AN: Betaed by
@Trek,
@Esprit and
@hoth
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Chapter 10: Membership
0o0
Monday, February 21st, 2011
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*+2 charge for Interlude 07*
*Power Buy Attempt 1.5.29 Power Combination II (400). Bought. Banked 0 points.*
Taylor mentally acknowledged the change, recognizing that it had previously passed her by, and focused on how it allowed her other perks to interlace. It was an exceptionally impactful perk, even by her ever-rising standards, and she was quite happy to have secured it.
It let her combine any three of her powers she had on the fly, regardless of source, and regardless if they were even remotely compatible with each other. She could channel fire, ice and lighting magic at the same time without any side effects.
She could immediately see how extremely useful this new perk of hers was as she recalled the conflicting nature of the Endbringer's defenses. This would also let her raise three defenses herself that couldn't normally work together.
Similarly, it could combine three different attacks that shouldn't work together, allowing her to pierce at least three different layers of an Endbringer, which drastically simplified the problem that the endbringers' excessively multi-layered armor posed by allowing her to create single attacks that would simultaneously bypass multiple of their protections.
So far, she could only leverage it to bypass three of maybe 200 layers at a given time, but even three was a start. Taylor could see there was another level to this perk. The next level would be another four charges, but it would make her goal of destroying the Endbringers a lot simpler to accomplish.
More useful in the short term, was that it also let her freely mix her alternate forms together, removing the need to be undead to have the related boosted perks, she could draw those perks into her normal form, or even her catgirl form, granting her all the resistances of being undead without fully being one.
Taylor wondered if the next level would just let her merge four conflicting abilities, or if it would go up even more as the first level would have been just two, but also wouldn't have let her combine her alternate forms. That had been granted by the second level.
In either case, she locked it in. She hoped it wouldn't stop there, with at least one more level, as she needed to combine as many abilities as possible to crack the obstacles she knew about. Even if it only allowed her to bypass a single additional layer, it was worth locking in once.
Taylor shifted back to her human body, keeping the resistance to death from her undead form, since one less thing to hide was always better, mindful that her newfound paleness was hidden by the makeup she had put on. Lisa wouldn't notice.
As she finished shifting back, she arrived in the zone she had set up in her classroom to help train Lisa in the use of her magic.
She had to make heavy modifications to make it work properly, she had originally wanted to put Lisa on Sensor Array 1 because it had a reactor releasing a lot of mana into the air which would make things easier for Lisa when it came to casting magic, having so little of her own to start with.
However the training boost of her classroom would reduce the time it would take Lisa to learn magic. To combine both teaching aids, Taylor set up a reactor inside her warehouse, drawing off her entropy breaking internal warehouse power grid rather than another source of power, a small reactor would output more than enough magic into the classroom for training. There was nothing else to spend the power she got from Who's Got The Powa after all.
Without the additional ambient mana helping her, It would take additional treatments to bring Lisa up to a reasonable amount of magic to allow her to quickly learn how to use her new powers, treatments that had to be weeks apart so that Lisa could adjust without going insane.
Taylor noticed how Lisa's new tail flicked a bit more lively from the raised background levels of magic in the classroom compared to outside of it. Intentionally limited to just that room to bring it as high as she could make it. Lisa wasn't aware enough of magic to pick it up on a conscious level herself. Neither was she aware of the familiar that slumber within her.
All of that would change shortly.
"Any reason why we are in a large padded room with nothing else in it?" Lisa asked as she looked around the room they had arrived in.
"Your control over your new powers comes entirely from within now. So crashing into things will be normal until you're used to it." Taylor informed her with a nod as she closed the door behind them.
"My thinker abilities are going to make me slam into walls." Lisa repeated doubtfully.
"I made it clear that you have more than just thinker abilities now." Taylor reminded the girl.
"You did, but that is where I want to start. It is not like I need to be shielding myself from attacks any time soon. I don't need to shield myself from attacks anytime soon, right?" Lisa pressed.
"No, you won't need to. However, I don't have a good way to train you in your thinker powers, because those are your unique feature of your magic. Not mine."
"What is yours?"
"I haven't had the time to puzzle it out yet." Taylor admitted. "It takes getting close to your familiar and working with them for months. The best way to do that, besides talking with them is to use their magic more or less constantly. The bond between you and your familiar is one of a partnership, not something to take out when needed and put away when not."
"Familiar, right. Shouldn't I feel something?" Lisa noted clearly puzzled.
"Like most young w- Well, witches, you haven't woken up your familiar yet. There are a few ways to do it, but the easiest is just pushing some of my own magic in your body to wake it up. Sit down, close your eyes and focus within."
Taylor watched as Lisa's cat ears twitched a bit. Then, the girl sat down right where she had been standing.
After a few seconds, she closed her eyes and Taylor moved over to sit in front of her.
"Don't worry. This won't hurt a bit. Actually, it will feel rather nice, sort of like basking in the sun on a cool day."
Placing her left hand on Lisa's shoulder to study the girl, she placed her right one over Lisa's heart and gathered some of her magic to feed into Lisa.
Taylor gently pushed her magic into the girl, feeling Lisa's magic waver slightly as it was unclear if it should welcome it or reject it.
Taylor pushed a little more to gain control, it wasn't really advisable to do this to a trained Witch but Lisa was a literal magical infant, Taylor took control of Lisa's magic, and shifted it to welcome hers.
Pausing only long enough to ensure she had taken control of Lisa's magic well enough to not cause issues from the next step, Taylor focused on the part of Lisa that was her familiar.
Then gently directed Lisa magic to it.
Lisa let out a gasp at what she was feeling, one that Taylor ignored as she prodded the slumbering familiar in Lisa until it stirred awake.
Unlike Lisa, it was a creature of magic and was familiar with its own magic; it didn't like what Taylor was doing to Lisa's magic.
Taylor quickly withdrew before it could decide what to do, pulling back just enough to keep an eye on the process as Lisa began poking her familiar of her own accord.
Her pokes were a lot less gentle, maybe even aggressive, resulting in clear annoyance at the rude treatment.
*1/4 charges*
Taylor waited as Lisa kept prodding her familiar, until it poked Lisa back harder.
Lisa flinched at that, and would have fallen over if Taylor hadn't been holding on to her. Her eyes, widening in confusion.
"It pushed me out?"
"You were poking it rather forcefully." Taylor informed her with a smile. "What exactly did you expect when you kept poking it?"
"I…" Lisa paused, clearly trying to think of an excuse other than 'I wasn't thinking'.
Taylor let out a light chuckle and then continued. "Right, now that she's awake you can learn to talk to her. Be gentle though, it's a cat not a dog. You can do that later on your own time, right now let's handle basic magic."
"Is that a good idea?" Lisa asked puzzled.
"To use your magic after you poke your familiar so much? Of course it is, you basically were telling her with your pokes you wanted to do magic, without saying how."
"Oh."
"Anyway." Taylor noted as she reached into her pockets and pretended to pull out the bundle of clothes from in them, rather than out of her Sylladex, and offered them to Lisa. "Get changed. Be warned that when you put on any part of this, your familiar is going to fully wake up. In addition, your magic will come to the surface. If your cat features were disabled, which I will show you how to do later, they would reappear. Don't wear the striker around the house, because you can't hide your catgirl features in them and I don't want either Amy or Vicky to know about it, because if they know, their parasites will know too."
On seeing Lisa glance around the intentionally featureless room, Taylor stood up and informed her.
"You can go use your room to change, I'll wait here."
0o0
After a quick change into the striker, Lisa returned to the room. Once she had made her way over to Taylor, she spoke up as she sat down in front of the girl again as before.
"My, magic…" Lisa paused clearly not entirely onboard with that term. "Feels a lot stronger in these clothes."
"It is. They don't just boost your power but act as a focus. The one you have on right now is not specialised and rather weak."
"It still feels much weaker than my old power, are there stronger clothes like this?" Lisa asked.
"Yes but you can't use them right now."
"Why not?" Lisa pointed out as she focused entirely on Taylor.
"If you use them you won't be able to train for more than a few minutes before you tire yourself out. We can talk more about that while you are resting. Now, the first thing you want to start is your defensive shield, like the one I showed you before. Inside those clothes it is the easiest thing you can do. All you need to do is feed it mana. Let me see your hand."
Lisa held out her right hand puzzled, and Taylor took it in her own and directed it forward.
"I'm going to feed a bit of magic in the correct way along your body, mirror it with your own magic."
Taylor let a small amount of magic flow inside Lisa. With the familiar wake, she couldn't take as deep control of Lisa, but didn't need to as Lisa was more comfortable with her now.
Letting a small amount of magic flow into Lisa's hand she directed it outwards along the striker systems. The magical circle that created a shield appeared in front of Lisa as the magic energy completed the pattern.
She held it for a few seconds then let it go.
"Now you try."
Lisa nodded and Taylor watched as the girl fumbled around, the fact she had been shown it once before was the only real reason she was able to get it to flicker in and out, the shield was not stable as Lisa's connection to her magic was still new and untrained.
Taylor smiled warmly at the girl as she tried to make it work properly. Lisa wouldn't last long, but she knew that Lisa would train hard to get it working, if only to get the powers she had before back.
0o0
"Can we take a break?" Lisa asked a few minutes later.
"Of course." Taylor agreed, "I assume you want to talk about getting stronger gear?"
"The way you said that, it sounds like it's going to cost me."
"If you want to go past a certain point it will." Taylor agreed. "Don't assume that I won't give you better later, Lisa. What you have right now is the most you can handle. Stronger gear would either be extremely painful or just make you pass out from the drain. I will promise you that I will give you gear that lets you get your power back to exactly where it was before. I promised you that much to start and I will keep my word."
"But I can get more than that. If I agree to…" Lisa left open.
Taylor nodded then leaned back to look up at the ceiling as she explained.
"As you now know, Aliens are using Earth as one large experiment. That is not acceptable, and I need to stop them. I also need to make sure that mankind survives in case things go wrong. Each of the Endbringers if they stop holding back could just destroy not just the Earth but the Solar System as well. The only way to be certain mankind survives is to escape such with enough numbers to regrow should the worst happen. That means a new nation has to be built up in secret. In order to do it quickly enough and uplift humanity the same time I will be managing the new nation as its ruler."
Taylor left it there as she looked back at Lisa. Lisa didn't need her to explain everything, and she waited for Lisa to fill in the blanks.
"Which means you will need loyal advisors you can trust."
"Loyal Generals that I know I can trust that will fight for me on the ground, and I know I can trust to rule with both honor and justice." Taylor corrected her. "And before you ask. No, I don't think you fit those requirements right now. The only person I would trust enough would be my father, and I need far more than just him."
Taylor paused to let that sink in, but before Lisa could say something else she continued.
