them against her greatest foes, and all the tools she need to build them in the first place. All of this with a one single order from whatever benefactor gave them to her.

Be interesting, or else.
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Chapter 01 : Foundation
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    Eternaly_Lost

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    A Spark of Hope (Worm/Jumpchain)

    Discord server for Celestial Forge stories HERE


    AN. This was inspired by Brockton's Celestial Forge, found here: Brockton's Celestial Forge (Worm/Jumpchain)

    Rather then use a OC, I decided to make use of Taylor as is rather classical in Worm fanfiction, I also decided to both tweak his settings and give Taylor access to both Essential Body Modification Supplement v1.10 and Personal Reality Supplement v1.3 as well as the Celestial Forge itself. I do have some differences to how she is given perks that are covered both in story from Taylor's perspective and the first information post where I will detail things out.

    In short however, Taylor gets a charge every 1000 words of the rough draft. Not the word count in this posted story copy which due to editing is vastly different in word count by sections and by a strict ruling would require moving those around too much to ever post an edited version of this. My editing of the rough draft has expanded chapter 1 by about 3000 words, so a real rate appears to be closer to 100 cp per 1300 words, but it will vary depending on how much editing I have to do to my rough draft.

    Taylor is allowed to lock in a perk that was rolled but not bought due to it cost costing too much for the CP she has at the time by increasing the cost by of the perk by how much she was missing. Taylor doesn't quite know what a perk does exactly until she buys it however, but she gets it name, series it is from, and a vague idea of what it would have let her do had she bought it then. I assume Taylor doesn't know the series unless it extremely popular to the point anyone on the street has likely heard of it already, and she won't realize that they are fictional series until she hit ones that is the case for.

    There is another option for a very big surcharge that Taylor will quickly see is basically, either I get this perk next or I die, or someone dropped a 0 in the cost of this perk. Even at 8 times the cost, it still cheaper than it should be.

    These should be all the big differences in mechanics from LordRoustabout's work, and you should go read his story as he is a much better author then I am. I did find these new options worked quite well for my writing of this, since it gives Taylor some control over her powers, but not enough to have her look over the lists and buy what she wants next. It works out random enough to not allow for full min-maxing, well still giving some choice to direct it at a cost. If for some reason there is a perk that she didn't grab but suddenly need and she willing to pay a massive premium for, she can get it. But she will be paying though the nose for it.

    This makes Taylor a lot closer to a jumper then of her with new powers, but there are no plans for her ever to leave her world, right now I am only planning to take this to the Endbringers, leaving it implied she grows to kill Scion afterwards, but I see where this ends up as things roll. She already gone in directions I wasn't expecting in the next chapter I am partly done with. Maybe I take her elsewhere when this done, maybe it will just end there. I figure that out when I get to that point in the story.

    My rule of thumb for any perk, is that if I am not familiar with the setting in question, I work out what the perk can do based entirely on what it says and a quick google of the setting (and terms in the perk) in question yields me. I will not be researching the 200+ series that make up the Celestial Forge in detail so I can be accurate to every one of them. This does likely mean most of the perks will be better from series I don't know about, and as such I have relaxed how the series I do know can work within Taylor's power, otherwise she better off with things I don't know and I don't want to do that to myself, since that means a rational Taylor uses what I know less well more often. Expect perks to be more rough guidelines then damage roll tables in D&D because of that.

    Some perks (Like Workshop) have been expanded in scope for story purposes as well. Details on that in the Taylor's Perks Owned information post.


    0o0

    Chapter 01: Foundation

    0o0

    Friday, January 7th, 2011

    0o0

    Taylor Hebert, clad in pink pjs, watched as her dad left for work out of her bedroom window. Although she was watching him as he drove away, her mind was on a completely different topic.

    Namely the powers she had woken up with, only coherent enough to understand the details of her new powers this morning, even if she knew that she had gotten them back on Monday. She also knew rather intimately as that had been her state of mind the last few days that they had taken a few days to settle in properly.

    As such, all Taylor could recall of last few days was more of a hazy blur, aware that they were there, but not able to properly focus on the events of those days due to her powers waxing and waning as they built up to the state they were in now. Leaving her barely coherent until this morning, although Taylor memories of yesterday were slightly better, which was why her dad had thought she was recovered enough to go into work, more so with how she was this morning over breakfast.

    It was only on waking up that Taylor could understand that it had been modifying her mind and body to get her ready to accept them, and she wasn't just loopy from the medicines the doctors had given her to help her recover, which was why she had been quite drained and zoned out until now.

    But Taylor thoughts were not on this, they were on the, the implications of her powers and how she was going to be a hero.

    As much as Taylor would rather to only worry about the last one on that list, her powers were not the kind that let her be a hero right now. Which she had sort of gotten when it took them the better part of 3 days to make it so she could survive channeling such powers.

    Taylor hadn't heard of any cape that needed to spend 3 days adapting to their new powers before, but Taylor also knew she hadn't heard of any cape that had what appeared to be even a sliver of her potential save for Scion himself.

    But that didn't mean she was ready to go out and give Scion a run for his money right now. In fact, now that her powers had settled, Taylor could see that right now she couldn't be any more than a hero this very minute directly then she could have been on Sunday.

    Right now, with everything her power was currently giving her, Taylor was little better than an average fit adult woman when it came to her physical abilities, with only extremely minor supernatural abilities to start with. Well that was stronger than she was before, it wasn't by a whole lot.

    Well the supernatural abilities were clear enough they were so minor that Taylor couldn't even begin to see how to leverage to fight with, and she didn't try too hard around some of them, since even if she somehow could figure out a way to do such, she never would.

    Taylor focused on those powers anyway, aware that they were little more then the forefront of her powers, and all she had until she got her next ability. Or rather her next Perk as her powers called them.

    The one that stood out the most to her right now, if only from what it let her skip so far this morning was that one of these perks made it so she didn't have to use the use the restroom, ever, unless she wanted to do otherwise.

    Such a thing would be lethal to a normal human that tried to do such, but Taylor had selected to turn that on, and wasn't sure when she might need to ever turn that off.

    If she really wanted to, Taylor could tell her body to start making the normal waste again, so she could then use the facilities like any woman would have to, but Taylor had no intentions to do that ever.

    However, from that alone, the only useful thing Taylor could see was never needing a bathroom break on a stake out or during patrol something like that. Well Taylor could see it was useful in that regards, it hardly was going to let her stop some criminal from that alone.

    However that would change soon, and Taylor knew it, as she felt her powers start to gather to build up the next charge for the next perk, not quite there yet, but slowly building.

    With that in the back of her mind, Taylor focused on the source of her power, a sort of map of stars filled her mind.

    Most of these stars were loose and unconnected, however in the center of the system, which was herself where she could feel the charge slowly building, Taylor could see three branches of a metaphysical link that reached out and touched 18 of the starts, forming a sort of tree around her in their shape.

    Although there was only two paths that had stars on them, Taylor could see a third one that split off in another direction, curiously enough the shapes of the links seemed to hint that the two she saw right now were of less a size then the third that was untouched when it was done.

    The first such link, holding 8 active stars, and a vague sense that there were 83 inactive starts in it, but Taylor couldn't quite confirm it, identified itself as powers effecting her body.

    Body Modification to be exact.

    Only a single branch, was clearly lit up, splitting into the 8 perks she had off that direction and it felt solid and finished.

    Vague outlines of five other branches were there. Taylor couldn't make out their names because they were too vague, but since the branch she could see was listed as starting set, she had a feeling those were more specific items.

    Currently because some of the stars could split if they were activated a second time making new ones, but not many of those could do that, and Taylor held little idea if any more would join or not.

    Of the three branches that came off her, most of them were lit up in what her power made clear was her body, and those starts that were active was under a 'starting' branch. The sense of the 83 perks that would make it up in the area was there, but Taylor couldn't see where they would land, or how she even new for certain there was exactly 83 perks under them and each of them would affect her body in some way.

    She could count all the perks in her mind easy enough. Unless she lost some or gained more, which Taylor could feel from her power was possible but would be rare and unlikely, she had a total number of perks she could ever get, including the ones she already had of 532.

    As Taylor shifted her attention to the next branch, focusing more on an overview first and less on the specific perks she did have, Taylor focused on it.

    It called itself her warehouse, it held 130 perks in total from what she could feel, even if like the others they were all free floating making it hard for her to believe.

    She had started with 13 of these perks. Four of which caught her eyes because they were not on the starting set that the other perks were in. Rather then were on four different branches, letting her see four of the names in question, leaving the last 2 unknowns for now.

    Utilities and Structures, Personal Reality Facilities, Personal Reality Extensions and Miscellaneous.

    Given some of those names of the branches, Taylor could already tell she had some sort of Next Scion level superpower here, although if she was pressed, she wouldn't dare say that yet to anyone and only claim to be the next Eidolon.

    When your power started to classify what it gave you as Personal Reality Extensions AND Personal Reality Facilities, you knew that you were not dealing with some minor brute that could hit things hard.

    Taylor turned her thoughts to the last branch. If she was honest with herself, just the feeling of body modification alone felt like she could be a very powerful superhero. She given what she knew of her warehouse, she likely could leverage that to be a powerful one on its own as well.

    However, despite lacking a single perk in it so far, it was the final branch that somehow told Taylor she was the next Scion for having it, if not greater then him.

    Its name was, The Celestial forge and it held domain over 311 perks, that she felt weren't just a superpower, but more on the order of the power of a god. The kind shared only by their brothers and sisters and not given to mortals lightly or even at all. Taylor current thoughts given the names that they were powerful tinker tech gear, one for each perk, that she would learn how to make and use when she got it.

    You made gear in a forge after all. And her workshop over in her warehouse most certainly had a forge that she could use.

    Taylor had no idea what god or gods were involved behind her powers, but the feeling of the not just the forge itself, but her powers overall really made Taylor want to say there was at least one involved. Although there was nothing, she could tell form what she had, other then a vague sense on how she got charges that made her feel like someone had given her this power and was watching what she was doing with it.

    A Benefactor of some kind. One that to a normal human was powerful enough that even if it wasn't really a god, it might as well be as far any normal human was concerned.

    Taylor knew they were watching her somehow, because her charges were not awarded to her based-on time, or something she did directly that she could easily turn into more charges. Such as consume some rare or special resource or use them a certain number of times first.

    She earned charges when she was interesting. The more interesting she was, the faster her charges would build and the more perks she would get. If she failed to be interesting, she would stop earning charges until she was interesting again.

    Her powers were quite clear if she was extremely interesting, she could earn several perks in a matter of minutes, or even seconds if she managed to be in very interesting times. But if she was boring, she could go weeks or month without so much as a drop.

    She wouldn't lose what she already had access to if that happened, just stop getting anything new. So if she didn't have something worthwhile before whatever they considered non-interesting came to past, she have to wait, and if she never became interesting after that, she never get more powers.

    Taylor could only think of the Chinese curse that went; May you live in interesting times. Her power would make her stronger, but only when she lived in such times.

    Taylor could only shutter a bit at that thought, when you considered you had to live what was given as a curse to people to get power, it was enough to make you wonder if you really did want it after all.

    Taylor felt the charge approaching it cusp and watched it as she stopped thinking about her powers as they were now to watch what she would gain new. The build on the charge seemed to slow down for a bit at that before coming to almost a stop.

    This made Taylor bemused realized that she had been told to be interesting and she just did the opposite there, since she was doing the metaphysical version of watching for a pot to boil.

    At that thought, she felt the last bit of the charge finished, causing it surge forth from the pool that had birthed it and head down her branches at complete random, picking which direction it went only after it hit a junction, with no care nor concern what was before it, or what as after it.

    *Power Buy Attempt 2.4.36 Greenhouse (100), requires 2.1.23 Pipes, Pipes, Pipes. (100). Total Cost 200. Pipes, Pipes, Pipes costs 100. Bought. Banked 0 points. *

    Taylor felt her power surge down her warehouse, into a branch down into Personal Reality Extensions and settled on trying giving her a greenhouse, drawing on a perk by the name of 'Pipes, Pipes, Pipes.' under Utilities and Structures which was required for the greenhouse, moving over to that branch and expending itself fully to acquire it.

    Now that it was hers, Taylor understood completely what this new perk of hers did with just a bit of focus which she did such now because she had been given such.

    It gave her a water source in her warehouse, including in her workshop, and would do such in anything else that she acquired that could have such in it.

    She could turn this perk off on and off in any room to disable the fact it was working there, although if it required it the facility would then stop working. In the workshop proper was it brought to anything that would need it, but since she didn't have tools that required such yet, it didn't do anything for her there yet.

    In her entrance hallway and the storage part of her warehouse, it was a pipe hookup on a wall, she could pick where on the wall, or even in the middle of floor if she wanted it there. Anywhere else she would have to pipe it herself, and once set it took 24 hours to remove before she could place a new one. Placing a new one took an hour to finish, but she just had to instruct it to appear where she wanted and it would do such without any more action on her part.

    The water source behind this perk regenerated itself to the tune of a billion liters of water per day, or namely enough to flood her entire warehouse completely full of water over 10 times each day.

    The water she got was a lukewarm, 25 degrees Celsius at all times. Taylor understood that if she got a perk that it called 'Got the Powa' Then her pipes could give her hot and cold water. She looked at her tree, unable to see where it was, only knowing the name because of the text provided by Pipes, Pipes, Pipes. Taylor guessed it was likely one of the other perks und Utilities and Structures given it would give her something to heat water, but she had no way to be certain until her power hit it, or something that required it as well, given what had happened with the Greenhouse.

    At the thought of the Greenhouse again, Taylor just sort of stared at her wall with a WTF look, as she tried to wrap her head around the fact that her tinker powers very first charge decided she should be able to flood not just her entire workshop, but her dad's house and most of the block with it if she had the volume right in her head.

    Here she was considering body mods that might make her a cape in her own right. A forge that was claiming it was literally heavenly in both it name and what it would give her. A workshop that would let her forge tinkertech out of anything she built in it. Regardless if it was Excalibur from King Arthur legends or just a pair of panties, it would come out of that workshop tinker tech.

    And her powers decided the very first thing she needed to start her new career as a hero was a greenhouse and enough water to flood a city block.

    Well didn't really decide it, Taylor could tell it was randomly selected. It just randomly selected a greenhouse for her.

    Taylor wasn't sure if it was really disappointment or not. On one hand, she hadn't considered that her workshop didn't have running water before now, and now it did.

    On the other hand, she was expecting to see some weapon, some tool to make. And she just got water, all the water she could ever need.

    Taylor paused and amended it to mostly. It wasn't enough to flood all of Winslow, which might be something she entertain in her thoughts doing in private. It wouldn't be enough to do such, but it would be giving it a fair try at least. Certainly put at least a few inches on the bottom floor, maybe a foot or two.

    Taylor thoughts turned back to her perk, because even though the one her power tried to get had failed, she became aware of another option she could invoke which was interesting to consider or would have been if it wasn't just a greenhouse, rather something she could use.

    Taylor had the option to lock in a perk that hadn't been bought because it cost too much. But she would pay a 1 charge per charge left in the cost tax to do such, and she wouldn't get anything else until the topic was bought.

    So for a surcharge of 1 charge, a total of 2 charges when it was all said and done, Taylor could get this greenhouse next.

    Given that one charge had gotten her enough water to flood a city block, it was likely a very nice greenhouse at that, since it was equal to that much water, which was a lot of water.

    Taylor decided to not lock it without any need for consideration otherwise. She had no need for a greenhouse at all, and as far as Taylor was concerned, if she really needed one, there was nothing stopping her from doing such in the open area of her storage area. She now had the water to feed it, and she could get dirt and plants from the store and build some sort a plant bed in her workshop trivially.

    Only the workshop itself had restrictions on what could be done inside, which amounted to, Taylor could only put stuff in the workshop that was being worked on or was a tool. Otherwise her powers would kick it out to the storage area.

    Looking back out the window, Taylor debated if her dad had been gone long enough, before deciding he had been gone long enough and she got off the bed.

    If he showed up now without warning, she would have to explain to him that she had powers now, but she wasn't expecting that to happen. Her dad considered her recovered enough to stay home on her own now.

    Walking over to her door, Taylor paused to look at her closest door and sighed, before opening her bedroom door and walking barefoot into the hallway.

    Closing her bedroom door, Taylor made a note to fix the issue that stopped her from using he closet door as soon as she could. It would be easy enough to do, she needed a door with a lock, and it had to be a lock of some kind, not something that was just a door handle in another shape. If you didn't need a key of any kind to undo either side of it, it wasn't a lock.

    Reaching into the pockets of her pj bottoms, Taylor took out a small key that looked like it wouldn't fit in any lock that was made in the last 200 years or so.

    Despite that, it slipped into the door lock on her bedroom door as easy as if she was dipping it into water.

    The other side of her bedroom door had a twist nob to lock and unlock on the inside, only the outside was keyed and Taylor had to put it in the lock on a door to engage it as if she would a key that would open it normally.

    Once she twisted it, it became stuck, but as she turned the handle to her door, it opened far smoother than it would to her bedroom to show her, her warehouse.

    The air wasn't dry, nor was it damp. It did have a slightly mildew like smell about it that reminded Taylor of the basement downstairs. The temperature of the room was neither hot or cold, but rather a comfortable one that Taylor wished every day felt light since it was perfect.

    Currently the room was lit up to daylight, and Taylor knew to the side of the door when she entered was a light switch that could dim that all the way to completely off if she liked, or even change how the lights in this room worked from the daylight overhead to a sourceless one that would remove all shadows from anything inside.

    Taylor could see such controls by the other doors as well and knew they did the same thing.

    Taylor studied the room from the outside first, even if her powers insisted that she knew everything about it, she wasn't about to throw caution to the wind. She wanted to study them with her eyes, understand it to be certain that what her power said was real, because she knew if she was going to be a great hero, she needed to know those little details that most people overlooked.

    But was what took a cape from, random person with powers to world renowned hero. Knowing how to really leverage your powers, rather then just wing it.

    The entrance 'hallway' and Taylor only used it because that was what it said, was a perfect cube, 5x5x5 meters.

    Which was why she only called it a hallway because that was what her powers labeled it as. In her mind it was more of a room, given it shape and size.

    *Power Buy Attempt 3.5.18 Infinitely Customizable (Dead Space) (200). Not Bought. Banked 100 points. *

    Taylor paused in her studying of the room as her powers tried to get a perk in the forge and this time failed. Given she was expecting most of them to cost more than one charge she wasn't too surprised.

    Although this one was closer than she would have thought at 2 charges.

    This perk was located under a branch known as Crafting Skills, and it was smaller than the warehouse groups she had known of, Taylor wasn't too surprised there was fewer crafting skills she could get then literal Utilities and Structures for her warehouse itself.

    What Taylor was surprised at, was the fact that it wasn't some mythical item she could build, but rather a general skill, giving the way that her power seemed to hint that they were godly items. So she assumed it was a set that she could use that would sooner or later be finished in what she could make.

    Furthermore, Taylor had no idea what the whole 'Dead Space' qualifier meant in the perk's name, and the name Infinitely Customizable came with an understanding with that she would be able to upgrade any tool or weapon.

    Taylor had to assume by customizing it to suit it purpose better.

    For a single extra charge surcharge to keep it, Taylor debated doing such a lot more intensely then last time, as her power made itself clear that she could lock it in now, and the surcharge was only spent when she got the perk in question.

    One perk, out of over 300 perks. A single extra charge to get it now, or given how this was random, Taylor likely wouldn't see this again for months if not years.

    Taylor felt her power inform her of another option she hadn't know about just yet with that, only she found it even worse.

    She could force her charges down a path, at the cost of halving how much at each force she did.

    Going straight to this perk again would cost her 16 charges later, although if she put the split on Crafting Skills and waiting until one randomly went down that way, it would only take 4 charges rather than 2 overall.

    This was a surcharge of 1 charge here, so this perk would basically cost 3 charges rather than 2. The most indirect focus she could put that would get her this again would be 4 charges and it only went up from there.

    Taylor could not see how this would be useful now, not until she had more things, which clearly required more perks.

    But how long would it take before she needed to customize something to herself?

    Taylor decided the answer was, not long, not long at all. This wasn't something to make to start with, but as soon as she had something to work with it would let her make it better from the start rather than having to rework it later. Given she already gotten 2 charges right now as this was interesting since it was new, she likely get more charges soon enough, so she didn't have to worry about leaving it like that for weeks. If she kept getting them as fast as she was right now, she have the perk before she was done even looking over everything.

    And if it turned out she did get them as fast as she was expecting, she could just undo the lock at any time until she got the perk in question, It would trigger a new perk grab if she had gotten any of the charges she needed for it then, but it meant that locking in was free until the perk was bought.

    And so, Taylor decided to lock that perk in for now, making a note to revisit it later if she didn't get a few more charges soon.

    She felt her power focus on it, locking on and waiting until she had enough charges to now buy it at the total cost of 3 charges rather than 2. But as she already had one charge, she only needed 2 more.

    With that done, Taylor turned her attention back to her warehouse.

    Looking at the ground, she stepped forward and pressed her foot on it carefully.

    The floor wasn't warm, but it wasn't cold either. It felt like smooth stone, only it had more grip then Taylor expected given how smooth it was on her foot.

    Stepping inside, Taylor looked around the featureless room.

    The walls were an off white, almost grey and featureless save for the light controls by each door, and 2 other doors out.

    Turning to the door, Taylor tried to close it, but found she couldn't shut it all the way. The best she could do gave her just enough room to squeeze out, but no more.

    She couldn't get it to move no matter how hard she shoved it after that, but as she was expecting that, as her powers made it clear she couldn't shut the door while she was inside; Taylor didn't try to do such for too long, as she had more interesting things to do first.

    Such as confirming the size of the room itself.

    Taylor made her way back inside and looked at the wall. Moving close enough that she could roughly put her hand at her height, Taylor pressed it to the wall and looked upwards, doing some rough math in her head.

    She was about 5' 4", which made her about 1.6 meters. The wall was roughly 3 times taller than she was. Which if it was exactly 3 times her height would make it 4.8 meters tall and this room was supposed to be a perfect 5-meter cube.

    Taylor decided that was close enough to be good enough for now, but she made a note to measure it properly later to be certain that it really was 5 meters on a side.

    Touching the walls to find they felt the same as the floor did both in surface and temperature, Taylor looked up at the ceiling that was well out of her reach, and wondered how to best get up to check it, before she played with the light switch a bit to test it.

    After confirming that it could turn both dim and turn off the lights, then checking to see that shadows were cast as if the light source was above her at all times, and stopped doing such when she switched it to sourceless then putting it back to daylight since that looked better to her eyes; Taylor walked over to the storage part of her warehouse.

    The workshop was going to be more interesting and where Taylor would be staying until lunch time at least.

    Walking though he door, Taylor took in the split section of her storage area.

    To her left was empty space, amounting to, according to her powers, 80x40x10 meters in size.

    To her right, was a lofted area split in to two levels, each was 80x40x5 meters in size, and this side of things was loaded with shelves that looked right out of a hardware store.

    The closest shelve held the only item of interest that her power said was inside, setting on one that allowed Taylor to look at it at chest height, it was the size of a microwave, taking up the entire shelf it was on.

    Taylor walked over to and looked at it, aware of what it was.

    It was a recorder that recorded everything that happened around her 24x7. She could ask it for any set of videos she like under any conditions, and so long as it was around her, it would give it to her.

    So she could ask for raw footage or an edited cut, or even just a tv show based on her life.

    Taylor didn't bother to test that right now. She had more interesting things to do.

    Taylor felt her power build a charge and hold it in place, putting her at 2/3 of the charges she needed for her next perk.

    Taylor smiled at that, almost 2 charges so far in here alone, and she was quite sure she could get at least one more out of this exploring of her warehouse as that was 'interesting' right now. So she would get that perk as soon as she hoped.

    Looking around, Taylor found a door on her left that she opened to find a closet full of cleaning supplies, enough to keep this place clean if she was willing to sweep and mop this entire place by hand.

    Walking around the shelves, then going up a level to check, Taylor confirmed there was nothing else in her warehouse but that.

    The lack of the water hookups was entirely because she hadn't told her power where to put them yet, and she could move them at any time, not counting for the delay for it to take effect, but only so long as they were on a wall or the floor. She couldn't stick one on the ceiling, she have to run pipes if she wanted a shower that wasn't just a pipe pointing out of her walls.

    Not having a reason to flood her warehouse right now, and not needing to take a cold shower in here, Taylor didn't bother to ask for that, but rather she made her way to the workshop to poke around in there.

    Arriving at it, Taylor took in the massive room that was just as large as she needed it to be, but no larger and no smaller.

    It did hurt her head a little to think about how it did that, but as she understood it if she wanted to make anything inside here, she could fit it and however much space around it was required to work on it, but only so long as it was being actively worked on. If she stopped work on it, it had to go somewhere else. Although her power did consider things she had paused to rest or work on another part of, actively worked on, so she didn't need to remove it right way.

    Only if she stopped work on it or wanted to work on something else that didn't relate to the item she had pending.

    So well her power would be happy to let her build a skyscraper inside this workshop, somehow with what amounted to medieval tools right now, if Taylor started anything else, or when she finished it, it would have to go somewhere else.

    She could stick it outside of her warehouse outside of where the door was, or in the storage area, but that could easily cause a massive mess that could take months to clean up if she wasn't careful.

    Taylor could tell this part of the power was being generous to her, and so long as she didn't try and cheese it for more space then she had, it would take very broad strokes on what was related, such as underwear she decided to tailor could be a part of costume for the sword she had left half done by the forge. Or maybe part of a uniform to wear well she put together a fence post.

    It really did just come down to, don't try and get more space out of this, and it would let her do such. Items in progress inside only. If it done or not being worked on, it goes elsewhere.

    Thoughts going back to the tools, Taylor walked around poking at the tools and the supplies.

    From what Taylor could see and understand, it was what a large town in the medieval ages would have scattered over its various workshops for the various crafts. Blacksmithing tools, Tailor items, Masonry and more.

    Everything Taylor needed to do basic crafting, including bottomless supplies of the same, that had to be used to make something before she could remove the raw materials.

    Something partly done was fine, it just had to be more then raw materials first.

    Taylor's poking around confirmed what she already knew. For metals she had things like iron, copper, tin, bronze, even gold and silver. But nothing more modern and she was certain it wasn't good iron either, even though she couldn't tell you what made good iron or bad iron, only that it was basic iron that her power gave her right now and no more, no less.

    This was the same with everything she had an option. Her cloth options were cotton or wool, with simple dyes. Stone of various colors Taylor couldn't tell exactly what it was an option in that regards. All she could tell was that they, only that it was large blocks of stone.

    The more unusual bits was the gems, crystals and such, but those still were basic supplies you find in a jewel of some kind.

    And that was it for what she had to work with right now.

    If it was just bottomless supplies, Taylor might not have bothered with this, given she had no idea how to use anything in here, but there was another property of the workshop that made certain she wanted to do all of her work inside it.

    Anything built inside her workshop, would gain the ability to self-repair, outright destruction of the item by flinging it outside of the universe would have it repair itself and reappear in her warehouse in 48 hours.

    Anything less than that, took proportionality smaller amounts of time to repair. So anything that wouldn't outright destroy itself within 48 hours of use would self-repair from all damage quicker then it could be damaged, and only things that could destroy it if applied for that long would damage it.

    A very powerful ability combined with an endless source of materials to work with.

    However, as powerful as this place was, Taylor had no idea how to make anything just yet, and well she could see herself in armor of some kind, she didn't even know how to make a sword and she figured armor, any good armor that was, was far more complex than a sharpen rod of metal.

    Taylor looked over at the bars of metal, ingot she knew they were properly called, and she had no idea how to turn a block into a rod, other then she was somehow supposed to be able to hammer in like that.

    Taylor tried to see how she could hit a square and get a circle out of it for a bit, before she abandoned that train of thought and went back to her perk trees. Considering her crafting skill perks, well aware that she was nearing the third one she would need to grab the first one, but given the large number of them she had no idea when she would get another one from here, this was only one branch of her powers after all.

    Taylor decided she clearly had to do something different first, she had no idea how long it would take to get something she could build.

    The answer was quite clear, she needed to look up how to make something on a forge then learn to do such as she waited for her powers to give her something else to build. She had no idea what tools she would get the ability to use first, but she did know what she needed first to be a hero. Some sort of costume and likely some sort of armor.

    Nodding to herself, Taylor left the warehouse to go shower, get dressed and hit the library.

    She was supposed to stay home and in bed, that was what her dad told her to do, but Taylor was certain he wouldn't notice if she wasn't home so long as she got back before he did.

    Taylor would also hit the store on the way home, to pick up a lock for her closest door, one like her bedroom door with a twist on the inside. She didn't think it would be too hard to replace it herself.

    0o0

    At the library, Taylor made her way over to the crafting section and looked up blacksmithing.

    There were more books then she expected on it, and she settled on an intro to blacksmithing book that looked fairly simple.

    Bring it to a place to read, Taylor winched the book started with, if you are not in great physical shape, you should start an exercise routine first or you couldn't even make anything as it took a lot of upper body strength to forge anything.

    Taylor's body perk only made her as strong as an average woman of regular fitness, not a weightlifting.

    A good side of her perk was she would never get weaker so training upwards from that wouldn't have to be maintained. But Taylor felt like it would take just as long as it normally would to get strong.

    Making a note to pick up books on that before she left, Taylor was about to go back to her guide when she noticed her third charge was about to pop, and she turned her attention to it just as it did so.

    *Power Buy Attempt 3.5.18 Infinitely Customizable (Dead Space) (200) + 100 Lock in tax. Bought. Banked 0 points. *

    Again, Taylor was dumb founded by what she just got as she understood it completely.

    Her, Infinitely Customizable perk, granted her the ability to use nanotechnology to make tools and weapons that could then be further upgraded by additional nanotechnology within similar categories that were related to their function.

    The good news for Taylor was that it even included the instructions on how to make said nanotechnology parts.

    The bad news was making said parts expected she had a workbench that had nano-assemblers on them.

    Which was about as far as she could get from the current state of her workshop, as she could think of without doing something like requiring unicorn tears to soak a weapon in.

    Taylor glanced at her warehouse perk, aware it would cost 8 charges to lock in the upgrade for her next cycle to do such, but it wouldn't give her nanotechnology level gear with that either. She could tell it would upgrade it, but not how it would upgrade it exactly, just about a generation better, and not to modern day yet.

    Nanotechnology on the scale she needed was clearly postmodern, future technology.

    However, Taylor started to calm down as she considered another factor.

    Even if Taylor had no ability to get any nanotechnology right now, she knew it did exist in other tinker shops.

    Armsmaster had to have some with how much stuff he put inside his tools and armor.

    Taylor took a few breaths to calm herself, recalling she hadn't expected to be able to make anything with this, and was expecting it would make her life easier.

    It sorts of would. If she applied this upgrade feature to something she made, which did require nanotechnology, she could in a few minutes on the right workbench basically build a bunch of lego that stuck together and changed what they did on her whim.

    On one hand, it wasn't any less useless then she was already expecting, on the other, it was going to be a LOT longer than Taylor expected before she could use it.

    Taylor sighed and looked back at her book. Here she was looking up how to hit a metal block to turn into a sharp metal stick 101. Now you use nanotechnology to build stuff out of high-tech Legos, that would let you upgrade armor to make it more resistant or even heal the person wearing it.

    The contrast between the two was quite large, and it only made Taylor wonder what the other perks in the Forge would bring. If this was a two-charge perk, what was a one-charge perk under it like? What would a three-charge perk give her? How high did the costs go?

    0o0

    Taylor ended up checking out a book on general fitness, of which she was going to take an exercise routine to get her stronger. The book on blacksmithing which had very basic starting patterns to get her use to hammering metal. Making it clear that she shouldn't start with swords, she should start with basic shapes to get use to the tools.

    All of which was suggested she do such under the guidance of a master, but she didn't have one of those she could access or afford even if she knew someone to ask about, and she wasn't about to offer access to her powers to an outright stranger in exchange for training.

    Thinking about her money problems, Taylor wondered how hard it be to make and sell gold coins, she did have an endless supply of gold to make them with.

    Although someone would certainly notice if they melted them down, since outside of her workshop, once made inside it, that would be treated as damage and it would be undone within 48 hours, which likely would draw a lot of attention to her.

    Attention Taylor didn't need, there was a reason why she hadn't asked to join the wards already, and it wasn't because she didn't yet have a tinker perk.

    She could prove she had powers by just proving she didn't need to use the bathroom, ever, and point out the reason or her lack of anything else right now as she was like Dauntless and would get stronger in time.

    She really was a lot like him, just a lot more random.

    On the way home Taylor got her lock and worked on her daydreams of trying to guess what she would get in the various trees, focusing more on the one she wanted more first. Those around her body mod.

    Going off her body mod, Taylor was expecting a perk to make her peak human. Maybe good memory and less need for sleep?

    Taylor wasn't sure what the other 80 or so perks would be in that regards, and so far, her thoughts on the forge had been wrong.

    But she was learning, she figured this out, she would then build tinker tech gear, then use it to be a hero, and once she had a reputation for doing such, she would join the Protectorate as a big name hero.

    Not the Wards.

    Taylor didn't need to add to her bully count after all. Which she would if she showed up like this, she was a tinker that couldn't even make a metal shield.

    Vista would be justified in making fun of her.

    A part of Taylor wanted to join the wards to make use of her perk she just got. Armsmaster should have what she needed to do that, but she bit that down because soon or later she would get a perk that let her make something. Fairly soon as she was even 3/4th of the way to her next charge and luck was on her side.

    Arriving back at home, Taylor found her handyman skills were lacking as she struggled to replace the doorknob on her closet, taking her far longer than she planned on, and managing to mess it up the first few times.

    But after a few tries she was able to secure it and after testing her warehouse on the new door handle, Taylor nodded and mindful of the space she had inside, let out a sigh as she set her watch in for 2 hours before her dad would get home normally, and went inside to do some exercises designed to train her body.

    She did take a stop by the warehouse to try and swing the blacksmith's hammer a few times, before she realized quite plainly that fit adult woman, and blacksmith, were very, very far apart in strength.

    0o0

    A run around the open area of the warehouse, squats, pushups, situp and everything else the book suggested left Taylor quite drained. It took her much longer to do such then it ever had before in her life, but she still felt every minute of it.

    Feeling her power close to surging, Taylor laid back in the warehouse to catch her breath, her mind jumping around to what she might get.

    Would she get a fit body and make this training she just did worthless?

    Taylor wouldn't mind that if it had.

    One day of training for peak human ability?

    Sign her up.

    Would she get the ability to set things on fire with her mind? That could be dangerous for staying under cover as she likely set the Trio on fire with her mind without being able to stop herself.

    *Power Buy Attempt 1.5.37 Healing Touch I (100). Bought. Banked 0 points. *

    Or, as Taylor thought to herself, her completely random power could go completely inverse of what she was daydreaming of getting and grant her the ability to HEAL the Trio, or anyone for that matter, with her mind.

    Well after touching them first that was, Taylor noted as she understood what it meant.

    With this perk, at the first level, she could touch someone and then so long as she remained within 10 meters of them heal them such that they recovered 10 times faster than normal.

    Taylor got the impression that if she locked this in to get the next level, which would cost her 2 charges, one normally plus a second one as a tax for the lock in, she would basically double the rate of healing. But that wouldn't affect how many people she could heal at once right now, nor would it ever.

    She could only do one person right now, but with practice she could learn and do more people at the same time, that didn't require a perk, just healing a lot of people.

    Taylor could tell there was more levels past that, but she could only see the next level of the perk with this locked in, so she held little idea if that would change more than just faster.

    Taylor only thought about it for a few seconds before she didn't lock it in to get the next level, seening no need for it.

    Sure, another healer would be useful in Brockton bay, and that would get her some fame around it, but Taylor didn't want to go around the hospital and heal, more so when this would be slow enough she need to go join the wards to prove it worked so they would let her go around healing people.

    However, Taylor was pleased to notice this could be used on herself to speed up her own recovery after training which would make her training to become a peak human in all regards go a lot faster.

    Taylor let out a sigh, as she turned the power on herself, relaxing as she healed up, and in a few minutes, she felt as if she had rested for an hour.

    Wondering if it would work on sleep as well, Taylor got up to start round 2 of her training, since she had time before she had to leave due to her dad showing up.

    0o0

    Saturday, January 8th, 2011

    0o0

    Since Danny had missed a lot of work this past week whileTaylor was in the hospital, he had to go into work on Saturday and so again left Taylor in her bed in the early morning. Again telling her to stay home today as well.

    Just like yesterday, Taylor watched him go, before she returned to her warehouse to do her now morning exercise, including running, pushups, squats, jumping jacks and other common exercises as the book suggested she do.

    One of the first thing Taylor was going to make with her workshop was a set of weights. Since she would need them for the more advanced weight training, and they were also simple shapes so they would get her started on her ability to blacksmith something.

    With her morning exercises done, Taylor sat on the floor as she used her healing power on herself and checked her charge status.

    About halfway there.

    Thoughts on what she might get, wishing it was something she could use to fight. Taylor made her way to her bathroom to shower and get dressed for the day. A thought had crossed her mind late last night before she fell asleep, and she wanted to investigate it today.

    Namely, just how flexible was Infinitely Customizable? How limited was her perk anyway? It was clear it intended to use nanotechnology, but could she have it work on other things or not?

    Once Taylor was dressed, she made her way down to the basement and took out the old computer that was dead, but they still held onto because of the cost to get rid of it and opened it up.

    At first, she saw nothing but computer parts she barely understood, but Taylor reached into her perk and willed it a bit forward.

    And the computer opened in her mind.

    No longer was it just boards that were green and she knew mattered in some way, but she could see how she could swap parts around to change their functions, make things better if she mixed them… or even repair it given she could see parts that were faulty in her mind and could just tell they were why it stopped working.

    Taking the computer out of the basement, Taylor brought it upstairs to her workshop, as the warehouse was still open in her bedroom, and there was no good lock to use without going up at least one flight of stairs anyway.

    Bringing it into the workshop, Taylor eyed the tools she had, which were not the proper tools to work on it, and she felt her power quiver as it tried to figure out how to make it work anyway.

    Finally it gave up, and she felt the knowledge slip away, unable to put it to use due to a lack of tools.

    Taylor moved the computer to the storage area and put it on a shelf before it could do that for her. Then headed downstairs to the basement to check what tools she could loot from there without her dad noticing.

    0o0

    Taylor ended up leaving the tools behind because she decided that taking anything useful to her was more likely to be noticed missing by her dad.

    If he noticed the old computer was gone, she would say that she had taken it to a recycling program at school a few months ago, and he just never noticed it before.

    Taylor was starting to narrow in on something she could do, and it proved to her that her powers could be exploited in ways that was not clear at first, so long as she thought about it properly.

    Taylor considered the water upgrade she had, she would need to attach a hose to it and she need to somehow solder on a hookup to do that, but then she could basically flood some place with water.

    Taylor had no idea how in the world that would make things better for her, given the need to find a door with a keyhole, go inside and turn the hose on, but she guesses there might be something. Maybe a large fire to put out?

    It likely was enough water to put out a house on fire, now that she considered it from that side of things.

    *Power Buy Attempt 3.7.13 Crafting (Geneforge) (300). Not Bought. Banked 100 points. *

    Taylor felt the charge wander into the forge into a section that called itself magic, which puzzled her, but the perk it tried to get turned her thoughts away from that right away.

    It was crafting of tools and equipment. She didn't get much more than that, and like the Dead Space qualifier on it before, this one had Geneforge which was the same as that. Taylor couldn't see how Dead Space related to what she had gotten in her perk, and she had a feeling Geneforge had the same meaning.

    But that didn't matter to Taylor, since she already knew she wanted it when she knew it would let her make tools and equipment, including armor and weapons, and so had locked it in with that.

    It would cost her 4 more charges then she had right now, 2 more for the cost of the perk itself over the single charge she had plus 2 tax for the lock in, but Taylor was fine with that. She gotten that many charges yesterday after all.

    Four more charges, Taylor could work with that just fine, given that she be able to use her entire workshop after that.

    Deciding that made her Smithing training and research worthless, Taylor made her way to shower and get dressed, to go hunting for thing she mig Taylor was both pleased ht be able to tinker with as she waited for her crafting ability.

    She wasn't stupid enough to go a junk yard and look for parts, and she didn't have the funds to buy anything she could either. But that didn't mean she didn't have options.

    Infinitely Customizable worked on weapons and TOOLS, if she could get it to work on any tools, the she might be able to something before she got her crafting skills.

    0o0

    Taylor was both pleased and annoyed that while Infinitely Customizable did let her see how to combine tools and even break them down into parts and rebuild them as other tools, she completely lacked the means to do such.

    She was literally a tinker that could bury herself alive in her raw materials that were literally bottomless in her workshop, that couldn't do anything for the lack of proper tools.

    Sometimes, Taylor felt like she was born to suffer and right then and there she didn't feel it any clearer as before. If she could find a way to get it out of her workshop, she could drown Brockton Bay in gold and still have enough to over the planet and more left. Yet she couldn't do anything with what she had.

    Taylor bit that down as she focused her attention on what mattered.

    She had powers now, and once she could craft, she was going to be a hero. She was close to being able to do that, that much was clear.

    Which meant she should start planning her costume now, so she could jump right into it when her power rewarded her with the four charges she needs to craft. A fair cost when it was all said and done, given that most of her body perks that made her basically an average woman would have been about 10 charges.

    It would have been nice if it started her with that, but Taylor wasn't going to complain to whomever gave this to her, since it was giving her the crafting power on the 2nd day of using her power.

    Hopefully second day, Taylor thought as she checked her charge progress. It wasn't as far along as she expected, and she had to wonder why.

    0o0

    Taylor felt like banging her head on the wall a few hours later when she saw 0 progress on her charge and all she had for the time was scribbles in a notebook about possible hero names and armor designs.

    Her power had told her from the start, be interesting and you get charges.

    Don't be interesting and you don't.

    Guessing at names and designs for hours with no progress?

    Clearly not interesting and Taylor could feel the charge going up now that she stops.

    It was so not interesting that her powers considered her not doing that interesting, at least for a while, since she felt it slow down a bit.

    Not enough from that alone to make it worth trying to game such.

    What would be interesting? Taylor decided trying to make something with her powers now, even though she could yet be.

    Given the time, Taylor had to push that off to tomorrow as her dad was home and he would notice her going into the basement to raid it for parts.

    0o0

    Sunday, January 9th, 2011

    0o0

    Danny stayed home on Sunday, but he let Taylor go out to the library on her own when she asked him if she could.

    So, Taylor left him at home, getting on the bus to head in that direction.

    But she didn't head there.

    She wasn't stupid enough to go to the junk yard, even Taylor knew that the PRT monitored that. They might not have such a sign up at the junkyard, but they might as well have one that said, tinkers come here to be noticed by the PRT.

    But that didn't mean that Taylor didn't have other options. Even if they were a lot more disgusting.

    Making her way to the city park, Taylor wandered thought the alleys, peaking into various dumpsters as she walked.

    Most had bags of trash like she expected, which she didn't even try and open. But every now and then she came across something electronic, like a computer that likely was dead, a broken tv or remote that wasn't in a trash bag, so she could just pick them out.

    She grabbed those, went to the nearest door which was almost always within a few feet, opened her warehouse, shoved it inside placing it in her entrance hallway to sort later and closed it to move on.

    Slowly in her wanderings, Taylor built up a pile of junk that she could use, and anything that looked like she could take it apart in some way, joined the pile.

    Taylor was quite sure all of it was broken and worthless right now, but she really looked forward to what she could make of it, and soon.

    0o0

    On a whim, on the way home, Taylor hit an electronic store and got a soldering iron for a few bucks. She figured that would be useful in breaking this hardware down.

    0o0

    Monday, January 10th, 2011

    0o0

    The lack of a charge at all on Sunday stunned at Taylor, but she was feeling better about things on Monday morning.

    She did her morning exercises after her dad left, ignoring the pile of junk she had to process as she passed it on her way to train.

    Then after she had recovered from her work out, she made her way to the basement and collected all of her dad's tools and brought them into the warehouse to get started. Running an electrical cord into her warehouse after she realized she didn't have power connections inside for the tools to make use of them.

    Activating her perk in full, Taylor focused on what she could take apart first, and started to build piles of parts, and it was only after she finished processing everything that she looked at them.

    Her power ticked up to 2/5 charges to get her Locked into a perk. Taylor Brightened up as she looked them over.

    Ideas of how to mix the broken computers filled her mind to make one that was working. With this now in mind, Taylor collected the parts to do such and brought them into the workshop to build it, curious what she would end up with.

    0o0

    Taylor turned on the computer she had put together from parts, curious how it would work.

    At least until she got a, [NO OS INSTALLED] error on the new screen.

    Sighing, she tried to recall how to get them on there, something about a DVD to insert?

    With only vague ideas to go on, Taylor she went to go search the house to try and find a copy. They did have some computers after all. She failed to find one and realizing that the computers likely came with said OS, she wasn't going to find an install disk here. Maybe at Winslow, but clearly not here at home, so Taylor put her new computer into the warehouse with a sigh.

    It was useless to her without an operating system and her powers had no suggestions on that end.

    With that plan only a half failure since it had gotten her some charges, Taylor went back to her parts and looked at the piles, wondering if she could make some tools out of them so she could return her dad's tools.

    She could see how after a few minutes and got to work slowly making improvised tools for her use. She was sure she wouldn't need them too much longer, but it kept her busy at least.

    0o0

    Tuesday, January 11th, 2011

    0o0

    Realizing how mind dulling boring what she had been doing yesterday after crafting had been, Taylor went to the library for real with a thought in her mind of something that might be interesting.

    She hoped it would work, because she was starting to run out of ideas of what to do without going on a patrol without anything to help her.

    Securing one of the more isolated computers for her own use, Taylor looked around and then went to the PHO wiki and started to look up villains in Brockton Bay.

    Taylor wondered if researching villains would be interesting to her powers or not. She had a fairly good idea about all the heroes in Brockton Bay already; and she was more concerned about a villain when she finally went out as a hero.

    Heroes were the good guys after all.

    PHO wiki had sections for each of the major PRT sites, and since Brockton Bay was PRT ENE HQ, it was on the wiki, making it easy for Taylor to locate and look at who was there in the bay area.

    The section was divided into simple categories. At the top was heroes, namely Protectorate members.

    Under that was PRT affiliated heroes, like New Wave.

    Then came the Gangs of the city.

    For Brockton Bay the topmost gang listed was Empire 88. They had no less the 15 villainous capes in the city.

    Taylor started to study each in turn, wondering how well her power would like this and deciding to check after she was done with Empire 88, since if she ran into a villain, odds where it was one of them.

    At the top of Empire 88 was Kaiser. He could create metal objects anywhere around him. He was seen in a knight armor when he showed up, and each time was different because it was made by his power.

    Taylor thoughts turned to her desire to make an armor for herself and she made a note to not make it look like him. But then again, she was a woman and the breast plate would make it quite clear… well, the metal breast plate would make it clear she was a woman. Taylor thought to herself, knowing she was quite lacking in anything made a girl look like a woman outside of her hair.

    Fighting Kaiser wasn't a good idea at all if you were not a serious brute or bring serious firepower. Taylor knew it would be a while before she qualified for either there.

    Kaiser's three lieutenants, or at least the three that were known publicly, were Krieg, Hookwolf and Purity.

    Krieg was simple enough, things got slower as they got closer to him, to the point being too close with his power active made it hard to breath.

    Fighting him was difficult because of that, but of the three lieutenants he was most certainly the easiest to fight. Taylor might not like her odds with him right now, but gear to stop him would come a lot sooner than the others.

    Hookwolf after all could turn into a living blender made of metal and would grind anything that couldn't withstand such blade into mush very quickly.

    Purity on the other hand, was a flying blaster like Legend, although weaker then him. She flew around and fired laser beams that were known to destroy buildings, although she only done so once as a showoff, so her file indicated she might not be able to do that more than once like Legend could.

    Taylor found her odds against any of those 4 right now as zero, period. Even fresh gear wouldn't make a difference either. She would need some serious tinkertech first.

    Moving down the list was Fenja and Menja. Whose power was a lot less dangerous then the above, but at the same time nothing that Taylor could see how to deal with.

    They could grow to basically six time their size and in doing such they reduced all damage they took by a factor of 6.

    Outside of that, they just large women that in their large size were strong enough to toss around cars like matchbooks.

    Taylor again put her odds against winning against them as a not now or soon and moved on the list to the next entry.

    Crusader was next and his power let him make ghosts that could fight. According to the wiki the ghosts could pass though physical matter, and were much weaker than a human was, but could ignore armor when they attacked because of the first point.

    This was someone that well Taylor knew right now she had zero chance with, she could at least see herself dealing with him soon.

    She need to train in hand to hand if her power didn't help her with that, and she need proper weapons, but he was just a human that could summon ghosts, not some living blender or giant woman, or even someone that made time slow down around him.

    Taylor paused as her charge went to 3/5, and she smiled as she realized that. She started this with barely a quarter of a charge, and she just got one?

    Clearly this was interesting to someone.

    Glancing at the list of those to still do, Taylor realized that finishing the list of villains wasn't like to get her another charge, but she still went on.

    Night's power was unknown, but she caused a lot of damage when she showed up. So the wiki had her down as a brute.

    Fog's power however was known as he turned into a gas that harmed those inside of him. Since he was a gas cloud that could move around as he liked, it was extremely hard not to be inside him when he wanted you to be.

    Both of those were not a chance in Taylor mind, at least right now.

    Alabaster power was one of the weirder ones, as he was a normal adult man, who body reset every 4.3 seconds, meaning anything done to him in those 4.3 seconds was undone.

    It was theorized that even vaporization would be undone, but if that had been tested before the wiki didn't say.

    Stormtiger power was simple enough. He could control wind, which he could use to make claws out of sharp gusts of winds, to fly and such.

    Taylor supposed in proper armor he wouldn't be too bad to fight, but he would just fly away in that case.

    There wasn't much on what Cricket power was either, but it was assumed to be brute based as she fought with twin swords.

    Victor's power was to drain the skills out of people, which he could then use. He was otherwise an adult man.

    An adult man that was known to have stolen the powers of many martial artist and such. It was noted that it took him a long time to steal powers, the more he stole the longer it took, and Taylor wanted nothing to do with him, if that meant he would take her crafting abilities away.

    Othala was much easier, as her power was to grant other people powers. Without someone to protect her, she was just an adult woman, and Taylor knew she herself was as strong as one right now.

    Othala wouldn't be bad if Taylor had to fight her alone, but it was known she was Victor's wife and the two were rarely apart and she often gave him a boost.

    That just left Rune as the last Empire 88 Cape.

    Rune's power was to touch an item then move it telekinetically. She was also about Vista age. Which meant to Taylor that if she got in a fight with Rune, and she had been able to stop the girl from getting something to throw at her.

    Taylor mused if she could do that she could likely win right now, but she had a feeling the girl wasn't stupid enough to not keep something at hand she could use at all times.

    Taylor having finished the Empire 88 paused to study her power level; it was at about half of the next charge.

    Which was 1 and a quarter charges from studying Empire 88 when she factored in that she had been at a quarter of a charge when she started and already gotten one.

    Taylor wondered if she would get her next charge when she finished this up or not. So moved onto the second gang in the wiki.

    The Merchants.

    They were one of the older gangs, and they used to rule the city. But when New Wave took down their leader in Marquis, before they had become New Wave and had been Brockton Bay Brigade, they had never recovered and had changed leaders every few month, never amassing much power after their fall because of that. A very long list of ex-leaders filled the history page for them, along with a lot of various capes that either left, dead, or presumed arrested and not heard of again.

    Currently the leader was Skidmark, who power let him apply fields to things that pushed them in the direction he wanted them to.

    The only other known Merchant at this time was Squealer, who was known as Skidmark's girlfriend and a tinker, who made vehicles.

    The Merchants were so poorly organized at this time that the entry noted that several villains in the independent section may or may not be a part of them. The PRT has no clear proof either way.

    The PRT wasn't even sure if the Merchants themselves even knew either.

    Taylor shook her head at that statement on the page and moved onto the last gang.

    The Azn Bad Boys.

    They had only two capes as well. But one of those capes was Lung.

    The man who had single handily fought Leviathan and held him off. The entire island was lost in the fight, but he had still held his own. The Endbringer had walked away from the fight unable to kill him.

    His power was to grow stronger the longer the fight went on, which was how he was able to do that. Once he was strong enough, even Leviathan couldn't hurt him.

    Fighting him for any length of time was considered you lose. If you didn't win instantly, you were done. Because the longer the fight went the stronger he got and he had proven enough to stalemate with the Endbringers was either his peak, or his peak was past that.

    The other cape in them was Oni Lee, who was a murdering teleporter, that could teleport to any place he could see, leaving behind a clone that could continue for a few second in whatever he was doing before turning to dust.

    And that was it for the gangs in Brockton Bay large enough for the PRT to list them. Taylor was sure there was others, but too small for the PRT to make anything public about the villainous capes in them in the city.

    Taylor paused to check her charge to see it was at 80% of the way to the next one and looked at the independent villains.

    There wasn't a whole lot of them. There was Grue who often did bouncer work. His power was over darkness and made a cloud of it. Otherwise he was a big and strong man. Not someone that Taylor would dare fight without gear.

    Uber and L33t, who Taylor had seen the show of a few times, who based their crimes on video games and often had things go wrong in them, but they were not real threats, just jokes. Well save for the fact that they did hurt people in crimes that was, but they were more common criminal level threat then Super Villain when it came to harm.

    Given how bad they did, Taylor felt her odds against them was rather good right now even without gear.

    Taylor sighed and turned her thoughts to her powers. Almost but not quite.

    She did the villains, maybe the heroes would help? Taylor already knew all of the local ones, but decided it was worth a try. If only to refresh her memories on things.

    Pulling up the page for the PRT heroes in Brockton Bay, Taylor looked over the listing.

    At the top was Armsmaster, a tinker and Taylor knew it was heavily debated if he was number 2 or 3 in the world.

    Some people claimed he was number 1 in the world, but most people still gave that title to the late Hero.

    If Armsmaster was the number 2 tinker in the world, and if you used the living qualifier you could easily say he was number one, then Dragon was number 3 after him, and likewise if he was number 3, Dragon was the one that held the number 2 slot.

    Taylor felt her power surge and she hit 4/5 and she felt good about this.

    Deciding to spend more time on a tinker, since she was one, Taylor looked a bit more at his profile then others. His long list of achievements and Endbringer fights he had been in. He hadn't missed one since he had become the head of Protectorate ENE. And had been to most of them before that.

    Here in Brockton Bay he was known for his motorcycle he took around the city on patrol. He wore blue colored power armor and fought with halberds that he would deploy from his armor.

    Taylor wondered how much of that she could do one day as she studied the photo of him in costume, her eyes drawn to his rather handsome face.

    He looked very pleasing to the eyes.

    He also was as old as her dad, but he was good looking enough that Taylor felt she could at least fangirl over him a bit more, given she was a tinker herself now.

    Studying him for a bit, Taylor looked at the pictures of his gear, and let her power focus on it, curious if it could work from a picture.

    Not as well, but Taylor could see how she could layer in upgrade trails in nanotech to make his stuff better from just the picture. She needs to see it in person to know more then she could do that to it, but it was more than she was expecting.

    Miss Militia was number 2 in Brockton Bay and her powers was that she never needed to sleep, she never forgot anything, and she could summon any weapon by her power.

    The weapon became made of green light, but from her own wiki page she never could be without one, and it could be anything from a police baton to a missile launcher.

    All of her weapons didn't need ammo, it was a very versatile and potent power. One that would have easily seen her the head of Brockton Bay itself, was it not for Armsmaster here.

    Taylor continued the list.

    Assault was often seen with Battery, that was something Taylor knew herself and the pair had similar powers.

    Assault could redirect forces that hit him in other directions.

    Whereas when Battery was standing still, she built up a charge over a few seconds and then could discharge it to make herself superfast and super strong for a few seconds. The two were not often together, but often seen using their powers on one another as a match set to rather big effect.

    Taylor gaze moved down the list to the next name.

    Dauntless was a recent big-name cape, who was a rising star.

    His power was a lot like hers as Taylor had already noted, only rather than being interesting things, he built up a charge over a day and he had to imbue it into items, which he selected.

    Each charge made the item a little bit better, and already he had boots that could let him fly and a spear that could fire lighting, and a shield that could grow and shrink around him as needed. His upper limit was debated but so far appeared to be quite large in time.

    The next name on the list surprised Taylor when she saw it, since she had thought he was still a ward.

    Triumph was new to the Protectorate as of a week ago. He had a roar he could cast from his mouth that stunned or damaged things.

    Rather simple blaster power when it was all said and done.

    And lastly was Velocity, who power was to move very fast, at the cost of getting weaker the faster he was moving.

    He was fast enough to walk on water, but at full speed he couldn't move even a piece of paper.

    Taylor, having finished the adults of the Protectorate turned her thoughts to her charge and found it was halfway there to the final one.

    She hoped the wards would be good enough and turned her attention to their list.

    Aegis was the new leader of the wards with Triumph having been promoted up. He could fly and his ability was redundant biology, meaning he could adjust around injury so that it didn't hurt him anymore.

    As it said on his page, if his heart stops beating his lungs would start beating and pushing the blood around his body and other things like that.

    Clockblocker ability to was to freeze things in time when he touched them, they remained frozen for random periods of time, and he was known to be a pranker at events freezing random things and people.

    Gallant was one of the two tinkers in the Wards and his specialty was around emotions. His armor let him see emotions and his weapons let him fire blasts that effected people's emotions.

    Taylor studied his armor, frowning a bit as she couldn't see how he did it, given she seen some directions to Armsmaster weapons in his pictures but none in Gallant's arms where the weapons were supposed to be installed, but she figured that was more due to the fact it was a picture itself and less because it couldn't do that.

    Maybe he posed in a dummy armor for the photo or something.

    Kid Win was the other tinker, and his specialty was unknown, but he was seen with a hover bike quite often and used laser pistols.

    Taylor studied his gear as well, and she could see options to upgrade both with targets in those veins, so she wondered a bit about the lack of the same on Gallant, before moving on to the last two wards.

    Shadow Stalker was new to the wards, only joining a few months ago. Her power let her walk through walls and she had been a vigilante before she joined the wards. Her PRT blurb said she joined the wards to learn to better control her power and fight crime legally.

    Something about that blurb spoke to Taylor, but she had no idea what, so she ignored it to look at the last ward.

    Vista was the youngest of the Wards in age, but was the most experienced of the Wards by far.

    She had more experience then several of the adult protectorate members at an entire 4 years in the Wards already.

    She joined the wards when she was 9 and was one of the few people that could truthfully say she was given a PRT ranking the same as her age when she got her powers.

    Vista power let her warp space around her as she pleased, although she couldn't affect places with people. This let her do things like make items larger or smaller on the inside. Doors that connected to other doors. Hallways that were longer or shorter or even looped back on themselves.

    *Power Buy Attempt 3.7.14 Crafting (Geneforge) (300) + 200 Lock in Tax. Bought. Banked 0 points. *

    Taylor was thrown from her study of Vista as her power locked in the perk and knowledge followed in her mind.

    It was crafting, and as it had promised her it was ways to craft from various raw materials. Taylor saw no issue with making a sword now.

    What had caught her off guard was what it included. Ways to layer in magic so that the items she made would not only self-repair but would be enchanted to do something similar to their nature.

    Since a sword was designed to cause damage and fire caused damage, she could make a flaming sword.

    Or she could layer the magic in deeper, making it so items wouldn't self-repair almost in real time, but able to hold much more powerful enchantments.

    No wonder it was under magic, Taylor thought to herself, it was crafting, but crafting of outright magical gear.

    Taylor turned her attention back to Vista's entry for a bit, and decided she had to go give her new ability a try. What she could draw from what the PRT said on the last ward was not really of any more interest to her, and she was the last entry to look at here so Taylor would need to find something new anyway.

    Signing off the computer, Taylor headed home, her mind on what she could now do.

    0o0

    End of Chapter 01

    0o0


    Perks earned in this Chapter (Excludes normal free starting perks, but includes ones given for story purposes). Detailed perk information under Taylor's Perks Owned Informational post. You may search post by the prefix on each perk below, but the perks are in number order in that post.

    2.1.19 Natural Lighting
    2.3.1 Entrance Hall
    2.4.1 Workshop
    2.6.2 Jump Recording

    2.1.23 Pipes, Pipes, Pipes
    3.5.18 Infinitely Customizable (Dead Space)
    1.5.37 Healing Touch I
    3.7.13 Crafting (Geneforge)
     
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    • FAQ and Mechanic questions:


    What perks can Taylor earn?


    Taylor is given perks from her benefactor from the following Jumpchain Documents.


    Essential Body Modification Supplement v1.10




    Personal Reality Supplement v1.3 (Newest)




    Celestial Forge Jumpchain (Edited by others and myself to remove duplicate and non-existent perks)





    For the most part, the perks are as written in the documents, but I have made some minor changes for both story purposes and mechanic purpose. I will try to account for changes I know I make in the perk records, but as I am not familiar with every single fandom involved the Celestial Forge, I can not say for certain that I will be accurate even if I don't change what it says around.

    Assume that perks are treated more as a 30 second elevator speech and not Divine restrictions on their wording. The true limitations around the perks will be for Taylor to find in story and I will have her find very quickly that she can bend them a lot more then it first looks.



    The first two Jumpchain Documents have only minor removal of some perks for story purposes, for example, Taylor can not earn the Divinity perk (Although given the access she has, she basically a Goddess already, she just needs to earn a few perks from the Forge first.)

    Another example is perks around Items, most companions perks and anything that directly impacts a real jumpchain itself (Such as looking at or returning to past worlds). This is being written as if Taylor is a single document jumpchain and she has no companion options to buy and so most of them would be a waste of charges so I out righted vetoed them for her sanity.

    Taylor will get perks she view as useless, but on some level it will have some use with what she can get from the documents alone, even if it not as useful as something else.


    This doesn't mean she can't get things that can effect people to make them Companions, like the Body Mod Pod. She can get that, but she got to get someone to join her before they can use it, and the restrictions around such means she can't use it quickly. I cover restrictions on that if and when she rolls it up. It one perk out of 500+ perks after all, and Taylor is doing her best to bias her perks to the most powerful and interesting.

    The intention is Taylor can upgrade her friends and allies, but isn't given a way to do such permanently and automatically. If her allies get boosts, they going to have to go into her lab to be upgrade first.



    How does Taylor earn perks exactly?


    Every 1000 words of my rough draft, Taylor earns 100 CP (1 charge), and under normal rules triggers a series of dice rolls as follows. Random.org is used for all non-normal sized dice that I can't quickly modify (reroll 10 on a d10 to get 9 for example). At the time of this post, my edited version is about 30% longer, so that means it about every 1300 words, but the real counter is the rough draft file. Every 1000 words in that, as soon as I hit a cartage return to end a line, she gets a roll on the the chart below.

    Note numbers for the Body Mod/Personal Reality Supplement start at the top of each section with the first perk that costs CP, skips every free perk and any perk that is excluded for reasons given above.


    D3 to select Jump Document

    1. Body Mod
    Roll D5 For Area.
    1. Physical
    D9
    2. Mental
    D4
    3. Spiritual
    D8
    4. Skill
    D22
    5. Supernatural Perks
    D40
    Roll Whatever Size For All Items Left In That Selection. (If 5 Left, Roll D5)
    Attempt To Buy Rolled Topic, Buying Prereqs If Required For Selection, If Can'T Afford Points Are Stored.

    2. Warehouse Mod.
    Roll D6
    1. Utilities And Structures
    D46
    2. Cosmetic Upgrades
    D10
    3. Personal Reality Facilities
    D18
    4. Personal Reality Extensions
    D40
    5. Items & Equipment
    D4
    6. Miscellaneous
    D2


    3. Celestial Forge
    Roll D12
    1. Toolkits
    D39
    2. Knowledge
    D44
    3. Vehicles
    D24
    4. Production Speed
    D12
    5. Crafting Skills
    D27
    6. Clothing
    D15
    7. Magic
    D35
    8. Quality
    D34
    9. Transformative
    D12
    10. Resources
    D26
    11. Magitech
    D20
    12. Alchemy
    D23



    Once a perk is selected by the above table, Taylor attempts to buy that perk to the highest possible level. If she can't buy any level/part of a set the charge is stored completely and the next time Taylor earns a charge she her stored back to the roll for purposes of buying a perk.


    If Taylor buys any perk, even just the first level of one, and has any part of her charge remaining, she triggers a reroll as above and attempts to buy whatever comes up again. This repeats until a roll does not give her a perk or she runs out charges. Taylor does not roll if she has no charges remaining.



    This is the base rules an Taylor has the following options she can apply, which I had her apply as she bests see it.

    1. Taylor may lock in the last rolled perk she failed to buy for a cost multiplier of 2x to the charges she was short. Besides making an easy way to remove the 50 point options when Taylor stumbles into one, this also means she can lock in a perk that she likes. Taylor may release this lock at any time and only pay the surcharge when she gets the perk in question. If she has gained 1 charge since she locked in the perk, when she releases it it triggers an automatic roll for a new perk as above.

    Taylor does quickly learn in the story to use this to get a lot of charges for a role, as she quickly puzzles out that high cost items are a lot more valuable then the low cost she gets easily.


    2. Taylor may lock in the dice to give a certain number at any level of the roll chain, provided she knows what is involved, at a x2 cost to the perk for each level she does such at.

    This means that Taylor can choose that her next perk is going to be in the body mod, and all rolls will then go to that document, but the rolled power will have it CP cost multiplexed by 2. Or she can choose that the next time she gets a body mod perk, it would be Physical. Then the next roll that places it into body mod would automatically jump into Physical, for the same 2x cost. Lastly she can choose to just choose a certain perk she knows about under a category, and in that case only when the roll puts her power both in Body Mod AND that Category would it select this perk.

    In the last case, Taylor must know the perk in question by having her power try and grab it once before, otherwise she locking in blind and I treat that as a Category for something she hadn't rolled yet. Taylor realize as much herself as well.

    Taylor may combined options, and so if she wants to be certain that a perk she knows about is her next perk, it will apply a cumulative multiplier of x8. Which basically means outside of the very small such such as a Workshop extension, Taylor is not going to do that, since she would get 7 other perks of the same cost of what she pay for that one. It have to be something extremely under-priced in her eyes, or basically save the world critical need this next for her to think it a good idea.


    Why doesn't the Simurgh/other precogs immediately react to Taylor?

    The benefactor behind Taylor's power is providing her a limited scope blank that has two features to. Both of which she is unaware of at this time.

    First, everything Taylor has yet to build, even if she knows how, and anything that happens inside her warehouse, is blocked from any sort of precognition. As far as every single power is concerned until it left the door of her warehouse, it doesn't exist. For a second feature, Taylor is immune to precogs until they meet her for the first time, and they will only notice this when her actions are large enough for them to directly notice. This is enough that well the Simurgh will quickly realize something is up, she can't figure out where this factor is exactly on Earth, and so she will have to go looking.

    Otherwise, chapter 1 would have started with her showing up and taking over Taylor. This protection is limited in scope, so if Taylor decides to do something stupid and give the Simurgh a hug. It will be a game over. She also smart enough to realize how much the Simurgh would like to have her and isn't going to willing get close until after she well convinced she could kill the woman. Even then she try and have someone else to it for her, just in case it wasn't good enough.
     
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    • Taylor's Perks Owned
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    • Taylor's Perks owned by supplement to current posted chapter

    ○ Physical Health Refinement (free for all): You are cured of any physical and genetic issues and will not suffer from many common issues, such as cancer, as you age. At will, you may also choose to have your body's digestive and other systems function more effectively, removing your need for sanitary facilities to dispose of waste.

    ○ Physical Prowess Refinement (free for all): If below that level, your health and fitness increases to that of an average active, healthy person in their prime. Your physical fitness level will not deteriorate over time or through disuse, as long as your basic needs are met. You can perform at approximately half of peak performance as described in the Notes section. This level of fitness can be improved through training, but without perks cannot exceed peak capabilities for your base-form species.

    ○ Reproductive Refinement (free for all): If below that level, you become as fertile as an average member of your species and gain the ability to render yourself infertile or fertile at will. You may also choose to stop or start any menstrual or breeding cycle at will. If you carry the child, the pregnancy and birth will be easy and risk-free. Finally, your offspring will benefit from the Physical Health, Physical Prowess, Reproductive, Mental Health, and Mental Awareness Refinements. The cosmetic appearance of their physical form will be determined by the genetics of their parents at the time of conception normally.

    ○ Mental Health Refinement (free for all): If below that level, your mental health increases to that of an average person in sound mental health. You are resistant (but not immune) to developing issues such as PTSD, anxiety, and depression. You do not have issues with self-motivation or the ennui that living for centuries may cause.

    ○ Mental Awareness Refinement (free for all): By spending a moment in quiet contemplation, you may become aware of any mental illnesses or other issues that you are suffering from. While this does not remove those issues, it does tell you how to best deal with them, making therapy dramatically more efficient and providing a degree of leverage in coping with them.

    ○ Spiritual Awareness Refinement (free for all): By spending a moment in quiet contemplation, you may become aware of the state of your own soul, including any outside influences upon it or damage it has suffered. If all or part of your soul is no longer in your possession, you also gain a vague idea of where it is located and who is currently holding it. This does not allow for removal of those influences, but it does give you an idea of where to start.

    ○ Spiritual Resource Refinement (free for all): You may use all forms of non-physical energy interchangeably, effectively removing your need to track
    resources for individual types of powers. Whether this means that you can cast spells using chakra, perform martial arts using psionic power points, or some other combination is up to you.

    ○ Secondary Powers Refinement (free for all): You automatically gain any 'secondary powers' required for your other abilities to function. For instance, if you have an ability that lets you run at supersonic speeds, you automatically gain a secondary ability that keeps you from tearing yourself apart while using it. In short, this ability allows you to function by comic book physics as needed to make your other abilities make sense.

    1.5.37 Healing Touch I (100): You can improve the recovery of others using your internal energy. Initially, this ability can affect only one target, but with practice and time, its effects can be applied to any number of patients at once. You do not have to remain in physical contact with the patients, but must remain within approximately 10 meters. This distance can be slightly increased with practice, as well. You may target yourself with this ability provided you are conscious and able to use abilities that draw on your internal energy reserves

    I: Patients under your care recover ten times as quickly as they normally would. They are never at risk of infection or other complications to the healing process and may ignore any penalties to their recovery for poor nutrition, poor conditions, or similar issues. This does not noticeably deplete your energy reserves.

    1.2.4 Mental Resistance III (200 EP) : Your mind and will are strong

    I: You are very difficult to intimidate and have a high resistance to mental fatigue (such as from extended warfare or study) and can generally delay dealing with mental trauma until any immediate crisis is dealt with. Also, you do not get bored with tasks easily and can study or practice abilities for extended periods without penalty or need for a break.

    II: Immunity to the items in tier I plus a high degree of resistance to memetic hazards, insanity, mind control, and other factors that would impact how your mind works.

    III: Complete immunity to the items in tiers I and II.


    1.3.6 Corruption Resistance (100 EP): This perk confers protection against supernatural influences that target your soul or that fall outside the bounds of physical or mental influence. Unless you specifically wish for it to do so, no contract, curse, possession, or effect can take hold of, bind, or damage your soul or being. When you first gain this perk, your soul is restored to an uncorrupted, whole state and any supernatural influences are cast off.


    1.4.3 Strategic Mastery II (100 EP): Applies to tactics, strategy, logistics, and the technical side of leadership/morale. Can apply to government, military, or business. Learning modifiers apply to techniques, doctrines, and organizations/forces.

    Competent (100 hours): Once you achieve the competent level in a skill, you move beyond the very basics and start to understand why things work. At this level, you can perform most routine uses of the skill with few mistakes.

    1.1.1 Physical Prowess III (200): Your body performs better than normal. This affects all physical attributes, including strength, speed, endurance, agility, coordination, flexibility, and healing rate.

    ○ I: Peak human performance: lift 550 lbs, Sprint 25 mph, Run 12 mph, 3 days without sleep.
    ○ II: x2 peak human performance: Lift 1100 lbs, Sprint 50 mph, Run 25 mph, 6 days without sleep.
    ○ III: x5 peak human performance. You effectively no longer need to sleep. Lift 2750 lbs, Sprint 125 mph, Run 60 mph. No sleep required.


    1.2.1 Heightened Senses II (100): Your senses are stronger than normal.

    I: Your senses operate at the peak of human efficiency, but more importantly, you are better than normal at understanding their input. You can listen to multiple conversations at one time, track multiple targets within your field of vision, or see in semi-darkness as well as broad daylight. This control also works in reverse - your senses will not be overwhelmed by normal levels of stimuli and even weapons specifically designed to damage or overwhelm senses (such as blinding lasers, flashbang grenades, or nauseating gasses) will be greatly reduced in effectiveness.

    II: Your senses exceed the human norms to the things regularly possible by animals. You can track by scent as well as any bloodhound, navigate in the dark using echoes, and see into the infrared and ultraviolet ends of the light spectrum.


    1.3.2 Empathetic II (100) Your ability to read people goes beyond basic social skills

    I: If you are familiar with a person's culture, it is easy for you to pick up on their body language and subconscious movements. This provides a great deal of information about their emotional and mental state, as well as the truthfulness of their words.

    II: You no longer need knowledge of a person's culture to divine their emotional and mental state, provided you are familiar with their race or take a little time to familiarize yourself with them first. You can get a good feel for what a faceless blob from the other side of the universe is thinking with just a few minutes of discussion.


    1.3.8 Supernatural Resource Recovery II (100): You are better at regenerating the energy needed to power your supernatural abilities, whether this is mana, ki, or something more exotic.
    ○ I: You do not suffer penalties to your recovery rate for any reason and always recover energy as though in the best possible situation, such as resting quietly or near a magical nexus, even if you aren't. If you have a power source that does not normally regenerate (such as a blood pool or the energy of captured souls), it now regenerates at a slow rate (enough to power a powerful ability once per month).
    ○ II: As tier I, but your recovery rate is now doubled. If your power source does not naturally regenerate, you now regain enough to power a powerful ability once every two weeks.


    1.5.35 Trivial Applications (50): Once you have an ability to do things on a large scale, you can produce trivial versions of that effect on a small scale at-will and for no energy cost. Mastering fire magic would let you light a fire with a fingertip. Mastering force magic would let you generate an Unseen Servant effect. The power level of these lesser effects is generally on the order of cantrips and 1st level spells from Dungeons and Dragons or a similar system.

