or it's fake time travel, in which case the shard is just giving him a bunch of its energy in the form of a continent-scouring death ray for no good reason at all, despite the fact that real time travel wouldn't work that way.
We do need to also think about the difference in scale here. The Entities represent something like a Kardashew 2 civilization when it comes to available energy, with every shard roughly matching a Kardashev 0.7 - 1 civ depending on their coverage (by my back-of-the-envelope reckoning, I'd need to check back on that SFIA video to be reasonably sure). That death laser might be a drop in the ocean compared to the energy budget of a single shard. Having Phir sé run around occasionally creating 'free energy' for a decade or two would probably not be that costly to his shard.
The post I made earlier about a method of faking time travel is also relevant here.
As for WHY the shard thought this kind of BS was a good idea, I don't know. Better battery/capacitator tech for the Entites maybe? I am willing to concede my argument if a better one comes along.
We do need to also think about the difference in scale here. The Entities represent something like a Kardashew 2 civilization when it comes to available energy, with every shard roughly matching a Kardashev 0.7 - 1 civ depending on their coverage (by my back-of-the-envelope reckoning, I'd need to check back on that SFIA video to be reasonably sure). That death laser might be a drop in the ocean compared to the energy budget of a single shard. Having Phir sé run around occasionally creating 'free energy' for a decade or two would probably not be that costly to his shard.
The post I made earlier about a method of faking time travel is also relevant here.
As for WHY the shard thought this kind of BS was a good idea, I don't know. Better battery/capacitator tech for the Entites maybe? I am willing to concede my argument if a better one comes along.
The answer for why it thought it was a good idea is simple: Powers are literally just a random number generator that is plugging the thoughts of the parahuman-to-be into it, along with some other parameters about what type of situation they're in. This goes back to the "Entities are just super advanced computers, and are outsourcing creativity by throwing stuff against the wall", and again explains why the limited time-travel they have might not have been used, if it's been labeled as not worth looking into because the power put into it is too much, or it has other constraints (maybe you need to set up an end-point, so where we might go "oh, it's not that expensive to semi-periodically set up end-points so if something ruins our day, we can go back and fix it", the Entities just go "using it is too energy-costly with seemingly no reward, toss it in the Cycle in case the humans can figure something out."
The answer for why it thought it was a good idea is simple: Powers are literally just a random number generator that is plugging the thoughts of the parahuman-to-be into it, along with some other parameters about what type of situation they're in. This goes back to the "Entities are just super advanced computers, and are outsourcing creativity by throwing stuff against the wall", and again explains why the limited time-travel they have might not have been used, if it's been labeled as not worth looking into because the power put into it is too much, or it has other constraints (maybe you need to set up an end-point, so where we might go "oh, it's not that expensive to semi-periodically set up end-points so if something ruins our day, we can go back and fix it", the Entities just go "using it is too energy-costly with seemingly no reward, toss it in the Cycle in case the humans can figure something out."
I think it was said somewhere that the Entities aren't actually that smart, they basically just outsource all of their thinking to their shards. The Entities themselves appear to act as something of a command unit, while the Shards that make up their bodies do all of the heavy thinking. When the Shards can't think of a solution on their own, the Entities graft them to a host and hope that they'll be able to stumble upon an answer for them.
Apparently, people like this story primarily for the slice-of-life stuff. Well that's good, because this update is basically just more of that.
I haven't given it as many read-throughs as I usually like to, though. Let me know if you spot any swapped words. I mean, I know everything's spelled right, I actually run it through a spell-checker first, (Seriously, why are there still people who don't do that!?) but sometimes words get typo'd into different properly spelled words, and I never catch all of them.
---
SUN FEB 27
I had time to think on the run back, and during my shower, I realized that I didn't really want to keep my identity secret from Parian. I felt a little bad, thinking I'd figured out she works at her shop in both her identities, and it just felt inefficient when I thought of all the extra trips I might need to make, if I kept interacting with her in both identities and committed to keeping them separate. The fact that it might simplify clothes shopping in the future was also intriguing. With that in mind, I emptied out my backpack after my shower, and loaded up my costume.
Gram showed up, a little before 1:30. Her driver came to the door to collect me, and I followed her out to the car. I could feel Gram's disdainful gaze at the outfit I'd wound up choosing. They were the nicest clothes I still had, but that meant they were from better days, and a little tight. I slipped into the back seat on the driver's side, and slid my bag to the floorboard in front of my legs. "Perhaps a more general update to your wardrobe is also in order." Gram remarked as the car started up.
I gave a silent groan and groused, "I'm going shopping with a friend, later this week. Knowing Vicky, she'll try to make me buy more clothes than I have room for."
She weighed my words for a moment, before nodding. "Still, perhaps an additional outfit..."
"I don't need more than one suit, gram." I remarked in a dour near-deadpan.
She hummed. "One business suit is… sufficient, if properly cared for." I could hear the 'for now' in her voice, and the disregard for only having as much as absolutely necessary. She probably had at least half a dozen of those business suits she kept wearing back at her hotel, even though she'd really only need three at most, plus a dry cleaner to send her gofers to with the spares every few days. I stifled a snort at the thought of my grandmother, sitting around at a Laundromat in her only clean suit, waiting for the rest of her clothes to be done.
"I assume you've looked into Parian?" I asked to change the subject.
Gram tilted her head in a small shrug. "I've confirmed the bank she trades with, and the fact that she's renting space and paying wages with a business loan, as well as the likely terms of said business loan. I could easily secure a transfer of debt both would find agreeable at a loss to myself, if you're adamant about supporting her. I could also attempt to negotiate for part of the business in exchange for reduced interest and smaller payments, which would be preferable, if not entirely without risk."
I think I understood. "So, either basically giving her money by not making her pay back as much as she's borrowed, or making her pay more later to pay less now?"
"Never underestimate 'paying less now', Taylor." She stated in a warning tone. "Assuming she's savvy with her reinvestment of the additional funds and the market allows it, the new deal could have her business grow to the point where she is making more per year than she would have under the old one, even if we would also profit from it. The danger is assuming the business will survive long enough to recoup the investment on our part." She settled back into her seat, humming thoughtfully. "Remember that investment is a long game. I may not survive to see this particular deal turn a profit, for instance."
"But I will." I thought out loud. That's just how old money worked.
"God willing." She muttered with a nod, killing my enthusiasm for the topic. I didn't want to feel disparaging things towards the religious, a bigoted notion that they were stupider for believing in some magic man in the sky that would make their life better for believing it... but I knew I'd never find comfort in giving up control or responsibility for my life the same way they could. I just didn't understand it.
The trip was quiet after that, making our way there at a sedate driving pace and still managing to be early. I let myself out when we got there, pulling my bag out with me and slinging it over my shoulder. Gram took the time to slowly maneuver her way out of the car after the driver got the door for her, cane in one hand, and the thin rectangular satchel-like bag she used as a cross between a briefcase and a purse in the other. I led the way inside, the young woman keeping an eye on the floor from behind the till catching sight of us a few moments after entering. "No bags." She called, eyeing my backpack.
"Uhh, we have an appointment?" I tried to ignore what she'd said.
"2PM, Lafayette." Gram cut in sharply, eyes cold as she stared the thin blonde down.
"Right." She said, swallowing thickly as she eyed a book behind the counter. Even I found Gram's 'I will buy out your entire business just to fire you.' voice intimidating, and she was using it to back me up. "Uhh, this way?"
She turned back toward the store's back rooms and stairs, shooting an alarmed and fearful glance towards her co-worker across the store, working the floor. From the angle, Gram and I couldn't 'see' it, but I caught the little wave she got back out of the corner of my eye. The 'better you than me' look transitioned into a plastic 'for the customers' smile when she saw me looking. Parian herself was situated in her studio, apparently working on a trio of shirts simultaneously from how they seemed to be tugging themselves together. She stopped when the young woman knocked and poked her head in. "Your 2PM is here?"
The cape nodded, the clothes and their mannequins disappearing from my senses and setting down again near the wall. Lifting things by the clothes on them, like I'd seen her do with my costumes before. "Thank you, Cindy." We just barely heard from the hallway. The door was opened wide, and we passed the woodenly-smiling young woman, who shut the door behind us.
Parian herself was sitting primly at her seat, her back straight on her working stool, hands clasped in her lap, head tilted slightly back to give the best possible initial view of her masked countenance. I felt Gram give an impressed and approving hum, even as the cape's eyes tracked over us. I could feel the thrill of trepidation and excitement as she took in my grandmother's sharp moneyed businesswoman look, meeting her intensity with a barely perceptible nod. Then her attention snapped first to the bag over my shoulder, her mood disappointed and mistrustful. Her eyes trailed over the baby-blue blouse I wore, which Emma had said contrasted well with my colors without straying too far from my 'winter palette', tight enough from its history as a late middle-school shirt that I knew she could easily see the lines of my bra through it. Her eyes shifted up to my slight tan, dark eyes and hair, and carefully neutral expression, then down to the straining light beige khakis I'd kept for special occasions and forgotten about for a year before my excavation for Arcadia clothes unearthed them. Her eyes settled for a moment on my 'shoes', and I could feel her lips purse as she tried to puzzle out some curious caution that seemed to have surprised the both of us at the sight of them.
"Hello." She intoned, pleasant but firm. "I am Parian. What has brought you here, today?"
Gram tilted her head approvingly. "My name is Rosalind Lafayette, and this is my granddaughter Taylor. As we discussed over the phone, she is in need of business attire."
"Taylor Hebert." I stated, holding my voice steady. Gram wasn't the sort to forget, so I had to wonder if this was some play, trying to introduce some small misconception about my name. I didn't want to think about it, and subtle social digs like that were never my forte, so I just gave her a hard glance and dropped it.
"Ah, measurement and fitting, then. Do you know what you had in mind?" Parian asked me, motioning me towards the center of the room, where a small carpet-covered wooden box floated closer. It seemed to be a pedestal to step on, but I'm not sure she'd need it, since she didn't the last time I was in. Then again, for all I knew, bowing and dipping to get at my legs in her frilly Victorian doll dress might have been fine between capes, but less so among civilian clients.
"Actually, could we talk for a second?" I should probably get this out of the way now, if I was going to tell her today.
"I have changing screens, if you'd prefer." She motioned over to a series of framed cloth separators along the far wall, some of which were artfully blocking the windows.
I shifted the strap of my bag meaningfully, and quietly added, "In private?"
She turned to Gram, her emotions cautious and indignant, though none of it showed past her mask. Gram tilted her head and waved her hand towards the doors, amused at my lackluster attempts at subtle secrecy, frustrated at my bullheaded deviance from whatever she'd had planned, ultimately indulging whatever I had in mind. I'm fairly sure she jumped straight to the not-incorrect assumption that I wanted to bring up cape things without her there.
With Gram's assent, Parian stared her down in thought for a couple seconds, before turning back and assessing me again. I could feel her wary caution giving way to frustration and confidence. "Alright, then." Her voice lilted a touch petulantly, before she motioned toward the door on the far side of the room, where I knew she was keeping my costumes and the rest of her works in progress. The other half of the long room was full of bins and shelving, housing spare materials, but the area near and across from the door was full of nearly two dozen adjustable mannequins. Most were bare, but I caught sight of a couple male-cut suits, a trio of what looked to be prom dresses, a pair of slinkier custom-fit dresses, what looked like a new version of her Parian dress, and the other two Terraform costumes, complete with gloves and a single pair of sturdy-looking boots that matched them, a third set of gloves sitting atop them.
"Well?" She asked, leaning against the shut door.
I chuckled nervously. "Sorry, I'm not very good at this..."
She heaved a small sigh. "Is this a confession, or do you have something you want repaired that you don't want your parents to know about? A boyfriend's jersey or something?"
I couldn't help the blush and stammering. "No boyfriend. I don't date people." Wait... "I'm not dating people. Anyone. Not dating. Shutting up now." I slung my bag off my shoulder and dropped into a crouch. Kill me now, this was going terribly. She stifled a chuckle, her guard shattered by the awkward mess I'd wound up. At least there was that... "I just, uhh." She froze as I pulled out the mask and costume top. "I thought you might want to see how your work held up, after Canberra."
She kept staring for a few seconds, and I gave her the time to process the revelation. "You're Terraform." I nodded, and she sighed, reaching up for her mask. I sputtered some startled sounds, but couldn't stop her before she'd removed it. "My name is Sabah." Her wig unclipped itself from the mesh holding her hair compacted against her scalp, and floated over to a mannequin's shoulder.
The first thing that came to mind was my surprise at how dark her skin was. A deep natural tan that my brain took a second to pin down on the duskier side of middle-eastern. With that shock out of the way, my eyes focused to the small but eye-catching purple gem in the crook of her nose above her left nostril. She had a few studs dotting each of her small ears, which matched the one in her small nose. Paired with her full lips and large dark eyes, she looked young for her age. Her face hinted at a cutesy punk style so at odds with her cape costume that I'd never put the two together without my enhanced senses, or seeing her standing there in Parian's dress.
"Oh, no." I muttered. "You didn't have to..."
She shook her head. "It's part of the Rules. Common courtesy when you know someone's face or name, is to give your own."
I groaned, dropping my face into my hands. "I didn't know that." I looked up at her with an apologetic wince. "I didn't mean to make you do that. I'm so sorry."
She chuckled and waved off my concern. "Don't worry about it." Her mood turned pensive. "Just... don't tell the Empire I'm not white?"