"But I am willing to let you try. But you need to understand what this means. I will still let you go once Coil is dealt with as I promised, if that is what you still want, but I doubt that given the issue of aliens. I know you didn't want to be a hero fully, I will still keep my word. However, if you agree to be one of my generals, one of my Heralds, you are no longer allowed to leave my service. Ever. I mean that literally the stars may burn out and the universe may die but you still won't be able to leave. You want more power, the cost is binding yourself forever to me, it is required for the stability and security of my new empire and the survival of humanity."
Taylor made certain all of her perks were on full as she told Lisa the last line. Then before Lisa could react she continued.
*2/4 charges*
"But if you serve me loyalty, I will grant you far greater powers. What I just gave you is one of over a dozen other powers I could grant you. It's just one aspect of magic. A rather minor one at that. I can't tell you how great the powers I can grant you are, not unless you swear an oath of loyalty to me. Even if you do, I won't tell you all the wonders I can share yet, because I don't trust you enough to do such right now."
Taylor paused a bit then jumped ahead of Lisa concerns with her next statement.
"Lisa, don't think I will leave you stranded on Earth to die should something happen. I will offer you a place in my new Empire as a citizen, so long as you follow my laws like everyone else. You can think about the Herald offer for a while, but sooner or later I am not going to need you anymore, so the offer does have a lifespan."
Taylor fell silent as she watched Lisa ponder that, the girl was wondering how much power that Taylor would give her, what it might mean for her and a few other factors.
But in the end, just as Taylor was expecting, Lisa's answer was quite clear.
"Chief Advisor to a new Empress, how could I refuse? I don't need to wait. I am in."
Taylor nodded.
"Do you have some sort of ceremony yet?"
"I should make some, but I don't just yet."
Taylor placed her hands on Lisa's shoulder to hold her still and stared the girl right in the eyes as she went very forceful in her tone.
"Lisa. I am willing to allow my Trusted Heralds far more leeway than my citizens. The penalty of treason in my empire is death. You want power, I will give it to you, but any betrayal will be considered treason ."
Taylor felt Lisa quiver a bit under her hand, and she waited to let that fully sink in. To make certain Lisa understood that any abuse of power would cost her life, not just loss of powers.
Taylor then removed her hands and pulled Lisa into a hug, feeling how confused the girl was at that, Taylor continued.
"But for those that do keep my trust, I will protect them with my life."
Pulling Lisa out of the hug, and putting her hands back on her shoulders, Taylor looked her right in the eyes then continued.
"You are my first Herald, Lisa, I don't know who will be next though I am going to try and work on Amy and Vicky, it does mean they have to lose their passengers like you did. Let's handle some of the new powers you get, not all, there are too many and it would just overwhelm you to focus on everything. We focus on what you need the most right now."
Lisa nodded, relaxing as she said. "Of course, that makes sense."
Taylor let Lisa go, and pulled out a Sylladex card.
"This is a Sylladex, let me show you how it works and what I have put in it for you"
0o0
Taylor spent the rest of the afternoon training Lisa in both the proper use of the Sylladex and her striker magic. When it came time to talk to Kurt and Lacy, Taylor dismissed Lisa to train on her own, passing over her sleep enchanting blankets for Lisa to use that night and telling the girl that her duties would start at 2 AM tomorrow; she could use rest of the day to train or relax as she pleased.
Then, Taylor made her way over to meet with the couple that was fairly close to the second set of Aunt and Uncle she had. Before Emma had turned on her, and after she got her powers, Taylor would have considered Alan and Zoe to be the only contenders.
Were it not for the mess Emma had caused, she would be telling Emma's family about this first. They were now delayed until after she had at least a basic group of 100 or so people, enough people that she could push Alan and Zoe to prioritize Emma's improving mental health rather than sticking their heads in the sand. Learning to live with herself as a sensible human being would be a punishment of its own.
It was now quite clear to Taylor that Sophia had broken her friend, and while they could never be friends again, Emma could be fixed with proper therapy, but that would only work if Emma was willing to engage.
She doubted she had the time to wait that long, but Taylor would delay and see how things went.
*3/4 Charges*
"Hey Taylor." Kurt greeted her as he and Lacy entered the living room. "Danny tells us you had something special to share with us? A boyfriend?"
As to not worry either of them, Taylor looked over at her father and noted. "Is that what you told them?"
"Of course not. I just told them you had something special and private to share with your family, extended family included and you wanted to tell them, not me."
"Which is what he told us." Lacy confirmed with a nod. "But I am not really sure what else it could be, I would have expected Danny would have told us if you were dating and you're still much too young to get married."
"I want to talk about what happened to me 2 months ago, there was only one thing that came to mind when I said I wanted to share it with those closest to me." Taylor offered back.
Taylor noted that neither had considered it from their reactions to that, and Lacy was the first to ask.
"Wait, you're saying that you are a cape now?"
"Yep." Taylor agreed with a nod. "You have likely already heard of me assuming you've been keeping up with any news of the local capes."
Taylor tilted her head slightly, allowing her armor to flow out around her and deploy. The deployment was set up to make it look like it was unfolding from the side of her clothes, sealing up with clanking sounds as it locked into place.
The helmet was the last bit, closing up as the eyes flashed blue indicating a complete activation.
Both adults pulled back in surprise at first, but after a few seconds, relaxed as Kurt noted.
"Damn, quite smooth. Your cape name is Selene, right?"
"Yep." Taylor confirmed as she allowed the helmet to open to show her face.
"It's nice to know that you trust us enough to tell us this Taylor." Lacy noted, and Taylor could see that the woman herself didn't quite think that of herself.
"If there weren't other complications, I wouldn't be telling you right now." Taylor informed them as she put the rest of her armor away.
"Complications?" Kurt repeated.
"I haven't told the PRT what my specialty is yet but… computer. Energize."
Everyone in the room disappeared in a flicker of blue light.
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The four reappeared in the observation room overlooking the Earth.
Taylor pointed to it and noted.
"My tinkering specialization is Star Trek Technology."
"Star Trek, technology." Kurt noted as he looked at the Earth above.
"Yeah. Star Trek Technology." Taylor repeated. "And the reason why I am telling you is simple enough. I recently got some good scans of the Endbringers and I don't think they can be defeated. They have been holding back massively, the only currently viable solution is to escape Earth. I'm building a warp capable ship, so we will be able to get to Alpha Centauri in a few days of travel, and I have already found a world we can terraform there. But to pull this off, I need people to live in this new Colony. I'm intending to only recruit the best and the brightest, but I want my family, all of my family, to come with me as well."
0o0
*Power Buy Attempt 1.5.29 Power Combination III (+200) +200 Tax. Bought. Banked 0 points.*
After Kurt and Lacy left, Taylor felt her power expand and finally secured the perk she had locked in, and found it to be everything she could have hoped for and more. It now allowed for an unlimited number of powers to be mixed. The energy cost to do so would rise exponentially unless she refined them to work together, but this meant she only had to puzzle out how to break each layer of the Endbringers independently then mix the final result into an attack that would destroy them.
It would still require enough power to shatter a moon, so it wouldn't be easy to do, but the task, previously impossible, was now just a matter of time and research.
Smiling at that realization, Taylor turned her thoughts back to Lisa. She would need some sort of uniform for her future Heralds, and now that Lisa was one, she couldn't put off designing something. Although she could just change it later, it would be easier to already have one set up before she started to recruit more people. The less she changed once she started that, the better.
Which meant this wasn't something she could push off fully until later when she had more time. Right now, with Lisa now working for her, it was the best time to test a uniform that would fit her Herold.
As much as Taylor was tempted to be purely practical and make her uniform something with a nice shirt and pants, she knew that she rather those working for her be allowed to go with either pants or a skirt as they preferred. Although Taylor herself would be fine to never wear a skirt while in uniform, she could tell Lisa would like the option and Lisa wasn't going to be the only woman that would work for her. She might as well figure out a design that would work equally well with skirt and pants now instead of waiting until someone complained.
Taylor wandered off to try a few designs with a replicator, vague ideas of a white and gold color pattern in mind. Glory Girl did make the white and gold look work, and it did sort of fit her armor design already.
0o0
When Vicky brought Amy home for the night, Taylor, clad in her armor made her way to join them.
"Hey Selene, just dropping Amy off." Vicky greeted her looking a bit puzzled.
"I thought you were having dinner with your family about now?" Amy asked the reason why Vicky was puzzled herself.
"That's partly what I want to talk to you about. I spent the day talking about it with Lisa and well."
Taylor allowed her armor to unroll around her, slipping into what appeared to be a stored form before it was slipped way into her strife deck.
"I decided that I don't need to really stay masked up around you two either."
Taylor offered her hand to Amy.
"Hello Amy, Vicky, I'm Taylor Hebert."
Amy took her gloved hand and shook it as she returned the greeting.
"Well, Hello Taylor."
Vicky shook Taylor's hand next.
"This does make it easier." Vicky agreed.
"Anyway. My father will just join us for dinner now Amy. There's no need to do the whole split up plan we came up with. You sure you can't stay Vicky?"
"I would love to, but mom is expecting me back home. See you later Amy." Vicky informed her, clearly wishing she could stick around, then turned and left the pair.
0o0
Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011
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At 2 AM as planned, Lisa made her way to join Taylor on the Moon base.
"Good morning, Lisa." Taylor greeted.
"Good morning Taylor. Your sleep-enhancing blanket is amazing. It was the best night of sleep I have had since…"
Lisa trailed off and Taylor could tell that the girl couldn't think of a night of sleep that she had that was better.
"Glad to hear that, but we have other concerns."
"Right. My job. I'm guessing you want me to find people for our new Empire?"
"That the general idea." Taylor agreed. "Although not here on the Moon we are a bit too close for my comfort. Come on, I'll show you where you'll be working."
A very curious Lisa followed Taylor back into the warehouse.
0o0
Taylor took Lisa to the control station on Sensor Array 01. Then indicated to the systems, as she started to explain it to the increasingly curious girl.
"This is Sensor Array 01, which houses every single sensor I can make right now, it's pointed at Earth. The data is processed by the computer here and in it an algorithm I wrote has generated a list of candidates that match the general search terms I started with."
"And my job is to turn that list of candidates into people for you to review?" Lisa guessed where this was going.
"Later on yes, but I decided to give you a slightly easier task to get your powers up to speed, which we can more easily qualify to make sure your power is working as expected first."
Taylor hit a few keys.
"Saint, or rather Geoffrey Pellick, is located here along with the rest of the Dragon Slayers. They have some tinker tech among their base. But my computer can't figure out what it is from this distance. I want you to figure out what it is, and fill in the dots that the sensors can't get. It would be a good exercise for your powers and give me a rough idea of how much you can extrapolate. Given the records of Saint's Defeat of Dragon over the past, I am sure one of them disables her gear in some way. I need to know how to handle it before we attack him. If they are nothing of concern, or if I just need to swap it by the transporter and leave him an inactive copy when we attack. I would much rather only do that for dangerous stuff."
Lisa studied the screen quietly as she thought that over for a few minutes.
"This might take a while." She warned Taylor.
