Omake: Exchanges 1F
(Credit to
@Slamu for most of this!)
(Credit to
@Sojiko for Conquest Quest! Go read it
HERE!)
***
Taylor was slouched in a chair in front of a workbench with a partially-assembled sphere the size of a grapefruit in front of her, and a half-dozen plastic containers containing all manner of raw materials. Several strips of plastic were laid beside them in a very orderly row, presumably insulation for wiring, and a small lead jar was brightly marked
'uranium sand, maximum caution please'. Somewhat incongruously, there was a partially dissected orange on a plate near where the partially-covered sphere was, and the small refrigerator plugged into the wall showed a number of oranges there as well.
...orange-powered superweapons. Thank you, Tinkers; just when Zeph and Reya had convinced her things weren't going to get much weirder from here, the gadget-focused capes had to go and prove her wrong. Well, at least the chair was really comfortable. Great ergonomic support, swiveled, armrests that automatically adjusted to
just the right height… Taylor wanted one for
her office. Although… if this was a Tinker's workshop (which it seemed to be), then where were the tools? A key weakness Tinkers had was that they were usually jury-riggers at best until they'd made some customized tools more appropriate to their area of specialization… but the suspiciously clean and organized workspace
should have had a collection of tools nearby if the craftsman was paying the least attention to their layout. There were certainly a great number of computers and computer screens all through the room that looked well-beyond cutting edge, but outside another suspiciously-clean workbench on the wall to her right there was a distinct lack of implements to actually
make things.
Inhaling through her nose, Taylor nearly gagged. The air was stale, dead. Something was
wrong with it, though she couldn't say for sure what. None of her environmental protection charms activated, so whatever was wrong with the air wasn't dangerous to her. No, not dangerous; lethal. Important to remember that distinction.
"This would be your first time in an atmosphere where you cannot respire Essence. You are correct; it won't kill you outright, though most places where a living Exalt cannot absorb the living essence of her surroundings often are home to entities who would be delighted to attack a Lawgiver where they are at a disadvantage." That Taylor should be on her guard went unsaid; Zeph was a strong proponent of maintaining constant vigilance.
"There is a Charm that can help in this situation, though its utility for a single person is limited, being designed to aid a full Circle of Exalted in hostile environs."
"But you have a workaround." Taylor's words were statement of fact, rather than leading question. She could feel the HUI's smugness through their link almost like a sunrise.
"I do, though it is costly in the short term as far as the amount of your soul that this will be etched upon. It is a Charm that allows for the extraction of exotic materials from your soul, rather than having to seek them out in hazardous and uncultured lands." There sounded like there was a story there, though Taylor wasn't sure she wanted to delve into it at the moment.
"Furthermore, it will further accelerate the crafting times significantly. There is an artifact that will extend the duration of Chaos Repelling Pattern that invokes the chief architect of Creation called the Hand of the Great Maker-"
Reya decided this is where she came in.
"What was that you were saying early about the Cauldronists being dangerous madmen?" The older Twilight quipped smugly.
"Were you getting a little hypocrisy on yourself there?"
"It's a very useful ability to have, especially when you lack the sort of infrastructure First Age Exalted seem to have taken for granted. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get Children of Breeding these days? And don't get me started on what Craft Gods think they can get away with when it comes to giving their blessing to something...."
Frowning in thought as they bickered, Taylor felt something else nagging at her. She could feel another computer activating, multiple computers really, from somewhere in the room. Turning her head, her eyes detected what her bugs had already seen; a stack of what looked like hockey pucks mated with roach motels, knee-high in a cooling tower, and several one-eyed, grapefruit-sized metal spheres that
just screamed 'Tinker drone' nestled in an oversized egg carton. Through her bugs' eyes she could 'see' over a dozen screens, somewhat blurry but gaining in focus when viewed by multiple roaches per section. Experimentally, Taylor began to see what happened when the insects moved inside the hockey pucks. It wasn't long before she was able to begin 'typing' with the bugs, competence from
God-Mind Algorithms allowing her to use each one to type almost as fast as she did with her endoskeletal digits on an off-the-shelf laptop.