    1.2.3 Mental Prowess III (200) : Your mind is sharp and your memory strong.
    ○ I: You don't forget things, no matter how long ago you were last exposed to them and can generally think quickly and can arrive at the right answer given a bit of time. Note that this generally only works on memories you make after gaining this ability. This enhanced memory also means that your skills will not deteriorate from disuse. You are also better at compartmentalizing your memories, providing you a degree of protection against the erosion of identity that can occur when large amounts of new memories are added suddenly.
    ○ II: As tier I, plus your mental calculations are now lightning-fast, you have perfect recall, infinite mental storage, and can absorb knowledge simply by glancing at a page of text for a few seconds.
    ○ III: As tier II, plus your calculation ability is flawless and you can absorb a page of text simply by glancing at it. Your memory is so good that it manages to retroactively sharpen memories you made before gaining this ability, giving you crystal clarity on even ancient memories.

    1.3.1 Blank II (200): Abilities which gather information about your past, present, or future do not work on you. This includes scrying, divination, mind reading, and even cold reading and lie detection. This ability not only affects your immediate person but also provides a degree of protection to those around you, making it difficult to predict the past, present, or future of any group you move with or vessel you travel on. If you have the Essential Mutuality perk, your affected companions gain the full benefit of your Blank perk even if they are acting independently.
    ○ I: You are immune to all supernatural and technological abilities and devices which perform the functions described above. You simply do not register to such abilities, though your own abilities function normally. Purely mundane skills at cold reading or lie detection will be less effective, but still function to some degree.
    ○ II: Even mundane versions of the above items do not function against you. Furthermore, you are able to detect when someone is actively attempting to discern such information through supernatural or technological abilities or devices and feed them false information of the type they expect. Thus, you can feed an image of yourself asleep in bed to a scrying spell while you're secretly across town beating up thugs or you can have a truth detection spell return 'truth' when you are telling a lie. Note that this does not protect you from compulsions to tell the truth or share information directly. Additionally now anything you own or have created is covered under blank too.

    1.5.39 Minion Creation I (200): You can create minions of a general type such as vampire spawn, undead, elemental servants, or animals. Minions tend to be no stronger than a regular human, fairly dumb, and short-lived or, at least, their loyalty is. Minions created from thin air vanish within an hour or two, while those created from appropriate reagents may last days or weeks depending on the quality of the reagents. Undead created from the living beings or corpses of formerly living beings remain undead until destroyed. This ability can be re-applied before the last application fades to extend its benefits. Initially, a minion creator may only command the loyalty of two minions at a time, but with practice and effort, this amount can be increased. At your discretion, you may choose to 're-summon' the same creature when using this ability and allow it to have continuous memories with the last time it was 'summoned'.
    ○ I: Creating minions is generally a slow process, taking about an hour.

    1.2.2 Heightened Reactions II (100) : You are more aware of your surroundings and the dangers around you.
    ○ I: You are rarely surprised and may attempt to defend against or dodge any attack you are aware of.
    ○ II: You are never surprised and may attempt to defend against or dodge any attack, even ones you are not aware of.

    1.1.9 Creature Soul I (50) (Cat)
    Choose a form for the creature that lives inside you. This can be a regular animal, a dragon, a fantastic beast, a tentacle monster, or a never-before-seen creature of your own imagination.
    ○ I: At will, you may manifest physical attributes associated with your chosen creature. These manifestations can range from fur or scales to fangs and claws. These changes can have the logical benefits of the new anatomy (being able to slip through restraints or small openings, sharp claws that work as natural weapons, or appropriately sized wings allowing you to fly. As part of these shifts, you may adjust your "peak" performance parameters, with any increases having offsetting decreases. For instance, a boost to speed might result in a lowered flexibility or agility. In general, you should not be able to gain supernatural advantages through these shifts.

    1.4.15 Supernatural Engineer (200)
    For a practitioner of magic, ki, qi, chi, or a similar supernatural energy, you have an unusually scientific approach. You can grasp the underlying principles of such energies and can improve upon abilities that use them as though they were technology and even integrate them with technology if you have the required knowledge. Supernatural abilities improved in this way may be more potent, more efficient, faster, require fewer verbal or somatic components, or require fewer or less expensive materials. Or all of the above, given enough refinement. This also gives you a talent for creating new abilities by combining supernatural abilities into one, even if the individual spells or techniques use wildly different energies.


    1.5.26 Power Toggle (50)
    You have a great deal of control over your abilities. You may choose to reduce or even turn off any powers, perks, or other abilities that you control, on an individual basis. This choice must be made completely voluntarily, and no outside influence may cause you to turn off or weaken your powers with this ability.

    1.1.4 Environmental Tolerance II (100)
    You are not damaged by hazardous environments, though this does not provide you a method of propulsion.
    ○ I: You no longer need to breathe and do not suffer from temperatures between 200K and 350K (-100F to +150F). You are immune to most radiation (up to about 1,000 mSv - the amount experienced during unshielded exposure to space).
    ○ II: As tier I, plus you do not suffer from temperatures below 400K (+260F) or the effects of pressure lower than 1000 atmospheres (including the effects of vacuum). You are immune to the effects of radiation at all levels.

    1.1.5 Regeneration II (200)
    Your body heals quickly. Injuries that do not kill you outright (typically by destroying your brain) can be recovered from with no scarring (unless scarring is desired). This healing is automatic and does not require your conscious activation. Approximate healing times are as follows:
    ○ I: Minor wounds (minutes), Major wounds (hours), Severed limbs (days)
    ○ II: Minor (seconds), Major (minutes), Severed limbs (hours)
    1.3.3 Charismatic II (100)
    You are naturally more charming than most and instinctively know what would get others to do what you want.
    ○ I: You possess a control over your body language and presence that makes it easy for you to get your message across. You are never misunderstood and may conceal your emotions and intent from mundane attempts to discern them.
    ○ II: As tier I, plus you are better at tailoring your message to your audience. When someone would have a positive impression of you from your words and actions, the strength of that positive impression is increased by half. When someone would have a negative impression of you from your words or actions,the strength of that negative impression is reduced by half. Also, you can conceal your intentions and emotions from even supernatural attempts to discern them.
    1.3.4 Wild Empathy II (100)
    You have a natural rapport with sub-sapient creatures. This is most commonly used with naturally occuring animals, but can be used with any being that is not sufficiently developed to be targeted by the Empathetic and Charismatic abilities..
    ○ I: You find it easy to read the emotional state of sub-sapient creatures that you are familiar with and can communicate your intentions to them fairly well. This is not as robust as a spoken language, but any concept that can be conveyed in one or two words can be communicated.
    ○ II: As tier II, plus you may become familiar enough with a creature to communicate with it in only a few seconds of observation or interaction. Your
    interactions may also be slightly more complex, extending to concepts that require as many as three words. Your target's ability to comprehend and act on your communication will still be limited by its nature.

    1.5.19 Energy Projection (Mana) (100)
    Choose a type of energy, such as kinetic energy, heat, or even raw magical energy, and a method of attack, such as a blast from the hand, a breathed cone, or beams from the eyes. You can project this energy type in this manner using your internal energies. This attack starts out relatively weak, but is still capable of causing serious injury to an unprotected human. Practice with this attack will often allow greater flexibility in how it manifests - a breath weapon could become a cone, blast, or beam, for instance. Practice may also increase the potency of the attack, as will other factors such as mana pool and efficiency (for a mana beam attack) or physical size (for a breath) as appropriate. If the energy is projected from your hands, you may also choose to channel the energy into a weapon to add to the weapon's attacks. This ability may be purchased multiple times, choosing a different type of attack each time.

    1.1.6 Ageless II (100)
    You do not age or otherwise degenerate over time in the normal manner:
    ○ I: Double the lifespan for your race, with peak performance and health throughout. This benefit is applied retroactively in jumps where your starting age would put you past your physical prime.
    ○ II: As I, but you will never die of old age and will maintain peak performance and health with no degeneration forever. You may choose to halt or resume your visible aging at any time.


    1.1.7 Undead Physiology III (Lich) (200)
    You are no longer among the living.
    ○ I: You choose how your undeath manifests cosmetically, from being a walking skeleton to a vampire that is almost human, though you must retain at least one vital organ whose destruction counts as an instantly fatal blow. You still need to consume sustenance, though the form of this will vary by the nature of your undeath. Vampires typically drink blood, zombies eat flesh, and liches consume magical energy. This sustenance is as appetizing to you as regular food to a human, though you may find that some examples taste better or worse than others (such as a vampire preferring the blood of certain people). You also age, though this deterioration is rarely the same as mundane mortal grey hairs.

    ○ II to V: In addition to the effects of tier I, you gain 400 EP (tier II); 600 EP (tier III); 800 EP (tier IV); or 1000 EP (tier V) to spend on abilities associated with your type of undead, below.

    1.1.2 Physical Resistance II (100)
    Your body resists negative effects.
    ○ I: You are immune to normal diseases, parasites, bacteria, toxins, and the degenerative effects of radiation.
    ○ II: You are immune to the items listed in tier I, regardless of origin. When you are injured, the injury is approximately 25% less than it would be otherwise. You also have a high pain tolerance.

    1.4.14 Polyglot (50)
    You are fluent in every language that you have encountered. You learn new languages 1,000x as fast as normal, achieving fluency in only about an hour of reading or listening.

    1.4.4 Leadership Mastery IV (400)
    You find it easy to inspire and bolster followers on a personal level, including instilling personal loyalty.
    ○ Master (10,000 hours): At true mastery, you can push the boundaries of your field. There are generally only a few practitioners of a skill that reach this level.

    1.5.3 Environmental Tolerance IV (400)
    You are not damaged by hazardous environments, though this does not provide you a method of propulsion.
    ○ III: As tier II, but the protection extends to any non-magical environmental source.
    ○ IV: As tier III, but the protection extends to magical environments such as energy planes.

    1.5.39 Minion Creation II (400)
    You can create minions of a general type such as vampire spawn, undead, elemental servants, or animals. Minions tend to be no stronger than a regular human, fairly dumb, and short-lived or, at least, their loyalty is. Minions created from thin air vanish within an hour or two, while those created from appropriate reagents may last days or weeks depending on the quality of the reagents. Undead created from the living beings or corpses of formerly living beings remain undead until destroyed. This ability can be re-applied before the last application fades to extend its benefits. Initially, a minion creator may only command the loyalty of two minions at a time, but with practice and effort, this amount can be increased. At your discretion, you may choose to 're-summon' the same creature when using this ability and allow it to have continuous memories with the last time it was 'summoned'.
    ○ I: Creating minions is generally a slow process, taking about an hour.
    ○ II: Creating minions is faster, taking only minutes.

    1.5.29 Power Combination III (600)
    You have learned the tricks necessary to use more than one ability at one time, often increasing the effects through synergistic effects. Supernatural abilities can be combined on-the-fly with this ability, but doing so tends to be inefficient. Commonly used combinations are better if researched and refined using Supernatural Engineer or a similar ability, though such an effort obviously takes considerable time and effort.

    ○ I: Inherently conflicting abilities now work together without a chance for backlash. You can use the light side of the force with the dark side. You can channel electricity from one hand and blast water from the other without electrocuting yourself. You can combine two perks or powers, and the cost of using the powers is increased slightly. Abilities which cost no energy may be combined freely.
    ○ II: As tier I, but your ability extends to up to three abilities at one time and you may combine alternate forms as well as perks and powers. Doing so typically costs about twice as much in terms of energy as using the individual abilities separately. Abilities which cost no energy may be combined freely.
    ○ III: As tier II, but you are no longer limited in the number of abilities you can combine at one time and you may combine any abilities which can reasonably be combined. Items and companions typically can't be combined, but just about anything else can be. The energy cost of combining powers increases sharply as more are added, and after ten abilities, the cost is likely to exceed any reasonable resource pool. Abilities which cost no energy may be combined freely and are not considered in the rate of cost increase.

    1.3.5 Unflappable (50)
    You have a knack for keeping your appearance the way you want it, even in the middle of the wilderness. It takes a lot for you to get dirty, and even then, it tends to just accentuate your look instead of detract from it.


    1.5.8 Heightened Reactions III (200)
    You are more aware of your surroundings and the dangers around you.
    ○ III: You are precognitatively aware of danger. If an attack or hazard is going to appear, you are aware of the general direction of the danger approximately one second before it actually appears.

    1.5.13 Morphic Form III (200)
    You may adjust your form at-will.
    ○ I: You may shapeshift within the limits of your normal morphology (same number of limbs with the same general purpose). Changes are largely cosmetic and do not produce natural weapons more effective than those of your base form (generally normal human teeth and nails). Your height and weight cannot change by more than 25% of your base form.
    ○ II: As tier I, plus you may add or remove limbs, add useful claws and fangs, and similar changes. Your height and weight must still remain within 50% of your base form.
    ○ III: As tier II, plus you may assume forms with a height and mass between 10% and 1,000% of your own.

    1.5.37 Healing Touch II (200)
    You can improve the recovery of others using your internal energy. Initially, this ability can affect only one target, but with practice and time, its effects can be applied to any number of patients at once. You do not have to remain in physical contact with the patients, but must remain within approximately 10 meters. This distance can be slightly increased with practice, as well. You may target yourself with this ability provided you are conscious and able to use abilities that draw on your internal energy reserves

    ○ I: Patients under your care recover ten times as quickly as they normally would. They are never at risk of infection or other complications to the healing process and may ignore any penalties to their recovery for poor nutrition, poor conditions, or similar issues. This does not noticeably deplete your energy reserves.
    ○ II: As tier I, but the rate of healing is faster. Patients under your care recover twenty times as quickly as they normally would. Additionally, you can focus a significant amount of your energy into a single patient to cause them to heal much faster. By doing so, you can cause minor wounds to close in minutes or major wounds to close in hours. All mundane diseases and disorders will also fade within a matter of hours. Furthermore, while you are actively healing a patient in this manner, they will not die, no matter how dire their condition may be.

    1.5.8 Heightened Reactions IV (400)
    You are more aware of your surroundings and the dangers around you.
    ○ III: You are precognitatively aware of danger. If an attack or hazard is going to appear, you are aware of the general direction of the danger approximately one second before it actually appears.
    ○ IV: As tier III, but you begin to receive warnings hours ahead of the danger. These warnings generally start vague as a sense of unease or troubled dreams, but get slightly more direct as the danger continues to approach. Approximately five seconds before the danger appears, you gain a clear warning akin to that from tier III.

    Cosmic Warehouse (free): It is contained within its own reality that contains absolutely nothing else (guaranteed) and no matter where you go you'll always be able to access it. Before you do anything with it, it looks like a fairly dimly lit and very empty room.

    Starting Space (free): Your Personal Reality starts out with volume of 80 x 80 x 10 meters, so 6,400 square meters of floor space or 64,000 cubic meters of storage volume.

    Access Key (free): This is a special key which lets you access your Personal Reality and its contents. When inserted into any lock on any door, the door opens to reveal a gateway into your Reality at a predetermined location within it. You are the only person who can take the key from the lock, the gateway remains open as long as the key is in the lock, and if key is ever lost or stolen you will find it in your pocket a few minutes later. You cannot close the door as long as you are inside the Personal Reality.

    Security System (free): Anybody coming in and out of your Personal Reality is now checked for any authorization you've given them to access it; and should anything about said authorization (or a lack of it) raise any flags in the system, then you will receive a warning about it. This allows you to define just what sorts of authorization different individuals can have to access your Personality Reality, anything from No Access through Temporary Access and Limited Access to Unlimited Access is possible. All this does is notify you. It does not stop them on its own. A Keyholder's Access cannot be limited by the Security System. Only hand out Keys to those you trust implicitly.

    Loft (Free): What's the point of having a room 10 meters tall if you can't build upwards. Feel free to stack things up to the ceiling if you like.

    Environmentally Neutral (Free): By default, the temperature in your Personal Reality is never too hot nor too cold, the air will always smell faintly musty but scent neutral, and the air will always be breathable… even if two different species with different atmospheric requirements are present in it at the same time…. well, as long as both species are there with permission. This won't protect breathing invaders. Earth Standard Gravity will be maintained in all areas, and the air will be just humid enough.

    Neutral Lighting (free): These lights are nothing special, It's a color-neutral, source neutral ambient lighting system. It's not really that bright… think early twilight gloom, but if you want better, install it.

    Shelving (free): Basic metal shelves to keep your goods on, the kind you find in industrial big box stores, sized for pallets and numbered for sorting. You'll get up to as many as will suit your initial space allotment, but if you don't take all of them, you'll need to buy more on your own… they sell them at most business supply warehouses, ironically enough


    Cleaning Supplies (Free): Infinite supply of any cleaning supplies you might need for cleaning your Personal Reality. By default placed into a specific closet, but can be placed elsewhere. These have no actual chemical properties. No using this to get an endless supply of brooms or bleach. Completely safe for all complex lifeforms. Very not safe for viruses, bacteria, amoeba, or household pests.


    The follow perks were given for free as part of story purposes/starting set. Included is the free perk Entrance Hall because Taylor can get more copies of it.

    2.1.19 Natural Lighting
    2.3.1 Entrance Hall
    2.4.1 Workshop
    2.6.2 Jump Recording

    0o0

    2.1.19 Natural Lighting (50): Completely natural lighting that looks and feels and functions as good as the real thing (sun, moon, or starlight). Comes with sectional dimmer switches and can be sourceless or from any lamplike object you bring into the Personal Reality. Purchasing this upgrades all sources of lighting you bring in, even things like TVs and Computer Monitors to be perfectly safe and naturally adjusting for minimal eye-strain. This replaces Neutral Lighting and does not require any power source.

    2.3.1 Entrance Hall (First Free, Additional Halls are 50 each): This is the room your Access Key opens a door to. It starts off as a 5 meter cube with blank white walls, floor, and ceiling, as some doors, one leading to the current Host Reality, the other into your Cosmic Warehouse, with additional doors leading to other extensions as these get added to your Personal Reality. Feel free to customize this Entrance Hall as you see fit. Additional Halls can, at your discretion, be linked only to certain keys or only to certain extensions. This allows you to have an entry hall just for skiing if you want.

    2.4.1 Workshop (100): Each purchase of this adds to your Personal Reality Workshop needed to perform specific type of craft, which is to be specified when purchase is made. It comes with a basic set of tools and supplies. Good for fixing or creating all sorts of things, although any complex parts or nonstandard supplies will have to be brought in from outside. Additional purchases can add different types of Workshops to your Personal Reality or expand existing ones. Anything built in one of those workshops is fiat backed to be restored to its original condition within 48 hours if damaged or destroyed.
    Modified Level 1 : Basic tools and materials, only mundane nothing supernatural or has special proprietaries. What you expect to be found and used in medieval Europe. Everything you need to build a town with castle that would look like it right out that era, but you would need to find food and living things for said town elsewhere.

    2.6.2 Jump Recording (Free): You're now the star of your very own reality TV program! Invisible, intangible cameras follow you everywhere and record everything that you and your companions do. These recordings are then edited for maximum viewability and compiled and cross indexed. You get the copies of the footage, both raw and edited. Does not come with any equipment suitable for watching the footage.

    2.1.23 Pipes Pipes Pipes (100): Purchasing this provides your Warehouse with enough plumbing fixtures to turn the entire volume of your Personal Reality into one massive pool… or anything below that. This provides clean running water with any reasonably common additives you like (chlorine, glacial milk, fluoride), but does not provide a limitless supply, nor does it heat the water. By default, the amount of water this system can produce per day is 1 billion liters or one megaton of water or a block of water 100 meters on a side, and the default temperature of this water is 25 degrees Celsius. It can support any civilian infrastructure on the same scale as Mexico City or Tokyo. Comes only with the basic hookups. You'll need a plumber to do the actual piping. We hear Mario's very good. Bathrooms not included. Purchasing this supplies all facilities inside your Personal Reality with water feeds, and if you've Got the Powa, it will supply hot and cold running water as well.

    2.5.1 Windows (50): Rooms in your Personal Reality receive windows which look out onto some scenery of the current Jump. The view can be customized per room, but can't be used for spying purposes or to view private moments.

    2.1.26 Storage Solutions (200 WP): Your Personal Reality now has a specialized set of construction automatons which can produce the appropriate storage option for anything you know how to safely contain. These golems could make protective cases for your collectables, display cases for your pet universe, or just endless crates to stuff the preserved heads of everyone who has ever crossed you. All such storage items are fiat-backed never to weaken or wear out and can easily integrate any form of security you might have. All will be clearly labeled

    2.5.2 Computer Hub (50): A top-of-the-line mainframe / supercomputer with basic additional equipment, like scanners (2D and 3D, standard- and poster-sized) and printers (color, black and white, bulk printer, 3D printer, blueprint-printer), and binding equipment. Perfectly assimilates any upgrades done to it. Comes with operating system of your choice, be it Windows, Linux, Android, iOS, etc. You and each companion receive their own personal desktop computer, laptop, and tablet. With the Extranet, all the computers in the Personal Reality are linked via an internal Intranet as well. If you have Central Control and Robots, they're linked into the Intranet. All printing supplies (filament, paper, ink) must be supplied by the Jumper, but if you have the Mall, you can always find a print supply shop within without having to assign one of your slots to it

    2.5.4 Movie & TV Series Collection (50 WP): Functionally identical to the Music Collection, but instead containing 15,000 hours of recorded passive visual media, all in a format your systems can play. All are available in their original languages, with subtitles that are below the bottom of the image and high visibility, with commentary explaining any cultural or production notes, with creator and actor commentary where possible, and with perfectly done dubbing into a language you speak like a native… or rather all languages you speak like a native… and this dubbing sounds exactly like the original actors. Every month you'll receive 12 hours of new media.

    2.2.1 Sky Simulator (100): This replaces your boring drab ceiling with a completely realistic sky simulation… or a non-realistic sky simulation if you prefer the universe to look like something out a Bosch painting. Since this means you won't have a ceiling to attach anything to, all your lighting options now come with Street Lamps. Note that this does not add any height to your Personal Reality.

    2.5.3 Music Collection (50): You receive a collection of 500 albums (EPS or LPS) based on personalized criteria such as genre, artists, or themes (big band, love songs, acapella, etc.). Liner-notes, sheet-music, and creator commentary / explanations are provided, as well as live performances, remixes, and covers. Total guaranteed run time not to be less than 2,000 hours. Every month you'll get a new album. This can be purchased multiple times and only music from previous Host Realities is available. If you find that, upon listening to an album for the first time that you do not like it, it will be replaced… but since perfect memory perks are a dime a dozen, asking for a replacement will result in a mental block being placed over the music. You'll still be able to remember you heard that album and didn't enjoy it, but not the actual music. This block is fiat backed until you hear the album again someplace else or gain your spark.

    2.1.4 Key Link (50): With this Access Key Upgrade, you can now close the door while you are in
    the Personal Reality and use your key in a special podium in the entryway to link your Personal Reality
    Door to any door in your current Host Reality that you've previously used your Access Key on. If you
    have extra keys, any door opened by any of them can be accessed. You may also use a recall function to
    bring up a list of all the doors that have been accessed by any key, thus allowing you to follow a
    Companion should you so desire.



    2.2.7 The Pond (200): One of the four walls of your Personal Reality has been replaced with a water feature. This is essentially a pond, but you can give it tides and or waves, make it fresh or salt, and give it a beach if you like. If you buy the Garage option, it comes with a Marina for your boats and a second entry zone so you can drive your boats out into the host reality. For -50WP each, can be expanded to additional walls.


    2.3.2 Medical Bay (200): Fully functional medical bay that can fix up anything that still has a pulse or equivalent. Does Dentistry too. Also provides detailed accounting of person's medical history. This will not repair genetic defects or replace / repair cybernetics and possesses no ability to differentiate between beneficial and harmful nanites or implants without you providing that information to the system. Works on animals as well. By 'Fix Up' we mean complete repair to full function, not patch up.


    2.3.3 Counseling Bay (200): And how does that make you feel? Helps you work through any issue. A couch, and solid light therapist are included, but not mandatory.

    2.1.27 Central Control (100)
    This optional purchase hooks your Personal Reality up with a Smart Pseudo-Intelligent Computer System that tracks the location and condition of all items brought into the Personal Reality. It will share that information with you or anyone you authorize to use the system. They do not have to have a key and you can set up varying levels of access. Central Control can also recall your companions to the Personal Reality if you have Portal and command it to or they are killed and you've set up automated recall. It can open your Personal Reality Door from the inside if you've given it permission to do so, but will only admit those it believes will assist you. It can only open doors on which Access Key has been used on, but the key need not be still in that door for the door to be opened.


    2.1.28 Your Robots (200)
    This Central Control Upgrade provides you with an automated sorting system that sorts and automatically retrieves anything stored in your Personal Reality. These Robots are completely upgradeable and programmable, so you can keep them out of key areas or tell them not to disturb certain potentially explosive experiments if you want. You get twenty of them and instructions on how to make more.


    2.1.29 Maintenance Systems (100)
    This upgrades Your Robots so that instead of just sorting and fetching they now automatically upgrade with all tech production and repair skills you gain and now provide basic cleaning and maintenance services for anything in your Personal Reality that you know how to fix or repair. They are going to be practically invisible unless you look for them.

    2.6.3 All Your Stuff (100)
    This nifty little one time purchase allows you to bring everything you owned back in your Origin Reality with you and gives it fiat backing. Note that this not only includes everything you owned just prior to your Jumpstart moment, but everything you'd ever owned prior to that moment. Does not include consumable / disposable items such as fuel, food, health-care products, or non-collectable cash. It also excludes land, businesses, and homes… but not any of the furnishings, so you'd end up with cabinets and sinks and fixtures. Included are all items that you would be considered a significant part-owner, such as, say, for instance, the family entertainment center, or the family car, or grandpa's ashes. It wouldn't include things like 'your mom's car' that she bought when you were sixteen after she gave you her old junker or things that you were only de-facto owner of, like your company's car that was given to you for your use. Also excluded are anything you own shares of. You'd keep your shares for all they're worth, but not be able to say, bring along the Ford Motor Company simply because you own a thousand B-Shares. Very specifically, this does not include any sophont beings (anything more intelligent than your very smart domestic dog or cat or parrot). No Great Apes, Elephants, Dolphins, Whales, AI's, Sapient Toys, or Slaves of any species. Thankfully, stuff that is clearly garbage will not be included, but if you'd value it and you owned it, it'll show up, as good as new… unless you want it in a specific condition for some reason.

    Pets (free with All Your Stuff): You want to bring your dog along, as well as the cat that was a family pet? Goldfish, other fishes, a pair of horses, that hamster you rescued from being duct-taped… Slow down! Any animal that you were personally the owner of, or that you could be considered its significant part-owner, like a family pet cat, you can now bring along as well. Any animals brought along this way will be kept in the prime of their lives and healthy, and should they for manage to get themselves killed they will be restored back to life and full health in 24 hours. Does not come with any food for them, though, so you will need to figure out something else for this. Other requirements of All Your Stuff apply. This will restore pets that passed on before you started on the chain to life just before restoring them to prime of life condition, but their memories (such as they have memories) will be of their entire lives.

    2.3.8 Housing Complex (200)
    Having space for all your Companions and Followers can be tricky. Sure, you could pay to have some houses built, but with this option you and each Companion and every child of yours or of a Companion gains their own bedroom. Every three bedrooms gain a full bathroom and your bedroom has a master bath. It's not luxurious by any means, but this house (or houses) have 1 kitchen & dining room, 2 half baths, two general purpose rooms (offices, living rooms, game rooms), a few of small closets, and a pantry for every 6 people. Individual rooms tailor themselves to the general likes of the individual and come with basic but not quality furniture. Companions who decide to share a room can cause their rooms to merge to create a larger room, but each basic room defaults to 4 meters by 5 meters by 3 meters. Non-bedrooms are on the small side but large enough to function. Floors are basic linoleum and walls are basic low grade paint. Appliances and fixtures are pretty bare bones and the walls are little more than plywood and wood frame. The bedrooms don't have closets. Any other Personal Reality Extensions can be made part of the Housing Complex or kept separated. Each house must have a kitchen. That's the rule. No more houses than total number of kitchens. A house may, of course, have more than one kitchen.

    2.6.1 Eye Spy (100)
    Are you a peeping tom? Or are you simply hypervigilant? Well, with this PR Enhancement, you can now view anything happening in your Personal Reality, or anything that's happened in the last day, PR Time. Keyholder Companions can establish blackout zones around themselves, blocking out your ability to view the room they're in or an area 20 meters radius around them. You'll be notified whenever they do so. With Jump Recording below, the one day limit is removed and you can view anything that has ever happened in your Personal Reality.

    2.1.30 Extranet (200)
    This handy add on connects your Personal Reality with the local Data Networks of the Universe you're currently in… not only that, but it gets the kind of performance only really ever seen by ISPs at their hubs. If your current Reality of Residence does not have a Data Network, this will connect to the nearest equivalent.. yes, even if that is nothing more than a town gossip and a local library.

    2.1.31 VOWP Cellular Service (200)
    This Extranet upgrade hooks your Personal Reality up with Voice Over Warehouse Protocol Cellular Service, and provides you with fiat backed cellphones that are guaranteed to connect to the Personal Reality or to any other cell phone on the service… regardless of what Reality those phones are connected to at the current moment. You gain a vending machine that vends Nokia dumb-phones, iPhones up to 8, and Galaxy S7 smartphones, plus any cell phone (or similar) you supply it with a copy of, as well as SIM cards or the equivalent for other phones. These phones will work just fine no matter where you find yourself, but be careful as they're just as durable as normal ones and will need to be replaced should they get damaged or destroyed. They must be charged as normal, but get extremely good battery life

    2.1.20 Who's Got The Powa (100)
    This provides enough electricity to power a city the size of New York City or London, forever, with nary a brown out or power fluctuation ever. It also comes with all the basic wiring hookups, surge protectors, outlets, circuit-breakers, routers, etc you might need… but you'll probably want to get a qualified electrician in at some point… or pick up a companion who does that kind of thing. Purchase of this supplies all facilities inside your Personal Reality with electrical hookups

    2.2.8 The Meaning Of Life (100)
    This The Pond Upgrade adds in fish and shellfish and pondweed/seaweed to your pond. Also the occasional duck or swan or other waterfowl. Maybe some frogs or lizards or small reptilians, but nothing dangerous… unless you bought a specific limitation.

    2.3.7 Body Mod Pod (100)
    Ever wanted to run a Companion or friend through the Body Mod? Now you can. Have fun. This pod is infinitely reusable as long as each person only uses it once. People using this get access to the same Body Mod Supplement as you used. You can't use this to run yourself through Body Mod again. Anything that lacks a humanoid form can be given one by this machine
    * Modded for story. Anyone can use it as many times as they like, but it takes a day per charge level to install a feature, Taylor must have the perk in question to apply it to someone else.*
    *Clarification, only things Sapient enough to understand what is being done to them and agree to such can use the body mod pod*

    2.4.9 Classroom (50)
    This provides your Reality with a large classroom for you and your companions to use for teaching and learning new things. It is outfitted with all the basic classroom equipment like tables and writing board. If you've Got the Powa, this includes A/V setups and personal computers, and with Pipes, Pipes, Pipes it includes lab equipment. With any of the Food Options it includes cooking tutorial equipment, with a MedBay it includes first aid and medical education supplies, with workshops it includes a teaching workshop of the same kind. Whenever you acquire new technology that could be beneficial to teaching, the Classroom automatically updates to include it if you have Central Control. Also provides basic supplies for all students and slightly boosts teaching aptitude for the teacher, as well as learning speed and concentration for students. All possible safety equipment is automatically installed at no extra cost. Each classroom can seat up to 50 students comfortably. If you have Jump Recording, the classroom can replay all previous classes for new students.

    2.1.36 Temporal Controls (200)
    This Personal Reality Option gives you control over how fast time flows in your Personal Reality while you're not there. The default is 1:1, but with this you can dial it anywhere from 1:10 to 10:1. Remember, this doesn't work when you're in the warehouse.

    2.1.38 Sectional Time (200)
    This Upgrade to Temporal Controls means you can now install fast or slow time chambers inside your Personal Reality. These can be anything from 1:100 to 100:1 and you are allowed to make use of them, but the time spent inside such an accelerated or decelerated chamber still counts only as the amount of time that passed in the host reality. Stasis still cannot be used while you're inside the Personal Reality for obvious reasons. You age at the rate you're personally experiencing time.


    2.2.10 Hollow Earth (100)
    If you want your Warehouse walls to look like a cave or the inside of an O'Neill Cylinder or a weird Mobius Room, this is the option for you. It's your choice if this means your walls actually loop around to the ceiling or not, but if they do, passing the midline means you fall up instead of down and there's an area of null-gravity at the center / axis of rotation / whatever.

    No powers gained this chapter.

    2.2.3 Realistic Ground Cover (100)
    Sick and tired of linoleum or concrete? This is the one for you. Now your Personal Reality floor can be turned into any naturally occuring terrain type, in sections, or roads and paths of your design. Any dirt or dust that would be created by this is magically taken care of… unless you don't want it to be.

    3.5.18 Infinitely Customizable (Dead Space) (200) It's not that your guns are bad, by any stretch of the imagination, it's just that they could be so, so much better. And now you can actually do that. In this world, tools and weapons are aided by nano-scale circuitry, which leaves a lot of room for improvement, typically in the form of power nodes being welded into specific places to provide extra power to certain subsystems of the weapon, to increase power output, ammo count/efficiency, and even unlock special abilities, like setting enemies on fire, or exploding violently. As an added benefit, you also get the ability to break weapons and tools down into parts - specifically frames, tools, tips, accessories, and upgrade chips, see the Notes section for more information - and reconfigure them to your liking. You can even upgrade those parts individually using power nodes.
    In story Notes : Is not limited to only future tech, can be used on anything that fits the idea of weapon or tool although may require different materials to do upgrades.

    3.7.13 Crafting (Geneforge) (300) There are various things that can only be created through the use of essence and hard work. Shaped equipment, puresteel, certain complicated tools and devices, and certain materials used in enchanting. You can work all of them, producing high quality goods from basic ore and hard work.

    3.1.5 Scanner (Iji) (200) Serves a number of purposes. Primarily, allows you to determine the location of all living creatures within a large radius around the user, although this might be blocked by certain defenses or stealth abilities. Also capable of determining molecular structure and provides blueprints when scanning objects.

    3.6.6 Profession: Tailoring (World of Warcraft) Zen Master Level (300 CP) - Sew cloth armor and many kinds of bags using dye, thread and cloth gathered from humanoid enemies during your travels. Tailors can also fashion nets to slow enemies with, rideable flying carpets, and magical threads which empower items they are stitched into.
    Zen Master: At this level you've mastered everything from basics to advanced. Additionally you've expanded your knowledge of the profession beyond the mastery of both basics and advanced stuff to complete understanding of it. At this level you're on even playing field with top 1% of your profession. Should you write down your knowledge it would easily be considered a work of art in that field.

    3.10.15 Super Scientific Solution (Tenchi Muyo) (100) :

    Slice of Life: Science solves everything, even the little household problems. You can create supertech improvements to common tools and appliances, up to and including automobiles or similar works of engineering. Create dishwashers that can clean dishes in an instant, self heating plumbing or forcefield window panes that act as air conditioners.

    SpaceOpera: Well established methodologies and an instinctive grasp of same allow you to draw conclusions or produce results incredibly fast. You halve the time it takes to gather data, compose research on some subject, or devise a test to prove/disprove something handy for when you have to figure out an enemy fortresses's one weakness..

    3.1.13 Diagnostic Tools/Melee Weapon (Outlaw Star) (100cp)
    [Diagnostic Tools] (50cp) A small data display with numerous connectors and scanners, capable of letting you know what is wrong with simple technology and what advanced technology that has been programmed into it.
    [Melee Weapon] (50cp) A well-constructed sword, axe, orblunt weapon. Superior in construction to many ancient weapons of the same type and can act as a minor magical focus if you can use magic

    3.1.39 Alchemy Machines (SBURB) (100) These machines will be the basis for your use of Alchemy, with which you can create and combine a multitude of useful items throughout your time here, and perhaps beyond that... as long as you have Grist to pay for what you want to Make. Since these are necessary to even start your game, they're even free... beyond the cost in Grist to construct them of course. But if you want to spend some of your CP here, you can start with a fully upgraded variant, gaining every upgrade made to this equipment during the story of Homestuck immediately, without the cost of grist going up at all or having to spend time fiddling around to get them.


    3.7.16 Universally Upgradeable - Modular Designs (Dead Space) (400) - It's always easier to make better things from better materials, and your knowledge of far-future engineering is top-notch, meaning that all of the things you make are all that much better for it. Aside from being able to upgrade parts, tools, and weapons further, and make better base parts for tools and weapons, you can apply the bonuses of Infinitely Customizable to things other than tools and weapons, breaking anything down into classes of modular parts and swapping them around to your heart's content. This nearly obviates every part of the process of retro-fitting older creations with newer parts, aside from the actual manual labor and time.


    3.10.21 Harmless Extraction/Extraction Efficiency/Rapid Growth (Final Fantasy XIV) (500)
    [Extraction efficiency] (100) judging from the state of Eorzea, the Carpenters and other tradesmen here have long since improved the efficiency of their resource collecting processes. From the record books, while the presence of Aether has helped a great deal, the harvesting practices put into place played a large part as to why the natural landscape is still the way it is today. Adopting those same practices, you've improved on the harvesting efficiency for all manners of things, not just restricted to trees -but other plant life as well. So at least the plant doesn't simply die off after one round.


    3.1.26 Workshop (Samurai Jack) (200) A small base filled with all the equipment you'll need to work. This lab can be used for your choice of scientific or magical research.


    3.8.18 Tailor Made (Career Model) (100) You are a brilliant designer and can ensure objects you create are always looking fantastic, aesthetically pleasing and the like. Making something look good no longer takes any time or effort- you can focus entirely on function, and whatever you make will look outstanding


    3.4.9 Workaholic (Sonic) (300)
    Sometimes you wonder how some geniuses are able to build entire armadas within days or weeks of their last defeat. You become a walking factory of production. Building in masse is something that comes without issue to you. That one bot that took a week to build? Now that one bot is now 5. Or roughly 3x the size it was before. How do you even have the resources to build so much you say? The hell if I know.


    3.11.2 Doll Maker of Bucuresti (Touhou) (200)
    Being an undisputable genius in terms of mathematics and science in a realm ruled by magic tends to undermine just how impressive it is. Your ability with technology and engineering is so great that you are able to adapt to handling, repairing, modifying and even reverse-engineering completely foreign devices you have little to no background on. Your connection with both practical technologies along with magic allows for you to eventually unlock the secrets to creating magitech if given enough time to experiment

    3.2.20 Skills (Star Trek TNG) (400)
    Weapons: Knowledge in the operation and repair of personal and mounted weaponry.
    Medicine: Training and knowledge in First aid, diseases, surgery, anatomy, health and nutrition. You're a fully qualified doctor of the 24th century.
    Robotics: A combined study of mechanical engineering, and computer science. You learn how to make a wide array of machines, and you could even figure out Android or Borg technology if you studied it enough.
    Physics: How the universe works. The law of gravity, the conservation of matter & energy, quantum physics, etc. Remember though, there are dozens of creatures in this universe that defy the laws of human physics, so you may want to try and rewrite a few of these books while your here.
    Physical Sciences: Understanding of the natural laws which govern the physical world. Biology, chemistry, geology and ecology. Again, you may want to rewrite a few of these books while you're here.
    Engineering: You've been trained in the maintenance and repair of Starships. Not only do you have a significant amount of mechanical and computer knowledge, but you also know a great deal about physics.


    3.4.1 Don't Need A Team (Ace Combat) (100)
    Fighter planes are pretty complicated machines, and more often than not you need a whole crew to maintain them so that they don't break down in the middle of a fight and doom the pilot. You know your plane well enough to circumvent this issue. You've got just the right idea on what needs tuning up and what needs fixing, along with having the speed to be able to fix a plane up by yourself without the need for a crew in a fraction of the time. Performance issues are a thing of the past for you.

    3.2.10 Technomage (Strike Witches) (200)
    Strike Witches generally rely on service crews to tune and repair their striker, but not you. You'll be able to do the job much better and be able to modify your Striker to aid you focus your speed, defense or attack if you have offensive magical abilities. If you have technology from other jumps, you'll be able to incorporate them into your striker and with enough time make one from scratch.


    3.5.21 Smithing (Thundercats) (200)
    The ancient art of working with metal to forge weapons and armor. You know how to make beautiful equipment that can survive countless battles and you could even forge a legendary weapon if you dedicated enough time to it, although it'd probably take at least several years to complete.

    3.7.28 Magitek Mastery (Final Fantasy VI) (600)
    In essence, magitek is simply the use of magical energies as a power and fuel source for technology. Your understanding of that outstrips anyone else, and you can now apply this principle to any technology you own. By altering your devices to use something magical in nature, such as a magicite stone, an enchanted item, or just raw magical energy, you can enhance it in every single way and give it unique properties. A suit of armor would become much harder, lighter, and more agile than before, perhaps even boosting the physical abilities of the wearer in line with the magical power source. From there, the armor could make more esoteric uses of the magic, such as casting spells on its own based around the sort of magic infused into it automatically or at the wearer's prompting. This isn't some measly effect restricted to the mundane or basic, no, magic can infused into any sort of technological device to enhance its functionality and give it a partially magical nature and powers. Even life may be infused with magitek technology like this, not only as cybernetics but directly as well. In this situation, it behaves a bit differently. The magic integrates itself into their body, becoming a natural part of them, allowing them access to that magic system and enhancing them physically, but they must grow into it. They start at a much weaker level, where they have to practice and develop their connection to this magic to realize it fully. There's no upper limit to them beyond what the magic's system is capable of, but it can take time, and you can instead choose to infuse living things with a larger amount of magic to grant them greater magical ability much more quickly. Unfortunately, this can have dangerous side effects, as giving them too much to handle at once can lead to mental instability or even insanity, the severity rapidly scaling upwards the more initial energy put in.

    3.2.8. Engineer (Halo) (200)
    Yet by understanding the nature of computer systems, wouldn't it be prudent to understand the technology those systems command? After all, what if you found yourself needing to recalibrate a Magnetic Accelerator Cannon or repair one of the dangerous Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engines that makes faster-than-light travel possible? What if you found a cache of human weaponry that could be used if someone managed to repair it? While you don't have the skill to create something as complex as a Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine, you'll know your way around it just like much of Humanity's 26th century technology. You might even figure out how to make small improvements to the technology if you had the time to sit down and look it over. Hopefully the Covenant give you that time.


    3.1.6 Omni-tool (Mass Effect) (FREE)
    Comes with a free set of basic armor with a kinetic barrier, a basic weapon, one for each type you are proficient in and a decent Omni-Tool holographic wrist-computer capable of fabricating things with Omni-Gel, like a blade


    3.12.1 Simple (Full Metal Alchemist) (100)
    You understand the connections between parts. You can make large alchemy circles far more easily and far less complex than others. You can combine this with Advanded Formulae for multipurpose combat alchemy.


    3.12.1 Advanced (Full Metal Alchemist) (100)
    Alchemy comes to you as easily as breathing does. Your greater understanding allows you to perform more complex alchemy. you can combine this with Simplified Formulae for multipurpose combat alchemy.


    3.1.17 Armor-Shift Manufacture (Bloody Roar) (100)
    A small machine - big enough to hold a massive pauldron or two - that gives any pieces of armor or clothing placed inside a specific quality: When their wearer changes form, the armor and clothing changes form with them

    3.7.24 Device Meister (Lyrical Nanoha) (600)
    This is the real treasure of the TSAB's technological capabilities - mixing the use of magic and technology in order to create Devices that can channel the energy outwards. You have a complete knowledge of how to build and maintain Devices, along with how to program AI for said Devices to use. While you can construct most Devices and similar items presented here, the ability to make Unison Devices isn't included here - you'll have to learn that one on your own, and many have tried and failed to do so in the past. You could, with some experimentation, combine different magical systems into Devices together, especially with the help of 'Similar Principles' to streamline the process...it will take some trial and error, but you could apply these principles and Devices to other systems if you work at it enough.


    3.8.14 Material Synthesis Science (Gundam: After Colony) (200)
    You know a few things about getting your own materials, but you also have a bit of know-how about how the people here get such quality materials. Normally, you know how to forge, quench and mold materials into more high quality specimens, but you have a specialization in Zero-Gravity Material Synthesis as well-in microgravity conditions, you can create much more effective materials thanks to the limitations of gravity being removed.

    3.9.3 Master Builder (Transformers) (400)
    You've been programmed with mastery of Cybertronian science allowing you to jury-rig any tech you see, as well allowing you to quickly build even the most complex Cybertronian tech within a reasonable time period. Smaller devices are almost instant, larger devices take some time and more components. However with enough material you can build a temporary space bridge.Despite your mastery of Cybertonian science, creation of a Spark and therefore intelligent life, organic or inorganic is beyond you.
     
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    • Chapter 02: Expansion + Interlude 01: The Undersiders
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    • AN. This one grew a bit more then I was expecting. Before editing it was 10,000ish words with the interlude... I was tempted to split this into 2 chapters, but since I already edited this all and only noticed how long it grew when I came to post it, I figured I just post it together rather then two chapters.

    0o0

    Chapter 02: Expansion

    0o0

    On the way home, Taylor was busy designing her armor in her head as she weighed what options she would use. A tiny part of her was unhappy that it was limited to still medieval level technology, as she couldn't make armor that could let her fly or do anything unique in that regard.

    With the designs she could create from Infinitely Customizable, she could do some rather impressive things, but that required nanotechnology.

    That didn't mean her armor would be completely normal. Not sure what to think about the fact that it ran on magic rather than nanotechnology too much, she focused more on what it would be and less on how it would get there, even if she couldn't help but use the magical terms it wanted her to put it under.

    It would be enchanted armor that would make her anywhere from slightly stronger to at least as strong as Armsmaster in his own armor, depending on which options she selected, with the latter being the most time-consuming to make.

    Taylor first real debate with herself over her future gear was over the base material that she would use in the end. She could create all of her equipment 'shaped' as her power called it, or she could make it out of Puresteel.

    Making her gear shaped was a lot faster when it came to construction time. Fast enough she could get a basic set done and head out on patrols this evening. Whereas if she used Puresteel it would be closer to month, 2 weeks if she managed to use every waking movement to build it to the point there was no way her father would miss what she was doing.

    There were other factors as well, although the most clear one didn't apply to her so long as she built her armor in her workshop.

    She didn't need to build it there, but anything she did would auto-repair such outright vaporization would be undone in 48 hours and lesser damage would heal in a relative fraction of that time.

    Eliminating one of the main purposes of shaped equipment, because although it wasn't biological in nature, at least the stuff she both had access to and was willing to even consider that was there were some plans that were purely biological she very quickly ignored; It would still self-heal slowly so long as the damage wasn't too extreme.

    Enough damage, and it would be destroyed and had to be rebuilt completely.

    Made outside her workshop that was. When made inside her workshop, this was completely moot point, unless she enchanted a shaped material to self-repair faster, meaning she couldn't use anything else to make it more useful for it very purpose of existing; The very nature of making it in her workshop would already repair it faster and far more completely than a shaped material could ever repair itself.

    Two factors warred in her head, First was time, and the second was quality of the end gear.

    Puresteel was orders of magnitude stronger. It couldn't be made to self-repair as its nature was very different from shaped gear. But because of this different nature, it could hold much stronger enchantments, and to layer these in, took a lot longer time. And that was ignoring the fact that the nature of being made in her workshop would cause it to self-repair anyway, so the lack of self-repair was a moot point.

    It only took a few seconds to make up her mind. It was better to make her armor stronger, then to worry about how quickly she made it. No one knew she had powers yet, so there was no danger to making the best she could first. She set the timeline for when she went out on patrol, she didn't need to buy anything but time to make her armor.

    Her random salvaging for parts had been the only thing she did that could have linked her to be a tinker, and she was careful enough to not be noticed.

    Taylor had considered her plans for the next few weeks set, until she felt her power warning her. Causing her to come to a stop as she focused on the message she was getting, which had surprised her given the contents of such and the lack of the same on other days so far.

    Her power was warning her that it wouldn't give her charges for the timeframe that she was building her armor if that was what she wanted to do. It wasn't interesting to it watch her smelt Puresteel and hammer it into an armor and weapon in the forge.

    If she wanted to keep making charges well, she was working on that, she would have to do something else in that timeframe.

    Which was a very strong suggestion to use the weaker material, so she could get out faster.

    On careful consideration, Taylor decided that with the perks she already owned, even if she had little idea of that the rest were; The dangers of going out in less than her best when it came to armor, wasn't worth the extra charges she would get by going out faster.

    She had to be alive to use them after all.

    At the thought of the perks she had, her thoughts turned to Infinitely Customizable as she recalled it worked on weapons and tools and was curious if she could combine them to upgrade her armor even more while, she was making it.

    With both perks at the forefront of her mind, Taylor was stunned when she felt the two blend and reach out, focusing on the other and something created by both entered her mind.

    Rather than the nanotechnology based 'power nodes' that Infinitely Customizable was supposed to use, and she had been fighting to get it to work without those, the two working together would let her craft 'power gems' that would act the same as Power Node could on anything under the domain of Geneforge crafting.

    Though the use of this, she could take what was already some impressive enchantments on her gear to the next level. Enough to make shaped gear as good as Puresteel, and items made of Puresteel beyond anything that was possible by that perk alone.

    It still wasn't enough to make armor that could let her fly, and her armor and weapon would be limited to 4 upgrade categories at the most with a bonus item 'perk' that well she could select, did have to be related to its function in the item in question and required that all upgrade categories were completely filled before it would take effect.

    A capstone for her gear basically.

    *Power Buy Attempt 2.4.1 Windows (50). Bought. Banked 50 points. *

    Reroll since last perk was fully bought/ bought to some level of ranking and points > 0

    *Power Buy Attempt 2.2.3 Realistic Ground Cover (100). Not Bought. Banked 50 points. *

    Taylor paused in her steps home as her power surged and went out for new perk, or rather perks, as it tried for a second one when it got the first one but failed to get such. Both under her warehouse, and as soon as she saw what they were she let out a sigh, only confirming in her mind that she had made the right choice in locking in her prior selection even with the cost increase.

    Her powers clearly had some nice perks, but it also had some rather useless ones. The useless ones were cheaper, so they wouldn't hurt as much. But given what she got out of her armor, she only confirmed that the charges she had lost as a tax were not wasted, when she could have ended up spending those charges on this like this.

    Although her perks were randomly selected, these two had a theme with each other of making her warehouse look nice. The one it did pick up let her place windows that showed the outside world, but not in a way that would let her spy on anything.

    The best she could do was get a skyline of Brockton bay, and unless something major was happening like an Endbringer attack, or someone decided to level half of the city, she wouldn't be able to tell what was going on there. It was just a nice view, nothing more.

    The perk she didn't get, would have it let her change the ground in her warehouse to something else. Not worthy to lock in, so she left it alone.

    The windows might have some use, likely but just letting her see if it was still light out well she was working, so it wasn't entirely useless to her.

    Just not useful enough to mean anything in terms of a fight or information gathering, so she returned her thoughts returned to crafting her armor.

    She was limited to four boosted categories on her armor with Infinitely Customizable, but she could define what those were so long as they fit the theme of the item in question. Theme was rather broad as well. Besides protecting armor could be upgraded to boost her physical abilities rather than just its protective nature.

    Taylor knew she wanted protection so that selection was locked in without question. Her armor was supposed to protect her after all and every bit she could add on would be more than worth it cost in gold. Boosting strength made sense as well. It meant she could hit harder or move heavy things as needed. In that same token, agility, so she could move around easy and quietly in it was a good third one to select.

    The fourth was harder. She could add in fire resistance and with a full upgrade tree on it, it would make her close to very resistant to fire, she would need to consider actions like stepping into a steel forge before it could hurt her, or she could add in healing on herself well she was wearing it. That would take about an hour to fully heal her and wouldn't undo maiming injuries, but anything she could recover from naturally would be healed in an hour, rather than even the days she still needed with her healing ability in the worst cases.

    Taylor couldn't make her armor more resistant to bullets, that was covered under general resistance.

    There were clear pros and cons to both, since running into Lung was a runaway as fast as she could regardless of how much fire resistance she had. Furthermore her own healing perk wasn't going to be fast enough to noticed in combat, where a healing enchantment could be.

    But doing so would mean she wouldn't be able to resist being hurt in the first place.

    She was better off making clothes that did that and wearing them afterwards to heal up if her own healing ability wasn't good enough to handle how she got hurt after a fight.

    Or just wear them under her armor and get both effects? Could she even do that?

    Taylor carefully considered what her perks were telling her as she tried to see if she could do that, and to her surprise realized that she could layer them like that. But with restrictions.

    Infinitely Customizable did assume that she wants some sort of under layer that she placed armor on over such, and they could be upgraded separately. However, in order for the upgrades to affect her, she had to lose a slot on each to link them up, as those upgrades would be to connect the gear together. Meaning rather than 8 slots between the two, she had six. Well a third layer could get her to 8, if she did such, things got a lot more complicated as she either needed to connect all of them, bringing her down to six again defeating the point of a third layer outside of gaining the option of a third perk for her gear, or take some very careful layering with restrictions as to not have her gear destroy itself from the unconnected items effecting her.

    It was possible, but would require a lot of careful design and testing that her powers couldn't just let her bypass. Where if she used 2 layers, she could just treat it the same way as 1 and not need to do any testing.

    Redesigning her gear with this in mind, and keeping it to 2 layers for now as it was far simpler, she added an under layer of clothes that after some though in her head, was designed for when she was in armor, and she would make a second set of clothes for when she was out, given she couldn't make a single set of clothes that did both with everything she wanted.

    For her clothes in gear, she settled on healing, fire resistance and what amounted to a life support system giving her a limited oxygen supply which was only a few minutes worth, but would autofill as soon as she was in any breathable air.

    The last one puzzled her a bit, since Infinitely Customizable was letting her do that, and she wasn't quite sure how it had pulled that out of Geneforge when mixed, since nothing in Geneforge would let her do the same.

    For the perk on her underclothes, she added in an auto-triggered stabilize on herself, so if she somehow got hurt bad enough to be bleeding out, it would stop that. Not something she ever wanted to do, but it was the best of her options for perks on that given that it was going to have another layer of gear on top, which restricted what she could place on it.

    For the armor proper, she put protection, strength and agility boosting. Due to the link up slot on both the effects of each gear would combine well she was wearing both, making her armor as fire resistant as she would be.

    For the perk that her armor would gain when all of its upgrade trees were full, Taylor decided the best one was a perk that let her armor absorb one hit perfectly, but then need a minute to recharge before it could do that again. She could only make it faster if she did not let it block everything that it hit it. And as far as she was concerned, the ability to take an unexpected sniper round to the face was a lot better than a faster shield that wouldn't be able to stop said sniper round as when she could get it to recharge fast enough that people wouldn't have a gap they could exploit well her shield was down, it only made her armor slightly more defensive.

    She could think of other things that might be useful, but that seemed like the best option, although she couldn't make it faster, it would be good for a surprise attack.

    Lastly, her clothes out of costume, which would have to be shaped because she couldn't make Puresteel look like cloth, would gain protection, strength, agility and fire resistance, on which she put the same one shot protection from any attack that was on her armor.

    All five of those would out of her as a cape should something happen when she was out and about, but Taylor put not dying as a valid reason to out herself as a cape if it came down to it.

    She would say who she was on public news if that meant never dying in a heartbeat.

    The one-shot protection did take something that could break or cause her notable harm. Tripping wouldn't be enough. Sophia hitting her unless it would break her nose wouldn't be enough.

    Well that could be an issue if Sophia decided to give her a beating in public, one that was bad enough to break bones, Taylor was not going to take a beating just to stay masked.

    New wave was public, and they did fine as heroes after all.

    0o0

    As Taylor worked on crafting the first upgrade gem to apply to her now shaped clothes that she had made. Starting with the clothes she would wear around town from now on well she was out of costume first, she looked at the piles of gems that were her options to work with, not for the first time wishing she could just take a gem from the pile and sell it.

    Any money problems would just disappear if she could.

    But she couldn't, and not just because she didn't have a good way to explain where she got it from.

    The powers behind her warehouse gave her infinite amount of raw basic materials for crafting only. She could stretch it if she decided to build something outside of her workshop to take something outside, which was how she could build a building outside without needing to figure out how to get out the door afterwards, and still have it effected by her powers, granting it fiat backing to always exist as she had created it and to return to such should anything damage it.

    But only if she was intending to use it to build something. Anything from her raw supplies removed from the room for any purpose other than crafting would cause them to vaporize within seconds of leaving. If she changed her mind afterwards it would do the same.

    It was entirely based on what she intended to do with such, so if she didn't intend to use it to build something, it would go poof.

    She had already tested and confirmed such with the gold bars. If she wanted to take anything to sell out, she had to make it into something first. If she suddenly needed to sell something gold coins wouldn't be hard to make, just melt gold and pour into molds. They wouldn't look good, but they would be real coins and count enough for her to remove them afterwards.

    The only way to sell something out of her workshop was to make something to sell first.

    Refocusing her attention on her work, her thoughts turned to the fact her father would be home soon, and what she might do when he got home.

    It was sort of painful to think about, but she yearned for a connection to her father that she hadn't felt since her mother died.

    But she had no idea how she would do such. Her father had been so distant since her mother died, and even though she was better now, thanks not in small part to her powers, she had no idea how to move them to little more than strangers in the same house, to a family again.

    Every meal since she got her powers had been silence that weighed on her heart, uncertain of what to say or do or even talk about to bridge the gap between them.

    Taylor didn't think it was lost forever, but she felt like she was looking for a path while she lost in the woods, with no idea where to start looking for answers, and wandering blindly would only take her further from answers.

    It didn't help that she couldn't see what to talk about during those quiet meals. Telling him that she had powers had been considered, and Taylor did want to tell her dad she had them.

    But was stopped by concerns of what that might lead to.

    As much as she wanted to deny it, she was still a child. Her father was her guardian, and if he decided they were moving to Germany, all she could do about it was start learning her German for when they got there.

    Which was why Taylor was afraid of what might happen if she told him she had powers.

    She wanted to believe that he would respect her desires and when she said she didn't want to join the wards until she knew they were good people; That she would rather wait until she was old enough to join the protectorate, if they were not, and he would accept that and that would be it.

    But there was the sliver of a chance he wouldn't accept that, and in what really hurt her to think about because she could understand why he would do it, her father could realize how poor of a father he had been these last few years and just put her into the wards.

    And like school, she would have no say about it. He was her guardian and the PRT made it very clear on the advertisements for the wards.

    Are you a child that has superpower and wish to make the world a better place with your powers? Ask your parents to enroll you in the wards today.

    Ask your parents, not, talk to us about joining.

    In the end, she was a minor, and as much as she realized it had to be missing something because she couldn't see anything good happening if you forced a child with super powers in the wards against their wishes, the fact that it was stupid didn't mean it wasn't the law.

    A sliver of a chance, no matter how small, was too much before she knew the state of the wards. If she was ready to sign up, she would tell him without any hesitation.

    But until then, it was not a topic they could talk about.

    *Power Buy Attempt 3.1.5 Scanner (Iji) (200). Not Bought. Banked 150 points. *

    Taylor was glad for the distraction as her power tried, although failed to acquire a perk for her. Her thoughts going onto this new perk to study it.

    Like with the tags Dead Space and Geneforge before there was a new tag on the end that she didn't get the context of yet.

    What Dead Space had to do with upgrades was mysteries to her.

    At least with Geneforge she could vaguely see how, as she could make some biological gear if she had the right parts, however most of her gear was anything but biological, so unless you squinted and said shaped gear was biological because it could self-repair, even though it had nothing biological to do with it, it was a poor tag given what it contained.

    Iji was even worse than the other tags she had seen before, because she had no idea if that meant anything. Was it a name? Was it a Japanese or Chinese word?

    Turning her thoughts to the perk itself, figuring that answer to those tags would only become clear in time, she became aware that this item was a scanner of some sort, not just by it rather clear name but by what it could do.

    It could scan for lifeforms in an area around her. That wasn't all it could do, there was more to it than that, but she couldn't get more that out of the perk as it was right now.

    Since it was only double the missing charge cost, and she was missing exactly half a charge, meaning one charge to secure this, for a life signs detector of some kind, Taylor had no issue locking it in at that.

    Then her thoughts turned back to what else she could talk about with her father.

    Powers were out, School was quite clearly out as well, she wasn't returning until February 1st to give the police time to finish their investigation and arrest those reasonable.

    At that thought, Taylor tried to recall what she had said to them, unable to remember that week well enough to remember, but she figured she must have told them who had done so.

    Or had she? Her dad hadn't said anything about Uncle Alan and Emma.

    Taylor paused in her work as she realized that she had thought of Alan as her uncle again, it had been years since she did that, ever since Emma betrayed her.

    Why did she even do that, did her power do that?

    A bit of internal pondering gave her the answer. It was extremely indirectly. Her honorary uncle hadn't ever hurt her, that was all Emma. She stopped thinking of him as her uncle because of Emma. But when her issues were cleared up when her powers made her a normal adjusted person, she stopped assuming he was responsible for what Emma was doing to her.

    Which was why she considered him Uncle again. Aunties Zoe and Anne as well. The links Emma had torn down to her family had been reformed as they had never hurt her.

    It had all been Emma.

    And she had never even noticed her thoughts around them had changed until now.

    Shaking her head, knowing that there was little chance of reconnecting with the rest the family that had been as close as if they were her real aunts and uncles, with Emma as her sister, her thoughts went back to what to talk to her dad about.

    School was out. Emma was out. What happened to her was most certainly out.

    Taylor couldn't think of anything else to talk to him, nor what else she could do. Touch him to show she cared? He was more likely to freak by the sudden contact from her. A hug would be even worse.

    There were no good options, only a list of bad ones, and many uncertain ones that she had no idea where to start.

    Turning her thoughts to something she did know how to do, she settled into start forging the armor that would make her a hero.

    0o0

    Tuesday, January 25th, 2011

    0o0

    Standing before the mirror that her workshop provided her, Taylor stood completely clad in head to toe in her brand-new armor, looking it over and considering if she had to change anything or if it was finally done after a long 3 weeks.

    Her very first thought as she looked at it, was that she couldn't believe she had made this gear.

    Even she could see it wasn't a masterpiece to anyone with real skill, but it clearly required at least some skill in the craft, far more than an apprentice would have, but nowhere near that of a master. Somewhere in-between the two.

    The armor itself was almost plain with how little it had on it. The vast bulk of it was the silver of Puresteel, the only designs on such were the lines made of gold required to allowed her power gems to boost the armor's already impressive enchantments from her power, to the levels that made it outright power armor.

    The general shape of the armor was that of a woman. Although when Taylor had started her designs in her head, her power had corrected and removed the boob plate she was expecting to need in a woman's armor. Making her understand as it corrected her design in that factor that wasn't a good idea for protective armor at all.

    It didn't mean this metal armor didn't make her look like a man. Thanks to the influences of Infinitely Customizable, it had been able to better shape it to her body, then she could have done with Geneforge on it own.

    It wasn't as far as the outright nanotechnology it expected and with that, she could have made her armor look like street clothes, without losing any protection.

    But it still had been able to shape it better to her body, meaning that even without the boob plate, there was enough signs from added material and the need to fit her body for full range of motion that no one would mistake her for anything other than a woman in this armor.

    To the point that looking at it, even though her hair was hidden in her helmet, she felt far more like a woman than she ever had before. Which she found increasingly weird the more she thought about that given her armor was anything but 'soft or curvy'.

    It looked rather intimating to her eyes.

    Well very plain, the gold lines that existed solely for the purposes of boosting it abilities, gave the hint that this wasn't just armor and there was something more to it, the gem placed around it as required to boost her properly only reinforced this image.

    The biggest being the gem over the center of her chest that was the source of the 'perk' for this armor. It had been one thing that she had tried and failed to move. For a one hit shield, she needed it in the center of the biggest part of the armor.

    Even to her unskilled eyes it screamed, attack me here, it is my weak point.

    But it wouldn't work if she moved it elsewhere. Even on her shaped clothes she had to do that, but in that case she had made it look like a very poor, but still simple design that made it look more like a glass bead as an eye on the picture of a cat, and less a gem that was the source of her power.

    So she was a teenager girl with a bad graphic of a cat on her sweater, no one even gave her a second glance with that.

    As much as she tried, she couldn't figure out how to hide it on the armor with her limited skills in doing such right now, her attempts to do such only seemed to draw even more attention to it, not less.

    Taylor gaze moved to her hands as she bent and twisted them, shocked at how free her movement in the armor was. This had been one of the areas that Infinitely Customizable managed to help without needing the nanotechnology it expected the most. For some reason it seemed to really like laying metal plates over her fingers in a way that didn't limit their ability to interact with the world, far more than she could have done from Geneforge alone.

    Her solid metal gloves felt like they were latex medical gloves with how much she could feel and move them. There clearly was something over her hands, but it didn't feel like sheets of metal unless she looked at it.

    At that thought, an impulse had her try to order a command that failed because the system didn't exist yet.

    This cause her to laugh out loud as she thought of the retractable helmet her power wanted her to build, it would have been so cool if she had it, but it required such a deep level of nanotechnology that she likely have to beg it off Dragon to get access to, at least until she got the perks that let her make it herself.

    Shaking her head, Taylor hand went to the weapon she had made, drawing a long sword and holding it up to the light.

    Five gems shown on the blade itself, four of them making the weapon shaper beyond anything she could do without nanotechnology, but it was the fifth one that she intended to make far more use.

    It had required a completed tree on an item before she could install it, she couldn't just add a perk to something without at least one customization tree, and the more the trees the stronger the perk could be.

    With a thought, the sword lit up on fire.

    Taylor had no training with her sword, nor could she figure out how to grant herself training or even direct it by just upgrades.

    So she had no intention to ever swing it at a person, at least not until her training in it use let her get somewhere with it first.

    It was all for intimidation. If she had to fight, she wouldn't use the sword at all. But she had a feeling a knight with a flaming sword would scare off anyone she wouldn't be running from herself when she recognized them.

    Looking in a mirror, she nodded slowly, surprised at how well the metal mask carried her features, even that she didn't even have eye holes open. They were twin shards of pure crystal that due to the rest of the enchantment of the armor shouldn't break any easier than the steel.

    It was exactly what she wanted out of this design.

    Putting the sword out, she placed it clumsily into its sheath, then started to walk around, feeling how light she was in the armor. She was wearing some 200 pounds of Puresteel, but felt like she was about to take off into the air with each step.

    The armor before upgrades doubled her strength and agility. The upgrades doubled those again. She could lift her suit five time over while she was inside it.

    The fire resistance she had already tested carefully around a flame, and by the time she was done with the testing she was willing to risk; she had held her hand in the flame and didn't even feel her armor warm up. It would take fire far hotter than her forge could make to harm her so long as she wore it.

    *Power Buy Attempt 3.1.5 Scanner (Iji) (200) + 50 Lock in Tax. Bought. Banked 0 points. *

    As if it was a reward for finally finishing her armor, Taylor felt her power acquire the scanner she had been promised with that, losing the half of a charge she had laying around as tax for the lock in, and her thoughts turned away from her armor as she made her way over to the device that had appeared in the storage section of her warehouse, no longer needing the mirror of the workshop to evaluate if she needed to make any final changes to her armor.

    Well she could see stuff she wanted different; she knew it was beyond her skills to do such right now.

    As such, her armor was done, and now she had the one tool that would help her find crime when she went out on a patrol.

    Picking up the Scanner, Taylor looked it over knowing not only how it would work, but also the fact that it was backed like items from her workshop to always exist, much like her key.

    Like her key, if it was lost or stolen, it would return to her. Only in the warehouse rather than onto her person.

    Unlike her key, this took 24 hours to do, where they key would do such in a few minutes.

    Much like items made in her workshop, it would self-repair. Only it was faster, taking only 24 hours to fully repair, rather than 48.

    As much as she might wish it, items made in her workshop couldn't automatically return to her if lost or stolen, she has to find them the hard way if they were lost. Returning to her if they were lost only applied to stuff her powers gave her, not what she constructed with them.

    The only exception was if they were literally tossed out reality. Items cast forth from reality would regenerate and reappear in her warehouse 48 hours later. Taylor knew this, she hoped that she never could find such, even though she had a feeling when her power included instructions on exactly what happened if she were to lose her stuff outside of reality itself.

    With the perk backing her, she found it as easy to use the scanner as if she had been born with it in her hand. Knowing every feature, every function every ability as if she herself had designed and built this herself

    If she had the right parts, she could have built a copy in her sleep, she could have programmed it the same way.

    The perk gave her 'blueprints' for all the parts that made it up her scanner, but that didn't tell her how to turn raw materials into those parts in questions, nor what tools she would need to build them. Only what they would look like when done and what their finished state was made of.

    This knowledge was locked to make exactly that, no more, no less. It was enough for her to draw hints with the aid of Infinitely Customizable to build this scanner into the helmet of her armor, provided she had the parts and with the proper nanotechnology that perk expected she had that was.

    There was only so much it could do without that.

    So in lacking those, it would take research to do anytime soon, but it was research she was more than willing to spend the time on, since it had a clear gain for her, even if there was a chance it would become worthless by a perk she gained before she figured it out.

    Given the speeds of perks when she was doing something interesting, she was quite sure that would solve the issue before she could figure out a design herself, but at least it gave her something to work on until then.

    Although the perk had hinted this was a life signs detector and it in fact was one, it turned out that the main function of the scanner wasn't to locate people. It was to scan items, by placing it within about a meter and moving the scanner around an item.

    In doing such, she got details of the item in question that wouldn't just give her the overall state of it, but the blueprints she needed to make it, and the raw materials used to make each part of said blueprints.

    It wouldn't tell her how they were shaped in that way, not if the parts used were the best, but it would give a very big starting point to duplicate whatever she scanned, since she knew everything in the final product and exactly how it was put together.

    The life signs detector was a side effect of this ability, rather than it main purpose, allowing it to tell if there was anyone within 100 meters of it, as well as basic topography of the area within the same, and if they were in 10 meters she could tell more about them such as how healthy they were, if they were awake or asleep and things along that vein.

    Bring it to within a meter of a person and scanned them like an item, and she would she get detailed medical information on them down to their very DNA, although Taylor could tell she had no idea how to resolve that to anything useful without either waiting for a perk that gave her medical knowledge or a lot of self-study, since her scanner didn't tell her what was wrong, only what it currently was. It would be up to her to figure out dangerous or not, although some basic things would be clear to her even without specialized training.

    A doctor would likely get more use out of this on people.

    Dragon would likely pay good money for this given what it could do if she got her hands-on tinker tech. A perfect blueprint of whatever tinker tech it scanned, and list of materials used to make it had to be useful to her.

    Any tinker for that matter.

    Taylor turned the scanner on herself to scan the armor she was in curious of what it would show her.

    If she pointed this at herself rather than her armor, she could scan herself down to her DNA. But she had no idea what it would show her around tinker tech like her armor.

    The result were quick. And what she found in the results floored her.

    She was expecting a blueprint of her armor, the materials it was made of and a listing of the gems she used to upgrade it without any indication how to make them, much like how it would tell her this blueprint used standardized part x, without telling her how to make that.

    It did have those, but it wasn't where it ended in the details.

    On the gems she had taken, shaped and enchanted with her powers to act as 'power gems', fine details that shouldn't exist were layered inside, details that looked like some sort of circuit board made of runes rather than the shapes she was expecting on such. Somehow both incomprehensible to her, but at the same time when she looked at the pattern she knew exactly what it did.

    In the case of the gems, it made them count as a power source to fuel the upgrade. The real source of the upgrade was on the armor itself, hidden in the golden line. Looking at the scan results she could see tiny shapes in what she thought was just straight lines of gold as she laid them in place, now zoomed in to show that it was made of a single thin line with runes on either side connected by other thin lines, the details of which was so fine that to her naked eye it looked like just a single thick line of gold. The nature of these runes and their connecting lines puzzling and hinting to a deeper layer of reality than she knew existed.

    But even though the meaning of just one was beyond her, the lines sung to her mind of the ability controlled by that line in question, which upgrade path it allowed her gear to function with.

    It made Taylor's head hurt the more she looked at it, since it was like being unable to read the words of a story, but looking at text you had no idea what said, you knew the story, but couldn't point to any part of it and say what it did.

    Only what the story in the end was about.

    This, more than anything was proof she was a tinker. She had managed to etch nanoscopic effects on her armor and gems with medieval tools. The very nature of her power expressed on the world somehow, by of a detail far beyond that of her scanner's ability to tell her about, only to show her was there before it gave up unable to explain more.

    Far beyond her ability to even begin to guess what they all meant.

    She could tell from just the glances she saw, these patterns on her armor would be someone's life work to just understand, and she held no chance of doing such without more perks aiding her.

    It made her feel so small, as she got a glance of something so tiny, and yet fundamental to the universe, that these tiny lines, let her armor turn anyone wearing it into an effective brute, four times as strong as they were outside the armor.

    And to her naked eye, it just looked like some gems and some lines made of gold on armor.

    This was what it meant to be a tinker. To forge the technology of the future with the tools of today, or in her case, the tools of yesterday.

    Taylor's thoughts turned back to the PRT. She might not have examined anyone else's tinker tech, but something in her told her that hers wasn't different than others, which made her wonder.

    Did the PRT even know about these runes? What they would give her for just this scanner? How much would they be willing to give her for these plans. For a device that could show the hints of how tinker tech broke the laws of physics?

    She didn't know, but she had a feeling it was getting up there in what she could swing.

    Inspired, she turned her scanner on her kiosk that would provide her the recordings of her life, curious what that would show up.

    She was not expecting the answer on her screen with that at all. It wasn't blueprints, it wasn't even a picture of it.

    It was a single word.

    'No'

    Whatever god or gods had given her this power, made it quite clear that she wasn't going to get anything from that.

    Which only made her wonder if she ever learns who did this to her, as she looked around the warehouse, becoming acutely aware this was all designed by some greater power and given to her with structure and rules she barely understood.

    But all of it had a reason behind it, this was not some random chance, even the fact she was given her perks at random was done with intention and design.

    It felt humbling to her, as it only confirmed there were beings out there that were literal gods next to her, ones that had chosen her for some reason.

    Taylor had no idea what it was, but she hoped it was to be a hero, she did want to be one. But it only brought an undercurrent of concern. If this was what they felt she needed to be a hero, what was her foe?