"What? No, of course not." I said as I stood up, our height difference accentuated by the way she was slumped against the wall. Without the presence of her cape persona, it was hard not to notice that I could probably rest my chin on the top of her head with remarkably little maneuvering on our parts, despite the platform shoes she had on. Given the lithe build I could sense under all those ruffles, it made her seem... small. Willowy with a regal bearing, but cute features that also left her looking a bit childlike for her age. Elfin, I think was the word. "I'd never do that."
A bit of the tension that'd permeated her form since I'd first requested some time alone unwound itself within her. "Good. I mean, I don't think they'd do anything... the only places I go are campus, where they don't have a big presence, and here... it'd be pretty stupid to attack me here with the PRT three minutes away." She nodded to herself. These sounded too well-rehearsed for something that rarely came to mind, to me. "Way easier to deal with subtle recruitment offers than threats or vandalism, though."
I nodded, and my eyes trailed down to the mask and coat in my hands. "Anyway, I just thought it'd be easier on both of us if I didn't bother making appointments for both identities. Seemed silly to dance around it." I added with a shrug.
"You're not wrong." She said through her growing smirk, amusement and some sort of fondness building within her. "But it wouldn't have been that big a deal to keep up a polite fiction like that, even if I figured it out." She clicked her tongue, head shaking slightly in thought. "Anyway, you were worried about your costume?"
I held it out to her, and it floated from my hand, the pants rising out of the bag after it. "Not worried, nothing really happened to it, and I washed the dust out, after. I just..." I started to fidget. "I figured you wouldn't have many cape clients, and... it seemed like a good excuse to bring up cape stuff." I was glancing down by the end. It seemed stupid, when I said it out loud. She was a fellow cape, and an experienced woman compared to me. I shouldn't need an excuse. Her indulgent smile wasn't helping my embarrassment any.
"Well, it looks fine. The others are finished, if you want to take them with you." Her eyes unfocused in thought, before she perked up. "Oh, I also have those clothes you left. They're up in my loft."
"Can grab them on the way out. Gloves and boots are done?" I couldn't help the touch of excitement that crept into my tone.
She chuckled, and the boots and single pair of gloves sitting on them floated over. "Not sure what I came up with for the boots will work, but it was the best I could think of." I grabbed one for a closer look. It looked like a little sleeve of the same durable cloth the rest of the costume was made from, clipped tightly to riveted fasteners in the soft bootleather. It'd cover the front of my foot from the toes to the arch, but left the heel and the rest of the soft arch free to contact the ground. "If you think of a better design, let me know. If they work, they're likely to wear down quickly, but I kept the design and can always make more of them. They're easy enough to swap out." I moved on to the gloves, and she swapped to them as well. "I wasn't sure about your hand size, but you looked like a medium from the set of basic hand forms I've got." I tugged them on. What'd looked like sleeve cuffs in the original design were actually part of the gloves, extending halfway up my forearm. Reaching under the outer layer with my other hand let me run the zipper closed, tightening it enough to stay on. I slipped my other arm into my costume sleeve before putting the glove on just to test it, and with the extra layer under it, the fit was fairly snug. The gloves themselves were tight, but the material was different. It was much thinner, and stretched a little as I flexed my fingers, only starting to feel constricting when I clenched my hand in a tight fist. "How is the fit?"
"It's fine." I said, clenching my hand another couple times. "Little tight, but that's probably on purpose?"
She waved me over, taking my hand in both of hers. "Fist, slowly." I did as asked, and she felt around my hand as I did so. Her powers tugged at the material now and then, like she'd pinched and pulled it with her fingers. "No pins and needles?" I held the fist for a moment, but shook my head. "Then it should be fine. Bring them back if your hands get any bigger, or you start to notice that feeling. There's not enough material to let them out any, but I can take them apart and replace them." She shook her head and gave a shy chuckle. "I'm... not used to making gloves people are supposed to punch in, yet."
I clenched my fists a few more times. "It's okay, hands are weird." I reached under the gloves' cuff-like hems and pulled the zippers' short drawstrings, then tugged at the fingers. They slipped off easily enough.
"Hands are so weird." She agreed, apparently happy to shift the subject. "So, I imagine you'll want to take everything with you?" I nodded, and the costumes started peeling themselves away from the mannequins, folding themselves in the air on their way into her outstretched arms. The one I'd brought followed after I'd finished slipping out of its sleeve. The boots went into my bag first, then the clothes packed in beside them. It was a big bag, but all three costumes still nearly filled it, given how thick the material was. The gloves were sat on top, and I was pretty sure I had just enough room to toss the hoodie and pants I'd left here last week on top. "Alright." She said, her wig floating back over to her. "Cape stuff done?"
"Yeah," I said with a nod, after giving it a moment's thought. "I think so."
Parian returned the nod, busy clipping her mask into the little harness that ran under her hair mesh and the little 'neck sock' that extended from her undershirt to cover her neck. She took a compact mirror from a hidden pocket, flipping it open to inspect her disguise. I wasn't sure if it was too large for her power to work with, or just personal preference. She tugged at her mask a little, checked that her ears were covered by the wig, made sure none of her neck was exposed, then flipped the mirror shut. She took a deep breath, rolling her shoulders and stretching to her full height. "Shall we?" She motioned to the door, now firmly back in character.
Well, if she was playing up the dolled-up Victorian noble... "M'lady..." I gave her a wide curtsy and wider smile, which had to look ridiculous, but perhaps not as much as if I'd been wearing my usual baggy clothes. She raised a hand to her mask, tittering cutely from behind it. She was having fun, even if she wasn't as amused as she was acting for my sake. Or her character's. I chose to believe the first one. I grabbed my bag and led the way out, still smiling.
Gram glanced up from her tablet when the door opened again, and I was glad she hadn't been sitting around waiting, even though we couldn't have been in there for more than ten minutes or so. She glanced back down, finished whatever she was reading, and by the time Parian and I made it back to the middle of the room, she was putting it back in her bag. The knowing look she gave us- especially after I tossed my nearly-full bag closer to the chairs where she was sitting- told me that she was well aware of the gist of our private conversation. She didn't approve, but her emotions showed more fondness and a resigned amusement drowning out her prior frustration.
"Now then," Parian said as I stepped up on the makeshift pedestal, her measuring implements floating to her from her desk. "Your clothes are tight enough that I could measure you through them, or you could remove them. I will leave the choice to you."
I thought about it for a moment. Gram wouldn't care, and Parian had already seen me mostly undressed. In the end it came down to me not feeling as bad about my body, these days. Sure I wasn't sexy, but I wasn't pudgy anymore. My legs were toning out from all my running, my arms were bulking up a bit from the weight training, and all of my exercise was trimming down my stomach in their own ways. I felt... okay. So I peeled off my blouse and pants, before letting her get to work. She tallied the numbers down more quickly than the first time, and I wasn't sure if it was easier without the extra layers, or if she was just putting on a show for Gram, since she already had measures for me.
"Do you know what styles you'd like?" She asked when we were done, to which I could only shrug haplessly.
"Business formal." Gram supplied, then briefly hesitated. "I believe... a skirt and jacket, would be nice."
Like the ones she wore? I was expecting some sort of suit coat, but I'd originally figured on pants since I was more comfortable in them. Parian hummed, her eyes raking down my body. "You do have very nice legs." I could feel my cheeks and chest heating up. I hated how skinny my hips were, but my legs were okay... if they thought they were nice enough to show off... and I was trying to ease myself into less masculine clothing choices. A skirt I'd only wear on special occasions and could probably ignore forever when Gram left town sounded like a good first step.
"Alright." I said with a nod, partly to make myself feel more confident with the choice. "We'll go with the skirt."
Parian nodded, moving to retrieve a small style book from beside her desk. "What length would you like? Do you want it open, tight, slitted?" When she returned, I was shown a handful of basic examples.
"I don't want it long enough to trip over, and I'd like it to restrict movement as little as possible... medium and not tight?" I hedged.
She hummed. "We could combine options. leave an overlapping split from the middle of the side, that you could close with buttons?" She ran her finger down the side of one of the images, from mid-thigh to the knees, where she circled her finger. "If you think you might need more range of motion, you could take a couple seconds to unbutton them." She gave me a moment to ponder it. "I think large buttons, a very obvious style choice. We could use the same buttons for the waist, offset to the opposite side?"
That didn't look too bad in my head, actually. Gram gave an assenting nod when I looked to her for advice. "That sounds fine."
"Onto the jacket." Parian nodded, turning some pages. "Open, half-close, or full-close?" She indicated a series of images, depicting an open jacket, one that closed under the bust, or one that closed over the bust. The first looked far too casual to me, I didn't think Gram would approve. Despite being what she wore, I didn't have the bust to make the second look good... hell, I wanted to draw attention away from my tiny tits, if I could...
"Fully closed, I think." I tapped myself on my sternum, above where my cleavage would be, if I had any.
She nodded, feeling a little surprised. "Alright. That will give you a lot more options for what to wear under it. Did you have a color in mind?"
That wasn't exactly the line of thinking I had, but that was a good point. Considering the colors question... "Something dark?" ...and easier to take care of.
Parian hummed. "Navy blue is fairly common, as a classic choice."
"That works." I said with a shrug. She extended her hand, and a roll of dark blue cloth floated off the racks and over to us. She took a pair of scissors from her kit, and cut a long two-foot wide strip from it, which folded itself up and wrapped itself around my waist, several pins that'd begun orbiting us threading themselves into the folds. "Wait, we're building this now?"
The living doll cocked its head in my direction, and I could feel Sabah's eyebrow raised under the mask. "Yes?"
I looked to Gram, who gave a satisfied smile, which hid her amusement at my mild alarm well enough. "The more of it that gets done today, the sooner it will be finished."
Obviously, but... I heaved a sigh, which had Gram smiling harder, and Parian raising a hand to her mask's mouth, pretending to stifle another tittering laugh. She still felt amused at my reticence, though. I knew on some level I'd expected this, but I'd hoped I wouldn't need to play mannequin for however long this was going to take. "Yeah, okay."
Gram chuckled, while Parian floated some cloth forms over to us, a flat piece of cloth that looked like a T-shirt floating up to press against my back. "This reminds me of the last time I did this, with your mother. She was about your age, and we were having something similar made."
That had me blinking, then looking over in confusion. My voice was curious and hopeful, when I asked, "Mom liked things like this?" I indicated the fabric cylinder pinned around my hips, and the forms pressed against me, which Parian was still measuring and marking notes about.
Gram outright laughed at that. "Oh, my, no." She shook her head as her dark amusement petered into chuckles. "She absolutely abhorred skirts and dresses, when she was your age. If they weren't a product of 'sexist propaganda' then they were a symbol of 'pandering to the patriarchy'..." She trailed off. I was surprised, though. Mom used to wear skirts and dresses all the time, especially to work. Parian's work slowed, the girl obviously listening in, though she felt awkward about it. "...it was one of the last things we did together, before she ran off to college." From the emphasis, I knew she was talking about Lustrum. She chuckled again. "I don't think she ever actually wore the thing..."
On the one hand, we were hardly alone. On the other, Gram was feeling wistful, reminiscing about the past... and I was incredibly curious... "What was mom like, before that?"
She crowed happily at the thought. "Oh, she was a sweet girl. Shy and bookish, before she went to school and found her stubborn streak. Studious, took well to her tutors, looked up to her brother, doted on her sister..." Her smile faltered. "I think, that was part of the problem. We had them tutored through primary... accelerated curriculum, specialized lessons, then we'd send them to preparatory, around middle school." Gram paused for a bit, long enough that Parian had finished with the half-shirt front pieces that were pressed against me and measured. "She hated school. Her marks were good, but she hardly interacted with her peers. Hated how the world wasn't like her storybooks. Hated how the boys were always expected to excel and thrive, while many of the other girls were expected to simply catch the eye of the right boy, or contribute just enough to be noticed before settling down, or..." She sighed. "She refused outright to continue private schooling. Insisted on a public high school." She spat the word like it'd offended her, then took a moment to calm down before continuing. "Her father talked her down to an academy near the college. Private, if barely. They still mingled with the local public school crowds, which appealed to her." I turned away, to watch Parian cutting shapes out of the roll of cloth, based on the notes she'd taken. "I never should have let her go." Gram muttered. "But her brother was off at Harvard, set to settle down with a nice girl, and her sister was taking so much of our attention, we settled for 'good enough' with Annette."
"And then college?" I prompted.
Gram nodded. "She came home, a rebellious spitfire that looked nothing like our little girl. She wanted nothing to do with high society, the family businesses, or starting her own family. We could have stopped her from leaving, but we were part of the problem, to her. Give her a few years, we thought. Let her work it out of her system. Then Behemoth came to New York, and Lilian's infection..." Gram wilted. "Then it was just the two of us left."
It took me a while, to figure out what to say to that. Parian started fitting the cloth patches together on top of me, pins holding them together after they folded into shape. She felt... really uncomfortable, but Gram didn't seem to care that she was here. I gave her a shy, apologetic smile, and she returned it, from behind her front of stoic professionalism. "I miss her, too." I said, finally. "You'll have to tell me about Uncle John and Aunt Lilly sometime. Mom didn't mention them very often... but, what do you think of the suit?"