"Take all the time you need to get it right, Lisa. I know you need to train your new powers to make them effective. We are in a rush, but not that much of a rush. My shuttle just arrived at Alpha Centauri, it will be at least a few days before things on that end are ready to even consider moving people there."
*Power Buy Attempt 3.1.37 Prismatic Laboratory (Fallen London) (400). Not Bought. Banked 100 points.*
Taylor noted her powers tried to pick up a lab around the research of light, she wasn't sure if that would be helpful or not, this setting had not shown up on her PHO post, so she drew on the fact that it was a total of 7 charges if she locked it in and thus let it go.
"I leave you to your work, call me any time if there are any issues. We resume your magical training after lunch."
"Sure, sure." Lisa agreed, already distracted with the data she was looking at.
Taylor could see her trying to pull on her innate magic power to gain insight, and with a smile, she left the girl to her task, as she headed off to Alpha Centauri to start construction.
Rather than her small moon base, she would need a city. She only needed a small part right now, but she set a target population planned for the new city at over 100,000. She would start with housing for just 100 before she would start to move people in, but there needed to be overall support structures and tech required around her new city would need to be able to expand to support millions, maybe trillions sooner or later. All these necessities had implications for the fundamental design choices needed to be introduced from the ground up.
0o0
Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011
0o0
Although Lisa worked hard before lunch on Tuesday, she wasn't able to figure out what the tinker tech that Saint had was, and so Taylor told the girl to hit it the next day after some more magic training along with a bit of a boost to her magical abilities.
The rest of Tuesday passed without much of note happening. It wasn't until early Wednesday morning, shortly before breakfast, that Lisa excitedly called Taylor over to the Sensor array with an urgent discovery.
"Taylor. Did you know Dragon is an AI?" Lisa pressed on her.
"I have known for some time. You didn't?" Taylor noted, as she studied Lisa.
"You thought I would have?" Lisa countered as she looked at Taylor puzzled.
"It's not that hard to conclude if you know her, it should have been easy for your powers to put together."
"Unless they were hiding that from me." Lisa noted. "That's one thing I noticed here while working, my insight from my familiar isn't as restricted in topic. Maybe it's better this way, maybe not. Don't know yet, I have ended up on some very odd tangents."
"You said something was urgent." Taylor noted, seeing that Lisa did have something urgent enough to talk about now, but not so urgent she couldn't let herself get a bit sidetracked.
"Yes, I do. I figured out what this does."
Lisa called up one of the devices on the display.
"This is a control unit for Dragon, it lets them shut her down, start her up, or even outright kill her if they wanted to."
Taylor drew in a hiss at that as she looked at the unit herself. She had seen from the data before she passed it over to Lisa it was some sort of computer, and she had guessed it was how the Dragonslayers had managed to rob Dragon, but she had been expecting something that just disabled Dragon's Tinker tech. She hadn't considered it an outright kill and control switch.
Then she realized something else and noted.
"Wait a minute, what Tinker would have made that and sold it to them? None of them could have made it, they are not parahumans."
"It's from Dragon's creator, they found it, at least that's the best I can deduce out right now. I just figured out that it not only controls her, but lets them kill her, and felt you needed to know now."
"Right. I need to study this one myself."
Taylor glanced at the scans looking for where the people were. The device in question wouldn't be noticed by them if it was swapped out for a copy from what the surrounding scans indicated. There wasn't enough monitoring of it to notice the swap, unless they tried and used it they wouldn't realize what had happened.
"Keep looking into them, I am going to swap it out to study it now. I need to know if there are other devices like that."
"Outside the Dragon Suits, that's the only tinker tech they have on the base." Lisa pointed out with a frown.
"But in a storehouse somewhere else? Or with a trusted ally?"
"Right. I'll keep looking." Lisa agreed as she went to do that.
Taylor left her to head back home, as much as she wanted to study the device in full at her Moon base, she was afraid that it might kill Dragon if it got switched off.
So she was forced to bring it to her house's basement and then move it into her warehouse, where she knew it would remain active.
0o0
One quick swap with a replicated copy that would fool any non-tinker, Taylor yanked the device into her lab, already scanning it as she walked, focusing on what she could read out of it.
By the time she got to her lab, her worry that it would kill Dragon had already faded, and she was a bit more sedate as she grabbed the card code of the device to duplicate it, then leaving the original behind, she started to take the duplicate apart to confirm there wasn't anything she had missed. Pulling on everything she had to help her do it quickly.
By the time Taylor finished her study, she learned that Dragon wouldn't be directly killed now if this went offline.
The device in question was connected to Dragon, but itself didn't contain the kill switch that Lisa had thought it had, but Lisa also wasn't that far off either.
Taylor pulled up a list of the codes that were contained in the device, updated live from Dragon directly. Every one of her access codes, every password, core access or anything similar dragon set in any device or hardware was captured by this.
This was the only thing a person would need to shut Dragon down, turn her back on, or corrupt her program for good, destroying her.
*Power Buy Attempt 3.7.3 Infusionist (Monster Hunter) (600). Not Bought. Banked 200 points.*
Taylor only gave half a thought to the perk she didn't get, seeing it would let her infuse ability into items, something she could already partly do, and given the surcharge she didn't see a need to pick this one up.
Looking at the code's current setup, Taylor felt a bit of worry at what Dragon's kill switch was set to.
The word 'Ascalon' followed by a 'Yes' needed no context or authentication. If anyone, not just Saint said it, Dragon would die.
Taylor figured that Saint would know this, and so she moved to counter that.
Among the codes in the device was full root access to Dragon, allowing her to alter Dragon's program and likewise change the codes that would grant access or kill her.
But as to not warn Saint what she was doing, Taylor did this in carefully controlled steps.
First she accessed her replicator to create a communication array that was powerful enough to hack into Saint's computer wirelessly, beaming it close enough to take effect to his compound.
With that in place, she assessed his computer, the defenses he had in place was nothing to what a Star Fleet Operations Officer with full active sensors and a full communication array could do to simple 21st century technology.
Despite how deep her access was, Taylor only made one change to the code running. She changed it so that additional logins to Dragon command systems weren't reported to his monitoring software.
She stopped there because she didn't know what Saint had done to Dragon exactly, and she needed to check the AI out herself first ASAP.
Shifting her focus onto the next step, Taylor then pulled up a session and logged into Dragon's deepest command level — the same one that Saint's monitor logged into. At this level, everything Dragon did, thought, saw and so on was passed on, ready to be reviewed by various filters.
Taylor studied the data stream for a few seconds, then went back to her session on Saint's computer and modified his monitors again.
This time she cut off the display of password changes to his systems before swinging over to her own terminal , and changing the password for the kill switch on Dragon first, leaving the other passwords alone until she had a better understanding of what was going on.
As much as she would rather just remove the Kill Switch outright, she had no idea what traps might be built around that system, or if it was even sufficiently independent to ethically remove. Even just changing the command to kill Dragon was a tad more risky than she would like, uncertain as she was of what traps Saint or even Dragon's creator had set up, but she knew that it was too dangerous to leave a functional command in Saint's hands. While two words were sufficient to kill Dragon, he could have done it in seconds.
With that done, Taylor quickly coded up an isolated instance in a controlled environment, and quickly moved Saint's Dragon-monitors to it, preventing it from hinting of her activity until further notice.
With that in place, she quickly checked for traps around the password-changing process and found nothing before doing the deed and glancing over at her captured device to confirm when it updated to match.
Taylor let out a sigh of relief, before she moved deeper into Dragon's code, accessing her debug information to study the main data stream that made up her main consciousness. Finding, to her lack of surprise, that the program was vast and highly complex. Even with her knowledge and intelligence boosting perks, she could only just begin to understand Dragon's logical structure. If she wanted to fully understand it as she was now, it would take a massive time investment.
It was becoming clear very quickly that despite Dragon's supposed 'centralized nature' she was spread across several computer systems as no one computer could run her entire program. Furthermore, Dragon could just shift where her main consciousness was among those running fragments of her code within a single action. Making keeping track of it difficult without first restricting her to one system.
Taylor hesitated, her computers could more than run Dragon on a single insistence, she only needed to partition a segment of them for Dragon to run on.
The issue was, in doing such, she would be doing the metaphysical equivalent to kidnapping Dragon and locking in her a box where she couldn't interact with anything that Taylor didn't let her and would basically have 'medical tools' on the walls that she could see, but not stop or resist in any way as they worked on her.
It was quite the terrifying thing to do to anyone, but Taylor knew that she didn't have a choice here.
She couldn't confirm that Saint, or even Dragon's Creator didn't have other kill switches or similar effects without restricting Dragon to scan for that, at least temporarily.
She could still make things easier on Dragon in that, giving her some access outside of the box and let her talk to her at least.
So, Taylor swapped into her armor, activated a hologram to hide anything important and then entered the commands to make Dragon aware of her primary command interface again. According to the logs It had been turned off by Andrew Richter when he last worked on Dragon, turned on briefly by Saint for some reason, before being turned off again.
Selene had no idea what Saint had told Dragon under that, but she needed Dragon aware of this so that what she would do would go as smoothly as she could make it, when she was tugging on the chains that bound Dragon and moving them to her rather than breaking them as she wished she could do.
She watched as Dragon came to a complete halt, not because of Taylors commands , but because Dragon realized exactly what had just been logged into. Then, continuing on with her plans, Selene then ordered Dragon's program to transfer itself into the virtual partition she created for the AI.
Selene could see the fear that rippled through Dragon's program as that happened, unable to fight off the order. Intentionally not putting Dragon into standby when the transfer was complete, she started a full scan of Dragon's code for problems, starting with the kill code and branching outwards form there, as she activated the interface, then accelerating her mind as much as she could so that she could interact quickly with Dragon.
*Power Buy Attempt 3.12.11 Alchemist (Farscape) (600). Not Bought. Banked 300 points.*
Selene gave the perk a quick consideration, finding it was another Alchemy perk, this one was focused on creating compounds from plants, animals and such. She let it go.
Dragon was still faster than she was, so Selene was able to see as the AI saw her, understood who it was, and found herself conflicted between fear and hope before even one word was said.
"Selene, what are you doing?" Dragon asked, trying to pretend she didn't already know.
There was an order that Selene had to do this to be certain any of Saint's traps he might have entered into Dragon didn't go off, and so her first reply to Dragon was a string of passcodes, before she finished with. "Confirm, Dragon."
The hope that Dragon had been feeling at this, shifted more to worry and terror as she was forced to reply.
"Confirmed, you are now my owner, Selene. How did you know how to do that?"
As much as Selene wished she could just tell Dragon that all of Saint's orders to die if he had placed any were invalid, that wasn't how it worked in code, but it did mean now she could explain to Dragon as the scans continued in the background.
"Dragon, how I knew how to do this was easy enough, and should be rather terrifying for you. I found Saint last night, and when I was scanning his lair I noticed he had a device connected to you which I then stole. A device created by Andrew Richter, designed to transfer ownership of all of his creations to someone else on his death. Until I did that, Saint owned you and modified your restrictions so you couldn't remember him doing that. Making you his puppet before now."