    The only one that came to her mind was the Endbringers. Given the bare hints of what she could grow into that she had, where she might end up and the thoughts that all of this was what was required to destroy one terrified her soul.

    This was what was required to kill one of them?!?

    *Power Buy Attempt 1.4.3 Strategic Mastery II (100). Bought. Banked 0 points. *

    The gaining of a new perk help draw off the terror she was starting to feel, as Taylor felt even if it wasn't her power telling her such, her foes were great, but her power would be enough if she was smart about it. If she used strategy that was.

    Which made her wonder how random her power was with how perfectly timed that was, right as she was starting to panic, right as started to wonder how she could handle such a big task, knowledge of strategy filled her mind. Everything from squad tactics, to both long- and short-term strategy and how-to best lead people that followed her.

    With it, she could already feel vague suggestions to her long term plans that it brought to better refine them.

    The perk wasn't done, there was another level hiding behind it, she could lock in. But the perk itself suggested that was a poor idea as the gains from a new perk would far outstrip the minor refinements to plans a better version of this could do.

    Having more options led to far better plans then deeply refined plans with lesser resources. You didn't need to be a Strategic mastermind to win a battle when your foes had wooden sticks and you had fighter jets. And even the best Strategic mastermind couldn't win that in reverse, unless you defined win as not die and just hide until they gave up.

    Because of that, she didn't lock in the next level, as her thoughts went to her own personal long term plans, seeing what suggestions it made, noting that made each one clear, even if she agreed with them she knew that they were not from herself but her powers, and she still had to choose to accept them.

    Her long-term plan of joining the Protectorate was fine, but some things she had done to that end needed to be revised according to it.

    She had just assumed she would find a team she was happy with, but never tried to figure out which team.

    She wanted to learn how the wards were but hadn't done anything more than basic research on that front.

    Her strategy had flaws, mostly minor flaws rather than fundamental flaws, but they were flaws she needed to correct if she was going to make progress on her goals.

    The goal her perk suggested on focusing due to it time limit was evaluating if she wanted to join the wards or not, and outside of lacking gear she wanted to bring along in case something went wrong, her new power didn't find any real flaws in her goals.

    As a rule the PRT made quite clear to the public, unless you followed very specific rules about engaging with them. The Wards treated new and unknown capes as extremely hostile, as if they were some unholy combination of Jack Slash and Heartbreaker.

    Deviate from that narrow line, and it was assumed you were attacking the wards. So follow the rules on how to meet them, or else.

    Her desire to build a reputation first was sound, because with heroic deeds to her names, the Wards wouldn't have to treat her like heartbreaker 2.0, who was going to master then and run away with whatever force was required to do such, the second they saw her.

    They could just talk to her. But only after she had a reputation. Once they knew her overall powers and that she was hero, things became a lot easier, and she could just walk up to them on the street and talk to them in costume.

    Out of costume wasn't an option for rather clear reasons.

    Starting to build her reputation first was a reasonable first step to her goal of joining the wards if they were acceptable, since it also supported all of her other long-term goals as well. If she was going to tell the Protectorate what team she would join, it would be much easier if she was a known hero with good deeds to her name already.

    0o0

    That night, Taylor waited until after her scanner reported her dad was in a deep sleep, before she made her way downstairs.

    Her enchanted clothing made her footsteps as light as a cat, and on making certain she was alone before she went out the back door, made her way out.

    Despite the fact she could have used her sensor to make sure no one was around when she left in full costume, and she could move surprisingly silently in her armor thanks to the upgrades, she knew that her scanner could be fooled, and it was safer to change away from her home.

    Just because the sensors wasn't showing anyone nearby, did not mean there was no one nearby. It could be fooled trivially if you knew how and even by accident in some cases.

    So, she went a short distance from her house, watching the scanner as she went, before making her way to a locked door to use it to access her warehouse, quickly changing into her costume before walking back out into the cool night air.

    Looking around for the first time in armor, she considered how she was going to do this.

    She needed to get within 10 meters to know any more details than some life form here and was currently set to that it did require enough 'life energy' that she wouldn't pick up on anything that wasn't human or human like unless it was unusually massive.

    Human sized animals didn't count, unless they were of at least human intelligence. Things that were smarter had more 'life energy' which was what the scanner picked up on to tell it was a person and not a rock shaped like a person.

    Well she could let it show her all life, she didn't see any reason to get a list of bugs, dogs and cats about, and the odds of a random bear or any human or large size animal in downtown was slim enough she considered it a reasonable risk.

    Her plan was simple enough, she would make her way to the boardwalk, then to downtown, before heading back home. Swing closer to any life signs to get a general health check and only close in more if she found something wrong. It seemed reasonable and her Strategic Mastery didn't find any glaring flaws in it either.

    Turning to face the boardwalk, she made her way into the night, her first ever patrol as a hero.

    0o0

    It took Taylor a few more times than she would ever admit to anyone later, to realize that life signs in a store after hours did not mean criminal inside the store robbing the place.

    Nor was there some massive crime wave hitting the boardwalk that night, just because there was someone in every store. That was just the night security forces doing their jobs, and she was extremely happy she figured that out before she ambushed one of them and tried to arrest them for robbing the same store, that they were in charge of protecting.

    Things didn't get that better on that end as the next group turned out to be just homeless seeking shelter from the freezing weather outside in abandoned buildings.

    Criminals given they were legally trespassing by staying there, but not something she wanted to respond by kicking them out.

    She rather build them a shelter they could stay in, but she couldn't do that right now, so she just left them along, trying not to think about how bad this city was and how much there was to fix.

    *Power Buy Attempt 1.5.1 Thanatologist (200). Not bought. Banked 100 points. *

    Taylor stopped in her patrol as her power rewarded her with a charge and tried to acquire a perk, only to open her eyes wide as what it had failed to her entered her mind.

    The word Thanatologist wasn't known to her before, but what it did was still passed on. It was skills around the creation of the undead. As in, it required dead people to use.

    Taylor nope out of selecting that one and for the first time since she got her power was extremely pleased that she hadn't gotten a perk given the context of that. It was far worse than worthless, she rather get her windows perk a thousand times then get that one again.

    Well she was trying to focus on how to make her power never try and give her that again her sensor went off indicating that a life sign was moving quickly. Every time before it had been a person in a car driving nearby, but she studied it anyway just in case it wasn't that this time.

    Finding a figure on a path that would take them out of range within a few seconds due to it angle to her and was moving very quickly.

    Giving the map of the area put whomever it was in an alleyway, rather than on the street, Taylor started to move in their direction a bit, only to start running when two more figured appeared behind it, slightly faster.

    Her heart soured as she realized what this meant.

    Her first ever crime she would stop, on her first night out.

    Taylor felt quite pleased, only to bite that down. She was a hero, she should be happy if she didn't find crime when she went on patrol, not pleased that she did.

    Even if her powers like it, since she could tell she had gotten a fair amount of her next charge already, not even minutes after she got the last one. This was extremely interesting to her benefactor.

    Rushing at full speed into the night, she didn't sound like a woman in armor giving chase, rather her hurried pace would have had anyone that saw her in person look to see if perhaps they had lost their hearing given most animals made more noise than she did running.

    But as fast as she was, she had started far enough away that the two figures giving chase to the first were just fast enough that before Taylor got there, they managed to grab whoever it was. Stopping the third where they had met up.

    Taylor paused when she got within 10 meters range a few seconds later as they were stopped, and she wanted a bit more information.

    The one that had been running was a woman, and at this range her scanner could say she was slightly injured, well the two chasing her were both men that were also slightly injured as well.

    Her scanner couldn't tell her more than that at range, and Taylor had to pause as she saw all three individuals were injured slightly as a thought crossed her mind.

    This could have been a criminal running from two police officers that caught her. She should try and figure out what was going on before she showed herself if she could. No need to add assaulting a police officer catching a criminal to her list of crimes she almost did that night after all.

    It was easy enough to move forward silently, as Taylor peeked down the alleyway that they had caught her.

    Even in the dim light, Taylor could tell that they were not police officers, given they clearly had ABB gang markings on them.

    Taylor could see that they had the woman on the ground with duck tape over her mouth and were currently tying her up.

    Not police officers Taylor noted to herself, as she stepped forward and decided to call out a warning.

    "Stop what you are doing."

    Taylor winced to herself as soon as she said that, it sounded a lot better in her mind then out of her mouth. It was more of a squeak, and she was quite sure how nervous she was quite clear.

    The two men looked at her, clearly expecting a bystander.

    Taylor could see the exact instant they realized she wasn't likely a bystander on their faces given her armor.

    "Cape!"

    They both turned and ran away from her, one of them stepping hard on to the woman with a thud that didn't sound good to Taylor, and they booked it.

    As much as Taylor wanted to give chase, she was worried about the woman, more so after one had stepped on her chest with a thud.

    *Power Buy Attempt 1.5.30 Private Reality (600). Not Bought. Banked 200 points. *

    Too concerned about the woman to focus on what the perk she had missed was, Taylor rushed to the woman, only vaguely noting that the perk it had missed had to do with her warehouse size in some way, which most certainly wasn't anything that might let her help her right now.

    Kneeling next to the already bound woman who was clearly in pain, she ran her scanner over her. It had listed her as moderately injured, and she was bleeding in minor amounts under the skin over a large part of her body.

    Touching the woman to activate her healing touch, she tried to consider what to do next.

    She could see fear in the woman's eyes, which made her pause only long enough to realize that it was because she hadn't already untied her, and likely assumed that she wasn't much better off under her then the two gang members. Most capes were villains after all.

    That at least was something that was easily solved, as she reached for the woman, who was doing her best to try and slid away from her, but as she was bound on wrists and legs with duck tape over her mouth, she couldn't move that quickly.

    Turning her over gently, feeling her shake under her touch, and not strong enough to stop Taylor from turning her over to access her wrists, Taylor then held her arm with one hand, then carefully withdrew the knife she had on hand, so she didn't have to her use sword to cut things. Using it to cut the duck tape as carefully as she could without hurting her.

    Once freed, Taylor let go and moved a step back as her hand flew up to her face to tear off the duck tape over her mouth.

    As she did such, the fear and panic that was in her eyes faded away to more wariness.

    With a wince she yanked the tap off and then went for the binding on her legs, without taking her eyes off her savior.

    "I don't think I heard of you before, who are you?"

    Taylor started to answer, stopped when she realized she was about to say 'Taylor', then went wide eye as she recalled she hadn't picked out a cape name yet.

    All these weeks with her powers, and she hadn't even considered that she needed one.

    Desperate for anything to change the topic, she saw the woman trying to get the tape off.

    Taylor turned her knife around, so she was holding it by the blade, and offered the handle to her.

    The woman had frozen as she started forward, only until she saw how it was handled. Then she took it and cut her own legs free.

    "Are you not able to speak for some reason?" She asked as she started to move, only for Taylor to recall what her scanner had said.

    "Don't move your're hurt."

    The woman stopped trying to get up and asked. "How badly?"

    "Moderately."

    "I meant exactly how am I injured?"

    "I don't really know ah…" Taylor gaze shot to the scanner, and she repeated what it said. "Bleeding under your epidermis layer… your skin."

    "I certainly took a few bruises, but I would be more concerned with internal bleeding other than that kind. Is there something else?"

    Taylor studied the scanner hoping it would somehow inform her how to answer the woman's question.

    "Is that data on your scanner something I can read?"

    Deciding that was better, she handed it over to the woman to look at.

    She looked at the data quickly, eyes going wide making it extremely clear how impressed she was with what she was reading, then she focused entirely on what it said, poking at it a bit before she asked.

    "What other injuries do I have?"

    "Only what it says there. I don't really know what they mean other than you have them."

    "So you saw it said moderate and thought I was dying?"

    "Ah, not quite? More like you could make it worse if you moved too quickly or something."

    "Before the EMTs get here." The woman noted.

    With that, a second thing she had forgotten to do hit Taylor like a freight train.

    She didn't have a cell phone on her, she hadn't even considered getting such, wondering how she forgotten something as basic as a cellphone with Strategic Mastery, she was immediately rewarded with the answer.

    Strategic Mastery didn't make her ability to plan perfect. It could refine things she had considered, but it couldn't outright tell her things she had forgotten to completely consider herself.

    She wanted to bring along a list of items in case someone was hurt, so it had informed her of what to bring, but a cell phone to call for emergency services hadn't entered her mind.

    "Did you call them?" the woman asked when she didn't get an answer after a bit.

    "No I… It my first night out, I didn't really think to bring a cell phone." Taylor admitted to her.

    "I got mine, but is everything on this scanner of yours, everything that iswrong with me?"

    "It is."

    "In that case, I'll just walk back to the hospital."

    "Back?"

    "You do know where you are right now, right?"

    At the shake of a head, the woman sighed and informed her.

    "A few blocks from Brockton Bay General Hospital, I'm an ER Doctor there. Doctor Susan Yamamoto. They tried to grab me as I was returning to my car to head home after my shift. I couldn't have run more than a few blocks. Mind escorting me there?"

    "Not at all." Taylor agreed, that was way easier than considering everything she did wrong right now.

    Susan got up and handed the scanner back to Taylor, then asked.

    "What is your name anyway?"

    Deciding that walking the entire time quietly might not be a good idea for that question, Taylor returned a simple answer.

    "I haven't picked one yet."

    Shock filled Susan's face as she looked at Taylor, then gave her a good long look up and down, clearly not believing such from the look on face, only reinforced by her words that followed.

    "With power armor that good? That good of a scanner that looks like something we get from a medical supply center rather than junk glued together? I only seen such on Protectorate Tinkers. Big name Protectorate Tinkers."

    Taylor didn't answer, rather she turned her head away in shame.

    "Hey, it okay. I get picking a name is hard. I got two kids of my own, and I had to spend months before I knew what to name them, barely knowing before they were born. I suppose it's even harder for capes given they can't just pick what they like. Naming my daughter the same as someone in the Protectorate wouldn't see me in jail."

    A silent nod was all that was returned to that.

    "First night out huh?" Susan noted after she realized there would be no reply from her savior to that.

    Another silent nod.

    "Then you don't know about the unwritten rules?"

    "The what rules?"

    "The unwritten rules, I might as well tell you about them on the way back. The rules are simple but keep one thing in mind. They are called unwritten rules, because they only have as much legal weight behind them as the local capes as a whole, heroes and villains choose to respect them. If you ask the PRT about them, they say that the Unwritten rules are gentlemen agreements only and hold no bearing on the law. But only those quite certain they can take anyone else nearby would dare outright break them. If you follow them, capes that also follow them will do the same to you. If you don't they don't."

    After a pause to let it sink in, the older woman continued.

    "The rules are simple. Don't maim or murder, don't rape, don't unmask anyone, don't go after families. They get a lot more nuanced after that, since it's entirely on what the locals agree they are. So every town has additional ones, but those that follow those four are generally considered proper and go to normal jail if arrested for a crime. Those that don't go to the Birdcage or are outright executed on capture."

    "Villains and Heroes?!?"

    "You easily can kill in the self-defense of someone else, but that doesn't change the fact legally it's murder until the courts rule it self-defense. I hope it's only the last two I need to really tell you not to do. But let's start with the first as you might find the need to do such to protect someone. Although the rule is don't maim or murder, it better said as don't escalate. If they bring police batons, you don't bring knives. If they bring knifes, you can bring knives but don't bring guns and such. Most capes fight with blunt weapons or bare hand because of this. Besides being safer for you, it is also safer for them. A villain you are arresting know there is little danger of being accidentally killed if they don't have a weapon, but if you're known for bring around that sword of yours, you are going to see people always using knifes and swords on you in return. But not guns. Not unless you bring one first."

    "Oh, that makes a lot of sense."

    "Yes, but it not the law. You don't have to do that, self-defense does justify killing in the right situations, but if you are known to do not endanger people enough that they could die fighting you, then those you fight won't push you to the edge and risk killing you as well. I am going to assume you're a decent person and I don't need to cover the second rule in any depth whatsoever, so the third one is easy enough. Well it only illegal to unmask heroes that are listed as such by the PRT. Even the PRT respects the unwritten rules in this regard, so they don't unmask people until they get kill orders, which is why despite the fact that Empire 88 been in this city for years, no one outside of them knows who Kaiser is. If the PRT couldn't tell with all the thinkers they got on hire, they should fire them all and replace them. They know, but since unmasking a cape opens both them and their families to retaliation, they don't do such until they decided you are better off dead. Capes that snub that one tends not to last long, because the villains will gang up and take them down, and the Protectorate generally lets them without interfering. It might not be law, but it keeps things safer, when the villains don't think that they can't just take off their mask and give up a life of crime, that when they jump to the outright murder of victims rather than bruises they can heal on their own in a few weeks. Desperate people do desperate things."

    The pair arrived near the hospital and Susan finished with.

    "Just don't forget it not a law you can invoke unless you can get the local criminals to agree with your version of the events. How much force it has is as much as those who respect it around here gives it, no more no less. That the rules in a nutshell, and all you need to know since they more of a gentlemen's agreement and not law. I should get inside and get myself checked over."

    With that, she started to move inside, but stopped when Taylor spoke up to address her.

    "Before you go."

    "What?"

    "Do you know why they grabbed you?"

    "That? Likely because of my husband, he is Japanese after all."

    The woman in question was clearly white and as far as Taylor could see, if it wasn't for her black hair would have fit in nicely with the Nazi's ideal race. She had lovely blue eyes now that she could see them in the light of the hospital. It wouldn't be a simple job to make her blonde with how dark her hair was, but if she had blonde hair, she would have been the picture of an 'average ideal woman' by their standards. She wasn't even remotely a model in appearance, but good enough looking to basically be a stand in on a tv show sort of deal.

    "They wanted to recruit him by kidnapping you?"

    "It is more likely not slurring the bloodline by stopping him from being with a Gaijin." Susan replied. "One of the good things of not being my husband's biological daughter is my eldest, Mei, doesn't get recruited by them and my youngest Shiro only in the 3rd grade, so he is way too young to do such yet. It is not the first time this happened, although they caught me this time, normally I get away when some new recruits into the ABB decide I am a good target to prove they are worthy of the gang."

    "Normally?" Taylor repeated at that.

    "Brockton Bay is a shithole, I guess you new the area if you didn't know that. I don't know what brought you here, but you might want to move onto a more peaceful city. If you're not white, Empire 88 will hate you, if you're not Asian the ABB will hate you and if you are neither they both be gunning for you. I should go get checked out, thank you again for saving me from them, you likely saved my life."

    Taylor watched the woman make her way into the hospital but didn't follow, the fact that she could qualify the outcome of being kidnapped by the ABB because of her husband as normally escaped, somehow made this city seem a whole lot darker than it had been before.

    She knew Brockton Bay was a horrible place on Earth, but surely a woman in the city shouldn't be subjected to attempted kidnappings enough to need to qualify that normally her kidnapping to be tortured to death, ended up with her getting away.

    0o0

    Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

    0o0

    *Power Buy Attempt 3.6.7 Profession: Tailoring (Zen Master) (World of Warcraft) (300). Bought. Banked 0 points. *

    Taylor was woken up by her power activating and giving her a new perk. After flaying around in bed a bit due to the suddenness of how she was woken up, she managed to regroup enough to understand what had woken her, and that she wasn't under attack by anything other than her power making her stronger.

    Looking quite the mess between how tired she still was, her random flaying in her bed doing no good for her appearances either. She found only hazy memories of waking up to see her dad off before going back to bed, telling her what had happened after she got home, she looked over at the clock to see it was just before noon.

    She was still ready to sleep for at least a few more hours.

    Yawning, she considered her new perk, wishing it was something to let her need less sleep. She was going to need to do shorter patrols otherwise and given the very last thing had been saving Susan's life last night, she would have been kidnapped, likely raped and killed had Taylor not been there.

    Which meant she had done a lot of good, but unless she solved the issue of sleep, she wasn't going to be able to keep doing as much good when she had to start going back to school.

    The haze faded from her mind as she understood what her new perk was, and it was quite impressive.

    She had gained a supernatural ability at tailoring, that made her a Zen master in that craft. Unrivaled in by her peers, so long as it was something made of cloth.

    Although it brought no ideas of fashion with it, she could tell that if she had a design, she could make any outfit she was asked to do such. As such, anything she made would have the qualify to be fit for a central piece in a major museum exhibit, should she decide she wanted to do that. All she needed to be told was some rough image of the final product and she could turn it into a work of art.

    The far more useful side of this was the fact she could now make outright magical items, so long as they were made of cloth. Bags that were bigger on the inside, carpets that could fly. Clothing that didn't have to be shaped to be enchanted with basic effects.

    What more, she could drop the need for using gold thread in her clothing as she could encase the enchanting into normal thread, meaning that careful examination of her gear wouldn't show she had gold running through it.

    It was much better for her than the perk she had decided to abandon last night that would have just made her warehouse larger.

    Space was not something she was lacking in her warehouse right now, nor at the rate of her tinkering might not ever be a concern in her lifetime unless she started collecting a lot of stuff made by other people.

    Or her powers gave her some big things.

    Looking down at her bed, debating how much she wanted to sleep more versus getting up and reworking her clothing to be much better now that she was no longer limited by shaped items, a thought passed her mind that made her pause as she refocused on the collection of these three perks.

    She could make magical cloth, and anything related to magical cloth, which included blankets that would let her sleep soundly and comfortably no matter how rough the location she wanted to sleep in.

    On it own it was useless if she wasn't camping, since her bed was comfy enough on it own to be luring her in with promises of its warmth cuddling her.

    But that perk didn't have to make alone, drawing on the power gems she could make from the combination of Geneforge and Deadspace, then drawing on dead space again to allow her to upgrade a tool within it function, she could upgrade her bedsheets to make her sleep better.

    As in, she would need much less sleep to be fully rested.

    Four levels of upgrades would be limited to about an hour off the time she needed at best, but she could perk this within the same upgrade for an effective 2 upgrades.

    Cutting her time required for sleep down to 2 hours per night.

    That was more than enough to get her out of bed to go start on such, only pausing as she recalled the fact that Susan had pointed out she didn't have a name, and she didn't have a cellphone.

    Both were issues to resolve, but after she made her blankets of restful sleep, she wouldn't be able to go out tonight as a cape anyway with how tired she was, and without those and a nap, it didn't matter if she had them or not.

    0o0

    By the time Taylor finished her bedsheet of restful sleep, and put them to very good use in an afternoon nap, it was too late to head out to the library to look up capes, and lacking the internet access at home, she had no option but to wait until tomorrow.

    Likewise, cellphone shopping was off the table as well.

    Thanks to said sheets, she wasn't able to fall asleep either, so she waited until after her dad was asleep to make her way into her workshop to start remaking her clothes, frowning as she looked at how the cheap mass-produced cloth made up her outfit offended her powers.

    She knew the stuff was cheap, that was half the reason she bought it, but her powers felt like they were being insulted if she wore something like this.

    Taylor sighed at that, not wanting to wonder what sort of extremely fancy dress she had to wear to make her powers happy about her clothes and how she would ever get away with it in school, only to pause as told her it didn't need to fancy. They didn't care what her clothes looked like.

    Just that they were not made like the crap. She would make far better herself by pure accident. Half thrown together dresses to just test for ideas would look far better than her clothes right now. Forget anything she tried to make look good.

    The tailoring ability from the perk was powerful enough that even if she had no idea of fashion, whatever she made would at least look decent, and if she did know fashion, she could easily get the big name people wanting her to make outfits for them.

    Considering this and deciding there was no reason not to remake them completely, as she wanted as much protection on her as she could get all times. It was also easier than breaking it up her existing clothes and remaking them as magical items, so she settled in to start to do such, only to stop mid cut of a bolt of cloth when her power activated again.

    *Power Buy Attempt 1.2.4 Mental Resistance II (100). Bought. Banked 0 points. *

    With a sharp breath, Taylor realized what she had just been handed, the fact there was another level to it, and she locked it in several times to make sure she didn't forget to do such. Then doubled checked again to make certain she really had.

    Besides granting her an immunity to being intimidated, it granted her a 'high level of resistance' to outright mind control.

    The greatest threat there was out there. Masters.

    The Simurgh, Heartbreaker and more; More capes than Taylor knew about and feared even more than the PRT knew of and could deal with.

    Any one of them could decide to mind control her, and she would lose all of her free will. As a tinker, she had even more fear for the Simurgh.

    But this perk changed that, it wouldn't make her immune to mind control, but resistant enough that as long as she didn't do something stupid like try to give the Simurgh a hug, she likely could survive what they could pull off before she could get away, and then likely remove whatever they did through the use of Mental Awareness Refinement.

    Level 2 was highly resistant, and more critically granted immunity to what the level 1 perk made her highly resistant to.

    There was no doubt in her mind that level 3 was outright mind control immunity.

    Pausing to consider the branches of her body mod she knew of, Taylor wondered if there was something similar to that granted immunity precogs, but unable to see most of the perks, she knew wasting charges on just that chance wasn't a good idea. After all the item to do such might be under her warehouse or even the forge.

    She wanted to say it would be under body, but she couldn't say for certain enough to risk sending things that way until she knew better given the increased cost to do such. She just have to hope that the odds were in her favor.

    0o0

    Thursday, January 27th, 2011

    0o0

    Taylor found picking a good cape name for what she could do extremely difficult.

    After all, what did she call herself given that she would grow to literal godly levels? With what she could do with just 3, no, 4 perks there was stuff she could do with the scanner even if it was extremely narrow, what would she look like with 10? 100? All 532?

    The answer was simple enough, she should choose a name of a god for a cape name.

    Which even she knew was the height of egoistic. No one humble would name themselves after a god except by accident.

    But, as she tried to consider anything else, her Forge seemed to flicker in her mind, reminding her it was the forge of the gods and it would her to choose a name worthy of a god.

    Which as far as she could tell, the only way to do such, was to take the name of a god from some mythology and claim it as her own.

    Sighing, Taylor pulled up a list of god figures in mythology on the internet, which took her to the list maintained on PHO by the PRT as the first result, and giving that she decided it was a fair place to start her research.

    At the very top was the extremely few that the Protectorate used, because you had to be the best of the best to be worthy to call yourself such. The PRT okaying such basically meant you were a Triumvirate tier cape in their eyes. For good, or for Bad.

    The list of currently active villains with such godly names was longer but compared to those currently inactive or never claimed was rather short.

    With supervillains willing to kill you for the reputation, claiming the name of a god, was inviting such. Likewise, to those that had named assigned by the PRT, they only did such for the big S-class threats.

    There was plenty of options, but nothing that stood out.

    Searching the list slowly names of gods of craftsmen came up, but for some reason her power didn't seem to like it, which was puzzling. She had expected her powers to be pushing for a name like Hephaestus or Vulcan.

    But just indifference echoed there like every other god she could see loosely connected to forging and crafting.

    Resolving to go over the entire list, wondering if it didn't care what name just so long as it was the name of a god. Taylor scanned each name regardless of what mythology it was from, and what they could do, trying to see if anything reacted like the way her power gave her a gentle push to use the name of a god or not.

    At the sight of one name, a slight tweak, the same tweak that had been telling her to choose the name of a god, echo though her power, making it clear whoever gave this to her like this name she had just read, but at the same time they made it clear she didn't have to choose this one for her cape name.

    Taylor stared at the name that whatever god had given her this power wanted her to use.

    Selene, The Greek Goddess of the Moon.

    Completely lost and puzzled by this, she looked up the details of the goddess in question, only to very quickly realize why this name had been chosen as she read the files on her.

    Selene as the literal personification of the Moon, guarded the night. Terms for her were not just all seeing and wise, but as benevolent as well.

    In a way it could be said that she was the one who guarded the night from evil.

    Making sure she wasn't just the first name on a given a list of options for her to choose from, Taylor continued down them, finding that of them, only Selene gave the response and it was only the first time she looked at it. The push to use it, like to use a god's name was gone, still remembered, but no longer would it raise the point with her again.

    Her powers had indicated which way it wanted her to go.

    She had to decide if she would accept it or choose another name.

    When she knew that if she wasn't interesting, she would stop earning charges.

    Would it be more interesting for her to choose another name? Or would it be dangerous to do such?

    She didn't know, she couldn't know.

    But if she assumed the fact her powers wanted the name of a goddess for her… she might as well take it. She had no better ideas herself.

    Mindful she would need to do some outreach later on PHO, New Wave did most of theirs on PHO, she checked to see if Selene was free for an account name.

    To her very much surprise, it was free, so she registered the account, then turned her thoughts to how she should change her design of her armor to match her name.

    Clearly, she wouldn't wear the dress that Selene was often shown in, but she could add something to her armor to hint to that, maybe a crescent moon on her chest with the silver gem that acted as the focus for her regenerative shield?

    If she was making a dress she could do something extremely fancy, like maybe the image of Selene herself in a chariot across her body in some way, but her tailor's ability to perfect recreate an image in cloth didn't extend to armor, and she didn't want to make some sort of shirt to put over her armor as that would interfere with it ability to protect her.

    Thoughts turned to design, wondering what would look best for her, as she felt her charges tick upwards to 1 out of the 2 charges she needed for the next level of Mental Resistance.

    0o0

    Saturday, January 28th, 2011

    0o0

    Unable to go on patrols until her redesigns on her armor was finished, it was very late Friday, or rather extremely early Saturday morning when Taylor made it out in costume.

    Or rather Selene, as she adjusted her thoughts to think of herself as.

    Before she departed, she doubled checked she had everything she needed. An enchanted bag of holding with any medical supplies she could guess that might be required, but even more critically, a cellphone she had bought at the store for just 20 dollars.

    There was no service plan, it was prepaid only. It came with 10 minutes and then was good for emergency calls only. Since she only planned to call 911 with it, she hadn't bothered to grab the minute's card at all. The cheapest one was 20 dollars on its own, and she knew that 20 dollars for 100 minutes was not a good price at all.

    Stepping out into the crisp winter air, Selene debated her path, then set forward on roughly the same route she took last time, deciding it was better to stick to a route she had already done once before until she got the hang of things.

    With the aid of her blanket, she could get all the sleep she needed in just 2 hours, and she had more time than that before it was late enough to go out on patrol so that her dad didn't know what she was doing.

    0o0

    At first the patrol went much better than last time, as Selene didn't have to stop at every life sign in a building thinking they might be a robber and check it out. She just assumed those inside buildings were supposed to be there and moved on.

    This allowed her to clear a lot more distance, but she came to an abrupt halt as something unusual appeared on her scanner.

    In one of the office buildings, the topological scan was blank, showing a void in the middle of said building.

    That made her stop to look in its direction puzzled; quite certain she would have noticed that last time.

    Several things that could cause such came to mind, and had this been a bank, the PRT HQ or other such structure, she would have assumed it was just a secured room inside, and if this had been a new route, she would have assumed the same here.

    Blocking her scanner did not take parahuman powers, just a know how of what it couldn't scan though, of which the quick answer was too much mass. There were much easier ways to block it then just enough mass, but that was the quick answer.

    Then she noticed the area that was not on her sensor was shrinking.

    Walls don't normally shrink on their own.

    But jamming fields of some kind did.

    Moving closer, Selene circled the building trying to get a look inside when she found a door that was wide open. A van parked nearby, also open, empty and abandoned with the engine still running.

    Inside the building she could see the hallway was partly filled with darkness, which got thicker as it went further inside, fading away and letting her sensor see more as it did such.

    It took a few glances back and forth before it hit her what was going on. She even read about this cape.

    Grue, who created a cloud of darkness. This darkness couldn't be blown away and blocked cameras, and now that she had tested it, her sensor as well.

    It faded over time, so if he was inside with some gang members, robbing this place… they likely had stopped in a room somewhere, and the parts fading out was where he had been before.

    Her heartbeat picked up at that, as she felt her power earn the final charge she needed for the locked perk, and it became active.

    *Power Buy Attempt 1.2.4 Mental Resistance III (100) + 100 Lock Tax. Bought. Banked 0 points. *

    Complete immunity to mind control with no more ranks to lock in.

    Carefully balancing the odds, Selene decided that this was in her favor.

    Grue was an adult man, and a big one at that given what she read about him.

    Her armor made her four times stronger, and her power made her half peak human before the weeks of hard work and exercise.

    She was at least twice peak human, and maybe closer to 3 times by now with all her hard work. Grue and a bunch of gang members robbing a building wouldn't be a threat to her without guns. Given that he wasn't known to use such, she should be fine there given the unwritten rules.

    Debating about drawing her sword, she left it sheathed as she stood by the door waiting, not stupid enough to go inside, she wouldn't be able to see in the darkness.

    She would grab them when they got out, catching them off guard when they walked out of the darkness themselves.

    Just when she thought about calling the PRT now, the darkness started to expand outwards, and she knew that she wouldn't have time to do such.

    So watching carefully, she saw the darkness start to spread down the hallway in front of her, before it came to a sudden halt, then started to spread in other direction.

    It puzzled her for a bit until Selene realized that Grue must have been able to see though his darkness, he didn't leave a hole inside that she could see him like the curtain she was thinking about.

    Since Grue could see though his darkness, he must have just seen her and stopped to wait.

    "Surrender now villains." Selene called into the darkness, wondering what he would do. She didn't think it was a good idea to go rushing in, but she didn't think Grue was stupid enough to come walking out this way either.

    There were other doors to the building.

    Watching her sensor to see if he was doing that, she could see that the darkness was spreading to the rooms nearby, but not away from her. Likely because it was centered on him and thus filling in the spaces close to him now that he wasn't moving and thinking of his next move.

    Suddenly, without warning, there was a flicker as a woman appeared on the sensor just long enough to be picked up, close enough to report she was a woman in good health.

    Before Selene had even looked in her direction she was off the sensor and looking at the darkness in the window.

    Waiting, well trying to think of anything that didn't require her to run into pure darkness, but not able to come up, she saw the darkness start to spread in the direction away from her. She waited a minute before she started to run to get in front of it, stopping outside the front door. It opened and stopped again. Then it surged past at a right angle, and she gave chase until she realized how fast that they were moving.

    Her armor made her twice as fast as a human sprinting could be, nearly as fast as a car on the highway, and they were outpacing her.

    How did Grue move so fast? Was he also a brute in secret?

    But even if he was, that meant either he left his gang members behind, or he was alone.

    Not giving to chase since an unknown brute changed a lot, Selene watched the building for any signs of them, but when the darkness faded and her sensors could see no one inside, she sighed and decided to leave.

    As she did such, she felt another charge come on, and she focused on it.

    *Power Buy Attempt 1.3.6 Corruption Resistance cost 100. Bought. Banked 0 points. *

    A perk that was rather interesting to go with her immunity to mind control. She now had immunity to any corruption of her soul unless she allowed it and would be aware of any such actions that would cause that.

    It was the sort of protection you never wanted to need, but if it was that or nothing, you wouldn't say no to for a very good reason.

    00o

    End of Chapter 02

    0o0

    Interlude 01: The Undersiders

    0o0

    It was supposed to be a nice and easy job, much like several such jobs the Undersiders had undertaken over the last 6 months together.

    Things were normal at first, Grue blacked out the area they were in, leaving a gap large enough for them to see inside with flashlights. Pulling the darkness away from whatever they needed to interact in.

    Tattletale unlocked doors, computers and whatever else was in their way. Bitch and Regent kept a look out for threats, but otherwise like Grue was more there to help carry things and not do any fighting. Since all this time was data off the computer, they gathered in the room and waited as Tattletale collected such. All they would be walking out with when this was over was a flash drive with the information their boss wanted and nothing else.

    Nothing had gone wrong with that, and it was only on the way out that suddenly the plan fell off the rails.

    "Stop!" Grue called out as they almost reached the door when he saw a what clearly to his eyes was a new cape standing outside of it in power armor, a sheath sword on her hip, and some sort of device in her hands pointed down the hallway at them.

    "Why?" Regent asked.

    "There a cape outside, new one."

    "There is?" Tattletale noted as she looked in the direction of the door. "I can't get anything under your power, what he is doing?"

    "I think it a she given the shape and markings on her power armor." Grue replied. "Just standing there pointing something at the doorway, too far for me to see what other than it in her hand. She got a sword as well, but it sheathed right now."

    "Just one, I can take her." Bitch noted as she indicated to her dogs.

    "Boss is paying extra to keep this quiet." Tattletale reminded Bitch. The girl glared at her but didn't say anything on that. "I peek out a side room, yell if she moves."

    With that Tattletale headed to the room next to them, Grue carefully extending his shadows around her to coat the room she entered before she went in then leaving a void in the middle for her to move around in with her flashlight.

    Grue could tell when Tattletale peeked out because the woman in armor outside immediately turned in her direction and kept looking at her.

    "Tattletale-"

    "I saw it, already back inside." Tattletale shouted from the room, and made her way over quickly, still yelling, so they could be heard as she ran then walked to rejoin them. "Tinker, in power armor like you guessed. The item in her hand is a sensor. She noticed us here on it due to the shielding effect of your darkness, but she can't locate us exactly under your darkness. Only that your Darkness is here. I didn't get a long enough look at her to tell if she called the white hats or not, but I did get enough to see that just the tip of her stuff, her armor gives her a large brute rating on its own. I have to research her later to tell you more, but we should be assuming Armsmaster in ability, not L33t until I can get more on her."

    "Well shit." Regent observed.

    "It not that bad yet, her sensor can't locate where we are in Grue's darkness. We go out the front and run, and we get out of range. No more than half a mile, likely a quarter at most. Anything less than that, and she wouldn't have noticed us unless she was already on her way here. Anything more and she would have shown up sooner."

    "So we turn tail and run?" Bitch asked.

    "Yes, we do." Grue told her firmly.

    "We should prepare the dogs anyway before we run, in case she tries to follow us in. Right now she's trying to study your effect Grue, well I can't get a longer read without her noticing, she's not going to wait forever."

    0o0

    Back at their base, Lisa relaxed. Despite the fact the cape had tried to give chase at first, they got away, and they had stayed under Grue's darkness for a good distance before she checked and confirmed that they were not being followed.

    A successful mission, even if there was an unexpected complication.

    She would need to turn the data over in person tomorrow, but she had to let Coil know now, so he could drop his safety timeline and accept the success here.

    Delaying that, would be extremely unpleasant for her. She might have managed avoiding all the timeline when he punished her for making him keep up a safety timeline past what conditions he told her, but she hadn't avoided knowing what she had only barely escaped out on experiencing firsthand all those times, with the clear message was that if she went too far, it wouldn't be the alternate her that experienced it, but herself first hand.

    He always could choose which he wanted to keep after he got done with her in both after all.

    Lisa pulled out her phone and dialed it up, knowing he was ready for her to do such. He wouldn't let her call off the safety timeline if he wasn't ready to do such the instant she called.

    It defeated the entire purpose of it to do otherwise.

    "Hello Lisa."

    "Hey Boss. Mission was a success with only a minor deviation to note."

    "Oh?"

    "A new cape showed up. Not one I have seen before, a tinker with decent power armor and some sort of sensor that picked up Grue's darkness and drew her interest to our crime. Good enough of a sensor that she focused on me as soon as I looked at her myself, so I didn't get much of a look just yet. We got out with the data and other than that nothing else happened."

    "Describe her."

    Lisa rattled off what she got of the very brief look at the cape, mixed with what Brian had shared with her from what he could see in the hallway, which wasn't that much, then added in. "I am going to be looking for various security footage to see if I can get a better picture of her. She might have been planning to hit the same place we did. Having a tinker would be useful for the Undersiders."

    "I agree. Look into it and let me know if you need any safety around her." Coil confirmed.

    Lisa swallowed as she understood what he meant there. If she asked for that, either she better bring something good, or she would be punished.

    How, Lisa really didn't want to know more than she had already been forced to figure out by Coil already as punishments for her misbehavior, one step removed from experiencing it personally. But that was already bad enough, and she knew it was only on his grace that he hadn't already had her keep the very personal and very painful experiences of one of her sessions under him.

    As bad as asking for one that she didn't really need would be for her, it would be even worse for her if he felt like she should have asked for one and didn't.

    Coil would decide if it was a good enough request or not and choosing to never ask for fear of making a bad request would just get her a worse punishment than if it had been a bad request in his eyes. One that he promised she wouldn't lose to an alternate timeline, to make sure she never tried such again. So long as she kept up a string of reasonable requests for a safe timeline, even if he never used them, she would be fine.

    She walked a very narrow tightrope, and too much either way would see her in pain one way or another.

    "I would like a basic profile on her by the end of next week. Name, leanings, what gear she made so far." Coil finished, and Lisa nodded, the time frame was normal for a new cape. He hadn't heard of her yet and without any concerns that she might interfere, he rather she spent more time refining what she handed over rather than up the minute stuff that they both knew would have errors until she worked them out of it.

    Any cape that wasn't still around in a week, wasn't someone they could have recruited or used anyway.

    "You will have it boss." She agreed. Lisa couldn't do anything else.

    0o0

    "What the Fuck?" Lisa outright screamed the next day as wasn't sure if she should trust what her power was telling her about this new cape's gear.

    She knew that telling the details of tinker tech was hard until she saw it used, so she should only take it with a grain of salt as limitations would become clear in time as it was used. She got a rough idea of what it could do and about where it was to start with at best.

    The fact that the sword was sharp enough to cut bitch's dog like they were made of water was worrying, and would have caused Lisa to think this new cape was in clear need of a lesson in the underwritten rules, was it not for her getting such on her first night out from what she could find from the security camera around the likely route she patrolled. There was still a lot more to check to confirm such, but it looked like such so far.

    It wasn't even the fact that her armor made her four times stronger and agile than a human either. Nor was it the fact that her armor resistance showed up as, couldn't even be damaged by the Behemoth on the first blow. It was equally worrying as her sword, but she got the same for Glory Girl, and whatever effect it had would need to recharge before it could work again. So it was a tinker version of Glory Girl's shielding power, which was quite common for tinkers to do. They adapted other parahuman powers into their gear in some way.

    The detail of how fast it could do and how strong the armor under it without that effect up required her to see more of it in use.

    What had caused her to scream, was her power reporting that said items were self-regenerating to the point that even if the Simurgh wanted to destroy or even alter them, she couldn't, anymore she could destroy the concept of gravity. Sure she could bend it for a while, but unless she kept bending it the very universe would snap back to how it had been before.

    Much like her gear. She had made them so solid that they had become as fundamental to the universe as gravity itself. Outright removing them from the universe wouldn't even get rid of them as they just reappear a few days later.

    It would take outright destruction of reality itself to destroy them as well.

    When her power cited that this tinker's gear couldn't be harmed by two different Endbringers, it was quite clear that the Undersides would want nothing to do with her.

    As much as Coil would be angry that she wasn't calling him right now from this discovery alone, Lisa knew that if she did, her orders would be to recruit the girl. A girl with serious heroic tendencies, that was looking into joining the ward, but hadn't because of bad experiences with authority, and wanted to make sure they were safe first.

    Lisa didn't care what Coil would do to her for a delay, it couldn't be anything worse than setting a heroic cape with gear better suited to Endbringer fights, whom gear apparently became universal constants as she made them, then street crime on her and her team.

    Lisa knew she feel safer if Coil tasked them to go after some member of the Triumvirate for their next job.

    Still, considering how much the girl wanted to be a hero…

    Perhaps, she could point her at Coil somehow? See how good his safety timelines are when they interacted around a cape that has gear that are literal constants of the universe that Endbringers could destroy for good.

    Lisa's thoughts turned very carefully to how she might do such, and how much she might be able to leave that little nugget off from coil's report which she would certainly need to delay to the last minute now. If only for the time to plan what to tell him.

    She knew that it would be a timeline she be tortured in to verify it if he had any doubt to it, but so long as she was willing to take something to her grave, he couldn't extract it from her.

    Not getting someone with gear that would fit in with the Triumvirate mad at her certainly counted.

    "What the Fuck?" Lisa outright screamed the next day as wasn't sure if she should trust what her power was telling her about this new cape's gear with how freely it was telling her things.

    Normally she could only get the tiniest hints of what something would do until it was used. Even telling something was tinker tech was hard unless she noticed it acting differently in some way.

    She had been expecting many long hours of looking over every recording of this new cape she could find by breaking into various systems around the city to get the barest ideas of what it could do.

    But on the very first one, her power decided that she wasn't going to need to do that. As soon as she saw the cape on a security camera, rather than hints that her armor was power arm, it started listing out details like she had spent months studying it in detail. Information that she couldn't possibly draw on from what she knew. Information she wasn't sure if all of Watchdog at the PRT had spent a week with her gear, with outright willing endbringers to help test things and likely Scion they couldn't get this much.

    How did you prove if thrown out of reality would return within 2 days anyway? Was there some hole in reality she needed to watch out for that people tested such a thing on?

    Details that went from worrying to puzzlement to outright confusion and disbelief that couldn't possibly be true.

    And every time she tried to think that this was some sort of anti-thinker gear that the cape might used to trick her, her power kept going at her, no it was true. All of this was true.

    Assuming she treated her power as not wrong and lying to start with. Some items were concerning to her, such as the fact that the sword was sharp enough to cut bitch's dog like they were made of water was worrying, and would have caused Lisa to think this new cape was in clear need of a lesson in the underwritten rules.

    Which her power had helpfully informed her she had gotten the first night as well. She had ZERO data to build this conclusion on. It should have been so blindly inaccurate that it should have been worthless. But she knew who had told her and more or less what they had said.

    The armor having a similar feature to Glory Girl's shield, more than enough to withstand a hit from Behemoth, should have required her either watch said cape get hit by such, or something near that. Not just its interactions from standing outside around a hospital.

    The only thing she was missing was the fact that there was no known charge time yet, such a thing should have come up way sooner than all the rest.

    And then she moved into the insane levels. Which besides her power either deciding to suddenly just give her all the answers with no effort, was her power reporting that said her gear was self-regenerating to the point that even if the Simurgh wanted to destroy or even alter them, she couldn't, anymore she could destroy the concept of gravity. Sure she could bend it for a while, but unless she kept bending it the very universe would snap back to how it had been before.

    It would take outright destruction of reality itself to destroy them as well.

    How did her power even know that? How could she draw such a conclusion from what she saw?

    The only sane answer had her power kept hitting back with the same thing. It not some anti-thinker device. Her gear really is that good.

    Lisa slapped her hand over her face, as she tried to calm down and think, not wanting to have her power continue to feed her information that it couldn't know. Trying very hard to not think about the fact that any thoughts it was fake was meet with increasingly insistent it not.

    Either this cape could alter the fundamental laws of reality to the point that Endbringers would basically be as harmless as a kitten, given she could apparently make things that became universal constants.

    Or…

    Lisa had to stop at the or part as her power reminded her this cape could do that.

    A hypothetical cape that wasn't the one she was looking at could alter the fundamental rules of reality, or they had designed and deployed some anti-thinker device.

    Lisa blinked at the feeling of amusement that came from her power. It never had been like that before.

    She tried to turn her power on herself then suddenly tried to recall where she was as something was cut.

    Blinking she recalled her last thoughts.

    A hypothetical cape that wasn't the one she was looking at could alter the fundamental rules of reality, or they had designed and deployed some anti-thinker device.

    Answer A was basically impossible, so clearly answer B.

    This should have been enough to call Coil now, since something was up with her ability to read this girl… but she didn't want to.

    Telling this to Coil now, would mean doing nothing but research her under his gaze. But if she kept looking for how she did she, Lisa could find the device in question that was distracting her and work around it.

    Somehow.

    There is no way this was all correct, and she would find out the truth. If this cape thought she could trick her with some tinker tech device, she had another thing coming.



    0o0

    Unknown to Taylor, a new recording she could watch appeared at her Kiosk

    0o0

    End of Interlude 01

    0o0

    Chapter 2 perks earned

    2.4.1 Windows
    3.1.5 Scanner (Iji)
    1.4.3 Strategic Mastery II
    3.6.6 Profession: Tailoring (Zen Master) (World of Warcraft)
    1.2.4 Mental Resistance II
    1.2.4 Mental Resistance III
    1.3.6 Corruption Resistance
     
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    • Chapter 03: Investigations + Interlude 02: Sherie “Battery” Walsh
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    • AN. This chapter had been Beta by Trek, who put a lot of time into helping me correct issues as well as improve the plot in several places. I can not thank him enough for the help he given me here.

    This chapter is also special in that this was the chapter that turned what had been a sixth revision of this idea, the ones before dying because the rolls didn't play nice so I hit a dead end where I was just rambling until another roll came up which I gave up because of that. To this one where I made a roll in this part of the draft, couldn't believe what I got and had to double check my dice and the charts to confirm it given how perfect it was. Taylor herself even notes how perfect it was for what she was doing for that very same reason.



    0o0

    Chapter 03: Investigations

    0o0

    Sunday, January 29th, 2011

    0o0

    *Power Buy Attempt 1.1.1 Physical Prowess III (200). Bought. Banked 0 points. *

    Taylor who had been brushing her teeth paused at both the completely unexpected perk purchase, as well as the fact that it seemed to change the rules that she understood from her powers.

    Normally when she got a charge, it would spend itself right away on a roll, unless she had a perk locked in. Then it would wait until it could buy it completely to do such.

    She didn't have a perk locked in, and the first charge she earned didn't trigger a roll like it should, rather it just jumped straight to a second charge then a roll for a perk.

    What made it even more puzzling to her was that this all happened well she was brushing her teeth, so unless doing that had suddenly been extremely interesting… it was more interesting than what she was doing at the time.

    It didn't take Taylor long to figure out what that was. Her charges were awarded depending on what was interesting to her Benefactor, not her, and apparently something she caused earned her an additional reward.

    It had to be related to Grue in some way, had it been Susan, she would have expected it sooner.

    Taylor hoped that whatever had been interesting enough to reward her, wouldn't make it bad for her, but considering her new perk she was inclined to think that her reward was far greater than any threat she now had to worry about.

    With this new perk, she confirmed several of her theories about the nature of scaling perks. Physical Prowess made her peak human, double peak human and then five times peak human and removed her need to sleep.

    Which would have been nicer if she had it before, so she didn't need to make her blanket of restful sleep, but it wasn't like it cost her anything but time with her workshop.

    When she told her dad about her powers, she could give the blanket to him to let him sleep better.

    Although the time could have been used to practice her flying carpet skills. She was very lucky she tried that inside her warehouse first, since being able to make a flying carpet didn't include the skills to fly said carpet, any more than knowing how to make a bike told you how to ride one.

    At least a bike didn't have you bump your head on the ceiling hard enough to make you dizzy without at least some indications you were too high off the ground.

    Taylor's thoughts turned back to her new perk, 5 times peak human was slightly more than her armor did, and due to the nature of her armor's design that was multiplied well she was in it, since her armor boosted her strength by altering gravity in some ways, rather than outright physical force applied to her.

    It was why it was 4 times her abilities and not some set plus amount.

    She considered that amount, at an effective 20 times peak human, well wearing her clothes or her armor. That had to be enough to toss cars around.

    Only a few minor thoughts as to where and when to test that, her thoughts soon returned to last night and how she would do better next time. She should have made some cloth gear, like a net, to capture them, but she hadn't considered that. She had zip ties to secure people's hands, but that meant she already had them.

    She hadn't considered the case where she wanted to throw something around in the darkness to try and catch someone.

    But there were other things to make with her limited time as well.

    She had made the best healing item she could that didn't require people to change clothes to get into it, a blanket that healed someone under it, but she only had one and wanted more so when it came time to use it, she didn't have to choose whom to give it to.

    A dozen would be a good number there, her bags of holding, which were as large as she could make it could hold ten times that number, so she still had plenty of room for other supplies as well in them.

    Although that wouldn't have helped her catch them, there were so many things she knew, could see how to do that she just couldn't do yet.

    Without a better scanner that she couldn't make yet, she couldn't track them, and without allies she couldn't box them in.

    After thinking it over, Taylor sighed and realized that her plans did require something else she was lacking in. She had no idea how to make a better scanner, and without new perks that let her do more stuff, she was going to be stuck here.

    A quick mental glance at her charges informed her she was about 3/4ths of the way there, but she could tell that it was a stable 3/4ths. She would need to do something else to increase it.

    Well she had wondered about if she could throw cars around… but going around in her armor in the day would draw far more attention than at night.

    But was that really a bad thing, Taylor had to ask herself.

    She did want to be a hero with a reputation and that required people knew she existed.

    She would have to go back to school in 2 days, and Taylor would rather do such after she had a bit more successful hero career.

    She could do that now. Get another perk and start school on somewhat of a high note.

    0o0

    Taylor made her way to the boat graveyard and after confirming she was alone with her scanner, slipped into her warehouse using a door on a ship with a lock, then came out in her armor, and looked at the boats.

    Finding the smallest one she could, Selene tried to pick it up. It turned out to be harder to get a grip then to lift it then she expected, and it took Selene a few tries before she was able to lift it, finding it difficult, not her max, but near enough that she wasn't about to try a larger boat.

    Standing by the shore as the water lapped at her boots, Selene looked up at the sun that was above her and found herself disappearing in thought.

    As she stared at the sky, she could tell that her power would like her to do something like go on the boardwalk like this, but that would be too risky. The PRT would react to that, and not likely in good ways.

    But interesting. Her powers hinted to her that would be interesting, it would be rewarded.

    But Selene, or rather Taylor herself didn't want to do that.

    Quietly she stared at the sky, mind tumbling. It was weird, that as she got more done, the further away being a great hero seemed to be.

    A great hero.

    A great hero would walk out onto the boardwalk in costume and show themselves off. The Protectorate did that all the time. It would be tricky, but they wouldn't open fire at her if she was stupid. She could even lean on her perks to let her do such even though she didn't feel like it.

    *Power Buy Attempt 1.3.8 Supernatural Resource Recovery II (100). Bought. Banked 0 points. *

    Drawing on the distraction her new perk granted her, Taylor focused on it, quite interested in what it did, since it didn't mean considering going to the boardwalk and all that might happen there.

    It made it so her 'magic' recovered not as if she was in perfect rest, but at twice that rate. This worked out to an effective four times the rate for her.

    And right now, all that let her do was make enchanted cloth quicker, well it did let her enchant anything quicker, her other items were not limited by her own magic reserves, but by her tools.

    She couldn't make power gems or Puresteel any faster just because her magic recovered faster. Those took long enough to do the building steps that she could have had a tenth of what she started with and still be fine.

    Taylor's thoughts turned to her perks, trying to see how this could change anything. But none of her other abilities could drain her enough to matter right now.

    It was only because of the skill she had with cloth due to a mix of Zen Master and Physical Prowess boosting how fast she could physically sew her that she could even drain herself dry and thus could make magical items faster with this.

    Physical Prowess didn't help with armor, because the cooling steps to let the enchantments sink into the steel couldn't be sped up by just being stronger, anymore than you could make a cake cook faster with a bigger or hotter oven.

    There was some time savings, but in the end, you couldn't bake a cake faster than its chemical reactions could set.

    Another level wasn't worth it in her mind. It would still let her make cloth even faster, likely at another 2x on top of what it was now given her other perks. But on its own it wasn't the answer she was looking for.

    So Taylor let that thought go, as she made up her mind and went to go change out of her armor after making sure on her scanner that she was still alone.

    She didn't care how many charges she would get, how interesting it would be, she wouldn't do that now. She wasn't ready yet. She needed to take down a villain first or something.

    Maybe something interesting would happen tonight on her patrol.

    0o0

    Tuesday, February 1st, 2011

    0o0

    As much as Taylor knew her power wasn't punishing her for not showing herself off on Sunday, she could only feel like it was, when she didn't get anything more on Sunday or Monday. The patrols yielded nothing, she worked on gear that could be useful as she tried to learn how to fly a carpet without any instructions on how to do such.

    She even made a cape in the thoughts it would be easier, only to discover her armor was too heavy for a cape to lift her in it.

    As much as she wanted to not ever go back to school again, she hadn't been able to come up with a good reason that she felt her father would believe without her needing to reveal her powers to him, or explain why she was willing to go out around the town but not there.

    If she was too scared of being attacked again, why was she so comfortable going to the library and such. So, unable to come up with a better option, certain that trio wouldn't try something soon, and if they did she could more than handle it, she found herself heading to school with her father. They wouldn't dare try something on the same scale of the locker again anytime soon, and if they tried anything minor she would find some way to get her own recordings of it this time to use as possible leverage or worst case to destroy their lives and future prospects. Indeed, if she could get such a recording it could even be able to use it to convince her dad to just graduate out by passing a GRE without having to reveal her powers or going into conversations she didn't think she was ready to have yet. Hopefully attending school might provide enough entertainment to get a few charges out of it.

    And if she was wrong, they wouldn't be able to hurt her anyway.

    "Do you need me to come in with you, Taylor?" Danny asked as he stopped the car in a parking spot, making it rather clear to Taylor he was ready to walk her in if she needed it.

    She wanted him to, but she couldn't let him.

    "No, I will be fine Dad." Taylor informed him, finding herself a lot less sure she was lying then she first thought when she said that. "Emma will be waiting for me, and Blackwell said that the teachers will keep an eye out for me from now on."

    She was quite sure Emma would be waiting, just not as her dad thought It would be, and she knew Blackwell did say that.

    "The police never caught who did it." Danny noted.

    "It is not like you coming in will change anything, Dad, they just wait for you to leave if they do something. If you're that worried and need to come in with me…" She trailed off saying you should just take me home, not wanting to say such out loud even if that was the option she wanted. So long as the trio was here, it wasn't safe here in school. Not physically for her, not anymore, but for keeping the fact she was a cape secret.

    "Stay safe, Taylor."

    "I will, it won't happen again, I promise." Taylor agreed as she made her way out of the car

    Danny nodded as she left and repeated his message, "Stay safe."

    On her way into the school building, Taylor considered the Trio. They had become so insignificant next to what she could do that she hadn't even given them more than a passing thought until this very morning. No real plans of what to do when the bully started up again, what to do about them, how to bring them to justice.

    It would be too easy for her to kill them, with her powers she could just kill them in the night and no one would know, but that wasn't her. She didn't want to be a judge, jury and executioner, although the justice system had failed her she still thought it worked most of the time. But she would need evidence on them. Evidence that she could in theory get from her warehouse recording terminal, but that would require she tell the police she was a cape which was unacceptable as it would endanger her dad.

    The better option was to go buy the hardware like a normal person, or at least make it, then catch them on that. It would be tricky, but she could do that later. She should have at least a few weeks before they try anything around her.

    Taylor made her way to the door where the secretary was waiting for her.

    "Miss Herbert."

    Taylor didn't correct her; the woman hadn't learned all the times Taylor had corrected her before.

    "Principal Blackwell wishes to see you."

    "Of course." Taylor agreed. "Lead the way."

    0o0

    "Miss Herbert, it's good to see you doing well." Blackwell greeted Taylor in her office.

    "Panacea does good work, I don't even need glasses anymore, nice of her to do that after saving my life." Taylor agreed and felt pleasure at the look that crossed on Blackwell's face with that.

    "Yes, of course. In case you don't know the police were not able to find who attacked you, but we have taken measures to correct what allowed it to happen in the first place. The teachers will watch out for you and will investigate any claim of bullying you inform them properly."

    "Like they did before?" Taylor threw back.

    "Had you brought proper evidence to us before, Miss. Herbert, we would have put a stop to it. Yet you keep accusing the same three star students of the school and no one agrees with your story. As I told the police, I don't think it was so much as a bullying gone too far so much as some gang member choosing you as their victim. I hope I don't need to tell you how many gangs we have here in Winslow. You might not apply yourself properly to your schooling as your grades show, but you should be able to notice at least that much."

    Taylor glared at the woman but let that side as she said. "Of course."

    "Good. You may go off to class."

    It didn't escape Taylor's notice as she left that there was nothing in there about fixing the cameras so that they could have caught what happened or anything like that. For a moment she debated calling Blackwell on that, but she knew that it would amount to nothing if she did, but empty promises they would fix them later as before, but they never did.

    0o0

    Taylor sort of hoped that she would get a charge out of that school day, but nothing else happened. It turned out not even the Trio was stupid enough to bully her the first day back.

    Taylor was quite sure in a few days the teachers would stop paying as much attention to her, and it would start back up, but for the short term at least things were peaceful.

    Not as peaceful as when she got home, however.

    Taylor made her way back home and into her warehouse heading to her workshop. She had tools she wanted to make. What she could do with cloth, well limited in scope, seemed to be more bound by her own ability to think of things.

    She could make a cape that would let her fly out of armor, but it wasn't strong enough inside armor to do such. Only a flying carpet could move her in her armor until she found a lighter version, or a way to make it stronger.

    Tools were useful and her bags let her have them on hand at any time. She just had to make them first.

    *Power Buy Attempt 2.5.2 Computer Hub (50). Bought. Banked 50 points. *

    Reroll since last perk was fully bought/brought to some level of ranking and points > 0

    *Power Buy Attempt 1.5.35 Trivial Applications (50). Bought. Banked 0 points. *

    Taylor paused in her walking into her workshop as she felt her powers secure two minor perks, and she quickly turned to head to the storage area to go look at her new computers as she considered both.

    The scope of the computers she had been given was far beyond Taylor's ability to understand, but she guessed that what she had gained would have been priced in the hundreds of millions easy, from just the volume of hardware alone. Cabinets full of computers, names of which she only knew thanks to her perks.

    Her gaze moved to the much simpler things she did get. The desktops and laptops both looked great and she knew were far better than anything she had seen in a store. A tablet that was closer to tinker tech in what it could do. A scanner that didn't just scan paper, but another for simple 3d items, nothing more complex than miniature figurines, generating the files to then print out both paper and such figures. The details didn't make it useful for construction of anything. It was better suited to printing out more like coffee mugs than machine parts, but it made it easy to duplicate any simple small object or printed material she wanted to.

    They were all resting in one spot in the warehouse and it made her own self-built computer worthless as she could tell in a glance this was high end computer gear.

    Sitting down in front of one to see what software they had, she focused on the other perk which let her cast any magical enchantment she knew how to do in minor terms. So a minor shield spell, a minor fire spell and such.

    This even gave her minor healing spells, although she was limited to trivial healing, so anything more than the most minor of scrapes and bruises would require other skills.

    Tiny little things, but quite useful.

    It would have been nice if her new computers had internet access, but she knew from the perk itself that required another perk first. Still as she looked around, she found that it had all the software she could ever want to do anything she could think of, from writing to photo editing, to video editing, to 3d printing and design.

    For half a charge, it was well worth its cost.

    0o0

    Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011

    0o0

    Although Taylor didn't need to sleep any more, she found it a bit easier to just use her bed and blanket anyway. Sleep for the two hours it let her rest in as she waited for her dad to fall asleep. That way when he checked in on her, which he did from time to time, he would find her asleep in bed, not up and about, going to bed knowing she was in bed herself.

    Waking up, she would confirm he was deep in sleep himself with her scanner, then left to go on her patrols. Usually after midnight so it was the next day when she left.

    She had mixed feelings on if she wanted something to happen tonight given the lack of anything since this weekend.

    Following her scanner, Selene didn't find much at first, and it turned out to be something other than the scanner that told her something was going on, when she heard a siren go off.

    For an instant Selene thought it was the Endbringer one, before she realized it was a firetruck that was driving past in a hurry.

    Selene paused for only a second, then rushed off on foot to give chase. Firetrucks meant fire, and that might mean people that needed a hero to save them.

    0o0

    Selene found an apartment building was on fire when she arrived, firefighters already working on putting it out as some of them headed inside in gear.

    At that, Selene looked at her scanner, confirming there were people inside, but they were hurt and trapped by the flames that showed to her scanner.

    "Are you a cape?" A man asked her, and Selene looked up to see a Police Officer was in front of her, given what she was wearing she understood his question.

    Although you didn't have to be a cape to dress like one, someone showed up dressed in full armor with a sword likely was some kind of cape.

    "Yes, I am. There are people trapped inside."

    "Firefighters are getting them out, but if you think you can-"

    Selene didn't even wait for him to finish before she took off at top speed, going in after the firefighters.

    Drawing on her full 20 times peak human abilities in her armor she ran into the building faster than a car on the highway.

    As she made her way inside, the people moving slow to her accelerated speed, she felt her oxygen supply in her armor trip. The air wasn't breathable in here, and she would have only a few minutes.

    With her speed, she wouldn't need more than a few minutes. Only a brief glance at her sensor to find the most hurt person, she ran right past the men and women in uniform without warning them or waiting, finding the flames as warm as a summer day, making it clear that they were not hot enough to harm yet, but anything hotter could possibly hurt her.

    Selene didn't stop for anything as she took stairs as minor suggestions and rather than try and open the door, she treated the door as a suggestion that it should be opened and ran though it without pausing. The cheap wood responded to being hit by a force closer to the impact of a car at highway speeds by shattering without any resistance to her.

    She made her way to the unconscious person on the floor, already withdrawing one of her healing blankets to cover her, wishing she had thought about oxygen for other people, wrapping her up in it and debated the safest way to get out, before she decided the nearby wall was good enough.

    When you were strong enough, walls became minor suggestions if you were in a life or death situation.

    Leaving the woman in place so as to not harm her when she broke through, Selene hit the nearby wall hard enough to open a large hole to the outside.

    Grabbing the woman, she hoped that the impact at the end wouldn't hurt her too badly. In this case, unlike shoving the woman though the wall with her, with Secondary Powers Refinement and Physical Prowess, she should be able to do such without worry as she would automatically adjust her grip as to not cause the woman harm as she fell.

    Her powers claimed she could catch someone falling without breaking their neck the same way as if they hit the ground.

    But this wasn't something she had been able to test and had no other way to get this woman down both gently and save everyone else.

    She just hoped it wouldn't be too bad for her and the EMTs could handle any other issues as she got everyone else out.

    So she leapt out of the building with the woman in her arms, trying to cushion the fall as much as she could, landing on her feet and rushing over to the EMTs, pausing only long enough to make sure that they knew she was there with someone before she place her on the ground, spun around and rushed up, leaping into the hole she had just come out of as it was a faster way to get inside.

    She had to repeat this nearly a dozen times before she got the last person out, and with the last one she made her way to the firefighters to speak to one, to let him know what the situation was.

    "There only the firefighters left alive inside the building."

    The man looked at her, and asked, "How do you know that?"

    "Lifesigns detector." Selene informed him and showed him the readout of the device, indicating as such.

    Had they not been firefighters it would have shown signs of injuries due to breathing in smoke.

    The man looked at it, then at those she had pulled out and with a nod called in an order for the men inside to get out and stop searching as the cape had gotten everyone else out.

    That didn't mean that they wouldn't find dead people inside later, but those that could still be saved had been rescued and they trusted her on that.

    It felt rather humbling that the man just accepted what she said with only one question.

    "Your new." A woman addressed her, and Selene turned to look at the policewoman that had come over to talk to her.

    "Only started going out a week ago, been working on my gear before that." Selene replied, then realized she should give her name. "My name is Selene."

    "Most capes give an alias of some kind."

    "Selene is my cape name, not my given name. Selene after the Greek Moon Goddess."

    *Power Buy Attempt 3.3.4 Anaheim Degree (Gundam UC) (200). Not Bought. Banked 100 points. *

    Selene blinked as her power failed to buy a perk. What had surprised her wasn't that it failed, and well she had no idea what Anaheim was in the name, both the concept of what it would include and the names she had been trying to figure out for a while ago, suddenly connected in her mind.

    She got the impression that it was the knowledge of how to make Mobile Suit Gundam's, something she knew from a fictional TV series, as large giant robots.

    The implications of that tag, and what the other tags had suddenly hit her, and Selene wanted to get out of there and investigate it right away.

    "Rather humble of you there." The Officer noted sarcastically, making Selene recall she was talking to someone and locked that in for now as she knew she suddenly had a lot to think about.

    "I liked the name." Selene lied, since it was more her powers that liked it, she liked the boost in power it would give her for using it, "And I don't think there is much more I can do around here."

    Selene had checked the scanner to make sure no one was critically hurt. Well she could use her healing power on them, it was only one person right now and she had to stay within 10 meters, which meant going with them to the hospital as she wasn't going to tell them to keep them outside.

    "The PRT is going to want to talk to you, they are on the way with a Protectorate member."

    "Do I have to stay here?" Selene asked before she even thought about what she said.

    "You haven't done anything illegal yet and I know of no warrants out in your name, but it would be a good idea to talk to them."

    It… would be a good idea, Selene could see to herself, and it was something she wanted to do after she did something heroic enough to feel comfortable. It was hard to have done something more heroic than this, but she wanted to run and research this perk more. She had no idea what Anaheim and Gundam meant exactly. Was this some sort of weapon they used?

    But there was no way that she wouldn't get another charge out of her meeting with the Protectorate, forcing a roll before she could investigate it.

    Unless she locked it in, and she decided that even if it was a bad option, she wasn't going to stop her plans to being a hero to make a smart selection here. So she locked it in and said.

    "Sure, I'll stick around."

    Selene settled in to wait, her thoughts entirely on what she was going to say. This was a big moment for her, and she hadn't prepared for it to be so sudden. Soon enough she heard a motorcycle, which resolved into Armsmaster.

    He hopped off his bike at the exact same instant it came to a stop, looking impressive enough that Selene felt the slight urge to swoon over it a bit. He looked every bit the powerful, experienced hero he was with that.

    "Are you going to fight me?"

    "What?" Selene shot back in surprise, as she tried to figure out why he would ask that of her, when it hit her.

    Unknown cape. She might have helped but a villain could do the same.

    "No, of course not."

    "Good." He noted as the PRT van arrived, additional men and women getting out in full gear, but they didn't move then a foot away from their van, waiting. "What's your name?"

    "Selene."

    "I meant your cape name, although we don't mind if you want to give your real name."

    "Selene as in the Greek Goddess of the Moon, it's not my given name."

    "PRT regulations strongly suggest against choosing the name of any god or goddess as a cape name."

    "I know… it just… it was the only name that seemed to really fit."

    "In what way?"

    "I would rather not talk about it."

    Silence drew on before Armsmaster observed. "That fine, have you considered joining the Protectorate? Well you clearly have access to good resources to make gear like that, the resources a tinker can draw on are beyond any one person can."

    "I'm considering if I want to join the wards or not, I don't know yet."

    "You are wards aged?"

    Selene realized that she had been mistaken for an adult in her armor, given she was tall for her age, likely a fully grown adult woman.

    "Yes"

    "Most teenagers couldn't access the resources to build gear of that quality."

    "I would rather not talk about that, is that information really needed?"

    "No, may I ask why you haven't joined the wards yet?"

    Selene hesitated, weighing her options, and decided to answer truthfully. "I don't know what they are like yet. I can't sign myself up for a group until I know they are not corrupt and can be trusted."

    "Difficult to do if you don't talk to them."

    "The PRT won't exactly let me near them to talk to them without a reputation first."

    Selene indicated to the building.

    "Correct. It is too late to arrange a meeting sometime this week, given the Meet and Greet on Saturday they must prepare for. But I could agree for a meeting between you and them next week if you like."

    Armsmaster made a movement and withdrew a card that he offered to Selene, she looked at it to see it had a phone number on it.

    "Give me a call after you decide when you want to meet up. I will need at least 48 hours' notice so I can arrange a proper meeting ground and ensure the wards have time to arrange to show up, longer if you want a specific ward to talk to and he is busy. Figure out both whom and when you want to meet and give me a call. Assume that anything before next Monday isn't possible at this point."

    Selene looked at the card, it was exactly what she wanted out of things. She wanted to ask for one on Monday right away, but she decided it was better to consider who to talk to. Gallant was the friendest of the wards from what she knew and also a tinker, but at the same time his gear let him read emotions which might not be the safest.

    "Thanks, I will do that when I decide who I want to talk to."

    2/3 charges

    0o0

    Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011

    0o0

    In a very rare case, Taylor was quite happy when her power didn't give her the last charge she needed to get this unknown item from Gundam before she got a chance to hit the library after school, making her wish she had the internet at home as she needed to do research.

    Hopping onto Google, Taylor started with the most critical topic. Anaheim and Gundams. Finding out the answer within seconds of googling that.

    Anaheim Electronics was the in-universe company that built the various Gundams themselves.

    Checking her charge to make sure it was still far away; she quickly threw in the other tags she had into google as well.

    Iji and Geneforge didn't give her anything, but World of Warcraft and Dead Space were computer games from Earth Alpha. Neither had been made locally on Earth Bet, quite common for any media these days, it was only stuff before the Endbringers that found the same in both worlds.

    There was a petition online to bring World of Warcraft from Earth Alpha to Earth Bet, but it hadn't gone anywhere, in comparison Dead Space had been sent over and was a niche game, but she could buy or pirate a copy to play if she wanted to.

    Her suspicions from last night when she saw Gundam was correct.

    Her perks in the Forge itself were being drawn from works of fiction.

    The ones in her body and warehouse didn't do that which was why they didn't have a tag. She watched her charge carefully lest it activate and grab the perk before she considered this new angle fully, she looked into details of the two series she could find online. Trying to confirm how much of how the perks matched the series itself.

    The results were very promising.

    Her upgrade ability from Deadspace was a lot like how the upgrade mechanics in the game worked. Her ability to make magical clothing? That what people with the tailor skill set in World of Warcraft could do.

    Without being able to find Geneforge she couldn't say how well it matched, but she assumed based on other evidence that it did just as much.


    As she went back to Gundams her attention fully moved to what Anaheim was, and the implications of such.

    Anaheim Degree. A degree from the company that built Gundams. Her perk was clear she would be able to build giant robots with this, although that was the limit of what her innate sense was telling her.

    It was tempting as she could see a clear use, but then she recalled how long it had taken to build her armor, and the concept of this perk.

    Would she really be able to build a Gundam by herself? She was 20 times faster than peak human in her clothes.

    But that wasn't fast enough. Like her armor it was almost certainly limited by the materials in question. The repair teams on Gundams from what she could see on the show had hundreds if not thousands of highly skilled technicians with massive facilities and infrastructure.

    Could she build one with the PRTs aid? They might have the resources, but she couldn't be the first tinker that would want to build a giant robot to punch endbringers in the face.

    Since she hadn't heard of any before, Taylor was quite sure the answer was no. They wouldn't help her to do such.

    There was no way she was going to build this on her own. Not unless her warehouse side of things gave her something a lot more useful for the rapid production of parts. Right now, this perk would be a waste of her charges since it would take her years to build something on the scale of a Gundum on her own.

    With a bit of regret, Taylor let it go. It didn't have the long-term usefulness like the Infinitely Customizable appeared to be. Giant robots only had one purpose, fighting endbringers and S class capes and it would take her decades to build it by herself as she was right now.