She blinked, her eyes flicking over the setting for a moment, from the room, to me, to Parian. I could feel the spike of alarm before her emotions evened out. She gave a deep, thoughtful hum to cover her pause, before nodding. "The colors and cut suit you well, dear. Were you planning on a straight professional trim, or something curved and fashionable?"
I gave a confused grunt, and turned my head to Parian. She daintily lifted one of her small gloved hands to line her fingers up with my sternum, a couple inches away. "We can go with a boxier, less common cut," she drew her fingers straight down, only curving into the bottom hem in the last inch or two from the skirt. Then she returned the hand to its starting position. "or we can curve a little, which is the most common variation." The fingers shifted away at a slight angle just under my ribs, this time. "Or, we can widen the curve, to give a splash of color near your midriff from the undershirt." This time it was a deeper constant curve away. "Any more than that, and we might defeat the purpose of a professional suit. This is the easiest to curve into a shorter hem in the back, if you'd prefer."
"Lower back hem is fine." I didn't want to encourage people looking at my butt, anyway. "The normal cut looked fine, maybe overlapped a little more? Less color, there." The fewer eyes on my stomach, or drawn to my unfeminine hips, the better.
She gave a brief hum, then the cloth held together over my torso shifted away, pins removing themselves, cloth refolding and re-pinning, before it returned. There was more overlap over my ribs now, the diagonal pulling away from it more sharply than she'd indicated, but less than the showy version. In the end, between the closed coat and the skirt, there was only a small triangle of my stomach barely visible. With how shadowed it'd be in most lightings, I doubted even wearing something bright would make it particularly eye-catching. "Now, for the top. Most suit jackets don't close this high, so I wanted to try something special with it." She indicated towards the right side of my bust, about mirrored from where my heart would be on the left. "If we move the buttons up and to the right, we change the profile of the cut enough to be unique and memorable, without too overtly altering the style." She dropped her hand and cocked her hip, which had the effect of cutely flaring her ruffles. "It also brings them further in line with the pattern set by the skirt, right, left, right," She pointed first at the lower-right corner of the skirt, then the left side of my hip, then the right of my chest. "which helps to tie both parts together as a matching ensemble."
I thought about it, and the image that came to mind looked good, but I didn't know if it was fashionable. Parian seemed happy with it though, and Gram gave an assenting nod when I glanced her way. "Yeah, alright. That sounds fine."
The cloth pulled away and re-pinned itself again, the angle of the diagonal trim shifting slightly, but mostly just extending up a bit more. I spied a pair of colored pins at the extending point, which I figured were placeholders for buttons. "This does mean the collaring on the trim will be a bit shorter and higher, than normal." A couple scraps from the earlier cuts floated our way, folding themselves into triangular shapes and pressing against the neckline of the jacket. A longer strip had folded itself into a collar, wrapping around the back of my neck and flared into two smaller triangular shapes just underneath but higher on the neckline than the first ones. "Is this acceptable?" It didn't seem very different to how I imagined suit collaring to look, so I shrugged and nodded. Then she waved a hand along my arm, would have been sliding it down my forearm but for the couple inches between us, and my arm found itself tugged upward by the unfinished sleeves around them. "Would you like an open cuff, or a rolled cuff? Open would leave the sleeve material shorter, intended not to be rolled, which gives an impression of informality. Rolled cuffs require more material, leaving the base sleeve too long to properly leave unrolled, unless you want to roll them higher up your arm. That would give the impression that you're a workman, which tends to be the wrong signal to send if you're wearing a suit at all. I'd suggest wrist-length sleeves either way, but rolled gives us more options for functional buttoning, if you'd rather not bother with cufflinks."
"Cufflinks?" I knew what they were, Dad and Mom both had a couple sets of them, but it'd been so long since I'd seen either actually use them, that I felt like asking.
Both of them seemed to take my question as 'what are cufflinks' rather than 'should I bother with them', though. "Like a pair of buttons, threaded through two buttonholes, instead of a single button-and-hole set." Parian stated, while Gram held up one of her sleeves. I caught sight of the shiny button there, which I noted to be an older coin on closer inspection, welded to another inside the sleeve by a short bar. Honestly, the whole notion struck me as a form of 'businessman jewelry' which… I couldn't immediately see the appeal of it.
I shook my head. "I don't think so? Maybe the buttons."
Parian hummed. "I can easily add the buttoning for them, in addition to an actual button. If you chose to switch over later, the original button would be completely hidden in the cuff."
"Huh. Yeah, options are nice. Let's go with that." Part of my plan for this suit was to be a stepping stone for things, dissociating jewelry and accessorizing from memories with Emma would be nice, too. Mom had jewelry and accessories, but she was never excited about them the same way Emma was.
The sleeves unfurled, curling back on themselves and leaving about two and a half inches of material folded over itself to form the cuffs. "Last important detail." Parian stated, after making a few notes and inspecting her work so far. "You don't seem like a purse girl, so I assume you are going to want pockets?"
I'm sure it said something about me, that I was more alarmed she thought not having pockets was even an option than anything else. "Yes, definitely pockets." I answered.
She nodded. "Please place your hands where they would comfortably rest inside a pocket." I rested my hands on my stomach above the cloth, and she made a couple more notes on her sheets, sliding a couple pins into the cloth beside my hands for reference. "Now slide them back and forth, along a comfortable path for putting your hands in the pockets." She leaned closer to watch my hands and made a couple more notes. "Now stop your hands near the top of that arc, about where you want the opening for the pockets to be." I did so, prompting more notes and pins. She started flipping through her reference book again as she asked, "Do you prefer open pockets, button-shut, or hidden zippers?"
In an emergency, I might not have time to change clothes… I supposed it'd be nice to not lose my phone or wallet, but I didn't like the few button-close pockets I had on a couple of my pants. "Zippers."
She marked it down, and showed me a couple pages from the book. "Pick a pocket style, please." Most of them were embroidery patterns, stylized sewing marks from the pocket attachments, or layers of additional material over top of the pocket's edge. I picked out one of the ones without much visible threadwork, to make the pockets less obvious. "I can also add hidden pockets on the inside. Under the hem, or as a breast pocket. Pockets in the shadow of your breast-line could help hide things like a wallet, or a second cell phone."
It was hilarious that she thought my breasts were big enough to hide anything, natural curve of a suit jacket or not. "I guess more pockets are better. Options for the future, and such." I could always hold out hope that I'd graduate out of A-cup mosquito-bites eventually. I appreciated the thought towards helping with my cape life, though.
Parian noted that down, floating one of the changing screens over as she circled me to check everything again, stopping to the side of it, as it set down in front of me. The inside of the panels were large mirrors, but it blocked Gram's line of sight, which might have been why she hadn't had it up before now. "We're almost done. I just want to check over everything, to be sure. Skirt hem length is okay?"
I knew what it looked like, but the new vantage helped put it in perspective. I looked… sleek, I supposed. I was still a beanpole, and it was pretty painfully obvious why they called these 'pencil' skirts, since my body was more of a curve-less cylinder. Still, even if I didn't look like a woman, I certainly looked important. While I had paused to look, Parian had floated over a set of large black buttons, about the size of quarters. "These are what I had in mind, for reference." They pressed themselves into the cloth. They blended in fairly well against the dark cloth, but were large enough to catch the eye anyway, without looking ridiculous. Two of them were right at the lower hem, which ended just above my knees.
My knees themselves were still bony, but they weren't the unsightly protrusions bulging out from a pair of twigs they'd been before I started running. I was proud of the tone I'd worked into my legs. I could deal with showing them off, a little. "The skirt is fine, and so are the buttons."
"Jacket hem?" She asked, and I nodded. "Cuffs are good?" The questions continued for a bit, as I confirmed all the little details, and she checked them off of her little list of notes. Eventually we were done, the mirror divider folding itself away back in its corner of the room with the rest. She gently slipped the half-finished suit off my shoulders, pinning markers into the skirt before it curled away to follow its top across the room. They reassembled on one of the adjustable torsos, which seemed oddly well calibrated to my sizes, given I hadn't noticed her adjusting it or swapping it out for one of the two my Terraform suits had been on. Probably the one from the costume I grabbed on Thursday, I decided after a moment's deliberation. I stepped off the platform and started squeezing back into my clothes for the day, while Parian stepped away a bit and flounced theatrically, flaring her ruffles as she dipped into a curtsy. "I should have it done by Tuesday afternoon."
That had me goggling a bit. It took my costumes two weeks. Sure, Parian didn't have the material in stock, so she would've had to wait on a shipment or had to go or send someone to pick the cloth up, but even then... how much was Gram paying for this suit? They hadn't mentioned prices or money at all since we got here. Either they'd worked it out ahead of time, or this was the sort of 'blank cheque' situation that left me feeling distinctly uncomfortable all of a sudden. Gram stood, apparently taking the words with the same 'conclusion of business' sentiment as I had.
"So we're done?" I asked, just to be sure. Gram nodded, quirking her brow.
"Unless you have some other business?" Parian asked, her curiosity well hidden behind a veil of professionalism.
"I did have a couple questions... about cape life and such, if you have time for it." Smooth lie, there. Neither were fooled, but politely ignored it. I turned to Gram. "I was thinking of hanging around the Boardwalk for a bit today, anyway. I can call you later, to start planning out our meetings and things, since I'll have my suit starting Wednesday?" She thought for a moment, and nodded. So I turned back to our hostess. "Do you mind me staying for a few minutes?"
She hummed and pretended to consider it. "That would be acceptable." She turned to Gram and gave a short, respectful bob. "I'll see you out?" Gram nodded, and slowly walked to the door. Parian turned back to me. "Please wait here, a moment." Her youthful stride quickly caught up, despite her shorter legs. She opened the door and the two walked downstairs, trading words I couldn't read, but seemed pleasant enough from their moods. When she returned, she skipped over the room I was in, heading instead for the stairwell up to the loft. There she took a moment to search, and came back down with the clothes I'd left. "Here they are. Did you actually have questions, or were you just ditching your supervision for the day?" Already her carefully crafted character was cracking, as she grinned at me from under her mask. I took the clothes and stashed them in the front pouch of my bag, since I was running out of room.
"Nah, I really was going to do some training. She doesn't need to be there for that." Plus, I had no intention of telling her driver I was a cape.
"Powers practice, or working out?" She asked curiously, while pulling the three shirts she was working on when we arrived back from the wall to start work finishing them up.
I shook my head. "Powers, I did my workout this morning. Why?"
She grinned, and it showed in her voice. "If you have a way to make a show of it, you could do it on the Boardwalk, or somewhere public. That's what I did until I could convince places to start hiring me for advertising shows. You've got good press right now, but more visibility rarely hurts."
Right, she'd probably seen the news articles or PHO threads, too. "Is everyone better at PR than me?" Her grin faded, and I could tell she was worried I'd been insulted. "I'm just bad with people, and don't like attention." Wait, that sounded wrong. "I mean, I don't know how to handle attention, anymore. I don't mind if people like or talk about me." As long as it's not behind my back, or whispered insults I'm supposed to hear, or insults to my face. I shook my head and started thinking out loud. "Yeah, some visibility would be good, though. You're not the only one to mention it. I guess... I could practice waterbending on the pier? Water's not as scary as fire, and it's flashier than earth or air."
"That sounds good."
We descended into silence for a bit, after that. I cleared my throat before it could get awkward. "Anyway, the thing I really wanted to mention... my Gram's been looking to invest in the Bay area, since I'm not moving away. That's what we needed the suit for, actually. She wants me to sit in on business meetings." Her work was slowing considerably as she absorbed my words. She felt wary, confused, mild alarm. "We don't have to do anything, if you don't want!" I cut in. "I just... I figured I still owed you from before, and just bringing in more business didn't seem like it was enough. Just... think about it?"
She still felt wary, but her confusion had swapped for consideration, her alarm now determination. "I can... think about it, yeah."
I nodded. Best I could do, I think. "Well, I'll be back Tuesday if you want to talk about it, then. Uh, I should... don't want to overstay my welcome..." My words devolved into nervous mutterings.
"You're fine." She scoffed, the needles she was controlling pinning themselves down as she rose to her feet. "But I won't keep you. See you out?" She headed for the door without waiting for an answer. I moved to grab my bag, full of costumes, to head out and dress up for my public practice, something still itching in the back of my mind. I glanced at Parian, her wig's full head of ring-curls bouncing behind her and catching my eye.
"Wait!" I called, and she stopped, turning back. I started to fidget a little. "I, uh. I still haven't learned how to put my hair up, for my costume. I was too burnt out to think on it after Thursday though, and I've been busy all weekend..." I pulled the steel needles she'd used for my hair out of one of my bag's side pouches, clutching them to my chest as I gave her my best, out-of-practice puppy eyes. "Could you... show me? Again? Please?"
She stared at me for a bit, her chest tightening as her emotions fluttered. They settled into an odd mix of affection, trepidation, caution, fear, attraction... I blushed and glanced away, for how little that helped. Sabah sighed, unlatching her mask and wig on her way over to me, one of the chairs tugging itself in her wake by its cloth components. "Alright, have a seat." I did so, and she came up behind me, even as her wig carried her mask through the air over to her stool. The mirrors floated back to us, the screen curling around us so that we could see my hair from the side and back without turning too much. "I don't know if you can copy what I did with my powers somehow, but I can show you that again, and how to do it by hand." She tapped her fingers to my scalp, and the tingles flowed through my skin like last time. My hair straightened behind the chair's back, and pulled itself into a bun. I handed her the pins, and she put them in. "The trick is to pull everything together so that there's only a couple places cinching everything down that need to be made tighter." She pulled the pins, tugged my hair out of the curl, and did it again. "Hair actually has a lot of friction and surface area, it all holds together really well if you can get it tight in the right way." She said to fill the air, while she worked.