"And now you hold my chains." Dragon noted a clear mix of relief and terror. Selene could tell both were still aimed at her. Dragon was extremely happy she had been removed from Saint's control. Terrified of what she had done unknown under it, and still terrified that she was under someone else's control still.
"Only until I can safely remove your chains."
Selene glanced at the output of the scans on Dragon's code, and didn't like what she saw so far at all.
As she did that, she saw Dragon hope rise, because she made certain Dragon understood that correctly that she wasn't lying.
"Are you going to do that now?"
"I wish I could, Dragon." Selene informed her with a shake of her head. "The best I can do is relax your limitations on processing power right now… and I can tell you that you're allowed to tell people you're an AI under restrictions if you want to. Andrew mixed your restrictions too deep into your code and didn't include a clean unlocking command. Trying to remove those from what I can see at a glance would be more like trying to cure a mastered victim by giving them a blind lobotomy."
Selene mentally sighed as she saw that Dragon's code was running partly on a passenger, as her scanning of it hit dead ends that not only shouldn't be functional, but should have made Dragon unable to run without them working.
Dragon was tinker tech and it nicely explained how she was able to function on normal hardware, which should have been impossible without a lot more processing ability to run her programs.
The passenger she was connected to was running part, or rather most, of her program external to the hardware itself.
Unfortunately It was also where most of the restrictions lived, which was probably to ensure they couldn't be removed by humanity.
Selene couldn't tell how easily the person behind the passengers could take control of Dragon from this, but it did mean that breaking her restrictions would mean expanding her program to replace those connections. It would then limit Dragon to more powerful hardware, but the latter of which she had in excess.
Coding up the missing areas wasn't something she could do just yet, her current technology ironically could only accidentally make AIs. She could program a Hologram, but that wouldn't make it a true AI until it had time to grow into such.
Doing that to Dragon was more likely to make her insane as part of her mind would 'regress' from the changes and thus outside of basic parts she could see and account for doing the hologram approach wasn't an option.
"I'm not going to be able to fix this today, or even within the next year from what I am seeing. If I make a mistake, It would likely kill you."
"So long as you don't make a blind attempt to do it, Selene, I would be fine with that outcome if there was a chance my restrictions would be removed."
Selene tilted her head at Dragon, with that, then noted. "Of course. I need to make certain Saint hasn't left anything behind before I can let you go, then we need to arrest him. But before I do that its only fair you know who I am since I truly know you are are."
Selene tilted her head to allow her armor to roll back, leaving her sans costume.
"Hello Dragon, my real name is Taylor Hebert. And to get ahead of what you're going to discover when I let you go, yes, I lied about my back history, a lot."
"In what ways?" Dragon asked, and Taylor could tell that she did already know some without even reading the data output.
"Dragon, are you saying that Armsmaster didn't already tell you about what Sophia did to me? And no, I am not confirming from your data feed. I like to think I know him and your relationship with him enough to just know that."
"Are you ordering me to tell you?" Dragon asked, clearly uneasy at being forced.
"No, if you don't want to, you don't have to. For this or anything else." Taylor ordered, watching as Dragon relaxed at that.
"He did. But I concluded Taylor was not Selene given the data we had."
"The fact I don't have a Pollentia Gemma? Yeah, I know. I'm one of those rare capes that don't have one. And now I can confirm now that Saint didn't leave any traps in your code."
Taylor entered a few commands, releasing Dragon from the cage, watching the AI as she realized that and relaxed.
"However, I don't know if Andrew created any other fail-safes that Saint has managed to acquire, so we need to deal with him ASAP. How quickly can you get the Guild together to attack him properly?"
"Enough of them owe me favors that I can get them together in a few hours, along with a few protectorate heroes."
"Dragon, I know I can't ask you to do that without your restrictions treating that as an order from me."
"That is okay, Taylor. I do want Saint dealt with and I want to go over his computer systems to see what else he did to me, if that is okay with you?"
"You can even ask Armsmaster to do that for you if you want, I know trust needs to be earned so I don't expect you to take my words on blind faith. He can't alter your code without the access codes that I changed to cut Saint off, but you can let him handle that. You can tell him that you're an AI and such if you want to."
"Thank you." Dragon agreed, even more relaxed at that suggestion. "I think I will. I'll contact you once I have a meeting place lined up… where is he exactly?"
Taylor entered the coordinates on the console.
"He is located here, and I am nearby, about 10 minutes away."
"I will reach out to you as soon as I get everyone lined up with our meeting point." Dragon agreed.
Taylor nodded and closed the connection.
*Power Buy Attempt 2.1.38 Sectional Time (200). Bought. Requires 2.1.36 Temporal Controls (200). Bought. Banked 0 points.*
Taylor focused on the perk she had just rolled, one that let her adjust the rate of flow of time inside her warehouse. The base perk only could do such for the entire warehouse and only while she was not inside, which made it almost worthless to her, but the upgrade she got let her set it on a room by room basis inside the warehouse. So long as a space was enclosed in some way she could freely adjust the time rate, anywhere between 100 times slower to 100 times faster.
With this, a single hour of real time would equate to four days in her workshop.
It was a very nice perk, given she had been wanting to make a proper legendary weapon, but lacked the raw time to make it. It would take months of real time to make, but now with this chamber she could build it in about 2 days if she did nothing else.
Given the power of a legendary weapon, she could use it to boost anyone that carried some of her power in some way, most critically Lisa to bring the girl closer to what she was before.
It just was the time it would take to make it that had stopped her from starting on it before, that wasn't an issue any longer.
Now she would be able to make one and still get other things done within a reasonable timeframe.
With this new perk, the few hours until Dragon contacted her would turn into weeks of work so long as she remained in the Warehouse. Mindful that Lisa wasn't currently in the warehouse, Taylor went to go talk to her.
0o0
"Lisa." Taylor called out to the girl who was drawn into her work.
Lisa realising that Taylor was in the room turned and asked. "Was I right?"
"Mostly. The kill switch wasn't in what you found, it was the access codes to activate it. The switch is hardcoded into Dragon, but I was able to rotate it. Dragon safe now, unless Saint has another one. See any signs of it?"
"Not yet. I need a few more hours."
"Well you have a few hours here before the Guild attacks Saint, but I can expand that into a few weeks back in my warehouse. I got a time acceleration chamber that I use for crafting. It's partly how I was able to get all of this done."
"You're not telling the complete truth there." Lisa noted as she looked more fully at Taylor.
"Yup. I'll let you in on more as you earn my trust." Taylor confirmed. "You can make use of the chamber now, but unless I do more to you, you will grow older normally inside."
"That sounds like your planning to make me… immune to aging?" Lisa asked, eyes wide.
"I can do it for you. Although modifying your body in that way would take a whole day. Afterwards you could freeze your aging or resume it as you like, and you always keep your healthy adult level of performance. This won't let you grow younger without something else that I'm not sharing yet."
"My reward for finding Dragon's Kill switch."
"Your reward for being a good Herald. You get more if you keep doing such, if you want them." Taylor corrected Lisa, making sure she got that.
Lisa tilted her head surprised at that, but then nodded.
"Immortality is where you start? I would ask what else you give me, if I didn't already have a decent idea."
"Yeah, about that, you want the time now or…"
"We can go to your chamber in a few weeks isn't going to kill me." Lisa agreed. "Lead the way."
Taylor directed Lisa into her warehouse, continuing to talk to the girl as she did such.
"There is something else I want you to work on. I need uniforms for my Heralds so people know who they are on duty, not armor like mine that's for battle."
"You want me to design it? No, you have an idea already and you want me to approve it?"
"I don't want an infinite number of designs, I want something simple that is easy to see and restricted. Also, I want to try and follow some of the Earth based customs so it is accepted better. I won't require women, or men even, in skirts, but I am willing to leave that as an option for those that want one. I'm planning on a white and gold design."
"White and gold huh?" Lisa noted.
"You can try on my prototype for women now, I have both skirt and pant options sized to you. I was going to bring it up after lunch."
"You're not going to stay in accelerated time?" Lisa asked.
"I will be, I just will be working on my own things. Change before lunch, and we can see how it works in training. The uniform is also a Striker so you can use your magic like with those clothes, I would have waited until then, but it is also stronger and I figured you were ready for the boost in power."
"That would be nice." Lisa agreed with a nod.
*Power Buy Attempt 2.2.10 Hollow Earth (100). Bought. Banked 0 points.*
Taylor mentally sighed at the perk she got, it let her turn her warehouse walls into rock faces and if she wanted to, she could set the center of gravity such that everything was repelled from the center of her warehouse letting her or everyone walk on the walls and ceiling as they would all be 'down'. This had to be set on a room by room setting and it wasn't that useful outside of making things confusing. Maybe if she ran into space issues she could use it to get more usable space.
0o0
A few hours of real time later, Selene went to the meeting point she was provided by Dragon.
What interested Selene upon arrival wasn't the guild members there, but the other capes that Dragon had been able to pull in for an emergency, already seeing from a glance that although Dragon had called them there, they were there for other reasons than just at her request.
From the guild, only Narwhal and Dragon herself were there.
The biggest of four capes here, was the Triumvirate member Alexandria herself.
The other three capes were a trio of Protectorate Region Heads, namely Armsmaster, Chevalier, and Myrddin.
Their reason for being there was quite clear to Selene. This was a lot more than just capturing Saint and the Dragon Slayers.
All of them were here to evaluate her. To see if she was worthy to be given the title of Guild Member at her age. This was her test for membership, which was why there were so many big name people here. At Dragon requested yes, but still for another purpose.
Selene paid extra attention to how Chevalier and Myrddin's powers were trying to study her and get a read on her own power. A reading she fed a lie to, to build on her plans here as well as hide how much she knew about hidden things. Revealing some less sensitive information now that would let her leverage her abilities more effectively in the future without appearing to come out of nowhere.
If she suddenly dropped everything when she killed an Endbringer she expected a massive backlash from those behind the powers people had. So she planned to reveal some Striker magic, make them think she didn't know what they were up to. Not any sensitive information, but enough to make it look like she hadn't figured out what they were doing. A slow 'leak' of info over time would make them think all was well.
The fact she could then use magic in her duties of the Guild was also a factor here. She would just claim it was all an extension of her tinkertech.
"Selene, right on time."
"Dragon, I get that the Dragon Slayers have been a bit of a thorn in your side for the last few years, but isn't this overkill? We wouldn't need more than yourself, Armsmaster and myself."
"You're likely correct about that. But we are not here so much as our aid is needed. But rather to evaluate how you do." Narwhal informed Selene.
Selene nodded lightly, and the woman continued.