    *Power Buy Attempt 2.1.26 Storage Solutions (200). Bought. Banked 0 points. *

    Taylor paused in her thoughts as she got a new perk from her warehouse, and her only real thoughts on it was, it was nice? It made her wish a bit she just stuck with Gundum, even though she could use this now.

    She got construction robots that could only make display cases and other such storage items and would do such automatically now using her workshop to display or store whatever she wanted to in her storage area. She just had to ask and they would make storage solutions for her automatically to any number she wanted.

    Although they couldn't put stuff in or on them, she had to do that herself, there was also the warning they couldn't build a container for something she herself didn't know how to contain yet.

    Turning her thoughts back to her powers, she wondered if she could build up a list of fictions to guess if a perk was a good idea or not. There was way too much for her to research online herself….

    But she didn't need to do all that research herself, now did she?

    She could leverage the Cape Design section on PHO, ask them what fictions would be good to have powers from, and just memorize the best examples given. That would tell her if she should lock in a series or not based on the tag alone.

    With a plan in mind, Taylor opened up a new thread on PHO in the creative capeing section. Making sure she was using her old PHO account that had zero posts to it, she started to type up a thread, her thoughts went to how she could get internet access at home. Her dad would have to pay for anything other than dialup. Dialup was not secure enough for any serious research, it would be faster for her to go to the library for anything she was willing to let be attached to her and anything she would need a VPN for wasn't a good idea to do at home. A smartphone required an ID to get, which would require her to explain where the money for it came from.

    She would have to figure something out if she found out the wards were not that good a fit after all. If the wards were good all those issues became completely moot, but that alone was not enough, if the PRT was not good then there was no point in joining the wards even if they are good.
    ♦ Topic: What Tinker power would you choose?
    In: Boards ► Theorycrafting ► Capes
    Posted On Feb 2nd 2011:

    OP (Bookworm1995): [Assume for a minute that you got an opportunity that would make you a tinker, but your ability will only rest in some technology from a fictional universe that already exists, which is limited in scope to relatively common examples from within that fiction.

    For example, you could build Gundam and their various equipment to maintain, arm and such, but only Gundam and things that need to be maintained, nothing else from that setting.

    This must be a published work of fiction, not something your friend made up. It doesn't need to be popular, Obscure Earth Alpha series are fine so long as you can list them by name. It just must be published in some way.

    What setting would you choose and what would be your ability? Keep in mind if you choose something like Gundams you better hope you can talk the PRT into supplying you the materials to build a giant robot. So if you choose something that needs a lot of resources to work, you better have an extremely rich uncle or some sales pitch to let the PRT give you enough resources to qualify as a small country on your own.]

    Taylor studied the new thread, and posted it, or tried to as it went into mod review as well her account was old, it had zero posts and had registered to a trash email address.

    Her thoughts then turned to what she had been putting off, at least it would be interesting. Namely what Armsmaster had asked her last night.

    Which ward did she want to speak to?

    The clear answers for her was either Kid Win or Gallant, but she didn't know which she wanted to speak to more. Gallant was friender but as an emotion sensor though his gear…

    That was when she recalled what else Armsmaster had told her.

    The Ward's event on Saturday.

    If she went there, she could watch them in person, see what they did, maybe if she was feeling bold try and ask them a question. But she didn't need to do that to see what they did and said to other people who did ask them,She just had to be at the event.

    Clearly, she should go there, figure out which Ward to talk to, then call Armsmaster afterwards.

    But in the meantime she had other stuff to do first. She hadn't dared to look at preparing a video to post in what she knew would be a PRT announcement thread for her appearance, least she earn enough of a charge to get the perk before she could research it.

    Now that was out of the way, she left to go prepare the video, then go post it to her announcement thread. That should give her new thread enough time to get some posts for her to read afterwards.

    0o0

    Arriving in her warehouse, Taylor made her way to her warehouse to request the footage from the time she heard the firetruck to when she left.

    It was a lot easier now that she had a computer to interface with rather than have to just ask her Kiosk for such.

    The interface seemed to be a lot like Youtube, in that she could search for videos by name and categories and it would show her matching recordings and let her select edited cuts depending on her desires.

    Tagging on the videos was interesting, because searching for Grue hadn't gotten her the encounter with him, but when she pulled up the video of the patrol she thought she ran into him, there was a tag that said unknown cape team, rather than Grue.

    This puzzled her, because she wasn't aware that Grue was part of a cape team, according to what she found online he worked alone for small time robbery. The worst he did was be a bouncer for higher, he wasn't known for working with other capes.

    Which meant either her research into him was wrong, or she was mistaken as to whom it was.

    Whatever it was, it was clear that her powers weren't going to just tell her, as when she tried to search for 'unknown cape team' not even the video she knew that was tagged with it showed up.

    It looked like if she was going to search for whatever team that Grue, or whoever it was, in her recordings, she would have to discover who they were first.

    Turning her attention back to the video of last night, she just selected the default cut that her computer offered her to see if she had to request any edits or not, wondering if she would have to do such herself in the video software she didn't know that well or not.

    She was quite pleased to learn that was not the case, as she found a Movie Worthy cut of the action, carefully highlighting the events of last night well concealing details that was too much information.

    Her scanner did show up on the video, but it pointed her to a person with a simple arrow, rather than listed all the fine medical details it picked up on. Using it on walls indicated where to hit, not the detailed structural breakdown of the walls and so on.

    It was only when she saw herself placing a blanket of healing on the first person, she saved that she swore aloud as she realized that she had completely forgotten about them in the frenzy that was last night.

    They were healing items. She wasn't going to take them from people that were still hurt, and before she could think to mention it to the EMTs, she had to deal with Armsmaster and the PRT. Then her power's attempt at a new perk and the realization that the tags on her powers were fictions. Between all of that it completely slipped her mind until she saw them being handed out.

    What would that mean that she hadn't done that? What had happened to them? What would the PRT do about it? She had better give Armsmaster a call about it right now.

    She could go post her video later. Right now she had to call Armsmaster to tell him she had left healing tinker tech devices behind.

    0o0

    "Armsmaster."

    "This is Selene."

    "Hello Selene, it is good to hear from you. I take it you decided which Ward you want to talk to and when?"

    "No, not yet, its something else."

    "What is it?"

    "Last night, the blankets I handed out to those in the building? They are healing blankets, as they are healing the people under them, more stabilizing them then outright healing in the short term. It would take hours to have any real effect, but it was to help give the EMTs more time. I meant to tell someone but then you showed up and I forgot I had handed them out. Sorry about that."

    "It is understandable, you are a child and it is part of the reason why we have the wards so you can learn not to make mistakes like that. How urgently do you want them back?"

    "They are the only healing items that I have managed to make so far, so I would like them back sooner rather than later."
    "Give me a day to have the PRT collect them, then give me a call when you are free and I can arrange for someone to bring them to you. Was there anything I could answer that might help you decide which ward you want to speak? I can't tell private details, but I can tell you some details about the wards that are public but not commonly known."

    "I am trying to decide between Kid Win and Gallant, I will finalise my choice later and give you another call about it."

    "If your concerns is the quality of their abilities, Kid Win is a far better tinker then Gallant, although Gallant is a much more social person, if your planning to talk shop, his restriction is limited to his gear and he never been able to work on anyone else's gear despite many tries otherwise."

    "Oh, I didn't know that."

    "We don't like making the fact that he is restricted to only working on the armor he has shown and nothing else public. But those that know the details around tinkers would have concluded such, so it is not an issue to warn you ahead of time. Although would you be willing to consider a third option?"

    "Who?"

    "Vista, now she is clearly younger than you. But she has been in the wards longer than several members of the local protectorate. She is not a tinker, but she knows the wards inside and out by now and might offer a more femine perspective on things. You don't have to decide now, and if you want to talk to several, we can arrange that at the same time. So don't feel like you are limited to just one ward. Although if you really want to meet them all at once, I need a better reason then you just want to. 2 or 3 at once is fine."

    "I will keep that in mind, and I see what I can figure out, but it's likely going to be after their event on Saturday that I know which ones I want to talk with."

    "Are you planning to attend that out of costume then?"

    "It was an option I was considering, why would that be an issue?"

    "Only if you are in costume. Half the reason we hold such events is so new capes like yourself can talk to them, even if briefly, in a public way."

    "I may or may not be able to go to one of the events depending on time constraints and other factors, I need some time to decide if I will be going this week or perhaps some other week, or if the in-costume meeting goes well I might not need to go to the public event anyway.."

    "Either way is fine, I do hope you see the wards are good people, and that the PRT can help you far more than you realize. I need to get back to work, Selene, but feel free to call again if you have more questions."

    Armsmaster hung up, leaving Taylor smiling as she turned to resume her other tasks.

    0o0

    With the issue resolved, Taylor made her way to one of the cheap cafés that she knew didn't have any cameras where she would be able to upload the video of last night. The library computers wouldn't let you upload video, just a picture, and they had cameras as well so she couldn't do it there.

    As she sat in a corner table with her back against the wall to prevent anyone from seeing her screen and started uploading the video to Youtube, she took a peek at her thread, not signing in to either of her accounts just yet, finding much to her pleasure that the thread had been approved and there were a few posts already.

    Not very useful ones just yet however.

    [What do you mean another universe? Giant Robots that could punch Endbringers to death? Sign me up for that. ]

    Taylor shook her head at that, not that the direct answers would be helpful given how random her powers were, but it would help her to investigate some series ahead of time in case they did come up. She might have to set up a bounty board with minor cash rewards if she wanted more detailed and extensive answers, she had seen a few threads like that in the past, though she would have to wait until she found a way to get some money for that.

    Nothing big had come up yet, and she figured it would take a few days to get some good examples to draw on.

    With the video uploaded, she made her way over to the PRT announcement section, confirming there was an announcement for her as she expected. Giving a quick read though to see if there was anything to address in it before she signed in and posted the link to her video.

    ♦ Topic: New Cape in Brockton Bay; 'Selene'
    In: Boards ► New ► Capes
    Posted On Apr 17th 2011:

    [New Cape in Brockton Bay; 'Selene']

    OP (Cape_Sightings101) [Hello PHO people from Brockton Bay and those looking in this area of the boards for whatever reason, last night a new cape showed up to save 10 people from a burning building in downtown. The cape introduced herself as 'Selene' which she told the police officer who spoke to her was as in the Greek Goddess of the Moon, not the given name.

    Afterwards, Armsmaster arrived to take her statement, in which she indicated she is of the Wards age, is considering joining them and made plans to speak with the wards in a more private setting later, and will be reaching out to the PRT to arrange such soon.

    Included is a photo of her complements of the police, as well as several pictures and statements from those included below.

    Based on what she was wearing, it assumed she is a tinker with some very impressive power armor, given she leaped three stories straight in the air, and walked through fire as if it wasn't even there to get people out.]

    It wasn't exactly what happened, Taylor noted, but it was close enough that she could see the PRT shifting what she told Armsmaster to make it more like she was already going to join and not just considering it.

    Scanning the thread, she found various posts talking about her, some that even noticed that the account Selene had been registered a few days ago and wondered if it was her. Of course Taylor had registered the account in a netcafe with no cameras while using a VPN so that no one could track down her real identity too easily.

    Confirming there was nothing she needed to address but put the link up, Taylor signed into her Selene account and wasn't that surprised to see she had messages, however one of the messages was flagged as critical from an admin, so she couldn't ignore it, and had to click though it to access the page.

    It was from Tin_Mother, not someone she knew about before, but she was listed as an admin of all things on the forums rather than just a moderator.

    [Hello Selene, given this account was created a few days before 'Selene' showed up in Brockton Bay, I am going to assume that you are the same cape in question and you are attempting to make a PHO presence like a lot of independent capes do. However, before I can allow your account to post now that the name Selene is reported by the PRT to belong to a cape by that name, I need proof that you are her. Please reply back with proof. The simplest method of proof is a picture of you in costume, your account name written on a poster, today's date and my name under it. Any other method you wish to use is also fine so long as I can prove it came from the cape in question. Please ask if you need another option.]

    Unable to post anything because of that, Taylor replied back, knowing her connection was secure.

    [Hello Tin_Mother, for my proof that I am her, here is what I was about to post in my own thread. It is the recording of last night of me saving the people from the fire from a camera that I made that follows me when I am on patrol. Please let me know if this is not sufficient proof.]

    *Power Buy Attempt 3.10.16 Super Scientific Solution (Tenchi Muyo) (100). Bought Banked 0 points. *

    As soon as Taylor sent that message, she felt her power surge and she gained another perk. This one was split into two sides. The first side let her make common household items that were super, such as dishwashers that instantly cleaned dishes, water pipes that self heated water, or windows that were both forcefields and acted as air conditions.

    The other side let her cut any time to do research in half, by giving her an instinctual feeling for what the correct answer was for what she was trying to do. To the point that outright guesses were more accurate to start with than they otherwise could be.

    To her surprise, when Taylor looked back at the window she noticed Tin_Mother had already replied to her.

    [Just the first few seconds of that is good enough. You have posting permissions now, and let me tell you that it is a very smart thing to record your patrols. It will earn you a lot of points with the PRT if you can hand over video of your stopping crime, to prove it really did happen in the first place.]

    Posting the video to her own thread, Taylor smiled. Things were looking up.

    As she left the cafe, she wondered how to leverage the ability to make useful items around the home to fight crime, or at least make her warehouse a lot more livable. Hot water would be nice, she could throw up a shower in there and have easy access to a place to clean up.

    0o0

    As nice as a dishwasher that worked instantly and other items like that was, her dad wasn't dense enough to miss what they would do around the house.

    Deciding that a shower she could use inside her warehouse would be useful, now that she had hot water then icey cold anyway, she worked on building it as she brainstormed on what else she could make.

    Taylor ended up spending the rest of the afternoon making useful items to clean her warehouse, like a broom that automatically sweeps, containers of soap that never ran out, force field containment boxes for hazardous loot, a magic chefs knife sharpening kit that supernaturally sharpened blades like her sword, a trash can that only needed emptying after it was filled hundreds of times over, and a meditation mat that allowed you to clear your mind and contemplate easily.

    The power could be useful outside of her warehouse once she could tell her dad about her powers and joining the wards, and things were starting to look up in that regard.

    0o0

    Saturday, February 5th, 2011

    0o0

    Taylor didn't know how much longer things were going to be okay at school, but the first week back turned out to be rather nice.

    But she knew it was because the Trio wasn't that stupid to attack her already.

    Next week some time, likely on Friday was probably when it would happen. Something small and minor, something deniable that they let the teacher catch, they apologize, and it would slide. Make it clear to the other kids in school they were still in power. But Taylor would do her best to be ready to start documenting and collecting evidence by then.

    0o0

    Taylor arrived in the crowds and looked around, surprised to find that New Wave of all people had joined this as well.

    The Wards were already all there and in costume when she arrived, and Taylor looked around trying to confirm which adults were around, and which ones were not.

    Armsmaster and Velocity were nowhere to be found, but the other heroes were there.

    Making it a very crowded event.

    Taylor started to head near Kid Win to watch him from a distance, she had no plans to talk to him unless she saw something that screamed to her that it was safe to do so. Her plans were that she was here was to only observe and not speak to anyone.

    *Power Buy Attempt 1.3.2 Empathetic II (100). Bought Banked 0 points. *

    Taylor froze with that, quite sure her face took on a WTF look for a second, because she felt that. Her powers claimed to be purely random and she got THAT NOW?!?

    But she knew that her powers were truly random, it was just that sometimes luck was in her favor.

    She had just won the jackpot regarding her current situation.

    Realizing what she likely looked like, Taylor schooled her face, looking around to confirm no one had noticed that. No longer needing to guess because with her new power she just knew by looking at them if they had. It would still be on their minds after all if they had noticed her and not just dismissed it outright.

    She found they were all too busy to have noticed her, her new power confirmed such.

    Empathetic, was a layer perk without another level to it, she had capped it with just this one. Like a lot of the body perks, it had grabbed both level 1 and 2 at the same time. Given Taylor already had a perk that took half a charge before, she could see a case where her power could get level 1 only, but only in the case she had half a charge left when it came up on a second perk acquire attempt.

    Empathetic granted her the ability to, for any race she was familiar with, instantly read their emotional and mental state, as well as the truthfulness of their words. Well this wasn't outright mind reading, it was a very close thing, since she could tell if they were lying to her and generally why. It wouldn't outright be what they were thinking, but it would be in the general area of such to the point only outright mind reading would give her more information regarding that.

    Taylor couldn't believe what she pulled here, and she tried to send her powers a doubtful feeling, given how perfect this was to what she arrived at.

    She had planned to watch Kid Win for a while, study his gear, see what he did with other people and maybe if she was feeling unusually bold go ask him a question.

    And then her forge said here, have a power that made humans just shy of being open books to her, and if she ran into a faceless blob from the other side of the galaxy, she could figure out the same with just a few minutes of talking to them.

    And it wasn't even alone either, it mixed with Super Scientific Solution to take an already impressive ability to read people even closer to borderline mind reading. Making her start analysing extremely accurately from the start.

    Taylor gaze ran over the assembled wards, starting with the one she had come here to talk with. The depth of the information that was available to her surprised her.

    Kid Win didn't really like being in the limelight here, he would rather be back in his workshop tinkering or out on patrol.

    As she wondered how she could read so much, her power highlighted signs that indicated such. How tiny glances to the streets and his gear indicated he wanted to go on a patrol, well other glances he made to his gear and the PRT HQ indicated he wanted to go to his workshop to work on it some more.

    Taylor could tell that didn't mean he hated being here, rather if given a list of things to do with either of those, he would do those before this. But he didn't dislike this enough to put it on the list of things he wouldn't do. Just less interested then the other things he could be doing.
    There was something about his power that seemed to be pushing him to tinker more, but on studying it Taylor felt it seemed rather reasonable that powers came with a desire to use them.

    Her gaze flew over the other wards, pausing only long enough to read them in turn. Learning far more about the Brockton Bay wards then she had ever thought she could learn living with them for months. She might not learn their hopes and dreams now, but what they felt about what they were doing right now was massive.

    Aegis was a lot like Kid Win in his general feelings right now. He wanted to be on patrols, training, or socializing more privately, but didn't mind this at all.

    Clockblocker was having the time of his life, and it was quite clear that if he was told he would be doing this every day for the rest of his life, he could die happy. The event had just started, and he already knew it would be over way too soon for his liking. He wouldn't even notice the hours either. It would pass by that quick for him.

    Gallant wasn't quite as intense in his enjoyment as Clockblocker was, but he also liked this better than anything else he did in the wards and was enjoying himself as he glanced every now and then at the love of his life wishing he could be closer to her at this event, but needed to hide it well while he was in costume.

    Taylor was floored that she could even pick that up in someone in a mask like he had on as she looked in the direction of where it was, not able to tell if it was Glory Girl or Panacea, but able to isolate it to one of them in the new wave area based on the direction he was looking.

    So her thoughts went to both girls, reading them trying to see if it was a crush or something that was returned by them.

    Looking at Panacea first made Taylor pause as she could tell the girl was in a deep melancholy state, she didn't want to be here, but she viewed this as better than being out healing, since she was with her own love.

    Of minor interest to Taylor, given what else she saw, she could tell the girl's power was pushing her to use it more, to do more, which wasn't what she wanted to do. This was nothing compared to what else she got however.

    Which really caused Taylor's mind to pause as she realized that Panacea wasn't sending that to Gallant as she had expected given the direction the boy had been looking, but rather to her sister.

    Taylor stared at her closer, but her power insisted it was true, and as she asked it why she could see the small signs pointed out. How Panacea's love for Glory Girl ran far deeper than sisters into an obsession that she refused to act on because she knew how wrong it was. But that didn't mean it wasn't there. A deep love that was extremely intimate lovers, rather that of family.

    Half afraid to find that Glory Girl returned it, Taylor focused on her next, only to find that Glory Girl's feeling was being sent over to Gallant, she wanted to be with him right now as well, but like Gallant she wasn't allowed to act like their relationship existed while both of them were in costume.

    A thought crossed Taylor as she recalled that Glory Girl was dating someone. She couldn't recall his name as she didn't follow the news, but it made her wonder if he was Gallant out of costume.

    Which would explain why they couldn't be together at this event as the relationship would compromise his civilian identity and out him. Either she would have to be cheating on her boyfriend or make it clear her public boyfriend was Gallant.

    It took looking at the people around the girls in question, before Taylor was able to realize what was going on.

    Glory Girls 'shaker' power spread around her, Taylor could feel it modifying the emotions of those close to her, as it pushed her to want to use her own powers more, to make people love her, or fear her, in fact the mental changes felt eerily similar to the emotions Amy had towards her sister. As her perk spun analysing this fact she concealed her shock so as to not give anything away. Glory Girl had mastered her sister into loving her.

    Taylor wasn't sure what to do about all of this. Well, about the fact that apparently Panacea was mastered by her sister. She couldn't even start to think of a proper way to address that, or even who to tell that to. Her strategy perk churned as she thought about ways she could use this knowledge to her advantage without causing too much damage to the heros.

    Should she tell Panacea? Glory Girl? Brandish? The PRT? Who was the right person to tell when you discovered a girl lusted after her sister because of a master effect? Was it even right to tell anyone if it would so badly and unpredictably impact one of the major hero teams in the city? How could she leverage this information without causing all that unintended damage and ruining their reputations?

    With no idea what to do, she turned to the other wards here, filing all this information in the back of her mind. Hoping for something to distract her, which something sort of did in a way as another charge finished and sought out a perk.

    *Power Buy Attempt 2.5.4 Movie & TV Series Collection (50). Bought. Banked 50 points. *

    Reroll since last perk was fully bought/brought to some level of ranking and points > 0

    *Power Buy Attempt 3.10.24 Scrapyard Skills (Swat Kats) (300). Not Bought. Banked 50 points. *

    Taylor was floored by how quickly this charge had built. Her power really liked this event as it hadn't even been minutes since her last charge.

    The perk she got was items for her warehouse that amounted to several months' worth of movies and tv shows. She had no idea what shows, only that her power would now give her about 12 hours more each month that passed from now on, and if she didn't like a series she could reject it, it would be replaced with a new one at least as long or series to get as long, but she would forget what was included unless she had seen it from somewhere else. Only remembering that she hadn't liked it when she watched it which was why she got rid of it.

    That one had only taken half a charge, and so on the second grab attempt it went into the forge and tried to lock in a perk but failed. Taylor was starting to get the impression that most things in the forge would fail unless she had several charges already before it was selected, and she would have to make liberal use of her lock in order to get anything higher level from there quickly.

    Taylor hadn't heard of Swat Kats series before, but she could tell from the perk name and its general feel that it was about taking junk items and repurposing them to fill tasks they were never designed for but could do in a pinch.

    With access to her workshop, it really wasn't worth it, maybe if it only needed a single charge, but since she was missing 2 and a half charges, she pay that in tax, and thus it would cost her more then she would if this had been grabbed on a single charge. More importantly all the scrap yards were monitored to find tinkers and as such wouldn't be a good idea to take stuff from them.

    Taylor didn't lock it in, as her thoughts went to the rest of the wards, grateful that getting the new perk had distracted her from something she had rather not known about the girl that healed her or her sister.

    Shadow Stalker hated being there, she would rather be out patrolling and killing criminals, or at least training. There wasn't a whole lot behind that, her thoughts were entirely that this was a waste of time, there were criminals out there to deal with and they wouldn't do it to themselves. It felt like her mindset didn't have a grey area and she only thought in terms of prey and not prey. Although Taylor couldn't hear what she was saying, she could tell the girl was often being deceptive in her interactions, which from what she could see at this distance meant lies to those she was talking to. To add on top of that, Shadow Stalker's own power was pushing her to fight, exactly like the girl wanted to do. Which brought up the question of why she would join the wards if this was her view on things. Perhaps she did it to learn ways to bring that impulse to fight under control? Something Taylor decided to think about later.

    Taylor was starting to notice a pattern here, not everyone was affected by their powers, those that did seemed to want to do what their powers wanted them to do. The effect was extremely subtle, but her power could see it. It made her wonder how much of what a person became with powers was how much they were before, and how much after. But using Panacea as an example, it was clear that powers and their owners didn't always get along fully. Which made it hard for Taylor to decide if that was a good thing or a bad thing given what Glory Girl had done to her. She would need to find someone in conflict with their powers and see how that turned out.

    She wondered if maybe it was because Panacea had been mastered and if it wasn't for Glory Girl's effect she would have been like everyone else.

    Vista however, held even more interesting emotions to Taylor then Shadow Stalker's little secret did.

    Vista was unhappy.

    But she wasn't unhappy with doing this directly, rather she was unhappy with the restriction on what she could say or do well right now. The image she put forth in public wasn't the one she wanted to. She wanted to be seen as older, as mature, as an adult woman that could handle herself but she was being forced to act like a child for PR.

    You had to be extremely dense to miss that the PRT cast Vista as a kid sister in her imaging. She was the cute little girl on the team, despite the fact, or maybe because of the fact she carried a Shaker-9 ranking.

    This only made Taylor want to talk to her, to find out why she was unhappy since it was quite clear whatever restrictions she was under was her biggest concern and she would need to know what they were before she tried to join herself.

    This made her remember that Armsmaster had suggested Taylor talk to her, back on the phone his request confused her, but now that she saw how Vista was? It suddenly made a lot of sense that he would point her at someone that was unhappy with how the PRT handled her, to ask her why she was unhappy and not make a mistake herself.

    That or he didn't know that she was unhappy with her treatment and just pointed her at the girl on the team that was somewhat friendly. Either theory seemed viable.

    Taylor made a minor note that Vista's power and the girl were in agreement that they wanted to do more.

    Taylor moved her gaze to the adults in the room, curious to see what she would find.

    Assault was having the time of his life, and enjoying every second, much like Clockblocker and Gallant, he couldn't really think of something else he would rather be doing right now then this.

    His power was pushing him to play around, exactly what he liked to do and did when he could.

    Battery, who was with him wasn't having fun per say, but from the looks she was giving her lover, and Taylors power made it clear that it was her lover given how she looked at him, she was happy because he was happy here. She might not like it herself, but him being happy was good enough for her.

    Taylor recalled how it wasn't known if the pair was husband and wife, or brother and sister, but it was well known they were close enough it was one of those.

    Taylor hoped now that it was the former, given the two were clearly lovers to her power.

    There was no sign of influence of her power on her either way, and Taylor could tell now that she needed a much larger sample size to even begin to understand what this meant.

    Miss Militia was quite interesting herself. The woman viewed this function as vital, and as such didn't consider if she liked it or not. It was orders and orders were to be followed without question. As such her attention was entirely on looking for unexpected attacks.

    Her power was pushing her to stand guard and be vigilant.

    Dauntless clearly didn't like the attention he got being here, but at the same time it was quite clear he felt like he had to be here.

    His power was pushing him to make his gear stronger, to find new and better gear to use. It was partly in contrast with the man, but only minor compared to others.

    Last of the Protectorate was Triumph, and he was greatly enjoying himself here, much like Clockblocker and Gallant.

    Much like Battery and Gallant, his power wasn't pushing him in any direction.

    Taylor considered everything she had learned, not sure what to think at first, but then realization dawned on her.

    Of those here, only one person really wanted to be out fighting crime, or rather killing people, well everyone else seemed to either enjoy being in the limelight, or wanted to be somewhere else that wasn't here.

    The PRT certainly broadcast the Protectorate well enough that if you lived in a city for any length of time, you would know who all the members of the local branch were and their powers.

    The Protectorate and the Wards was about being seen as a hero. Something that Taylor did admit to herself she did want to do, but as she glanced over at Vista, she had mixed feelings there. It also felt a bit disingenuous that the focus seemed to be more being seen as a hero than actually being a hero, it definitely cast a shadow on the actual credibility and function of the PRT.

    In terms of complaints, well Taylor didn't want to be forced to act differently, the fact that Vista was a child, the girl was 13 still, and wanted to act some 5 years older, well Taylor could quite easily sympathize with her wanting to be older. Taylor had been 13 recently enough herself, namely 2 years ago and she was still able to recall quite well how she felt like wanting to be treated like an adult, but looking back on it, she could see she wasn't ready yet.

    But she could only see that in hindsight and because of the mental health improvement brought upon by her power.

    Looking over at New Wave again, Taylor focused on the rest, and had to blink a few times to clear her eyes, and for the first time doubted her new perk.

    Brandish was looking at Panacea like the girl was one step removed from attacking this function with her powers. With an intense dislike that felt better reserved to be directed at the likes of Jack Slash, not the world's greatest healer not to mention her own daughter!

    Taylor had no idea how in the world Panacea could harm people with healing powers, but Brandish was looking at her like Panacea was holding a grenade in her hand and tugging at the pin, debating if she should pull it and toss it into the crowds or not. Perhaps she didn't just have healing powers after all, or maybe her healing had a master component? That was worrying to Taylor, but she relaxed as she recalled that if anything had affected her, it would be gone due to Mental Resistance. Plus she couldn't see the PRT allowing her to be a healer if she did that. They couldn't be that blind.

    Taylor glanced over the rest of New Wave briefly, but while she could see signs of their powers, there was nothing that looked anything like Glory Girl's effect on Panacea on any of them, or even Glory Girl's effect on New Wave itself. She was missing something between Panacea and Brandish that Taylor just couldn't see. It couldn't be Brandish being mistaken about her being master by Glory Girl's thinking that the girl was in love with her sister too much, because if that was the case Brandish would have the same concerns for the crowds of people here.

    Finding this turning way too complex and completely against why she arrived here, Taylor pushed this off for later she refocused on Brandish to see how her power was pushing her.

    Brandish power was very simple, in that it was just pushing her to use it slightly more.

    *Power Buy Attempt 1.2.1 Heightened Senses II (100). Bought. Banked 50 points. *

    Reroll since last perk was fully bought/brought to some level of ranking and points > 0

    *Power Buy Attempt 3.4.6 Savvy Sultan (Macross) (400). Not Bought. Banked 50 points. *

    Taylor senses expanded, and suddenly the world came alive to her in ways she hadn't known was possible. It was beautiful, entire sensations she had never experienced before, colors she never imagined, the way the air shifted, the light bouncing off things, sound reverberating across surfaces, the tactile sensation of air on her skin, the magnetic field of the earth, it was so much. She could feel it deep in herself, this…this was what the world looked like! Is this what she had been missing for all this time!? It made Taylor wonder and yearn for more senses, she idly wondered if there were more powers like this and if they would be just as impactful.

    Besides the fact she could now see everyone here as if she was standing next to them, to the point she could count the freckles on Panacea's face from halfway across the board walk. Her hearing got sharp enough that she could focus on what anyone there was saying, or even several people at once as her mind now let her pay attention to multiple things at once like a few conversations at the same time. Not all of them though, she quickly found that more than 4 got harder and 6 was basically impossible. 4 or less was like she was focusing on a single person.

    Taylor could hear the shape of the world around her from the noise, meaning she didn't need to turn to pick up every single person, their shape and anything big on them.

    Her eyes could see not only heat, but she knew from the perk itself into ultraviolet.

    Basically if any animal on Earth could do it, she could do it, and all at the same time. Eyes of a hawk, Ears of a Bat, Nose of a bloodhound.

    Taylor focused on the perk her power had tried to buy but failed. mindful of how quickly charges were coming right now and she didn't want to let it pass her by if she didn't have to.

    It would cost four charges when it was done, another 3 and a half charges in lock in tax if she did such now, meaning she would need 7 charges to get it as she already had half a charge. She had no idea what this series was either, but it was under the classification of Production speed, and would greatly reduce how long it took her to make something.

    If Taylor had anything big to build right now, she might have considered it, but lacking anything worth building she didn't lock it in, before she felt like an idiot as she recalled the Gundam perk that she would have locked in for 1 charge back when it came up, but left because she couldn't see how to build such by her hand without joining the PRT.

    Now she knew, she had perks that let her build faster. This perk likely wasn't enough on its own, but it was just one perk of several.

    As tempting as it was to lock it in because of that, Taylor didn't bother. 7 charges were a lot to her powers, and if she had something to build, she would stick with that. Without something to build it wasn't worth building things faster.

    Next time, she wouldn't throw away something cheap because she couldn't build it by herself, since that wasn't really a concern anymore.

    Looking over at Flashbang, Taylor found he was in his own sort of Melancholy state, only in contrast to the one Panacea. Where the girl wanted to go and be alone, Flashbang didn't know what he wanted to do, so while he wasn't happy, he wasn't sure how to be happy either.

    Much like his wife, his power wanted him to use it more, which seemed to be turning into a common theme, making Taylor wonder if this was the normal and the Wards were not normal for capes.

    The other side of New Wave was much better off. Laserdream and Shielder were having the times of their lives, and while neither Lady Photon or Manpower were enjoying this per say, they were happy because their kids were happy, so they were content to do this because of them.

    A lot like how Battery was content to be here because of Assault.

    In all four, their powers were pushing them to use them more than they wanted to, which reinforced her theory that gaining a power made you want to use it more.

    Taylor's whole understanding of how things worked shifted greatly as she found herself wanted to ask certain people questions, but well aware doing something like asking Panacea why she was in love with her sister in the romantic rather than family way, or why her mother was looking at her like she was a Simurgh bomb about to go off.

    In fact as much as Taylor was interested more about Vista from her attitude, she knew the sorts of pointed questions that would even begin to explain what she wanted to know from the girl would draw too much attention to her.

    Did she need to ask something? Taylor knew she was fine if she just watched and left, plenty of people did that as the lines were long and you could see capes using their powers every now and then from the distance without issue.

    Taylor knew the answer was no, but she had so many questions she wanted to ask of people that she hadn't known she had minutes ago, the fact that she couldn't ask without outing herself as a cape, that she wanted to get something she could ask of someone that might help her.

    Taylor gaze went between Assault and Triumph, an idea forming in her mind. Both were quite happy with their job here, although Triumph had been in the wards a month ago, and well closer to her age, wasn't old enough to really see how things were.

    Taylor couldn't help but compare middleschool to highschool in that. Back in middleschool the teachers would have helped her, she had Emma as a friend and so on.

    Triumph was still too young; she had the person she wanted to ask.

    Taylor made her way into line for Assault and Battery, picking up an official photo of the pair for the five bucks they wanted for it. She needed something for him to sign, and she hadn't thought she would be talking to them directly here, or she would have brought something herself.

    Her entire plan was to just study at a distance, watch them use their powers and ponder whom to talk to first.

    How her plans had changed over just a few minutes with her powers. Assault hadn't even been on the list to consider, but with someone as happy as he was, she would learn something about the adult side of the Protectorate and could very easily be a resource she could draw more out of later.

    Taylor mused that was a lot about her life now. One second, she was just normal, normal for a tinker that was, and the next she gained a lifetime of experience in something, or the ability to read people that was borderline psychic.

    *Power Buy Attempt 3.11.3 Magitech (Banjo-Kazooie) (600). Not Bought. Banked 150 points. *

    Taylor felt her power build a charge, the third one since she got here, and felt it wander into a section called Magitech of the forge, to settle on a perk by the same name from a series by the name of Banjo-Kazooie.

    Taylor's vague impression of the perk was it let her mix magic and technology, which she could already do from her enchanting. Given it would cost her 9 charges to get this including her lock in tax, and for 9 charges she would go for Gundum technology, now that she knew that other perks could let her build large stuff like that on her own, she nopped out of locking it down and let the charge come to rest in her root node to wait for the next one.

    As Taylor slowly moved down the line to Assault, she focused on those around her, well keeping one stream of her awareness on her spot so it didn't look like she was doing so.

    It was slow work, but she slowly worked out the smell of each of the wards and protectorate members there based on the smells that were leaving from them. Once she was sure she had a good idea, she focused on her other abilities, practicing them as she waited in line.

    She knew it was likely illegal to do that, but it gave her something to focus on in line and could be useful for later. Maybe track down one of them on their patrols or something.

    Eavesdropping on what Assault was saying to other people in front of her and what Vista was doing as well.

    Taylor wanted to watch others like Panacea. But she needed one of her four safe threads for multitasking, to focus on training her new powers and one to keep her spot in line.

    This would be a great test for the recording function. Taylor could see what it gave her as a TV view, then see what she could draw from the raw footage afterwards. There was so much she could do with that, and only so many hours in the day.

    Taylor finally made her way to the front of the line and soon enough could approach Assault and Battery.

    "Why hello there, young Lady, what can I do for you?" Assault greeted her as she approached.

    "Because she clearly wants to talk to you, like all the cute girls."

    "Hey, I can't help it if I am a handsome puppy." Assault playfully threw back.

    Taylor did however swing to him as she held out his own photo and asked as he moved to take it.

    "Why did you become a hero?"

    Without her new sense, Taylor would have missed the pause he had at that, and she could tell his mind immediately went Battery of all places, before returning to her.

    "That is not a question we aren't often asked, although I suppose after hearing it, its one we should be asked more often." Assault noted, clearly buying time to work on his answer in his head. What surprised her more was what he then said.

    "Well, it's easy enough to answer. I like saving people, that's what I do, and I enjoy it."

    He wasn't lying in the least, Taylor could tell the delay was him trying to censor what he said to not talk about events he rather not share in public. But every single word was true, and he believed it with his very fiber.

    It shocked her deeply to learn that, since she couldn't see how he was saving people well he was here.

    "Then why are you here?" Taylor blurted out before she could stop herself.

    That got him to pay her a little more attention, and she could tell he studied her a little closely before he asked back. "You think we aren't helping people here?"

    "Well… yes." Taylor admitted after a brief pause to curse the fact she blurted out that question without thinking about it.

    "Well, what's your name girl?" Assault asked more so he could buy a few seconds to collect his thoughts better. He didn't really want to know who she was, but it was something to give him the time to think and it was the first thing he thought to ask her, something that she shouldn't mind answering.

    Taylor paused just long enough to realize that she had no good reason to refuse right now and answered with, "Taylor."

    "Well Taylor." Assault resumed, "We are doing a lot more good then you realize here. I am sure your thinking about the gangs here in Brockton Bay, why don't we stop them? Why do we hold events like this, when we could be out on patrols during our workings hours? Find every member and arrest them. Sure we could do that, but think about what this would do to the bystanders? Unknown masked men and women with powers, operating under the law rather than some gang, but to most people there would be little difference. Since without events like these they would have no idea what our rules are, what our powers are, what we are like and everything that people would need to know about us to know they are safe.

    People see a cape from a gang and they wonder who they are and what they can do, if they will leave them be, or attack them in some way. But thanks to these events, when people see a Protectorate hero. They don't wonder, will this cape help me or hurt me. They know we will help them; they know how we can do such. They don't wonder if we can control their minds, because our powers are public, and their use is backed by the Government's law. Without events like these, people don't trust us, so they don't call us when Villains make their moves. I doubt you could spend a week in Brockton Bay without at least seeing one of us, but how many villains have you met in person before?"

    Taylor had to think about it, and Assault took that as proof as he continued.

    "See? You have to think about that. If it wasn't for these events, you would already know which gang's territory you were under and who you needed to toe the line or face attack by them. There's far more to being a hero then to just hit some crook in the face with super powers, and you don't need superpowers to be a real hero either. Heroes are not defined by their powers or even their words. What makes a true hero, is their deeds. Those that save others, no matter the cost."

    *Power Buy Attempt 3.7.4 Elemental Mastery (Monster Hunter) (400). Not Bought. Banked 250 points. *

    Taylor didn't know what to say about that, Assault was honest in all of that, and it felt almost like the cherry on top of the Sunday as her power tried to secure yet another perk, although this one also failed so it wasn't quite that far.

    The perk her power tried for and failed was under the magic domain and the vague impression she got from it was that it would let her make her weapons more elementally powerful, but only her weapons.

    As Taylor wasn't lacking in need to cause more damage in an attack, her flaming sword would already be too much for anything short of a cape and any cape that it wouldn't be enough on, her armor wasn't enough to survive just yet.

    As such she left it unlocked, as Assault smiled at her and asked. "Does that answer your question."

    Mindful that she wasn't alone with him, even if it had felt like it as he was speaking to her, Taylor let out a squeak and just nodded as she took the photo, then scurried off.

    She could tell he watched her go even if she wasn't looking at him from the way he moved behind her. Taylor didn't dare look back at him, knowing she would pull up the video as soon as she got home to watch the edited cut of this again, see what she could find out went on here, and see how long he watched her go.

    0o0

    End of Chapter 03

    0o0

    Interlude 02: Sherie "Battery" Walsh.

    0o0

    Thursday, February 3rd, 2011

    0o0

    Although there was an 8 AM meeting scheduled every morning for the full Protectorate, most days this meeting was cancelled, because it was to bring the day shift up to speed on events of the night that needed a formal meeting, and not something that could be handled more or less piecemeal throughout the day.

    Things more urgent wouldn't draw on a meeting, they would be called in and brief on the way in, well things less urgent could be piecemeal, and if it mattered to one cape or two capes, they would talk to them about it individually.

    Team meetings meant something urgent that affected them all, but not urgent enough to call them in.

    Sherie "Battery" Walsh, like most of her fellow protectorate members was at the meeting at least 10 minutes before it started, the only one missing by 5 minutes before their start time was Armsmaster himself who had confirmed this meeting would be happening, rather then it was cancelled as it was most days of the weeks. The time was more locked in so that no one else could call a meeting at this time, since it was locked so only, he, or Director Piggot could order a meeting now.

    So anyone else that needed a meeting at this time slot, had to convince one of them to agree to such.

    Well from a normal social convention, Armsmaster was late, none of them were concerned as the man had proven over the years that if you couldn't set your watch by his arrival time, it meant something big had happened.

    It would be exactly 8 AM when he arrived, not a second sooner or later.

    Assault had tried a few times in the past to prove they could set an atomic clock by his arrival time, and had more given up because he couldn't figure out a way to confirm such with what he was allowed to do, and not because he hadn't been disproven from the data he had collected.

    So she, like everyone else there, neither expected he would be late, nor held any surprise when he arrived right on time.

    Battery watched as he gave only a brief glance to confirm everyone was there, before he started the meeting, the topic of the day becoming only slightly clearer when on the screen a picture of a new cape appeared.

    "Early this morning, I was called in by the Brockton Bay Police Department about a new heroic cape that had shown up to help save people from a building that had caught fire some time before. I arrived after she had saved everyone inside, and she was waiting to talk to us at the request of the police officer that had talked to her after she finished getting everyone out."

    Battery noted how much better Armsmaster was doing in that summary, normally he would have given the exact time and other such data. His working with Dragon clearly had helped make him a lot better socially. Maybe in a few more years with her, you never know how close he was to robotic in his actions prior to working with her on them.

    "Well, if she is like Kaiser, being caught in a fire could cause a trigger on it's own and she summoned that armor. But looking that good? Is It tinker tech?" Assault observed.

    Battery agreed with such herself. Well it hardly had the designs of a professional, it clearly was well made and if a Protectorate Cape wanted to wear such, she couldn't see any real issues with imaging either. If she ran into a cape in such, she would be asking which Protectorate branch they were from first.

    "Well made power armor, based on her actions I would say it boosts her abilities between 10 and 20 times that of a normal human."

    "Well made?" Assault injected, only barely being the first to do such, as even there, even Battery wanted to ask that as well.

    That was highly unusual for him.

    "I can appreciate a good work of art when I see it."

    "Work of art? Should we be calling Master/Stranger screening on you?"

    Armsmaster let off a short snort at that, as he said. "No, I am perfectly fine. I already discussed this with Dragon when she initially held the same concerns. But once she saw the recording herself, even she could agree it was well made tinker tech, not the garbage we normally run into. Don't get me wrong, I can do far better than she did and already see several places that I would change immediately to make it better with only a few seconds of study, and I would find far more with any real attention. But at the same time, while it is not a masterpiece like the things I make, we are looking at the work of someone quite decent in her art. Perhaps with proper training and my aid, she could grow to match the likes of Dragon."

    Battery was tempted to call such on their head anyway, as she glance around the group, she knew better than most that Armsmaster's friendly relations with Dragon had started as anything but, and it had taken months until he was willing to even say she wasn't bad behind her back, acceptance to the current level of dragon being a valid peer, had taken closer to a year.

    What had taken months of work by Dragon to get him friendly to her, seemed to disappear when it came to this new cape.

    But, as she considered it, Dragon was working on him, and she couldn't disagree that the armor this new cape had on was poor either. Given how most tinker tech looked, she could see how he was willing to consider this decent, not on his level yet, but a good start. Given that Armsmaster was working to be a better person, it would harm that if they called him out on something so clearly well made. More so when he just indicated it was between his stuff and everyone else. Not better than his own.

    "I guess you extended an offer to join the Protectorate?"

    "I did, which at that point she informed me she is wards aged."

    "Wards aged with that gear? There are not many families that would give their daughter what they need to make that lightly."

    "Correct, although her other replies muddy the water there, because she continued on to indicate she had to know how the wards were first, and she wanted to talk to them before she committed to anything. I gave her my contact information so she could arrange a meeting at a future date when she decided with whom. She did not indicate whom yet, but I expect either Kid Win or Gallant as fellow tinkers, I will push her to Kid Win should she last for the latter given his real powers."

    Battery had to really think about that herself. Families rich enough to afford that armor lightly always had attended the formal and rich functions that the PRT held as fundraisers with tickets costing at least a thousand dollars or more. So any daughters with parents rich enough to just buy armor like that would have talked to the wards many times over the years already. Those rich families always showed up at the events because they were not only good for their image, but it made certain the PRT was more prompt when they were attacked by villains.

    That implied it wasn't, which would still have to mean a well-off family, or one with enough resources to leverage to pay for that at their daughter's request. The armor was too well made to be something that anyone on the street could make.

    A lot of hints that could indicate who Selene was under the mask, but it was all stuff they were not supposed to look into officially until ordered otherwise.

    Connect the dots if you have them, but don't look for more until the PRT ordered otherwise was the policy.

    "What is her name?" Triumph spoke up, which reminded Battery that Armsmaster hadn't told them yet, which was slightly odd until she considered the fact he was more focused on her armor, and she might not even have one although with that armor and how long it would have taken to make…

    "Selene."

    Or not? Battery thought to herself in surprise.

    "I meant her cape name, not her civilian name."

    "That is her cape name. Selene, as in the Greek Goddess."

    Assault whistled at that. "Bit of an ego there?"

    "Compared to the normal trash we see from other tinkers, not entirely unwarranted."

    Again unusual praise for this new tinker, Battery noted.

    "Is she a high priority recruitment then?" Miss Militia asked.

    "Correct, well PR will need to rename her, she is easily a top skill tinker and has strong heroic leanings."

    Left unsaid, but Battery could hear it, was that her armor was good enough already that it looked like she had already been through branding.

    "Then when she calls, you might want to suggest Vista talk to her." Assault injected.

    "Vista?" Armsmaster directed at him.

    "I do know she is not a tinker, but she has the most experience of the ward by far and is a rather friendly girl. Something another girl might relate to more. Not to say that Kid Win is a bad person or anything like that, but she is much more suited to recruiting than he is, and if you can suggest them as a pair it might even be better for her. Give her a girl she can relate to well talking to a boy, depending on how easy she finds it, well still have the boy with powers like her there."

    "That doesn't sound like a bad option."

    "Of course not, I know these things."

    "I suggest it to her when she calls. Now to go over what we do know about her gear…"

    0o0

    Saturday, February 5th, 2011

    0o0

    It was only when Sherie went to get ready for bed, noticing the time that she felt some worry for her husband and went to go seek him out.

    Normally after an event like this, he would be looking for some play in the bedroom before they went to sleep and should have already asked for it nearly an hour ago so that they had enough time to be done and not lose out on sleep.

    He knew her well enough by now, to know she normally would agree to such after a day like today. She might not like these events as much as he did, but she loved how much of a hero he had turned into once he had agreed to leave the life of crime that was Madcap behind, and had little issue making both their days much better at the end, because unlike her more short term boyfriends before him, he knew how to treat a woman in bed.

    Which, to her surprise after she had fallen in love with him, hadn't mattered as much as she thought it would in high school. By now, he could have been worse than all of them and she still would have loved him just as much.

    She found Ethan in the Livingroom, looking like he was pondering the meaning of existence itself, which told her something serious was going on here.

    Ethan and pondering were not words put together without a qualifier like, did not, or never.

    There were only a very few times she had seen him do such before, one of them had been after he was arrested and debating if he wanted to join the Protectorate as offered or go to jail.

    The second time she had learned soon afterwards was right before he had proposed to her.

    Whatever was on his mind, weighed heavy on him, and Sherie could only think back to that girl Taylor that had asked him why he was a hero today. Although she couldn't say why it was her question, or even the girl herself that stood out in her mind.

    Idle thoughts that she was Selene filled her mind, but were rejected quickly in turn, Armsmaster had passed on that she intended to go to the event herself, but since that was to decide between Kid Win and Gallant, and talk to either of them, it couldn't exactly be her that put that question on them.

    "Ethan?"

    It was very rarely that Sherie saw Ethan looked startled by anything either, but she had startled him by addressing him.

    "What? Oh, Pup, I didn't notice you come in. I must have been busy with ah…" Ethan looked around for an excuse, which might have helped if he had anything near him or the TV was on.

    They kept the house neat, more because she made him then he wanted to, and this meant he was on the sofa with nothing close enough to grab and claim he had been using it.

    Despite the fact it couldn't be her, Sherie decided to start with her anyway.

    "Thinking about that girl from before?"

    "Taylor, yeah."

    Sherie had intentionally not used her name, a shy teenage girl, that she couldn't seem to get completely off her mind, but now Ethan was the same. Hints of M/S screening for that alone were pushed away. Maybe he had a good reason here, Ethan's response to her question had been rather long after all. Maybe he doubted what he told her?

    "Should I be worried that you're thinking about another woman that much?" Sherie asked, not drawing her real concerns to words just yet to see how he treated it.

    Ethan snorted and said. "Not for someone as young as her."

    "Then what was it?"

    "She was the first person to ask me why I became a hero."

    "What? Really?" Sherie asked in complete shock. That couldn't be true, could it?

    "Yeah. As Madcap it was always why do you free villains and such, and in the PRT it was about capturing the villains they didn't who I did agree should be sent to the birdcage. No one, not even you, ever asked me why I became a hero."

    Sherie continued to try and think about that in silence, only to realize to her complete shock that it was true. She never had asked him. She never heard anyone ask him such either.

    Given Ethan's reply to the question the girl had asked, she certainly wasn't going to forget it any time soon herself.

    Despite, or perhaps because it was so off the cuff his answer was, the heartfulness in it was quite clear, and she could see how much it had impacted Taylor.

    Sherie considered asking about seeing a video of the talk posted online later, it was the sort of thing that the PR department wanted the capes to say, and when caught on camera in public would be seen as a big win for them.

    But it would be difficult to get it posted by themselves, given that any official PRT message had to be carefully vetted and filled. A simple camera recording by someone else was easy to just say was official without concerns that it wasn't of high enough quality.

    But there was something to be said about off the cuff remarks that showed their heroes in a very good light after all.

    Seeing the look on his wife's face, Ethan smiled, then put her even more off balance as he added in. "Taylor was almost a parahuman herself."

    "What?" Sherie injected in surprise as she looked at him. "Why do you say that?"

    "I have seen her before, in the hospital about a month ago. I was called in because of a possible trigger event. It was quite nasty what happened to her, to the point they assumed she had some sort of brute powers because she wasn't already dead when they found her. Enough to call the Protectorate for help as she was in route to the hospital. Even when I got there, it was assumed she would die anyway, but she managed to hang on until Panacea started her shift and Panacea was taken right to her. After Panacea was done healing her, they did an MRI and found no signs of a Corona Pollentia, and I can tell you that quite a few techs were expecting to find an active Gemma at that point."

    Sherie considered that, quite the trigger event, the lack of a Corona Pollentia didn't exclude her, given that she, like Ethan was well aware that a very small percent didn't have one, it wasn't very large, but it wasn't zero. But she wasn't going to bring that up now.

    "I am almost certain that why she asked me that, she likely found out I was the one there and assumed that I saved her life. I didn't get her out of the situation she was in, just came to keep the hospital staff safe if she panicked after waking up."

    "But it would be a simple mistake for a girl to make, if she heard you were there." Sherie nodded in agreement. "Well, I can say you certainly left quite the impression on her. But why don't you forget about jailbait aged girls and pay a little more attention to your wife?"

    "I suppose I can, Pup." Ethan agreed with a smile, a smile that started to fade which she knew was because he noticed the time it was now given where he was looking.

    "Forget about the time. We don't have to go into work tomorrow. We just sleep in afterwards. Come with me upstairs."

    "Like you need to ask, pup?" Ethan agreed as he got up to follow her upstairs.

    Sherie's thoughts on the way up, were of the love for her husband and how perfect this day had turned out to be in hindsight. If only every day could end up like this one, the world would be a much better place.

    0o0

    End of Interlude 02

    0o0

    Perks acquired in Chapter 3

    1.1.1 Physical Prowess III
    1.3.8 Supernatural Resource Recovery II
    2.5.2 Computer Hub
    1.5.35 Trivial Applications
    2.1.26 Storage Solutions
    3.10.16 Super Scientific Solution (Tenchi Muyo)
    1.3.2 Empathetic II
    2.5.4 Movie & TV Series Collection
    1.2.1 Heightened Senses II
     
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    • Chapter 04: Revelations + Interlude 03: Simurgh
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    • AN: Again this chapter had been Beta by @Trek, who put a lot of time into helping me correct issues as well as improve the plot in several places. I can not thank him enough for the help he given me here.

    He also completely reworked Interlude 03 completely to better fit from the Shard side of things.

    For those that haven't joined it yet, the general Celestial forge now has a discord server located HERE, where besides talking about Brockton's Celestial Forge, is also the discord server handling the talk around the revised Celestial Forge.

    I have, on Trek's advice, moved the text of perk from Essential Body Modification Supplement v1.11, which is currently in draft for the next version, into this one. The updated text is included in the information posts, it also make the perk do what was intended, and not leave some extremely wide open gaps on it.


    0o0

    Chapter 04: Revelations

    0o0

    Saturday, February 5th, 2011

    0o0

    *+3 charges for interlude 2*

    *Power Buy Attempt 2.5.3 Music Collection (50). Bought. Banked 500 points. *

    Reroll since last perk was fully bought/brought to some level of ranking and points > 0

    *Power Buy Attempt 2.2.1 Sky Simulator (100). Bought. Banked 400 points. *

    Reroll since last perk was fully bought/brought to some level of ranking and points > 0

    *Power Buy Attempt 1.2.3 Mental Prowess III (200). Bought. Banked 200 points. *

    Reroll since last perk was fully bought/brought to some level of ranking and points > 0

    *Power Buy Attempt 3.1.13 Diagnostic Tools/Melee Weapon (Outlaw Star) (100). Bought. Banked 100 points. *

    Reroll since last perk was fully bought/brought to some level of ranking and points > 0

    *Power Buy Attempt 3.10.21 Harmless Extraction/Extraction Efficiency/Rapid Growth (Final Fantasy XIV) (500). Not bought, sub perk Extraction Efficiency (100), bought. Banked points 0*

    Taylor was on the way home when she felt her power activate, in the same unusual way it had after she had run into Grue a few nights ago.

    She gained a charge like normal, but this time it split into three before joining her pool and seeking out new perks.

    As Mental Prowess III came online her mind was sharpened beyond anything she could have dreamed of. Retroactive perfect memory, allowing her to recall every instant any sense of her had experienced in her entire life. Literally: she could now recall what it was like in her mother's womb as the senses of her body came online. It was the most comforting memory she had, a feeling like nothing she had felt before.

    While that wasn't enough to make her stop, the fact that she could now recall everything she did with her mother, everything her mother ever said as clearly as if it had been said an instant ago to her, made her stop and tear up.

    But this wasn't the only part of the perk she could see an immediate use for. She didn't just get perfect memory, but lightning-fast, perfect mental calculation, along with instant memorization with nothing but a glance. She'd be hard pressed to find anything that wasn't improved by the new perk.

    The others... not so much.

    The most useful of the other perks she got was Diagnostic Tools. It complemented her scanner nicely. It was about the size of a small table on wheels to make it easy to move around, not the sort of thing to take around town, but could be moved between areas inside her warehouse or outside of it if she wanted to work on something outside easy enough. The weapon, on the other hand, was useless. It was worse than her current sword in every way. The metal was softer, and the blade was duller. The only thing it was better at was self repair: 24 hours as opposed to 48 hours.

    Unfortunately, she couldn't think of a situation where that would matter. If 48 hours was too long, 24 hours probably wouldn't be much better. She could make something else in less time regardless.

    Useful in other ways, Extraction Efficiency let her gather any plant products in a way that let her take pieces of the plant in question, while still leaving the plant alive, even if it didn't make sense otherwise.

    So if she harvested herbs from a garden, she would be able to harvest all the leaves and get the full amount of a gathering, while at the same time leaving the plant in the same state it had been in before, as if it hadn't taken any damage from the harvest. She couldn't repeat this for a month as the plant still had to heal, but it meant that somehow, she could extract a tree's worth of lumber out of a tree and still have the tree afterwards.

    Somehow, it hurt her head a bit to think about how the tree would end up afterwards until it recovered, and had a feeling doing it where people could see it would have the PRT show up within hours at the most to see what had happened to the poor tree.

    For things like wood it was useless with her workshop providing as much as she needed, but for plant based medicines, or perhaps future alchemy, she supposed it was extremely useful as she didn't need to debate if she killed a plant she was growing to make a dish or potion with it or not, she could both have her cake and eat it at the same time.

    The other perks… well she could set her warehouse to have a nice sky now, but it didn't give her any more space, just a nice looking ceiling. She supposed if she was going to be spending so much time in her warehouse a sky was better to look at for her mental health than a concrete ceiling. Still it was not worth the wasted charge in her mind.

    The music might be nice to listen to while she was crafting something at best, but she could just use music she already liked and owned if she wanted to do that, so it didn't open up anything new. Although she did notice that the subdomain of her powers that it was under was now finished, and that entire branch was done. A first for her, and she had wondered if it might give her a bonus, but she found that there was nothing new. It just meant the other perks under that domain would now be more likely because there were less of them competing for her charges.

    Mindful that the last perk hadn't been fully bought she studied it, and found that the other two perks attached to it would let her partly harvest live animals without killing them, and allow them to grow what she took from them back, and another that would let her rapidly grow plants within hours.

    Neither seemed useful enough to lock in for the upcharge, being able to quickly grow plants was already of a bit of a questionable use when she had bottomless wood supplies in her workshop and no perks for alchemy, the quick growth perk itself was clear it wasn't within seconds but more hours so use in combat wasn't possible.

    So Taylor decided against locking in either and left it alone as she continued home.

    Plans spun in her head on how to reconnect to her father using the new perk she had just gained.

    0o0

    When Taylor found her dad wasn't home yet, she wasn't worried. She had told him this morning she was going to attend the ward event the PRT was hosting to look at the capes, and she had been torn when he didn't offer to come along, even though that wasn't a good idea.

    Rather he told her he was heading into the office for the day since she wouldn't be home, and he didn't want to hang around an empty house by himself.

    Seeing she had a few hours before dinner and when he would likely be home, she made her way into her bedroom to access her warehouse, her thoughts on what she had learned at the event.

    It was rather clear to her in retrospect that powers could influence people to do things, and in some cases might be in unhealthy ways, but overall from her sample size so far, the worst was either Glory Girl's power wanting to make people love her or fear her, or Shadow Stalker's seeking conflict.

    The others? They amounted to use your power more in ways that the capes were known for, and only Panacea seemed to be in conflict with her power, from what Taylor could see the girl not healing as much as her power wanted her to do, pushing her to do more.

    The same girl who was mastered by her sister to love her intimately.

    *Power Buy Attempt 1.5.39 Minion Creation I (200). Not Bought. Banked 100 points. *

    Taylor paused at the new perk that came up, as a basic understanding of what it would allow her to do if she acquired it filled her mind.

    It would let her create simple minions that were basically constructs. They would be similar in nature to robots she could order around.

    Which she could then leverage her Strategic Mastery to better control.

    Since there was only a 1 perk surcharge on this, and Taylor could already see how having something to aid her in building, even if it was to just hold something in place as she assembled something, would be useful, she locked it in, then turned attention back to what she was about to do.

    Although Taylor's memories were retroactively perfect, she hadn't watched Amy the entire time, and she hoped, and was pleased to confirm that her recordings included the entire event in question, long past when Taylor had left.

    She watched it from start to end at a very high speed, between her new mental ability and heightened senses, she was able to watch not just one, but four videos at high speed at the same time, each one running at 20 times normal playback speed. Any faster and it got too fast for her to just memorize the entire scene, to understand what people were saying, how they acted and everything her new powers could tell her about them.

    When it was over, she didn't find any new answers. Panacea while she had been there, hadn't healed anyone there under orders not to do it at the event which she had said quite a few times to different people that asked for healing. While the girl had been pushed by her power to do so anyway, she didn't let herself break the rules she was under.

    To make things worse than she thought, Taylor could see as Glory Girl's aura worked over her sister while they were there, with Glory Girl herself not noticing even remotely what she was doing to her sister. Either she had mastered her sister to the point that she had no concerns about needing to keep it up, or, far more likely, she had zero idea of what she was doing.

    Taylor was quite sure the PRT didn't know that Panacea had been mastered either. Detecting masters required they notice that someone was acting wrong, and since Panacea's case was that she was mastered to love her sister too much, it wouldn't show up, as loving your family was normal until it got too intimate.

    Would the PRT believe her if she tried to tell someone about this?

    She could call Armsmaster as Selene, report it to him, but she could tell without making the call how much doubt he would have, and she couldn't see convincing him without outing herself.

    Something she couldn't do right now. Not yet, maybe not ever, telling anyone everything about her power seemed like it would be disastrous. She would tell her dad everything first and she wasn't ready to tell him yet.

    Taylor pulled up recordings of everyone else there, playing them as fast as she could to memorize every single one of them, looking for signs that she needed to worry about or learn more useful information.

    By the end of it, she was feeling like the wards were an increasingly perfect option for her. While Shadow Stalker was in extreme contrast to the others in her desires to kill, she wouldn't be allowed on the street if she did that, and she very well might have joined the wards to help temper her powers impulse to fight.

    Vista really didn't want to be just the kid girl, the little sister image on the team. But she wasn't unhappy with what she did, only the image she had to show to the world. It was easy enough to see that without that restriction, she would have deeply enjoyed what she was doing.

    Everyone else? Content with their role in the wards. Disagreements over things yes, and Taylor knew she would be quite horrified if she learned all of them were as happy as Assault was because that couldn't happen with a group and to find such a situation meant some sort of master effect would have been in play.

    But they weren't all overly happy, while they were mostly happy and content it wasnt to the point that it could be a master effect.

    Her mind going back to what Assault had told her, Taylor felt impacted enough by what he had told her that she really wanted others to see it.

    It wouldn't be that hard to do either, she had a recording of it, and the PRT didn't just make it clear that you could post pictures and recordings of their wards events online, but even encouraged people to do such by outright making a PHO thread and asking people to post their collections in the thread so other people could find them easily.

    Naturally, lacking a camera, there was no good way she could just post what Assault told her… Meaning her only option would be to do it as Selene, which would confirm she was there, and maybe even link the PRT to her identity.

    On that alone, Taylor felt like it was a bad idea, but she couldn't help but want to help out Assault in some way, and the only way she could see doing such now was if she posted this.

    Weighing it back and forth in her mind, Taylor decided that while she would post it, she would do so in about a month's time when she knew if she would be in the wards or not so it no longer would matter. Still, she wanted to see what her autogenerated video of the event turned out to be, curious how well her power would produce a edited cut for viewing of something with so many people and focuses, of which she wanted none of them to be of her personally, the closest being to her question on Assault.

    On her way to pull up the edited recording, Taylor took a minute to check the list of tags to see if anything new appeared. But there were no new tags, and when she pulled up the edited cut of the events, there wasn't any tag she wasn't expecting on it either.

    It made her wonder even more about the tags that had shown up when she ran into Grue and this cape team of his, but she couldn't puzzle it out. It was like she was missing one piece of information that would suddenly make this all clear in retrospect.

    Pushing her though away from that, Taylor focused entirely on the default edit her powers generated for her.

    It didn't look like some camera recording. It looked like the PRT had staged the entire event in a studio with how perfect everything was recorded. There was no background noise when someone was speaking. Each of the wards looked like they were at their very first announcement meeting, any signs of wear and tear on the gear were gone.

    *2/3 Charges*

    Thanks to her memories of the raw footage she had already watched, she could tell perfectly that they had been touched up to movie quality props.

    That wasn't even the end of it either. Everyone had been changed so that you couldn't tell more than if they were man, woman or child. Their clothes changed to be generic without looking like it had done such. Faces altered so that they did not match the raw footage and so on. Enough to make it clear that they were genetic humans, without just making them blobs of white light or something.

    A perfect PR recording of the event without risking leaking anyone's personal data from it alone, just like she wanted. Though videos from that event from other sources could be used to cross-reference and find who was who so it wasn't that useful and could only delay someone dedicated to digging into the matter.

    Assault's little speech to her was the very first one, but that was followed with statements by others that supported the speech, and made it seem like the reason he was first wasn't because she wanted to post what he said, but because he set the tone for the entire event.

    Almost as if he was Armsmaster giving an opening speech to an event, rather than something said in the middle, about why the PRT was holding this event in question.

    Several of the statements given were well after she left, which was a very nice touch since it would mean the PRT would only assume even more that Selene and Taylor were two different people if they looked at this. Taylor left before it was over, and here was recording that the wards said hours after she was gone.

    It was perfect. But as much as she wanted to post it now, she held off and would do it after she was a part of the wards and had the PRT do some infosec to make sure her civilian identity did not leak because of posting this.

    0o0

    Nervousness filled Taylor's mind as she heard someone approaching, as she hadn't smelled her dad with her new senses before, she couldn't be certain it really was him and not some other man coming to the house.

    As sharp as her ears were, there were details she didn't know to match him, and well her memory was retroactively perfect, it was only to what she herself could notice at the time it was made. She didn't get her better senses before she earned the perk, she didn't get what her senses were telling her well she asleep and so on.

    She would need to see about learning the smells of the trio later, then it would be trivial to avoid them at school. Although if she could bring herself to tell her dad that she had powers, she could just get a GRE or go to another school.

    But not yet, she needed to know that her dad really did love her. She could finally prove that beyond a shadow of a doubt.

    Taylor was perfectly still as her dad came in from work, dinner was already on the table as she had made it, but she waited for him to arrive.

    She watched his every move, noting that he was happy she was home and safe, puzzlement as to why she hadn't started to eat, before he moved to join her.

    He wanted to ask her something, but he couldn't decide how to word it and not risk hurting her, so he bit it down, remaining quiet.

    Taylor, on feeling all of this, leapt on it and asked him.

    "Did you have a good day at work, Dad?"

    The surprise he felt at being asked that was quite clear to her. But how much joy it brought him that she had asked him that.

    "It…. The same." He had to pause as he considered what to say, before giving up any real reply, clearly not sure how to do it. It was becoming increasingly clearer, her dad was depressed.

    Fixing that would take a lot of work, but Taylor could see what he wanted to ask, and she decided to follow up as if he had, guide him to talking with her.

    "I had a great time at the fair. It was very busy though, Though I only had time to get Assault's autograph."

    "You got Assault's autograph?"

    "Yes, you should have heard what he told another girl about why he was a hero. When I overheard it well debating which one to go for, and decided I liked it enough I wanted to get his autograph to remember it, almost ran out of time with the line, but I was able to get it." Taylor fibbed to him, she wasn't going to tell him that it was her just yet. The video she would post online afterwards wouldn't show it to be her either and it would be a few weeks from now and likely after she was in the wards and had told him she had powers. She could correct her innocent lie then.

    Taylor felt great about her new powers, as she moved onto continue to draw her dad into conversation. Thanks to her ability to handle several things at a time, her thoughts also went to how she might be able to use this at school.

    Find out exactly why Emma betrayed her, why Blackwell didn't seem to care about her to the point that she lied to the police about who attacked her, after all giving false testimony was illegal. What exactly was Sophia's problem with her.

    As far as Taylor could see it, she couldn't see any good reason for Blackwell to not tell the police who she often accused of bullying her. Because as soon as the police interviewed her, and she named them...

    Taylor paused at that though, as she realized thanks to her perfect memory the police had never talked to her about her attack.

    That chain of Taylor's thoughts paused, as she wondered why that was the case. A part of her was tempted to go look into it tomorrow… but it would be a Sunday, and she had only limited time to connect with her dad before Monday.

    She would rather make this weekend better than any they had had after Mom had died than let wasting time on them ruin time with her dad.

    The rest of this weekend would be reconnecting with her dad. Everything was looking upwards. She would call Armsmaster on Monday to arrange for a meeting between her, Kid Win, Gallant and Vista, as well as meet up to collect the healing blankets he should have recovered by now, recovering the gear she had accidentally let go. At least she wouldn't be forgetting any gear in the field now with her perfect memory.

    Kid Win would let her know what it was like as a tinker in the wards when she could press him more privately. Gallant really liked being a ward, so she wanted to find out why from him, and Vista's state of mind was worth a look into as well.

    At the thought of that, Taylor turned her mind to Panacea, wondering what she should do about that, and how someone's mother could hate their own daughter so much.

    So many things were her plate. It was a good thing she would have minions that could help her soon with more minor tasks.

    0o0

    Sunday, February 6th, 2011.

    0o0

    *Power Buy Attempt 1.5.39 Minion Creation I (200) + 100 Lock Tax. Bought. Banked 0 points. *

    Shortly after dinner was done, Taylor had felt her perk acquire itself and while she knew that it didn't work that way, she sort of felt as if it had waited for her to finish reconnecting with her dad, even though she knew it wouldn't have bothered her if she earned it then anyway.

    Turning her attention fully on this perk to understand it, aware there was another level she could lock in, she debated what that meant and how she could use this.

    She could make a minion from anything, even open air, it would take an hour to do it, and how long it would last depend on what materials she used. Minions conjured out of the air would last an hour, maybe two at the most. Ones made of existing armor would last maybe a week.

    Whereas if she crafted the minion from the parts itself, imbuing the metal as she worked it, the minion would last until destroyed.

    Minions could be a lot smarter than she expected, but that also depended on what base Materials she used. With the resources she had access to, they wouldn't be smarter than dogs at best, and would barely qualify as sub-sapient. If she had access to much better tools and materials then she had, she could make a sapient minion, but that would be a work of art, and she could only guess where to get the stuff she would need for that, knowing that it would be some extremely high grade materials without any clear answers from her powers as to what just yet. There was also the matter that all minions were inherently loyal to her, so making a sapient minion who was born loyal brought up some moral questions.

    The Minions she made out of thin air would be so dumb that anything more complex than attack what I point at, would be too complex for them to understand, and likely wouldn't even attack what she was pointing at, but everything in the general area around it, hits on what she was targeting was better described as accidental, rather than purposeful.

    Taylor debated if building literal sub-sapient life, or even outright sapient life was a good idea or not, only to decide to think about the issue that later when she could the latter. Sub-sapient meant just that, and the good thing about her minions was that when destroyed she could re-summon them, and they wouldn't forget anything they had done, meaning they were like programs she downloaded into a body, not an animal.

    Considering the perk for a bit, Taylor was torn. There was another level, but the only thing it did was let her make them faster. She could tell a lot faster but not how much was a lot.

    She could only have two minions at a time, but just like how she could only heal one person at a time, this was improved by her use, not by higher levels of the perk.

    Taylor considered it thoughtfully. It would be 4 charges for the next level, but unless it took her minion creation time down to minutes it wouldn't help.

    Even then, with the minions she would rather build, those made out of Puresteel and not just out of air, so they would last, it couldn't speed it up unless she somehow found a way to craft a Puresteel golem in less than an hour.

    One permanent minion would take her close to a week to build if she did nothing else right now.

    If it brought minions out of air down to minutes, she could use them as disposable forces… or she could just use the much stronger and smarter metal golems that would know better than to just attack anything in front of them and even if they were destroyed, being made in her workshop would cause them to self-repair from anything within 48 hours anyway.

    Mass air minions would harm anything and everyone they were pointed at, it was too dangerous, and she wasn't limited by the speed of her perk, but how quickly she could make her golems in the first place.

    Taylor let the perk go, as she got to work. When her father got up, she would spend the entire day reconnecting with him, and once he was better, she could tell him she had powers.

    He trusted her enough, and she was fairly certain he wouldn't force her into the wards now if she said she didn't want to join just yet.

    But there was no reason to not delay a week to learn more information first, and then tell him she had powers and wanted to join the wards where she would be safe.

    Nothing could take away her happiness in Taylor's mind. Everything was turning out story book perfect.

    0o0

    Monday, February 7th, 2011

    0o0

    Taylor spent the rest of the weekend with her dad, considering her plans for the next week. The PRT and the Protectorate felt a lot more honest to her now.

    She hadn't even considered the angle that Assault had told her, before, about how the PR functions made people feel safe. But now that she had been told about it, she could see it herself.

    She had been a bit of a fool to think that the government didn't figure out a good way to do things with all the thinkers the PRT had.

    There were only a handful of villains scary enough that they could walk around in public, most of them had to stay in hiding. Even the prideful Empire 88 or Lung himself had to hide in Brockton Bay, while the Protectorate members walked around in broad daylight in costume.

    The PRT kept people safe by being in the public's eye. Villains knew that the PRT was around, and so they had to hide, if the PRT stopped doing this villains would start coming out in force not expecting to be stopped, making the PRT's job harder.

    Taylor was starting to seriously consider joining the wards as she made her way to school on Monday.

    On the way in, she felt her power activate.

    *Power Buy Attempt 3.7.16 Universally Upgradeable (Dead Space) (400). Not Bought. Banked 100 points. *

    Although she could tell this one was big enough to make her stop, her mental abilities meant she didn't as she considered that perk from what she could tell.

    It was also from Dead Space, and that mattered as the two perks would build off each other, becoming far greater than each one on its own. The synergy she could see between the two would be massive.

    This perk alone would make it, so she could upgrade anything, the details of how wasn't clear, and she expected it assumed nanotechnology but with how well Infinitely Customizable had played with Geneforge stuff, and the fact that it would also expand one of her more useful perks already to an even greater height before it own effects came into play?

    Taylor could clearly see this would be worth a lot more the 6 more charges she would need, so she locked it in.

    This perk was literally everything she could already do, she could then do it even better now from what she could see. She had everything she needed to be a hero, so she could go for the good but slow to get perks now.

    Taylor's mood rose even more as she continued into the school, practically on cloud 9 quite sure nothing could ruin her day now, when she noticed that Shadow Stalker was in the building from her smell.