"I think... I might be able to do that with water?" I said, after she'd undone it again. I leaned down over the chair's armrest, grabbing mom's thermos out of my bag's other side-pouch. "If I can control the water well enough, I can use it like a thousand tiny hands..." I uncapped it, and let the water flow out. Sabah had backed away when I moved, so I just let it flow over my mane. There was enough to coat everything, holding it straight, pulling it into a curl... pinning it down... I drew the water away, and part of the bun frizzed out, trying to follow it. I sighed and tried again. It took three more, but I managed it. "I think... I've got that down now. I'd still like to learn to do it by hand, if you have the time?"
She'd felt pretty amazed by my powers, when I'd started showing them off. I'd wondered if powers like ours, with such fine control, were rare. Her emotions had tapered off in the few minutes I'd spent practicing, settling into that mix of fondness and fear from before. She laughed at my concern for her schedule. "You were my only appointment today. I usually spend Sundays on homework, or in the store mingling with the weekend crowd." She started stroking my hair, brushing it out with her powers. It felt nice. "Don't worry about me. Anyway, usually it's easier to braid hair before bunning it, if you're going by-hand." By the end of the five seconds it took her to float a hair-tie to her from somewhere, my hair had pulled itself into a basic braid. "In this case, it's just balling it up and sticking a pin through the end." She rolled the hair up, tucked the tip of my hair under a thicker part of the braid, and slotted a single needle through it. "Easy enough." She pulled the pin, tugged the hair free, pulled the tie off, and my hair unbraided itself under her power. Then she put my hair into a ponytail with the tie. "Without braiding, it's harder, but just takes practice." She twisted the hair a bit, hooked a finger under the now-spiraling tail, twisting the hair over it, and started reeling it around the spool she formed from the first bit of the tail. This time she pinned it in a couple places, and it only frayed out a little more than it did when she used her powers for it. "Okay, give that a few tries, then you should probably head out, before Cindy and Tammi start getting ideas about what we must be doing up here, unsupervised."
I blushed. Those must be her employees' names, since I recognized the girl who'd showed us up here. "Do they... usually think that sort of thing?" How many people did Parian have alone with her, and how often were they given reason to think she might be doing... things with her clients? Was... was Sabah gay?
She snorted, her amusement taking a dark turn. "They're socialite fashionistas, who decided working for a cape in Brockton Bay was a perfect start to their careers. I'm sure at least half the rumors about me on PHO were started by my employees."
Huh. I... might need to check out her thread, then. I gave the bun a good five tries, but none of them looked anywhere near as good as hers did. "You're on the right track, though. Just keep practicing."
I nodded and grabbed my bag, putting the needles and thermos away, and slipping it onto my shoulders while Sabah reset the room and her costume. If she wasn't going to ask for them back, I might as well keep them, right? "Thanks again, Sabah. I... know I keep imposing. I really appreciate all of your help."
By now she had her mask on, to hide the darkening of her cheeks. She shook her head and laughed. "It's no problem." She paused, taking a moment to breathe and get back in character. "You're very welcome." She added, with a tiny curtsy bob and a nod. I chuckled, smiling and nodding back. I followed her through the door and down the stairs, trailing behind as she glided through the store proper, drawing eyes and 'ooh's as she went. She stopped by the door. "Thank you for stopping by. I hope to see you again, soon." She stated sweetly, and even I could hear the subtle 'I hope to take more of your money, soon' in the words. She felt amused, so my guess was intentionally distancing herself from me personally, for the sake of the crowd. Didn't want anyone getting ideas that I was more than just another customer, so I decided to play along.
"Thanks again, Parian. I'll see you soon!" I wasn't sure I could actually pull off vapid commercialist, but I gave it my best shot. She snorted as I pushed through the door, and shook her head before moving to mingle with the crowd.
Now then... I stretched my senses as far as I could up and down the bayfront, considering the quays and piers along the boardwalk. If I was going to make a show of things, I had to consider my options carefully.
---
---
Ehh, might as well include the old AN, too.
Parian is incredibly chill about revealing her identity, because we have to remember, she was always planning on revealing it. She knew revealing her skin color would give people enough dots to connect, that it would out her. And she intended to do so, as a talking point and PR move, once she was more established and could take advantage of the press. This version of Parian is much closer to that point than she ever was in canon.
Read a fic recently (as in, the last couple months or so) which had a moderately-pierced Sabah, and for some reason I just can't shake the image now. I think it gives her a lot more character, being a five-foot punk scene waif who's very loud with her style and body mod choices, at least as much as her family and culture let her be, because small women are just like that. Hell, the short scrappy guy is a trope, too. There's way too many reasons a smaller-statured person would find ways to stand out for at least some of them to not apply to Sabah. She's a social animal, after all. Why else would she care about being ostracized to the point of canonically making life-ruining choices to avoid it? I've been to college. You don't need to care what people think about you there. Either WB has never been and assumes it's just more high school, or Sabah actually cares about what people think of her to the point where she would absolutely try to be attention-grabbing and memorable enough to climb social strata.
It always struck me as... really weird how Sabah was supposed to have not really cared about her identity when she lives in a city where the largest cape presence would happily kill her just for existing. I'm hand-waving a bit of it away as self-delusion, here.
At first I'd intended Gram's casual dismissal of Parian as a classist, and accidentally racist, disregard for 'the help'. This accidentally shifted near the end, to her just being old and losing track of herself. Potentially pointing to more serious mental degradation that she might be hiding. Honestly I'm pretty happy with leaving all of it ambiguous for now. I don't think there's a single character in this story that is entirely well, some more than others. I'm not entirely sure where along that spectrum Gram fits, aside from still being fairly functional as a cog in the ol' capitalist engine.
I wasn't intending for Parian to be the one to have the idea for a Boardwalk show, but it fit in the moment, and a quick check through the last couple updates didn't show anything too obviously contradictory to it. I decided I liked it, so in it went.
EDIT: Added a bit to the end.
Now Taylor knows how to do hair buns, and can have herself a nice Gay Panic later.
"Okay, give that a few tries, then you should probably head out, before Cindy and Tammi start getting ideas about what we must be doing up here, unsupervised."
Cassandra Herren is the fanon name of Rune, in Ward it was revealed as Tammi and it's bit of a crapshoot if a fic keeps with the old fanon name or changes to the canon one.
But not a gay hug! Just a normal, no fondling 'I appreciate you' above the clothing hug. Not that she isn't worth lots of gay hugs, or that there is anything wrong with consenting hugs, one of my best friends knows how to hug very well. But normal hugs, they aren't gay hugs because we both just really appreciate each other! Probably.
I'm sorry, I was distracted by something. Not her bottom, no just distracted by random thoughts that are unrelated to situations of a nature mention earlier this conversation. Any thoughts related to gay or non gay hugs are completely unrelated too any distractions I may or may not have been having.
... I'm going to go have a completely consensual not gay nor straight arms wrapping around each other in a platonic squeezing event!
Cassandra Herren is the fanon name of Rune, in Ward it was revealed as Tammi and it's bit of a crapshoot if a fic keeps with the old fanon name or changes to the canon one.
Oh Taylor... one day you'll be healthy mentally enough and be able to see you have the literal body of a supermodel. Fashion and supermodels prefer long legs, and smaller busts. Why? I don't know. Curves are wonderful things, but Taylor has always almost ever been described as a teenager who would slot into the fashion industry with effortless ease. Damn bullying destroying her...
As it is, can't wait to see her show off her Water Bending out on the Boardwalk. With her walking on water, making the tide spin and dance. I am sure she is going to draw quite the crowd... and some comparisons to Leviathan. Which is a given, but also will show just how effective she is going to be when she fights him. If she can go full Avatar state... she might be able to deny Leviathan every drop of water he reaches for.
Taylor was adorable here, and her interactions with her Grandmother and Sabah were adorable. And it is a fascinating thing to include the Uncle and Aunt. One dead to Behemoth even. Pity she never got the chance to know them, but knowing she lost family to Endbringers makes it even more personal in the future.
Fashion is easier if you don't have to design around curves, that's why supermodels are usually stick-thin: They're living poles to hang an artist's design from.
(The expression on male models on the runway, on the other hand, sometimes makes me wonder how close they are to murdering their designers.)
We've got ourselves a cyclical argument, here.
It says right there in the quote, they usually fake it. Actual, meaningful 'send information back in time' time-travel is apparently too expensive to ever use. If it's never going to be used, why include it? It just adds more plot holes for zero gain, when flat-out declaring it irrelevant or impossible changes nothing.
Of course, this is the exact same argument I used before, which you refuted with "But they can do it, so it absolutely matters! There are no plot holes because it'll never be used for that. Everything fits." hence, cyclical. : /
I just looked up Phir Se's powers to double check I had things right, and the whole 'doubling power' thing doesn't make sense. Yes, he'd be bringing energy back from the future, but to keep from generating a paradox he'd have to send that energy back, which means the total amount in the system would never exceed that first doubling, and would likely stay in the past if he fired it. Giving him an attack exactly equal to what he started with.
Either the Entities already had infinite energy with this power, breaking the entire setting and making the Cycle pointless, or the shard does indeed have to front the energy for the 'paradox' it 'lets him get away with'.
Basically, if energy isn't free with that technique, why would the shard pretend like it is? It doesn't have anything to learn from the host finding an exploit in the made-up rules it decided on that aren't based on the actual underlying physics.
Actually no, finding loopholes and exploits within arbitrary limitations is exactly what shards want their hosts to do. Even if it's something they've done before, they're happy to play along if they think their host is trying. Lady Photon's shard doesn't punish her for firing the same beam attack she always does, it's happy she's in a fight.
The whole point is to generate billions of different hammers, to see if any of them are better for the arbitrary jobs they're supposed to do. Then they cull most of them, and start over. Occasionally these hammers will be used for actual hammering, and the shards are probably fine with that.
Energy is energy. It has to come from somewhere, and doesn't actually disappear even if it stops being usable.
You'd probably be better served with the analogy that if you only look at the Earth, solar panels look like they generate energy from nothing. We know the sun's burning the matter to transfer the energy to make the light that powers them, but a limited observer might be incapable of realizing it. The hosts think they get free energy, but they're just using an alternate reality's pool instead of their own.
*yes, I know we have 3space+1time+who-knows-what-else dimensions but I'm talking about dimensions in the sense that worm uses them....I hate that sci-fi/whatever-it-came-from spawned a second meaning for the word that happens to be so confusing....
We do need to also think about the difference in scale here. The Entities represent something like a Kardashew 2 civilization when it comes to available energy, with every shard roughly matching a Kardashev 0.7 - 1 civ depending on their coverage (by my back-of-the-envelope reckoning, I'd need to check back on that SFIA video to be reasonably sure). That death laser might be a drop in the ocean compared to the energy budget of a single shard. Having Phir sé run around occasionally creating 'free energy' for a decade or two would probably not be that costly to his shard.
I like to imagine that the shards are deployed on individual planets, such that they can just eat the damn planet to power their bullshit.
Solar absorption, geothermal siphoning, tide and weather power for what little that would give... more likely they'd just use the solar power to crack the water, burn the hydrogen... in the end they'd probably turn to some inefficient method of collecting or generating antimatter, then burning what's left of the planet directly for power...? Assuming they don't just redeploy to a fresh planet when they've sucked all the heat from the mantle and maybe harvested the useful radioactive material from the core.
I think it was said somewhere that the Entities aren't actually that smart, they basically just outsource all of their thinking to their shards. The Entities themselves appear to act as something of a command unit, while the Shards that make up their bodies do all of the heavy thinking. When the Shards can't think of a solution on their own, the Entities graft them to a host and hope that they'll be able to stumble upon an answer for them.
I don't think the 'Entities' actually exist. They are shards. Larger masses of shards with more processing capacity and raw power than the subsets they let out for testing, with important core functions they never give up unless they find something better, but... they're just shards. Even the most core parts of them are just specialized shards. They are very much made lesser for distributing their parts for the cycle.
They're... what's the word... *goes to look it up* Really? Zooid? I could've sworn it sounded cooler than that. ANYWAY- I don't think there is a part of an Entity that is not a shard. Some might be more specialized than others, but none are truly irreplaceable, so long as another can serve the function. If a better Administrator develops in a cycle, they just tear out the old one and harvest it for parts. Better memory storage? Better processing? Better emulation? They are ships of Theseus, and give zero fucks.
Cassandra Herren is the fanon name of Rune, in Ward it was revealed as Tammi and it's bit of a crapshoot if a fic keeps with the old fanon name or changes to the canon one.
I was using 'Cassie' for Rune for almost a year before I found out she had a canon name.
Quick search doesn't say which update first gave her name, but I haven't been keeping up with how fast Ward updates, or which update says what as they come out. All I know is, when she needed a name and I first checked to see if she had one, she didn't.
I will admit that me using Tammi here is partly me thumbing my nose at her name (she still doesn't seem like a 'Tammi' to me, in either her younger Worm or older Ward characterizations) and partly me declaring that Steve is dead, there shall be no more Steves, by using the name to give a one-off character a little more depth by having a name at all.