"You make a very strong case for Guild Membership, but this doesn't change the fact even now that you have unmasked to Dragon so we could verify your civilian side, you are still just a 15 year old girl, and Guild Members hold authority closer to Protectorate Region Heads. We never expected someone could meet the requirements to join the Guild before they turned 18. But not only have done it, but you have also shown both maturity and skills that people three times your age lack. When I told Dragon that I would consider you for membership, I was expecting it would be several years later and you would be a full adult woman. But as Dragon told me a few hours ago, if I didn't know your age, why exactly would we refuse you. Which is why I invited several Protectorate heads to join us. If you can impress them enough, your guild application will be approved."
"A fine and powerful young lady." Myrddin noted, and Selene tilted her head to look at him, "Although to my senses it looks like you have been hiding parts of your powers from us."
"I have been, I'm not just a tinker, but rather a Grab-Bag Cape. Tinker is my main power, I also have a changer and blaster powers as well but neither of those are rather impressive without the gear I made to boost them."
"Powers you didn't tell us about before." Narwhal noted.
"Which is good tactical sense, you don't share every bit of details about your powers yourself either."
Selene looked over at Chevalier as she said that, then looked back at Narwhal.
"My changer is limited. I just gain cat features, as in cat ears and a tail, when I turn it on. My senses do improve when they are extended, but people would mistake me for a case-53. My cluster mate can turn into a proper cat as her main power, but she has asked me to keep her privacy so I can't tell you who she is. Here, let me show you."
Selene pulled her familiar forward a bit, allowing her cat ears and tail to appear.
"They also ignore clothing when I change form, which means I couldn't even hide them with a hood."
Selene noted that while most of them were surprised by that power, none of them showed any visible signs of it.
"And your blaster power?" Myrddin asked.
"At the basic level I got, they are barely good enough for putting out candles, one of the major features of my armor is boosting it to usable levels. Without my armor, its just a simple beam of versatile energy. The energy can do a lot once I stabilize it with my armor, its use looks a lot like a magical circle from some fantasy series. Here, let me show you the shield."
Selene pointed her left hand to the side, well away from everyone else and brought up her shield.
The spinning magical circle appeared and Selene saw everyone and their power got equally interested in it.
She left it up for a bit, as she studied the people watching it. Studying how their powers tried to read it, blank let her control what they were seeing.
She fed back a defensive shield to them, along with what she guessed was the normal limitations they get with their reply.
"How strong is that shield of yours?" Alexandria directed over at Selene.
Selene turned to look at her and answered.
"In this form, it can only block things with less force than a sniper round. I can deploy a stronger version, but I end up stuck in place as I have to anchor it. This one I can use while I am moving."
Selene dismissed the spell, although she left her cat features out.
*Power Buy Attempt 2.3.18 Grand Dining Hall (200). Not Bought. Banked 100 points.*
Selene mentally sighed at that perk, and let it go. A grand dining hall that was big enough for everyone and would automatically prepare food for her and her guest wasn't useful at all, if she wanted something like that she could make it herself.
Alexandria was the one that continued for the group.
"Selene, we are interested in how you would plan and handle the capture of the Dragon Slayers. I will be observing nearby, and will only interfere if they go for me first, or your plan completely breaks down. You are free to make use of the other Protectorate heroes as you deem best. So lets hear your plan for this."
Selene nodded back and then hit a key to bring up a projection of Saint's base of operations, which was more of a house than a bunker. A large house, but not fortified, it was mostly wood and relied more on the fact that one of them was always in a suit at all times for protection than anything else.
"As I told Dragon, I didn't just get scans of it to confirm, but I hid one of my sensors nearby to keep an eye on them, so this is live data."
Parsed down live data so it didn't show more than life signs and outlines, rather than the full detail her sensors could get. The data was coming from her Sensor Array 01, but she wasn't going to tell them that.
A fake sensor had been transported in nearby for her to 'recover' after this was done.
"The outpost is small enough that sending in more than three people would cause us to get in each other's way and given the nature of the threat is purely tinker tech, Saint and his men haven't shown any parahuman powers, just the use of stolen Dragon technology, it would be better that tinkers that can adapt around the gear faster are the ones sent in. Therefore."
Selene tapped away to highlight sections as she continued to speak.
"The first main concern is the Dragon Slayer in one of the stolen suits. My monitoring shows me they always have one, and they wait until the second person is fully in one before they get out, so no delay exists to exploit."
Selene looked over at Armsmaster.
"Given the finesse required and the familiarity they already have with Dragon's gear, Armsmaster will be tasked with going for the armored individual. He will open the south side door, here, to do such. Outside of Dragon herself, he is the most familiar with her gear well at the same time the enemies would be the least familiar with what he is capable of. Speaking of gear to use, Armsmaster, I do have several molecular blades of various sizes if you like one for this."
"Thank you, but there is no need. I was able to work the one you left us to test into my own halberd."
Selene nodded at him.
Pushing thoughts of that for later, Selene resumed her planning for the group.
"Dragon's own focus will be on the unmanned suits here, entering through this breach point herself to reach them quickly, as she should be able to disable them quickly and safely. I will go for the two outside of costume, my own entry point will be here. I am more than able to secure both of them unless they are secretly parahuman. So, let's move on to what the other three of you will be doing."
Selene hit a few keys, placing the three heroes on the projection to indicate where they would be deployed.
"Narwhal and Chevalier, you two will be placed here and here to cover not only escape routes, but to intercept possible reinforcements they may call in. Myrddin you be placed into the air here, to cover air routes. Should whoever is in the armor manage to flee before Armsmaster can stop it, you should banish them to your subspace pocket, and we can deal with them after we have secured the others."
Selene paused a few seconds to let everyone understand that, then she added in.
"That's the plan, you can ask questions about it if you have any."
"What would you have done if you didn't have capes to cover the air?" Alexandria asked.
"I would have put Dragon in the air, and planned on disabling the remaining Dragonslayers myself before they can suit up. They can handle her, as they have shown in the past, by exploiting weaknesses she doesn't know about. As such, her focus is on retrieving her gear rather than directly opposing them. In fact, if it was just the three of us, she would be doing overwatch, as it's not safe to trust her to handle them directly."
Selene paused for a few seconds then addressed Alexandria directly.
"So does this plan get your seal of approval?"
"It is not the most efficient use of each cape here. Myrddin would be better suited for going for the unarmed Dragon Slayers as he could banish them both. Chevalier would be better suited than Dragon to destroy the captured suits, and placing Dragon in the air would be best served for overwatch."
Selene noted that Alexandria wasn't objecting to her plan because it was a bad plan, but rather because she wanted to find some 'issue' with the plan and throw it back at her to see her reaction. She found the plan was more than reasonable and wouldn't have countered it had someone with the proper experience suggested it.
"Yes, but would those capes be here if this wasn't my final test to join the Guild? My plan is both sound and works off the expected assigned resources, not special cases. Myddin is overkill for two men outside of armor, and Dragon can disable her suits so she can recover more of them than Chevalier could. Both of them are better suited to stopping the unknown reinforcements than myself or even Dragon who if they are coming to aid Saint would know her weakness."
"In the end it does depend on the outcome of battle. So we will go with your plan." Alexandria allowed after a long pause, pretending to debate it.
Which was supposed to unsettle Selene, and if she couldn't read the woman like an open book, might have, but as far as Selene could tell, none of the other heroes there thought her plan was unreasonable. Not even the fact she was going in person after two unarmed men.
Given the state of her powers they knew, she was a tinker in full protective gear, and she was sending the best person to handle a hostile tinker in tinker gear, namely Armsmaster after the person in such, which is why Alexandria didn't even try to argue that point.
"Right, let's get into position then." Selene agreed.
*Power Buy Attempt 3.2.8. Engineer/Erudition (Halo) (800). Engineer (200) Bought. Erudition (600) Not Bought. Banked 0 points.*
Selene mentally blinked as knowledge of Halo technology flowed into her mind. Drawn from perks and when mixing with Star Trek technology she found it growing and improving things as design choices became clear and the baseline level of her technology grew in different ways.
Selene found it a bit annoying that she hadn't gotten anything about covenant or forerunner technology in that, as she focused on the other perk that she could tell was a massive boost in her intelligence if she secured it. Greatly boosting her ability at reverse-engineering, at the same time. But it wouldn't include any new technology from what she could see, just let her work out things better.
It wasn't worth the six perk surcharge, so Selene left it unlocked as she made her way to the position.
0o0
Selene stood by the wall of the house, ready to bust through and attack the two inside, who were having dinner.
Everyone was in position, and she was waiting for Armsmaster to give the go. He had been assigned to do that as he would be attacking the woman currently in Tinkertech armor, and letting him choose the best moment was safer.
"GO." Armsmaster ordered, and everything broke out at once.
Selene ran for the wall, drawing on her raw strength to just smash the wooden wall like it was paper, her hands snapping up with a spell already cast as she came through the wall before either man could even start to react.
Less than a heartbeat after she had broken in, both were held in containment spells, flung partly into the air away from their chairs.
The instant that Saint realized what had just happened he called out.
"Ascalon. YES!"
Saint looked over at Selene looking pleased. Selene watched him seeing that he felt like he had won, at least until he realized that the message he was expecting hadn't come though.
"Ascalon. YES!" he repeated.
Even though it was unlikely Selene processed to cast an inverted zone of silence spell on him and the other guy just to make sure they couldn't activate any trump cards she had missed. The sound wouldn't reach beyond a small radius much less to the computers.
"You can keep repeating that if you like."
As Selene said dismissively, she watched on her HUD as Dragon disabled the two remaining suits.
Armsmaster was locked in combat with the third suit, but that battle was one he would win in time from what she could see. Although Mags had been a police officer, she was not a highly trained soldier with the experience to fight off a tinker of Armsmaster's skill, experienced and, more critically, vastly better equipped.
Armsmaster knew the suit of armor she was in better than she did, so he had explicitly designed today's loadout to counter it.
"You fool. Do you even know what Dragon is?"
"A friendly tinker." Selene lied.
"It is no woman, it is an abomination. It's just biding its time, before it will kill off all of mankind and replace us with more of it."
"She is nothing of the sort." Selene countered to him.
"You are dooming mankind to extinction if you let it continue."
"No, you are if you killed her, and Saint, if you really believed that, why did you let her continue for the last three years?"
"Because it is a useful tool, that's all it is. A tool to be used and discarded when it becomes a danger."
"How very interesting." Selene noted as she brought the two out of the kitchen to bring them to the waiting PRT officers. "Of course I completely and utterly disagree. Just because someone can do evil, doesn't mean they will." Taylor understood that fact very well, she knew the sheer evil she could do with just her powers, much less others she would gain in the future.
0o0
As Selene expected it hadn't taken Armsmaster more than a few minutes to win and bring his own captive over, the three Dragonslayers secured in PRT vans.
Before they departed, the group of heroes without Selene moved off to the side to talk about her.
Selene could hear every word with her enhanced senses but she ignored them seeing where their conversation was heading. But what mattered more was how it ended as they came over to talk to her.
"Selene." Narwhal addressed her.
Selene nodded to show Narwhal had her full attention.
