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.