People binge-reading the story shouldn't be confused, given Rune's name is stated as Cassie two chapters ago, and 'Tammi' isn't going to show up again. If I need to give one of Parian's employees more backstory, I'll probably use one of the ones that hasn't featured yet. She's got more than two minions store clerks, after all. At least 6, including Sabah. Any less and you just can't fill all those shifts.
Oh Taylor... one day you'll be healthy mentally enough and be able to see you have the literal body of a supermodel. Fashion and supermodels prefer long legs, and smaller busts.
Fashion is easier if you don't have to design around curves, that's why supermodels are usually stick-thin: They're living poles to hang an artist's design from.
This might be true of runway models and proper fashion magazines, but for all the things Taylor's exposed to? The stuff curvy Emma did shoots for? Things like TV and newspaper ads, or bulk product photography?
Girls without body issues are rare enough to be dismissed as a meaningful portion of the population. There's always a demographic that doesn't fit your type that's held up as an ideal, which sticks in the mind more than the ones that do match up. Emma's probably secretly worried that she's too curvy for high fashion, or is looking to become an actress where being curvy is a boon, or she's a massive hypocrite with a body type closer to Taylor's than fanon dictates because canon hates details, or...
Bah, point is, someone as torn-down as Taylor basically can't not have body issues. (Note that I said 'girls' earlier. Women without body issues are actually a thing)
The story is intended to trend toward positivity, but it's going to be a slow thing. We're not going to see Taylor, mature woman who's grown into herself, outside a possible epilogue.
I like to imagine that the shards are deployed on individual planets, such that they can just eat the damn planet to power their bullshit.
Solar absorption, geothermal siphoning, tide and weather power for what little that would give... more likely they'd just use the solar power to crack the water, burn the hydrogen... in the end they'd probably turn to some inefficient method of collecting or generating antimatter, then burning what's left of the planet directly for power...?
IIRC that's part of why a lot of the Eden Shards Eidolon accesses are running out of power so fast (besides him tapping into them so hard), they weren't deployed correctly to access local energy sources and so are basically "running on batteries". Not sure if that's fanon or not, though.
Rule 6: Do not skeeve over characters, especially ones that are minors.
Crossposting my omake from Spacebattle:
Making Waves
"Breaking news! Local Brockton Bay independent Terraform just sent a massive tidal wave to help alleviate the Boat Graveyard from its boat problem! Her impressive display has set the city's Endbringer alarm off, sending the city into a 2-hour panic as people ran for shelter! Here is Terraform, addressing the fallout. Terraform, what do you have to say for yourself?" the anchorman shove the mic into the face of one caped menace as she squirm from the attention.
"Ye-yes Chuck, I was attempting to give the bay a makeover a-and, to help stimulate the failing economy. I didn't mean to cause a panic I swear!" Terraform stumble, making skittish hand gestures at the Boatless Graveyard.
"Well, there you have it folks! She was just trying to help! As we always say after every Armsmaster interviews, which the PR department still haven't addressed after he went skinny dipping in a public pond, referring to his suit as 'inefficient for aquatic confrontations,' all accidents comes from good intentions. Now, onto other news. Clockblocker was found freezing his Clockblocker body pillows in time at Boardwalk. He cited this as protest for the mistreatment of Wards' image as the pillows shows him to be "more beefier" than he really is, emasculating his self-image. He also wanted to address the underw-"
Slamming the remote with the zeal of an Ellisburg survivor, Piggot shut off the TV. Rubbing her eyes and nose to alleviate her PR headaches. Wards and their tantrums. Piggot gave up on her paperwork, opting to defer them to one Thomas Calvert. Not that the slimy eel ever did anything major, though he seemed agitated nowadays, twiddling his thumbs diabolically whenever someone mention Terraform in their conferences. Not that she could blame him. Speaking of said thirst-quenching deviant, she reach for her emergency phone, stretching the cords as she leans back against her creaking chair, slowly and agonizingly dials the number.
"Watchdog here, how can we help?"
"Terraform. Info. Now." Slamming her phone down, she notes the increased pressure she exerts on the machine. Stress has made her volatile to them in the past, though she never had so many destroyed since Terraform's debut. Organizing the rest of her papers, she set out to Calvert's office. Suffering needs companions.
-0-
Watchdog HQ
"Hey Don, check this chick out!"
"Christ Chris, she's 15!"
"Sorry, I meant chick magnet. Pussy galore here been warming her way into half the female capes in Brockton Bay."
"Christ, isn't her mother a Lustrumite?"
"Not sure if she knew, but who cares! More importantly, she doesn't even acknowledge or utilize her position. I mean, think of the possibilities she can exert over Brockton Bay, or in bed."
"Christ! Disregarding the latter, what do we do about her?"
"Well, we'll help her obviously! Potential this big squandered by a traumatic teen is unthinkable! We must help her realize her true potential and grab them by the-"
"Christ, you need Christ in your godless life! You are worst than Spacebattles and PHO threads combined in the last decade! No amount of filth and sins can be contained in Hell."
"It either this or getting back to the Ellisburg drawing board. At least we have a better view."
"Yeah, I'm more of a Scion sympathizer anyway. Who knows, he might someday drown out the noise of humanity with kitties. Nothing better than the world with a little less noise."
"I think drowning is the job of our goddess and savior, Terraform. The time for patriarchy is over!"
"You are a dude, right?"
"Yeah, but my wife don't take kindly to what is dangling between my legs. At least when the world is a matriarchy, I can look more like a victim in the public eye."
"What were we discussing again?"
"Something wet I bet. Oh look, it's tea time!"
"Chamomile?"
"You bet."
-0-
Somewhere very elitist later.
Taylor's Grandma sips some of her English Breakfast, muttering something about 'hedonists' and 'chamomile.' Her teatime was one of the few pleasures she can afford in her schedule. She sat in a luxurious terrace near Boardwalk, overlooking the city's now boatless Boat Graveyard, a hint of pride shine on her honed eyes. She took one more sip, then grudgingly put her teacup down when her phone rang.
"Accord here, We are in position to strike and exterminate the Teeth."
"Good."
"Anything for you, Agnes, assuming our deals hold?"
"For now."
She shut her phone off and hand it to her butler. He was much more on the skinny side, but he was the best he elite has to offer. Charming and poise, something that the Bastard should take note of. Sighing, she take out her mask and put it on with grace she done countless times. Her husband has left her with an empire with wolves salivating for a piece. She has protected her legacy, proud little thing, as best she could. Danny was stupid to not take note of Taylor's potential. In time, she will be ready.
"Ready to go, madame?"
Grabbing her mahogany cane, she stand up with the help of her butler as he helps her to her limousine. The ride was long, but she gets to feel the influence she has sown so carefully over the land. She was proud. Her little elites, sprouting and asserting themselves over the lawless land. Bygones were the days of high standard and grace. Her little kingdom will do for now.
The car stopped at a mighty building stretching over the cloud, a bastion of good growth and care. As she made her way up like so many other times, she can see the world underneath, rotting on its last limb.
She arrived at the top floor. A gentleman in red bowed for a solid minute, as standard preceded, and lift his head to give her a practiced smile.
"Welcome back, Agnes Court."
Business resumes.
Sorta had a few ideas after reading your story, so I just dump them in this omake.
I don't think the 'Entities' actually exist. They are shards. Larger masses of shards with more processing capacity and raw power than the subsets they let out for testing, with important core functions they never give up unless they find something better, but... they're just shards. Even the most core parts of them are just specialized shards. They are very much made lesser for distributing their parts for the cycle.
They're... what's the word... *goes to look it up* Really? Zooid? I could've sworn it sounded cooler than that. ANYWAY- I don't think there is a part of an Entity that is not a shard. Some might be more specialized than others, but none are truly irreplaceable, so long as another can serve the function. If a better Administrator develops in a cycle, they just tear out the old one and harvest it for parts. Better memory storage? Better processing? Better emulation? They are ships of Theseus, and give zero fucks.
While I haven't actually read Wildbows Canon, I think it was actually fact that the "entities" are Gestalt-Organisms, existing only because of the way their component "shards" link up to form a whole. Though I do admit that it might be some widespread fanon instead. As said: Haven't read Worm itself.
I always imagine them to be either recluse geniuses who can't function like normal human, similar to Contessa, or child-minded parahumans randomly recruited for their power and 'creativity'. When you are smart like Lisa without something as interesting as being leader to a Super-villain team, you sorta went mad from researching the countless horrors of the world, reverting to the PHO mindset to alleviate daily stress.
Fashion is easier if you don't have to design around curves, that's why supermodels are usually stick-thin: They're living poles to hang an artist's design from.
(The expression on male models on the runway, on the other hand, sometimes makes me wonder how close they are to murdering their designers.)
It's actually worse than that. Women's jeans didn't manage to break into good fittings until one jean company happened upon a model who had, I shit you not, the exact average measurements of the typical American woman. From there, they could just make a design that fit her well and scale that up or down for different sizes. And after she spent enough time working with the designers, she could give them better and better feedback. Yes, women owe their skinny jeans to "The woman with the perfect butt."
edit: As for the male models, statistics show that men find women more attractive when they smile. But women find stoic men more attractive. So the "don't fuck with me" face is statistically proven to be the more "alluring" one. tl;dr, our lizard brains associate male bedroom eyes with the phrase "and I will murder anyone that comes between us."
Back on topic, Taylor is so not gay that she manages to flirt with literally every female in her age range, news at 11. But yeah, girl needs a hug badly. ...And therapy, definitely therapy.
On another note, I wonder how some of the girls in Taylor's harem team would react to meeting Emma.
Side note, kidding about the harem thing. Only two of the girls on Taylor's team are trying to get into her pants. The other two are an overenthusiastic child and Dinah.
Again, reposting this here before I could give it more than a couple passes over. Let me know if you spot any obvious spelling swaps or grammatical errors.
Usually would've waited for the weekend, but I feel like posting it now, so posting it now. XD
---
SUN FEB 27
The street the Boardwalk was on had a habit of sometimes getting a little too close to the waterfront. At times like these, instead of trying to fit proper store buildings between the street and the quay, they'd cram one of those little walk-up coffee huts in, or leave the space open. The view was nice enough, with the shining Protectorate Rig and the small islands with their old lighthouses. It would've been even better without the Boat Graveyard, but life in Brockton was all about taking what you could get, these days. In the summer, you'd never find one of those spaces without at least one food cart, but in the rainier winter season, only the more intrepid foodhawkers were out. I could already see the clouds rolling in, for the rain they predicted overnight and into next week.
So, for my display, I wanted a nice big open space to see the water, without any food stands so I wouldn't be unfairly swarming them or pulling their business away, and without any of the coffee huts for the same reason. There were a few options, but two of them were fairly close to Parian's, and another couple were smaller and situated in the lower-density northern half of the Boardwalk. I was actually pretty happy with the best option, near the southern end of the strip. With the border to Downtown to the immediate west, Arcadia and the University to the northwest, and the PRT building to the southwest, the spot was well centered to help obfuscate that I'd come from a shop in the area. To the immediate south were apartments for people working in the shops to have a shorter commute, but it was honestly more popular with the university students as a slightly cheaper alternative to campus housing. South of this line of nicer apartments, you had the 'Asian' sector, where Sue's tenement was, just north of the slums.
That decided, I stopped in at one of the Boardwalk's beauty stores and headed straight for the cashier, asking for a compact mirror. Not giving them a chance to have a problem with my bag, I bought the first thing they grabbed for me. It came with a little brush, and had little pads of compressed powder set in the other side. Foundation, eye shadow, blush. An all-in-one emergency makeup kit, at least four times as expensive as a standalone mirror. I wasn't sure if they were trying to shill me the more expensive one because I seemed to be in a hurry, or grabbed what they thought I needed, given my habitual lack of makeup. Either way, they didn't stop to chat, and I was in and out in under two minutes.
The next step in my plan was finding an alley that had a hidden spot lacking any obvious cameras. Even if they were tight, I felt weird about wearing an actual pair of pants under my costume ones, so off they came. I put on my masks, my pants, and my coat. Then came the boots, which I hadn't tried, but I trusted Parian to know my body fairly well, by now. Those came up almost to my knees, the rim a tad snug until it was past the bulge of my calves. The little sock of material the same shade as the bootleather felt a little odd under my toes at first, but didn't hinder my sight as much as rubber would've. I leaned down to inspect them, tugging at them to make sure they wouldn't come loose from the boots. They seemed pretty well buttoned in, though. There was a little strip of lighter material peeking out between the sock and the rest of the boots, which I assumed continued down over the toes under the cloth. Everything below my ankle was much more rigid than the stuff above it, helping everything hold its shape. After that, I tugged on my gloves, zipped up the hidden zippers, clenched my hands a bit...
And felt good. This was it. My costume was done. I held back the urge to squeal and hop in place for a bit, if only barely. I still had myself a bit of a shuddering shuffle-dance, as I grinned and clutched my hands in front of my chest. With my khakis stowed, I grabbed my bag and hopped between the alley walls, to put myself up on the roof. It was too dark in the alley to properly judge my hair as I did it, so that part waited for me to drop off my bag. A quick run a few buildings over, and I stopped on a roof with a proper rim to it, a couple feet high. It was enough for my bag to be hidden from the street, leaning in one of the corners. I grabbed mom's thermos and my hair needles, and headed for the center of the roof so that I wasn't visible from the street anymore. I stopped near the roof access hatch-door, which looked just as rusted-shut as it'd felt, given its proximity to an ocean-salt bay. The real positive of it was the little padlock I could feel inside, though. That looked just as untouched as the rest of it. No one was coming up here from downstairs, to stumble on my stuff.