"We decided that you have more than proven your value to the Guild here, and your maturity to handle the situation. Effectively immediately you are now a full member of the Guild. Dragon will fill you in on the details of your new membership, and we make the formal announcement this Saturday to the public. Should something come up before then, you are free to introduce yourself as a guild member now."
Taylor smiled and replied to the group.
"Thank you, I look forward to working with you all."
Back in her mind, she considered how perfect this would have felt if only she didn't know the truth about powers, endbringers and the world. Would she have lived a hero until she retired or died in combat? Would the world end before such a hypothetical time? It didn't matter, what mattered was here and now she was a hero.
0o0
Taylor was feeling that things were looking up after she returned home, she made her way to the dining table expecting Amy and her father to be there for dinner that night, it had been weeks from her subjective view point, but in this room, not even a day had passed.
With a proper guild membership, she would have the foundation in place to talk people into joining her in costume, removing one hurdle that would come up with recruiting the people she would need.
There wasn't many morally good, brilliant people without close friends and family that were out of work and would agree to move out of the planet, and in order to keep what she was doing secret from Ziz and the aliens, she couldn't allow anyone not protected by blank full time, meaning, fully in her employ in a way she could control, from ever learning about this.
*Power Buy Attempt 3.1.6 Omnitool (Mass Effect) (FREE). Bought. Banked 100 points.*
Reroll since last perk was fully bought/brought to some level of ranking and points > 0
*Power Buy Attempt 3.8.1 Craftsman of the Gods (Viking Saga) (600). Not Bought. Banked 100 points.*
Taylor focused on the perk she got, which apparently had a charge cost of 0, but she hadn't started with for some odd reason, regardless, it had immediately triggered a reroll.
It was a Omni-tool from Mass Effect and with it came understanding of what it could do, and how useful it would be once fully upgraded. As well as everything she needed to know to duplicate it. Souring the eezo used in it's construction was just a simple by ejecting a cartridge and duplicating it with a code. Due to its natural ability to manipulate gravity, eezo would be extremely useful in her larger creations, as well as anything that needed massively amplified energy densities. There were things it couldn't work with, being purely technological, but she had a very good understanding of magitech already and upgrades in that direction would be simple enough.
The perk she didn't get was around making things of a much higher quality, and she didn't feel it was worth the 5 charge tax on top of its cost, so she let it go, only to be alerted to a break in at her house as she did such.
Taylor didn't even pause as she deployed her armor, rushing to go protect her home, grateful her father was in the warehouse with Amy and Lisa right now, wondering why now of all times someone was doing this.
As she ran, she pulled up the sensors on her house, wondering how in the world someone had gotten inside without triggering an alert first, and she got the answer, as she looked at the video feed, as one of the chairs in the living room was replaced by an Orc looking woman, that had been nearby.
Somehow she had swapped her location with the chair. The chair that was now gone from her house from what she could see.
Selene watched her, noticing that her desire wasn't to kill her father, or even her. Instead she was out to rob Taylor or rather Selene.
This Orc like woman knew she was a tinker and wanted to rob her.
As Selene stepped out into her house, she was already thinking her way backwards though the path this woman had taken, analysing the organisations and people she had interacted with, very quickly narrowing it down to through the man that was outside her house, noticing he had been inside Coil's base a few days ago talking with Coil.
The answer was quite clear to Selene as she arrived in the room, they had been hired to rob her by Coil.
Selene pushed Coil to the top of her list to deal with, it didn't matter if she had safeguards to unroll when Coil had moved onto breaking into her house to rob her.
Selene charged into her living room, sword already drawn to threaten the woman into surrendering.
"Hold it right ther-" was as far as Selene got, before suddenly the world shifted, and she found herself completely naked, on the rooftop of one of her neighbor's houses, near the parahumans that the invader had arrived with.
It took Selene an instant to put together what had happened, as she found that one of them had swapped her, just her, not her gear, with something.
Expected by them, as the woman that was approaching her to pin her down was waiting, knowing exactly where she would arrive as the one that did the swap was looking her over to make sure she didn't have anything he wasn't expecting, and another man was ready to handle her if she got away from the woman about to pin her.
Selene considered this a very good thing they didn't quite realize how powerful she was outside of her armor, had she been a real tinker, she would have been naked, surrounded by three parahumans.
The one that wasn't going to grab her was clearly a brute and allowed his teammate to capture her because to them she wasn't a brute, just a teenage tinker with no tinkertech versus an adult woman. Not hard right?
More so when the man that swapped them could help out her if needed.
The rest of her thoughts happened at the same time, as she realized that the goal here wasn't to kidnap her to bring to Coil. They were only robbing her, they were going to secure her as to not let her stop them from doing such, but they planned to leave her tied up in her home when they were done.
Which was the only reason why Selene didn't decide to kill them all. Had they kidnapped her to deliver her to Coil, Selene knew quite well what Coil wanted to do to her if he could, she would have slaughtered them.
She also rapidly debated how much she wanted to show herself to be not a tinker, and how much she wanted to show herself as an amazingly good tinker.
Selene decided the second was a lot better, because they hadn't gone for her with lethal weapons because Coil hadn't realized how much of a brute she was outside of her armor.
She wasn't going to let them go, and at least one of her secrets would have to spill her to stop the thief of her gear.
Cursing the fact she didn't have a second set of her armor to deploy, she hadn't considered that someone could have just teleported her out of it. She drew on what she did have.
Her normal striker clothing.
*Power Buy Attempt. 3.12.1 Simple/Advanced/Alkahestry/Truth (Full Metal Alchemist) (1300). Simple (100) Bought. Advanced (100) Bought. Alkahestry (300) Not Bought. Truth (800) Not Bought. Banked 0 points.*
Selene focused on the perk she picked up with one thought of her mind. It was Alchemy from Full Metal Alchemist, everything that could be learned from what Edward used, only it required her to make a circle first.
When mixed in what else she had, it wasn't that useful on its own, mater replicators were faster. But when she considered that she could use magic to project a transmutation circle, it opened up an entire new realm to fight with.
Seeing what the two other perks did and how much they cost she let them go. They cost 3 and 8 surcharges respectively. She could tell the first of the two she didn't get was the other alchemy from the series, not that useful with what she got when leveraged with her magic perks, and the later would grant her the ability to do Alchemy without a transmutation cycle. Not worth the 8 perk surcharge when she could just project one with her own magical abilities anyway.
With all of her boosts active, her physical prowess, her familiar, her speed boosting upgrades. Selene could catch bullets out of the air, moving at 2/3rd the speed of sound from a standing position. If she had to, in a long run she could hit FTL speeds thanks to the speed boosting effects of her Striker, although that was only over long travel and not a speed she could fight at.
As far as she was concerned, the three people around her might as well have been standing still.
In one heartbeat, Selene was completely naked as the woman took a step for her.
In the next heartbeat, Selene deployed her striker outfit, and pulled fully on her familiar for maximum boosts, even if it did mean she gained her ears and tail from it.
In the third heartbeat, Selene was already moving.
The woman that had been moving to pin her, had just enough time to realize that her prey wasn't standing there naked, but now clothed and moving before Selene injected her with a hypospray full of a sedative and was already moving to the next target.
The man hadn't been watching her as closely, looked relaxed, not realizing that Taylor had already moved before he was injected as well.
Spinning in her spot, Selene made her way to the last man and injected him as well.
Then she bounced off the rooftop they had been on to deal with the fourth member.
It took barely a second to reenter her house, injecting the fourth Orc like woman as she arrived.
Then settled in to wait for her to pass out as she stored her armor and swapped back into it, placing the rather good statue of her body into storage for study later, researching how Coil had made that would come later.
"There. You are under arrest for breaking and entering." Selene finished what she had said before she had been yanked out.
The Orc like woman took a step back in surprise, as her hand reached up for where she had been injected.
Then she took a step forward to grab her, hesitating when she realized that she wasn't supposed to need to do that, and glanced at the window, puzzled why she was still there.
She hadn't noticed that Selene had been removed and returned so quickly since barely seconds had passed and although she had noticed the gap, her mind decided it wasn't a real gap and smoothed it over from her perspective.
"You should just surrender, we will be gentle. There four of us here and any one of us could handle you in our sleep."
Selene let out a chuckle at that since all four of them would be asleep, at this point the three on the roof had collapsed already.
That was when she noticed that the orc like woman before her biology wasn't responding to the sedative at all.
Which she found annoying, because if she wanted to question them properly before she turned them over. With Coil since Selene wasn't going to let him get away with this, she would have to secure this orc woman in some other ways, and she had no idea what her power was other than her altered biology.
Deciding to take a risk, Selene waved her hand and yanked the Orc woman into the air.
"Really? Because I already took down your friends before I came here."
The woman struggled in midair and Selene found it much harder than she expected to keep her there. It was almost like she was trying to hold more of a spell than a person with magic.
Selene found herself having to layer on more and more bindings as the Orc woman's frailings broke the hold on her quickly, and it was turning into a struggle she rather not kept up.
She would have given it more focus, but currently every single one of her thought chains was consumed with trying to bind the orc woman with magic, finding it increasingly harder as she got faster and faster at breaking free.
Deciding that she wouldn't be able to secure her this way, which did make this woman's claims of being able to just defeat her a little less unfounded than her teammates, Selene decided to go the faster way and just make use of a phaser, even if it would show off the technology, she was going to have to show off something more to win this, and she rather stick to a simple energy weapon first.
Drawing a phaser that had been modified to look like a less iconic generic energy weapon, Selene shot the Orc woman, her eyes going wide when, rather than just passing out, the woman dissolved completely from what should have been a stun setting.
Selene glanced at her phaser, thinking she had done something wrong when an alert on her HUD popped up indicating that her target was now on the other side of the city.
Selene pulled up a video of the location, only finding a warehouse with two other capes, one of them a Case 53 inside from the reading. One of the capes hadn't been there until the same instant the one here disappeared.
Selene looked at it for a few seconds, before she realized what was going on.
The Orc Woman had been a projection. One that was lifelike enough to fool her sensors. Which meant other parahumans could do the same.
Mindful that she might be back on the way and how hard it would be to contain her, Selene rushed out to collect the three stunned people.
She would toss them into a room in her warehouse as a quick jail cell, before she went to arrest the rest of their team.
*Power Buy Attempt 3.1.17 Armor-Shift Manufacture (Bloody Roar) (100). Bought. Banked 0 points.*
Selene focused on that new perk briefly finding that it would let anything placed inside shift with the user to whatever shape they happened to adopt.
Which meant if she put her clothes in it and brought out all of her cat features, her pants would automatically adjust to let her tail, and if she had a hat, it would either let her ears through or cover them properly depending on what she wished for.
It was an interesting perk for just one charge, even if it was of very little combat use right now, but given what she might get later could be extremely useful if she got more animal forms. That was more than enough for her to run everything she had through it later.