So, a Tinker's lab without tools, a chair fit for her, computers and Tinkertech uniquely suitable for her, and hundreds of PRT officers and wageslaves filling the heavily-reinforced building above her. No capes seen as-yet, though Taylor wasn't about to discard the possibility of the several humans on her floor and the two floors above wearing prison jumpsuits having a few paras in their number. Either someone was leading up to a job offer of the kind they didn't think she would (or dared to) say 'no' to, or… she wasn't sure, to be honest. The first idea didn't seem terribly likely, though the possibility of a Stranger at play couldn't be discounted entirely. Reaching to her hip, Taylor was reassured that her built-in computer was still functional. Working with minute shifts in her hand pressure, she made a note to herself:
Date: Unknown
Time: Unknown
Woke in strange room, PRT sigils, office workers, armed PRT troopers all through building. Tinker workshop (??), no tools, bug-computers ready. Suspect Stranger effect at play
The bug computers were set to work connecting to the internet. Normally her 'hosts' would be able to control the internet access by filtering her access through a portal, but one of the advantages of having the power of the Unconquered Sun literally at her fingertips was that she had perfect internet access wherever she happened to be. The first group of roach hackers began to search for where Taylor was by triangulating against various GPS and Geo-Site caches in verified locations. Judging by their responses, she was… in the basement of the PRT's Headquarters in Downtown Philadelphia. Lovely. The questions of
how and
why she had been teleported two hundred and fifty miles away from Brockton Bay between eye-blinks and without any warning from her defensive charms nagged at her, but that was a question that could be dealt with later.
The fact that the date was wrong -
backwards by nearly
two months - was perhaps a more pressing matter.
The next puck was spent slicing its way through the local PRT Database-... and then the next puck. And then three more-...
Ah, there we go.
That was
significantly more resistance than she'd ever encountered when waltzing through Brockton Bay's PRT servers. Curiouser and curiouser.
Tapping into the many camera feeds in her own room, a brief rollback to several minutes ago revealed it to have been occupied, prior to Taylor waking up, by a Case 53 woman with white-silver hair done up in a ponytail, graphite-colored skin where it wasn't replaced with wicked-looking obsidian-metalic implants, and glowing golden veins that pulsed occasionally with her heartbeat. Her distractingly-entrancing mutations clashed with what looked to be a boring set of baggy PRT-branded grey sweats, though her right sleeve was rolled up to reveal that arm split up to the elbow and converted to a dizzying array of self-actuated tools poking and prodding away at something on the desk - presumably the rough spheroid now in front of Taylor. The figure yawned, frowned at the fact that she had just yawned, shook her head-... and something happened to the recording, causing a single frame to glitch into complete static before revealing Taylor there.
Rewind. Play. Pause. Still not showing anything. Perusing the camera filter options, Taylor cycled through the concurrent recordings taken through heat-mapping, night vision, sonar, and one mode called 'paranoia' that somehow flipped every color 180-degrees on the color wheel.
There was a story there, but she ignored that tantalizing draw and re-focused on the matter at hand, swapping to a different camera in the opposite corner of the room.
Rewind. Play. Pause. Same glitch.
Curious, she deployed a post-recognition enhancement program to build a 3D model of the room from the four different cameras she could access in here. The program cycled quickly through the small time loop, and soon enough showed that the room itself didn't experience much in the way of change. Again. And again. After the fifteenth time through, the program was running on less than 70% guesswork for the resolution enhancement, but there was a... seeming
ripple when viewed in slow motion, one that washed over the semi-glowing, graphite-colored woman and replaced her with Taylor.
Focusing back on earlier camera feeds were able to give a better image of the cape's face, which… looking past the creepy golden-glowing veins, the pencil-lead skin, and shiny-white hair...
Taylor's heart caught in her throat.
Mom.
That wasn't possible, Mom had died years ago...
… Or...
had she?
Taylor swallowed roughly.
No, she refused to get her hopes up. She ran the face of Annette Hebert and the woman through a face analysis protocol, and got a number of hits all detailing a cape named "Weaver" - a Case 53 that had exploded onto the scene near the… start of January. A Ward, the first (and to date, only) Case 53 with a Tinker rating… and no secret identity.
Civilian name: Taylor Anne Hebert.
One of the few survivors of the destruction of Brockton Bay city by Behemoth.
What.
As Taylor's mind did a good impression of a vinyl record scratch, her insects still navigated the Internet on auto-pilot. One brought up a professional recording of Weaver's reveal back in January, demonstrating moderate showmanship in presentation but otherwise unexceptional until she took a bullet for a teammate. Absently, Taylor considered the possibility that it was some macabre publicity stunt, but discarded the idea in disgust. Emily Piggot had no shortage of unflattering personality traits, but assassinating a child, one of
her people, was not in character for her. This was
interesting.
No, don't let yourself get sidetracked.
This... what even
was this world? Not Taylor's, for certain.
She wouldn't have let Behemoth ruin
her city, for one.
Possible honeypot lotus-eater mind trap? She added to her note-taking program. If
she were designing a mental cage of sorts, she would definitely include some sort of incentive to want to stay inside it, reinforcing it. But no illusion would be able to withstand intense scrutiny on a long enough timeline, as attention to detail would eventually trip up whoever was providing sensory input, and
she had no time for a Cartesian Evil Genius right now.
"The possibility that this is a full sensory illusion is plausible, but improbable. The most efficient forms of deceiving you are thwarted by your charms such as Judges Ears Technique or Integrity-Protecting Prana, while the less efficient forms of deceiving you would require an extensive understanding of abilities that you have kept hidden from all but a very small number of people. That the fundamental prohibition against time travel may have been broken, however, is... disconcerting, and opens up numerous existential implications."