I'd considered just hiding the thing underground, but on the Boardwalk, the only way to do that was to tear up the surface, first. Even if it wasn't obvious enough to get people curious or digging, the city actually cared about this place. I didn't want to just make work for city ordinance. I briefly considered heading all the way to the beach, to stick my bag under the sand. I'd need to go a ways out to find sand deep enough that someone couldn't just dig it up in an hour or so if they found the metal in it or saw me bury it though, and the potential for rain before I was done made me think the chance of rainwater trying to force sand in wasn't worth it. Digging down into the sand to near or below sea-level was stupid, leaving things in saltwater was asking for it to be ruined.
It was fine either way. I could always keep an eye on the bag, in case someone found or messed with it. I took off my ceramic mask, since I didn't want to risk tying the straps up in my bun. Then I uncapped my water, took out the little mirror, and did my hair. It took a few tries to get it to work and not jostle itself loose with a little bent air. After replacing my outer mask, I took another look at the bun in the mirror. I rather liked that the lanyard-type straps I found for my masks were the same color as my hair. They easily attached to the little ringlets just inside the edge of the mask. The domino masks I got from Amy were white, but the straps for them were black, and only a little darker than my hair. I didn't really care if I had to undo my bun or cut the strap to get that one off, since I had no intention of unmasking before I was done anyway.
That done, the water went back in its thermos, which I levitated by the water inside it to put it back in its pocket. The mirror went in one pocket, while my phones came out of another. Then my civvie phone went in a pocket, before I dialed the PRT on my cape phone and started running. I was three blocks from my bag by the time the non-emergency line clicked over, and they gave me the usual greeting.
I slowed down, wandering closer to the edge of the roof. The next time I hopped, someone on the ground noticed, and I waved. "This is Terraform. I was thinking about doing some power training, would the PRT have any problem with me doing that near the Boardwalk, as long as everyone was safe?"
"One moment." The man said and started typing. Probably a memo to their Protectorate half. "How close to the Boardwalk, and what kind of training?"
I hummed in thought, pausing my walking, which also let the small but growing crowd train cameras up in my direction. "My original thought was on the quay, I could pull water up from the Bay, maybe make some fences from ice to keep people back, but nothing's stopping me from freezing the water and doing the practice a ways into the Bay." I shrugged, even though I knew he couldn't see it. "Maybe twenty, thirty feet out, then?" Eight to ten meters sounded about right, to me.
There was more typing. "Could you hold off for a bit, I'm waiting for confirmation from the top."
"Oh, I'm not there yet. I can probably draw the trip out to half an hour if I need to, or call it off." I shrugged and hopped to the next roof, easily managed with my stronger legs and a little airbending to drift a bit.
"Thank you, ma'am. Shouldn't be half an hour. That said, would you mind if I put you on hold for a few minutes?" I didn't mind, and said as much. Seven minutes of rooftop wandering and listening to elevator music later, he came back on the line. "Sorry for the wait, ma'am. You should be good, Director Piggot, Deputy Renick, and Miss Militia have all signed off on the powers display, as long as it stays on the water. I've been asked to remind you that the truce is expected to break down in the next week, two if we're lucky. Though, you should be fine if you keep to the Boardwalk in the future."
"Thanks for keeping me in the loop. I can't think of anything else I'd want to do for training, given my trouble at the Trainyard." I knew the truce wouldn't last forever, but it was nice to have a timetable.
"Oh, no. Thank you. The Directors have been much happier, since you've started keeping us apprised of your public appearances."
I didn't think I had made any appearances before I started calling them, but… no, they probably did include the Trainyard training, even though there wasn't anyone around until the Merchants showed up, and I hadn't had my proper costume then. "I'm happy to work with the PRT for the public's sake. I'd hate to cause a panic just because I need space to practice with my powers."
"Well, we would always make space for a Ward, if needed…" I gave him an unimpressed hum. "…but this does seem like a good alternative. Patrols have been informed, and we've sent notes to our call centers. Good hunting, Miss Terraform."
I thanked him, and ended the call. Now that I knew I was definitely doing this, I turned away from the street and grabbed my civilian phone to send dad a quick text that I'd be out until at least when we normally had dinner, practicing. With everything squared away, the only thing left to do was to head to the spot and do the thing. I turned back to wave to the small crowd of cape geeks and tourists who'd been following along on the ground with their cameras. Free publicity, right? I pointed along the Boardwalk, then sped off in that direction, quickly eating the last few blocks to the open quay I'd scouted via earthbending. I leapt from the last building, coming down on the quay's railing, in a gap in the crowd. A little airbending slowed my descent enough to make it passably elegant, landing on one of the concrete rail posts.
By the time I turned back to the crowd, the few I'd startled had finished backing or skittering away. It wasn't terribly dense, maybe thirty people who'd been walking between stores, lounging and chatting, or tourists gawking at- or taking pictures framed by- the Protectorate HQ. They'd all stopped to stare though, and more people came from around the buildings. They'd already had places they were headed to and wandered into view, or saw the crowd's reaction and were curiously investigating. I could already see phones coming up, or people who'd had them out for pictures tapping their screens to swap to video.
Right. All the pressure. I brought my hand up for a little wave. "H-hi, everyone." They all kept staring. One of the few kids here with their parents waved back. I let my hand drop. "Uhm..." My voice cracked, and I cleared my throat. Serious hero. Serious hero! "Right!" I projected my voice, which amounted mostly to shouting, as unpracticed with it as I was. "I was going to practice with my powers anyway, and figured people might like a show. However!" I brought my hand back up, pointing down at the stone pillars and metal fencing that made up the quay's safety rail. "Everyone needs to stay on this side of the rail! The PRT's going to be very unhappy with the both of us if you throw yourself in the bay. Be safe!" I turned back to the water, raising my hands and drawing a large bulge of water up out of the bay. My hands pressed down, flattening the top into a rectangle about three by ten meters, butting up against the concrete siding of the quay. Then I pushed my palms out, forcing the heat from the mass until all that remained was an eight by thirty foot block of ice a short drop down from the Boardwalk. I wasn't thrilled about standing on ice for hours, though. The last thing I wanted to do was slip and fall on camera because I forgot to keep the ice forced solid, or give myself frostbite because I had to keep the ice super-cold to prevent melting from body-heat and slipping... Ugh.
I swirled my hands, churning the water at the bottom of the bay, before pulling the thick silt-filled water up and into the air. This was then spread over the ice, before I pulled most of the moisture out of it, and froze what was left. The result was basically several inches of silty permafrost between the ice and the air. Figuring this was about as good as I was going to get, I hopped down onto it and spent several moments testing the grip and temperature. It was still really cold, but I thought I could work with it, and my feet didn't slide any. Satisfied, I repeated the process to form a beveled dais near the end, before I hopped up the slight slope and settled myself in the center of it, then gave a slow twirl as I inspected it, and nodded to myself. Almost perfectly flat, with at least a meter's clearance on either side from the center. I wasn't planning to move that much, but the leeway was nice.
My senses weren't reporting optimally, but I could still easily feel the nearby Boardwalk, and keep a metaphorical eye on my bag. Naturally this meant that when I turned my eyes back to the more permanent concrete quay, I was unsurprised to find the available standing room just behind the rails was already full. There wasn't much of a second row behind them yet, but that was only a matter of time. Almost half of them had their phones out now, though only a quarter or so had them pointed my way. After a couple seconds of trying to think of something else to say, I gave up. Instead, I gave a small bow, and turned back toward the bay.
I let my hands drift out in front of me, pinching my fingers as they passed waist height. As my hands continued upward, a pair of meter-thick columns started to draw themselves out of the bay. With a quick downward chopping motion, I split them in half, then took a step back, letting the motion of pulling my hands back to behind me roll down from my shoulders, through my spine, settling my weight on my back foot. This pulled half the original pillars behind me, until they settled into a square around me. I wanted to see how many I could control at once, so I started slowly spinning on the balls of my back foot, pulling the pillars into a helix starting from the tops. Once I had the whole thing spiraling around me, I started splitting them every couple seconds. 8, 16, 32, 64... 128... when I tried to split it again into nearly three hundred little strands, my control slipped and the whole thing flowed into a sphere around me.
If I had to guess, maybe two hundred separate parts of a single, larger whole? That seemed perfectly fine, for the moment. Now I had to wonder how many different things I could manage at once. I stopped my twirling motion and with it, the spinning of the water in the dome around me. I pulled it up, shrinking it into a large ring above me, which I then froze solid. I raised a hand to draw another, thinner stream of water from the bay, which threaded its way over, around, and through the ring of ice. When it was almost circling back on itself, I stopped drawing more from the bay, and started snipping off globs from the front of the stream into softball-sized spheres. These I sent off in different orbits around the ring, different speeds and distances, and opposing rotations. It was starting to get difficult at around 50 of them, not from any strain on my part, but because they kept crashing into each other and exploding. It was especially hard to keep the ones behind me that I couldn't see apart. I knew where I wanted them to be, but there must have been some hiccup between visualization and implementation. When I ran out of stream to snip apart, I started re-conglomerating the falling droplets into new spheres to add back in, instead of letting the water rain back into the bay.
Honestly, as I got better with it, I started crashing them together on purpose. The crowd seemed to like the glittery explosions more than the displays of precise coordination. I was glad the clouds had rolled in as fast as they had, it wouldn't have been nearly as fun for the onlookers with the harsh afternoon glare reflecting back in their eyes. I'd need to keep that in mind, if I decided to do this again. For all that it was getting easier though, I could tell the only reason I could even manage this much was because they were all moving in roughly the same direction. The soft steps, gentle sway of my spine and hips, and circuitous motions of my hands and arms... that only kept them all moving counter-clockwise around me. Even the ring of ice had started picking up a tiny bit of spin I hadn't intended, due to my focus on the spheres. The little motions, though- slight tweaks to trajectory or velocity within the greater flow- were a matter of willing it to happen while I maintained some control over them.
It was about twenty minutes, maybe half an hour, since starting on this, that I stopped. The crowd was starting to lose interest, and I'd learned what I'd wanted to from this exercise. The ring I'd been using to give myself a concrete frame of reference melted, the spheres flowing into it, and the whole mass swirling into a rough chaotic spiral before splitting in half and floating to either side in front of me. The right, I started to freeze, and melt, and refreeze into ever more elaborate snowflake shapes. The left I kept liquid, forcing the amorphous blob to float itself into various rough geometrical shapes.
A few minutes into this, my attention was broken by a shrill voice excitedly crying "Teddy!" and breaking through the din I'd been ignoring up until now. Most of the crowd had been talking amongst themselves, but a few had called out to me. This had me stopping though, considering the cone floating to my left, which had just ceased being a rectangle. Had the kid seen something I hadn't intended, in the shift? ...was there any reason I couldn't do animal shapes?
With that thought, I flowed the two masses back together, and tried to actually manage a proper bear shape. It... wasn't great, but for all I knew, I was being too critical of myself again. Slightly oblong spheroids for the head, muzzle, and ears. Pear-shaped body, and roughly cylindrical stubby limbs. No one could say it didn't look like a nearly transparent stuffed bear. I got a cheer and some polite clapping, and a little boy started loudly demanding dinosaurs. I supposed if there was anyone I didn't mind taking requests from, it was the kids. Might as well make their day, I thought with a smile.
My dinosaurs were even worse than the bear. They needed more detail, and I actually tried making them move, which didn't help any. Still, the kids were happy, and the crowd seemed impressed by life-sized obviously-fake replicas. The requests changed after that. Dogs, cats, birds... I was making a small herd of ponies gallop around my platform when I heard a familiar voice.
"Hey! Do you do ice sculptures?" Assault shouted, grinning like a loon.
I let the ponies collapse into the bay. I'd only been able to manage six of them because I'd kept them all moving the same directions, and even though their legs moved under them, they were still moving with the same general 'flow' as their bodies, just at different angles or velocities. Still, that was pushing my limits a bit, and I was thankful for the excuse for a break, even if I'd never admit it. I turned a petulant glower his way, even though it was covered by my mask. He'd managed to slither his way through the crowd, and was standing just behind the rail off to the side a bit. Dauntless floated in the air next to him, on the bay side of the rail, giving me a sheepish smile.
"Just because I can, doesn't mean I should. If I made you something, I'd have to start making things for everyone else." The crowd's excitement started getting a tad rowdy at my words, so I raised my voice. "But! I don't feel comfortable with that. What if people hurt their hands holding ice for too long, or dropped it on their feet or something? It's not like they'd even last that long. It seems like a crummy trinket to give out at this sort of thing." The mood shifted negatively at that, people loved free shit, even if they couldn't keep it forever. "Maybe if I do a big earth training day or something, I can make things that'll last, for people." That seemed to mollify them, and I turned my attention back to Assault. "Why do you want to know, anyway?"
He kept grinning, but his insides tensed and twitched in a way that told me he was fighting down the urge to giggle. "Ehh," He shrugged. "Director seems like she needs her own personal honey badger, is all."