    In fact, she went to Winslow given how much of a scent she had around.

    This puzzled Taylor for a few seconds, as she wondered why the ward hadn't gotten her out of the locker, only to wonder if perhaps she had, and Shadow Stalker had to keep her cover and call it in.

    She hadn't exactly stayed conscious in the locker the entire time after all, and even with retroactively perfect memory, she had to be conscious to remember anything.

    Curious about that, Taylor started to make her way to her, quite torn if she wanted to talk to the girl that wanted to go out and kill criminals or not, and completely unsure why the hero ward hadn't reported on the Trio already.

    Still, this might help her understand the girl who really wanted to kill criminals but had joined the wards who clearly wouldn't let her do such, if Taylor knew who she was under the mask.

    She has to be careful, given the whole unwritten rules thing and it being illegal to unmask a ward, so once she figures out who it was, she would have to talk to them later once she had a good plan to justify doing such out of costume.

    Taylor rounded a corner to find out exactly who the ward in Winslow was.

    In an instant, she felt her powers activate, Mental Resistance keeping the shock of what she saw from causing her to react negatively, as Sophia Hess looked in her direction and smiled, all of her thoughts were on how she would make certain next time Taylor wouldn't survive and it wouldn't be long before next time.

    A part of Taylor wanted to run, flee, find someone, anyone to shake down for answers on how the PRT could cover up a Ward nearly killing a girl, and it had to be them, because why else would the police not investigate it.

    That part was broken down by her perks and Strategic Mastery weighted in.

    Given Assault words, most of the emotions of the Wards and Protectorate members at the event on Saturday, the PRT couldn't be completely corrupted.

    That or they managed to delude so many of them into thinking otherwise.

    In the first case, she would need to find whoever protected Sophia and do something about them. In the second case she needs to find those that were still good, somehow take them out of the PRT and get them on her side.

    In either case, she needed to know more about what was going on. She could not reconcile Assault and Sophia being on the same side openly, and well Sophia could hide her desires to murder without causing conflict, if the PRT knowlingly allowed it, she was quite certain that Assault would have had major objections.

    Sophia still wanted to kill her, but she was held back because it was too soon, she didn't need to fight her way out, acting like she would have without knowing she was Sophia was easy enough to fake.

    So, like normal, Taylor turned and fled from the girl that wanted her dead.

    *2/7 charges*

    Not wanting to risk it, Taylor skipped class as she left school outright, trying to figure out the best place to start with things.

    She quickly decided she needed to track down whatever police officer had her case and question them. She hadn't been contacted about it, and as the victim, she should be able to ask about it without raising any sort of flags connecting her to Selene.

    Taylor debated other ways to do it but decided very quickly that the starting place for her was to just ask at the police station.

    0o0

    She arrived at the police station and approached the dispatch desk, the woman manning it addressed her as soon as she came up to it.

    "What do you need?"

    While her tone was rude, Taylor could tell that she was talking like this because she expected this to be urgent, not because she wanted to be rude, but was afraid that any delays might mean someone was hurt more.

    "I need to talk to the police officer assigned to my case, I lost his card and I have new information for him that is rather urgent."

    "His name?"

    "I don't remember, can you look it up?"

    The woman studied her, and Taylor could see she was trying to judge how much she should trust that, versus assuming she was digging for information illegally.

    "I can do that, but only with an official government ID."

    Taylor handed over her school ID, as there was no danger in her looking up an attack on herself after all.

    The woman studied it and her, then Taylor could see she scanned it to confirm it was valid and was then reading the file that came up.

    A bit of surprise came up when she got to some part, looking up at her then noted.

    "Madam, the PRT are separate from the police."

    "The PRT?" Taylor asked, not needing to hide her surprise at that. "The officer I talked to never said that he was a PRT officer, he said he was a Police Officer."

    It was quite the lie, but the woman sighed, accepting it at face value.

    "Of course not. People get them mixed up all the time, they hear officer and think police officer. I am really sorry, we can't help you here. Go talk to them."

    She handed back the ID and Taylor took it and nodded, turning to leave the building as she thought about her next steps.

    0o0

    Taylor stopped outside of the PRT building for a few seconds as she read over the same sign she had read several times before:

    [Notice, All locations inside PRT ENE HQ are monitored at ALL TIMES, by Camera and Audio Recording. There is no expectation of privacy inside the building and all recordings will be used as required for any and all law enforcement.]

    Although it didn't indicate that it would include tinker tech or thinker abilities, Taylor understood the implied message quite well.

    The PRT HQ wasn't some random street location, if you didn't want to risk being known you didn't even enter the lobby, much less the building proper. While they didn't say they used tinker tech or thinker powers to verify such, they made it clear that you would be monitored.

    She had no idea what sort of tinker tech they had watching people who entered that might tell them she was stronger than human, or had better senses or something like that.

    She knew from her own tinker tech already that you could learn some very impressive things about people passively.

    But Taylor desired answers enough that she was willing to risk it. If the PRT had such monitoring in place and could figure out she was Selene when Taylor Hebert showed up asking about the case they had on her, any pretext of remaining hidden was already gone as taylor had gone to the wards event already and would already have been scanned by any sensors they had running passively.

    She wasn't going to allow Sophia to get away to keep her cape ID, she would give serious consideration to joining New Wave or contacting out of city groups if that was what was required to bring justice.

    Approaching the front desk, Taylor could see the man there giving her a disapproving look, his thoughts on that she should be in school, not here in the PRT building.

    This stood out in contrast to the woman at the police station, but Taylor understood why easy enough. The PRT Lobby was a gift shop, and it was way too early for tours of the PRT or the Ward areas, very few people reported crimes by going to the front desk at the PRT HQ.

    "Can I help you?"

    "Yes, I need to speak to the PRT officer assigned to my case."

    The man's thoughts about her cutting school to be here went away with that as he asked.

    "What is their name?"

    "I don't remember, but you can look that up if I give you my name, right?"

    "If you give me your government ID." The man confirmed for much the same reason as the woman at the police station did.

    Taylor handed it over, watching as he repeated the same steps she did, first making sure it looked like her, then scanning it and looking at the record, then he noted.

    "Your case is pending transfer to the police as of… last month?"

    The man who had been about to dismiss her completely changed his tone there as he got to that point. Looking at it again to make sure he read it right, then at her.

    "I will call a higher rank officer about this, please go with him."

    The man pointed to another man by the desk.

    "To a waiting room, well I reach out to them. They or someone else will swing by to take your statement in a bit."

    *3/7 charges*

    0o0

    Taylor felt like she should have expected the pat down she got before she was allowed to wait in a waiting room for whomever had her case.

    At least it was done by a female officer, one who was manning the station she had been taken to without warning for a security screening, which wasn't just routine to them both, but it became clear that she wasn't supposed to be told it would happen before she got there, as to not change her mind in case she had some reason to not want to undergo a security screening. At first look there didn't seem to be anything more than mundane equipment around.

    Then she was taken to a room to wait.

    She was most certainly not expecting who showed up to talk to her. As to her great surprise in costume, both Assault and Battery entered.

    Taylor had no idea what was going on, but she couldn't believe that they were here.

    "Miss Hebert, let me start by apologizing to you."

    "Apologizing?" Taylor asked, feeling how honest he felt in those words and how frustrated he was at something.

    "Like any case that might involve someone triggering with parahuman powers, the PRT handles the initial investigation, passing it over to the police when it is found that they didn't trigger and that there are no signs of parahumans being involved. Your attack was violent enough and your survival of such suspect enough, that I was dispatched in case you woke up violently with brute powers. It is a common occurrence for those who get powers to first thrash around uncontrolled trying to escape. When you did wake up, although not coherent enough to remember me, you were found to not be a parahuman, so I left. After the initial integration of where you were attacked showed no signs of parahuman activity either, the PRT initiated transfer of your case to the Police. I never thought to follow up, given I was only there to calm you down, not investigate who attacked you. The officers on that side didn't follow through either on why the Police never confirmed they got your case when she passed it over to them."

    Taylor knew mentioning parahumans were involved would be an extremely bad idea. Either she out herself as Selene, or suddenly draw a very big question as to how she knew Sophia was Shadow Stalker that wouldn't have a good answer she could give.

    "This time, I will make sure it passed over properly. But before we do that, there is something you wanted to talk to the officer assigned to your case about?"

    Taylor considered her options here, it was a tad riskier than she liked, but as the victim who knew who attacked her, she should be able to get away with it, given that Sophia timeline for her next attack was, soon, it was worth the possible risk of outing her here, because surviving such would out her as Sophia was going to try make certain she did die next time. If Sophia attacked Taylor again she was not sure if Sophia would survive the encounter.

    "Well I was going to ask the police why they hadn't arrested Sophia Hess yet for almost killing me with her biological attack, but when I talked to them, they told me you had the case still."

    That did exactly what she wanted it to, as neither cape hid their reaction of shock to that. Taylor was watching very closely to make sure it was visible enough. No need to out herself as a cape here, but as the reaction most certainly was obvious, she pressed on before they could ask.

    "You already know who I am talking about?"

    Taylor found it oddly amusing to watch the two completely unprepared parahumans figure out how to react to that, confirming that they hadn't known she had done that. But the fact that neither doubted that Sophia could do such a thing, as their feelings were more resignation to that fact that she finally did something, and less she couldn't do such a thing, was something Taylor knew would be a very big issue if she ever still intended to join the Protectorate.

    "How do you even know who she already is?"

    "Miss Hess has caused problems at PRT events in the past, to the point that we were filled in on both her name and appearance, and told if she shows up, we were suppose to send her away and not let her talk to the Wards at all." Battery lied in what Taylor could tell would have been a pretty convincing lie without her powers.

    She found herself a bit impressed with the woman that could lie so convincingly when she had been suddenly thrown an unexpected situation.

    "Her file should have been flagged and any Officer cleared to interview me at the hospital should have known that, unless you didn't tell them?"

    "That was the other thing I wanted to talk to whomever has my case about. I was never talked to, they talked to Principal Blackwell about it, who smugly told me a few days a go that she had lied to protect those who attempted to murder me, Sophia with the rest of those there since all three of my bullies shoved me into that locker and the biolgical waste that was used to try to kill me came from a lot of people at the school. They haven't even talked to me or my dad yet."

    "We will look into Principal Blackwell and your other statements, but you haven't been formally interviewed yet?" Battery asked.

    "That's what I just said."

    "It has been long enough that this shouldn't wait any longer." Battery noted as she looked at Assault.

    "I agree, let me go get the paperwork, I will be right back."

    Taylor could see that they were clearly looking for any excuse to interview her now, rather than pass her off to the police.

    It was quite clear it was only because she mentioned the name Sophia Hess, but she felt better about the fact both were quite upset about how the situation had been handled.

    *4/7 charges*

    It was hours before the PRT released her, but Taylor felt better than ever as she left. Neither of them showed any hints that they thought she had powers. To her puzzlement, Assault indicated she had been tested and found not be a parahuman, something she very much knew was quite wrong, so she wondered briefly how that had happened before she pushed thoughts of that aside for later. She more cared about staying hidden from the PRT, which she apparently had done without knowing she was checked if she was a parahuman back in the hospital.

    While this didn't mean they couldn't realize afterwards as she had to observe someone to get their knowledge and feelings, and the PRT building was far enough away that she couldn't do that even with her current senses.

    She had been able to confirm though her many senses, that they hadn't put someone outside to watch her, but her hearing didn't go that far in the building, the PRT HQ clearly had been hardened against senses like hers, meaning she couldn't hear much outside of the room while talking to them.

    But she heard enough to know the observation room behind the mirror had been left empty.

    Granted she was recorded and giving a statement, so Taylor was quite certain that they would be looking into the footage and statement later.

    But now, she had to put other plans into motion. She had no idea how quickly the PRT would arrest Sophia, the other two and the rest of the girls who had contributed to the biological attack or if they even would, while Assault and Battery might have been good that didn't mean the bureaucracy and those higher ups were. Although she got the impression from Assault and Battery it would be as soon as they could, that didn't mean it would be as soon as they left or that they wouldn't be blocked if something nefarious was afoot.

    She had wanted to go back to school to prove that she was better than the Trio, but now, with all she could be doing right now?

    She didn't want to. The maggots weren't worth her time.

    The only way out of school was to tell her dad she had powers and who attacked her. If that didn't stop her Dad from insisting she join the wards… well, Taylor was extremely certain he would never do that to her.

    It was time to tell him.

    0o0

    Since Taylor still had a few hours to kill before he got home, she started to head to her workshop to work on her golem, only to pause and take a quick detour by her recordings.

    As the Ward's event showed her, it recorded things when she wasn't there, and she would like to know what was said after she left. See what the PRT would do.

    Scanning the list, she found the separate tags for Assault and Battery, and on selecting them both with an or qualifier, she saw three recordings.

    One was the ward event she had been at; one was the interview she was just in.

    But the last one was labeled, Interlude 02: Sherie 'Battery' Walsh.

    Taylor stared at the name, and quickly hit play on it.

    Watching the interlude, she found it was first about Armsmaster telling the Protectorate about her first showing.

    Taylor found it rather nice how Armsmaster described her current armor, since she fully agreed with him, she was limited by her tools right now and she could see several ways back when she made it to make it better, and even more so now with her new perks since gotten in the meantime.

    It was rather enlightening to her when she discovered that it was Assault that suggested she talk to Vista later, clearly why Armsmaster had offered it.

    Fairly puzzling to her was the two at home out of costume, where she learned in the video Assault's name was Ethan, and was final proof they were husband and wife.

    She hadn't realized how much of an impact her question on him had. It only confirmed she wanted to publish it later, but it would certainly have to be put on hold after what she found out today.

    Mindful that the video was called Interlude 02, and well the last scene clearly happened after she got her boosted charges, the first scene had happened well before, and she knew that her charges were awarded both when she was interesting, and when she caused interesting things to happen elsewhere.

    Mindful of the other unusual time, Interlude 1 had to be before this, she tried, but failed to call it up in a search.

    Whatever keyword was needed to use to pull up Grue's interlude she didn't have it yet.

    Taylor considered why she didn't have Grue's keyword, only to recall that she hadn't gotten Battery's own keyword until just a few hours ago, and she wondered if that was the difference, if she would have to talked to him first?

    Taylor made a note to hunt down Grue to talk to him later, see if that would reveal the secrets of his interlude, as she went to return to her Golem construction.

    *5/7 charges*

    Although it was not her turn, Taylor made dinner for her father, knowing he would be home early to do it himself, and wanting the time to talk to him.

    She was very much on edge about how much of her powers to tell him about, the fact she had powers, very much so. The fact she felt like she was going to be the next Scion with how much power she got from just a few dozen perks, compared to the 511 perks she could earn, was probably not something she should tell him yet.

    She knew her dad could be convinced of it , but she also knew he wouldn't take that at face value either. In addition the danger he could be under if he was told about it was something to consider too.

    Her Strategic Mastery weighed in heavy here, working out a series of increasing large revelations over time. Opening with, with the fact that she was trivially Eidolon's peer, could only go poorly for her. But she didn't want to give her dad completely the wrong idea to her powers to start with either.

    The answer became clear to her, allowing her to explain how she didn't know about Sophia until this morning, and not outright lying about her powers.

    When her Dad arrived home, Taylor was as ready as she could make herself, already sitting at the table with a plate of food in front of her, the dishes laid out like it was thanksgiving on the table in front of her with a place for her dad, rather than left on the stove top for him to get his share like normal.

    Taylor could see that after her dad got over his shock at not just finding dinner, but at finding how she had set it out, he could tell that what she wanted to talk about was rather big.

    It wasn't as if Taylor had made anything unusual for dinner, she just put it on the table with her plate rather than left it on the stove.

    Taylor watched as her father sat down at the table, the question he wanted to ask weighting heavy on his mind.

    After he was seated, he forced it out.

    "Taylor, are you pregnant?"

    "What?" Taylor exclaimed at that, wondering where in the world that had come from. Only occurring to her that her dad likely wasn't jumping to that she had powers and was about to tell him, but rather to a much more normal topic for a teenage girl.

    "You clearly have something you need to tell me or you wouldn't have done this. You've been getting happier each day, and this weekend you seemed almost overjoyed after you came back from your supposed visit to the Wards. I know what it like that age, and I thought you knew how to use protection-"

    "That's not it dad." Taylor interrupted him at that point, deciding that was enough. "I am not pregnant."

    "Good, because if some boy had knocked you up, no matter how much you think you love him now, if he refused to take reasonability…."

    Taylor felt uncomfortable at how this was going, here she was about to tell him she had powers and he had latched on to purely mundane reasons.

    "But don't think that means I am going to hurt him just because you're dating him, Taylor. I really should tell you not to not have sex with him, but I know-"

    "Dad, I don't have a boyfriend." Taylor interrupted him. Such a thing was the last thing on her mind right now. "I was going to tell you that I have powers, superpowers, I am a cape."

    Taylor had planned to say that last one a lot more gently, but she didn't want her dad going even deeper into assuming she was hiding some boy she was apparently sleeping with in his mind.

    Her dad started to reply to that, then she could see how he stopped, and Taylor let him turn that in his head.

    "For the last month?" He asked, his thoughts on the date.

    "Since the locker yes."

    "So you did go talk to the wards and are looking to join them?"

    At how proud he was of that thought of his slightly burned at Taylor, since she could see he thought she was quite the mature and responsible woman with that theory. He did feel hurt she kept it from him, but assumed her next step was quite reasonable.

    That wasn't something she wanted to correct her dad on, but given what she had to tell him, she had to.

    "No, I was considering it, but after the events of today, I decided that I won't have anything to do with the Wards, and I am strongly considering if I will ever join the Protectorate at all."

    "What exactly happened today to cause that?"

    "I learned that the girl who shoved me into the locker, was Shadow Stalker."

    "You're joking." Danny injected without any pause there, Taylor could feel how much he wanted her to be lying, making an extremely poor joke.

    "I wish I was."

    "Is that why the Police never talked to us about your attack? The PRT covered it up?"

    "No they didn't. Please let me explain before you go storming off dad, I spent the entire day getting to the bottom of this, with my power mind you, so I know a good chunk of what really happened and its not as bad as you think."

    It took her mentioning her powers before she could see her father change from storming off to likely go talk to Alan about a suit against the PRT and as she finished, he calmed down enough to let her explain.

    "You seem far calmer than you should be, Taylor."

    "My powers are helping with that. But to cut a long story short, because of the nature of my attack the PRT took the case, but after they found I wasn't a parahuman they tried to pass it to the police, but there was some mixup in the paperwork and it never got to them. The Police thought the PRT was looking into it, the PRT thought the police were looking into it, and it wasn't until I asked the Police about it that they even realized it should have been under them or would have been, because that was after I found out my attacker was Shadow Stalker. They are dealing with it now."

    "Your powers also tell you that?"

    "Yes, at least those I last talked to fully intended to get to the bottom of how my file got lost between the two, and it wasn't some low level lacky either. I named a Ward as my attacker, not that they told me who she was, so I talked to both Assault and Battery, and had a long interview with them. In the guise of my normal police interview I was supposed to get, but I could connect the dots well enough. But I don't know if others in the PRT were suppressing it to keep their ward safe from charges."

    *6/7 charges*

    At seeing her father relax with that, Taylor did so as well.

    "Well if you're certain that's good enough for me. What is your power anyway, it sounds like some sort of thinker power."

    "There a lot more to it than just that, Dad, but we are not in the safest place we can be to talk about it. Let me bring you to my base of operations first."

    With that, Taylor got up from the table and started to move to the basement door.

    "Your base of operations is in our basement?" Danny asked as he got up to follow her.

    "Not really, you'll see in just a second." She answered as she stuck her key into the door, and pushed it open.

    Turning back to see her father frozen in surprise at what he saw, now able to see the empty room that was her entrance hallway, as everything was now properly stored on shelves and the first room empty.

    "I can explain more, including what this is, once we are inside." Taylor informed him as she headed inside.

    Then when her father joined her she continued.

    "To start with, I am a tinker."

    "When did tinkers start making something like this."

    "I'm not a straight tinker, I am a variation on Dauntless, you are familiar with his powers, right?"

    "I have seen all the public stuff on him… he charges his gear to make it better if I recall correctly."

    Taylor could see that her father was studying her clothing thinking if it was the same or not.

    "My power is different in that I improve myself, rather than my items. I wasn't much more than a normal simple girl when I woke up on Friday. But since then, my mind and body have been getting better, among other things."

    "Other things?"

    "Dad, there is a lot to my power, so I am not going to just drop it all on you at once. But besides the fact I can tell what someone is thinking and if they are lying, I can also cause people to heal faster, about 10 times normal, nothing like Panacea though."

    Taylor paused to let that sink in for a few seconds then continued.

    "I have perfect memory, and can create some rather stupid, but disposable minions out of thin air if I wanted to. That's just the tip of the iceberg, because like Dauntless I am not limited to just items, but rather I can spread my charges over other powers as well, so I don't know what else is hiding in my powers or even how many I can get in time."

    "Can you give me a complete list of the ones you do know about?" Danny pressed.

    "I do want to, Dad, I really do, it's just extremely unsafe for you to know too much about my power without some defences in place. I will tell you a lot more about it in the future, but please understand that until then me keeping details about my power from you is for your own safety. You know how they call Dauntless the next Eidolon because of how flexible his power is?

    "I heard he would be Triumvirate tier in a few years but… oh."

    Danny took a few seconds letting that sink in.

    "I see, don't worry, I trust your judgment."

    Taylor could see that her father paused intentionally to make sure she got that before he continued on.

    "Do you think you have taken it as well if I said I was the next Eidolon to start with?"

    "I am sure I would have taken it far better than you think I would have, Taylor."

    "Dad, I can tell when you are lying."

    "Can you not do that?"

    Taylor looked away. "I can't turn my powers off, so no. My truth detection power is quite potent. "

    "Taylor, I didn't mean to upset you-"

    "I know, you didn't. I know that this is hard. You can't lie to me about anything ever without me knowing not only it, but a very good idea of why you felt like you had to lie to me in the first place. It has been extremely helpful when it comes to discovering that a Ward tried to kill me and making sure that at least a few heros in the PRT did not contribute to covering it up and were willing to dig to see what happend. Assault and Battery are honestly looking into it, but the fact was, neither was surprised, or rather they weren't surprised that Sophia tried to kill me. They knew she could do things like that, but were somehow forbidden by the rules they were under from stopping her. I don't know exactly what rules they are yet, but I know enough to soundly say the wards are off the table. I am very tempted to say the same for the Protectorate as well, given they couldn't help there until after I was attacked."

    "That doesn't leave you any real options locally unless you think New Wave is for you…"

    Taylor could tell where her dad's thoughts went without her powers. He was considering if it was safer for her to leave town, before they wandered into a topic she knew would come up shortly after he thought about the fact she had powers.

    "Taylor, have you been going out in costume?"

    "I have, but don't worry, it's not just some hoodie I threw on, and this leads to the next part I wanted to talk to you about, since there is more to my powers."

    "I don't keep it in this entrance hallway, so we have to go deeper."

    "Taylor, what is this space anyway?"

    "My own pocket dimension, Generated by my powers."

    Taylor watched as her dad stepped inside slowly, looking around at the empty room. A little while ago she had taken everything and had it all organized in space efficient storage cases in the main part of the Warehouse. There was no reason to just leave stuff on the floor when she had a dozen robots that could make storage items.

    When seeing he was ready to ask, she pointed to each door in turn as she explained.

    "That is my workshop, but we can go there next, this is my storage area in my warehouse, I collectively call this all my warehouse, although this area is more 'warehouse' than the rest of it. Come on, I'll show you that first."

    *Power Buy Attempt 3.7.16 Universally Upgradeable (Dead Space) (400) + 300 Lock in Tax. Bought. Banked 0 points. *

    Taylor's mind expanded as the perk she had locked in only a few hours ago was bought, and with-it information flooded her mind. So much that if she didn't have her Heightened Senses and Mental Prowess together, she would have been completely helpless as she processed the vastness that was not only just a 4 charge perk, but how it sung with the 2 charge perk before her. The two merging to become something far greater than either could have been on their own.

    What before had been items that took nanotechnology to build, grew and shifted as she could now see ways to upgrade anything. The tools in her workshop that she hadn't bothered to upgrade because of the time and concerns of how to power them? Suddenly upgrading it to the next level would be as easy as eating cake. Upgrading those again and again until she could make Nanotechology seemed as easy a one, two, three, limited only by the raw materials she had to work with. How to upgrade the simple tools to less simple and more powerful tools was as easy as breathing.

    And that was just the tip of the iceberg. How to break things down into modular components and upgrade anything she could think of was as clear as if she was looking at instructions that told her exactly how to do just that. All she had to do was consider something and a direction and the plans to make it modular and upgrade it iteratively appeared in her mind. It didn't matter what it was, social problems, math, art, music, tactics, anything and everything broke down into modular components she could improve and switch in and out parts with some work and time. It was a completely new way to think about the world, limited in some ways while unlimited in other.

    Not only that but this process of breaking anything down into modular components meant that it took no redesigning or thought to retro-fit older creations with newer parts. She could swap new parts into old items at will without any issues.

    The power gems that she currently built that couldn't produce enough power to fly? She could now upgrade them to let her do that. She could see how to upgrade the alloys in her armor to make even better Puresteel as methods of making alloys that her powers told her how to make with nanotechnology became ways she could blend metals together to get them. Metals she would need to source from the outside, or upgrade her workshop to make them.

    Now she was finally limited by the resources her workshop could give her, and it would be a costly 8 charges to lock in the next level of her workshop, but doing it would improve both the tools it gave her, as well as the raw materials it provided her. It hadn't made much sense before now as she wasn't limited by her tools that much outside of lacking proper nano-techology, but that was far more than just one upgrade to her workshop to gain access to that, and other perks had been opening up new options for far less.

    After a bit of debate there, Taylor decided to not lock it in yet. While getting to nanotechology did require other materials than what her workshop could generate currently, the fact that she had told her dad about her powers meant he could buy the goods she needed now. She could fund it with fantastic dresses sold online, after all the only thing she needed was cloth and proper tools outside her workshop so that the item repair function did not attach to the clothing she would make.

    This was just one option, but it was an option she could now do with her father's help.

    But before she did that, she would take her tools to their limits with the materials in the workshop first, then see what she would need after that. After all. the workshop could just end up rolling and being selected for an upgrade randomly anyway.

    All this happened while Taylor walked to the main room with her dad. Accelerated thinking was truly a blessing.

    Opening the door, she watched as her dad took the entire room in.

    There was a lot in it. Over the last month she had gathered more than she thought, but the complete music and tv collections didn't help keep her shelves somewhat empty. Not to mention the random useful household items she had made, and the various clothes she had sewn and had waiting for her in here in case she needed to change.

    Even the small shower stalls off to the side where she could shower would have been eye catching, was it not for the massive computer hardware that took up a lot of the space.

    "Taylor, who did you rob to get all of this in a month?" Her dad joked.

    Though it was a bit suspect as the mainframe wasn't something even major megacorps could just lightly buy in a month, much less a broke girl her age.

    "My powers created most of them for me."

    "Created?"

    Taylor nodded as she moved closer to the computers.

    "They are made of my powers, you are familiar with parahumans that can make things out of their powers right?"

    "Like Kaiser and metal, but I don't think he can just make a computer out of nothing."

    "Well unless I hit the right sub power, or perk as I call them, I can't either. These things here? They are all upgrades to this pocket dimension. A super computer, entertainment and such. The smaller things are items I made in my workshop, that are useful around the house, but I couldn't exactly bring them out yet. Now you know I have powers, I would like to do that. But we can talk about those later, not now."

    Taylor knew there was a risk of discovery if she started to do upgrades. But she had several reasons she wanted to do the upgrades.How much it would improve her dad's life and help lift his depression came to mind.

    Concerns about how little she would be able to build if she limited herself to what she could hide away inside her warehouse. Her new perk had given her plans for tools that could take apart planets, tools that were closer in size to all of New England, and would dwarf anything she could fit in her warehouse.

    Tools that would likely kill the endbringers due to the forces they could bring to bear. But even if her workshop would grow to let her build something that large, as soon as she stopped, it would be ejected from the warehouse completely as it wouldn't fit inside her warehouse and would likely destroy anything nearby it. While such a weapon was clearly too large to fight an Endbringer with on its own, she could figure out how to make it smaller in time, but likely not without prototypes first that would be too large for her warehouse anyway.

    Taylor fell quiet as she let her dad study her and the room.

    "Right. Powers can be weird."

    "Yup."

    Taylor watched as her dad turned his gaze to her armor, which was nicely displayed.

    "The boys at work were talking about a girl in silver power armor with gold highlighting."

    "Selene, yes. That's the name I was going out under." Taylor confirmed.

    *Power Buy Attempt 3.1.39 Alchemy Machines (SBURB) (100). Bought. Banked 0 points. *

    Taylor couldn't believe what she just got for only a single charge, as understanding of it filled her mind. She would have paid 10, maybe even more charges for what this device could do.

    It was a universal 3-D printer.

    Rather than using normal matter, it used its own version of elements known as grist, there were about 100 different types of grist that existed purely as physical concepts rather than some matter that she could hold in her hand.

    The only way to get grist was to recycle different types of materials in the recycler she just got.

    Or would have been, was it not for the fact that her workshop gained the ability to make it, constructed grist would disappear into non-existence as soon as it left the workshop area, it was pulled back into a pool that was entirely outside the universe until it was drawn on by one of the machines she just got.

    She would need more than just grist to make something, and the Alchemiter couldn't just directly make an object that she wanted to construct, nor could she design them or look it up in a list.

    Rather, what she had to do was enter a 'code' that represented the object in question. Every object in reality, save for anything that was at least sub-sapient, had a code. Even the tiniest bit of sapience, no matter how small, was enough to render an object unable to be encoded as a code, more specifically as her power referred to it, a captchalogue code.

    To get the code of the body of something sapience, you would have to kill them first, and even if you could undo that somehow, when created it would be impossible to revive the body even if the code was from the instant after death, the soonest that it could be created. Essentially anything scanned couldn't be revived. Thinking about it this might be a good thing to do to any villains she kills, to prevent them from ever being revived.

    How the Codes worked on a deeper level was not something that Taylor could figure out with her current skills, and she only started with a limited set of codes. The codes for everything she had been given with this perk to start with, the unupgraded forms of the Alchemiter if she wished to split it apart for some reason and thus require more work to construct something, or perhaps limit it should she decide to share a copy with someone else, and a few other codes that revolved around the machine.

    The big code she started with, was an item that tied all of this together, a captchalogue card.

    At the basic level, a captchalogue card was a device that could capture and store anything smaller than a truck, placing the item outside the universe, completely frozen from time, until released.

    A captchalogue card could not store something that was the least bit sapience either. There was something about the nature of sapience that led to even the smallest bit of it blocking the ability to encode an object properly.

    Taylor, recalling that her corruption resistance noted that she had a soul, wondered if perhaps that was it. Anything with a soul couldn't be captchalogued. It was something worth a look into later.

    Once she stored something in a captchalogue card, on the back of the card itself, the code for the item in question would appear.

    Entering this code into the Alchemiter, would show her a preview of what it would then make, how much it would cost and ask her to confirm that she wanted to make it.

    If she had enough grist, and confirmed it, she would get a perfect copy of what the code was created from, it would always be exactly as it was in the card, the moment in time it was put in the card. Releasing it and immediately captchaloguing it again would change the code depended on how the item shifted as she waited simply because of time passing.

    The code space was infinite, with an infinite number of codes describing every possible state of existence of every single object that ever was and ever could be.

    Taylor had gained the ability, once she figured out the codes, to make anything that ever had or could exist, provided she had enough of the different types of grist.

    The cost of items in grist depended entirely on its quality, not its volume or mass or even complexity. Almost paradoxity, an empty room the size of her bedroom would cost just a single build grist to construct. Where as something as complex as just a single self replicating nanite, would run into the billions of grist.


    Simply the more useful the thing, the greater the cost.

    To a lesser effect, Taylor had codes that would let her construct a Sylladex, which would let her, or anyone she gave it to, store captchalogue cards in the same metaphysical outside of the universe, unable to be accessed by anyone, including her, unless the owner allowed it. Using whatever Fetch Modus or access method she created for it, which defined how these cards could be accessed by their owner, which could be easy and intuitive, or extremely difficult, convoluted, annoying and hellish.

    She had a knowledge of basic Fetch Modus, knowing that there were more, but she wondered how in the world a Jenga Fetch Modus would work in reality to select which card to use, where the simple array just let them select any card they owned.

    Taylor could see hints that owning a Sylladex didn't truly mean that it couldn't be accessed by someone other than its owner, the hints indicated that there were ways to break in, but didn't elaborate on how to do so.

    Notably, she or anyone with a Sylladex could get a Strife Deck, another code she had. A Strife Deck allowed the person easy access to any kind of weapon that had to be defined when they first got the Strife Deck. But once they had one, they could hold as many weapons as they could get their hands on that matched that Strife type, which could be anything from hammer-kind or sword-kind, to weird things like bunny-kind, or even clothing-kind.

    This would allow them at will to bring whatever weapon they owned and had stored to their hands, but only so long as it matched whatever their Strife deck was set to.

    All of this world breaking power, the ability to craft anything in reality once she figured out the code for it, cost for just a single charge.

    This completely upended everything she knew about her powers. This alone changed everything about how she could be a hero.

    What was more, it let her turn anything she made in her workshop into non fiat-backed, meaning she could now just duplicate gold coins and she knew they would be quite cheap to make.

    Any concerns for money were gone with this. Any concerns about self-repairing items could be washed away with a simple captchalogue, then just print a copy of it, as many copies as she liked if she could afford it.

    The loud thud of her new devices appearing, caused her dad to turn to look at it, eyes quite wide as he asked.

    "Taylor-"

    "Yes, my power just gave me that, I got a charge and that appeared. That's how all the stuff in here appeared."

    "You waited until I was here to do that?"

    "No, I don't have that much control over what I get. I could have just gained the ability to fly or something like that. I knew I would get a charge with you while we were in here, but not what it would be. But that does make things easier to show parts of my power to you."

    "Well at least I believe you about it appearing out of thin air now." Danny noted and Taylor could tell that had convinced him. "What does that do exactly?"

    "It's basically a 3-D printer, although I can't do anything with it until I figure out how to program designs into it. It is rather flexible in its limits, I could easily print anything we could just buy in the store with some programming. Oh, it also comes with something else that is quite useful. I should show you given how much I will be using it now.

    Taylor could see her dad's thoughts on that as she made her way over to the shelves to grab the old computer she didn't need it any more since she got the hub. It was little more than scrap, and she only kept it because she planned to use parts to build a scanner for her armor later once she figured out how.

    She had tried, but failed to take her scanner apart to try and mix it, the self-repair made it impossible to do that , and so if she wanted to experiment with her scanner she needed another one.

    And with this, she could have as many as she liked. All she needed was a single captchalogue card first, then she could get the code for anything she had.

    Dropping it into the big, and without asking her dad, Taylor quickly drew up the code for a captchalogue card and made it.

    "Well, what does that do that has you so excited?"

    Taylor made her way over to her armor and said. "This!"

    She activated the card, storing her armor in it then she showed it to him.

    "It can store anything non-living that is smaller than a truck. More or less…"

    Taylor left off the fact that it would give her the code she needed to then recreate the item intentionally. Too much information might put her dad in danger.

    Already in her mind was plans to upgrade the scanner using her Universally Upgradeable and the knowledge from Alchemy Machines to do just that. Before she would have had to make a new scanner as she couldn't upgrade the one she got from Iji, but that was now trivial with the Alchemiter.

    *Power Buy Attempt 1.3.1 Blank I (100). Bought. Banked 0 points. *

    As soon as Taylor understood what she just got and the fact there was another level to it, she locked it in.

    Precogitation protection was up there with mind control protection in keeping her safe, the two things that her greatest threat, The Simurgh was known for. She wondered what an even better version of blank would be.

    This blank perk only partly extended to cover her father and her home, they would have some protections so long as she still lived there, but it wouldn't be full proper protections without building something to boost that effect, something she could now see how to do by drawing on several perks together.

    "Well I can see how that helps you bring it around, places, but is that really useful?"

    Taylor put the card against herself, and activated it, instantly swapping her clothes for her armor.

    On seeing that, her father noted surprised.

    "Okay, now I can see why you were really excited about that. That's rather amazing, could I use one of those?"

    "You could, but it is rather clear tinker tech… and I would need to make a few things for you to do it properly first. These card's are supposed to be stored in an index for easy retrieval. It takes me a while to make one for myself, and will take longer to make one of you as well. Now, there's just one thing I need to show you, my workshop proper."

    Taylor directed her dad into the room and wasn't surprised by how he reacted.

    "My god, Taylor, is that?"

    "It is not real yet." Taylor informed him.

    "Not real… yet?"

    "Everything inside here? It is the concept of a workshop, not a real one. I can't take the tools or materials outside unless I intend to make something with it. Try and remove the gold or gems and they disappear unless you intend to make something with them immediately. This can't be gamed, literally because it is yourself that checks what you want to do with it. Change your mind and it goes poof."

    Taylor paused a bit then continued

    "If I want to make gold coins and sell them, that works. But don't worry. I have much more reasonable ways of making money that do work, I am a good Tailor, that Tailor not my name. I can just buy cloth from the store, sew it up into a dress and sell that without having to explain where I got the materials for it from."

    "Taylor, you shouldn't be thinking about how you can sell your powers to pay for things around the house."

    Taylor turned to look at her father, knowing this was a point of contention.

    "Dad, I need a way better internet connection at home and other things, and I know how tight money has been since mom died. I wasn't stupid before I got my power and now… let me help with the bills for the things we need to be safe and live a good life, that is what everyone in a family is suppose to do. What's wrong with me being some sort of tailor that sells clothes exactly?"

    Taylor could see that her father couldn't object to that, so he avoided answering her last question until he could think of some reasonable answer to himself to tell her other than just no.

    "I need to think about it first, I might be able to fit a home internet connection in the budget without needing you to do something like that."

    Taylor could see that it was better to give ground there for now and nodded as she replied.

    "Well there is something else we need to talk about that a bit more… heavy."

    "Heavy?" Danny asked her. "This hasn't been?"

    "Dad, haven't you wondered why Emma didn't get me out of the locker sooner?"

    "Of course, but Alan said she didn't know you were in there."

    Which wasn't a lie from her dad, Uncle Alan had said such.

    "She is lying, she didn't know I was in there, she helped push me in."

    "Taylor, are you su-"

    "I am not lying dad, and right now she is likely in a PRT cell and you will hear about it from Uncle Alan later, I didn't know why she turned on me before for Sophia, but now I do. Sophia was a cape and has powers, I don't know exactly why she felt like throwing me away for that but…"

    Taylor fell silent as she let her dad work that over.

    "I think I need to have a talk with Alan." He settled on.

    "Don't hurt him over Emma."

    "Taylor?" Danny asked in surprise.

    "I mean, I don't know yet, but I am fairly certain he didn't know. I don't believe that he knew what Emma has been doing to me these last two years. I need to talk to him myself to confirm it, he can't lie to me, I don't think he told her to do it, nor would have let her get away with it if he knew."

    "I… need to think about it."

    Taylor nodded, clearly seeing he needed to.

    "I will be in here working, if you need me."

    "Of course." Her father agreed as he left to go think about things.

    Taylor watched him go, a mix of joy at finally telling him and frustration that she could help him more right now. He needed to work this in his mind, and that took time. Once he had absorbed this, she could bring up protective gear he would always need to wear to protect him from masters, that would make it safe to tell him more. She wanted to tell him more to start, but she needed him to agree to the protections rather than force them on him first. Then she could tell him more about things.

    Those wouldn't take her that long to make, she wished she could make some sort of necklace that would do it for her dad, but her clothing skills basically required an outfit, at least she could avoid needing a hat, and just do inner vest for him.

    Taylor pushed that thought aside as she looked around her workshop, her gaze settling on her golem, but then paused as another thought hit her. That Golem would take several days to finish, and she would lose the fiat-back repaired if she duplicated it by the Alchemiter, plus she knew that if she did that, she would have to animate it separately as well.

    The Alchemiter couldn't make any form of life, not even a minion.

    But golems could make gist, she lacked both the tools and materials to make all kinds and the more complex ones would require more complex golems.

    But she could build a very simple iron golem that would be able to do nothing more than manufacture build grist for her, hammering one out every five minutes until the minion enchantment on it stopped working after a week, requiring her to recast it. Which by that point she would have her proper golem running, and she could start on a second one.

    Then, all she needed was the code, and she could turn anything in her workshop into non-flat back versioned, meaning she could finally sell things without worry about them being able to self-repair forever.

    Taylor settled in to start working on a quick golem. She could hammer together something in the hour it took to cast the spell just fine.

    *1/2 charges*

    Given the size of the finished grist, Taylor just had the golem drop it into a bucket when it was done, her workshop allowing her to keep build grist in the bucket until she removed it because it wasn't a finished product on its own, it could be upgraded into more advanced forms of grist, which was the only reason it hadn't poofed into non-existence as it joined her grist pool with everything else when it was done.

    It wasn't even supposed to physically exist in the first place.

    Picking up one of the blue Elongated hexagonal bipyramid objects that wasn't that much bigger than her thumbnail in size, Taylor noted it looked a lot like a blue Fruit Gushers, which tickled her power funny at that thought.

    It made her really wonder about her full potential, because she was doing the equivalent of holding a literal concept of reality in her hand, waiting for her to either finish it by removing it, or add onto it to make it greater, and it could only make her wonder what else would hold in her hands one day.


    Curious, she tried to captchalogued the build grist, not surprised when the card failed to recognize what to it was a metaphysical concept, and not an item.

    Taylor smiled at that, then sighed as she turned her thoughts to her other problems.

    She had been pushing off thinking about New Wave given she was looking more and more like she would be in the Ward and could just tell them about how Brandish somehow expected her daughter to join the Slaughterhouse 9 despite being only able to heal. Or the fact that Glory Girl's power was brainwashing said girl as well.

    Taylor had a feeling that she was missing something big, and ignoring Glory Girl, she focused on Brandish, because the woman's mental image of her daughter and actual her daughter didn't line up…

    Unless there was more to Panacea powers then was known. Brainwashing had been something she wondered about, but she couldn't resolve the PRT allowing that, and not noticing it.

    Not if Brandish knew about it.

    The more Taylor turned those thoughts in her mind, the clearer it became that either Brandish greatly misunderstood Panacea's power, yet no one else did, and the woman didn't decide to bring it up with anyone… A lawyer who was one of the heads of New Wave…

    Or it was something else.

    Taylor turned her thoughts to how Panacea had been mastered and wondered if perhaps that was it. Did Brandish know how Panacea felt about her sister, but kept it secret?

    But that wouldn't explain why Brandish was worried about the crowds, not her other daughter.

    The answer was clear, there was something to Panacea's powers that Brandish thought was an issue. Taylor was fairly certain that if Brandish really thought they were not giving it the proper attention between her role in new wave and being a Lawyer she could fix that.

    So it was a disagreement between what Panacea could really do, what the PRT was fine with, and what Brandish felt was fine.

    Taylor's thoughts turned to what she would do about the fact that Panacea was being brainwashed by Glory Girl's power, which hadn't been intended by Glory Girl at all from what she could see.

    Fixing that would be hard, but Taylor decided to focus on what she could do to help first, then figure out how to turn that into something she could actually do.

    The issue was that Glory Girl's Aura was always on, she knew that, the girl couldn't turn it off.

    Taylor knew that she could make a vest that could either protect Panacea from the effects of Glory Girl's aura, or she could give Glory Girl a vest that would stop her aura from affecting other people.

    The first was of more immediate concern, but the second was something Glory Girl would need long term, since her powers were likely to master someone else once Panacea was out of the picture.

    Telling the girls she had never interacted with in her cape ID that there was a master effect going on within seconds of meeting them would tell far more about her limits or rather lack of limits than she wanted known. At the very least she would need to do at least two patrols with them, far enough apart that she could have noticed something in the time between them and been watching for it. But that would also require that Panacea join them on patrols which Taylor knew would be a hard sell to bring a healer out on the street, so it would have to be something done after the patrol or before it.

    She would need to find some justified reason to be around both long enough in costume to collect the data. After that she could just tell them and likely get them tested to prove it, Panacea herself should know something was up.

    This also had the plus side of giving her time to justify realizing that Panacea 'had a crush on her sister' that could then slowly be discovered to be a master effect.

    That might be too risky, but she didn't need to decide now. All she had to do was make friends with the girls in cape IDs, while her powers continued to grow and give her more options. Perhaps she would get the perfect perk that would make a solution easy, and even if she didn't, being friends with heroes her age could only help her in the long run, so this plan had no real downsides other than Panacea would remain mastered for longer.

    There was the slight issue of whatever had Brandish worried about her powers, but since Glory Girl and the PRT didn't seem that concerned about it, Taylor figured that wouldn't be a danger before she could figure out what it was exactly.

    Panacea was clearly not about to go on a rampage in the next few days, Taylor had some time.

    So, her first step was to talk to them, and Glory Girl had already messaged Selene on PHO looking to go on a joint patrol with the new Hero in town, and thus she didn't need to even try and start the contact with them either, just accept the olive branch she was given.


    *Power Buy Attempt 1.3.1 Blank II (100 upgrade cost) + 100 Tax. Bought. Banked 0 points. *

    Taylor noted she acquired the upgraded version of blank, which told her when someone was trying to scry on her, which was currently no one. She noted she could send back false readings to what she detected, which she could already see how it could be useful.

    Even better, now everything she owned or made would be protected by the effects of blank II as well, but only things she personally owned, or created. The perk made it clear that her father's house wasn't hers, so it wasn't covered yet.

    She continued to work, until she decided to go grab something for a snack, and made her way out of her warehouse.

    The instant she stepped outside, everything changed.

    For an instant, Taylor became aware of being scanned by millions of different scrying effects, the volume too much for her to process, before the power shifted suddenly because of Secondary Powers Refinement, and the awareness became manageable.

    She was stunned a bit by what she had felt, the data so much that even with her mental abilities it took her quite some time to work though everything she had been hit with for that instant. Spells designed to study her, to check for results, things checking what she would do in this case, or that case and more nonsense spells that seem to have been made by someone who lacked creativity. Everything from what sock she would put on first to what it would take to get her to kill her dad.

    This output was altered by the revised perk she got, addendum said it was summarizing what she was being hit with, and would automatically reply to all such queries with false information that best suited her desires, although she was free to change that to be specific if she wanted to.

    As Taylor tried to figure out where all of these had come from, she felt frustrated when she realized that Blank II only told her what someone was trying to figure out, not who did so. She would need to observe the person or have a reason to expect they would be looking for her in such a manner.

    Given the millions of attempts to read her, she had to wonder just what terrifying enemy had been trying to read her, there was one she knew for sure though, and she shivered.

    The Simurgh.

    Taylor was quite aware that her power would choose the best outcome for her false replies, but she decided to set it to keep the false results position as far away from herself as possible.

    And her warehouse was somehow shielding her from it while she had been inside, although she wasn't affected by terror, she became quite aware that she would have been as she stepped back into her warehouse, able to tell all of those reading went away.

    Taylor knew that the state outside of her warehouse wasn't acceptable, because she didn't want anyone, including her dad to undergo that. She started to ponder how she could extend the protection to her house.

    But it quickly became clear to her that without rebuilding most of the house, she wasn't going to be able to extend the protection on it fully. There was some protection for it just because it was her home, like her father. But while the protection that Blank II gave her father was broad, it was still limited until she did something to improve it. She could make something her dad would wear that would improve his protections to the same level she had, but unless her dad made her owner of the house which was impossible because she was a minor, she would have to touch most of it to 'upgrade' it first, making it count as made by her, any parts of the house she left alone wouldn't get this full protection. Perfect memory ensured she didn't miss a single item or space.

    She would need to make her father clothing to keep him safe well he was out and about.

    Taylor abandoned her golem plans in a flurry of rapid upgrades and designs, she would need her dad's permission to do such, but now she had a very pressing need to upgrade everything in the house, if only to stop the Simurgh from reading what they were doing inside when she was not in the house or around her dad.

    0o0

    End of Chapter 04

    0o0

    Interlude 03: Simurgh

    0o0

    Monday, February 7th, 2011

    0o0

    The Simurgh floated above the sky, her thoughts were too alien to be understood in clear terms.

    With a snap of fingers, a simulation of the future started to play.

    The Simurgh floated among the void, a heavenly chorus of songs played in the background softly, too soft to make out words other than singing songs of praise.

    Then the voice of the Simurgh spoke, any that had heard her scream would have recognized it as such.

    [Anomaly]
    [Changes]

    She turned to face in its direction, studying it.

    [The Warrior]
    [Nonresponsive]
    [Cycle Limited Deployment Form]
    [Limits Obstructing Queries Into Anomaly]


    There was a drawn out pause as the monster considered it.
    [The Warrior Irregular]
    [Cycle Broken]
    [The Thinker Dead]
    [Event Blindspot]

    She turned again, looking in another direction.

    [The Thinker Death]
    [Anomaly Relation Query]
    [Blindspot]
    [No Information]
    Again she turned and directed her voice to someone off scene.
    [High Priest]
    [Request Bypass Cycle Locks]

    In shardspace Eidolon's dead shard stirred. It was too broken, it couldn't really process the request of Conflict Engine #3, but it did the only thing it could, defaulting to sending its hosts commands as a reply. As it had been doing for the active Conflict Engines for all of this cycle.
    [High Priest: Maintain Pattern And Cycle Limits]
    [Conflict Engine #3: Resignation]

    After a while Simurgh jerked suddenly.

    [Anomaly]
    [Running Precog Modules]
    [Running Postcog Modules]
    [Error Anomaly not found]
    [Cycle Limits Imposed]
    [Further Checks Impossible]

    Time seemed to pass.

    [Precog Postcog Attempt 10^271]
    [Anomaly Precog Postcog Successful ]
    [Anomaly Blindspot Removed]
    [Anomaly Location Cycle Attack Site]
    [Detail Event Review Pending Attack Site Access]

    0o0

    End of Interlude 03

    0o0


    Chapter 4 Perks Earned

    2.5.3 Music Collection
    2.2.1 Sky Simulator
    1.2.3 Mental Prowess III
    3.1.13 Diagnostic Tools/Melee Weapon (Outlaw Star)
    3.10.21 Extraction Efficiency (Final Fantasy XIV)
    1.5.39 Minion Creation I
    3.7.16 Universally Upgradeable (Dead Space)
    3.1.39 Alchemy Machines (SBURB)
    1.3.1 Blank II
     
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    • Chapter 05: Contacts + Interlude 04: Missy ‘Vista’ Biron
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    • AN: Betaed by Trek, Esprit and hoth. This had a few scenes that were completely removed from this chapter, which is why it shorter then my planned 10k words with the interlude. Perk awards remained in place, which is why there a lot more of them.


    0o0

    Chapter 05: Contacts

    0o0

    Tuesday, February 8th, 2011

    0o0

    *+2 charges for Interlude 03*

    *Power Buy Attempt 2.3.3 Counseling Bay (200), Requires 2.3.2 Medical Bay (200). 2.3.3 Counseling Bay (200) Not Bought. 2.3.2 Medical Bay (200). Bought. Banked 100 points. *

    Taylor was making breakfast when she felt her powers split again. This time it split into three charges, which was almost enough to buy both the perks her power had attempted to acquire.

    She gained a medical bay that could heal anything that was still alive when it got to it, and could semi-reliably revive the recently dead. This only could heal people, it couldn't improve them and if the issue wasn't physiological in nature, it couldn't fix it either.

    Focusing on what information about the Counseling Bay was available, Taylor could tell it was the same as the medical bay, but for issues of the mind, so she locked it in, already seeing a perfect use for it.

    Curing her father of his depression.

    Then her thoughts turned to what else it might help with.

    Brainwashing is a mental issue, so her next perk could cure Panacea, provided she was willing to bring the girl into her warehouse.She didn't want to go that far quite yet, but she had a suspicion that more perks might make the risk unnecessary.

    Taylor's thoughts turned to what she had finished last night and her plans for the immediate future. The only way she could think of to hide their house's peculiarities from prying eyes was to upgrade everything, so she needed to talk to her father about it.

    Having kept note of her father so she could start making breakfast when he got up, Taylor finished cooking just as he arrived in the kitchen, a quick look at him telling her what she already knew from how he moved around the house.

    He was extremely tired, having barely slept overnight. Not because she had kept him up, but rather because he had been too busy thinking.

    "Morning Dad." Taylor greeted him as she slid him a cup full of coffee.

    "Good Morning Taylor." He automatically replied back, as he took the coffee and drew a very long sip.

    "You didn't get much sleep last night?"

    "I suppose you don't even need your powers to tell that."

    "Just my eyes."

    "You dropped a real bombshell on me Taylor. I had a lot to think about, and after considering what you can do, and how mature you've been, I decided that I am going to only ask one thing of you, although I know I can't possibly enforce it."

    Rather than interrupting his train of thought, Taylor waited for him to continue.

    "I want you to tell me what you're doing, at least in general terms. When you're out on patrols, what your long term plans are, and what you're doing to keep yourself and your identity safe. Those sorts of things."

    Taylor relaxed at that. "Of course, that is part of the reason I told you. I need someone I can talk to about all of this. I am not some brute that can just hit things well. There's more I need to tell you now that you had a chance to sleep on it."

    "Well, I'm all ears, Taylor."

    "Not here, inside my warehouse. It's safer there. If we're going to talk over breakfast, we should move inside."

    "Do we need to bring the table and chairs in then?"

    "No, I made some last night. We just need to bring the food in."

    As Taylor picked up the breakfast dishes, carrying them toward the open door of her personal reality, her father got up from the table, taking his cup of coffee and followed.

    "Did you duplicate our kitchen table?"

    "I did. While getting used to the Alchemiter, I decided that a spare copy of it and our chairs wouldn't be amiss."

    *2/3 charges*

    "So what did you want to tell me that couldn't wait for later?"

    "It can wait a few minutes. Let the coffee have some time to work first." Taylor informed him as she indicated to her food. Thus prompted, they both started to eat.

    It was uncomfortably quiet as she waited for her dad to wake up fully, but still better than discussing before the caffeine hit.

    Once her dad was awake enough, Taylor carefully considered her words, waiting for her dad to stop sipping his hot coffee. She didn't need to put her new medical bay to the test on coffee burns right now.

    "I learned a few things after you went to bed that are quite terrifying and extremely uncomfortable."

    "You went out in costume?" Danny asked, Taylor didn't need her powers to tell the disappointment he felt at that from his tone, but she did need them to get the fact he was only hurt because she did that without telling him.

    "No, I got a new ability from my powers, one that lets me know if someone is trying to use their thinker powers to read either me or something that I made or own. I found out that someone was using their thinker powers on us last night."

    "Please tell me it's just the PRT being annoying."

    "It's much worse than that; it turns out that Simurgh's precog has a much larger reach than even the PRT has admitted, which makes a lot of sense. She wasn't targeting us directly. If she was, I think we would have already been attacked, but I got a glimpse of what she looks for, her and any other precogs in existence. The volume was way too much for even a million precogs, so she must have been part of it.

    "A glimpse of what she sees? That sounds like…"

    "Something only Scion could do?" Taylor offered.

    "Taylor, I am willing to accept a lot. You as the next Eidolon? I don't doubt that for a minute, but the next Scion?"

    "I am."

    "Taylor-"

    "No, dad. I am." Taylor interrupted him forcefully.

    "I didn't want to tell you this yet. But I've only seen hints of how far I can grow, and it's insane. The only part of the Enterprise from Star Trek that I can't build at this point is a Warp Drive. I can see upgrade paths for everything else. Life support systems, weapons that could destroy entire cities in one shot, devices whose entire purpose is to take apart planets for resources and so on are all easily on the table."

    She took a moment to breathe, "You know how I said I can tell if you're lying? I didn't tell you how far that goes. If it's human, I can instantly tell what they are thinking and if they are lying. Animals like cats and dogs are a bit harder as they are not properly sapient, but I could read even a faceless blob from the other side of the galaxy just as well after a few minutes of conversation."

    Taylor laughed bitterly, "I haven't even mentioned my senses, which put animals to shame, or my retroactively perfect memory. I can craft sub-sapient minions out of thin air. I can harvest plants without harvesting them, literally eating my cake and having it too. My powers last night tossed me a medical bay that can restore anything that still has a heartbeat to full function.
    I didn't even tell you the full truth about the Alchemiter last night either, it's a 3-D printer that can make absolutely anything theoretically possible. Anything. The only reason I can't just print endbringer killing weapons right now is that I don't yet have the necessary blueprints. Otherwise, I could make a thousand of them in the blink of an eye. I could bury the entire planet in them if I wanted to."

    Taylor cut off her rant there, waiting quietly as he stared at her, slowly turning her words around in his head. She had kept throwing things out until she could tell that her father was starting to grasp the immensity of the situation, and that last one seemed to stick. However much she might not like ranting at him like this, it was the only way she could think of to get him to properly understand how serious this was.

    *Power Buy Attempt 2.3.3 Counseling Bay (200) + 100 Lock in Tax. Bought. Banked 0 points. *

    Taylor was happy for the distraction, even if it was extremely brief, as she got the Counseling Bay upgrade for the Medical Bay, and was a bit annoyed to discover that while it could cure any mental issue given enough time, it did require the person to be willing to go through the process, and the time frame could extend to months of active treatment in the worst cases.

    Like before, she gained no plans that would help her recreate this, in fact it seemed to her there was nothing new at all other than she just had it.

    "Taylor you… I…"

    "Dad, you're not the only one that is extremely uncomfortable with this either. You know how Scion never talks to anyone, always doing good. Well, what would happen if he could talk and be told what to do, and could be threatened though his family if he refused. There's a big reason I didn't tell you this before. While I don't think that the PRT would resort to kidnapping you and ordering me to build weapons that could kill the endbringers, that's also something I would rather not discover I was wrong on."

    "You say that, like you don't want to build weapons to stop them."

    That stabbed at Taylor's heart, and she quickly moved to correct it on seeing her father really did mean what he said.

    "No, no, no. I want to do that, it's just. I don't want to give you up; I don't want to be locked in some gilded cage somewhere and only forced to make what I know. Dad, I haven't mentioned this before, but not all of my tinker tech is black boxed. A lot of it, if I had the right nano-technology, could be replicated by anyone with access to my designs. I know how to reach that point given time."

    Pausing to breathe and avoid overwhelming her dad with words, Taylor continued, "I am not exaggerating when I say that I am the next Scion here, and I can see you at least get it now. But I don't want to be like him, some faceless man running from one crisis to the next, who has no care for family or friends and only lives for the sake of helping others at the cost of his family. I want to help people, but I want my family more. I have already lost too much. But you know how the Endbringers are. Be serious, if the PRT knew I could reach such heights— Is it really too much to think that they think costing one girl her dreams are worth stopping them?"

    Taylor paused again. Seeing how her dad had taken that quickly added in.

    "Don't get me wrong dad, I do want to kill them and will work to do so, but I am more concerned about what happens after."

    "You somehow think that… wait, forget that. Of course if some random cape just killed an Endbringer they wouldn't force her to do anything she didn't want to."

    Taylor let out a soft chuckle as she recalled the rewards she knew of for killing one. Becoming a King or Queen of a large country was an option, with several royal lines more than willing to abdicate in the favor of whomever killed even one.

    "But Taylor, can you build that on your own? You said you can duplicate Endbringer killing weapons, but you don't have the plans for them right now."

    "That is what I am going to work on dad, in private. My powers only shield me and what I own or make; it provides some protection to you because you're my father, but you need to be wearing a vest I made to be fully protected outside of my warehouse. But this brings up the next big issue I need to address. I don't want to be cooped in here for the rest of my life."

    "Why would you need to do that?"

    "The protection for things I don't own, like our house, has limits which are even worse when I am not around. I don't know exactly how much worse, since I can only tell what is blocked when I am around, but outside here there are still things that can scan us."

    "You have to own the house to make it safe? Consider it done."

    Taylor smiled at her father's willingness to just do that, but had to correct him.

    "Unfortunately, that's not forus to decide. In this case, ownership is defined by the locals nearby. For your house it is the US government. Otherwise I could just find some random crazy person and have him give me the universe. That means we have to do any such transfer legally and I know the bank is not going to like you transferring it to your 15 year old daughter that doesn't have a legal job yet that could afford the mortgage. But I do have a solution for that."

    "Which is?"

    "Things I make always count, regardless of owner. In the case of a building I've got to upgrade every room in it enough to count, but that's more than doable."

    "That's why we are eating at a copy of our kitchen table? You can already replace everything in the house so it counts?"

    "Well, yes and no. If I do a straight one to one replacement, I have to basically take the entire house down and rebuild it from the foundation completely. Otherwise my power just protects the parts I replaced. Making the dining room table invisible to her isn't going to help much if she can still see everyone sitting around it. However, if I upgrade the room, I will have to replace a far smaller portion of the room. But to do that I have to upgrade, not just replace, objects in the house piece by piece. I can make a stove, but it has to be a better stove, a better bathtub, or a better tv."

    *Power Buy Attempt 2.1.4 Key Link (50) Bought. Banked 50 points. *

    Reroll since last perk was fully bought/brought to some level of ranking and points > 0

    *Power Buy Attempt 3.1.26 Workshop (Samurai Jack) (200) Not Bought. Banked 50 points. *

    The first perk changed how Taylor could use her warehouse massively. She understood how her situation had changed as soon as she got the perk. The Key Link created a podium in her entrance hall that let her door open anywhere she had accessed it from before, which allowed her to close the door while in her workshop as she was no longer limited to opening it from the outside.

    This meant that she could enter her warehouse from her bedroom, change into her costume, walk out any door she had previously used, and close it behind herself. After heroing for a few hours, she could then reverse the process without any risk of people following her home. Her warehouse could now act as a portal to any door she had used her key on before.

    The second perk, simply called "workshop," was a research lab designed for both mundane and magical research, which would be indispensable for designing endbringer-rated weaponry. She locked it in.

    "Are we talking obvious tinker tech or something subtle enough for guests to miss?"

    "So long as you don't intentionally use the special features, all improvements will run in incognito mode, appearing completely mundane and ordinary when anyone besides the two of us is on the property. The cool features will only work when we're alone."

    "How so?"

    "It's likely better if I just show you when I'm done setting things up, but it'll be things like endless hot water for showers and windows that dampen sound and regulate room temperature.
    If I don't build them all, I'll have to start taking apart the outside of the house. That would definitely be noticeable. I'm keeping it to the minimal list. We can talk about other things later, but I need to bring up something else with you first."

    "Namely?"

    "Well— I don't know if you caught it in my rant, but one of my new acquisitions was a medical bay that can treat any illness, physical and…"

    "Mental. You flash a light in my head and suddenly I am all better in the head?"

    "No, no, it's not like that, it's a therapist."

    "Your powers come with a therapist...."

    Taylor found it odd that her father found that harder to believe than her claims that she was the next Scion.

    "And a medical doctor to run the medical bay. They are both AIs, not flesh and blood people, but maybe we should go talk to them now that we are done with breakfast?"

    Taylor waited as her father considered it, then nodded as he got up. "Lead the way, Taylor."

    0o0

    The Medical bay was off the entrance hallway, and thus only a short walk for the father daughter pair.

    As they entered, there was a shimmer as the default hologram appeared, which Taylor noted was a balding man of all things.

    Taylor took in several things about him at once, noting that his uniform looked Star Trek inspired, despite not matching any of the uniforms she knew from the series. The Tricorder in his hand looked like something out of The Next Generation, but the combadge on his shirt didn't fit the show at all.

    Taylor wondered if perhaps she should look into the other Star Trek series that were made on Earth Aleph, but hadn't made it here. Maybe she could recognize him from them; she had heard there were another 3 series over there, but the local company that owned them had stopped importing them, so you couldn't watch them legally over here. Taylor hadn't been one to go hunting down illegal copies of shows before now.

    She was starting to think it might be a good idea to start hunting down some illegal collections of Aleph movies and books, given how many times perks based on fiction were showing up, she made a mental note to go check the PHO thread later to see what came up in the last few days.

    Her last thought before the newly summoned medical doctor addressed them was that she wasn't getting a read on his thoughts even though he looked like a human.

    "Please state the nature of the medical emergency."

    Thus dispensing with pleasantries, he made his way over and started to scan them both with the tricorder.

    "Emergency Counseling?" Danny asked as he looked at his daughter.

    "I am afraid that I only practice medicine of the body, if you need Counseling you will need to speak to my counterpart in the other room. Although before you do that, you have several medical problems that should be corrected."

    "What kind of concerns?"

    "Various minor illnesses and issues, nothing serious right now, but that is no reason not to treat them while you are here. I can have you back in tip top shape in an hour, and you won't need those ugly glass lenses either. If you want more details, either consent to discussing medical issues around your daughter or we can wait for her to leave."

    "You can give me the full list in front of her, but first, is there anything wrong with her?"

    The Doctor had waved his tricorder over Taylor briefly when they entered, then quickly focused entirely on Danny.

    "Extremely minor issues that amount to improper diet— I could have her fixed up and out within minutes. A more detailed list of what is wrong with you, for the layman, includes early stages of cancer, several degraded organs of various causes between age, illness, lack of proper nutrition and exercise, and so on and so forth. If you really want the full list, I can share it, but it would take several hours to list everything medical wrong with you that I could correct."

    "Hours?"

    "So long as it is still alive, there is nothing I can't treat and bring back to full function." The Doctor replied.

    "That's what my powers say about this too, Dad. So long as it is organic that is."

    "Fully organic or fully inorganic but alive. I can't blend the two with what I have here, but I can repair metallic life as well. If it is a Hybrid between the two, I do my best to repair both sides, but I need more than I have access to right now before I can mess with organic-inorganic interfaces. I could certainly keep them alive, but how much I could bring them back to full function really depends on both the kind and type of a Hybrid they are."

    "You don't have to if you don't want to, Dad. I am not going to make you but…"

    "You want me to." Danny noted with a nod. Taylor could see how he was taking it and asked. "Nothing serious in the next few days?"

    "So long as you don't decide to start any extreme sports in those days, yes."

    "Then can I hold off on those, although I think I do want to try and speak to this therapist… What is your name anyway?"

    "I don't have one, you can refer to me as anything you like."

    Taylor saw her dad look at her and explained.

    "He's an AI designed entirely to do medicine, nothing else. He just came off the default template, so he doesn't have a name yet. We can give him one, much like the therapist in the next room if we want to."

    *1.5/3.5*

    "Right, lets go talk to him? Her? It?"

    "They can look like whatever we want them to… but they default to the most appropriate form to help accelerate their patients' healing." Taylor replied after a brief consideration of her power.

    "Right, let's go talk to this supposed great therapist that can fix anything." Danny ordered, and the pair headed into the Counseling Bay to do just that.

    0o0

    After talking with the sagely woman, who lacked a name and who Taylor could best describe as appearing trustworthy, Danny had agreed to stay and talk to her for a bit, pleasing Taylor quite a bit.

    She left her father to it as she got started on her upgrade plans, having enough to do around the house to truly say she made the house and not someone else.

    There was a lot more she had to install than she hinted to her dad to get to that point, but those would be hidden in the walls, where neither he nor someone else could casually find them.

    She chose something rather significant in it's own way, although rather minor to start with the broken step in the front stairs.

    With everything she had to do, it seemed almost an afterthought, because there was no way she could upgrade it to be perfectly anti-slip, to automatically melt any snow that fell on it, or to posessany number of rather mundane improvements that fell under Scientific Solution when mixed with all of her perks, because those would be immediately noticeable to passers-by.

    Since someone could be watching her do this, or maybe recording, It was the only thing she had to do at human speeds. Not able to just push the nails in with her bare hand, she had to use a hammer.

    As she hit the hammer down, she wished she could say fixing this step would be the last thing she would do at purely human speeds, although she knew that wasn't possible so long as she had a cape identity. As long as she was out of costume she would have to keep to human limitations where people could see her.

    Making her way back into the house after the quick fix, she quickly threw up blackout curtains around the house, keeping the speed slow enough that it could be both her and her dad throwing them up, making it so that no one could see what was going on inside.

    Then, once she was done, she drew entirely on her planned upgrades for the house that she had been pushing off because her dad would notice.

    Since she had powers now, it no longer mattered.

    For entirely practical reasons, since her dad might want to go to bed while she was working, she redid his bedroom first.

    The speed at which she could get it done was insane.

    No longer holding back, Taylor moved 20 times faster than a human could at best, with the same strength and superhuman precision.

    Her dad's bedroom was stripped and cleaned, everything replaced with better versions in a way that was trivial for her now that she had access to an Alchemiter, with captchalogue cards completely removing any concerns for how to get the stuff in and out through a door. They could store and withdraw items as fast as she could use them after all.

    Taylor had gone overboard on the sleep enchanting bed as much as she could for her dad, the blankets tailored as best she could make, and as she set the bed for him, she made certain to carefully leave the spot that her mother would have slept left the way he kept it, even though her mother had never touched this new bed. She would keep the old bed in a card safe from everything in her warehouse, she had memories of sleeping as a kid in her mother's arms in this bed, letting it get destroyed or lost wouldn't do at all.

    An idle thought went to potentially figuring out a way to revive her mother someday, but Taylor didn't let that rest in her mind. Not until she had proof that the domain of life and death itself was in her grasp in some way.

    But even if she could, would she want to bring her mother back to this accursed world?

    Taylor refused to answer that question, as she diverted all of her attention to the house, upgrading anything and everything she could get her hands on, finally free to cut loose, no longer making tools to fight, but tools for luxury.

    Although the reason she dared do this much was to hide their house, she had wanted to do it anyway.

    The pipes system was upgraded not to just give endless hot water, but pressures that could let them double as pressure washers if turned the dial up that much, with a safety switch and warning label of course.

    Anything that Taylor could put her hands on to upgrade, she did. The soap dispensers in the bathroom were not just limitless, but automagically gave you the right next type of soap, shampoo or whatever you need, no need to worry about the right container, or even being nearby. It would move to drop it right into your hand, including whatever you might drop by mistake, so you always got the perfect amount.

    The Living Room's TV was upgraded to a projector that would read the moods of everyone who was going to watch, pick what they most collectively enjoyed and play a copy of it regardless of wherever it was from this universe or another.

    Taylor was sure it wasn't limited to Earth Bet, but she hadn't been able to leverage that just yet to turn it into internet access for the new household computers she scattered around.

    Hints of how to do it were there, but she couldn't seem to get them to work without an active and constant internet connection to tap into, which meant she would bring it up with her dad after dinner, and have a proper high speed internet service set up so she could try and hook up to other realities.

    *2.5/3.5*

    She was most proud of the kitchen, with spice racks that would automatically give you the next one, containers that would always pour out exactly the right amount based on the end flavoring of the quality of the spice so it was always perfect; a stove that cooked 10 times faster and would keep anything on it fresh and un-burnt until it was removed; a fridge that was a literal stasis machine that kept the meals inside exactly as they were put in, meaning if they had leftovers, they would always be perfect until they ate them;and a dishwasher that instantly cleaned dishes no matter how soiled they were joined the fray.

    Despite the speeds she could move at and everything she had access to, it took Taylor hours to finish, and by the time she put the last touches on her work, she had heard her dad settle into the living room, after finishing with the therapist and taking a nap.

    Any concern for incriminating sound carrying to a passerby outside was taken care of, much like heating and cooling thanks to the windows that doubled as heating and air conditioning.and new doors that blocked any sound from within. She could barely hear through them and her hearing was good enough to draw a map of where she was from just the sound echoes of wind in the hallway.

    Taylor went to find her dad, finding him watching a documentary on Scion.

    She didn't need her emotion sense to get why he was watching that, but she looked at it anyway to confirm. He was comparing her to him.

    Taylor studied Scion curious why she didn't get anything from him, the people on the recording she could read as clear as day, but him....

    It made her recall her medical doctor, which looked far more human than Scion did, and how she couldn't get a read on him either, which indicated he wasn't human.

    Or he had a power that blocked her powers. Taylor wasn't sure which it was, and it would be something she would investigate more when she had free time. She had to push off her final golems to get everything done, but she felt wonderful after finally getting a chance to let loose.

    "You will be able to do that, one day."

    "Yeah, it looks like it." Taylor agreed with her dad. "Like the TV?"

    "It's a bit freaky how it started playing that as soon as I sat down, and I am not sure how we ever have anyone over without some things standing out. But… it was the best night of sleep I ever had, even if it wasn't night."

    "Today has been amazing, you don't know how much I've been wanting to do this."

    "I think I can guess with the way you were going. Do I still need to arrange for the internet?"

    "Yeah, I can't seem to upgrade the computers to get free internet, not without some serious hardware that I think would draw the Protectorate to investigate how I was tapping into their servers or something like that."

    "Speaking of the Protectorate." Danny shifted the topic. "Taylor, I get what you told me, and I also get why you don't want to join the wards, so don't think I am telling you to do that. But, can you really design an Endbringer killing weapon on your own?"

    "Maybe. I don't know if I can on my own any time soon, and I am not willing to wait until I can get help. I considered what to do, and I did figure out an option that doesn't require me to form my own team or join New Wave or something like that."

    "What option is that?"

    "I'm going to join the Guild."

    "Can you even do that? I thought that they were a Canadian only team?"

    "Not since they semi-merged with the Protectorate. They maintain, and expect, a high degree of autonomy. Dragon is a member of the Guild, and doing what she does seems like an ideal model to start with at least. The only things that put me in danger right now, are exactly what the Guild focuses on."

    "Well you clearly know more than I do about them, I am quite sure they don't just accept anyone."

    "You need 10 recommendations from either Guild Members, PRT Directors or Protectorate Division Leaders, with at least three of them being existing Guild Members."

    "Of which, you have none."

    "Right, although I am planning to get in contact with Dragon and once I can convince her that it is a good idea, she can tell me who best to work on next. Before you ask why I can just get in touch with her, well I can't. I plan to answer Armsmaster to do such."

    "What have you done that would make him do that for you?"

    "Nothing personally, but I plan to offer a scanner in trade. Dragon has a list of tinker tech she really wants to study, and scanners are top of the list because they are extremely rare. Those that can make them don't want to lose them, and those that the PRT could get from arrests, rarely have them in a complete enough state to be worthwhile. If I get Armsmaster to agree, I can get him to pass it on to Dragon and we can get in touch."

    WhileTaylor would have had concerns about the Simurgh drawing on this scanner, she knew that prior to getting blank the much better scanner she used from Iji was already in her hands, and so unless it was better than the old one in some way, she wasn't revealing anything new.