"The worm's home reality is not unfamiliar with cross-dimensional entanglement, clearly this is another manifestation of the Well of Udr's distressingly elastic sense of continuity."
Alright. Going on the assumption that this
was real, then... there was someone claiming to be Taylor running around, and doing an absolutely poor job of it. A cursory examination of the public history of one Taylor Hebert (which seemed to have become uncomfortably public recently, by the number of news articles) seemed to support this. Fine, that was something that could wait until later.
True to Taylor's first estimation of this being a Tinker's workshop, there no footage of Taylor… the
other Taylor, Weaver, leaving the room in the last nineteen hours. Nor any sign of her sleeping. Several PRT officers came and went, as did a small young blonde girl dressed up in a… prisoner's outfit? The little girl also appeared to be a Tinker of some form, given the way the two of them appeared to be working on several lifelike-looking mechanical dragons that Weaver would pull out of some kind of mechanical-style dimensional storage whenever the tiny girl would come around...
She looped those power displays a few times. They niggled at her, but she pushed onward when nothing immediately came to mind.
She also noted the avatar of Dragon appearing on some of the various screens in the room at various points in time, though most often when the small blonde Tinker was in the room as well.
By every indication - the relaxed-yet-deferential body language of the PRT officers, the genuine happiness of the small girl, the smiles seen on Dragon's avatar - it appeared Weaver was a model Ward… no, a
supermodel Ward, if some of her search hits were to be believed. Why did they have her locked away in what appeared to be a gilded cage? A past hit on PHO made reference to 'in-house detention' until the 'Marrow matter' was cleared up, but that was
weeks ago. Marrow, apparently a Protectorate-aligned Case 53 with bone powers, had disappeared with Weaver for a brief time to something designated the Cradle, only to return… with all sorts of new powers.
No, Taylor frowned, reviewing an online video of the aquamarine-crystal woman in action. The much more blatant display of powers that caused her to rapidly glow-...
Not powers.
Charms.
"That... no. It couldn't be-"
"It appears the Seal of Eight Divinities has finally been lowered. Too little, too late, unfortunately."
... Right then.
Query: "Cradle, the"
Director's Eyes Only, all records sealed. Please report to local security station immediately for debriefing.
Well, things just got a little more interesting. Calling on her now-limited supply of Essence (and wasn't that a terrifying thought... for later), Taylor's fingers flew over the keyboard reminding the computers of her innate and incontestable authority as she defied their firewalls and password protected systems.
Director's Eyes Only, all records sealed.
USERNAME: M.Uriel[at]Philadelphia.PRT.gov
PASSWORD: Uriel.Martini-LittleHavanna1997
Welcome Director Uriel
The Cradle was apparently a pinpoint dimensional breach, with very specific GPS coordinates given to its location. Close ties to Ward: Weaver, who reported its existence and location. There was a list of scientific instruments attempting to detect its existence, but similarities to the Haywire portal were few and coincidental, prompting a degree of skepticism from the science team monitoring it.
The dedicated satellite feeds watching the location seemed to imply that persons in a position of authority did not share their skepticism. Digital photos, presumably with an off-site hardcopy backup, showed a high resolution image of the Brockton Bay Crater every fourteen point six minutes. Initially obscured by a large ash cloud, then a scene of heart-wrenching desolation. For the majority of clear images there was no change, until a spidery series of scaffolds began to be erected. Curiously, a Dragon suit was on site helping, but three scenes following its arrival indicate several other Dragon suits on-site, the scaffolding wrecked, and a number of bodies. A fight, then.
What was so important about the Cradle? A recording of Weaver giving a presentation to a number of high ranking officials, including the surprisingly elusive Chief Director of the PRT. Taylor felt a presence on the network, something akin to sensing the minute minor changes in the atmosphere heralds someone walking up behind you. She turned her head and nodded to the avatar of the woman now staring at her from the nearest computer monitor, smiling politely.
"Hello, Dragon."
Taylor immediately began erasing all security footage in the building for the last 16 hours. She wasn't going to be able to accomplish all of it, but it would be something Dragon would need to address, and if only the last sixteen minutes were erased then that would be sufficient.
"I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage, Miss...?" Oh, right. The mask.
She couldn't help but smile at the parallels. Standing, she walked briskly towards the door… only to note there was no handle.
Rapping at it with a knuckle was enough to activate
Pillar-Breaking Blow, which promptly caused the entire multiple-inch-thick metal door to shudder… and then dramatically tip and fall outwards into the hallway with a loud
crash.
Taylor hummed to herself in satisfaction, then turned just enough to address Dragon again.
"Firefly. I don't suppose I could ask you to let me out the front door upstairs?"
Dragon's flat gaze and the alarm going off in the distance was enough of a response for her.