Hmm. I couldn't tell if he was mocking her by implying she needed a visit from a particularly vicious animal, or making some reference to her personality I just wasn't getting. I only knew Director Piggot by her reputation as a no-nonsense hardass. Even through all the jeers and lost faith in the Protectorate and PRT in the Bay, with their limited record for success with the city's abnormally well-entrenched gangs, very little of that was aimed her way. It probably had something to do with how bright and visible the Protectorate was in comparison to the PRT, everyone thought of the heroes first, in both success and failure, where the gangs were concerned. The cynic in me wanted to assume she was just a politician, good at deflecting bad press and failing upwards instead of getting fired... but that was probably unfair. My mind jumped back to Amy, calling Assault an asshole. Maybe that was all this was? Some jerk being an ass to his boss? Dauntless groaning and chastising him wasn't helping his case, any.
I missed what he said, absorbed as I was in my musing, but decided to press on. "So, are you both staying to watch, or...?"
Dauntless cut in, first. "Oh, no. We just swung by on our way in." He pointed off towards the north ferry dock, where the hardlight bridge connected the city and rig, when it was on. "Figured, ah... couldn't hurt to check on you." I couldn't feel his emotions, but my prior interactions with him left me thinking he was being sincere. They'd probably been on patrol in the south, or stopped a little out of their way, heading to the rig from the PRT building.
"You seem to be doing fine!" Assault cheered. "Though if you'd like to take a break-" oh geez, had he noticed? "-we could break out the sharpies and do autographs for a while. We were gonna' do a couple dozen anyway, for a nice crowd like this one." Dauntless sighed, but didn't disagree. Did I even want to do autographs? I knew that was a thing, but I hadn't thought to bring something to write with. Should I have practiced signing things? When would I have had the time? Doing that instead of homework before bed? Assault must've seen me shrink back a bit, as his grin faded. "D, stall?" He shot quietly at his partner, before hopping down onto my platform. Dauntless popped into the air, stutter-stopping to land on the other side of the crowd, where he called for people to start a line and pulled out a pen. Assault gingerly crossed to where I was, slowly growing to trust my makeshift quay's grip as he went. "Gonna' guess you haven't done autographs before?" He asked quietly after he hopped up to join me, turned away from the crowd so we wouldn't be overheard.
I heaved a sigh. He was way more observant than I was used to dealing with. "Haven't even practiced it, yet."
He winced. "Oof, sorry. Weeell, it's fine. It wasn't a priority, and it's like… 'How to Ward 203' anyway." He rolled his hand in front of his chest. He seemed to be a very physically engaged speaker, talking with his hands. "They spend something like a month figuring out names and image stuff, and memorizing the rules, before they start actually prepping for public appearances. Figure you're ahead of the curve." That wasn't nearly as reassuring as he was trying to make it sound. "Anyway, Cliff Notes version; you have a signature and an autograph. These are not the same thing. Autographs shouldn't look anything like your normal handwriting. …signatures either, if you can manage it, but cape secrets and all. Handwriting can be traced, and anyone can look up your autograph when you start giving it out." I was honestly a little surprised by how seriously he was taking this. "The best thing you can do for now is either pin a gaff on me and dodge out entirely, or just focus on making your autograph as not-yours as possible for now. It doesn't have to be consistent, fans are happy with a barely legible scribble. More important they can't use it to trace your handwriting, or forge your signature." That sounded like generic 'famous person' advice, but it made sense for capes, too.
"I think... I should try it." I didn't want to disappoint the crowd, even if I could manage to give myself an out from signing things, like he'd said. And this was something that I'd have to deal with eventually, right? "It'll be good experience for the future, but..."
He dug into his kit and held out a red 'Assault' themed marker. Because of course he did. He seemed to detect the glower I sent his way, but it only made his grin wider. "Asshole." I muttered.
When he was done laughing, he held out the rest. Battery blue, camo olive green for Miss Militia, a darker red for Velocity, plus bronze, silver, and gold gel-markers for Dauntless, Armsmaster, and Triumph. "Y'know, people keep messing up my name that same way, and I have no idea why." He chirped happily.
"I'm sure you don't." In the end, I took the Armsmaster one. I was pretty sure it was the exact same pen he'd used to sign my baton, the last time I'd seen him. I handed back his own comparatively pink marker. "Anything else I should know?"
He shrugged. "Couple Wards patrols out today. They might stop by, too. Aside from that? Don't sign anyone's butt. That's just weird."
I punched him in the shoulder, but he just chuckled and rocked back slightly. "What, boobs are okay?"
"Everyone likes boobs." He quietly cheered, before leading the way back to the boardwalk. I grumbled and fumed, but didn't think telling Assault I wasn't gay, or that I took offense to the hints at being flat, helped my secret identity or my image for the crowd. He waved the few people who'd stayed focused on us away from the railing, and he hopped up into the space they cleared. Then he whistled. "Hey, Dauntless!"
I hopped up after, and Assault started calling for lines for us. Dauntless started making his way over, and the pair settled in to bracketing me on either side, limiting how much of the crowd could swarm me at once, which I appreciated. Thankfully the crowd wasn't nearly rowdy enough to have me signing body parts, though I did get a couple requests to sign the shirts people were wearing. I decided to use a blocky print for my autographs, for now. I didn't really trust myself not to slip into my normal writing style if I tried anything else. I was fairly proud of how well I could write, given mom started teaching me early, and always complemented me on it. Not that having nice handwriting has helped any, the past couple years... but I'd take every little bit of pride in myself I could manage.
I'd figured on giving myself half an hour for autographs, then getting back to practice. It was about twenty minutes in that I realized something was odd with someone in line. I could imagine being bored in line for someone else, a couple parents and a teenager with a cape geek friend had already passed through my line as examples, but this boy seemed more... muted, than actually blank. He was frustrated, like bored people were, but the small flashes of other emotions I expected weren't there. Instead there was just a dull smugness and self-satisfaction. Amusement with no joy or glee. My brain stalled when he finally made it to the front of the line. "Could you make it out to 'Lisa'? I want to rub this in her face."
He was about my age, and smiling. It was a pretty smile, beautiful even. I immediately hated how much prettier his smile was than my own over-wide frog mouth could manage. When he said her name though, the pieces fell together in my head. Lisa wasn't a rare name, but how many emotionally dysfunctional boys would know girls by it? No, I cursed silently to myself. This was probably Regent. He was holding out a white shirt, the fine material making me think of it as more of a blouse than anything I'd expect a boy to wear, despite the male cut. He'd drawn it out of a paper shopping bag full of similarly higher-end clothes. His smile seemed frozen in place, even as I felt the tendrils of suspicion creeping through him at my increasingly awkward staring. Right, shit. I think I flinched, before gently taking the soft cloth from his hand. "To Lisa, then." I didn't bother scrawling any platitudes on it. Just 'To Lisa, Terraform' in two lines. "Thank you for coming by."
His mood was still wary, but that smug self-satisfaction flared a little. "Any time, babe." He took the shirt and left, not even bothering to look at the autograph before slipping the shirt back in his bag. This whole situation was... very weird.
After that, I felt done with signing things, for now. "Alright, I think... six more, and I'll go back to practicing." The next group with a kid was six places back. There were groans and cries at my words. "I'll do another round of signing before I leave. How about that?"
Assault laughed, to my left. "Don't let them dictate terms, or you'll be here 'till Thursday. If you do another go, set yourself a timer or something. Then call it a day." He scribbled down another autograph with his Triumph Gold marker.
"Twenty, thirty minutes, at most. Don't let yourself become overwhelmed if it's just you." Dauntless added from my right, taking an autograph book from what looked to be a cape tourist, signing his own appellation down with a more reasonable generic black permanent marker.
"Right, thanks." I said, getting back to the line in front of me. While I was talking with them and signing things, I was also keeping my senses pinned on Regent as he left my field of view. I wasn't going to just let him leave unobserved, when it took so little effort to do so. My range was going to take a hit when I went back to practice, but as long as he stayed on the Boardwalk? I wouldn't even have to change my schedule to track him down later.
A few minutes and six autographs later, I backed myself against the rail again to bring the two Protectorate capes into my field of view. "Thanks again, guys."
"No trouble at all." Assault said, finishing up. "You heard the lady, sorry, sorry! Time's up." He turned back to me. "See you 'round, kid."
Dauntless chuckled at his partner's enthusiasm. "It was good seeing you again, Terra."
I gave them a small wave, and Assault reached out a hand to clasp Dauntless' arm. The flier hopped them into the air, before jumping them over to the roof of the shop just to the north. Assault fell the short ways to the roof proper, turned back and gave a gigantic stupid-looking wave. "Later, e'rrybody! See ya' soon!" Then hopped away to follow after Dauntless, who'd flown ahead.
I couldn't help but snort, biting down giggles at his antics. "Oh well, back to practice." I put a hand on the rail and hopped over it, taking my walk back to my little dais slowly to make sure I could keep Regent and Assault in my 'sight' as long as possible. I didn't have any trouble with it, Assault easy enough to keep track of, running along the rooftops, and Regent having slipped into an electronics store. People were coming and going from the crowd, and I could still detect everyone who'd gotten autographs, on top of everyone else. Everything on this half of the Boardwalk. Might as well practice with that too, while I was here, right?
With that, I pulled streamers from the bay, starting five circles swirling lopsidedly around me. The 'petals' closed up around me, the streamers swirling into each other before breaking into a new pattern of swirls and rings around me. I wasn't too worried about what they wound up looking like, just making sure to shift into new patterns with at least a few different parts every couple seconds. I knew my limits now, I just had to keep pushing myself to just under them, for now.
The sun set behind me not long into my second stint of practice. There were more than enough lights around the Boardwalk and on the quay for myself and anyone that wanted to stick around to see what I was doing, though. I figured half an hour there, maybe an hour after sunset by now, it was probably around seven. If I stopped soon, took half an hour for more autographs, I could be home around eight and-
"H-hey, Ter-"
I was already throwing myself to the left with an airburst, landing sliding along the bay as ice formed under me. My momentum took me around as I forced the ice into a curved ramp, bringing me back around to see... Aegis and Kid Win, the latter rocked back on his board in shock, hand still raised in greeting.
Maybe... I was getting too absorbed in training and tracking people. I dropped my aggressive stance, slumping into a tired stagger before throwing myself back up onto my platform with a waterspout. The ice I'd just formed collapsed into water behind me. I pointed up at them with an admonishing finger. "Don't sneak up on me!" I snapped. Kid started stammering out apologies while Aegis glared my way. I heaved out a sigh. "Sorry, I'm sorry. I don't handle surprises well." I motioned back to the previously thinning crowd almost thirty feet away, and then back up at them, barely fifteen feet away and floating above the height I'd been keeping my water at. "You're a lot closer than I thought anyone was, too." I really didn't want to let on that the real reason was because they were flying and I couldn't sense them coming.
"Well, no harm done." Aegis stated diplomatically. "We'll... remember to get your attention from farther back, in the future."
I waved it off. "No, it's... ah, thanks. I'd appreciate it. I'm just tired, I think. Had an eventful morning, and spent the last..." I grabbed my cape phone to check the time; 7:24. "Three and a half hours training."
"Oof, yeah." Aegis nodded along. "That'd do it. We were just stopping by, wanted to say hi."
"I, uhh..." Kid stammered a little, before visibly swallowing. "I wanted to see how you were doing, after..."
Right. He'd been the only Brockton Ward at Canberra. I waved them closer, not wanting to shout our conversation where the cameras could pick it up. A wave of my hand had a stream of water leap from the bay and shape itself into a blocky, rudimentary throne of ice that I plopped myself down in. Between my pants and the bottom of my coat, I had a good two or three centimeters of fabric between my butt and the ice, so it wasn't that cold. Certainly not enough to dissuade me resting a bit while coming down off my adrenaline spike. The pair floated down, Aegis taking a slow straight path to land on my little dais, while Kid slipped to the side, his board sending him in a rocking chicane as he quickly dropped height before coasting over.
"You want a seat?" I asked after both had landed. Both politely declined, so I waved them a little closer, skidding a foot to send my seat grinding around about forty degrees closer to pointing away from the Boardwalk. I didn't want my voice to carry, but also didn't want to look like I was completely hiding from view. "You look better." I said to Kid, after they stopped only a couple feet away.
"I, uh… yeah." He muttered. "Doing better. Had a few days off. I just…" His emotions were fairly complicated. There was a mix of things, joy, frustration, agitation, his heart was beating and I could see a bit of blush peeking out from the bottom of his visor. The majority of his mood though? A sense of shame. "I'm sorry for just leaving you guys, when…"
"No, don't." I said, sitting up a bit more and waving a hand in a 'cut that out' motion. "We were all fine, I don't blame you for taking care of yourself. I might've done more work, but I think you had the harder job." Unlike me, he would've had to actually interact with people, warning them back, forcing them to stay, even if he would've stayed away in the air for it. I didn't have any trouble keeping from dipping into the panic and stress and existential horror that plagued the people of Canberra after the attack, unlike him. "I'm just glad you're feeling better. I'm a little surprised they have you back to patrolling so soon, even."
"Oh!" He'd gotten a bit introspective at my words, then perked up a bit at my concern. "They can't make me do anything until next week. I volunteered. I, uh… can't stay in and tinker for too many days in a row, or I get yelled at. It was either go home or patrol, so…"
When he didn't continue, I hummed thoughtfully. "You don't want to go home? Are you okay?"