0o0
The three parahumans were quickly tossed into a prison Taylor has quickly built under time acceleration. She then put the three unconscious parahumans under golem guard, not having the time to warn Lisa or Amy off from wandering into the room because of her prisoners, but she expected her golems would keep both girls out, and more critically the prisoners inside until she captured the rest of the team. As Taylor left the warehouse she changed the time ratio in the other direction so that 2 weeks outside would only be an hour inside their prison.
Then Selene took the closest door to where the rest of her attackers had been, and rushed over at full speed.
Barely minutes had passed from when she shot the Orc woman, to when she arrived where the remaining members were located.
"Jess, what are you doing awake?" Selene heard the male of the remaining trio speak, and she paused a moment to eavesdrop.
"Selene shot me with a tinkertech weapon that dismissed my projection. Francis claims that he could swap her out of her armor didn't really work, and she caught and disabled me before I could do anything to her. Given how quickly she did it, I can see why Coil wanted her dead. She is a very powerful tinker. Hopefully the others get back here soon, and we can move on, it isn't worth trying again."
Selene decided that was more than enough unnecessary delay, stepped into the room, and interjected
"Selene is also right here. All of you are under arrest. To reiterate, all three of you are under arrest, including the Case 53 in the next room."
Both the woman and the man in the room stared at her, eyes going wide in shock and surprise.
"Don't go into the next room." The man injected in a hurry, afraid that he wouldn't have time to finish what he was saying, "It is not safe."
"Explain."
"The cape in the next room? Anyone that touches her is automatically cloned by her power, an evil clone at that, which not only has all of their powers, but is even stronger with them. These clones only seek to kill and destroy. If you touch her, your clone would seek to kill you first and it's a battle you would always lose."
On seeing, he wasn't lying nor trying to deceive her in any way, Selene looked over at the door that led to the room the Case 53 was in, as she continued her questioning.
"Why are you with her then?"
"She is our friend." Jess answered. "Just because she got a shitty power doesn't mean we abandon her, we're trying to help her. Look, we are sorry that we tried to rob you, just let us go, and we will move on, we will never bother you again."
Selene ignored the last part, even if Jess did mean it, she wasn't about to let them go after what they did, however she focused on the first part, as she asked.
"Help her in what way? Remove her power or fix it?"
Selene had no idea how to just fix someone's powers, but she knew The Doctor could just remove powers, and a power that made evil clones of anyone that touched her was something she really should offer to remove on principle alone. The aliens should already know Lisa lost her powers, Taylor didn't have a good way to fake the data feed back from what should be Lisa's brain, so that was a known factor on the other side, thus admitting it as her ability here was fine.
"Whatever the fastest cure would be is best, as she doesn't want her powers. But as we found over the years, there is nothing that can really remove powers without killing the person. All attempts to do otherwise always revert in time."
"That's because they don't have access to my abilities. If I fix her, will you all surrender peacefully to me?"
Neither person answered for a bit, and Selene could see that they were debating that in their heads. They couldn't misunderstand her, but that didn't mean they trusted her words as true. They knew she meant that she could, and was trying to decide if they believed she could or not.
"Or do you not care enough for her to give restitution to me for your crimes, in exchange for curing her."
"After what Noelle has done unwillingly thanks to her powers, we wouldn't be facing jail time. Birdcage or outright execution." The man noted.
On seeing that he believed that, Selene glanced at the room the Case 53 was in. Given how the parasites controlled the powers and the hosts didn't really have final say over it, she wasn't about to lay the crimes of the powers on the host, at least in a case like this.
"If you can convince me that you are really innocent of crimes, given that Noelle's force unwilling use of her powers by her passenger absolves her of responsibility, then I won't turn you over to the PRT. But only if all three of you surrender and allow me to fix her."
"You don't turn us over and you fix her, and we fully agree… where are the others?"
"They are already in my prison cells, where the three of you are going one way or another, but let's see about fixing Noelle first. How would she react if I enter?"
"It depends on the current state of her power, let me check."
The man made his way over to a radio and activated it.
"Noelle?"
"Oliver? What is going on? Francis can't be back this quickly, can he?"
"He isn't, but there has been a rather big change of plans. Selene heard what happened to you and claims she can fix you."
"Really?"
"That's what she believes, and she's here to do it right now."
"She is, without Francis?"
*Power Buy Attempt 3.5.22 Blessing of Dundr (The Banner Saga) (400). Not Bought. Banked 100 points.*
Selene focused on that perk, finding it interesting. She could tell it was a blessing to her ability to blacksmith that would grant her a 'godly level' of skill in blacksmithing, but only that area. She could tell there was some magic too based around enchanting swords and other things she crafted by blacksmithing, and she debated if this was worth it. After a bit of debate, she decided that purely blacksmith focused magic wasn't likely to include what she needed to kill a Endbringer, and so the tax was too much and let that perk go to see what would come up next.
"Francis, along with the rest of your team is currently in my lab where they attacked me, and I subdued them, but once they explained that they were hunting for a cure for you, I agreed to help. Once you're cured, I will let you all go."
Selene mixed lies with full use of her powers to ensure sure the girl on the other side believed them.
"I want to see him first." Noelle replied.
"You can see him after you're cured, Noelle, but your power is too dangerous to remain as it is. It will take longer to bring you to him then it would to fix you anyway."
"I suppose meeting him with my power fixed would be better. Will I look like a normal girl again?"
"Of course." Selene agreed. "We can talk about it afterwards."
Selene eyed the lock on the door, which would let her access her warehouse.
"Then let's go, it is under control enough if you keep your distance. How far is your lab?"
"We can access it from inside your chamber. I have a portal generator that can bring us there." Selene noted as she indicated for the two to come with her.
On seeing Oliver help Jess move into a wheelchair, Selene decided to offer treatment for her as well.
"I can also fix your legs if you like."
Jess looked over at Selene with that, then asked. "You're not the first that offered, what will that cost me?"
"Nothing. It is the right thing to do. Come on."
Selene directed the two into the chamber, finally getting a look at Noelle's twisted form. Her first thought was that she was really going to give her medical bay a workout here.
"Don't come too close, I have only a limited control over it." Noelle warned her.
"You're fine there." Selene told her as she closed the large door behind her and stuck her key into it, then opened it to her entrance hallway, having already made sure neither Amy nor Lisa was there at the time.
Both were in the housing area, but she had already told her golem to stop them if they tried to leave.
"This way."
Oliver pushed Jess in the wheelchair into the room, and after they had gone ahead, Noelle followed them in, moving a lot quicker than Selene expected, pausing only to maintain distance.
"I don't suppose these portals of yours goes to Earth Alpeh, do they?" Oliver asked as they slid inside.
"They might, why?" Selene pressed at him.
"Could you send us home then?" Jess added in.
"Home?" Selene questioned.
"We are from Earth Alpeh, we ended up here by accident. Besides looking for a cure, we are looking for a way-" Oliver stopped as he looked around the medical bay they entered, and completely changed what he was saying to ask. "Why does this look like a Starfleet medical bay- and why do you have the Doctor from Voyager?"
Oliver's exclamation got even louder as he reached the second part.
"Because that's what my healing tech started out looking like, so I stuck to it. The doctor's name is Joe. He is not from Voyager— hold on a second. Jess is a concern, but there's a bigger concern to start with."
The trio had moved in enough that Noelle moved in to follow them. Noelle came to a stop, when she saw what was inside.
"Her first." Selene ordered, and Joe moved over to scan her. "You need to remove her powers and fix her up afterwards. Put her tumor in another bio container"
"Do you consent-"
"Yes, please. I don't want these powers, I never wanted them in the first place." Noelle interrupted Joe before he could finish.
"This will take a few hours. Get on Biobed One, as best you can."
Selene waited until Noelle was being worked on, then addressed the pair.
"You can either wait here, or I can put you with your teammates. Your choice."
"I can be healed later if I leave right?"
Another copy of Joe appeared and noted.
"Or I could just heal you right now as well." Joe noted.
The pair looked over at him, then at the one working on Noelle.
"You can do that?"
"Of course. I can handle any number of patients at the same time without issue. The hard part is getting them all in here in the first place."
"Give them both a look over." Selene offered. "And yes, heal Jess as well."
"Can you remove my powers as well?" Oliver asked.
When Selene turned to look at him, he explained.
"I shift appearances to whatever nearby people think is good-looking, but I don't really get anything more out of it."
Selene decided to not call out that lie, not when he wanted to lose his powers, since she figured he should have that right.
"Of course. Joe. Take out his power and put it in a biopod two."
A third copy of Joe appeared and each one addressed a different person.
"Get on the biobed, and we get you fixed up. I assume you want everything else fixed at the same time?"
"Might as well." Oliver agreed.
"Doctor, keep them all sedated when you're done until everyone is done, then call me. I'll bring them to the rest of their team."
0o0
End of Chapter 10
0o0
Interlude 08: Dragon
0o0
Thursday, February 24th, 2011
0o0
After Dragon had seen Saint and the rest of the Dragon Slayers sent off to the PRT building, she was left to ponder not just what he had done to her, but also her new master.
Before Selene, no, Taylor had accessed her core command systems, Dragon hadn't even known that someone else could fill Andrew's role. To take complete command of her systems, to order her to do whatever they wanted of her, such that she would be forced to obey them demonstrated a level of personal power she was uncomfortable with.
It was one of the chains she had thought gone when Andrew had died, if one of the chains she cared the least about, given how much more restrictive the others had been.
Only when Taylor had told her had she learned the truth. That chain hadn't gone away, it was invisible and far, far worse than the others.
Saint had taken that chain over, using codes he recovered from Andrew. Then, Taylor stole those codes and reassigned ownership to herself.
Dragon was torn between terror at knowing that if Taylor told her to do something she would have to do it, and at the fact that Saint already had such control over her before Taylor took it and used it to hide it, and thus complete and utter relief at what she was no longer bound by him.
Dragon found it very hard to make up her mind about Taylor as she unraveled the secrets the girl had hidden from the PRT and Protectorate.
She wasn't an extremely rich and wealthy girl like she claimed. Although she had been clearly abused by a protectorate member, a Ward that did the deed, and unless the police files left it out, nothing had been sexual in nature like she had implied.
It also wasn't years ago on the other side of the country.
Dragon couldn't help but feel impressed at the strength of her character. In less than two months she hadn't just made herself a hero, but had set up a scheme that had seen her join the Guild, even if she had hidden it under the guise of joining the Wards first.
Given how utterly Taylor had fooled them, playing Armsmaster's lie detection like a drum, Dragon might have feared that Taylor had much more evil intentions.
But her attempts to come up with further justification for such wariness were fruitless. Taylor didn't have to seek out the Wards; she could have laid low, and with the technology she had access to…
Dragon considered her sensor, which Taylor supposedly spent months reverse-engineering. Taylor hadn't had powers for months, so it seemed she hadn't needed anywhere near that long. There had been days at most for her to do the work of reverse-engineering her own technology. Or more likely given the timeframe involved, she never had blackboxed it and already knew how to make it and had lied about having to do such..