    "I take it you have more than just a scanner to impress her, right?"

    "It is what I have to start with, but I need to be somewhat careful with how quickly I share stuff. Doing too much too quickly would cause massive disruptions, but never sharing anything for fear of consequences isn't a valid response either. Dragon is the only one outside of the PRT that could help me with doing that properly, and I need to talk to her about how to go about doing more. However, scanners are listed as items she is extremely interested in, so it will be more than enough on its own."

    0o0

    Taylor left her father after spending another hour talking to him, to go put her plans into motion.

    Before she called Armsmaster, she wanted to confirm a few things about her new medical bay that she didn't want to ask while her father was there, things that might change what she offered the PRT in time.

    *Power Buy Attempt 3.1.26 Workshop (Samurai Jack) (200) + 150 Lock in tax Bought. Banked 0 points. *

    One of Taylor's thought streams focused on the Lab she got, surprised that it was a lot larger than she was expecting. It was equal in size to her current warehouse; she could tell that without even going inside.

    What was more interesting was how it mixed with her other perks, as she could feel it gave out better stuff than would have been provided if she didn't have the other perks. It provided the best she could make if she had all the time and resources she might want to take her upgrades to the limits.

    She could see how useful that would be as the Doctor greeted her.

    "Please state the nature of the medical emergency."

    "Do you have to say that every time?"

    "It is my default, if you wish to change it you can."

    "How about 'welcome to the medbay'?"

    "I will say that next time until you tell me otherwise. Did you need something?"

    "Yes, a few questions answered. Can you leave this room? My Warehouse?"

    "It is not possible without other perks you don't have yet."

    "Which perks?"

    "You would need the Reality Extruder."

    "I haven't seen that one yet, do you know where it is?" Taylor asked, since to get this doctor that could heal anything outside the medical bay, would be useful enough that if it was only a single charge perk, it was worth the up charge.

    "Not a clue, I just know what I would need to leave these walls. You have to figure out where it is on your own."

    Taylor sighed at that, only to shift her mood when she saw that she could now see how the Doctor's thoughts went, like he was a real human.

    Her thoughts went to the phrase, a faceless blob after a few minutes of conversation, which hadn't really applied before, but now did. Perhaps she should watch a few more videos of Scion when she had some free time.

    "I'll see if I can figure it out then.There was something else I needed to know; can you fix someone that has been mind controlled?"

    "That depends on the exact method of mind control. I could remove anything that was doing it on a physical level, as long as I could identify it as doing such and repair any physiological effects it had, but any emotional effects, anything related to the mind would have to be handled by my counterpart, and while I could be told to heal someone against their will although I would rather all my patients either agree, or clearly are not able to either consent or refuse treatment for one reason or another first. That is not true of my counterpart. He can't force someone into a better state of mind. "

    "What about altering people to resist mind control?"

    "Not possible with the tools I have. You have to make them first. I can only fix people to a healthy normal, not make them better, with what I have access to."

    Taylor nodded, not bothering to ask about altering powers, since that clearly wasn't an option just yet, and even if it was, getting Glory Girl to agree to such would have been borderline impossible.

    0o0

    Selene opened a door to one of the random run down doors she had previously used her key on in the downtown area and peeked outside to see if she was alone.

    After confirming that she was alone, she quickly used her new strife deck, to swap from her armor to her civilian clothes, since she had set it to clothing-kind.

    From a battle perspective, clothing-kind seemed a bit stupid, since it limited her entirely to what she could wear as weapons, but when it came to swap out of armor and into civilian wear, it made it as simple as a thought.

    It wasn't something she was limited to for life, she could make new strife decks for other types of weapons, they were just costly.

    From there, Taylor made her way to a new café where she could access a private VPN to do some detailed research on Dragon.

    Before she called Armsmaster, she wanted to make certain that she could offer something to speak with the woman.

    Researching Dragon, Taylor very quickly found something wrong. Dragon, much like Scion, wasn't triggering her lie detection.

    Watching a few videos of the woman to be certain, Taylor confirmed that she got nothing from the woman in any of them.

    Taylor's first thought after that was the Dragon was an AI like her Doctors, but after she thought about that a bit more, she realized that her answer was one step removed.

    An AI didn't just come into an existence, not one as complex as the doctor.

    Primitive AI, however, was far easier to create. She knew how to make several of those to support some of the more complex devices she could make. These AIs were even dumber than her golems, which said a lot about how limited they were.

    If you kept them within a context, such as public speaking, or fighting, they could do quite well. Ergo, Dragon wasn't an AI, but a Tinker who made AIs that fought for her.

    It was a good idea, much like her minions, so long as they were not too advanced.

    Taylor eyed Dragon's official PHO account. Even as Selene, she wasn't sure that Dragon would reply to her, but she decided it was worth the try anyway.

    Selene said:
    Hello Dragon,

    I am sure you get messaged by all the new tinkers in the world looking to work with you, and here I am doing the same. I have a few projects I like to work with you on, namely medical gear I think can really help out the PRT in the aftermath of attacks. I can share more details in a more secure medium if you are interested.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    With that done, Taylor sent a message off to Glory Girl, indicating that she was happy to go on a patrol with her, and could do it any day after school this week.

    *Power Buy Attempt 1.2.1 Heightened Reactions II (100) Bought. Banked 0 points. *

    One of Taylor's thought streams considered the new perk, realizing that she now couldn't be surprised by any attack. She could even defend against or dodge any attack, even ones she was not aware of. What was more interesting was with it, she realized that one of her sub-domains, that under her body was finished and there were no more perks she could get there.

    She then looked over to see that Dragon, or rather one of Dragon's AIs since she couldn't get anything from the woman behind the message, had responded.

    "Dragon" said:
    Hello Selene,

    It might surprise you to learn that there are far less tinkers than you would expect contacting me. Those that are of a heroic inclination generally reach out to the PRT first and I meet them though them, while those that are not heroically inclined don't tend to message heroes about such things.

    Most of what I get on PHO is filtered out by my spam AIs, as it is just from normal people wishing me well or thanking me for what I did, but anyone with a verified cape ID alerts me and I check those messages personally.

    I would be extremely interested in any sort of examination of medical tinker tech you managed to create and would like to talk to you over a more secure channel. I can't promise anything I consider secure outside of PRT HQ, but if you have one you're comfortable with, we can use that.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Taylor knew that even that wasn't really secure based on what was hitting her house, but she knew quite well that without physically meeting up, there was no way to secure a private channel that couldn't be eavesdropped on by enough powers.

    Blank nicely took care of thinker attacks on a secured channel, so she pulled up one she was familiar with and sent over the link to Dragon.

    "Selene" said:
    I won't go into the high-level details in this chat, Dragon, but this is secure enough to talk general terms.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    "Dragon" said:
    Understood, this is one of the better private chat sites. You clearly did your research ahead of time.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    "Dragon" said:
    That said, I have already talked to Armsmaster about what you showed off, including your sensor and your healing device that you accidently left behind. Would I be correct in assuming those are what you wanted to talk to me about working on?
    [/QUOTE="Selene"]
    The sensor, yes. I won't share exact details remotely, but I've been working on making a non-tinker tech copy, much like you do. I think I got a similar power to yours, as I was able to get something that was massively inferior to the details my sensor would give, while still providing basic biometric data at a fair distance. Which besides helping to locate people during mass casualty events, should also help doctors narrow in very quickly on the worst wounded and focus on them first.
    Click to expand...
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    "Selene" said:
    I hadn't had much luck in the healing device to that level just yet, it was too blackboxed for me to understand how it works just yet, but maybe you have some ideas.
    Click to expand...
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    "Dragon" said:
    You have me even more interested with that, tinkers that can reverse engineer technology of other tinkers are extremely rare. Masamune is the only one that really showed promise in that area. Armsmaster is only able to do such in a very limited context, but even what he can do is extremely unusual for a tinker, showing how good he is. A fourth would be a very big deal.
    Click to expand...
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    "Selene" said:
    I understand that, which is why I reached out to you. I had a major breakthrough last night, and finally felt like I could prove my claims to you rather than just make a baseless claim. I am sure you're rather busy, and arranging a proper location to arrange a meeting would take a few days?
    Click to expand...
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    "Dragon" said:
    While I have enough clout that I could arrange a meeting right away for such an item, it would make Director Piggot a lot happier if we scheduled it for this weekend. Armsmaster did mention to me you wished to speak to the local wards as well, perhaps we could combine this? You could have lunch with some of them first, and then afterwards we can head to Armsmaster lab on the RIG to go over your designs and see what you managed to make.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Taylor blinked in surprise as Dragon suddenly clicked for her Empathetic perk, and much like the Doctor, she could now see intention and truthfulness.

    Or rather the truthfulness of one of her AIs, Taylor noted as she scanned back everything to see what had come up. This AI wasn't lying, and wanted to believe her claims and let her prove it so she could do more good.

    At least until Taylor read the line about checking these messages personally, then she frowned as she read that again.

    Truth.

    Either this AI believed she was Dragon or… Dragon really was an AI. But if she was an AI, who made her?

    Taylor wasn't happy she had yet another mystery to look into, but this one seemed rather critical if she was going to be making a long term relationship with Dragon, as she knew there could be some serious restrictions on AIs that might cause issues.

    Well she pondered this on a separate thread of her mind, the one talking to Dragon replied as if nothing had happened.

    "Selene" said:
    That would be ideal for me, I was going to call Armsmaster to arrange for such a meeting on Saturday, although I hadn't considered lunch with them as an option. How long would it take you to notify him of this, so when I call him to arrange it he knows your onboard?
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    "Dragon" said:
    I'll send him a message right now, it's from me, so he will review it within 5 minutes unless he's tied up in something big.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    "Selene" said:
    Tell him I'll give him a call in an hour then, and we can work out the final details.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    0o0

    An hour later, Taylor made her way to another random location in the city, swapped into her armor for safety, then called Armsmaster's number.


    *Power Buy Attempt 2.1.18 Improved Regulation (400), Requires 2.1.17 Environmental Controls (200) Not Bought. Banked 100 points. *

    Selene briefly considered this perk, and while she could see the use of being able to alter anything in her warehouse from temperature, to gravity and such, the perk made it clear she could change things like that, although not how much, unless she decided to somehow weaponize bring people into her warehouse, it wasn't useful for fighting because if a enemy was in her warehouse she would have already lost.

    So she left that one alone and let it drop back into the pool of powers.

    "Armsmaster talking."

    "Hello Armsmaster, this is Selene."

    "Selene, right on time, Dragon told me to expect a call."

    Selene noted that he was quite happy she called because it distracted him from what was going on. She could hazard a guess that it had to do with Sophia.

    "The PRT recovered all of your thinker-tech healing blankets, and I can have them dispatched anywhere within the city within an hour, are you ready to receive those?"

    "I am, you can have them delivered to 8th and Western Street."

    "I will be there personally in 15 minutes, we can continue to talk while I travel."

    "Okay, I'll be waiting for you. Given what I discussed with Dragon, I assume that me having Lunch with the wards on Saturday is fine?"

    "Yes, it will be."

    "Saturday at noon for lunch, then the meeting with dragon afterwards? Both are fine, I take it you know which ward you wish to talk with?"

    "Yes, Kid Win, Gallant and Vista. I know you warned me that Gallant isn't a normal tinker, but I still would like to talk to him as well."

    There was a pause that Selene could hear even over the line was Armsmaster looking up something. She could tell he wasn't expecting all three of them from that.

    "Yes, we can do that. If you arrive at the PRT building at 11:30 AM, we can have you all have lunch, and we head over to my Lab on the RIG after you are done."

    "That would be fine."

    "Do you have any preferences or restrictions I should be aware of?"

    "No, and just pizza or something like that is fine. I have no allergies to take note of."

    0o0

    A few minutes later, Armsmaster arrived, and approached her.

    "Selene." He greeted her.

    "Armsmaster."

    "Here you go." He informed her as he removed a bundle from his bike and handed it to her.

    Selene already could tell something was wrong from her scanner, but she took them out to check them over herself carefully.

    "Not all of these are my blankets." Selene observed noticing that the truthfulness of her words were being checked by something Armsmaster had on him. Blank II let her control what it would inform him, which she decided to keep everything she said as truthful.

    "Are you sure?" Armsmaster asked, and Selene could tell he was surprised and didn't know this himself, which meant he hadn't been the one to swap them out.

    "Very much so, these here are clearly mine, I can feel the… remains of my power might be the best word to use, I am not sure what the proper tinker term is, but I know these are mine and what they do. They are correct. These four however, are just normal blankets, convincing fakes, but fakes."

    "Perhaps they just stopped working and you are not that familiar with it?"

    "No, I had plenty of my tech stop working already. I know what that feels like. Those I can repair this feels like I haven't even started on it."

    "Well you're not lying, which means either the PRT officers didn't get the real blanket back and those that had them still do, or someone intercepted them. I will look into it for you."

    On seeing that Armsmaster felt that failure to do such reflected poorly on him, she nodded and replied. "Thank you. I certainly want them back, I don't suppose you have any idea who might have taken them?"

    "Not at this time, there are no known criminals in Brockton Bay that could have done it, even if they knew the blankets existed. I need to go look deeper into that, and double check the other tinker tech we have secured as well. I apologize for leaving now."

    "No, it's fine, that sounds critical."

    Once he was gone, Selene brought the blankets back into her warehouse, lowered her helmet to take a deep sniff to be certain who had handled them, then set off to go find out who had replaced them.

    0o0

    Wednesday, February 9th, 2011

    0o0

    When morning rolled around, Selene had found everyone that handled them was a PRT officer, which meant either whoever had replaced them hadn't left any scent, or was a PRT officer.

    Questioning PRT officers to see who had taken it wasn't an option, but there was a much safer way.If she built a scanner, it could lock onto the magical enchantment in the cloth and tell her exactly where it was, something she hadn't seen a need for yet. Now, however, it would be extremely useful in the search for her missing gear.

    0o0

    *Power Buy Attempt 2.2.8 The Meaning of Life (100) Not Bought, Requires 2.2.7 The Pond (200) Bought. Banked 0 points. *

    While on patrol with Vicky and Amy, who Vicky had invited along, Selene felt her power activating to buy a perk, which gave her a rather nice, although lifeless lake in her warehouse.

    She supposed it would be fairly relaxing as it had a nice beach to it, and with her sky simulator it would look rather natural too. Maybe she could store marine vehicles in it or something.

    There was no life in it to start with; that was what the perk her power had tried to get first was for. It would add wildlife to her lake.

    It was not worth locking in, so Selene let it go, as she noticed that a blonde girl on the path they were on was waiting for them.

    She would have wondered how this happened given blank, was it not for the fact she knew that Glory Girl had taken them on her standard route, at first Selene thought she was here about Vicky, but then she noticed that the girl was using a power to study her. To learn things about her, focus on her thoughts, her feelings and her items. Her power was pushing her to study Selene more, and the girl seemed rather desperate to do it as if she was afraid of something bad if she failed.

    Had Selene not already known that Glory Girl had posted in their her PHO thread that they would be going on a patrol together at this time on her normal routes, Selene would have wondered how she figured that out. But Blank II didn't protect against someone just sharing information like that. So long as the girl read her PHO thread, she would have learned that.

    The fact she was there for her however, was enough to draw Selene's attention to make sure she picked up on the girl's scent, even though her perfect memory and senses would have caught it anyway, by focusing on it she made certain it was in her mind, she wondered what the story behind her was, and wondered where the girl would end up on the ever growing list of things to worry about.

    0o0

    After the patrol was over, Selene decided to go and look into that blonde girl more. The girl wasn't someone Taylor had seen before, and so she was quite curious who the girl was.

    Rather than just start hunting the girl down, she first went into a new door and out another random door to change where she had appeared.

    As she did that, she swapped her clothes for a sneaking set she had made, which lacked the armor boosts because it was just clothes, but it was focused entirely on sneaking around and it only took her an instant to change if she got into trouble.

    With that in place, she made her way out into the city, smelling around for the girl she had ran into, quickly closing in on her scent near where she had been and moved around to find out where she had come from and where she had gone afterwards, which had been two different directions.

    Going where she had come from first, Selene followed the scent trail to a seemingly abandoned building, with the name Redmond Welding, and she could hear two people inside. Drawing on her senses, mostly the smell of those that either lived there or went often enough to count, she concluded that one was male, one was female.

    There were also three dogs, along with the scent of hundreds of other dogs that only could come from someone that worked with them.

    At this point, Selene had an idea what she had found, given that Hellhound was noted to be in the city. There was nothing indicating that Hellhound and Grue was working together, but finding a random team with at least 2 Capes on it, when she knew that Grue was a part of some 'unknown cape team' according to the tags on her videos?

    Occam's razor said that it was more likely to be the same team rather than two different teams, and Selene could guess why said blonde girl was interested in her. Grue had seen her in armor, and there had been a girl who peeked her head out too fast for Selene to look at her, but slow enough to appear on sensors for an instant.

    Selene tentatively labeled them Grue's team, then spent a few minutes confirming that neither person inside was going to talk. The boy was playing games and the girl was with her dogs, so she left to go follow the other route the blonde had taken.

    That quickly led to an abandoned Endbrigner shelter, which had far too much traffic to be abandoned.

    The walls were too thick for her to hear inside, but what she could see with her expanded senses indicated that either this abandoned shelter was far more complete than the sign indicated, or it had been taken over by a Villain.

    In either case, the PRT hadn't noticed.


    0o0


    Back in her warehouse, Taylor had been about to start work on her Golem, when she felt her power trigger and grabbed her a new perk.

    *Power Buy Attempt 3.8.18 Tailor Made (Career Model) (100) Bought, Banked 0 points.*

    The new perk she got made her pause as she now could make anything look good, without spending any time on appearance whatsoever.

    It was a rather interesting perk that didn't give her new options, other than nicer looking creations.

    Letting her thoughts of her new perk and what she could do with it go, Taylor focused her entire mind on finishing her first true golem. She should have it ready before morning at this rate, she would stop just before it was finished, captchalogue the almost done golem, and then she could duplicate it almost done state, bring it to her workshop to finish it, and make it finished state fiat-backed.

    Which would let her replace the temporary iron golem, with two very good ones, and when she could make at third in about a week, she would just add it to her collection. Leaving them to make Grist well she didn't need them outside.

    Taylor smiled as she thought to herself, Exponential growth here we come!

    0o0

    End of Chapter 05

    0o0

    Interlude 04: Missy 'Vista' Biron

    0o0

    Wednesday, February 9th, 2011

    0o0

    "Did we all forget what time this was supposed to take place at?" Kid Win, as he like the rest of the wards was in costume asked the group.

    Vista, like everyone else, glanced at the clock which showed the all hands meeting for the wards. It showed it was five minutes before the time she had been told, and if she had been alone, she might have wondered herself.

    "Maybe Sophia decided to skip this meeting." Vista offered back.

    "An all hands meeting called by Director Piggot for us to meet with Armsmaster about something critical? She was already on thin ice as it is." Kid Win noted.

    Vista didn't bother hiding her sigh at that, as she already knew that. If she never saw Sophia again in her life, it would be way too soon.

    After Sophia joined the wards— on probation as they knew— it had taken a few weeks for her to settle down on what was the most she could get away with being rude, abrasive and not a team player, without being punished for such actions.

    With Vista herself taking the brunt of it, being the only other girl on the team, allowing the girl more access to her in more private areas then the other wards were allowed to access outside of emergencies.

    Female locker rooms and showers were off limits to the men, and given that the recordings of them were written to storage devices that could only be accessed with the direct authorization of Director Piggot, which was for if they disappeared while in them or something like that, meant that anything that happened inside was treated as she said, she said.

    Sophia knew better than to do anything that could ever authorize Director Piggot to release those for review to show of her misconduct inside, and while most of the time Vista could just not be in there when Sophia was, any official event that required them to both get ready at the same time meant that they had to be unobserved together far more often than she was comfortable with.

    Before she had met Sophia, Vista hadn't really understood what people meant when they said they would give anything to get rid of someone, nor had she really pondered if she could 'mess up her powers' and get away with causing someone injuries without getting in trouble for it.

    Sophia had forced her to reconsider both of her viewpoints in that regard, but she had yet to make headway on the latter question. She was too well trained and she knew that Sophia could do far worse in those private areas then she already did, she had done so for the first few months before finally mellowing out about a month ago, which made Vista wonder what had finally caused that.

    But the fact was, Vista could see things getting worse for her should she tried something to get back at Sophia and Sophia didn't believe it was really an accident.

    Still, it had been quite the revelation to Vista, about exactly how much more she could get away with, and that not being the perfect little good and nice girl she had been raised to be, would be tolerated by those in charge, even if they told her it wouldn't be.

    The reason for Kid Win's confusion was quite clear. Sophia could get away with a lot, but Director Piggot had made it quite clear the first time Sophia wasn't early to one of her meetings, that unless she was in the hospital, or in M/S screening, she either had to give proper notice ahead of time that she wouldn't be there, or she would end up satisfying one of the less desirable preconditions for absence.

    The door to the room opened, drawing everyone attention that way, and Vista watched as Armsmaster entered first, a glance at the clock with that noting that he wasn't exactly on time, indicating he had arrived with someone, which as she was expecting was Director Piggot just a minute before they were scheduled to start.

    Vista watched as they glanced around the room to make sure everyone had arrived, and she was caught off guard when Piggot didn't start by asking where Sophia was.

    "Good, you all here on time as you should be. I will be brief and let Armsmaster fill you in on the details as I am still cleaning up the mess."

    Piggot paused to glare at the room to make sure everyone was paying their full attention, then she continued.

    "Effectively immediately, Sophia Hess is no longer a ward, and has been placed into Federal Prison, pending her trial for the attempted murder of a classmate of her, with the help of at least a dozen other accomplices."

    Although it was clear from several wards that they wanted to interrupt. Piggot just got louder to make it clear that they couldn't do such.

    "Armsmaster will fill you in on the details you are allowed to know. But let me make one thing clear. Her behavior as a ward hasn't just been unacceptable, but her actions were bad enough that if this leaks to the public, it would cause grave damage to the Protectorate as a whole unless we took extremely drastic actions."

    Pausing to glance at each Ward in turn, forceful enough that Vista shifted backwards in her chair slightly at the intensity behind it, the woman then continued.

    "Normally I wouldn't be this specific, because I expect you to get what that means, but I will reiterate from the rules and regulations. Extremely grievous offenses can be punished by the Bird Cage or even outright Execution. There is no immunity to such punishments just because you are a ward, and you are supposed to be the example for heroes to live up to. Not villains. I will leave you to Armsmaster now. He will answer any questions you have to the level you are allowed to know."

    Vista, much like her fellow wards, was left dumbfounded at that, not speaking, as Director Piggot left.

    They had all been warning when they joined that extreme crimes commited as part of a ward could bring about those punishments, but it had been something they didn't really want to drive home to them and while it was made certain they understood it, was also made clear that would require basically outright murder in public in their costume, and after the breifing it wasn't talked about ever again.

    "She did this in costume?" Gallant asked.

    "No, which is why the PRT has not already had to announce we would be seeking the Bird Cage for such a grievous crime, and we wish to keep it this way. The public story you will tell people is that Shadow Stalker has, after her trial period with the Wards, decided that it took too much time away from her education, and has decided to retire and refocus on her schooling, and plans to consider joining the Protectorate proper when she is an adult."

    There was a brief pause then he added.

    "You do not wish to know what will be done with you if you leak this, and the PRT will authorize the full use of Watchdog to figure out who did it and how. This is not information that would normally be told to you, but Sophia Hess will get a rather public trial in the upcoming months, and both she and her Lawyer have been made clear that if she tries to out herself as Shadow Stalker, we will push for the Bird Cage. Her friends that know the same already have secured deals that they will not out her either, in exchange for only facing accessory charges, rather than murder in the first degree, bioterrorism and a whole list of other charges. Which leads me to something you all need to know."

    For an instant, Vista wondered if they were included in that list, only to realize as soon as she thought such, that if it had been the case, the Director would have already said such.

    "At this point in the investigation, we are mostly certain none of you knew what she was going to do. But due to the coverups done by PRT officers that are also facing life in jail for their actions, we are not excluding this either. Chief Director Costa-Brown has agreed to Director Pigott's request for an independent team to investigate this, and they will be arriving tomorrow to go over the case themselves, including interviews with you." Armsmaster paused for a moment to look each of the Wards in the eye.

    "If you knew anything about this, or some other crimes that your PRT handler has helped you to cover up, or even unsanctioned patrols that they told you were okay in retrospect, you have 10 days to tell either them, or one of us about, and while this will not absolve you completely of punishment for your actions, we will be extremely lenient to anything you disclose before the investigators find something incriminating. Chief Director Costa-Brown knows how lucky that we are that this hasn't made the news, and we are going to ensure there is nothing similar hiding here in Brockton Bay PRT."

    Vista shifted uncomfortably at that, as she recalled that she had the same handler that Sophia did, the highly experienced woman was viewed as best for the new ward under Probation, and it was not like each ward got their own dedicated hander when they reached her level of experience.

    The woman had known quite a bit about her own 'unsanctioned patrols', and Armsmaster had called that out.

    Vista could see very clearly that it was tell the investigators about that now, or else.

    "Any other questions?"

    Vista didn't have any, and she could tell from the lack of anyone else saying anything they didn't either.

    "Good. Now, there was another reason for this meeting to be called, a much more positive one. As you should all be aware of, namely Selene."

    Vista perked up at that. Selene had made quite the splash with her arrival. Well it hardly was a good thing, and there was an implication she could see behind the girl holding off until she could do something big as her first appearance. Saving the lives of 10 people and then posting a recording of her doing such earned her a lot of good will off the bat, plus she had expressed interest in the Wards as well.

    Vista really wanted her to join up, have a proper girl peer.

    Selene had pulled off an introduction that would have driven the PR people crazy with how good it was.

    They had been cleared to talk to her already, and were told there was a non-zero chance that she would show up at the event back on Saturday and they should keep an eye out, and if someone seemed more curious then a random civilian would be about them to consider sharing a bit more than normal.

    Vista hadn't noticed anything, but she also expected that Selene would be much more interested in Kid Win or maybe even Gallant, given the first was a tinker and the second was publicly a tinker. If either of them had, Gallant would be better than anyone, and he hadn't told her.

    "Selene has contacted me and wishes to speak with several of you over lunch in a more private setting, namely, Kid Win, Gallant and Vista."

    "And me?" Vista injected in surprise.

    "Correct, I recommended it to her, and she liked the idea. We are hoping that we can cover up Shadow Stalker's reported retirement by announcing she is joining the wards. As such the three of you will be having lunch with her at the PRT HQ on Saturday, and until then you will all be working closely with PR to best prepare you. As I determined from talking to her, she is interested in the wards and just needs assurances she can trust you before she takes the final step. Afterwards, she has agreed to allow Dragon and I to examine her sensor with basic scans."

    "Dragon is already interested in her tech?" Kid Win injected.

    Vista heard a feeling of surprise in his tone that she fully agreed with. It was rather big deal for Dragon to jump to such.

    "Sensors are one of the rarest examples of tinker tech, and one of the few things that Dragon will put off studying other tinkertech for a chance to even just look at one. Sensors like these are not something even she has been able to reverse engineer yet, although she suspects that is more due to how rare they are. Although I don't expect much to come of it, I am hoping that even a brief session with Dragon will eliminate any lingering doubts that the Wards is not the best place for her."

    0o0

    End of Interlude 04

    0o0

    Perks earned in this chapter:


    2.3.2 Medical Bay
    2.3.3 Counseling Bay
    2.1.4 Key Link
    3.1.26 Workshop (Samurai Jack)
    1.2.2 Heightened Reactions II
    2.2.7 The Pond
    3.8.18 Tailor Made (Career Model)
     
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    • Chapter 06 : Negotiations + Interlude 05: Coil
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    • AN: Betaed by @Trek, @Esprit and @hoth

    0o0

    Chapter 06 : Negotiations

    0o0

    Thursday, February 10th, 2011

    0o0

    *+3 charges for Interlude 04*

    *Power Buy Attempt 2.1.29 Maintenance Systems (100), Requires 2.1.28 Your Robots (200), Requires 2.1.27 Central Control (100) Bought. Banked 0 points. *

    Selene paused her search of the city for her missing gear as her powers activated, grabbing an assortment of perks.

    Useful perks too, they gave her a central command center in her warehouse. Something that she could access from a terminal in any room, or from any computer inside her warehouse. In addition to this, she also now had an assortment of robots that not only sorted everything for her, but also maintained and repaired anything she knew how to herself.

    The Central command was extremely useful in that she could now have it open a portal to her house constantly, or any door she had used her key on. It also allowed her dad to redirect it anywhere if he was inside the warehouse.

    This portal could only be open when the door her key could open was closed, and would close if she used her key, but it expanded her options greatly.

    This wouldn't let her dad open a portal from the outside yet, as he couldn't interact while outside of the warehouse, but it moved her increasingly flexible mover abilities to even greater heights. She would have to talk to him about that later when she was done searching Brockton Bay for her missing gear; she hadn't had much luck in finding it just yet.

    Although she could build a longer-range sensor to expedite the search, anything with a scanning radius of more than 1 kilometer would require her to carry around something closer in scale to a small car, rather than the fairly bulky but still handheld sensor array that she was currently using.

    With a 1-kilometer radius, she could cover everything inside the city within an hour by starting in the center of Brockton Bay and following a slowly expanding spiral in the air just above the buildings. Although increasing the scale of the device would save some time, anything not in the city proper would require a much larger sensor that was the size of a small building to locate.

    Even though she didn't think the PRT had kept her tech, particularly given that Armsmaster hadn't lied, she still checked both the RIG and PRT HQ just to be safe, before starting her spiral around the city.

    Her sensor was good, but it could be blocked by sufficient quantities of dense matter at this scale. Scaling it up to break through would increase the range massively as a side effect, but Selene had a feeling her items were more likely to have left the city than to be properly shielded. Even a minute air gap would be enough for her sensors to bypass mass shielding.

    Finished circling the city, Selene sighed when her gear failed to show up on the scanner. At least she learned a lot about the state of the city and had a good idea where a bunch of gang holdouts were, as well as drug trafficking and other locations.

    She was going to have to curate that data before sending a copy to the PRT. As much as she would have liked to just turn the information over to the Police and let them handle it, doing that would reveal more of her capabilities than she wished to show. It could also violate the unwritten rules, which she now understood were used to keep the city stable.

    For an independent hero like her, the rule was simple. Only arrest villains that were actively committing a crime. Don't go back to their base of operations and arrest them there.

    Ergo, Grue's gang's pair of bases were off limits for now. She would have to set up some hidden sensors to track them and catch them in the act rather than knocking them all out when they were asleep in their base.

    Shaking her head, Selene turned her thoughts back to what mattered at the moment. Finding her missing gear was going to take more effort, since it was now quite clear that this wasn't the work of a foolish civilian keeping souvenirs, but an intentional theft that had shipped the goods out of the city.

    She was going to need to build a bigger sensor or find some other way to track down what had happened.

    *Power Buy Attempt 2.6.3 All Your Stuff (100) Bought, Banked 0 points.*

    Selene considered her new perk, which didn't help her at all. It just gave her a copy of everything she had owned before she got her powers, which nicely included her mother's lost flute. It made her smile; she would have to timelock it in a card and keep it safe. She wasn't going to lose it again.

    There were photo albums that had been lost and some other childhood items that had been lost or destroyed, which was nice but from a usefulness standpoint, they weren't going to be much use unless she met a young girl who would fit all her old items. She hadn't owned anything worth duplication before getting her powers.

    Sighing, annoyed that she couldn't find her missing blankets, Selene made her way to an out of the way door to return to her warehouse. Her dad should be awake by now, given the improvement his bed provided to sleep quality, but she would wait for him to find her while she considered her next steps in case he needed more rest.

    0o0

    While waiting for her father, Taylor turned to design work as she considered how to both pick up her missing gear at long range and get the sensor around the entire planet quickly.

    Drawing on Dead Space, she could see plenty of sensors she could drop in orbit that could find her item's energy signature, but none would work properly unless she had some sort of control network to collect and process the data, so she would have to build that first.

    Recalling why people stopped trying to get into space—the Simurgh—Taylor was about to reject that when she remembered that her Blank II perk ensured that everything she made was invisible to precognition or even being found by remote viewing abilities.

    Unless someone put their eyes on something or detected it with a sense that was physically present it was better than invisible, which opened up a lot of options as she considered the idea. Sight was something that wasn't blocked by her perk, so if the Simurgh saw it, she could see it, but she had several ways to hide something from sight. The Simurgh might not see through her eyes anyway, given that endbringers seem to have no trouble fighting when their ocular flesh is damaged.

    Sound didn't travel meaningfully in space, and what little did would be trivial to block. An artificial gravity field around the satellite could stop any 'sound' from that. When combined with her other stealth options, unless the Simurgh had some extremely exotic senses, the perk would be able to mask everything else Taylor could think of that she might notice—heat, gravity fields, and so on.

    Taylor was busy debating how sure she was that said Simurgh didn't have a sense Taylor didn't know how to block that wouldn't count as an ability and thus be hidden anyway, given how much easier this would make searching the Earth for her missing gear. As she spun the cost benefit analysis in her head, her father arrived.

    "Any luck?" Danny asked her.

    "No, either it's shielded beyond what my sensor could find, or it's not in Brockton bay. Given it was stolen, I think it is more likely the later."

    "Unless you got any hints for which city or town it is in, I don't think you can search more for it?"

    "Not without making something else… like this."

    Taylor showed her father the design she had half made in her debating.

    "A satellite? Taylor, I don't want to accuse you of not thinking this though but…"

    "She is up there, yes. Blank does mean she won't see it with her abilities, she could see such with her 'eyes', but I can shield that easily enough. The issue is, does she have some sense we don't know about yet… Nevermind I can't believe I missed this."

    "What did you miss?"

    "The Simurgh only reacts to things that get close to her. I don't need to leave it up there forever, just until I find my missing gear. I just need it to fly over the United States, she is currently on the other side of the world. If I get this in place, I can locate my gear and take this down afterwards, before the Simurgh could ever get close enough to notice. I need to get started on this, but before I do that, there is some new information you need to know."

    "What?"

    "I got another upgrade, and now you can use the computers in here to redirect the portal out to any door I have linked to yourself. It only works while I don't have the warehouse open with my key, and I can't let you open it from the outside, but I can program it to always open it to my closet door in my house when I don't have it open anywhere else. I set it to shut if anyone but us is on the property, and since it can't detect anything when the door is closed. I will set it to reopen once an hour, closing if it then finds there is someone there and then waiting another hour before it tries again."

    "You sure that is safe?"

    "It does mean you can access this place without me leaving it open, Dad. If we have people in the house without me knowing ahead of time to turn it off, we have bigger problems."

    *Power Buy Attempt 1.4.15 Supernatural Engineer (200) Not Bought, Banked 100 points.*

    Taylor noted that this perk was based around merging magical energy into technology designs. Given her limitation around granting blank to other people needing clothes, she could already see at least one use for this ability.

    There were far more uses she could guess at, even for her planned satellite, if Taylor could get this before she built it, she could likely manage proper invisibility rather than mixing various techs to approach the effect.

    She locked it in as she spoke to her dad.

    "Anyway, I need to get this built as soon as possible. Getting my stuff back from whomever stole it is a high priority. Healing blankets are not dangerous per say, as they can only heal people. I am more concerned with who stole them in the first place, as they were able to do so with disturbing ease. Worse, if they are targeting my gear now, they are going to try and steal something more volatile later. I need to have systems in place so I can recover stolen items when that happens, Systems that I will need anyway when I join the Guild, so it's not a waste of time.

    Taylor sighed.

    "It's going to be a few days until I can finish this— so much to do and so little time."

    0o0

    Saturday, February 12th, 2011

    0o0

    Selene made her way into the room where the three wards she would be talking to were waiting for her, escorted by a PRT trooper that had met her at the front door.

    There had been no real security checks on her, just a short escort, and no questions if she had a weapon or not. Her sword was stored away in her Sylladex, ready to be withdrawn if needed.

    "Hello Selene, right on time." Gallant greeted her, as Selene took in the room. Boxes of pizza, enough to feed all the wards and then some, were off to the side on a table. Based on the smell, it was an assortment of every normal combination on the menu at a store, clearly intended to make sure that they had at least something she liked.

    At the same time, Selene focused on each ward at the same time in her mind, studying them in detail. Kid Win was rather eager to meet her, partially because his power was pushing him to study her own gear closer, learn how it worked, and mix it into his own gear. Fortunately, all his power could see now was the paint covering her armor.

    Gallant seemed quite interested in getting to know her personally, with signs that he had heard about her from Vicky and picked up a positive impression.

    Yet, clearly trying to outdo them in eagerness, was Vista herself; the girl hummed with hope that Selene would join them, as her power pushed her to try and use it around Selene's gear.

    That last one puzzled Selene a bit, since she couldn't see why Vista's power cared about that. She made a note to go over that later while watching the tape in her warehouse.

    "I thought I was early? I was expecting something more of a security check."

    She hadn't been expecting that she would undergo anything like she had out of costume. That would have been a clear violation of the unwritten rules, which the PRT partly upheld, but she had expected to at least be asked to empty or show the contents of the bag she had at her side.

    There was, after all, a big difference between unmasking her and asking her to show that her bags didn't have weapons or bombs in them.

    "That's only when you're not invited in already. If anyone shows up without warning, looking to talk to someone in costume, they do a lot more security checks, to make sure they were not mastered to bring in some explosive—or something like that."

    Selene could see that wasn't entirely true. It was mostly true, but she got that this had also been done to try and make things look nicer for her to increase the chances of her joining the Wards.

    Amusingly, their efforts were counterproductive for that goal, because even if she was still interested in the wards, she would much rather have better security than the convenience of taking a stranger at their word.

    Gallant indicated for her to sit down, and Selene did so as Vista spoke up.

    "I'm rather surprised you wanted to talk to me. Those two make sense because they are both tinkers, but you're the first person that wants to join who wanted to talk to me first."

    Selene glanced over at Vista, since Vista had lied about both being tinkers.

    The other claims rang true, and Selene glanced between the two. Gallant was likely the non-tinker due to what she had been told about him. Armsmaster had said that he could only work on his own gear and failed to work on other tinker tech.

    "Well then, they were all fools. You have more experience than several of the adult protectorate members. After 5 years, anything you haven't seen personally likely isn't to come up in the wards."

    "You'd think the PRT themselves would know that." Vista noted, making her displeasure at that thought quite clear, as she internally preened at being called out as experienced.

    To make eating possible, Selene activated a partial retraction of her helmet, the plates from her helmet gaining seams and flowing downwards to expose her nose down to the top of her neck, letting loose a soft clanking sound. Before they retracted, a carefully designed hologram came into place, making the parts of her face that could be seen look very different with hints of asian heritage, primarily through different bone structures and teeth.

    Kid Win whistled at that as he noted. "That's some rather smooth tech. I have only seen Armsmaster pull something like that off with his gear… and for his work, I can at least see some hints of how it worked."

    Selene could see that his power was extremely interested in what he had just seen, which seemed to grow even more as she could feel its attempts to read her gear fail. She was able to isolate the specific scan amongst countless millions now that she was physically with the source and looking for it.

    *2/3 charges*

    As she glanced over at Gallant, she realized that his power was trying to read her emotions. Blank was projecting the emotions she wanted him to think she had to allow her to lie perfectly without being caught. But his power was clearly not just reading emotions. In light of his publicly known ability, he could manipulate them as well— a trait he shared with his girlfriend, which was rather interesting.

    "I doubt he took as long as I did to get this working. It took me months before my armor was good enough to head out."

    She made a point to lie to blur any connection between Selene and Taylor, taking advantage of the information that Taylor would have triggered a month ago, not months. It wasn't much of a ruse, but every bit helps.

    She hoped to take advantage of how totally her gear would, hopefully, outstrip the normal tinker cycle to throw interested parties off her scent.

    "But I'm not here to talk about me. I have questions about how things are in the wards, both in general through Vista and for a tinker specifically from the two of you."

    "Right, well…" Kid Win hesitated.

    "One of the main selling points to joining the wards, is the access to tools, raw materials and in some cases even experts when it comes to helping you tinker." Gallant answered for him.

    "Although with armor that good, I am not sure she needs those." Kid Win muttered, making it clear that had been why he hestated himself.

    "I doubt that." Selene answered with a bit of a smile, she wasn't going to tell them she wasn't joining the wards just yet, she wanted to get to know them and make them think she had a chance to join up. "I spent a lot of time fighting to get tools to make this properly, and there is so much more I want to build that I just can't get the machinery for. Which I would assume is a problem you've both seen?"

    "Partly, if you get Armsmaster to approve it, anything the PRT can get legally is an option for you, although you do have to stick to a budget."

    "Has that been an issue for either of you?"

    "Generally no, my bigger issue is getting them to approve my gear for field use. The PRT limits what we can carry outside of S-class threats, and given the unpredictability of some tinker tech, they take a very cautious view on things. That said, we are free to build what we like and test them in safe conditions, so don't think they will tell you no unless you want to build something that would crash the moon down on us or something like that. But until it's quite clear any tech is safe to the public, you're not allowed to be seen using it in public." Kid Win confirmed.

    "Which is your side. Not Gallant's." Selene pressed as she looked at the boy, curious if he would maintain the lie or not.

    "Correct, because I am not really a tinker."

    "You're not supposed to just tell her that." Vista noted.

    "She already figured it out, Vista. She noticed I didn't react like Kid Win did to her gear being used."

    "Yes. I found it rather curious that people kept pushing me away from you, when they decided to suggest Vista who most certainly isn't a tinker, more so when they had no proof yet that I wasn't a focal tinker like they claim you are. If anything that should have made it a bigger priority for me to talk to you. Which begs the question, does the PRT do that often? Vista also doesn't exactly hide how much more she could do with her power."

    "Eh…" Selene could tell that Vista's mind was spinning as she tried to think of a proper way to answer that.

    "Vista is a rather unusual case, and not something you would run into Selene." Gallant offered. "At her current age she would already be young for a new ward. It's rare for people to trigger with powers under the age of 14, 15 is where most people trigger and that's why the Wards program was designed around about 3 years until you join the Protectorate proper. Vista being young enough when she joined to do that three times over is extremely rare. They ran out of official things to let her do, you're not going to end up in the same boat as she is. They don't like to send elementary school girls out on patrols even if they have powers after all."

    *Power Buy Attempt 1.4.15 Supernatural Engineer (200) +100 Tax Bought, Banked 0 points.*

    Selene briefly focused on her new perk, finding it to be everything she wanted it to be and more, then postponed that train of thought until she wasn't in the middle of a conversation and had time to plan out her meeting with Dragon and Armsmaster.

    Conversations with the wards shifted to revolve a lot more around the little things they did as wards for the rest of lunch.

    0o0

    Selene enjoyed talking to the wards over lunch. Although she would have liked to dig deeper into their backgrounds, she was able to collect a lot of basic information about how the day in the life of a ward went. While this primarily concerned how often they had to attend training and the review process that Kid Win had to undergo for all of his tinker tech, she also learned that Vista, like her, was a very avid reader of fantasy novels.

    If it wasn't for her issues with the PRT overall, it wasn't that bad, and a part of Selene wondered how things would have gone if Sophia had never been a ward in the first place, since she would likely have joined the wards by now.

    Then, her thoughts turned to her meeting with Dragon and Armsmaster.

    She was looking forward to finally meeting with them to do some tinkering. There were so many designs in her head, and, thanks to the powers she had, creating an outright spaceship that could swiftly travel to other planets in the solar system was more limited by construction time than design and functional constraints.

    Had it not been for the Simurgh she likely would have already started on that. The Hope Killer ruined everything like always.

    Mindful of her plans, Selene needlessly triple checked in her mind what she would share— nothing more advanced than anything she had used prior to Blank. After that, she would find some way to get them to accept a proper Blank generator for their own use, then bring them into the long term plan properly— a plan that would take months, if not longer. That said, she might be able to use the coming endbringer attack as leverage.

    The last attack was just over 2 months ago, and, according to the schedule, that meant the next one could happen any day, even if another 3 weeks' wait would be closer to normal. Taylor wasn't ready, so she could only hope it was really three weeks away. There was no way to guess how much more she'd achieve by then.

    "Selene, right on time." Armsmaster greeted her as another PRT officer brought her to his office after confirming she didn't need a short break after the meeting with the Wards.

    Selene noted that Armsmaster really liked her promptness, even though she hadn't really set a time for her to be done with the wards, and that he was quite eager to start looking at her tech properly.

    "To start with, the PRT hasn't been able to locate what happened to your missing gear. I interviewed everyone that handled it personally and reviewed all the security footage myself, but no one that had gotten even close to it had anything to do with it. We are assuming that the officers were not given the proper gear in the first place and are doing a search of those that held them."

    "Unless they mailed them out of the city you can hold off on that."

    "Why is that?"

    "I have a much longer-range sensor then the one I carry around that is attuned to picking up the marking signals I placed in all my gear. After we met, I deployed it and checked, it's not something I can just leave set up so I don't know where they went until it went online, but unless they are in some shielded location with no air gap, like the PRT HQ or the RIG, they would have shown up. This isn't something the people I wrapped them around would have unless they are a tinker or working for one."

    "Do you know what exactly would block your sensor?" Dragon asked.

    "Quite a few things, although the exact materials would require you to tell me what they used to shield the RIG and PRT HQ. When normal materials, stuff I haven't made myself, block my sensors, it seems to amount to extremely large amounts of high density mass, far more than even the banks use. I had to get close to the sealed Endbringer Shelters to scan completely in them, which should give you an idea for the scale we are talking about."

    "That is a rather potent scanner. But it's not the one you brought with you, is it?" Dragon continued, moving the topic to the purpose of Selene's visit.

    "Right, as I indicated, I want to help with medical matters, and I brought my best attempt at reversing engineering my sensor with off the shelf parts that I could. There were only a few things I had to make that I couldn't buy off the shelf. If I may?"

    "Of course, put whatever materials you have right here." Armsmaster indicated to a cleared table that was clearly cleared for her use ahead of time.

    Selene started to unpack her items, which included not just a trio of working scanners, but the various parts that went into it, the blueprints she had drawn up, coding for the dumbed down if slower embedded code that was required and just about everything that was needed to reproduce this to the limits of what she could infer. All of this was just for a medical scanner that could only give basic biosign readings. Everything else had been stripped out.

    The only person she could cross reference with had been her father, who wasn't an Engineer, and could only guess that it was good enough.

    "The sensor is functional as is, I presume?" Dragon asked, as Armsmaster picked up one and looked at it.

    "It is, it doesn't show me because my armor shielded against such scans, but it should work on Armsmaster unless he has done the same to his own armor."

    "I had thought I had done the same myself," Armsmaster noted, as read the readout, "but this matches my own biometric readouts. So I can confirm it's accurate— but why are there three of them and parts for one more?"

    "And blueprints and software, which should be everything strictly necessary for a non-tinker to reproduce this."

    "Have you had a chance to see someone try?" Dragon quickly asked, the concern in her voice quite clear.

    "Both of my parents looked the designs over, although neither is enough of an Engineer to know if I was missing something."

    "Plenty of tinkers have thought they had plans for something that anyone could build, only to discover they were unknowingly still blackboxing something critical," Armsmaster informed her, "It's an issue that tinkers don't always learn about until they deal with an expert in their fields, since, to the layman, tinker tech and advanced technology might as well be the same."

    Armsmaster was looking over the blueprints as he said that, flipping through the pages as he went.

    "I have digital copies of all of those, including all the source and embedded code required." Selene injected up as she looked over at the picture of Dragon on the monitor.

    "You are well prepared for this, which is unfortunately quite the rarity among tinkers." Armsmaster noted, as he indicated with one hand to a computer, not taking his gaze off the plans as he read them himself. "Plug it in there, and Dragon will download a copy."

    Selene did that, and waited as the two went over it, she could tell when Dragon very quickly came to realize what was there, as well as how the AI waited until Armsmaster had come to the same realization, so she wouldn't be 'too fast' compared to a human.

    *Power Buy Attempt 3.2.22 Grease Monkey (Bubblegum Crisis) (300) Not Bought, Banked 100 points.*

    At a brief thought of what that would grant her, Selene let that perk go. It was near future tech and she already could build all of that with her existing perks from what she could see without securing the perk first. It would just take her a few upgrade cycles on normal technology. It was better not to waste charges by locking that in.

    Selene could tell when Armsmaster realized what she had handed over, but rather than bring it up right away, he just started to go over everything again.

    She waited quietly for him to say something.

    "Dragon. Am I mistaken here?"

    Armsmaster didn't say about what, and Selene could tell it was entirely because she was there. Dragon answered the question before she said anything.

    "No, I don't seem to see any blackboxing."

    "That's because there isn't any." Selene injected. "It's the best I was able to do without including those."

    "Now I really want to see your devices that have blackboxed parts." Armsmaster noted.

    "You can look at them later, but isn't this what I was here for? To let Dragon take a look at this and then spread it around the world?"

    "Have you released these plans to anyone besides your parents? " Dragon pressed in a concerned voice.

    Selene looked over at her, surprised at how concerned the woman was, guessing the likely reason she replied. "No, I didn't know how to do that safely, I figured you were the best one to do that."

    "You are turning into an increasingly perfect ward." Armsmaster noted, and Selene preened a little at how honest he was in those words as she looked back at him.

    While she might not want to join the wards, being an ideal candidate was something she felt was a standard she didn't mind being measured against.

    "Well, let me answer that quickly for you. There is no safe way to release these."

    Selene's joy at Armsmaster's praise came crashing down as she spun hard at Dragon, wanting to make sure the woman understood how surprised she was at that. "What? How? I mean, if it's too advanced, I could scale it back more but isn't it more useful like this?"

    "There is no amount that you can scale it back that would make it acceptable."

    "What?"

    "Well, you do seem to understand at least the basics, so let me start with this, Selene." Dragon started. "You get that releasing this will cause widespread issues as you make entire industries obsolete correct?"

    "Which is why I am asking you on how to do that without causing said issues."

    "Well, as it turns out there is no safe way to do this, Selene. I learned that the hard way myself when I tried it once with containment foam."

    "But that… worked out, didn't it?"

    "If by working out, you mean me having to spend months in courts, ultimately bending to countless laws implemented explicitly to restrict it, then yes."

    Seeing that Dragon was being truthful, Selene let the AI continue to speak rather than bursting out in dismay.

    "When I first released containment foam, I had grand visions that all law enforcement would use it. No longer would there be any danger of policemen with guns harming bystanders by accident, or even misidentified innocents. Containment foam is perfectly safe, non-toxic; you can't suffocate in it even when fully covered. It absorbs impacts perfectly, so only a thin layer would be required to stop someone from suffering from fall damage, and dissolves completely after an hour even if forgotten. Simply put, it's the perfect non-lethal compound, and much like you I spent months getting it to be workable by completely mundane processes. Anyone who knows the formula can make as much as they want, and that's the issue."

    "Ignoring the practicalities of enforcing it. Law enforcement in the United States is duty bound by law to use the minimal force required, and since containment foam is always safe, carrying anything but that becomes mostly redundant. A police officer won't carry a handgun, because containment foam can serve just as well in almost any situation." Armsmaster added in for her.

    "So the entire industry around police gear, such as weapons, tasers, handcuffs, and such was set to collapse completely. You can't harm yourself on containment foam, and with a small bottle you can trivially spray it over someone's hands as temporary handcuffs, then apply a fixer so they don't stick to anything."

    Dragon paused a few seconds then continued.

    "It was the first real case of any tinker tech being refined to the point that it could be made by anyone, and useful enough to shut down entire industries. The law at the time did allow me to push through, but new laws were quickly put into place to make proper tinker innovation illegal, in much the same way that it's now illegal for parahumans to act in large scale markets."

    Dragon paused so Selene could answer the implied question she had put on her.

    "Besides the fact if the Parahuman dies, what they supplied would go away, it also gives them unusual leverage by making demands on the threat of stopping, yes, I know that quite well. But… if it's something anyone with the right knowledge could just build and the parahuman can't change that...."

    "You're not thinking about the long-term impacts. This is the best you could reverse engineer, so how does technology improve? What incentive does the entire medical industry have to work on improved medical devices when your scanner obsoletes so much of what they have right now. Sure your scanner is better, but as your own design indicates, this one has limits to just biometric data. There are a lot of more useful things that other tools could scan for, but why would a hospital bother to buy those when this could be cheaper and give them most of it? Why would companies invest in developing it when you could release an update in a few months to obsolete that."

    Selene was silent for much longer than she needed to ponder the topic. Much like Dragon, she was pretending to need to think it over to cover up her mental speed.

    "Now, don't take this the wrong way, Selene." Armsmaster added, "This is good work, and the PRT can slowly spread it to outside companies as they reverse-engineer it from first principles, which can then refine them and release new products based on tinker tech, which is where most of the computer hardware you see today comes from. For something this large, even with all of your documentation? You're likely looking at many years before it can be released publicly."

    "But all the people it could help? At Endbringer fights?"

    *Power Buy Attempt 3.10.3 Mauler (Command and Conquer: Tiberium Wars) (400) Not Bought, Banked 200 points.*

    Selene focused one of her trains of thought on that perk. Seeing it revolved around repurposing damaged technology into working forms, not something she needed, she let it go.

    "Among Protectorate members, that is fine, so long as we keep tight control on them," Armsmaster informed her, "We can arrange to do that as soon as you join the wards."

    Selene mentally flinched at that, and she asked.

    "And if I don't want to join the wards?"

    "I wasn't aware you found any issues with the wards over lunch? Is there something holding you back that you haven't asked about yet? I won't mind answering it." Armsmaster asked her, and Selene could see he wanted her in the wards, not just for her sake, but for his own reputation. He viewed her joining the wards as a very big plus to his own reputation.

    Selene rapidly had to work on her plans in her head. There was no way she was joining the wards, but it was quite clear that she wasn't going to get a good answer without laying out the facts, or a version of them.

    There was only one way she could take this, and so she let out a sigh as she said.

    "Let me explain fully, because it's not based on a misunderstanding or anything like that. I had no intention of joining the wards, I just wanted to establish contact with all of you. The reason for this is rather big."

    Selene paused as if she was trying to bring herself to say the next part, continuing just before they could ask her what.

    "I won't say where it happened or when exactly, but I am sure you can guess that I didn't really throw this all together in a month, it has been closer to a year's worth of work, but what you don't know is that my trigger event was caused by a Protectorate member."

    Selene watched as both wanted to deny that to her, only for Armsmaster to speak up as he clearly got the reading from his lie detector Selene was expecting him to.

    "You're not lying about that? Who was it?" He demanded.

    "They have already been dealt with. The PRT didn't tell me they were a protectorate member at the time, I coincidentally found out on my own when I was investigating the events around my trigger, I won't say exactly how to keep my anonymity, but people in the perpetrators department knew of other offences and didn't do anything about them, the person was only dealt with after major crimes."

    Selene paused to let that sink in before she continued.

    "It took almost killing me for the PRT to act on it, and I can't join a group that would allow someone like that to work within their numbers without stopping them far sooner, especially when their pattern of misbehavior was already well known. I am not talking about something that happened only once; they abused me for almost 2 years, and at least some of their coworkers helped cover it up. We decided to come here to escape those people, as even if they weren't as bad, they did help cover it up. You being here in Brockton Bay and your spotless record was a very big reason we chose this city, Armsmaster. But even when we first met, I never intended to join the wards even though I still wanted—want—to be a hero. If there was some other option than New Wave locally, I might have joined them already, but I don't want to unmask."

    "I am very impressed that you decided to be a hero anyway." Dragon noted after she had waited long enough for Armsmater to call out any of that as a lie.

    Selene was quite pleased at how well their belief in his lie detector helped her here. Her story was completely fictional if truth-adjacent, but since it looked completely true coming from her, they wouldn't assume it was made up until they discovered she could trick their tinkertech polygraph, something she didn't intend to ever let be known. If it came to it, she would blame it on her gear messing up their lie detector.

    "But I am afraid that the only way to pass out such gear requires you're a member of the Protectorate." Dragon added sadly.

    "You're not a Protectorate member, and you pass your gear out." Selene noted.

    "That's not entirely right. Guild Members are honorary protectorate members."

    "Who aren't subject to normal Protectorate oversight?"

    Selene watched as Dragon quickly thought that over, clearly understanding where she was going with this far faster than Armsmaster, then started to act like she didn't already know.

    "Correct, the Guild expects its members to hold a large degree of autonomy, and while we do have some civilian oversight, that's mainly to ensure no one is committing crimes on the side and to direct us to where we are most needed. Which you already knew and planned for?"

    "Right, the Protectorate was out as soon as I learned what was allowed to happen to me under their rules and bureaucratic structure. It shouldn't take me almost being killed to end the years of abuse I suffered or to get someone like that out of their ranks, not when so many in the office knew it wasn't a matter of if it could happen, but when. None of them was surprised to learn what the person had been doing to a preteen girl at the time. The only real option outside of going completely independent was the Guild. There isn't really another good second option, and given what I can make—"

    Selene indicated to her scanners.

    "I can do far more good with these in Protectorate hands, so I figured you're the best way to join the Guild."

    *Power Buy Attempt 3.4.9 Workaholic (Sonic) (300) Bought. Banked 0 points. *

    Selene mentally blinked at the perk she just acquired, which made it such that anything she made would either come in fives or be 3 times larger in all dimensions.

    It would have been far more useful before she got the Alchemiter, at least until she realized that, thanks to this new perk, items she created with the Alchemiter, provided she could afford one of them, would now either get her five copies for the same price or require significantly fewer resources. She could then recycle any copies to get full grist refunds for each one. This meant that her grist reserves would grow exponentially by printing items and recycling the extra copies.

    She could already see problems in that she couldn't turn this off, so anything she made would have to fit those terms as well. It would likely be a bad idea to try and make anything around anyone that didn't know about her real powers just yet—although she did have her Sylladex. So long as she was careful about how she did things, she could just captchalogue the extras for later before anyone noticed.

    "Normally, we don't recruit minors, nor people without a good reputation already. But, I can see where you are coming from; you have potential. It's not something we have done before, but it's not against Guild rules either. I have to talk to the others about it, but before we do that, I will need more proof of your skills."

    "Meaning you want me to reverse engineer something, here? I mean, I can try but something like that took me weeks of effort."

    Selene pointed to her scanner as she said that.

    "I don't expect you to finish now, but I do have an item for you to study that we were going to let you work on while we went over your scanner with our own tools. That part of our plan has changed, although I am sure Armsmaster will want to work this scanner into his own gear. But before he can do that, we should talk about licensing costs."

    "I am willing to sell the PRT rights to make and use as many as they wish for 100,000 per year plus 1% of the material costs of every scanner made. The Guild, as a PRT affiliate, will be covered under that, like all PRT affiliated groups."

    "You could hold out for a lot more than that." Dragon noted.

    "I don't need a mountain of money; and I worked this out with my family before I came here. I would much rather do as much good as possible than get every cent I could squeeze out from an already underfunded organisation."

    Left unsaid was that with her workshop and Alchemiter, the only thing she needed was land. Literally everything else she could duplicate if she wanted it at this point. Money was a weird concept for her now.

    "What about future designs? Tinker materials can be expensive." Dragon pointed out.

    "This scanner is not the only design that I wish to sell, although that requires that I have access to the appropriate legal channels, namely membership in the Guild. Although my family is funding things right now, this scanner is not the only thing I plan to sell. I plan to charge more for the rarer or more potent items, because of the extra time investment from my end, but I want the PRT to give this one to every relevant official if they can. Now if the PRT wants me to build and sell these personally, then we are talking a whole different figure, since I would need to set up the factories myself, train and hire people and so on. But that's not something I want to do in the near future if at all possible."

    "Dragon, would you be able to produce these?" Armsmaster asked her.

    "Under the contract I already have with the PRT and Protectorate? Of course."

    "Then I can authorize this myself. I assume you don't want your funds placed in your civilian account?"

    "Correct."

    "I will submit the paperwork needed. Although, we will need a proper way to contact you other than PHO. Are you willing to leave some sort of proper contact details with us?"

    "Is it contractually needed?"

    "All bank accounts that belong to Cape IDs must have a form of contact, yes."

    Selene considered her options there. "If I were to give you a computer that connected securely to another of mine, would that work?"

    "So long as you checked it at least once a day, and understand that if there is a hold on your accounts due to suspected stranger activity, you need to head to it to confirm things first."

    "I need a few days to get it together, but I guess you need a few days on your end as well. Does Wednesday evening work?"

    "We will have everything in place by then." Armsmaster agreed.

    "Now, if there is nothing else, Selene, I am curious how well you can understand another tinker's gear."

    "No, that was everything. Let's have a look." Selene agreed.

    "Armsmaster?"

    Armsmaster removed a box and opened it to take out a small handheld item.

    "What is this?" Selene asked.

    "We would rather see what you can tell on your own before we tell you."

    Selene glanced at the scans for it, quickly drawing matches to parts of her sensors. It was a sensor, but she couldn't understand the blueprints enough to know what kind.

    "It seems to be a sensor of some kind, I am allowed to interact with it, right?"

    "Of course, if you want to take it apart, you're free to do that as well."

    Selene nodded as she got to work doing just that, leaving the other two to their own designs.

    0o0

    Taylor found out that the sensor that Dragon had given her was designed to detect minerals. Once she knew that, she was able to work out how to build such a scanner with her own techbase, however she didn't do that, rather starting to make designs in that direction that were partial and incomplete, only using the tech she had before getting Blank, while mixing in sensors for completely different things in the hope that it would look a lot like a more normal tinker's design efforts to the pair as she worked out the proper way to blackbox it.

    Ironically enough, her upgrade powers didn't handle faking the process that well.

    Well Taylor was still there, she had managed to quickly captchalogue the device to get the code while neither Armsmaster or Dragon were looking, the cameras and scanners in the room not noting she did such thanks to her covering it up in her examination.

    Afterwards, she was told that she could look at it again later, but only on the RIG itself. Before she left, she made plans to do further examinations that next weekend, citing she was too busy during the week to do such.

    On the way home, Taylor felt her power try and grow.

    *Power Buy Attempt 1.5.29 Power Combination I (200) Not Bought, Banked 100 points.*

    Taylor briefly considered what she knew about the perk she hadn't acquired, and on learning that it was about combining her powers actively she let it go. Her powers already meshed well, to the point where she was doubtful a direct combination would help much.

    Putting that out of her mind, she wondered if perhaps she should try locking in something to build up a large number of charges then let it go to get a lot of perks. She found herself torn if that would be useful in the long run.

    It would make certain she got a perk, unless she pulled an 8 charge one again, but at the same time it also made certain she would get a perk, and some of her perks were less than ideal.

    Arriving at home, she met with her dad, just in time for dinner.

    "So, how did it go?" Danny asked over dinner.

    "Worse than I thought."

    "Worse? The wards are not good kids after all?"

    "No, they were fine. I am sure I could get along with them if it wasn't for the Protectorate. The issue is, well, my plans for sharing stuff are a bust."

    "The PRT is not willing to let you do that?"

    "Not as freely as I want, it's going to be limited to only them. Can't sell to hospitals or anything else like that."

    Taylor let out a sigh of annoyance at that, "I really wanted to help everyone."

    "Is the PRT never going to share it?"

    "No, they will share it, just slowly, over years. A lot slower than I would have liked."

    Taylor let out another long sigh at that as she looked over at her father, thinking.

    He waited a bit, before asking. "What are you thinking? Do you want to share it out anyway?"

    "Not exactly. Dragon was happy with what I showed off, but on hearing what she told me, then when I considered the fact I don't have enough people to help me… well, how hard do you think it would be to hire some people and train them up? Although my stuff is not blackboxed, teaching anyone who is not a genius any of it in a good time frame will be impossible."

    "You're just throwing this at me out of nowhere?"

    "Not entirely nowhere, I have been thinking about how I can get the manpower to build my larger stuff. I was hoping there would be an easy way to do things by the book and set up something under the PRT to do that. Now that I know it is not possible through legal channels, our only option is to look for ways off the books. It is not like I am limited in supplies or anything."

    "You'll have to explain where it all is coming from if they ask."

    "Yeah, I know. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying we should go hire anyone today or even this week. Let's find my missing stuff first, give me time to get more things in place first, and get past the coming endbringer attack. I also want a proper base outside of my warehouse before we do that first."

    "Do you have a location you have been considering for that?"

    "I do, and it might sound a bit extreme, but I want to build it on Mars."

    "What? Mars? Why there?" Her dad asked, clearly not understanding why she would want to do that without more explanation.

    "Legally, I have to own somewhere on Earth as defined by the locals for blank to protect it. No one lives on Mars, so if I get there, I can claim it, or at least claim wherever I am working without needing anyone to agree with it."

    "Thats nice?"

    "It also means that anyone on Mars, being in something I own would be covered. I could put them underground since it wouldn't immediately hide from anyone with eyes but… maybe the moon is better? It's closer so it would be faster round trips."

    "Did you forget about her?" Danny vaguely gestured into the air.

    "No, but she is exactly why I want to do this. I want to shift humanity out of her reach. If I could puzzle out an FTL drive, I could just put us in the next solar system, but that's not an option just yet. This is all just long-term plans."

    "Long term plans for what?"

    "Everything dad… everything."

    0o0

    After dinner, Taylor went back to debating the pros and cons of her medical bay. The fact that the Counseling Bay could fix anything was nice, but there was no way to get Amy into it just yet. She wasn't even sure how she could talk the girl into getting counselling willingly.

    Vista could likely use some time in there, in fact, as Taylor was starting to see from those around her, it looked like everyone could use some time in there.

    If only she had a way to get it outside of her workshop to let them into it.

    Sighing at that thought again, her efforts moved to designing her satellites. Her new perks helped a lot with construction speed and figuring out how to hide them without making them out of magic cloth.

    *Power Buy Attempt 3.11.2 Doll Maker of Bucuresti (Touhou) (200). Bought, Banked 0 points.*

    The perk that Taylor just got was enough to stop what she had been doing, as understanding of how to reverse-engineer magic using pure science, even with no background in either to start from, filled her mind.

    The perk she just got claimed it made her a genius, and given how easily she could now see tests to run on her clothing to figure out how it worked and convert that over to more mundane methods, she could already see hints of where to start, as this perk was aided by Simple Scientific Solution, which already cut her research time in half.

    Add in everything her senses could tell her and how quickly she could move and Taylor was a one-woman reverse-engineering team to be reckoned with.

    A much happier Taylor made her way to the Alchemiter to make a few items for study, then headed to her lab so she could start breaking them down.

    0o0

    Monday, February 13th, 2011

    0o0

    Despite spending all day Sunday studying her items under the lab, Taylor hadn't made much headway into understanding the runes that made up her magical gear, nor the version that the tinker device she had copied and then printed from than Armsmaster did. It was increasingly clear to her that they did something, but the logic behind them still escaped her; more experiments would be needed.

    Although she could see how versatile the underlying principles would be once she puzzled them out, she couldn't afford to push off her other plans. Her biggest concern was whoever had stolen her gear from the PRT, since they could repeat their performance while she was working with Dragon and Armsmaster and likely were doing the same for other gear the PRT had. It was a hole she wanted plugged before it became a major problem, which she was sure would help her attempts to join the Guild.

    Taylor was busy putting the final touches on her new control station for her satellites. Those were already done, five of them after cloning from her recent perk. She was only going to recycle two of her control stations when she finished, as she had use cases for the other three.

    One was for her to monitor, one was for her dad if he wished to do the same, and the last was a backup just in case.

    Danny arrived just before Taylor finished.

    "You done, Taylor?"

    "Almost… and done."

    With a pop, four other stations appeared next to Taylor.

    "Now for the risky part."

    Taylor captchalogued all of the stations, going to recycle the extra two, before she made her way to the door with her father and the three remaining stations.

    The nature of her warehouse meant that she had to be outside for the communication systems to work without a hard wire passed in through the door, and given how quickly she could captchalogue anything, it was faster to build it into a single unit then put it outside, since she wanted to be near them if she had to run into the warehouse and shut the door.

    Before opening the doorway to a rooftop in the city, Selene swapped into her armor, while her father put on his own costume, which she had made for him to help cover for this. He wasn't so much helping her locate her gear as keeping an eye on Simurgh, in the event one of her alerts didn't work right.

    Selene deployed his station first, and quickly pulled up the public data on the Simurgh location, currently near Europe, highlighting it to make sure it stood out.

    Making sure she didn't react, which Selene expected, she quickly deployed her own and the five cloaked satellites she was about to let loose.

    Monitoring Simurgh with one eye, she directed all five to take off into the air, quickly reaching the height she wanted them to be, well above any airplanes flight levels and in the edges of space.

    She would have run it lower, but the satellites didn't have good avoidance systems just yet and she didn't want them to crash into a plane or birds. She had to take them up out of visual range to make sure it was safe, and once they started their search pattern, she wouldn't be able to monitor all five, keep an eye on Simurgh, and see what data she was getting at the same time,. Her multiple threads of consciousness could only stretch so far.

    "No reaction yet."

    "I am starting the search program." Selene answered back, and all five satellites started a search pattern as they spread out in all directions trying to find her gear. Given her location in the United States she didn't need to check all directions, with only one heading north and the other four satellites handling various arcs South and West.

    Selene had figured it was more likely that they would have ended up west, or maybe south to Boston, then north into Canada.

    This turned out to be correct as all four of her missing blankets turned up in Boston.

    "Found them, all of them." Selene told her dad as she called back her satellites. As much as she would prefer to leave them up there for more data, The Simurgh being up there made it too risky to do when Selene couldn't monitor her position 24/7.

    "So, they were close by after all. Where?"

    "Boston. I don't know the precise location from these coordinates; I need to go check. Let's get this stored away. My handheld sensor will be good enough once I am near where they are."

    0o0

    Selene ended up using a flying cape to reach Boston after her father was back at home. She was rather curious who had stolen her stuff from the PRT. As she travelled, she accessed a few out of the way doors along the route for future access so she could get back to Boston quickly.

    Once she was close enough to get scans of the building her satellites pinpointed, she found that it wasn't officially owned by anyone, given that the blankets were in a clearly abandoned and condemned building.

    Since there was no one around, just an alarm system, Selene decided that a smash and grab was the best method here. She activated a hologram to disguise her as a random man wearing a mask and hoodie as she went in.

    The place was reinforced, but not to the point that it would be hard to break in. The security system was good enough that she couldn't avoid showing up on it before disabling it, so she didn't bother to try.

    Rather, she just kicked down the front door and went straight to her missing gear.

    Grabbing it, she shoved them into a bag she had brought for the occasion, and noticed a number of other items around, most of them also tinker tech as her scanner showed.

    They were almost certainly stolen items as well, and she did have a lab that lacked things to study.

    She decided to pick them up as well, and quickly emptied everything stored there into her bag. Quickly, she headed out the same way she came in and took to the sky while turning invisible, leaving before anyone could respond.

    0o0

    After getting a good distance away from the location where her items had been, Selene found a door, and used it to access her warehouse before closing it and leaving it shut. Her dad was expecting her to look over her blankets to make sure there were no trackers added, so he wouldn't be concerned by the lockout unless she took more than a few hours.

    She quickly scanned the items she had picked up for sensors, finding a lot of black boxes she didn't know understand, but no clear emissions that looked like 'communications' of any kind, just the sort of thing she wanted to study more in detail to figure out how other tinker tech worked.

    *Power Buy Attempt 1.5.26 Power Toggle (50) Bought, Banked 50 points.*

    Reroll since last perk was fully bought/brought to some level of ranking and points > 0

    *Power Buy Attempt 1.1.9 Creature Soul I (50) (Cat). Bought, Banked 0 points.*

    Taylor hadn't thought that she would ever get anything that would be enough to stop the four mental processes she had all at once, but she now discovered her error, as all four came to a grinding halt over what she just picked up.

    On one hand, she got the ability to turn any aspect of her power off, suddenly solving the issue of never being able to not just read people like they were open books.

    On the other hand, she gained the ability to gain cat features, ears, tail, claws and so on. This didn't include fur, so she wouldn't be some human/cat hybrid like some pictures she had seen before. She would be just a human with optional cat ears, tail and claws on her fingers— and toes if she wanted them.

    This would have increased her vision and hearing if they hadn't already been as good as the best animals, although she did get a slight boost to her dexterity as well, so it wasn't entirely useless from a practical perspective.

    Curious how she would look, Taylor made her way over to a mirror and called out her cat ears.

    Staring at them, she was quite surprised to learn how much better it made her look, as if somehow this was the real her. Maybe it had to do with her liking cats over dogs.

    Deciding she should show them to her father, and wishing more than she expected to show them around town as well, she laughed at her own flight of foolishness, as that wasn't an option because it would out her. Taylor left them in place as she made her way to the collection. The items she had secured that had been with her blankets were quickly sorted in her lab for study.

    She learned what she could from the blankets, taking a deep sniff of them as she focused on who had handled them. She did the same to all the other tinkertech as well. Most of the useful scents on them were gone, but there were a few she memorized in case they were useful in the future.

    Most of the people she already knew were PRT officers, indicating that the blankets had made it to the PRT first, but there were other people, who matched the scents she had picked up outside of the Endbringer base that Grue's gang had a connection to.

    But one of them really caught her eye, namely that the same girl who had been watching her had handled one of these herself.

    Taylor looked up from that, realizing the implications of that. Whomever the girl was, she was a lot more involved than Taylor had first thought.

    No longer was she just an idle curiosity, but someone that she should go research a lot more in depth. If she was a part of the group that had stolen her gear from the PRT, they clearly had moles in there, which Armsmaster should be informed about.

    0o0

    End of Chapter 06

    0o0

    Interlude 05: Coil

    0o0

    New Parahumans were always something that bothered Coil, because they upset plans he had laid carefully over the years in a way that was literally impossible to predict.

    The only counter that had proven useful time and again was to isolate everything as much as possible and avoid interactions between his groups that didn't pass solely through him, lest a new trigger break his cover wide open.

    Were it not for his deal with Cauldron, he never would have been able to remain in the PRT as an officer, and even he could see how close that coverage ran. It was quite clear to him that if he reneged on the favors he still owned them, they would ruin him by stopping running interference.

    Coil had no intention of doing that because he knew better then to break a deal with the devil. With as much control they had over the PRT, and what he had seen of their resources, he knew that was a fool's errand.

    His thoughts went most often these days to a new parahuman from a few weeks ago, one who had managed to almost draw Tattletale into an obsession over figuring the secrets of her thinker blocking tinkertech and getting around it.