He grunted in confusion before he got it. "Oh, no. I'm fine. Home is fine, my parents are great, it's just… complicated."
Aegis dropped a hand on his shoulder to stop him, then turned back to me. "That's a little rude to ask."
"Sorry." I said, shaking my head. "As long as everyone's safe, I won't pry. I felt I had to make sure, though."
He stared, scrutinizing me for a few long seconds, before he nodded. "I get that, but it's still a bit too close to trying to unmask someone." His mood shifted abruptly- at least it seemed that way to me- from wary and agitated, nearly hostile, to confusion, indecision, curiosity, and... hunger? Then settled on various flavors of caution and amusement. "So, Dauntless and Assault stopped by earlier, right? How'd that go?"
Oh, he'd been trying to change the subject. Had to remember that I couldn't trust my emotion sensing completely with him. What'd he do, shift more of his hormone production to his large intestine? I shook my head to clear my musings. "It went well. We stopped to do some signatures, and they helped keep me from getting overwhelmed, my first time. Met some interesting people." ...what the hell was Regent doing in a lingerie store? "I, uh..." I grabbed the Armsmaster marker from my pocket. "I might have kept his pen? Is that weird?"
"Don't tell Battery." Kid muttered, getting a soft elbow nudge from his partner.
"Nah, no one's gonna' miss a marker." Aegis answered more seriously. "We're supposed to keep a few on us, and we get a little budget for PR things like that. If he blows his on novelty stuff and then loses them, it's on him."
I chuckled. That seemed like him, yeah. "So you do a lot of PR stuff? What do you spend that budget on, besides pens?"
"Runs a bit of a gamut. Wards patrols are technically PR things, since they're supposed to be safe areas where we can't get into fights. Brockton's just..." He shook his head and sighed. "Anyway, we do signings, show up at charity events to draw bigger crowds for them, help out around the city in ways our powers are uniquely suited for, show up at community centers for events... Most of it's just the patrols, though. And the budget..." He pondered how to answer for a couple seconds. "Budget's just a budget. You spend money and sign it off, send it up the chain for approval, usually it goes through instead of coming out of our paychecks. This one's just... materials we might need for events, or things that make us look good, or more 'normal' or 'human', you know? If a kid drops his ice cream and I bought him a new one, I could probably get that signed off to the PR budget." He hummed, trying to think. I frowned behind my mask. That seemed... it made the little bits of heroism feel a little cheaper. I didn't like it. "I dunno, it's always just been markers. Maybe getting pictures printed or something else, for something to sign and hand out on patrols? The big events cover that stuff anyway."
I wanted to change the subject. I didn't want heroes being nice to start feeling dirty, so I grasped at something else he'd said. "Patrols are PR things? So, if... I've heard Glory Girl sometimes goes along for those. If an independent wanted to tag along, that'd be fine?"
He seemed a bit flat-footed, frowning and tensing up as he thought. "It's... usually a case-by-case thing. In bigger cities, they have protocols for it, smaller cities don't have as many capes period to ask, and most cities our size don't chew through indies as fast as Brockton does." He shook his head to give himself another second. "It's really just GG, or people like me or Win who were thinking of joining up, and then do." He thumbed a hand at the Tinker, who nodded along. "I don't think there'd be any problems if you wanted to, though?"
"Any requests?" Kid Win piped in, causing us to glance his way. "For like, who or when?"
Aegis gave him a warning look, while I looked away to give the question a bit of actual thought. "Maybe Vista?" They turned back my way, Kid feeling disappointed, while Aegis had a flare of protective worry among other angrier emotions I couldn't pin down. "She's been a Ward the longest, right? She must know a lot about being a hero, especially a female hero."
That had his emotions shuffling, as he considered it. "I think Militia or Battery would be better for that, but... I can ask, at least." Aegis shrugged. "I certainly don't have any say over their schedules... Later this week fine?"
I took a moment to debate telling them I was busy Tuesday and Friday. I didn't think they'd schedule something during school, or in the mornings when I'd been meeting Dinah lately... everything else coming up I could reschedule around the patrol. "Sure. I can let you know if I'm busy. Do you need my number, or can you get it from the call center? I know my cape phone's on file with the PRT."
He shrugged and grabbed a pad and pen. "Might as well, saves me a call later." I gave my number, and he scribbled it down. "So, what's your plan now?"
Operation: Stalking Villains was still go, Regent looking at bedsheets now for some reason, after stopping in at one of the bath shops. I wasn't going to tell them about that, though. "Another round of signing, then heading home. Dinner, homework, maybe start on a new book if I'm caught up already." I shrugged, standing up and thumbing back at the quay. "Did you want to stick around for that? I'm supposed to give it half an hour, tops, and then head out."
They glanced at each other, Aegis unsure until he saw Win nodding excitedly. "Yeah, I can clock an extra half hour."
"Got an alarm set." Kid added cheerfully. Must've been a tinker thing, in the visor maybe? I shrugged and motioned, before leading the way back across the platform. When we were halfway there, I stopped to thrust my fist upward, raising a set of stairs out of the ice and silt. It was a simple matter of walking up and hopping down over the railing, Kid Win following, while Aegis just floated up and over. A simple motion and the entire platform's ice turned liquid again, slowly lowering itself into the bay until only the slight murk from the silt atop it remained to slowly fade as it sank.
I was starting to get better at this, I felt. I managed almost four dozen autographs in the span of that half hour. Regent had left the Boardwalk about ten minutes into it, and was heading through some of the less opulent areas in the Docks, between the coast and the residential sprawl. I didn't know where he was heading, but it wouldn't take any time to catch up. I thanked the boys for their time, and they headed off flying to the southwest, where the PRT building was. Instead of trying to press through the remaining crowd or leap over them to the rooftops, I absconded into the Bay, formed a board of ice, and sped northward.
Less than a minute later I vaulted from the bay onto the pier for the north ferry station, heading up onto the rooftops from there to head inland a bit, before swinging south. Regent made for a fairly unique sight, striding confidently down the street laden with shopping bags. I dropped into an alleyway just before he passed in front of it, and called; "Regent."
He stopped, tensing for a moment before his head lolled in my direction. His brow quirked at the sight of me, and he sighed. I felt it then, a slight tingle along my arms and legs, starting in my fingers and toes. It felt a bit like Sabah's power, only slower and much deeper. "I knew I should've just stolen the damned car..." He muttered, then turned and headed into the alley, stopping just inside to set down his bags. "Well, it's not every day I find myself with a new stalker. So then, your place or mine?"
I was so focused on the feeling of his power trying to take hold, I blanked on his words. "...what?" I hissed.
Regent rolled his eyes. "You obviously want something, and far be it for a gentleman to turn a lady down. I mean, we could do it here," He made a show of glancing around at the trash and grime lining the space. "-but it's a little dirty, don't you think?"
The growl tore itself out before I could stop it. No, he was wary and amused, and nothing else. It took me longer than I liked to figure out that he was just riling me up. The tingles continued to creep up my arms, but so long as it didn't try to affect my brain or spine, I could put him down easily enough. If I let on I could detect his power, I had no idea what he'd do with it. "I'm not here for sex." I snarled. He started on some quip, but I cut him off. "You know Tattletale."
"I do." He drawled. Ugh, this was such a bad idea. First I wanted to make sure I was right, then maybe see if he could tell Tattletale to hurry up and call already, so that I could start planning what to do with them. I'd gotten impatient, then frustrated. "You know, she's probably at the loft, if you want to say hi." He pointed a thumb off generally westward.
"Your... base? Home?" I asked, and he nodded. "...why would you lead me there?"
He rolled his eyes again, and gave me a disdainful, nearly disgusted look. "You obviously have some way to track me. Your little show was still going on when I left. And since I'm not ditching my new shit," He waved at the bags. "-and going shopping again tomorrow just to maybe throw you off, you're going to find it anyway. So, why should I care?" He finished with an exaggerated shrug.
Well, when he put it that way, it made a lazy sort of sense. "I'm sorry, about that."
"No, you're not." He stated with a smirk.
I hummed, and clicked my tongue. "No, I'm not." I acceded. "Would you mind letting her know, and reminding her to call me?"
"Ooooh..." He grinned. "Hot date with a limp fish?" I just tilted my head and let my mask stare imperiously. "Tough crowd. Fiiine, I'll let your girlfriend know she's in the dog house." He snickered to himself, then raised his arm in front of him, showing off a sparkly new-looking watch. "Now, was that everything? I'm due at the club in an hour."
"Yes." I stated, forcing my voice to stay neutral. "That was, in fact, everything."
He gave a jaunty wave, picked up his bags, and wandered off, whistling a chipper tune. I watched him go, listened to the sound fade away, all while staring out of the alleyway. "I don't think I like him." I muttered to myself, then heaved a sigh. I raised a fist, unclenching and reclenching the fingers. The tingling from his power was taking longer to fade than I liked, but I was able to focus and help my body along purging the influence. After that, I wall-hopped to the roof, headed back to pick up my bag, and went home.
I did follow him back to his home base with my senses, though. Because he was right. I was really never not going to figure out where that was.
---
---
Piggot is of the opinion that all Parahumans are basically superpowered children. They throw tantrums, have no concept of collateral damage, or care for who they step on when they throw their weight around, and generally make a nuisance of themselves however they can, whether they realize what they're doing or not. The Wards exist to teach Parahumans how to human, and soldiers are acceptable humans in her eye, so she uses them like the valuable resource they are. The point being, if Terraform wants to run around, playing the twice-shy teacher's pet, actually involving them in her decisions despite her lack of willingness to commit to joining up? There are far fucking worse options, so the behavior is to be encouraged. Piggot is the one who insisted on the practice staying on the water after Renick was happy to blanket green-light everything.
Armsmaster is still busy fixing shit in Australia, and Dauntless is out on patrol. So, MM is in charge by default. And yes, I'm of the opinion that Dauntless IS probably 2IC, at least on paper, if the directors are trying to push for him to take over as Prot Lead somewhere. Militia's an excellent XO, but doesn't strike me as command material if there are other not terrible options available, especially since I thought she hadn't wanted the job when I wrote this. That might be incorrect, still doing research but it's not a priority. Armsmaster is an Alexandria, image-wise. Imposing and effective. Dauntless is a Legend, being the home-town charismatic lump with astounding potential. Even if they don't get a real Legend or Eidolon out of him like they're hoping to, he's still a face-man they can stick a competent XO behind to get shit done and have their PR, too.
I really wanted to find a different word for the balls of the feet than 'the balls of the feet' but... apparently the only other word for it is the anatomical designation Taylor wouldn't care to know off the top of her head. So... yeah.
At first I was like "Nah, it's fine. MM is all red-white-blue, I can have her be blue since Battery is obviously green with her circuit-board look, right?" WRONG! Battery's costume is blue! Gah, this is like Armsmaster all over again. The first Worm fic I read, I somehow mixed up him and Assault in the same scene, coming away from it thinking they were both wearing red. To this day I still need to check myself to make sure I'm not giving him the wrong colors.
ANYWAY- they have a goddamned gift shop. That means they have merch, and Assault would absolutely carry his own merch around for gags like that.
I spent a few hours absolutely convinced I'd mentioned Taylor's writing before, and not in a positive light. Eventually I realized I'd been thinking of Lady Photon, and how I described her notes as chicken scratch while she was the focus character in one of the interludes. Focus Character = Taylor, right? Bah, got that sorted. With an english teacher mum, it makes absolutely no sense that Taylor wouldn't have at least good handwriting. Nothing stopping Annette from teaching her daughter to read and write early, so she totally would.
The meeting with Parian probably lasted more than an hour, but less than two. Taylor would've been out around 3:30 or 4, then did the quick change and stops, followed by training. So depending on whether or not you count the break with Assault and Dauntless, she's spent about three and a half hours at it. That's about how long Major Actions are- They will always consume at least two hours of the day, usually 3-6 hours. The hard 'three Actions' limit is more to prevent trying to game the system with like eight two-hour Actions a day for maximum points. That doesn't sound fun to deal with on my end, so I nixed it early.
Today's actions by time (to give you an idea how I mentally tally these things) were: Cass stuff! ~4-5 hours total, combining the wandering and waiting, with the actual talking, then the food after. Parian! ~2-3 hours, including heading home for the shower first, meeting Gram, heading in, and the actual 1.5-2 hour event itself. Training! ~4 hours, including the prep, the training, and the two autograph stints.
Kid Win has like... no goddamn backstory to him. Given the fact that he triggered, and the nature of Tinker triggers, his life can't be amazing... but there's also nothing to hint at a cause, that I could see. So I'm starting to build a story for him, which might show up over time, depending on how much we interact with him in the future.
Also, Chris has a crush.
I think it's a bit of a trope? But it was useful for this scene, and working some votes into the narrative, so it happened.
I'm pretty sure I nailed Regent's attitude, but I'm not sure I got his voice correct.
Oh well, hopefully when people tell me I'm wrong, they'll actually explain how, so I can maybe fix things. XD
I think I might've gotten Regent's powers a little wrong, but his range is apparently larger than Skitter's was, when he actually had his hooks in someone. I feel pretty confident he wouldn't give up what little control he could build up over a couple minutes of conversation, and that's what was fading over time, that Taylor purged at the end.
"Well, we would always make space for a Ward, if needed…" I gave him an unimpressed hum. "…but this does seem like a good alternative. Patrols have been informed, and we've sent notes to our call centers. Good hunting, miss Terraform."