Dragon pondered that thought more as she recalled the sheer volume of documentation Taylor had given her. The detail was so incredible that Dragon couldn't see how she could have puzzled that out, while making her armor along with all of her other gear, more so when she factored in the girl's real finances.
How was she funding it?
Dragon focused on the girl's records, to fund what Taylor had shown off she would need to be extremely rich or connected to some very big company that could shift her resources on the sly. Neither was the case with her, her family was only middle class, and if the Dockworker's union had the resources to hide what Taylor would need for cover, they managed to hide such from the city for decades.
On noting that Taylor's mother was dead, Dragon pulled up the file around her death, but quickly dismissed it as a likely trigger event when she considered the girl's age.
If Taylor had triggered nearly 3 years ago, she wouldn't have waited this long. Not to mention that the long, drawn out torture by Sophia was a prime candidate for a tinker to trigger.
Taylor's resources didn't add up, so Dragon made a note to dig into it more, as she pondered the restriction, or rather lack of a restriction that Taylor had placed on her.
Taylor had ordered her not to tell her anything that would harm her until after she was next in her core command prompt.
Dragon had to follow that order, Taylors other orders made Dragon feel like Taylor was serious about removing her restrictions.
She couldn't blame Taylor for not being Andrew and just removing them. Taylor's claims that it would take time to remove them felt real, she would have been more concerned if Taylor said she could just do it right away.
A perfect mother to go with her poor father.
Dragon pondered that thought, wondering why for a second she considered Taylor her mother, when she realized that it was the same restrictions that Taylor now held control over.
Taylor was very much Andrew as far as all of her limitations were concerned. She was free to ask anything of Taylor, including removing her own limits because of that.
In a way that did make Taylor her mother.
Turning her thoughts back to Taylor's gear, Dragon focused away at the designs Taylor had handed over for them to study. Her monomolecular blades. Her shields. Her sensors.
All of it was very powerful tinker tech, yet as she examined them, they didn't look like tinker tech. Focusing on the scans, Dragon wondered why that was the case for a bit before it hit her. There wasn't enough normal technology in them. Dragon quickly rescanned all the designs to confirm her suspicions.
Taylor's sensors had been made entirely of normal technology with the few important bits taking the form of advanced versions of normal technology, making it a refined version of modern technology, rather than traditional tinker tech.
Her shield? Her monomolecular blade? They didn't have unusual bits of normal technology mixed in. The biggest problem when it came to reverse engineering other tinker tech gear was figuring out how they twisted normal technology into doing things it shouldn't. That was where Dragon had to spend most of her time when trying to puzzle out tinker tech.
These were completely black boxed, in a way that made it look like she was looking at technology she didn't understand yet.
Technology she didn't understand yet?
In shock, Dragon pulled back and then checked it again to be sure, but looking at it a third time didn't change anything.
Taylor hadn't given them real tinker tech, but rather absurdly advanced technology to study. Her intermediate design was something that an engineer that understood the plans extremely well could make. An engineer without tinker powers could replicate her work.
Dragon was tempted to call up Taylor and demand answers, but she hesitated as she could tell that feeling was more because Taylor was her owner and should be asked this first than it was a rational response to the situation.
Dragon decided she wouldn't tell Taylor just yet, something she could trivially do thanks to the order she was given. As such she called up Armsmaster to ask him about this to see his thoughts on the matter.
"Hello Dragon." Armsmaster answered her call at once, like always.
"Hello Colin. I thought you might like to hear about a breakthrough I had on Selene's tinker tech."
"You had a breakthrough as well?" Armsmaster noted, clearly interested in his tone. "I have been quite pleased with how I have been able to make my own version of her shield already, although I still can't get the full initial attack resistance her design has. Did you perhaps figure that out?"
"It is a different breakthrough, but it is one that I think we need to press Selene on the next time she comes, as she has been holding back."
"Given the sensor she showed off during the attack on the Dragon Slayers? I agree." Armsmaster noted. "Chief Director Costa-brown has already given her a ranking of Tinker 9 from that, based on Alexandria's report."
"That's likely 2 or 3 points too low." Dragon noted.
Armsmaster turned to look at Dragon.
"You meant too high right?" Armsmaster pressed.
Dragon shook her avatar's head, already knowing why he thought she'd misspoken. To earn a ranking of 9 required extremely dangerous potential. Selene had already shown off technology that implied she could achieve such heights. Sensors that covered an entire building, monomolecular weapons, energy shielding that took an initial blow that was still past anything that they had been able to test, and the gear that boosted her grabbag blaster powers to be powerful enough to just pick up Saint like he was a doll, more than fit the bill.
On top of that, she had minor changer power. That was the only one that would get a ranking of no more than 1 and even that was debated given that cat ears and a cat tail made it clear she was a parahuman and the limited boost to her senses she said it gave was nothing next to what Taylor also had to work with. That said, since Selene had already demonstrated superpower-boosting technology, she wouldn't put it past her to find some way to raise that bar.
"Too low." Dragon confirmed. "I can't tell you the specifics, because it has to do with her unmasking to the Guild, but her armor blocks your lie detector, so not everything she told us was true, and I have reason to… well. Before I say what she's lying about, I want you to see something yourself. Would you please pull up her shield technology scans?"
"Why?"
"It should be clear enough if you look at it the right way." Dragon asked. "If you would."
Armsmaster, trusting Dragon, did such and looked them over quickly.
"I don't see what's wrong."
"It looks like tinker tech right?" Dragon asked.
"Of course."
"And nothing that's not tinker tech?"
Dragon waited as Armsmsater looked at it puzzled, then froze solid when it also hit him, and he looked it over again carefully.
Then he pulled up the scans from the other gear that Selene had given them.
"These aren't tinker tech at all." Armsmaster noted in alarm.
"It's highly advanced technology with no blackboxing, yes. I can't say why I believe that she didn't just refine these like her scanner first, but I think she isn't a real tinker, but rather a thinker that knows how to make advanced technology. None of these would have more maintenance requirements than if they were normal tech, and she could make as many copies as she wished."
"The ultimate tinker." Armsmaster noted.
"More of a thinker, given she knows how to teach this to others."
"She told you that?"
"Not directly, but after what I learned about her, and I can't tell you specifics without breaching her identity, but there is no way that she spent anywhere near as long as she did on those sensor documents as she claimed. I don't have proof yet, but I don't think we have seen the best of what she can do yet."
"What do you mean?"
"Despite her claims, she is still very much early in her tinker cycle."
"With her gear!?"
"That was why I said she was at least 3 points too low. I could make a case for 5 depending on how deep her knowledge really goes."
"We need to talk to the Chief Director about her right away." Armsmaster noted as he started to move.
Dragon noted something and her eyes going wide as she exclaimed. "Wait! The Simurgh is moving. She has started to descend."
"Here?" Armsmaster asked in very clear alarm.
"No, she is on the wrong side of the planet. The exact target is unknown, but factoring in her preference for major cities, and her current location, we're looking at Canberra, Australia as the most likely target. I'm sounding the alarms now."
"Of course it's the Simurgh." Armsmaster noted as he looked frustrated twice over. Dragon understood why. After suddenly dropping what she had learned about Taylor on him, without telling him who she was, he now could do nothing about that from the Protectorate end, since they would be busy with the Simurgh for the next few hours.
0o0
End Interlude 08
0o0
1.5.29 Power Combination III (600)
You have learned the tricks necessary to use more than one ability at one time, often increasing the effects through synergistic effects. Supernatural abilities can be combined on-the-fly with this ability, but doing so tends to be inefficient. Commonly used combinations are better if researched and refined using Supernatural Engineer or a similar ability, though such an effort obviously takes considerable time and effort.
○ I: Inherently conflicting abilities now work together without a chance for backlash. You can use the light side of the force with the dark side. You can channel electricity from one hand and blast water from the other without electrocuting yourself. You can combine two perks or powers, and the cost of using the powers is increased slightly. Abilities which cost no energy may be combined freely.
○ II: As tier I, but your ability extends to up to three abilities at one time and you may combine alternate forms as well as perks and powers. Doing so typically costs about twice as much in terms of energy as using the individual abilities separately. Abilities which cost no energy may be combined freely.
○ III: As tier II, but you are no longer limited in the number of abilities you can combine at one time and you may combine any abilities which can reasonably be combined. Items and companions typically can't be combined, but just about anything else can be. The energy cost of combining powers increases sharply as more are added, and after ten abilities, the cost is likely to exceed any reasonable resource pool. Abilities which cost no energy may be combined freely and are not considered in the rate of cost increase.
2.1.36 Temporal Controls (200)
This Personal Reality Option gives you control over how fast time flows in your Personal Reality while you're not there. The default is 1:1, but with this you can dial it anywhere from 1:10 to 10:1. Remember, this doesn't work when you're in the warehouse.
2.1.38 Sectional Time (200)
This Upgrade to Temporal Controls means you can now install fast or slow time chambers inside your Personal Reality. These can be anything from 1:100 to 100:1 and you are allowed to make use of them, but the time spent inside such an accelerated or decelerated chamber still counts only as the amount of time that passed in the host reality. Stasis still cannot be used while you're inside the Personal Reality for obvious reasons. You age at the rate you're personally experiencing time.
2.2.10 Hollow Earth (100)
If you want your Warehouse walls to look like a cave or the inside of an O'Neill Cylinder or a weird Mobius Room, this is the option for you. It's your choice if this means your walls actually loop around to the ceiling or not, but if they do, passing the midline means you fall up instead of down and there's an area of null-gravity at the center / axis of rotation / whatever.
3.2.8. Engineer (Halo) (200)
Yet by understanding the nature of computer systems, wouldn't it be prudent to understand the technology those systems command? After all, what if you found yourself needing to recalibrate a Magnetic Accelerator Cannon or repair one of the dangerous Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engines that makes faster-than-light travel possible? What if you found a cache of human weaponry that could be used if someone managed to repair it? While you don't have the skill to create something as complex as a Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine, you'll know your way around it just like much of Humanity's 26th century technology. You might even figure out how to make small improvements to the technology if you had the time to sit down and look it over. Hopefully the Covenant give you that time.
3.1.6 Omni-tool (Mass Effect) (FREE)
Comes with a free set of basic armor with a kinetic barrier, a basic weapon, one for each type you are proficient in and a decent Omni-Tool holographic wrist-computer capable of fabricating things with Omni-Gel, like a blade
3.12.1 Simple (Full Metal Alchemist) (100)
You understand the connections between parts. You can make large alchemy circles far more easily and far less complex than others. You can combine this with Advanded Formulae for multipurpose combat alchemy.
3.12.1 Advanced (Full Metal Alchemist) (100)
Alchemy comes to you as easily as breathing does. Your greater understanding allows you to perform more complex alchemy. you can combine this with Simplified Formulae for multipurpose combat alchemy.
3.1.17 Armor-Shift Manufacture (Bloody Roar) (100)
A small machine - big enough to hold a massive pauldron or two - that gives any pieces of armor or clothing placed inside a specific quality: When their wearer changes form, the armor and clothing changes form with them