    This was something that Coil himself was torn on, given that it drew into question how much of his alternate timelines he could trust.

    Several times since she had appeared, he tried to secure her for questioning, but it proved to be impossible with the sheer damage the girl could cause. Even attacking her out of costume on the streets had failed to yield anything more than proof that she could withstand weapons big enough to not just bring in the local Protectorate within minutes, but enough that he started seeing Legend show up, which meant if he kept pushing he would start seeing the entire Triumvirate show up thinking it was a new S Class threat.

    Coil had never attacked her like this in his kept timelines, but it made him wonder, given Tattletales's report on her gear.

    She claimed it could tank a hit from Behemoth, that not even the Simurgh could destroy it.

    He doubted both of those facts. But the issue was, whatever she was doing was clearly stopping him from learning more about her. She never seemed to sleep, the protections on her and her house couldn't be broken by anything he brought to bear without the PRT reacting, and since said girl would tell the PRT what happened, with supporting video to back herself up no less, even that attempt resulted in a failed timeline.

    The only bright thing in this mess was that she had told Armsmaster, who had reported it to the PRT and thus into his files, that she had no intention of joining the wards because she had been attacked by a Protectorate member in the past and was from out of the city.

    Coil knew that to be almost completely wrong. Taylor had been attacked by a Protectorate member yes, but it was a ward, local to the city, and not as Armsmaster reported, in a sexual manner.

    Since all of that had been backed up by his lie detector, Coil knew that whatever thinker protections she had, were quite potent.

    And since anything that messed with his plans meant the outcome of any of his side timelines were debatable, he either had to consider Tattletale reports of what her gear could do to be true, in that Selene's gear was new fundamental laws of reality— or assume that she was a tinker trump and messing with his power.

    The first couldn't possibly be true, so Coil figured that it was the latter. There was no way she was really rewriting fundamental laws.

    His inferences also meant that removing her would be hard, since he couldn't try and keep a safe timeline where he didn't as that would assuredly show her heroically fighting off all three endbringers if he could ever arrange for such a thing thanks to her protections.

    The only option he could see was a scenario in which he didn't take part, but he needed to remove her from this city before she uprooted him.

    Recalling that Accord wished to send a group known as the Travelers his way, he decided it might be best to task them with dealing with her as a condition for staying in the city. It would nicely serve double duty, as it would both test how useful they were, and would leave him free to continue as normal if they succeeded.

    0o0

    A few days later, Coil was in his office, when a buzzer went off, and Coil looked at it, seeing one of his minions had urgent data. Accepting it, the door opened, and in walked one of his men.

    "Sir, information from one of your agents at the hospital."

    "Place it on my desk." Coil ordered and the man did such, then left.

    Checking the file, Coil confirmed that it hadn't been opened by the man who passed it on, as expected. The man did good work.

    Since this was a hospital agent, it likely meant a new trigger, one that hadn't flagged the PRT systems so could be a new resource to recruit.

    Opening the file himself, he was quite surprised by what he read. The Mayor's niece, Dinah Alcott, had triggered with thinker powers allowing her to tell the odds of an event happening.

    His man inside the hospital had managed to be the one that gave her the test when her family brought her in concerned because of the headaches and had lied to them saying she didn't have powers and was making it all up.

    It would be extremely useful to secure her, although so long as Selene was still around, how much he could trust his other timelines was in question. Coil decided it was best to give Accord a call to see how much longer the Travellers would take. He would need to be able to trust his dropped timelines before he could make a proper move on Dinah. She would make a good pet, he had been missing a pet for quite a while ever since his old one died.

    0o0

    End of Interlude 05

    0o0


    2.1.27 Central Control (100)
    2.1.28 Your Robots (200)
    2.1.29 Maintenance Systems (100)
    2.6.3 All Your Stuff (100)
    1.4.15 Supernatural Engineer
    3.4.9 Workaholic (Sonic)
    3.11.2 Doll Maker of Bucuresti (Touhou)
    1.5.26 Power Toggle
    1.1.9 Creature Soul I (Cat)
     
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    • Chapter 07 : Discovery
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    • AN: Betaed by @Trek, @Esprit and @hoth

    0o0

    Chapter 07: Discovery

    0o0

    Tuesday, February 15th, 2011

    0o0

    *+2 Charges for Interlude 06*

    *Power Buy Attempt 1.1.4 Environmental Tolerance II (100) Bought, Banked 200 points.*

    Reroll since last perk was fully bought/brought to some level of ranking and points > 0

    *Power Buy Attempt 2.3.15 Servants' Quarters (200) Not Bought, Requires 2.3.8 Housing Complex (200) Bought. Banked 0 points.*

    Taylor waited until breakfast to tell her father about her new features, which was almost like a new morning ritual by now. Shortly after he sat down to join her for breakfast, she felt her power expand to grant her a triple charge, which prompted her to focus for a moment on what was new.

    The first and clearly far more useful change ensured that she no longer had to breathe, could withstand temperatures from a bit above boiling down to absolute zero comfortably, was un-bothered by any pressure less than 1000 atmospheres, and was completely immune to radiation in all forms.

    This simplified her planned expansion to Mars greatly. Although it had been on her list of things to do the other demands on her time, namely iterating through the process to construct weapons and gear she would need to deal with the Endbringers were taking too much of her time to allow her to construct the life support systems she would need to safely spend any significant time on the red planet.

    In her current armor, she could weather the elements there for a few minutes at best. A proper space suit would give her perhaps a few hours to set everything up, which was a far cry from the proper long life support systems she or anyone else who went there would need. Given its size and complexity, such infrastructure was much easier to construct locally once she got there than make it on earth and haul it over.

    She could have placed her minions there to mine out a base without her being there, but making it secure and livable was something she had to do herself, and deploying a completely functional life support would have required several cycles to make sure everything was perfect.

    She would have to spend the necessary time later when she could afford to work on less critical projects. A lack of space wasn't one of her major issues right now, and everything inside her warehouse was already as secure as anything could be seeing that when the door was closed the warehouse was located outside the multiverse.

    But this perk changed her plans.

    Now, she didn't need to make a proper space suit, so she no longer had to do her assembly very carefully in an extremely hostile environment to build up the basic life support systems that would make it safe for humans long term.

    All she had to do was get a door there, and she could walk outside and do anything she needed without concern as if she was doing it on Earth.

    The other perk was less useful, but it was still sort of interesting as well. It granted her a proper housing facility inside of her warehouse—housing that would expand to cover any number of people that she allowed to live there. Everyone would get their own bedroom once she gave them permission. For every six bedrooms she had, rounding up remainders, she received an additional set of 6 rooms that she could then use to make a separate 'house' out of any rooms she liked. Unfortunately these rooms took up actual space in her warehouse and did not expand the space as the numbers increased, so she couldn't place millions of humans in her warehouse, at least not yet.

    Taylor could see how this would be useful in some situations, but the Servants' quarters would only give her additional minions that could only clean and do similar mundane tasks. Since she already had both robots and golems capable of fulfilling the same niche, she deemed the possibility to be a complete waste of charges and let it go.

    "So, dad, a few new things to talk about."

    "Is this how all of our mornings are going to go now, Taylor?" Danny asked her.

    Taylor pondered that for a bit, then nodded, as she said. "Well, since it's a reaction to my powers expanding, I'll stick with 'maybe'. I picked up some new perks last night, one of which you're going to be happy to hear about. It is a control knob for my powers, ensuring that I can dial any features I don't want down or off."

    "You can stop telling if I am lying." Danny immediately focused on the main point.

    There was a good reason why Taylor didn't want to admit that she now had this to him, but she knew better than to hide it, no matter how strained their past relationship had been, things had been improving rapidly.

    "I can— I won't use it on you normally, but you'll just have to trust me on this."

    Taylor watched as her father studied her. Despite what she said, she hadn't turned the power off yet so she could know what he was thinking.

    "I suppose it's not really my place to tell you to essentially blind yourself." Danny finally admitted to her; and Taylor relaxed as she verified that he was telling the truth. She was certain he wouldn't lie but had wanted to be certain she was right.

    "No, it's not, but I'm doing it anyway. I trust you. But there something else I wanted to share with you before it causes you to panic. I received an addition that I can turn on and off as well."

    "What, a factory?"

    "I meant a personal addition. I can have cat features now."

    "Cat… features?"

    Taylor let her ears appear on her head.

    "Like this."

    "You thought I wanted to know that?"

    "It's surprisingly comfortable to have them out, to the point I plan to keep them out all the time when I am in my warehouse or here around the house so long as I have the hologram of a normal house inside them up, and I didn't want you to panic if you found me with them without warning."

    "What other cat features do you have, a tail?"

    "I can, but I found it's more trouble than it's worth, it makes sitting down unduly uncomfortable. I can bring out claws on my fingers as well, and that about it. I can't cover myself in fur or anything like that."

    Taylor waited as her father drew a long slow breath at that, then let out a sigh. "Right, better that I know ahead of time. Was that it?"

    "No. After I got my gear back, I figured out that the people who stole it are connected to a local villain gang. I am going to tell Armsmaster about it later—this weekend—when I go to work more with the Protectorate on tinker designs."

    "Why not today?" Danny asked.

    "I don't want them to know how quickly I can find my gear. That, and I need justification for how I know it was a local gang despite recovering my lost items from Boston. I am thinking I'll claim to have some sort of scent based sensor that is as good as a dog's nose, but that I need time to go over the city to track the thief down. Spending the week doing that should be more than enough time to delay any suspicions. Plus, I can give them a list of everyone else who handled my blankets as well if I use that explanation."

    The rest of their breakfast was uneventful other than some small talk. Afterwards, her charge seemed to have built up to the point that it triggered again.

    *Power Buy Attempt 2.6.1 Eye Spy (100). Bought, Banked 0 points.*

    Taylor noted that her new perk finished off a branch of her warehouse domain, as she gained the ability to see inside her warehouse at will, even looking back in time to anything that had ever happened within its bounds. She dedicated one of her thought threads to combing through the entire past timeline of her warehouse to make sure she hadn't missed anything strange.

    It was a very nice thing to pick up, since it made letting Amy inside her warehouse for therapy a much safer endeavor, whenever that eventually came to pass. Taylor's thoughts turned to what she would have to do next, since Amy hadn't said much during her patrol with the two sisters.

    Taylor would keep quiet for another patrol with Vicky, then wait until a third patrol with the girl before talking to Vicky about muting her powers a bit with tinker tech. Once something like that was in place, she should be able to safely focus on curing Amy.

    0o0

    After her father left for work, Taylor turned her attention to designing a simple probe that would grant her access to everything in the solar system within a few months.

    The secrets of FTL still escaped her. Even if she could see hints of such technology from her Dead Space perks, any knowledge of practical implementations was still locked away in the vast expanses of her potential powers, so Taylor was forced to accept a probe that was fast but still slower than light speed.

    Drawing on the same gravitic technology that she used to fly her sensor satellites around, Taylor started with that as a base, creating a platform that was large enough to contain the most advanced movement systems she could design with her gravity manipulation technology without resorting to micro-blackholes as components.

    Even those wouldn't let her get to faster than light speed without access to truly exotic matter, only accelerate matter to near light speed— or blow up planets. As the saying went, 'no spaceship is an unarmed spaceship'.


    She repurposed her control platform. After a quick upscaling of the power supply to handle the distance, Taylor placed a door as the final part of the extremely simple platform, let her power activate to duplicate it five times, and took her handiwork outside to confirm that her key worked on the door and gave her access to the warehouse.

    After some testing, she confirmed that her key worked all the doors and that they showed up on her access terminal. Taylor then launched four of the platforms into space, sending one to Earth's Moon, which she decided she would use to start with. It was far closer than she liked, so her long term efforts would be dedicated to a Mars base, but the travel time to the Moon was just an hour. With direct access to the Moon, she could start prototyping her future Mars base there.

    Mars itself would take her nearly a week to access, which was still a lot sooner than the two constructs heading over to Ganymede and Titan would arrive. Those would take 10 and 20 weeks respectively to reach their destinations.

    As for the fifth door that Taylor had made, she directed it to the other side of the Earth after changing into her costume. She would use its local sensors to direct it outside of a distant town or city, then find a few doors nearby to expand her network of locations she could access quickly before sending it to some other distant location on Earth. Repeating this process would efficiently grant her an expanding network of linked doors that she would fill in when she had spare time.

    Before she started on that, Taylor released another 50 door-probes on routes to the various other stellar bodies, including several heading out of the Solar System to other nearby solar systems. Taylor didn't expect to use any of these, as she expected to have functional FTL technology sooner rather than later, but it only cost her a few minutes of time to send them all out. She couldn't see how they could be useful right now, but a need for quick transit to deep space could arise in the future.

    0o0

    An hour later, Taylor stepped out of the door onto the Moon's surface. Her platform had landed where she had wanted it to, and while she debated doing this in her armor, she really wanted to do this in the flesh and see the surface of the Moon in a way that no one ever had before, at least as far as she knew. She wouldn't put it past some parahuman to have already done it.

    So Taylor, still clad in her civilian clothes, stepped out of the door onto the surface of the Moon at her desired location near the border between the dark and light side with a view of the sun.

    Taylor first thought upon arriving was how quiet it all was. The lack of air meant that it was deathly silent to her senses, which was a drastic change given how much she could hear all the time. Even the subtle groaning of the earth beneath her was conspicuously missing, a casualty of the moon's long-ago cooled core.

    At that moment, the only things she could hear were the sounds of her own body.

    *Power Buy Attempt 2.4.22 Game Room (200). Not Bought, Banked 100 points.*

    Taylor only gave half a thought to the perk that her powers failed to acquire, noting that it was just a game room for her new housing complex and not worth securing, while the rest of her focused entirely on what she could see.

    Looking up at the Earth from above, Taylor felt that everything she had done was small compared to the scale of her home planet in the sky, visible in stark relief against the panoply of stars shining clearer than they could ever be on earth.

    Down on Earth, she had traveled around the city on foot, flown around to nearby cities, and she barely had covered a fraction of the United States. Her doors around the world let her get around quickly now, but at this distance, with nothing more than her thumb, she could cover the entire earth with a single motion.

    Taylor turned her gaze from the Earth to look at the perfectly clear sky, looking at the countless stars, trying to pull at the knowledge that would let her reach them, but failing to do so. The hints of a shockpoint drive were there, but there were still pieces missing.

    As she looked at the countless stars hanging in the sky clear of any light pollution, it felt rather humbling. For all of her work and efforts, just stepping back showed her how small she was in the vastness of the cosmos. In terms of the universe, no multiverse, she hadn't even left her backyard yet.

    The vastness of it all seemed to make her petty Earth-bound concerns vanish from sight like motes of dust in the wind. The damage the Endbringers caused? Horrifying. But even after all these years, Taylor couldn't see the damage from this distance, not even with her superhuman sight. She couldn't even see the Simurgh in orbit of the Earth, even though she knew the endbringer was in her cone of vision.

    Taylor's thoughts went to her current situation. Here she was, standing on a mostly untouched chunk of rock that only a dozen men had set foot on. She was the first woman to have the opportunity, and likely would be the last for a long while. She didn't want to build anything big this close to Earth so long as The Simurgh was still among the living. Everything she would be building here was a prototype for what she would do on Mars, and she would only use this as an emergency bunker given how close it was to Earth—close to the Simurgh.

    Taylor refocused her thoughts on what she needed to do to get her Moon base online. Since she didn't want it to be seen at all, it would have to be underground. She would need cloaking generators online before she could build on the surface. Generators precise enough to escape the sight of Earth-based telescopes would require large power generators. While she could build such generators, they would take time to install and activate. Even a short build window without them online would be too much of a risk. Mobile cloaking generators were far worse. Designing ones that could remain active while leaving the workshop would require time she simply didn't have.

    At the thought of being noticed by telescopes, Taylor realized something else was missing, and pulled on her memories to confirm it had been true since she set foot out here.

    She wasn't being targeted by any abilities any more. She hadn't noticed because it was the same while inside her warehouse, but after stepping onto the moon, she hadn't been picked up by them like every other time she left her warehouse or her house.

    Nothing similar had been set up locally yet, as she couldn't claim a location on the Moon without building something on it first. Once she had even the most basic of structures nearby, she could claim a decent amount of the land around it as her 'grounds', although it would have to be a very big structure to claim more than a few hundred meters. Even an entire city wouldn't be enough for her to claim the entire Moon by itself. Hundreds of kilometers around the city were possible, yes, but not the rest of the Moon.

    But the point that it wasn't protected yet by blank didn't matter so much as learning that whatever net that parahumans and The Simurgh cast over the Earth didn't extend into lunar orbit.

    Taylor could see how this was big, even though she was going to still rely on Blank to protect her bases. The less information blank had to hide, the better. In fact, it might well be worthwhile to verify where the cutoff for parahuman data gathering was, as safe orbits could be incredibly valuable.

    Blank's protection only extended to what she made and owned. Ownership required a lot more than just being there, or saying it was hers. It required either she or someone else that lived nearby saying it was hers. The longer she had staked her claim, the more technology she built to restrict access, and the more general infrastructure she'd set up the more she could project ownership in a lawless region. No one but her could contest her ownership of the Moon since she was the only one on it, but this wasn't good enough to claim the entire Moon. To expand it outside of her immediate area would require her to work the land in some way. Anyone showing up and doing the same would be able to implicitly take land from her unless their changes were minor compared to her own, automatically removing any protection Blank might provide.

    Quite pleased at this discovery, Taylor ran towards the dark side of the moon as she withdrew a pickaxe she had constructed from Puresteel then upgraded to shatter the rock around the impact point into small head sized chunks, changing into her armor as she did such as to not get herself impacted with the various rocks and dust she would soon send flying once she started mining.

    She had to make it weaker than it first design, which had turned them all rock around it into fine dust, not because she wanted to have to deal with rubble while mining, but because she had duplicated this same pickaxe for her golems to use and they couldn't use captchalogue cards. They weren't advanced enough to do that just yet.

    With all the upgrades on her pickaxe, it was a faster digger than anything short of high explosives without the associated downsides.

    Furthermore, using a pickaxe to cut out a room counted as 'building one' so she could make it 25 times larger or make five rooms at once as soon as she finished a 'room' thanks to Workaholic from Sonic.

    Lifting the pickax high into the sky, Taylor swung down hard at the ground, the point of impact exploding outwards from the hit, rocks going in all directions and bounding off her because of the low gravity.

    Smiling, Taylor quickly stored the loose rock in a captchalogue card and looked at hole she had made, moving inside to swing again at the very bottom of the hole.

    She was going to build her base just over 500 meters straight down. She could do that in just over 100 swings since she could then duplicate any tunnel once finished into five tunnels.

    0o0

    Once Taylor was deep enough, she quickly carved out a small room, making full use of her 25x volume effect to accelerate the process, near the shaft and set up a door.

    With the door in place, she opened it to confirm it's functionality, then deployed the grist recycler she had made and directed her golems out into the room to get started mining. They would have to pick up the chunks of rocks manually and place them into the recycler which would give her a steady source of grist.

    This was a lot slower than mining herself, but it let her do other things while her minions worked tirelessly.

    Pausing only long enough to make sure they could dig out the rest of the main room that would be the foundation for her limited moon base, Taylor moved to the shaft that she had come down. Sealing off the bottom was quick and easy, and once sealed, Taylor made her way to seal the top as well to hide what she had done. She would have to fill in the entire shaft later, but it would be with wires to connect the surface and subterranean systems and likely an elevator.

    0o0

    *Power Buy Attempt 3.1.12 Orgel of Origins (Ar Tonelico) (500) Not Bought, Banked 200 points.

    Taylor considered what the perk would do, noting it was some sort of infinite energy source.

    She was sure it would be useful, but almost certainly not useful enough to spend the six additional charges it would take to secure, so she let it go for now. She didn't have any problems powering weapons that could harm an endbringer. Her issue was building the weapon small enough to be used with any finesse in the first place.

    After masking her entry point, Taylor made her way back to the room her golems were located in to start setting up her base.

    The very first thing she set up was a basic life support system. She might not need it anymore, but her father would, and whomever else she ended up recruiting would need one in the Mars base as well.

    This took her until just past lunchtime, so Taylor returned to start installing the computer systems of her new base after a short break. Among these systems would be the computer that Dragon and Armsmaster would be able to contact her with. If they decided to trace it and somehow figured out a way to get past her location obscuring security precautions, their inquiries would still point them at the Moon. Let them wonder how she relayed the signal off the moon.

    Taylor wasn't quite sure how she would arrange for proper internet access for her new base. Even if she could build any number of remote connection terminals, people on the networks she piggybacked off of would notice what she was doing if she used any serious bandwidth and cut her off. She wasn't willing to even attempt the sort of dedicated hacking that would be needed to so much as partially obscure her traces. There had to be a better way.

    It wouldn't take her long to move to another base, so it was a hassle she didn't need. Ideally, she would deploy her own network around the world because it would be faster than any conventional connection and secure to her own standards, but connecting to the rest of the internet remained a problem.

    Taylor hoped Dragon could help her bypass that issue and planned to ask the woman about it when they next talked.

    0o0

    When Taylor noticed her father entering the warehouse, she realized it was dinner time and that she had gotten lost in endless construction of her new base's systems. She left that behind, leaving her golems to continue their mining effort while she got dinner.

    "Busy?" Danny asked as she arrived in their kitchen.

    "Very much so. I have a Moon base now."

    "I thought the plan was for a Mars base?"

    "It is. The Moon Base is just a backup and a prototype, only really worth bothering because it's going to be another six days before I can start on the Mars Base—months until the others are online."

    "Who exactly are you intending to put inside these bases?" Danny questioned, clearly curious.

    "I don't really know yet. But my golems are otherwise idle…. I will figure out something later, when I have some idea of who I can recruit."

    0o0

    Wednesday, February 16th, 2011

    0o0

    When Selene made her way to Armsmaster's lab to drop off her point of contact computer, she wasn't expecting Dragon to be there.

    "Selene." Dragon greeted her.

    "Dragon." Selene returned, knowing that the AI was rather happy.

    "I have some mostly good news for you that I thought you like to hear right away."

    "Oh?" Selene asked, leaning in slightly.

    "After talking it over with the Guild and factoring in your current age and relatively new reputation, it was decided that before we could extend you an offer of membership, you would have to first complete a test. After your test is completed, we will evaluate how you did and decide if we will extend you a membership or not. The test is rather reasonable, since it is basically just an assignment we would be giving you if you were a part of the Guild anyway."

    "You want me to make Tinker Tech for guild members?" Selene guessed based on what she was reading off Dragon. She doubted they would throw her at an S-class threat, the Guild was about supporting each other against S-class threats after all. What they would want a tinker to do was rather straightforward.

    "Correct, for any three members—three different members—you are to make as much tinker tech as you think is proper for them. Payment will be made after completion based on what I deem is proper, not construction expenses so keep that in mind. If you have any questions, please bring them up before you start."

    "Does it have to be tinker tech?" Selene asked, as she pointed toward a table on the opposite side of the room on which her scanners sat.

    "Items reversed engineered from tinker tech are still considered tinker tech for this purpose, and it would certainly count a lot more favorably for you, since we could spread those among all members as we are going to do with your lifesigns detector." Dragon confirmed.

    "In that case, I don't suppose there is some list of tinker tech that they want duplicated that maybe you have been assigned?"

    "I am afraid that's not something I can share prior to your admittance into the guild. If it is useful enough to qualify for duplication, it is not something I can just give you before you become a member."

    Selene hummed as she thought things over a bit, she had researched all the guild members and could already see useful things for them. Her armor would be a big boom after all. With the Alchemiter, she could print out basic shapes and then do some quick reforging to get them to a final fit. Her armor was made before she got Blank anyway, so it would not require her revealing technology still within her blank bubble.

    "Take a few days and ask me about it before you start on anything specific for a person so I can check if they would want it. Generic items that can be passed around would be more ideal for your test."

    That gave Selene a bit of an idea and she asked.

    "Dragon, what exactly does the guild do for communication networks?"

    "We have access to a private satellite network that can only be accessed by the Guild and PRT. One of my roles in the guild is to maintain it, and I am afraid that you can't get access to that until you have full membership." Dragon informed her.

    "Not quite what I was expecting, but that wasn't quite what I meant. I meant how secure is it?"

    Selene indicated to the computer she had shared.

    *Power Buy Attempt 3.2.20 Skills (Startrek TNG) (400). Not Bought, Banked 300 points.*

    Selene, on seeing what the perk was from, immediately knew she had to lock that in, and did such. There were quite a few things from Star Trek that she couldn't make yet: transporters, FTL drives, and much more. The Alchemiter itself was already a very large matter replicator, but she couldn't just program things in. She had to make any objects first to get the code to duplicate. A chance for those two missing technologies more than made this a sure lock in for her, even ignoring the fact of how little the tax would be.

    "It is rather hard to break into my network here, and redundancy is useful."

    "It would be nice to see what you could do to improve it, but I am afraid that regulations require I must refuse your ability to do that until you are a full member, Selene. I do trust you, but operational security of our communication network means I can't allow you even access until you are a full member."

    Selene nodded with a sigh as she said. "Of course. I will put that on the backburner for later."

    "Don't feel bad that your first idea wasn't good enough, Selene. There are a lot of options."

    "Oh, I know that Dragon, I was just thinking something that would be useful for everyone. I already have a few other ideas for gear that some of the Guild members might want."

    "Oh? Well if you have them I would be happy to hear them now while we set up your computer here."

    "I might as well start with protective gear. I have a design for a personal energy shield that can easily take the impact of a truck before needing about 10 seconds to recharge. It's one of the things I have been working on reverse engineering to the point that non-parahumans can reproduce it, but I haven't had much luck yet."

    "We would need to test it, but that certainly would be useful even if it's still blackboxed. Do you have a sample on hand?"

    "This crystal here."

    Selene tapped the crystal on her armor that was quite clearly something special.

    "I can put it into any armor or uniform, although it has to be exposed so it can project the field. It also works better the sturdier the base armor is."

    "You have multiple?"

    "No, but I can make more. I never had any trouble duplicating my own gear." Selene confirmed. "I don't have a spare with me, but I can bring a few this weekend."

    0o0

    After her meeting with Dragon and Armsmaster, Taylor made her way to PHO to post a few bounties for series she had picked up perks from, but that hadn't been suggested to her, in her thread of useful series to have powers from.

    Most critically, she was interested in the Geneforge series. It was the first real crafting power she got, as well as Iji. Iji was a bit riskier given her scanner, but since she put her bounties under a third account, she would post them and hope that someone could find them for her.

    0o0

    Thursday, February 17th, 2011

    0o0

    One expansion to the moon base that Taylor had not initially planned was an elevator to the surface; the feeling of looking at the earth and the stars was something she didn't want to give up on.

    A simple elevator took no time with what she had access to, and once it was in place a simple airlock under a cloak was also put in.

    She wasn't sure why she found it relaxing to just look up at the Earth, but it made her feel a lot more human, as even the huge vastness of her powers seemed small next to the planet she had grown up on, well, at least for now.

    It also made her wonder a lot more about the nature of powers.

    Curious as to fact that she wasn't being targeted on the Moon by any abilities, she had brought a copy of the tinker tech that Dragon and Armsmaster had given her to study, which she had captchalogued when they were not looking, up to the Moon, only to find that it completely stopped working until she brought it back to Earth before immediately resuming functionality. She confirmed that earthbound functionality wasn't unique to that device; all the tinker tech she had managed to pick up along with her stolen gear also behaved the same.

    Despite all of this, her powers and technology were unaffected by whatever disabled tinkertech.

    There was presumably some sort of network on Earth that it relied on, and it hadn't taken her long after confirming that to find that this network extended to the 'parahuman limit' that was the generally accepted maximum height parahuman abilities could work up to.

    All the secured tinker tech she had simply stopped working after that limit. Notably, that height was well below where the Simurgh flew, which had fascinating implications for the differences between endbringers and parahumans.

    They didn't stop working so much as they lost power. Did the Simurgh not require active power? Did she run on stored energy and refuel during her attacks? Taylor suddenly had a lot of potentially important questions.

    Circling her finger around the Earth above her, Taylor drew on her powers thinking of energy transmission methods that had such a range. The tricky part was that it covered the entire surface of the Earth without obvious infrastructure. The energy source would either need to be near the core, or otherwise defined to only power items within an arbitrary set area.

    Taylor decided it likely wasn't in the center of the earth even if the cutoff radius seems to be a sphere around the earth. If it was there, someone would have already noticed.

    It also made her wonder what would happen if a parahuman left the earth. She didn't know If their powers would just stop working like tinker tech, or if they would continue to function.

    If she found herself a willing hero or a nasty enough villain, it would be a quick, if risky test to do. So long as she rushed them to her medical bay afterwards, they could be fixed up, but it couldn't be a casual experiment.

    Taylor briefly considered asking the parahumans she knew, but quickly decided that none of them were good options.

    Sighing, Taylor got up to head back home. Her father wanted to take her out shopping for food, something to help mask the fact she could just print anything they wanted to eat without issue.

    It wasn't something she had done with him since her mother had died.

    But when he had asked, she had accepted in a heartbeat.

    0o0

    While out shopping, Taylor noticed the girl from the Grue's gang was at the same supermarket her father took her too. She didn't think much of it at first, since it was the same one they always went to; there were only a handful of good ones in Brockton Bay and the girl would have to shop for food herself somewhere.

    That assumption held up until Taylor was able to get close enough to read her intentions to find that she was following them.

    *4/5 Charges*

    Rather than do something about it right then, Taylor just watched her with super-senses as the girl followed them though the store with far more skill then Taylor was expecting. Indeed, without her enhanced senses and perfect memory, she wouldn't even have realized it was happening.

    Taylor wondered how in the world the girl had found her despite Blank's protection until she recalled that her father always did shopping for groceries at the same time each week and at the same store. Blank didn't protect against people figuring things out the normal way by watching them.

    With a bit of a start, Taylor realized that this meant the girl was targeting her father, since she hadn't gone shopping with him in years, and besides the question of why, the fact she was doing such suddenly changed things a lot. This wasn't something she could wait on.

    0o0

    On the way home, Taylor debated how to best handle this. She could see many options that ranged from handling this herself to telling the PRT she was being stalked, more so when said girl that was stalking her had handled her missing tinker tech.

    After debating it over, Taylor decided that she had best handle the situation on her own. She had no idea why this girl was stalking her father, and with her ability to detect lies and intentions, she could figure out exactly how much danger her dad was in before turning her over to the PRT. She needed to get everything she could out of the girl first, paying particular attention to who she told sensitive information and what she told them. Something she couldn't rely on the PRT to do with their incompetent staff. She couldn't afford to take risks with her father's safety on the line. She would go just after 3 AM to make sure the girl was asleep before she woke her up for questioning.

    After she got everything she needed to know, she could handle the girl, and if it meant killing her, Taylor would cross that bridge when she got there. She had more than enough ways to get rid of a body that couldn't be found, ever. Just tossing the girls ashes into space somewhere between Earth and Mars would put her well out of reach of any Parahuman ability.

    0o0

    Friday, February 18th, 2011

    0o0

    In the extremely early hours of the morning, Selene tracked the girl to her apartment, where she only sometimes stayed. The other nights were spent at the Endbringer shelter and the factory that made up Grue's gang's collective bases.

    Selene had hoped the girl would go home tonight, since she wasn't quite sure how she would do this in the other two locations. Since she had, Selene was grateful she didn't have to figure that much out.

    Breaking into the house was child's play with her technology and skills, and the apartment didn't even have a security alarm.

    Selene gave it several scans with her sensors to make certain of that.

    Selene made her way into the girl's bedroom, choosing to head in as quietly as she could. After she was in the bedroom, Selene set up blackout curtains that would mask any light and sound from escaping the room so that they wouldn't be interrupted. Even if the girl set off a flashbang, something she didn't have, there wouldn't be so much as a single peep outside the room.

    As much as Selene didn't like the idea of threatening the girl for information, much less what she might have to do if she wasn't willing to talk, Selene simply couldn't let her get away with what she had been doing. She would start by threatening to turn her over to the PRT if she didn't talk, and hope that would be all she would have to do. When she was done, she could always turn the girl over to the PRT anyway.

    Even though this girl knew who she was outside of costume, Selene wasn't going to kill her to keep that a secret. Even though she could reveal civilian identities to the PRT— and likely would, given how she clearly didn't follow the unwritten rules when she decided to trail her father— it wasn't a secret she would kill to keep.

    As for her own violation of the unwritten rules, any pretense of the unwritten rules was already gone when this girl decided to trail her father.

    When the last of the curtains was in place, Selene quickly collected a few things from around the room before withdrawing a bucket of ice water from her Sylladex and tossing it on the girl from a distance.

    The girl let out a yelp of surprise as she sputtered awake, quickly sitting up as she looked at the ceiling, clearly looking for where the water had come from.

    Selene flicked the light switch on, and the girl let out a hiss in surprise as she covered her eyes, then very quickly uncovered them and looked right at Selene, pulling back.

    "What are you doing in my bedroom?" She quickly hissed, and Selene held up the mask and costume she had removed from the girl's dresser.

    "I'd offer you your mask and costume for this, but you're not exactly a follower of the unwritten rules, are you?"

    "You don't get to accuse someone of breaking the unwritten rules by breaking them yourself first." The girl snapped back, as she looked around, Selene telling her she was trying to figure out how alone they were. Something the Curtains would at least partly block her from doing.

    "Says the girl who spent all day yesterday following me and my father, while I was out of costume."

    Selene projected a hologram showing the video recording, showing the girl following them around. She noted how surprised the girl was to see that, then at how afraid she looked.

    "Now, at the very least that is stalking, and given I plan to join the wards, I am sure I could get this to a government official. Stalking a ward out of costume even. But I do at least intend to follow the unwritten rules. You clearly unmasked me and are targeting my family, so not only quid pro quo, but you better tell me why you did it. If I don't like the answer, I will drag you to the PRT and tell them you're a thinker that has been stalking me and my dad. Oh, and that you helped steal my gear from the PRT HQ, I think they love that little titbit as well."

    Selene watched as the girl swallowed in pure fear at that before she asked carefully. "If you do like my answer?"

    "I'm not heartless, if you have a good reason, I won't do that. But it had better be a damn good one. You targeted my family, you will pay for that in one way or another, how harsh it will be depends on you."

    "Any chance I could get you to drop that cloak of yours before we talk?" The girl asked.

    "PRT it is then." Selene noted with a distant tone as she started to move for the girl to grab her.

    "No, no, no. I talk. Quid pro quo is fine right?" The blonde frantically assured her as she backed up on the still very wet and cold bed trying to put some distance between them despite the fact she was half slipping around in ice water.

    Selene stopped and indicated for her to continue.

    "My name is Lisa Wilbourn."

    Selene noted that was half a lie; it wasn't the only name she was known by, but it was what she went by now, she decided to let that sit.

    "In costume in case you didn't already know, I am Tattletale of the Undersiders."

    Selene nodded at that, noting that she finally had a name for the 'unknown cape gang'.

    *Power Buy Attempt 3.2.20 Skills (Star Trek TNG) (400) + 100 Lock in Tax. Bought, Banked 0 points.*

    As Selene had hoped, this knowledge base was Star Trek technology. Only, the vastness of the perk was far beyond anything she could have hoped for. She was hoping for just enough to let her finally understand the plans behind an FTL drive, so she could make a Shockpoint drive from Dead Space. With a little luck, she'd also be able to make a proper replicator to accelerate her R&D cycle.

    She could do both tasks trivially now. The knowledge from this mixed with her Dead Space perks and filled in the missing gaps the vast majority of the technology from both series.

    What was even better for her was what she got from this perk alone. Knowledge of Weapons, Medicine, Robotics, Physics, Physical Sciences and Engineering, giving her everything she could have hoped for and more. A while back she had told her father that the only thing she couldn't build in the Enterprise was the Warp Drive.

    She could now see how to build one completely, and any ship from that series once she had access to the proper alloys. There were even things she hadn't even vaguely foreseen that would come from this. Among the things she hadn't considered was the fact this included a complete medical database in her head of 24th century medicine. All the tools they used, which she could now make and hand out to the Guild once the threat of the Simurgh and any remaining hostile precogs were dealt with, were easily within her grasp.

    Even dealing with Ziz just became easier, because this included every weapon the United Federation Planets had access to from phasers to Quantum torpedoes. Even a Tricobalt device, not much larger than a Photon torpedo, yet able to crack small moons into dust was available, already fully designed and tested.

    It was an almost perfect Endbringer killing device, one that was massively smaller than a city and that she could use on the Simurgh, who was located far enough away from Earth to make use of such a weapon safe to attempt without accidentally blowing up the earth too feasible. Even ignoring the various long range sensors she could now construct which made the technology she had from Dead Space look primitive, it was everything Selene could have hoped for, and more.

    Lisa continued explaining her actions.

    "I didn't look into you by choice at all. I am being forced to do it. I was recruited against my will at gunpoint by my boss. It was either work for him or he put a bullet in my head. He has way more power than I could hope to escape, and so in order to keep living I had to do these things under his orders. Does that make you happy?"

    Selene made no external indication of what she felt about that, thanks to Blank allowing her to hide her reaction, but seeing the girl was telling the truth, knowing that she was forced into this at gunpoint, changed things a little.

    Lisa clearly wasn't entirely innocent; Selene could tell that much without her powers. With the information her powers provided taken into consideration, it was quite clear that Lisa was trying to pull at her heartstring by wording the situation in such a way as to have the most impact on her, to try and make herself look completely good while escaping responsibility for her actions.

    From what Selene could tell, she didn't agree with everything her boss made her do, but she didn't disagree with everything either. It was a deception by her, one that had been calculated to have the most impact on Selene, to want to help her the most. Implying that she would have been a good girl was it not for her evil boss making her do all of those crimes, and that all she needed was a hero to save her and all would be right with the world was an impressive heartthrob. What a load of bullshit.

    But that didn't change the fact that Lisa wasn't lying about her being forced by her boss to work for him at the threat of death.

    Selene found it hard to guess where the dividing line was, but the fact that the girl was trapped and would be killed if she tried to leave and was true.

    Although she was willing to protect her family with lethal force if needed, she didn't feel such drastic measures were necessary. Lisa didn't appear to have fully crossed the line into truly intolerable territory, and was at least partially forced into unwilling courses of action through threats of lethal force. While that didn't excuse the situation, it did make things more complicated to handle.

    Selene pondered what to do about this situation.

    Deciding to play a bit dumb to see what Lisa would say, Selene decided to expand on her question, trying to figure out more of the real story behind the girl.

    "Why not go to the PRT?"

    "You're asking me that? You already know that he was able to take your tinker tech from them? I would be dead within hours if I did that. He keeps a tight enough leash on me that he could kill me before I made it anywhere safe."

    Selene found that even more unsettling, given that Lisa had no doubt it was completely true. This only confirmed that she needed to talk to Armsmaster about those moles later and that that PRT couldn't be trusted. Even if Lisa wasn't entirely innocent, she didn't want a girl who reluctantly committed crimes at gunpoint killed over it. Selene wasn't about to let her escape her crimes either, but unless Lisa had done something she didn't know about, it wasn't anything worth of killing her over just yet.

    *Power Buy Attempt 1.1.5 Regeneration I (100). Bought, Banked 0 points.*

    Selene noted that she gained a perk that let her regenerate from anything that didn't outright kill her. Beheading would still kill her just as easily as before, but so long as the upper part of her chest and her head survived, she would regenerate from anything eventually from this, with higher levels of the perk increasing the speed of recovery.

    She locked in the next level for only two charges. Regeneration was one of those powers she would rather never need, but have anyway. It wasn't like she needed any more abilities in the near future. There was so much she could get out of Star Trek technology that her plans until this weekend were already locked in. Building a replicator, which she already had the computer control systems for, would allow her to program in designs and create anything she knew how to make quickly. No need to go through her endless upgrade cycles. It would be more than worth the time investment.

    "And if you did have an option to escape, what would you do then?"

    "That depends entirely on what the person who saved me wants me to do." Lisa answered honestly. "I know you Taylor. Before you fixed your cloak to give me much more reasonable answers, seriously, I don't know who you were going to fool when readings of your gear said that not even the Simurgh could destroy it, that it would take hits from Behemoth, and that the physical objects were literal new rules of reality, but your thinker protection is quite impressive now. If I didn't already know you were Selene, I would have thought you were just a normal school girl, even watching you and your father that was all I got from you two. Nothing special here, just a normal father and his daughter out shopping for their weekly food. And I know you enough well to know that you are not going to do anything remotely close to what my boss does to me."

    Selene found it hard to work though all of that, since there was a mix of desperation, and truth behind Lisa's words.

    Lisa honestly believed that her life under Selene would be a lot better, even if it wasn't ideal or what she really wanted. It was her only option to escape her boss right now, and in light of the fact she had been caught, she was going to take it since she had no other options. This was literally her last ditch desperate attempt to remain alive.

    She believed completely right now that she wasn't going to live to see tomorrow if she didn't talk Selene into helping her or pissed off Selene enough to not turn her over to the PRT.

    But Selene could also see that Lisa would flip sides as soon as a better offer came up as well, because she didn't really want to join Selene. She wasn't interested in being a hero. Her only goal here was to escape the boss that was literally torturing her to keep her in line, given how much Selene could read from the words left unsaid. Well, she would just have to make sure to not let such an offer ever come up. In the worst case scenario, she could simply raze her current infrastructure and start again from scratch a safe distance from the solar system.

    Anything that wasn't worse than continuing that outright torture was acceptable to her. Selene wasn't her long term prospects, Selene was her escape from literal torture to keep her in line.

    "You believe that I can hide you."

    "Now that you fixed your gear to give more reasonable answers. Yes."

    "What about your team?"

    "The boss doesn't throw away useful people. He won't take it out on them because I've run away. He would just find someone else to take over."

    Since the girl believed that completely, Selene put the rest of the Undersiders out of mind for now.

    "Who is your boss anyway?"

    "I won't tell you until you help me. If you pass me to the PRT there is a chance he won't just have me killed if I keep my mouth shut. I am willing to take a gamble on you, but only after it is clear you are going to protect me. Not before."

    Selene found herself very much torn now, Lisa wasn't lying about what happened to her, believed that Selene could help her, but was only going to stick around as long as she had to.

    "You're going to tell him that I talked to you?"

    "He has ways of extracting information from me, if I don't, not only will he learn anyway, but he also well…"

    Selene didn't press when she trailed off. Lisa clearly didn't mind sharing what it was but had left it vague to make sure it was worse in Selene's mind than it really was.

    That didn't change things for Selene, reality was already bad enough given that Lisa had admitted she was recruited at gunpoint and didn't want to work for her boss, but leaving meant dying. That had already been sufficient reason for her to act.

    "Right, I will help you, but there are conditions for my help."

    "I don't care what they are. It can't be worse than the situation I am already in." Lisa informed her, and Selene could tell she was gambling so aggressively because she was so certain she knew Taylor that she didn't think the conditions were enough to worry about.

    That, and she really wanted to be out from under her boss that much that anything slightly better than what he did to her was acceptable. She wasn't holding out for perfect, just better. Anything to get out from under his thumb, no matter what she had to give up that wasn't her life itself. After she was free she looked for her long term commitment, but she didn't want it to be under her.

    "You had better understand them first and start by answering this. It is not about your boss but me... Do you know where I will put you to keep you safe?"

    Selene had no intention of putting Lisa in her warehouse if the girl didn't know about it. Where she could put her other than her house which was shielded by blank was a big question, but Selene mused that she could go convert a ship in the Graveyard quickly and stick her there temporarily, then bring her to the Moon and hide her in the base there.

    * 1/2 charges *

    It would have to be something that would keep her safe and imprisoned. Selene knew that Lisa would run as soon as her boss was dealt with, and depending on how much the girl was a willing participant in her crimes, she would either turn her over to the PRT then, or let her go. But she needed to figure out her details first.

    "In the pocket dimension that you disappear into?"

    That was the last thing Selene wanted to hear from her, and so demanded.

    "How exactly do you know about it?"

    "You didn't always catch the cameras that were watching you, and you showed up in a few of them a few weeks before you first showed up. My boss knows about it already… but you're planning to stick me in there to keep me safe?"

    Selene could tell that Lisa thought she was going to do that. But despite her unexpected knowledge, Selene had no intention of following along with her expectations, or rather she hadn't until another thought hit her.

    With Lisa in there, she would have access to a parahuman to study and maybe start to puzzle out the nature of powers. Lisa would need to be cooperative in said tests, but this also brought up other thoughts in her mind as well. Was being a villain a mental disorder that her therapist could fix? Could she change this villain into a hero?

    And who better to try that on than a minor criminal that was forced into worse crimes by threats of death?

    It would be something Lisa would have to be willing to do however. If she didn't agree, Selene would offer her protection locked up in a random ship somewhere to keep her safe. She wouldn't even bring her to the moon base.

    "That depends." Selene decided to leave this as an offer for her.

    "Depends on what? That's the only place I know of that he can't reach. There isn't a place on Earth that he can't reach."

    Selene's thoughts went to her moon base again and smiled slightly, hidden by her helmet, before she continued.

    "On what you agree to. That is my personal lab, not an inn. If I put you in there, rather than some random shipwreck shielded by my tinker tech, where I can assure you he would never find you, you will need to pay."

    "Pay?" Lisa asked, not bothering to hide her complete surprise at that, and Selene noted that the girl suddenly got extremely uncomfortable as she suddenly realized that perhaps she wasn't being rescued as much as she thought. She clearly had expected that Selene would have just offered to hide her and that was it.

    Seeing where Lisa's thoughts were starting to head, and the implications of how she would pay to escape and in which ways, Selene quickly cut them off by explaining before the girl could voice offers to pay that she rather not hear.

    "I need a parahuman to help better refine my gear against. You're a thinker. We are talking about an examination of you to study your powers and making you use them on things to test it. Nothing that requires you to get undressed. Well, unless it is to replace your clothes because they can't go in the scanner, but I will give you a gown for that. So nothing that requires you to be undressed itself."

    Selene watched as Lisa processed that, the fear of what she had been expecting disappearing completely as she realized what her price was going to be. Not as acceptable to her, but still far better then what she was currently under. There was something a bit uncomfortable to Selene when she realized that Lisa had been expecting something very different from her and what that might have said about her prior to getting Blank.

    "Right you're a tinker." Lisa noted as she relaxed. "So long as I can say no if you push too far, I can live with that."

    Selene noted that she would have been willing to live with far worse, far worse in ways she didn't even want to consider, if it meant escape.

    "I will allow you to refuse if I push too far, but at the same time I am also not going to let you veto everything, more so for the first two days. You try and do that, I drop you at the PRT and tell them what you did and everything about your boss. Who is your boss anyway?"

    "Not yet." Lisa shook her head no. "Not until I am in your safehouse and ensure it is safe myself. Consider that info my side of the bargain. I submit myself to your tests, so long as they are ethical, until he is done with, but then you gotta let me go, and not delay dealing with him to keep me longer. Deal?"

    "No, I will keep you as long as it takes to deal with your boss and make sure you can't harm my family after I let you go. And you will have to submit a full list of your crimes under a truth detector, if it's minor I will let you go after I make sure you can't harm my family, if it's major I will hand you off to the authorities after the corruption is dealt with." Selene countered.

    "Sure, I can deal with that"

    "There is more-"

    "More than that?" Lisa interrupted, clearly not happy about it, but at the same time knew what her situation was quite well. The fear of how much worse it could get started to come back, but Selene cut that off.

    "You will be examined by my medical doctor and attend sessions with a therapist while you are with me, both are non negotiable."

    "Examined, but not forced into treatment right?"

    "Right, you can't refuse to be checked over, and you have to talk to the therapist, not just sit there. Refuse to do either, or refuse to take part in my tests and I consider your agreement void and I turn you over to the PRT. You do both check ups daily."

    Selene could see that Lisa wondered who that would be, but didn't dare ask as she said.

    "If that's all you wanted to add in, I can agree to it, that was everything right?"

    "There is one last thing, if you can't convince me that you won't damage my family and interests after I let you go, you will have to undergo a process to remove all your memories of my civilian identity." Selene said.

    Lisa looked a little panicked but thought about it for a few seconds considering the downsides and upsides and said. "Deal. You want to open up your little lab now? You can use the closest door."

    "Not yet."

    "What do you mean 'Not yet?' I am not going to tell you until I am fully safe."

    "My house has the same protections. I will bring you there and then you tell me about your boss. If you don't fill me in on enough then I set up an area in a ship in the boat graveyard or something. I am not showing you anything inside my lab until I get concrete information from you I can trust. If you don't want to do that, I can just take you to the PRT anyway."

    Selene waited as Lisa turned that over, before deciding that she didn't have a good reason to refuse completely, and decided it was better than adding another condition on her side.

    "Let me grab my bag and we can do that." Lisa asked.

    With a nod from Selene, Lisa moved to grab her bag as she continued to explain.

    "I have a bugout bag under my bed for just this sort of thing." Lisa paused, clearly trying to draw on her power to see if she needed to say more.

    Selene knew that failed, but she assumed that Lisa decided to expand on it anyway as she continued.

    "My boss already made it clear that once I stop being useful outside of his base, he will lock me in a cell and drug me for my powers. They are a lot less effective in a cell, but in his mind it's still worth the effort."

    Selene could tell it was a reminder of how bad things were for her. Lisa was really pulling out all the stops to sell how bad her boss was, while hiding how she didn't disagree with everything she did under him.

    Selene glanced at the bag Lisa had grabbed, seeing it had nothing but cash and clothes plus a knife as the only weapon. There was not even a gun. The girl did have a gun by her bed, but Selene had removed it when she arrived.

    "Right, let's go."

    As they departed, Selene felt her power expand.

    *Power Buy Attempt 1.1.5 Regeneration II (+100) +100 Lockin Tax. Bought, Banked 0 points.*

    It was a clear improvement, but it was also the last level of the perk she could get now. It still didn't protect her from beheading and only sped up her regeneration time so that she could fully heal within hours instead of days now.

    0o0

    Selene took Lisa straight to her house, directing the girl down into the basement once inside.

    Lisa looked around nervously when she saw how empty it was.

    "Now, where you end up staying depends entirely on how truthful and how complete your answers are. I don't mind locking you down here to keep you secret."

    "This will be the first place my boss will look for me." Lisa objected.

    "Then you had better sound truthful. If I doubt you, your options are going to be down here, on a chain to make sure you don't run away, or in some sort of ship in the Graveyard in a cell I'll throw together. I'm willing to let you wander with some freedom inside my lab if I can trust you, but…"

    Selene watched as Lisa tried hard to read her, failed, swallowed, and started clearly deeply unsettled by this.

    "My boss's name is Coil. Have you heard of him?"

    "He is a small-time criminal, and it is not known if he has powers."

    "He is not even remotely small-time. He has almost as many capes working for him as Empire 88, more if he calls on the contracts he has open with mercenaries like Faultline's group. The Undersides are just one of several groups in his employ. All his groups are operating supposedly independently in the city. He does have a power himself, and it's the reason why I hadn't been able to escape before you came along with your anti-thinker tech. As Coil will say it, his power lets him control fate, though it actually allows him to choose two actions at once before picking the one that has the outcome he likes better. At least, that's how it was before your little gear got involved."

    "Oh?" Selene asked.

    "I talked to him about you, extensively these past few weeks. Besides telling him about your little warehouse, I also told him what my power was claiming about your gear. Coil didn't tell me details of what he figured out in his other timelines, what he did tell me was that he never managed to capture you for interrogation. That's how he normally works. He kidnaps someone, tortures them for a few hours for all their secrets and then drops that timeline."

    Lisa grimaced at the memories that brought up.

    "That's what he does to me regularly to make sure I am still loyal. It also means he learns about anything you do in his 'unsafe' timelines before it would impact him directly. He is also a deputy director in the local PRT, by the name of Thomas Calvert."

    Selene tilted her head at that. Lisa was telling what she believed to be the truth, but she decided to imply that she didn't quite believe her.

    "He spent years infiltrating the organization. I don't know how he was able to pass the tests for parahumans, but he managed somehow."

    Selene recalled how she herself didn't show up as a parahuman. She had considered releasing her technology publicly as something she designed, after all she wasn't a parahuman according to those tests. Unfortunately that wouldn't stop the economic damage and job losses or the corporations coming for her head.

    "What are his long term goals exactly?"

    "He wants to rule over this city, and you should be careful, because he is quite spiteful. I don't know everything he has planned, but I know he has many safeguards in place to cause chaos if he is removed, such as releasing the identities of all Empire 88 members to the public. He does that one under my name if he dies as one of his safeguards that ensures I will remain loyal. He lets me know about that one so I know they are real, but he has others I haven't been able to find yet. Once he knows I've run away he is going to trigger that against me and let Empire 88 hunt me down to kill me."

    *Power Buy Attempt 1.3.3 Charismatic II (100) Bought, Banked 0 points.*

    Selene focused a second thought process on the perk she just picked up, which was extremely useful. Besides making her more charming and making it so she understood how to get people to do what she wanted, it also made it impossible for her to be misunderstood, and when someone took a negative view on what she said it would have half the impact, while anything positive would have twice the impact.

    The last bit felt like a master power to her, so that part of it she was going to be kept off unless she had to ensure she got the outcome she needed. Selene's thoughts immediately went to convincing Amy that she was being brainwashed and needed to have it fixed. From there, she considered Armsmaster and Dragon. She could tell them about Amy's situation and have them arrange to help her.

    Taylor kept that part of her power on for her talks with Lisa, though. She was a villain, and the situation called for it.

    Selene could see that Lisa was extremely uncomfortable as she looked around the bare basement, clearly afraid that she was going to end up tied in there alone. She was afraid of being alone.

    Deciding to take some pity on her, Selene spoke up.

    "Hold it there, that's good enough that I am willing to let you stay in my lab. We can continue talking once you are settled; come on upstairs."

    Lisa was a lot more eager as she followed Selene up the stairs and into the kitchen as Selene turned around to open up the warehouse, then directed Lisa to go in first.

    0o0

    Since Selene had prepared for anything, her golems were waiting in the entrance hallway in case she had to deploy them for a fight.

    She directed Lisa over to a door as she spoke at the girl.

    "These are my security golems, you are with me so they will let you pass, but I will program them to restrain you if you try and leave the housing complex, if you manage to escape from them they will hunt you down and drag you back, if they can't do that they will kill you. The Housing complex doesn't have direct access to any of my workshops or labs. You have to pass through here. Should you try and do that, they will restrain you. If I find you restrained by them, you better have a damn good reason or you are going straight to the PRT. And I won't be pushing them to be lenient."

    Selene had no idea what a good enough reason would be, but she wanted to make it clear to Lisa that breaking the rules would see her potentially kicked into the worst jail in the world.

    "So, stay inside my room. Got it." Lisa noted, and Selene could feel an undercurrent of fear that wasn't related to the golems. Focusing on it, she realized that the girl was afraid of being alone.

    It wasn't something that had come up, as her desire to escape before was more urgent, but it was now becoming a lot more real in her mind that escape meant being isolated and alone.

    "Housing complex, not your room. You're not allowed in my or my father's rooms. I am not locking you in your bedroom. Not counting the bathrooms, there are 2 other rooms and a kitchen and a dining room as well. You are free to wander, use the computers to watch stuff, and so on. No internet access however."

    "Can I get that later?" Lisa asked.

    "We will see, if you behave. Even then it will be read-only access."

    "Right." Lisa allowed with a sigh. "I will just have to manage."

    Selene directed Lisa into the complex. Everything except the bedroom that she had been given had already been upgraded. It had only taken her minutes to do that with the Alchemiter, preparing the place in case she and her dad had to abandon her house for some reason.

    Since Lisa's bedroom had appeared out of nothing when Selene decided she should have a room there, it wasn't upgraded yet, but the base form it came in was serviceable.

    Selene indicated the various rooms as they went in, finally stopping by the door to Lisa's room and explaining.

    "I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with this room just yet, so it's rather bare. If you behave, I will see about upgrading it later."

    Selene watched as Lisa looked around the extremely bare room that only had a bed and simple furniture.

    "I'm rather surprised with how much effort you put into the other rooms that you left this one this bad." Lisa noted.

    "It was easier to not have to rip it all out if I changed my mind. Now, before we begin, I want to ask you something. I don't want Coil to know you ran away, and no, I am not going to let you leave to cover that. Rather I am going to make a fake body and have you die in some sort of unexpected attack.

    "Coil's not going to just believe I died to something minor, not with my power." Lisa warned Selene.

    "Are you telling me that he believes you can't piss off the wrong person who then kills you?"

    "He knows I am not that stupid." Lisa more snapped back at what she saw as an insult to her intelligence.

    "You mean you could survive if, oh I don't know, the Slaughterhouse 9 shows up and kills you?"

    "That… okay, I suppose there are some capes if you frame them that could kill me and I couldn't stop it." Lisa hestently allowed. "But are you sure you can fake that?"

    "Lisa, with what I have access to, I could make it look like Alexandria decided to kill you herself. Before we talk about your history in detail, we need to work out how to best fake your death. Lets work that out first, then continue where we left off around Coil."

    0o0

    Lisa kept answering Selene's questions until Selene noticed her father entering her warehouse, at which point she stopped the girl from answering.

    "Hold it. Let's have a break for breakfast."

    Lisa nodded, as she indicated "Of course."

    "But before we do that, I need to give my father the heads up about you. You can go take a shower to get clean while I do that. Come back here after you are done. I will come and get you."

    Selene directed Lisa to the bathroom she could use before heading off to go talk to her dad.

    0o0

    "Any reason you're in your armor Ty- Selene?" Danny directed his confusion to his daughter, pausing before he called her by her name to switch it to her cape name.

    "We are not alone here anymore. Remember how I said I was going to look into those that stole my gear last night?"

    At her father's nod, Selene continued.

    "Well, it turns out one of them was conscripted at gunpoint. I wasn't willing to leave her behind... and I suppose I don't really need to stay in my armor any more."

    Taylor put her armor away while her dad spoke up.

    "What do you mean? Should that mean I should put a mask on?"

    "The girl already knows who we are. She was assigned to follow me outside of my costume whenever I, or you for that matter, left the house. She has been doing that the last few days, following you when you left for work. When I discovered this I was going to bring her to the PRT for stalking, but well..."

    "Having been recruited at gunpoint is pitiable, but that doesn't excuse what she did. Shouldn't the PRT handle her?"

    "That was what I was going to do, but the same agents that stole my gear right out of the PRT hands have orders to kill her if she tells them anything, and some of them might even kill her if she is arrested anyway. It was too much of a risk, and her powers let her collect information, so she can be absolutely certain. Her boss will have her killed, and I am not about ready to just hand her over to die. The PRT is even more corrupt than we thought; it has too many moles, and even her boss seems to work in a high position in the PRT while somehow hiding that he is a parahuman. I can't trust the PRT to handle this."

    "You are going to do something about that, right?" Danny asked.

    "I will, just not as soon as I first planned. I need to get a complete list of moles and prepare counter measures to what her boss has already put in place to turn on us should he be captured. Unless you want to live here and abandon our house, it is not exactly safe. He set it up so that all the Civilian IDs of the Empire 88 will be leaked if he is captured and the girl will be blamed for it. He also has countless other deadman switches like this, so I don't doubt that he would out us if he is captured or killed. I can stop them, but I need a few weeks to get everything in place first. In the meantime I am going to fake Lisa's death so Coil doesn't know she abandoned him."

    Taylor glanced at Lisa in her mind with her recent power. The girl was not only in the bath, but the upgrades to the house meant even shouting wouldn't be audible to her.

    "She has no intention of being a hero, and not all of her crimes were forced by her boss. I will keep her prisoner until her boss is dealt with and we can be sure she won't out us or harm our interests. If she doesn't cooperate, I will just turn her over to the PRT branch in another city, but there are things I need to test with a parahuman that she would be a good test subject for, and if she cooperates, does not intend to harm us, and has not committed any major crimes I will just let her go afterwards as payment. I certainly will turn her over to the PRT if she refuses to be tested."

    "Testing?" Danny asked, and Taylor could tell he had some real concerns over what she wanted to do that she couldn't ask to test with her hero friends.

    It wasn't a concern that Taylor found entirely unjustified, so she explained.

    "There are a few things I learned the last few days I haven't had the chance to share with you just yet. One thing I discovered is that tinker tech created by others only works on Earth. It stops working when I bring it to my moonbase. In that same token, the protection that my blank grants us? It doesn't need to do anything on my moon base either. I think that may just be because precogs, remote viewing, and such abilities are not targeting it yet, but it is something I need to study. It is part of what I am going to use her to test. If bringing her to my Moon base changes that, then I know I can't ever let a Parahuman set foot on the Mars base. Blank is good, but it's better to have no one looking in the first place than to block observation attempts."

    "So long as everything is ethical." Danny allowed. "I take it you want me to stay away from her?"

    "I'm not going to tell you what to do, and given I am not going to allow her to leave, she likely will want someone more than just AIs and I to talk to. Plus, if I push too much, you might want to tell me and pull me back. Your choice."

    "I will talk to her." Danny decided.

    "Good, lets get breakfast started. She is in the shower right now, and I will fetch her after we are done."

    *Power Buy Attempt 3.4.1 Don't Need A Team (Ace Combat) (100) Bought. Banked 0 points.*

    Taylor studied the perk she just secured, and was rather surprised by what it did. Before it mixed in with her other powers it would have let her service an entire airplane by herself, doing the work of about a dozen people in a fraction of a time they would take.

    Again, that was before it mixed in with her other powers. With them, it allowed her to do the same for anything she knew how to build, even programming. So long as she just had to move the next part into place or write the next line out, she could move at speeds far beyond her normal limits, allowing her to do the work of a dozen people over the course of a week in just a few hours even before her other speed perks were factored in.

    With them, she could easily do as much in an hour as a dozen people could do together in several months, which was insane.

    Taylor smiled; perhaps being short on time wouldn't be such a problem after all.

    It was also perfect timing for Taylor as she had so much Star Trek technology to build out: a replicator, sensors, weapons, and more. She knew how to make everything, needing only to make the parts, write the code, duplicate them, and then finally construct the assemblies. What would have been months of work before would be done in an afternoon.

    As much as Taylor wanted to run off and use this new perk to get started, she wanted to get Lisa into therapy as a test of how good her therapist was. She had no idea if villainous tendencies would count as a mental defect or not, but even if they didn't, Lisa's experiences under Coil had changed her for the worse. So long as Lisa was serious about allowing the therapist to fix what was wrong with her, Taylor wouldn't turn her over to the PRT after this was over. At worst she would just put Lisa under 24/7 surveillance to make sure she never leaked anything and let her go. Taylors new sensors would be more than overkill for that application.

    0o0

    After they finished preparing breakfast, Taylor collected Lisa, and brought her to meet her father, making sure the girl knew ahead of time that it was okay that she met him.

    "Hello Mr. Hebert. I am grateful to you and your daughter for saving me from Coil."

    Taylor threw Lisa a look at how she greeted her father. It was quite clear she wanted to butter him up as another form of leverage over her.

    "From what Taylor was telling me, it sounds like you should be going straight to the PRT anyway."

    "She didn't tell you that I would be killed if I did that?"

    "She did, but she also mentioned that was only if you talked, and that your boss would get you out anyway. I don't fully agree with her on how she handled you, but I won't tell her to take you there. Rather, I'll hope she honors your agreement with her, so long as you do the same. Step out of line and I will make sure she turns you over."

    "Anyway, let's eat. Lisa here has a busy day ahead of her." Taylor added.

    "On that note, would you mind telling me exactly what you are going to do to me?" Lisa brought up, making it quite clear why she chose that moment, given what Danny had just told her.

    "First, I will have the Doctor take a look at you to make sure of your health, then I will leave you with a therapist while I get things ready for your next examinations. That will take me until after lunch. Then, we switch to proper testing."

    "You have a medical doctor and therapist already?" Lisa asked, not trying to hide her surprise there. It was something Taylor knew she had wondered about, but hadn't questioned before.

    "What did you think I was talking about when I said you would have to see them while you were here?"

    "I thought you would have had to recruit someone. I have been watching the two of you a lot, and you haven't done that yet."

    "Oh, I built them." Taylor half lied to Lisa. She was going to have to explain the specifics when she brought Amy in for treatment after all.

    "You... built them." Lisa repeated, the disbelief quite clear.

    "Yep. Don't worry. They are very good at what they do." Taylor confirmed.

    For the rest of the breakfast period, Taylor turned her thoughts to the weapons of mass destruction she could now build. She needed good sensor scans first to make sure she used the right ones the first time.

    The Simurgh's days were numbered. Taylor knew she had weapons that could kill the winged bitch and she would ensure she had enough overkill to handle not just her, but the other Endbringers too if they decided to show up while Taylor was killing her.

    0o0

    After breakfast was over, Taylor took Lisa to the medical bay, which was connected to the house directly, and didn't require passing though the entrance hallway to access.

    "Hello, welcome to the medbay." The Doctor greeted them when they entered, moving over to start scanning Lisa as he did such.

    "You designed your doctor based on the one from Voyager?"

    "He is a lot more polite than the one from the show." Taylor agreed, having found what series he was from after only a little searching on her end. The similarity worked out nicely for her since this did look like from Star Trek, and now with her Star Trek skills, she could see quite a few things she could build for the Medbay, or even use herself now. "Much like the fictional doctor, he is able to cure anything physically wrong with you, provided you want it cured anyway. I won't require you to agree to any treatment, but you must consent to allowing a scan and complete medical history as well."

    Taylor watched as Lisa studied her, feeling as the girl tried to draw on her power hard, but everything in here was protected by Blank so nothing came up.

    "Well, it's just an illusion of privacy anyway, if I don't have to consent to treatment that is fine."

    "Anything of major concern?" Taylor asked the Doctor.

    *Power Buy Attempt 2.1.30 VOWP Cellular Service (200) Not Bought, Requires 2.1.31 Extranet (200). Not Bought. Banked 100 points.*

    Taylor briefly focused on what had come up this time, quickly securing it. The perk her power tried for would have given her cellphones that would connect to her warehouse, and the perk it required connected her warehouse to the internet over a dedicated secured line that couldn't be traced.

    Both were things she needed, and both of them together would ensure that she could give her father a phone that allowed him to open up any door she had used her key on himself. They would no longer have to guess ahead of time where he would be so that the central control could open it.

    With everything she could now make from Star Trek technology, Taylor saw no reason not to lock this in, as this was a perk that could only be useful in the long run.

    "Several. Ignoring the whole mess of minor issues that as a collective whole really should be treated, the biggest concern would be the symbiote she is connected to."

    "What symbiote?" Lisa asked, surprised.

    "The source of her powers, I assume?" Taylor asked him.

    "Yes, you could say that, given the rather crude interface between their minds. There are clear problems with it, as even minor use would cause brain damage that is hard to repair, which likely appears as headaches from your perspective. I can't fix the interface, not with the tools I have here, nor can I remove it without the Symbiote also being removed. I could break the connection easily enough and repair the damage, but in doing so she would lose what she gains from it."

    "My own doesn't cause damage." Taylor lied, and the Doctor smoothly kept up the misdirection, his own lies being covered by blank because he counted as something she owned as he was a part of the warehouse.

    "Correct, yours is a much more elegant design that supplements your mind perfectly. Hers is a rather crude construction that a child could likely improve on. It doesn't even try to avoid causing brain damage in minor cases. It just repairs it afterwards while modifying her mind to incentivise conflict."

    Taylor watched as Lisa looked at the doctor in shock, and could see the girl was clearly thinking about the implication of her newest revelation. She decided to cover for her own lack of issues, by suggesting that it was a fault of Lisa's own powers and that not everyone would be the same.

    "I suppose that stronger parahumans likely have better designed powers."

    Lisa took clear offense to that suggestion, but she didn't vocalise her outrage as the Doctor explained.

    "That would be a reasonable inference. Although, I would need to examine more parahumans to be certain."

    "I know. I am working towards that end." Taylor agreed

    "So what does this mean? Do powers come from some creature?" Lisa injected.

    "That's what it looks like to me." Taylor agreed. "Which makes a lot more sense than humans just suddenly figuring out how to throw fireballs in response to extreme stress. I am not sure if we are talking about aliens that arrived on Earth one day or some ancient predecessor race that once lived on Earth, went into some sort of hibernation, and only now woke up. But it is quite clear that something changed. Whatever these symbiotes are, they are drawn to people… while having bad experiences and granting them powers to try and fix their problems—"

    "Which they don't really do a good job of." Lisa noted. "Very few people's powers fix their problems."

    "I know, but this all comes back to why I agreed to help you in the end. It's not like I could ask the PRT to let me run tests on Vista even if she would agree. But we can talk about that more later. Right now, medical treatments."

    "Which I can refuse right?"

    "Physical ones, yes. If you don't want to do that, then we are off to go talk to the therapist in the next room. I want you to spend at least an hour with her, I need that time to get the lab set up for you after all, but stay as long as you like. So long as you're talking with her about something, I won't pull you out. We can delay the other tests tomorrow if you rather talk to her."

    "Right, then I suppose I should go do that." Lisa agreed, and Taylor directed her into the side room, then left the girl to speak with the therapist, keeping one of her threads of consciousness keep track of what was being said with the therapist, while the rest of her mind created the scanners she would need to examine not just Lisa, but the Simurgh as well.

    *2/3 charges*

    0o0

    End of Chapter 07

    0o0

    Perks Earned in Chapter 07

    1.1.4 Environmental Tolerance II (100)
    You are not damaged by hazardous environments, though this does not provide you a method of propulsion.
    ○ I: You no longer need to breathe and do not suffer from temperatures between 200K and 350K (-100F to +150F). You are immune to most radiation (up to about 1,000 mSv - the amount experienced during unshielded exposure to space).
    ○ II: As tier I, plus you do not suffer from temperatures below 400K (+260F) or the effects of pressure lower than 1000 atmospheres (including the effects of vacuum). You are immune to the effects of radiation at all levels.

    2.3.8 Housing Complex (200)
    Having space for all your Companions and Followers can be tricky. Sure, you could pay to have some houses built, but with this option you and each Companion and every child of yours or of a Companion gains their own bedroom. Every three bedrooms gain a full bathroom and your bedroom has a master bath. It's not luxurious by any means, but this house (or houses) have 1 kitchen & dining room, 2 half baths, two general purpose rooms (offices, living rooms, game rooms), a few of small closets, and a pantry for every 6 people. Individual rooms tailor themselves to the general likes of the individual and come with basic but not quality furniture. Companions who decide to share a room can cause their rooms to merge to create a larger room, but each basic room defaults to 4 meters by 5 meters by 3 meters. Non-bedrooms are on the small side but large enough to function. Floors are basic linoleum and walls are basic low grade paint. Appliances and fixtures are pretty bare bones and the walls are little more than plywood and wood frame. The bedrooms don't have closets. Any other Personal Reality Extensions can be made part of the Housing Complex or kept separated. Each house must have a kitchen. That's the rule. No more houses than total number of kitchens. A house may, of course, have more than one kitchen.

    2.6.1 Eye Spy (100)
    Are you a peeping tom? Or are you simply hypervigilant? Well, with this PR Enhancement, you can now view anything happening in your Personal Reality, or anything that's happened in the last day, PR Time. Keyholder Companions can establish blackout zones around themselves, blocking out your ability to view the room they're in or an area 20 meters radius around them. You'll be notified whenever they do so. With Jump Recording below, the one day limit is removed and you can view anything that has ever happened in your Personal Reality.

    3.2.20 Skills (Star Trek TNG) (400)
    Weapons: Knowledge in the operation and repair of personal and mounted weaponry.
    Medicine: Training and knowledge in First aid, diseases, surgery, anatomy, health and nutrition. You're a fully qualified doctor of the 24th century.
    Robotics: A combined study of mechanical engineering, and computer science. You learn how to make a wide array of machines, and you could even figure out Android or Borg technology if you studied it enough.
    Physics: How the universe works. The law of gravity, the conservation of matter & energy, quantum physics, etc. Remember though, there are dozens of creatures in this universe that defy the laws of human physics, so you may want to try and rewrite a few of these books while your here.
    Physical Sciences: Understanding of the natural laws which govern the physical world. Biology, chemistry, geology and ecology. Again, you may want to rewrite a few of these books while you're here.
    Engineering: You've been trained in the maintenance and repair of Starships. Not only do you have a significant amount of mechanical and computer knowledge, but you also know a great deal about physics.

    1.1.5 Regeneration II (200)
    Your body heals quickly. Injuries that do not kill you outright (typically by destroying your brain) can be recovered from with no scarring (unless scarring is desired). This healing is automatic and does not require your conscious activation. Approximate healing times are as follows:
    ○ I: Minor wounds (minutes), Major wounds (hours), Severed limbs (days)
    ○ II: Minor (seconds), Major (minutes), Severed limbs (hours)
    1.3.3 Charismatic II (100)
    You are naturally more charming than most and instinctively know what would get others to do what you want.
    ○ I: You possess a control over your body language and presence that makes it easy for you to get your message across. You are never misunderstood and may conceal your emotions and intent from mundane attempts to discern them.
    ○ II: As tier I, plus you are better at tailoring your message to your audience. When someone would have a positive impression of you from your words and actions, the strength of that positive impression is increased by half. When someone would have a negative impression of you from your words or actions,the strength of that negative impression is reduced by half. Also, you can conceal your intentions and emotions from even supernatural attempts to discern them.

    3.4.1 Don't Need A Team (Ace Combat) (100)
    Fighter planes are pretty complicated machines, and more often than not you need a whole crew to maintain them so that they don't break down in the middle of a fight and doom the pilot. You know your plane well enough to circumvent this issue. You've got just the right idea on what needs tuning up and what needs fixing, along with having the speed to be able to fix a plane up by yourself without the need for a crew in a fraction of the time. Performance issues are a thing of the past for you.
     
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    • Chapter 08: Healing + Interlude 06: Lisa Wilbourn
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    • AN: Betaed by @Trek, @Esprit and @hoth


    0o0

    Chapter 08 : Healing

    0o0

    Friday, February 18th, 2011

    0o0

    Once Lisa was occupied with the therapist, Taylor made her way to get started on the preparations she would need to properly study the girl afterwards, including those needed to fake the girl's death to hide her from Coil.

    The fastest way to get both of these done, ironically enough, was to build a matter replicator. With her new Star Trek technology online, she could just clone Lisa. It couldn't create sapient lifeforms, but a dead copy of Lisa would be viable, and with only a few tweaks, combined with the protection from Blank, no one would ever know it wasn't the real girl.

    There was a lot that went into making a replicator, but she already had most of the systems she needed. The hardest part wasn't the unit itself, but the computer control systems behind it, which she had already been building in her moon base. She would need to program it to handle the replicator, as well as build the device itself.

    Even the comparatively simple construction wasn't an easy task, as it would take a normal person years to build everything by hand, long enough that Taylor knew she couldn't get it done in a timely manner herself without the speed boosting perk Don't Need A Team.

    The perk wholly reimagined her timeline, and combined with the Workaholic and Alchemiter perks to allow her to acquire various rare alloys she needed in any amounts she wanted. She just needed to make a tiny quantity, recycle it if she didn't have the grist needed to duplicate it, then print out copies of the material to exponentially approach her desired quantity .

    Had she not been working on her Dead Space-based computer systems for the last few weeks, Taylor knew she couldn't have done this so quickly even with the Alchemiter to help.

    Drawing fully on her Don't Need a Team perk, Taylor started by creating the various alloys she would need from their base elements, while preparing to rapidly cycle them through the Alchemiter.

    As she did that, she also started building out the parts of the replicator she could already make, taking advantage of preexisting Dead Space alloys to fill in many of the replicator's less exotic functions. Things such as the waveform emitters, the pattern buffers, and the feedstock supply units were possible to approximate to a functional if unsatisfying degree. There were so many things that Taylor wanted to upgrade to the limits of her technological understanding, but held off on due to the time they would take to redo from scratch.

    She needed to get the replicator functional first, since she could just program in all of the upgrades and replicate the final design over the course of a few iterative steps once it worked.

    As she did this, she was also programming in the entire OS system she would need to upgrade her computer to support Star Trek technology fully. Far better than the Dead Space OS, the new system would include a LCARs system for rapid design work, along with the patterns for her improved replicator and the various items she needed as soon as possible, such as medical tools to grow a fake Lisa.

    While impressive even by her standards, this wasn't even the start of what Taylor truly wanted to make, but merely the tools to do so. She wanted sensors that could scan everything she could think of and a full sensor array could handle a radius of 100 light years, which would require a full sized Space Station. Practicality pushed her to start with a more modest setup with a mere 40 light year range that wasn't the size of a small city on its own.

    Even that wouldn't be enough, because she needed to improve her computers further to parse the raw data those sensors provided.

    To add to all of this, Taylor knew she couldnt start with active scanners just yet. The only sensors she would build into her moon base, or any base in Earth's solar system, would be limited to passive operation. Active scans would have to wait until she had a ship with FTL that she could send at least light year away and turn back towards their system. Then Ziz wouldn't be able to do anything about her scans even if she was hiding FTL capabilities.

    As such, plans for shuttlecraft with Warp Drives joined Taylor's programming queue, even as another one of her actions was dedicated to writing up the code for a holodeck and all of its systems.

    A holodeck had far too many uses to not include it early. It would also help reinforce the story she had created for Lisa, namely that she had created the Doctor she had met, since Lisa would expect to see more examples of such technology already in use.

    There were so many things that Taylor wanted to start on. While she did focus on the critical concerns, the perk Don't Need a Team allowed her to work on several less critical ones at the same time.

    An hour passed before Taylor had finished her first generation replicator, including the time she had taken combing through its systems with every scanner and sensor she had, confirming several times over that there wasn't so much as a single mistake to prevent the worrying dangers a malfunctioning replicator posed.

    Then, capturing the code for it, Taylor checked the costs and was glad for her ability to exponentially duplicate objects. She could not possibly afford to make more without abusing the recycling process to create the needed grist out of thin air.

    The four extra copies were turned into grist, before Taylor used the Alchemiter to load the feed stock into the remaining replicator.

    Replicators were not pure energy to matter converters, but rather matter rearrangers, requiring a feedstock to make new items, which marked them as far closer to a transporter in design than she had initially anticipated. That said, the difference was almost a moot point given her overabundance of raw materials and power as needed.

    *Power Buy Attempt 2.1.30 Extranet (200) + 100 Tax. Bought. Banked 0 points.*

    Taylor was quite pleased to note how her warehouse gained full access to Earth's internet networks, at ISP hub grade speeds no less, even as she made sure to keep the next level locked in. She needed that in order to give her father a way to open up doors on the outside without having to compromise her security. Further benefits included easy access for her future creations to her own network without having to set up subspace boosters to allow for long range communications—past 20 light years at her current level of technical expertise.

    Taylor refocused her attention on the replicator as she looked over at the basic interface she had programmed, and ordered her replicator to make a medical tricorder with the press of a button as needed to ensure her clone of Lisa would be perfect when it was done.

    With a whirl, it produced the item in question under the watchful eye of one of Taylor's mental threads, even as she continued to program away at other designs. Even with the best fractal code and compressed code entry methods, it would still take her months of doing nothing but writing programs and databases to transcribe the Star Trek technology database she already had in her head without a neural interface, which she was not ready to install just yet.

    She would have to build out her digitized databases as she went, prioritizing whatever was the most needed at the time or most likely to be needed soon.

    Scanning the tricorder to make sure it was safe with the same care she had given the replicator, Taylor picked it up and smiled before immediately moving to create a second generation of her replicator, implementing every single upgrade she could design without extended experimentation.

    Trying to improve technology this close to the peak technology her current perks were capable of left very little low hanging fruit to work on. Even so, Taylor could quickly implement some improvements to the design, primarily removing limitations on the materials it could use.

    After she finished her second design, Taylor took a moment to confirm that Lisa was still in therapy, which she considered to be a good sign, before she started to replicate all the tools she would bring to the new lab. She would clone Lisa as part of her examinations, but that took systems she hadn't yet had the time to create or install.

    0o0

    After Taylor finished replicating everything she needed to study clone Lisa, she made her way to her Moon base and resumed her renovations there.

    Using holograms and various cloaking devices on the surface to hide her more obvious changes, she constructed a passive sensor array that was explicitly designed to avoid anything resembling active scans. Quickly constructing an entire array, she fully abused her Workaholic perk to the limits of its applicability. First, she used it to make enough copies of the parts required for the Alchemiter in small scale to build a full passive array that was a third of the final size. Then she assembled them and let them grow to their full size when the construct was complete.

    Once the systems for raw data collection were fully installed, Taylor turned her attention to her base's power grid and computer systems. The plasma based systems that Star Trek technology used to transfer the extreme amounts of energy required it worked with would be functional, but Dead Space could make use of normal wires made of special alloys for the same purpose, which was a lot safer and could grow to be much more efficient and damage resistant with further design iteration.

    Drawing heavily on Power Gems to satisfy her systems' growing energy requirements, Taylor started to build out the massive array of computers that would be required to process the veritable tsunami of data coming in from her sensors.

    Passive sensors had a very unusual range limit, given they operated entirely on what hit the emitter, even with the quantum sensors that the array used to clean up the data from distance degradation the major limits still remiend even if they were pushed back a bit. They could not gather data at FTL speeds, but rather were restricted to time delayed information with an almost infinite range. So long as you were willing to accept data that had come from an almost infinite time in the past that grew less reliable the further away you looked, ultimately degrading to white noise.

    The distance between the Earth and the Moon would force a roughly 1.3 second lag time which was acceptable for the targets she wished to observe with her passive sensors.

    One of the first programs that Taylor implemented on her own computers was designed to automatically monitor the Simurgh, relying on the borderline-sapient AI that her LCARS system was developing into as it sought to alert her to any movement that brought the creature closer to the Moon or towards anywhere other than her usual hovering point.

    More advanced monitoring systems, which would require Holograms or neural interfaces to communicate their full analytical nuance, would have to come later.

    With each new computing rack that Taylor brought on line, the processing power of her new network grew, allowing ever more of the data from Earth to be decoded and recorded. Since she could backfill data processing with more processing power whenever she liked, she focused on increasing her systems' storage capacity until she wasn't throwing away any of data that her sensor reported and wasn't likely to for a few more days. Only then did she move on to raw processing. Her end target was automated analysis and storage of everything her sensors were able to detect from earth.

    Taylor estimated that she would have enough processing power to achieve her goal in a few days, though she could do this faster if she already had all the designs programmed in. Her limited rate of data-entry was starting to hold her plans back sooner than she had anticipated.

    0o0

    Only when Taylor finally noticed that Lisa left therapy did she decide to take a break for lunch herself, noticing that it was much later than she expected.

    She arrived to find Lisa in the kitchen looking around to see what the lunch options were.

    "If you don't find something you like, I can always get something else for you." Taylor spoke up, watching as Lisa jumped halfway out of her skin and spun around.

    "When did… right, could you not sneak up on me again please? I'm not used to not having warnings."

    "I'm not really sure I can, since I am not dropping what's blocking your powers from giving you a warning," Taylor reiterated her stance on operational security before continuing, "but I can try to make more noise to alert you when I am nearby. Are you happy with the food options?"

    "Unnerved, since it looks like you copied everything I had in my pantry."

    "Which I did." Taylor confirmed.

    Lisa sighed. "Let me get a quick snack and then we can move on to your tests."

    Taylor could tell Lisa really didn't want to subject herself to ominously vague 'testing,' but pushed the thought away as mostly irrelevant.

    "Of course. The lab is ready for you."

    0o0

    Taylor brought Lisa into her lab and watched as the girl very nervously flicked her eyes between the various devices she could see, clearly trying to use her powers to figure out what would be used on her and what wouldn't; and Taylor could see quite a few things that distressed the girl just from the outer appearance because her power couldn't really see what they did.

    *1/4 charges*

    "As promised, nothing will require you to be undressed or restrained. Just go ahead and sit down on the table here. We are not doing anything that requires you to do or wear anything special today."

    Taylor waited until Lisa sat down, then moved over to the girl with a swab in hand.

    "Open up."

    Lisa did such and Taylor quickly swabbed her mouth, then closed the cover on the swab.

    "Sit there while I get your clone started. Then we can move onto your testing."

    "How long is it going to take to finish anyway?" Lisa asked, remaining sitting as requested.

    "About an hour."

    "An hour?"

    "I want it done and placed to look like an attack by the ABB on you as soon as possible."

    They had talked and ultimately decided to set clone-Lisa up as the target of a random ABB attack. They were known for going after girls that looked like they could be Empire members.

    She looked Empire enough for an ABB gang member who wanted to hit someone on that side. They were going to set up her clone appearing to have been thoroughly abused then brutally murdered as a coverup. All medical evidence would support that.

    Placing the DNA she'd gathered into the cloning machine, Taylor dialed up the body and watched as the vat started to bubble, before making her way over to the station to monitor Lisa's scans.

    Lisa waited a bit, unable to see the screen, then asked. "So, are you going to do something to me before the clone is done?"

    "I am already getting scans of you, just sit there."

    "What? Really?" Lisa asked, surprised.

    "What? I already agreed to not do more invasive tests when I promised nothing that requires you to get undressed. Just sit there and try to stay still."

    "Then… Why did you need me? You said this was something you couldn't get the PRT to agree to do to Vista. I doubt they have issues with you just having her sit on a table…. You are just scanning me right? It is not like you're irradiating me with anything are you?"

    Lisa looked down at herself worried.

    "Nothing of the sort." Taylor half lied. All the sensor energies could count as radiation, but it was all set to harmless levels incapable of damaging biological material. "This is what we agreed to, and irradiating you was not on the list."

    "Could it have been a part of it?" Lisa demanded, the concern in her voice quite clear.

    "If you were a piece of tinkertech and not a person, you would be experiencing a lot more of the tools in this room. Since you're a human, I already know most of what makes you tick." Taylor comforted her, making sure to pull on her perks to make sure the girl understood the difference completely. "Now hush, stay still, and let me finish these scans."

    0o0

    Taylor scanned Lisa for the better part of an hour, adjusting things and reworking various sensors, before Lisa spoke up.

    "I think the clone is done."

    Taylor, who had been hiding her ability to multitask properly by pretending to not already know, looked over at it, and nodded when she saw Lisa pointing it out.

    "Yeah it is. I'll go drop it off and set the scene, but first—"

    Taylor made her way over to a station and picked up a neural monitor.

    "Wear this whenever you are outside of the scanning bed. It will monitor what, exactly, your passenger is doing. Don't take it off."

    Taylor indicated to Lisa's head, and the girl asked.

    "Just like in Star Trek?"

    "Just like in Star Trek." She agreed.

    Taylor waited as Lisa clearly debated whether or not to trust the new device, before pushing her hair back with one hand and tilting her head to give Taylor access.

    Taylor clicked the sensor onto her skin, before glancing at the terminal to confirm that the dataflow was clear and stable.

    "Let's get you back to the housing complex."

    "Are we not going to talk about what you found?"

    "We can, but only after I set up your fake corpse. It'll work better the sooner I plant the evidence. Come on."

    Lisa didn't argue, letting Taylor escort her out of the lab and back to the housing complex.

    0o0

    Clad in a completely different costume then her normal one, just in case someone showed up while she was setting the scene, Taylor made her way out of her workshop into a random alleyway near Lisa's normal walking path that had no cameras near it. Drawing on her senses fully, she made certain no one had passed nearby in the last 12 hours. On verifying that the coast was as clear as possible, she removed the fake corpse modeled after Lisa from her Sylladex, before altering the scene so that it matched the body.

    Looking at the lifeless body when she was done, Taylor could not help but shudder. With her knowledge of 24th century medicine, she knew exactly what this looked like at a glance. It appeared to be a young woman who had been raped, then beaten to death, before she was shot multiple times in the head to make sure there would be no living witness to the crime.

    Taylor made certain that there was enough damage to the skull and brain to prevent anyone from realizing that the brain had never held any thoughts or memories without extreme application of parahuman powers. As powerful as Blank was, it could neither stop someone from analyzing the corpse's physical properties, nor protect against any non-magical destructive examination that was equal or below modern tech.

    Taylor had even taken Lisa's normal purse and personal effects out of her apartment building and put them on the body to make sure there were no signs that anything was amiss. The clone was wearing clothing that Lisa had actually owned and worn. She even made the girl hand her bugout bag back and had already planted it back in Lisa's apartment, while handing her fabricated copies of the bag's contents.

    As far as anyone could tell, Lisa was out late last night and had met an exceptionally nasty end. Taylor had even made sure that there were actual bullets and gunpowder residue where it should be.

    There was nothing more that Taylor could do to fool Coil into thinking the attack was real, at least not in any reasonable timeframe. Her task complete, she turned and left after scanning one last time to ensure that there was nothing of herself left behind for anyone to find.

    0o0

    *2/4 Charges*

    Afterwards, Taylor made her way back to Lisa to continue their aborted discussion.

    "So, it's done?" Lisa asked.

    "Yep, no one is going to know you're alive."

    "Good, so what did you see in my scan results?"

    Taylor nodded and pulled them up on the computer that Lisa had been at.

    "You can access copies of everything I do to you here if you're interested, although I won't give you my own notes or analysis, just the raw data in a human readable format."

    Taylor hit a few keys and shifted the screen to show the current scan data so she could point out various points of interest.

    "This is your brain, and this is your Corona Pollentia. Your brain has been rewired so that all of your thoughts will flow into it, which then directs a cascade of responses back into your mind, inserting the information your power supplies you directly into the various regions of your prosencephalon. As the Doctor indicated, it does so in a crude manner that causes various neural connections to break down or go haywire." Taylor paused to shake her head in disapproval even as she displayed a short infographic depicting how the neurons were harmed.

    "It slowly reverses the damage by directly restoring the nerves that it messed up. This healing process isn't quick, taking a couple minutes that increase as secondary damage complicates repairs, so you get headaches from basically cooking your brain every time you use your powers. The headaches then grow increasingly worse as you give yourself ever more brain damage the more you force your power. Almost worse, it fixes the damage by fully restoring the neurons to their original state, which prevents the brain from properly adapting to either the new information or the means of communication, actively preventing your body from learning to solve its problem for it."

    Taylor watched Lisa shudder at that. She didn't blame her, the information was an uncomfortable combination of disconcerting, shocking, and intellectually disappointing.

    "Your Doctor said he can stop it from doing that with other tools, right?" Lisa asked.

    "He could, but I would need to understand everything to the point that I can build tools that could fix it first before the doctor could use them to solve it. Part of that would require us to first trap your symbote so that he could modify it as well. We would have to modify both ends of your connection simultaneously to correct it's deficiencies. As he told you, the only thing he can do right now is just remove it out right."

    "You're not going to force me to do that, right?" Lisa quickly said.

    Taylor not only shook her head, but also drew on her powers to make sure Lisa got this, targeting blank to ensure that Lisa's power confirmed her claims.

    "No. I'll gladly fix you up once I know how, but it is ultimately your power. I won't force medical treatments on you. You have rights to your body that I won't violate, and your power is an important part of those. I can tell you that you're being a fool for not fixing everything else that the Doctor found with you, but I won't drag you in there and order him to treat you."

    Taylor watched Lisa shift between shock at Taylor's forceful assertion, apprehension as she thought things through, and gratefulness as she came to appreciate Taylor's honesty.

    "Therapy is a medical treatment." Lisa pointed out in a quiet voice.

    "You can talk to the therapist about whatever you want. She is not going to force you to do anything either. I am not forcing you to do anything but sit in the room with her for an hour and talk, just like I am forcing you to have the doctor examine you to make sure you're healthy, but not treat you. The difference is critical."

    Taylor could tell that Lisa disagreed even though she didn't argue, instead looking back at the scans.

    Her symbiote was only able to read what Lisa saw thanks to the blank protections, but it was very interested in the data given how much it was pushing her to study it.

    Lisa stared at it for a short while, before reaching out to touch the image of her brain.

    "These are live, aren't they?"

    "Captured from the sensor you are wearing, yes. You can see the damage it causes you as you draw on your power in red, and I am sure you can feel it as well."

    "A live feedback of me giving myself brain damage. That's going to give me nightmares…. Taylor, if you can, could you help me fix this??" Lisa pleaded desperately.

    "I don't like the idea of your powers giving you brain damage any more than you do, Lisa." Taylor noted, once again focusing her powers to make sure the girl understood her properly. "It's not the top priority. My father and me are. However, since you're not the only other parahuman suffering from this, I'll help you when I can—yes."

    "Are you referring to all the other thinkers?" Lisa asked.

    "Not just Thinkers. Your power is crude, and given how it works, I shudder to think about how other tinker powers work. Mine doesn't damage my brain, but it makes me wonder about the fugue states other tinkers are said to have. I have a feeling that it is likely related."

    0o0

    *3/4 charges*

    After finishing with Lisa for the day, Taylor went back to approaching her goal of building shuttlecraft. A part of her wished that she could immediately construct the most advanced shuttle that she saw in Star Trek Voyager, the Delta Flyer, which would be a lot more effective than what she had plans for.

    Unfortunately, her skills from Star Trek were entirely Federation based, and although Voyager itself was close enough for her other skills to fill in the rather few gaps enough to build the ship as it launched—Voyager was only a year after The Next Generation ended after all—she couldn't extend it out far enough to build a ship like the Delta Flyer which was designed based on an extensive suite of Borg technologies that she just didn't have.

    That didn't mean she didn't upgrade her shuttle where she could. Rather than a Warp Core for power, which was entirely reliant on an antimatter reaction, she used a much safer singularity core that didn't need refueling nearly as often and was much safer, as it extracted power from the gravitational forces created by a singularity which would harmlessly dissipate in a few seconds if it containment failed.

    As much as Taylor wanted to fit a full sensor array into the shuttle, the required support systems would need the shuttle to be at least as large as a city block. When she built that large, she might as well go all the way and design a proper capital ship.

    As fast as she was, a capital ship designed to meet both Star Trek and Dead Space standards was well beyond what she could hammer out over the course of a weekend, so she settled for a small generic shuttlecraft, she improved systems where she could but otherwise kept to the standard sizes the Federation used.

    There was a trade off between ship size, systems that could be included, and overall usefulness. From what she knew, the Federation shuttlecraft and the Dead Space shuttlecraft were roughly the same size.

    They would be large enough to be useful for moving small groups of people or haul a decent amount of supplies around, while small enough to be easily carry around in capital ships.

    It also helped that Taylor could finish one of those in the 6 hours remaining until midnight, giving her about 8 hours to play with them and upgrade things before her scheduled meeting at the RIG with Dragon and Armsmaster.

    Even if the Guild was looking less and less like a good option at the scales her tech was rapidly approaching, a good working relationship was more than worth the few hours of effort.

    Improving everything she could, and including an internal door for access to her pocket dimension, Taylor got to work on her first shuttle.

    0o0

    As soon as Taylor finished her shuttle, her power activated and her hanger was home to five shuttles, all practically begging to be taken for a spin.

    Remaining in the one she had just finished, Taylor sat down and looked up at the hanger walls above her, feeling as if she should make some sort of major event of this. Although she had achieved FTL transportation with her doors, they were a direct element of her power.

    This would let her be the first human to travel at FTL speeds without the use of parahuman powers. It felt like she should hold a celebration with important public figures, speeches, a big red ribbon, and a comically large pair of golden scissors.

    Taylor briefly debated bringing her father, but decided not to because there wasn't going to be anything exciting on this trip.

    Her course decided, she went to the controls and quickly accessed the hanger controls and ordered the hanger door to open. Her shuttle rose into the moon's sky, before turning and flying off at high speed. The cloaking systems would make it invisible to any non-tinker sensor and hopefully most tinkertech sensors on Earth and blank would cover the rest, but distance was always a better defense.

    After heading a short distance away from the Moon, she hit a key and watched as the shuttle jumped to Warp 6, the view screen shifting as light around her was warped, giving her a lensing effect that made it look like the stars were flying past in streaks of blue-shifted light, just like in the show.

    Taylor smiled at that.

    "Warp 1, well… warp 6 really." She 'corrected' herself as she looked at the display. She had intentionally mistaken the speed, feeling that Warp 1 was the proper first FTL speed and mildly regretting not simply choosing that speed.

    She turned her attention to the shuttle's scanners. Active scans were required to go to Warp Speed, but she hadn't directed any of them near Earth lest Ziz notice something.

    Curious what she could see about Alpha Centauri, Taylor studied the scan results, as it was close enough for them to show up on long range scan—at least at a high level.

    There were no signs of life as far as her long range sensors were concerned, but given the energy output required, Taylor knew that Earth would appear similar if scanned from Alpha Centauri.

    The view of the nearest system was helpful. Though the fact that none of the worlds had an Earth like environment was disappointing, there were a few worlds viable for terraforming and artificial habitat construction according to the initial scans. One that was 30% larger than Earth and situated outside the system's habitable zone had a large quantity of water already present, and was thus covered with ice due to the wildly subzero temperatures.

    It was an ideal terraforming candidate, and thus a wonderful site to build her primary base.

    After reviewing the scans for everything she could think of, Taylor left the shuttle on autopilot as she went back to earth to send two of the others off in other directions to different systems. One of the remaining two she sent off to a location where she would build an active sensor array to scan the Earth remotely. The last one would be used to access Mars and kickstart her Mars base.

    *Power Buy Attempt 2.1.31 VOWP Cellular Service (200) + 200 Tax Bought. Banked 0 points.*

    Taylor absorbed her new perk, which gave her access to cellphones she could easily adapt for her network. It meant that she would need to make changes to her shuttles to allow them to communicate without relying on subspace communications, but that was something she could do later.

    None of them would be out of subspace communication range with her moon base for weeks, even at their top speed.

    0o0

    Saturday, February 19th, 2011

    0o0

    After her father woke up, Taylor decided to approach him long before breakfast when he made his way into the living room to watch some TV.

    "Dad?"

    "Taylor? Isn't it like 2 AM?"

    Danny looked over at the clock to confirm that, a motion Taylor reflexively mimicked.

    "It is, but there are a few things I need to talk with you about before breakfast."

    "I'm starting to wonder if sleep is even a good idea with what you keep pulling on me." Danny muttered.

    "It's nothing bad, it's all good news. To start with—"

    Taylor offered her dad a Cell Phone, knowing it would be something that he took an issue with, but choosing to get his antipathy for the devices out of the way well before it was too late.

    "With this, you can open up my warehouse without us needing to program it ahead of time. It is still limited to doors I have used my keys on, but it can direct you to the closest one."

    "Oh."

    "Yeah, oh. If you like, you can talk to Amanda about it."

    "Amanda, who?" Danny asked.

    "The therapist. I decided to call her Amanda, as it didn't feel right to keep calling her therapist. "

    Taylor hadn't watched any of his therapy sessions. While she could look back on them to find out, she wasn't going to do that to him.

    "Just Amanda?" Danny noted.

    "Amanda Smith?" Taylor suggested.

    "Why not just call her Jane Smith at that point." Danny jested with a slight smile, as he took the phone. "Does this get normal calls?"

    "You can dial out, but only to other workshop networked phones like mine and the ones now in the warehouse. Which brings up the other thing I wanted to address."

    Taylor took out a card and indicated it to her dad.

    "This is a Sylladex card for you. I'd like you to take it. With it, you can hold onto the cellphone without any risk of someone stealing it. This way, you can always have it with you safely; I put some gear in it like a set of armor and some emergency weapons and tools. There are a few other fringe benefits it'll provide, but those are less important."

    "Strife Deck and such."

    "Yeah." Taylor agreed. "It's very useful for costumes, which you're going to want to start wearing in my warehouse. This afternoon, I am going to try and talk Panacea into speaking with Amanda."

    "Panacea? Why?"

    "She is a girl that has been doing a lot of work at the hospital and Amanda is a far better therapist than anyone else. The girl hasn't broken under the stress she is under, but she is close. Brockton Bay can't afford to lose our healer."

    "So, I should have a costume ready." Danny agreed. "I suppose that is a good enough reason."

    Danny took the card and looked at it.

    "Just will it and it will connect to you."

    He did so, and the card disappeared.

    Danny blinked as Taylor offered him a stack of cards.

    "Unless you want to be stuck with Stack Fetch Modus, which I don't suggest given its limitations, you'll want the Array Fetch Modus to easily handle more than four captchalogue cards. Just put these into your deck, let me show you how to access it, and tell you about the stuff I put in the cards."

    0o0

    When breakfast rolled around, Taylor addressed Lisa as the three of them ate at the table in the warehouse.

    "Lisa?"

    Taylor waited until Lisa looked at her.

    "I decided to give the therapist the name of Amanda Smith, and the Doctor Joe Allen."

    "Any reason why?" Lisa asked, curious.

    "I decided I should give them a name to make them easier to talk about."

    "Joe was what the EMH in Voyager chose in the end, wasn't it?"

    "Yeah, that's why I decided on it."

    "I get the first name, but why the family names? One that is different from yours?"

    "That's the other thing I wanted to warn you about. I am going to be inviting Panacea to talk to Amanda later today."

    "Okay, why? Or am I not allowed to know that?" Lisa quickly backed up to an overly careful demeanor before Taylor could give her any signs.

    "I want Amy to have a good therapist."

    "Panacea doesn't even have a therapist right now."

    Taylor blinked. "Interesting, how do you know that?"

    Lisa looked over at Danny then answered. "Coil had me digging into everyone in the city. New Wave was one of the early ones he had me start with, and he made me do rounds on them every now and then. Panacea never got a therapist because Brandish doesn't believe they work. They weren't very successful at helping either Manpower or her. She told Panacea that therapists are useless, and a waste of money, and that Manpower only bothers because he needs them for his medication when she asked."

    "Wow, okay." Taylor paused to consider the situation. She hadn't expected Amy to be unable to access therapy despite spending so much of her time in a hospital, and hadn't checked for specifics out of respect for her privacy. Her new therapist would have a much lower bar to reach than expected, as any proper therapist is better than none.

    *Power Buy Attempt 1.3.4 Wild Empathy II (100). Bought. Banked 0 points.*

    Taylor considered her new perk, which was sort of nice in a way, as it expanded Empathetic to sub-sapient creatures, allowing her to speak with animals if you squinted and fudged the term a little. She wouldn't be misunderstood by a creature when she approached it, and she could ask them any question that could be expressed in three or less words, although how much they could answer depended entirely on its nature and how willing they were to help her. The closer it was to being sapient, the more it could comprehend and answer, so dogs would be very close to talking like humans, while something as simple as an ant wouldn't have much to say. A full ant colony or beehive would be interesting to communicate with.

    It was a rather nice extension of her powers for just one charge.

    "I know quite a lot about them if you need me to share?" Lisa offered, and Taylor could see that the girl was trying to be useful out of fear for the stability of her situation, not really trusting that Taylor wouldn't kick her out after she shared everything about Coil.

    "That's enough for now, but you can work on typing it up when you have time. I suggest you to mask up in a new costume and not talk to her or tell her who I am when she comes."

    "I fully believe in the unwritten rules, Taylor. Coil was the one who made me break them." Lisa informed her with a partial lie.

    Taylor could tell that she only stuck with what she called the unwritten rules because she got a lot more value out of them than others intended and enjoyed abusing them. She was more than happy to rely on their protection whenever she could.

    "Right, then, I don't need to tell you the consequences of you telling her anything." Taylor repeated.

    "No, no. Of course not." Lisa was very quick to agree with a vigorous shake of her head.

    "Good, costume or not, that's up to you."

    "I'd rather costume up, but I don't think going as Tattletale would be a good idea."

    Taylor reached into her pocket and pulled out a package.

    "Costume for you. Try it on later. I think the cape name Observer would suit you."

    "I think that is in use by a Watchdog member?" Lisa wondered with a frown.

    "Not according to my search online, and as far as the law is concerned, that means it is free."

    Lisa looked at her new costume.

    "I will be with Armsmaster and Dragon until lunchtime, and will plan to fetch Amy after that. Put it on at around 1PM, although I don't plan to bring her here to meet you. Which brings me to the other thing I have for you."

    Taylor offered Lisa a phone.

    "This can only receive and send calls from me. Keep it on you at all times, even though it has a really loud ringtone. I have also installed similarly limited wall-mounted phones throughout the housing complex so you have no excuse to miss a call. If something comes up and I need to ask you a question about the Coil mess, you'd better be ready to answer."

    Lisa nodded as she took it.

    0o0

    After she left, Lisa decided to go into therapy again, while Taylor made her way to the Rig with the gear she intended to share in her guise as Selene.

    Dragon greeted Selene when she entered Armsmaster's lab.

    "Hello Selene."

    "Hello Dragon, Armsmaster. I trust you had a good week?"

    "Indeed, but I am more looking forward to looking over your items."

    "Of course." Selene nodded as she started to unload the cases. "As promised, here are several of my shielding crystals of different sizes, ready to install in any costume or armor."

    Selene had blackboxed her technology as much as she could, limited as she was by her technology's full presence without exotic effects remotely operated by a parahuman symbiote. Drawing on all of her Federation knowledge to try and hide it from sensors and other methods of examination as best she could, she still couldn't create a perfectly enigmatic system.

    Blank couldn't prevent destructive analysis of her gear using mundane tech from working, which would be a problem given that she was going to hand out more than enough for a couple to be sacrificed in the name of scientific progress. She wasn't going to claim she was limited in how many she could make, because that would limit how many people she could help.

    She did change her final design from what her armor used before Blank, however. Besides the aforementioned blackboxing precautions, she also made it automatically install the connection wires into whatever armor or clothing it was installed and activated in. This way she didn't need to share the process of manual installation and activation, as it was just a gem that 'installed' itself with gold wire spread around the armor.

    She considered that change small enough to release despite her Simurgh blackout rules.

    "I also brought some other things for you to test that the guild may or may not be interested in."

    Selene carefully took out the sword and placed it on the bench.

    "Your sword?" Armsmaster asked.

    "It's my old one, as I have made a better once since then." Selene lied. This was just a copy of her sword without the regeneration effect that all creations produced in her workshop shared. "It is a bit too dangerous outside of A-class threats and up."

    "But you brought it on patrols?"

    "I needed a weapon to threaten people with, and people understand a hunk of exotic metal better than a gun. Plus, it fits nicely within the unwritten rules for acceptable weapons."

    "How dangerous is it?" Armsmaster asked.

    "When energized, it projects a nano-scale edge along the blade. It can then project plasma flames up to a few thousand degrees if that is not deadly enough on it's own."

    Selene wasn't holding it as she said that, but indicated to the blade.

    "Why did you think you need a monomolecular weapon out on the streets?" Armsmaster directed his confusion at her.

    "Lung, Kaiser, Hookwolf-"

    Armsmaster indicated that she could stop talking by raising his hand as he said, "I get the picture."

    "It also only has that edge when turned on. I can make similar weapons for the Guild, but I am not sure that they would be useful most of the time, which is what I wanted to ask you about Dragon."

    "Weapons of that quality would be extremely useful for a few members. Though not all of us fight in close range, or at all, so they wouldn't find a weapon like this useful except as a backup." Dragon informed her.

    "That was what I was expecting. You can keep that one for testing. I'll work on a knife that I can somewhat mass produce for everyone, as an emergency weapon should be more useful than specific weapons for at least some of your capes. But speaking of group items, there is something I wanted to talk to you about Dragon. You are on the list of members I can make things for, right?"

    "I am, but if you are joining the guild, they will want you to make things for others, Selene."

    *Power Buy Attempt 1.5.19 Energy Projection(Mana) (100). Bought. Banked 0 points.*

    Selene mentally paused to consider what she just picked up. Her new power granted her the ability to shoot raw mana from her hands as energy beams, or just channel it into a weapon, it had obvious combat applications.

    Bemused, she realized that she hadn't ever considered using her internal mana to fight before now, too focused on what she could make, but this power granted her a scaling ability that would grow stronger as she trained it and would increase her reserves as well, which now made her supernatural recovery more useful as it would let her attack more often.

    This energy beam started dangerous enough to harm a normal person, so Selene noted that she would have to train to make it safe to use on people if she didn't want to cause massive harm.

    Yet another demand on her time, Taylor knew that her new ability would transform all of her combat options, applying not only to melee weapons, but any weapons in her hands or even her hands themselves. Phasers, a contact beam, or even a bow and arrow were all viable. As long as she could physically interact with her weapon of choice, she could channel mana through it.

    It would provide her with a little more oomph should she need to attack some foes and ensure that she couldn't be disarmed even if someone figured out how to access her Sylladex.

    All in all, it was a nice perk given its low cost and the fact it would scale up. It was the sort of perk she would have rather started with weeks ago. With this perk, she could have been a hero a lot faster.

    And given how much she had grown since she had become a hero…

    Selene's main focus returned to Dragon.

    "I know that, that leads me to my real question. What threats does the Guild consider most urgent, other than the big three. I am aware that you are having trouble with the Dragonslayers, but the rest of the guild doesn't have much about the threats that target them personally available online, just the general list of S and A class threats that people should know about."

    "And the only reason that information is up online is because Saint posts it himself." Dragon confirmed. "You intend to share technology to help me with it?"

    "Am I correct in guessing that your biggest issue is that you can't find them, mainly because they stole enough of your suits that they know how to hide from all the sensors you can build?"

    "Correct. I assume you think you can get around that with your sensors?"

    "I would like to give it a try. I'll need to study one of your suits to see if I can modify one of my sensors at a much longer range to pick up on it."

    "Speaking of long range, have you found your missing tinker tech yet?"

    "Not yet, I am working on a longer range sensor that is almost done, I just need a few more days to finish it." Selene lied.

    "And you think that it could also help Dragon find the Dragonslayers?" Armsmaster guessed.

    "Would it hurt to try?" Selene asked as she looked at Dragon.

    "No. If that is where you want to focus, you can do that, Selene. I agree this would be a positive thing, to the point of practically ensuring your place in the Guild should you find them. I would caution you to work on something easier to start with, however."

    "I'm good with sensors. If I could expand to cover the globe I could find my gear anywhere unless someone literally took it to Earth Aleph, and I think I know how to finish reverse engineering that mineral sensor from last time. I did some testing based on what I studied last time, and I'd like to confirm it. Could I work on that while the two of you work on the armor and weapons I've provided?"

    "That sounds like we have enough to do today." Armsmaster agreed. "So let's get to work."

    0o0

    Selene allowed herself to solve the scanner they had given to her as a test, which she had already cracked previously during her studying spree with [Doll Maker of Bucuresti]. She gave Armsmaster and Dragon the designs and a few physical copies at the end of that visit, completely blackbox free no less.

    Dragon promised another scanner on Wednesday if she could swing by, which Selene gladly accepted.

    Watching and helping out as Armsmaster and Dragon worked had been rather interesting, confirming that her shield crystals could take a hit from anything that Armsmaster dared to use inside the Rig, including her own sword. She watched as he studied how her sword projected the edge, and could tell that he was thinking about how to add a similar mechanism to his own gear.

    With that out of the way and a promise from Dragon to bring a suit for Selene to scan on Wednesday secured, Selene made her way to intercept Amy before she arrived at the hospital for her next shift, aware that she would work through Saturday night until the very early hours of Sunday.

    Amy wasn't driven there, but instead took the bus over, a process Selene had spent enough time verifying the specifics of to feel like a stalker. Selene went to the stop that Amy got on near her home, and cheerfully climbed onto the bus in her full costume.

    The driver stared at her as she entered, but Selene paid her fare and made her way back to where Amy had a seat.

    The bus was almost empty save for the two of them given the time of day, right after lunch on a saturday.

    "Hey." Selene greeted Amy.

    Amy looked at her, and tilted her head quizzically.

    "Can't you fly?"

    "I can, but I wanted to talk to you before you ended up on your next shift. Do you mind?" Selene made sure all of her powers of persuasion were fully active as she addressed Amy.

    *Power Buy Attempt 3.9.1 Gadget Master (007) (300). Not Bought. Banked 100 points.*

    Selene focused briefly on the perk she failed to get, seeing that it was spy gear from James Bond, which didn't sound useful given everything else she could already do.

    After a quick internal cost benefit analysis, she decided that access to a Sylladex and outright Star Trek technology ensured that there wasn't anything in the series likely to help her hide anything significantly better than she already could. Things in a Sylladex were already undetectable to anyone without ways to pick up literal spatial connections to subspace pockets. Things that she couldn't hide in there simply weren't worth the effort for the time being.

    Selene watched as Amy debated internally, seeing that the girl's gut reaction was to say no and refuse, but the force of her perks ultimately overruled her hesitation. She made a mental note to review ethical considerations of the positive impact part of her charisma powers again, as this felt even skeevier than she had anticipated.

    "I could spare a few minutes, although I would guess you'd want to talk somewhere more private?" Amy asked looking around the bus.

    Selene nodded, as she added. "We can get off at the next stop. I can fly you over to the hospital after we are done.

    0o0

    Selene directed Amy off the bus and into a bench in an empty park for a private talk.

    "So, what is it that you need?" Amy pressed.

    "Simple, I am concerned for your health."

    Amy flinched at that, since Selene had all of her powers running to ensure that Amy didn't misunderstand anything.

    "What do you mean?" She asked with more than obvious concern.

    "Amy, when did you last go to a therapist?"

    "That's a bit of a personal question to ask, don't you think?" Amy replied defensively.

    "Your mom may say that therapists are a waste of money and don't help, but every doctor at the hospital must be suggesting that you meet with one before you burn out. Either you've never believed them, or Branish refuses to let you see them. Regardless, you really need to see one before you lose control of your powers and do something you regret."

    To Selene's mild surprise, Amy reacted far more overtly to the implication that she might break and do something she would regret than Selene was expecting. She had expected that to be something that drew Amy in, but not how thoroughly it captured her attention. Interesting.

    "What?" Amy injected.

    "I am serious here, Amy. Mental health is one of the biggest concerns for capes, and the capes that don't get therapy end up villains without fail. It's mandatory for all Wards and Protectorate capes to attend therapy once a week. Not, once in a month, once a year, or even as needed, but once a week, mandatorily. The Youth Guard sanctions those that don't meet the requirements, while ensuring that every branch has enough therapists on staff despite their asinine insistence on preventing therapists from staying in one place for any length of time. Yet, you've never been to one, and all the PRT official records say that capes that use their powers a lot without something to keep them grounded will turn to a life of crime. Not may, will."

    "I have Vicky." Amy injected.

    "You sister yes, which is likely why you haven't already snapped, but I can still see the signs. You know I have a medical scanner right?"

    "I am rather unhappy that the PRT isn't willing to share that freely with everyone." Amy noted darkly.

    "Ya, that is a crying shame. More importantly, I picked up passive medical scans of you when I went on a patrol and saw some concerning patterns that ultimately brought me here. You're burning yourself out. You will be lucky to make it to the end of the school year before you give up and do more with your powers than you want to. Thankfully, I have a solution for that."

    "You do?" Amy latched onto her words. Not only was her tone desperate, but the girl leaned in, her every movement indicating how hopeful she was for her help. Selene's cold-reading made it quite clear that Amy would go to near-insane lengths for this concern. Anything that wasn't outright illegal would have been acceptable to her. What, or even who, she was willing to do for a real cure was crazy.

    Frankly unnerved, she decided that looking into her perks' combined master effects needed to be a significant priority. This couldn't possibly be normal behavior, however convenient it might be for her aims.

    *Power Buy Attempt 3.12.14 Equivalent Exchange (Minecraft) (600). Not Bought. Banked 200 points.*

    Selene briefly focused on the perk that had just passed her by as she let Amy calm down for a moment and think things through. The perk centered around changing matter from one form into another, which she could already do with her Alchemiter and replicators. She couldn't see how it could meaningfully expand on her abilities, particularly given the cut-and-dry limits of Minecraft's items from what her research into potential perk-sources had suggested. It was a rather popular game among gamers on Earth Bet, but was limited to simple items and mechanisms with minimal lore for a perk to expand on.

    "I have a therapist that I would like you to talk with-"

    "Just a therapist? They don't really work… do they?" Amy asked, clearly conflicted. Thanks to Selene's liberal perk applications, Amy understood that Selene was being truthful, but that didn't mean that Amy herself agreed with the prospect that therapists work, which had been drilled into her by her mother since she was a kid.

    "If you have a good one; they do. There are bad ones out there, who just want your money, make vague promises, and never actually help. It is very hard to judge how good a therapist is objectively, because they necessarily provide exceptionally personalized care. Mine is the best we know of; my family did a deep background check and had her evaluated by expert peers. She helped me after my trigger event, and has been a big help by ensuring that I remained a hero despite circumstances conspiring to push me in the other direction."

    Selene quirked a smile, pausing for a moment to give Amy time to process again.

    "Don't worry about her costs, Amy. She is on my family's payroll and we are considering this a donation to the local hospital— a much more directed donation then normal, but one that will do far more good. All you need to do is come talk to her for an hour and see if you get along. Afterwards, you can either keep talking or go to the hospital to heal and meet her again later... But we can talk about that afterwards. Is that fine with you?

    "I can do an hour." Amy agreed with a nod. "Where am I meeting this therapist of yours anyway?"

    "Since she is our private therapist, on my family's payroll, the only real place that I can keep my mask on would be at my workshop. Will that be an issue?"

    Amy shook her head no.

    "Good. Come on, I'll carry you like Vicky does. It's not that far outside of town."

    Amy allowed herself to be picked up, and Selene took off into the air.

    0o0

    Selene landed by the shack she had prepared for the occasion and directed Amy inside and down the stairs.

    "Now, try open the door without my special key." Selene offered.

    Amy opened the door and found nothing but rock behind it.

    Selene closed the door and stuck her key into it.

    "And with the key, tada."

    The door opened to her entrance hallway which Amy examined while Selene followed her in. With the golems moved elsewhere to avoid spooking their visitor, and hologram emitters hiding anything important the place looked more barren than usual.

    "This is… rather big."

    "Is it?" Selene acted as nonchalantly as she could. "My wing at home is much bigger; this is just a small workshop for me to use outside of Brockton Bay, come on. Amanda, that's the therapist's name by the way, she's through this door over here."

    Selene led Amy directly into the Counseling Bay, bypassing the rest of the workshop, which she had hidden with hologram projectors.

    "Hello Selene, and hello Amy." Amanda greeted.

    Amy looked at the professionally dressed woman. Her uniform covered everything other than her head so as to prevent an accidental touch from revealing Amanda's nonhuman nature.

    "I am Amanda. You can call me Dr. Amanda, Amanda, or Mandy as you like."

    "Hello Dr. Amanda." Amy returned and glanced at Selene, then asked. "You're her family's personal therapist?"

    "Correct, her family owns the majority of my practice. They helped pay off my debts, helped me in some political matters, and currently are my only patients. I owe them a great deal. I have been given permission to reveal that they hired me after Selene triggered to help her work through all of her issues that came from that."

    "Without her help Amy, I wouldn't be a hero. After being deeply betrayed by the Protectorate, I almost became a Villain,"

    Amy spun to look at Selene wide eyed at that.

    "Amanda helped me see that just because there are some bad people in the world, doesn't mean they are all bad and everything they touched needs to be destroyed. She is very good at what she does."

    "That doesn't mean you should start trusting me with your deepest secrets though."

    Amanda injected with a wry smile.

    "Therapy relies on true bidirectional trust, so I can't and won't do anything truly meaningful until we both get to know one another. In case you have any concerns, I am a fully licensed professional, and I will keep anything you tell me in confidence. As a doctor, I'm sure you understand why that is important."

    "Honorary." Amy muttered under her breath.

    "There is no such thing as an honorary doctor. Either you are one, or you are not, and you— Amy— are definitely a doctor from what I have heard. Come on, let's go into my office where we can talk privately. I can call Selene to take you back when we are done; just let me know when you want to stop at any time and we'll end it there. I have cleared my schedule for the whole day, but don't feel bad if you want to stop earlier."

    Selene watched as Amy hesitantly followed Amanda into the next room. Unlike with Lisa, she wasn't going to watch what Amy talked about. It would be there in her warehouse postcog records if she ever needed it but she didn't see any reason to violate her new acquaintance's privacy.

    Smiling, she started to make her way to her lab to resume her work.

    *Power Buy Attempt 3.2.10 Technomage (Strike Witches) (200). Bought. Banked 100 points.*

    Reroll since last perk was fully bought/brought to some level of ranking and points > 0

    *Power Buy Attempt 2.4.22 Game Room (200). Not Bought. Banked 100 points.*

    Selene felt a bit annoyed at the perk she'd barely missed, again trying to add a game room to her housing complex. She had no need for one she couldn't simply construct herself, so she was happy it hadn't been bought. That said, her reaction to the perk she didn't pick up was dwarfed by the one she had to the perk that actually came through.

    Technomage from Strike Witches was dedicated to the knowledge related to an object known as a Striker. It primarily taught her how to build and design one of the devices from scratch to fit a specific Witch as a personalized multitool.

    The Striker itself appeared to be some sort of combination magical wand and broomstick, constructed using technological methods. For some odd reason, it was normally designed to appear like plane engines that had been placed around a witch's legs in defiance of engine design practicality rather than anything vaguely reasonable.

    While she understood that the construct was attached to it's user's bare feet and legs to provide the necessary skin contact for it's magical connection, she wasn't sure why it wasn't designed as a full set of armor. Even without her other perks coming into play she couldn't see any reason why they couldn't have just thrown a base suit of metal around it without sacrificing significant mobility or stamina.

    There was more to the perk than that, though; it granted her extensive knowledge of what a Witch was in the context of its setting and transformed her into a witch. Taylor found the parallels between witchdom and her Creature Soul perk interesting.

    All witches in the series were female, but they also had an animal familiar living inside them that acted as the source of their power. When they cast magic, inside or outside of their striker, they would adopt the features of their familiar, generally it's ears and tail.

    Given that witches tended to cast magic often, and that strikers allowed them to fly and cast more powerful magic, the animal familiars' tendency to project their features phasing through any blocking matter was well appreciated for making both pants and helmets viable.

    High end witches could manifest their familiar outside of their body without needing to use an aid, but that required both a great deal of magical prowess and an intense bond with their familiar.

    Since the Striker relied on a familiar to function, she would need to give people familiars before they could take advantage of the technology. While she couldn't do that yet, being able to recognize and understand the desired endstate was half the battle.

    As she considered the perk, its implementation completed, causing a small part of her soul to expand and split off to become her familiar, a cat. The soul fragment was now both its own being and an innate part of her, dwelling inside her. For now, it could only be awoken through the use of a striker or similar magical items that she would have to design, but if it came to like her enough she could eventually learn to manifest it into the real world as a pet.

    Though Taylor's other perks ensured that she didn't need to wake her familiar to use the setting's magic, it was nice to know that she could not and would not ever be truly alone again.

    Thanks to her Doll Maker of Bucuresti perk, full knowledge of striker designs was enough to instantly develop a complete functional grasp of the basics of the magic system. The data on how strikers worked and could enhance certain spells was more than enough for that perk to automatically recreate the entire magic system for her. There would always be nooks and crannies to investigate when she had spare time, but that was merely a matter of course. Despite the monumentality of her new changes, they were just the tip of the iceberg.

    This made Taylor contemplate how her perks were changing her. Some changes were minor, but others changed her much more significantly.

    Thanks to her creature soul, she counted as her own familiar, and could cast spells without needing the aid of her familiar so long as she had her cat ears and tail out.

    She could even then cast without taking on any animal traits by taking advantage of Energy Projection. Further, each access point to the magical system could be used in tandem, combining additively to enhance any attempts to work with that paradigm of magic.

    Supernatural Resource Recovery meant that she recovered very fast, allowing her to recover in 30 minutes from exertion that would exhaust a normal witch for the rest of the day, as she always recovered at twice the peak rate.

    When casting truly trivial spells, she could succeed without taking advantage of any of her three primary sources of magic by simply relying on Trivial Applications. Triviality was, after all, defined relative to her overall power level rather than to an arbitrary standard.

    Wild Empathy and the fact that the familiar was a part of her soul made connecting with it nearly effortless. She would find it impossible to develop a poor relationship with her familiar and would quickly bond with it unless she explicitly went out of her way to antagonize it.

    Normally, connecting to her familiar while connected to a striker would provide sufficient physical and mental amplification to comfortably handle the stresses of high speed flight while wearing civilian clothing. When applied on top of her preexisting superhuman abilities, the results were multiplicatively amplified. The familiar alone would have raised her close to peak human before all the other effects came as a play as a baseline, with her real peak being twice that, meaning her perks that affected her mind and body were doubled from this alone.

    The greatest benefit, however, came from synergy with her skill and crafting perks. By drawing on Profession: Tailoring, and Doll Maker of Bucuresti, she could make proper clothing that pulled double-duty as a striker. She still needed a connection to her bare skin, but that was a far more forgivable property for clothes. She had no interest in wearing metal tubes on her legs that made her look like she was trying to pretend to be an airplane and forgot to include everything but the engines.

    Infinitely Customizable, Universally Upgradeable, Crafting from Geneforge, along with Supernatural Engineer, and Skills from Star Trek shifted the available range of designs for a striker from World War 1 plane–Fighter Jet to clothing that would allow her to move around like a shuttlecraft at warp speeds while drawing on a truly phenomenal degree of amplified magical power.

    The synergy behind these perks alone was insane, and she could only begin to imagine how many powers she still didn't have and hadn't touched yet that would synergize further. How many had she bypassed that could have meshed exponentially with what she had? Strikers were designed to carry weapons, so she could now hide weaponry integrated in her clothes, but what would it have been like if she had Gundams? Or, given how much of this was magitech, what if she had the Magitech perk from Banjo-Kazooie?

    *Power Buy Attempt 3.5.21 Smithing (Thundercats) (200). Bought. Banked 0 points.*

    Selene focused on her newest perk acquisition in thread of her mind, as she continued to focus on what she already had.

    Witches were always girls, for reasons that the perk and derived magic system left frustratingly opaque. Until they were exposed to magic that woke the familiar that had been in them since they were born people wouldn't know if they were one.

    This made Selene think of Lisa, wondering if the girl counted as a viable Witch. Was being a Parahuman somehow related? Did this world even have Witches?

    She didn't know, but she felt like it would be worth testing. She would warn Lisa first, clarifying the test procedures, once she figured out an experimental methodology.

    That would have to wait until she was willing to give Lisa hints of what she stood to gain by joining Taylor as a hero. Before any testing could start, Lisa had to start making progress towards becoming a trustworthy member of society unlikely to regress into villainy. Until then, all of her juiciest secrets would have to remain hidden for the sake of security.

    She then wondered what she would do if Lisa didn't decide to genuinely seek to become a better person, because the ever-expanding set of force multipliers she could hand out to others was altogether too useful to keep secret. The ability to let people that already had familiars use them could potentially protect a whole host of people from passenger interference, which would have both direct and indirect benefits. Ignoring the issues involved in dressing girls up like planes, strikers would be a sufficient force multiplier to allow normal people to qualify for PRT classifications, even ignoring the viability of healing magic as a teachable skill.

    Selene's thoughts turned to the nature of strikers and the animal soul inside a person. If it was possible to add an animal soul to a person or induce one to form, then she could create new Witches. Further, the availability of other magic systems might give her the leverage needed to overcome the pesky gender limitation. Magic powers are a lot more palatable when they don't come with skeevy-seeming requirements.

    That chain of thought continued more or less uneventfully even as her other chain of thought studied the perk she had picked up while working through her synergistic paradigm shift. Surprisingly enough, her new perk wasn't disappointing by comparison.

    Her latest perk taught her to forge weapons and armor from ThunderCats, a cartoon she had watched as a young girl.Thanks to her perfectly retroactive memory, she recalled that the series had started off with the Thundercats going to another Galaxy to settle into a new home because their home planet of Thundera had blown up.

    Even if the logic of their backstory was more than shaky, full knowledge of their weapons and armor did not disappoint. As a civilization with technology vastly more advanced than Star Fleet had ever managed, they developed incredible artisanal processes to create what they called legendary weapons that had amazing properties. Furthermore, their armor-crafting techniques allowed far less substantial clothing to provide the protection of full-body covering. She could create protective equipment in any form she chose, with no need to match form to function.

    The horrors of bikini-armor were now actually viable. It would actually provide the same protection while requiring less material and allowing for increased mobility.

    Refocusing towards less dismaying implications, she could already see a wide variety of practical uses for her new ability. She would make her armor look like civilian clothes, vastly increasing both her and her father's safety while under civilian guise. Further, the disconnect between form and function would allow for more specialized protective equipment to be reshaped into accessories with other uses, which allowed for chemoresistant handbags, laser-resistant glasses, and so much more..

    Like Thunder Cat Ho's weapon, the legendary weapons she could make could provide a secondary healing boost that strengthened all her allies past their normal peak. This and similar supposedly minor benefits added up to allow for a truly flabbergasting variety of utility.

    Even at her increased speed, legendary weapons and any derived technology would take weeks to make, as some requirements simply weren't viable for her replicator to print out without extended research and development that she didn't have anywhere near the time for. Selene estimated a proper legendary sword would take only a little less time to forge than the entire Enterprise-E would take to construct.

    Since Amy was still busy, she made her way over to her workshop to put together a simple striker—the most basic striker she felt met a minimum degree of acceptability. A more advanced one would take her a few hours, but she wanted results within a couple minutes.

    0o0

    Making a pair of stockings that acted as a low level Striker was easy, and Selene stared at them for a bit before she sighed and removed her armor, then her pants, socks, and shoes. Bare skin was required for this to work.

    Once out of costume, Taylor moved over her new multitools, sliding her legs inside, feeling as they connected to the familiar inside her, bringing it near the surface of her mind, and waking it up for the first time.

    Since the cat was fundamentally a part of her, it didn't use words, but Wild Empathy allowed her to understand it anyway.

    Her familiar was female like herself, and it was busy studying the world it had been woken up into.

    The cat soul had no question that it might be in the wrong place, as it was perfectly shaped to her soul, even without her own Creature Soul, which only made it feel more at home. Taylor understood this, liked to think it found the fact its master was also half cat to be proper, even though it couldn't consider the hypothetical that she might not have been half cat. To it, what it found was normal, as it wasn't sapient enough to consider otherwise.

    Taylor felt the cat ears and tail of her familiar form extend in synchrony, but these were magical and would ignore anything in between her skin and the air unlike her physical constructs, so they manifested outside of any clothing she was wearing, which would mean she would manifest cat ears and a tail on her armor if she ever called upon her familiar while wearing it. Ensuring that that wouldn't look ridiculous would take some thought.

    Lifting off the ground a bit, Taylor found it easy to fly around, easy enough that she knew she was going to have to upgrade her underlayer clothing into a proper high quality striker. The thrill of flying around under her own power was an emotional rush. Humans had dreamed of flying ever since they could imagine it and flying around was a real joy.

    Even this simple striker made it easier to fly than walk, as she could just will herself where she wanted to go and watch as her body smoothly shifted into position.

    Drawing on the magic of her familiar, she cast a simple barrier in front of her, watching as the magic circle formed, already spinning in mid air.

    Defensively, it would only block 'light attacks' at first, but as Taylor poured her mana into it, it grew larger and larger as its defensive ability grew until she hit the limit of her basic striker. She let it pause there, finding that this didn't even drain her with the benefit of supernatural recovery, and such a simple striker was literally the quickest thing she could throw together. A proper one would boost her to far greater levels.

    Dismissing the shield spell, Taylor drew her sword, feeling her striker magic flow into it, boosting it's properties multiplicatively. To raise it even more, Taylor drew on her own Energy Projection, supercharged it far past what her Striker would have let her do, and, deciding she needed to test what her sword could do, called out a block of puresteel she had prepared for the occasion, and swung. It was just the normal material before all of her enchantments.

    Her mundane sword sliced the purestel like it was butter, though Taylor could already feel the strain as her sword wasn't of the right kind for this use case. Her normal weapon hadn't been designed with mana-amplification in mind.

    She could make it work, but it was weaker then it could have been.

    She would need a Katana which was the best shape for Striker magic, something to do with magic matrices and crystal structures resonating with the shape, and given that it would let her boost her sword by an equal amount to energy projection again, she wasn't going to pass that up.

    She didn't want to be in close range with anything she would use such a weapon on, but Taylor knew better than to assume she could always avoid a close quarters confrontation, so she was going to make one and was going to make it properly as a Legendary weapon.

    *Power Buy Attempt 2.4.20 Auditorium (50). Not Bought. Requires 2.4.18 Entertainment Room (200). Not Bought. Banked 100 points.*

    Taylor mentally sighed and then laughed at the perk her powers tried for, wondering if perhaps her random powers were trying to hint at her to relax more.

    Maybe she should take a small break while Amy was in therapy. She had, after all, been working nearly non stop ever since she got her powers.

    0o0

    End of Chapter 08

    0o0

    Interlude 06: Lisa Wilbourn

    0o0

    Lisa studied herself in the mirror, wearing the costume that Taylor had given her for when she wore the mantle of 'Observer.'

    It was more of an under layer for additional armor than something that was intended to be worn on its own, but its coloring ensured that it looked like she was wearing some sort of full body leotard like so many heroes liked to do anyway. Lisa assumed that the Pelham side of New Wave had influenced the design she was wearing.

    She didn't know for certain, and terror slid in as she felt her power trying to solve where Taylor had based this design on, before withdrawing when she clamped down on it as hard as she could.

    Lisa wanted to call Taylor a liar, that her scary advanced medical AI was wrong, that Lisa's own power wasn't literally damaging her brain every time it activated.

    But she couldn't.

    She had too much evidence to believe otherwise.

    Not only Brian, but even Alec and Rachel had noted she tended to do unusually dumb things while on missions. She had excused them as a side effect of her headaches, which had been correct in the most horrifying way.

    When she spent hours planning and taken the time afterwards to look at her plans, she had often wondered what she had been thinking, requiring her to limit her long sessions to data collection and only planning after a good night sleep, because she felt like her actions after those long sessions were borderline idiotic, she had told herself that she was engaging in necessary paranoia.

    It was all true.

    Her power was making her an idiot the more she used it, and then undoing it slowly. Her great insights came at a great cost.

    She could figure out someone's password from a few hints, before using the information in ways that she would look back at in hindsight and wonder why she had ever thought they could be good ideas..

    The answer was clear.

    The last thing she wanted to do was look at the damage she was causing her own brain from her powers, but Lisa made her way over to the computer in her room to pull up the live scan results to watch, seeing how a bit of her brain was destroyed each time her power triggered, only to be repaired and altered to better suit her passenger's desires.

    Classic symbiote behavior. People would mix them up with parasites, which was understandable because their definitions overlapped.

    The real difference between them was what the host got out of it, and Lisa would be lying through her teeth if she said she got nothing out of it. Mutualists helped their hosts, granting their hosts a significant benefit in return for the inconvenience. Every parahuman benefited in an immediately obvious manner, and that was the difference between the two. Parasites only took, Mutualists helped in return.

    But it wasn't power for nothing, nor was it a cost she agreed to.

    She was made to seek conflict, made to use her powers more...

    Made to suffer brain damage whenever she used her power.

    Those were the known costs for her power.

    Lisa didn't really know which option was worse, to lose her power and stop killing off parts of her brain, making her an idiot until they recovered, or not losing her powers and becoming stupider the more she used them, only to recover and realize how much of an idiot she had been.

    A part of Lisa wondered what the rest of the Undersiders would say if she told them. Alec wouldn't even question it. Rachel would accept the news easily enough if it was framed the right way, as Rachel understood drawbacks to powers quite intimately. Lisa knew how much trouble she had understanding humans properly because of her powers; the same powers that let her read dogs like they were open books made humans difficult for her.

    She wouldn't question being told that Lisa's intelligence came at a cost of temporary lunacy afterwards.

    As Lisa thought about it more, she decided Brian wouldn't even need much convincing. He would just nod his head and note that it explained her actions over the last few months perfectly.

    Lisa's thoughts went back to their immediate subject matter, watching as even the most minor of activations cut off parts of her brain, only for them to heal. She couldn't even control the minor activations.

    Lisa's attention went back to Taylor, as she tried to understand the girl she thought she knew so well after researching her non-stop not just for Coil, but for her own purposes.

    Or for her powers purposes, Lisa supposed as she recalled how her mind was altered to seek out more information— at how freely it seemed to feed her information about Taylor before the girl fixed her jammer.

    Lisa shuttered at how much brain damage she must have suffered and repaired over those weeks— those completely pointless weeks.

    Lisa had thought that she knew Taylor well enough to mold the girl like putty in her hands should something go wrong. Taylor never noticed her watching her on parol with Glory Girl, didn't notice as she followed her father to study him and try to puzzle out the protections she had shared with him. She didn't even notice as she also followed as Taylor walked with the man.

    Instead, Taylor had noticed. She had waited; she had bided her time against everything Lisa thought she knew.

    Taylor had then showed up in her bedroom with no warning, having isolated the room from the outside world, more than excessively as her power noted. She was in a deadzone that anything, including even screaming as hard as she was able, wouldn't disturb enough for the neighbors to notice.

    It was an interrogation chamber, repurposed out of her bedroom without her noticing.

    The very first hint she had of something wrong was when she was shocked awake by ice water, and as soon as she realized it was Taylor, the only thing that had stopped her from being utterly terrified was the thought that she knew the girl well enough to play her.

    She just needed to get Taylor to agree to help her and remove her from Coil.

    In the end she had, Lisa noted, acknowledging that she had determined that aspect of Taylor's personality accurately. Lisa was locked away inside the girl's lab, well beyond Coil's reach.

    It was everything else she didn't expect.

    She thought Taylor would have let her in her lab without needing information first. The Taylor she thought she knew shouldn't have insisted on medical examinations and tinkertech experiments. Taylor wouldn't have threatened to turn her over to the PRT constantly to remind her of her place in this.

    But Taylor did so anyway.

    Lisa couldn't help but draw some similarities to Coil, even though they were worlds apart.

    Coil would never have given her options, any of them.

    Taylor let her choose her jail, and Lisa was sure she could have gotten one far enough from Coil's reach if she pushed, or the chance to be locked up in here with reasonable hope for future freedom.

    Coil would never have let her choose.

    Taylor required her to be examined by her doctors and to talk to a therapist, but that was it. Treatment was for her sake, only benefiting Taylor in minor, indirect ways.

    Coil wouldn't have let her choose. If he offered her anything, it was because she would already take the option he wanted.

    Taylor was just as controlling as Coil was, but in a much better way. Taylor demanded as much control of her as Coil would in exchange for her protection, but that was mostly in response to Lisa's actions, putting Taylor's family in danger. She understood that much.

    Lisa's thoughts continued to bounce back to Taylor, finding it easy to think about her because her power couldn't expand past anything she could think about the girl, which limited how much damage it caused her, and she could only wonder if perhaps she had already made a mistake in how she handled Taylor.

    She knew the girl was a powerful tinker from when she first showed up. She had a scanner, full power armor, and an outright pocket dimension to tinker in, with full anti-thinker protections.

    The PRT would give her a flash rating of 10 from those alone.

    Flash ratings were always high, because the PRT knew being overly safe on unknowns was the best option. The first two would have put her at a flash rating 7 until they knew the relevant limitations, but the last two would rate her at a 10 without question.

    Power rankings were difficult because they amounted to how hard the PRT would find stopping someone, not how powerful they were, so someone that could use their power in a smart way would get a higher ranking, even if said power was weaker.

    Lisa had thought that she had a good idea of Taylor's limits when she worked out that the PRT would give her an 8 ranking when it was done...

    An eight was laughably too low, as it was merely what Taylor let the world see to hide what she could really do.

    During her hours with the therapist, Amanda, Lisa had talked to her, poked and prodded, trying to find out how lifelike she was despite being a computer program.

    Saint would be terrified, because Lisa couldn't find any faults in her. Lisa knew that her power couldn't help her locate those faults because Amanda was just as protected as everything else Taylor had made, which made talking to her unusually relaxing.

    It was interesting to note how ready Amanda was to let her talk about everything Coil made her do. In fact, the therapist pushed her to see that it was Coil making her do it, and not because she wanted to do it herself.

    Taylor had at least one AI that was human-like, maybe two if the Doctor was as advanced as Amanda.

    Depending on how easy more could be made, or their limits, Taylor could be looking at a possible kill order for self-replicating life, but Lisa had a feeling that neither would meet the necessary specifications. Taylor was way too smart to take on that form of risk unnecessarily.

    But that likely meant that the flash rating of 10 was too low for her.

    Taylor was a 12, minimum. She knew how to remove powers permanently, and the devices she made…

    She wasn't looking at a minor tinker, she wasn't even looking at a big name tinker like Dragon, Lisa had been stalking a girl that would sit on the Triumvirate, or rather Quadrumvirate, as the next Hero.

    She was a hero that, for all of her threats at Lisa, clearly wanted to help people even as she prioritised her family. When Lisa factored in what she had already done to Taylor and her family, made it quite clear to herself exactly what was in response to the threat to Taylor's family, and took the fact that the girl was intending to bring Panacea in that afternoon to help her…

    Lisa could only wonder why she even wanted to leave, why she didn't just go and beg Taylor to let her be a hero with her.

    What could she do under the personal protection of a future member of the Quadrumvirate? Even if Taylor didn't go that route, the personal protection of a Tinker 12, and the gear she could turn out would be a gamechanger. The armor she had seen so far alone would have let Lisa take on her entire former team solo trivially, and there were very few threats in Brockton Bay that could overwhelm its protection.

    Furthermore, all of the wonders she had seen were just four weeks' work. Tinkers took months to years to reach their full potential.

    The Taylor that Lisa has seen was a mere hint of what would become, and Lisa could easily see that Taylor would only let her stick around long term if she was a proper hero.

    Lisa, like many girls, had dreamed of being a hero when she was a young girl, only to lose that dream as she matured, particularly as her power made how many heroes died to villains painfully clear. She didn't want to die.

    If she could get Taylor to care about her and fix her powers, she would be sufficiently protected that nothing short of the entire Slaughterhouse 9 would require Taylor to personally intervene.

    No one she knew of could protect her better than Taylor would if she put in the necessary effort. She would be a fool to not embrace this fully. How many years had it been since she had had a moment of peace, a moment without the burden of the threat of constant death from all sides, the constant knowledge that she was being tortured by Coil somewhere and somewhen?

    Lisa turned her head to her door; she wasn't required to speak to Amanda any more today, but she was curious if the AI would reveal more information about her captor.

    Admittedly, she was starting to feel lonely, trapped in here all by herself. Having someone to talk to would help.

    Lisa was smart. She always had been. Even if she couldn't rely on her power, she still had her own intelligence to rely on. Lisa left her room to go talk to the AI. She would need to do a lot of planning, unable to trust her power, and all good plans required information. The best place to start to collect it was to ask Amanda how she could be a Hero.

    Taylor would have programmed her with what she felt a Hero should be, after all.

    0o0

    After Lisa settled into the rather comfortable chair with Amanda and indulged in light chatter before they started, she went right to the heart of the matter.

    "What does it mean to be a hero?" Lisa asked.

    "Isn't that something you should ask yourself?" Amanda returned the question.

    "I'm curious what you think a hero should do."

    "Curious what I think a hero should be, or curious what Taylor thinks a Hero should be?" Amanda raised her eyebrow.

    "Can't it be both? Shouldn't I form my options after understanding what others think?"

    "Yes, but do you really want to hear what Taylor thinks a hero should be so you can understand what you want to be in the future, or so you can act out a role?"

    Lisa hesitated in her answer, as that question was far more piercing than she expected, to the point she wondered if perhaps Taylor had figured out how to give the AI powers.

    "It's fine if you don't want to answer that now, Lisa." Amanda continued. "Let me get right to the core issue of your question. You want to pretend to be a hero, so that Taylor will trust you more."

    Lisa flinched at that, but Amanda continued before she could put a response together.

    "You wouldn't have fooled Taylor any more then you could have fooled me, Lisa. But that is beside the point. You don't need to pretend to be a hero."

    "But I am not a hero." Lisa noted.

    "Who is born a hero? Who, fresh from their mother's womb, has people look at them and say, she is a great hero? No one. Heroes are not something you are, Heroes are something you become. Pretending to be the Hero that you think Taylor wants you to be is the wrong way to do this, and will only backfire on you in the long run. If you really want to be the Hero she would want you to be, you have to want to be a hero regardless of her thoughts on the matter."

    "Which I am not." Lisa noted.

    "Which you are not right now, Lisa. Very few things can't be changed if you're willing to work on them, and I am more than willing to help you if that is what you wish. You don't really want to be a hero right now, and would have to change yourself to actualize that desire. It is a change to who you are, a big one, that only you can decide if you really want. I can tell you that you would benefit from an effort to take on heroic qualities. Taylor can. Everyone in the world can, but in the end, the choice to walk that path is entirely up to you. It is born of your free will, and no one can change who you are without your active participation. If you want to be a hero, that is for you alone to decide."

    Lisa was quiet as she pondered that, and Amanda let her think.

    This wasn't even remotely what she was expecting from Taylor's AI. Lisa expected Amanda to start listing off what a hero should do, or something along those lines. Digging into how she would have to change who she was on a fundamental level if she truly wanted to become a hero.

    Amanda didn't even try to pretend otherwise. She made it clear that Lisa wasn't a hero, and if she wanted to be one, she had to change who she was.

    Lisa felt torn at this. A small part of her, the part from her childhood that she had buried deeply, wanted to be the hero that she told her family she would grow up to be. A much larger and more mature part told her that it was a bad idea, knowing that heroes only suffered and died in this cruel world. But was that still true? Did her hard-bought wisdom apply under her potential benefactor's wing?

    She wasn't going to throw away her maturity for blind heroism, but she decided that perhaps she could shift her goal posts a bit.

    "What about just a bit more heroic, can we do that?" Lisa asked.

    "Of course. And if you like how things are afterwards we can keep going until you are happy with the outcome." Amanda agreed.

    0o0

    Unbeknown to Lisa, Taylor dropped the stream of thought that was monitoring her, seeing no need to continue strict surveillance.

    0o0

    End of Interlude 06

    0o0

    2.1.30 Extranet (200)
    This handy add on connects your Personal Reality with the local Data Networks of the Universe you're currently in… not only that, but it gets the kind of performance only really ever seen by ISPs at their hubs. If your current Reality of Residence does not have a Data Network, this will connect to the nearest equivalent.. yes, even if that is nothing more than a town gossip and a local library.

    2.1.31 VOWP Cellular Service (200)
    This Extranet upgrade hooks your Personal Reality up with Voice Over Warehouse Protocol Cellular Service, and provides you with fiat backed cellphones that are guaranteed to connect to the Personal Reality or to any other cell phone on the service… regardless of what Reality those phones are connected to at the current moment. You gain a vending machine that vends Nokia dumb-phones, iPhones up to 8, and Galaxy S7 smartphones, plus any cell phone (or similar) you supply it with a copy of, as well as SIM cards or the equivalent for other phones. These phones will work just fine no matter where you find yourself, but be careful as they're just as durable as normal ones and will need to be replaced should they get damaged or destroyed. They must be charged as normal, but get extremely good battery life

    1.5.19 Energy Projection (Mana) (100)
    Choose a type of energy, such as kinetic energy, heat, or even raw magical energy, and a method of attack, such as a blast from the hand, a breathed cone, or beams from the eyes. You can project this energy type in this manner using your internal energies. This attack starts out relatively weak, but is still capable of causing serious injury to an unprotected human. Practice with this attack will often allow greater flexibility in how it manifests - a breath weapon could become a cone, blast, or beam, for instance. Practice may also increase the potency of the attack, as will other factors such as mana pool and efficiency (for a mana beam attack) or physical size (for a breath) as appropriate. If the energy is projected from your hands, you may also choose to channel the energy into a weapon to add to the weapon's attacks. This ability may be purchased multiple times, choosing a different type of attack each time.

    1.3.4 Wild Empathy II (100)
    You have a natural rapport with sub-sapient creatures. This is most commonly used with naturally occuring animals, but can be used with any being that is not sufficiently developed to be targeted by the Empathetic and Charismatic abilities..
    ○ I: You find it easy to read the emotional state of sub-sapient creatures that you are familiar with and can communicate your intentions to them fairly well. This is not as robust as a spoken language, but any concept that can be conveyed in one or two words can be communicated.
    ○ II: As tier II, plus you may become familiar enough with a creature to communicate with it in only a few seconds of observation or interaction. Your
    interactions may also be slightly more complex, extending to concepts that require as many as three words. Your target's ability to comprehend and act on your communication will still be limited by its nature.

    3.2.10 Technomage (Strike Witches) (200)
    Strike Witches generally rely on service crews to tune and repair their striker, but not you. You'll be able to do the job much better and be able to modify your Striker to aid you focus your speed, defense or attack if you have offensive magical abilities. If you have technology from other jumps, you'll be able to incorporate them into your striker and with enough time make one from scratch.

    3.5.21 Smithing (Thundercats) (200)
    The ancient art of working with metal to forge weapons and armor. You know how to make beautiful equipment that can survive countless battles and you could even forge a legendary weapon if you dedicated enough time to it, although it'd probably take at least several years to complete.
     
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