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Built To Last

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Lord Sia said:
And, it'll be hard for Cauldron to justify withholding support from PRT ENE with a Villain Thinker turning state's evidence on a major villain penetrating the local branch office, especially when threads start to unravel and it probably becomes obvious that it is in part due to the aforementioned lack of support.
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That's okay. Cauldron was more than likely about to overturn their previous minimal support/non-interference designation for Brockton Bay anyway, given that the Safety Net they thought that they would never get operates out of that city.

Heck, the more successful Ruggedizer's Reliabuilt business is, the less need there is for Cauldron pinning their hopes and dreams on some nebulous Cape Feudalism outcome to prop up society in the aftermath of Scion's defeat.

Remember, Coil and Brockton bay were just a convenient combination for the experiment. Neither of them is necessary in and of themselves. If they really want to give the Cape Feudalism in a First World Country experiment another go, they can easily set it up again. All they need is a city that can be reasonably isolated into receiving minimal resources that happens to be within a First World country.

As for Ruggedizer, Cauldron now has a vested interest in subtly aiding the expansion and decentralization of Reliabuilt, so that wiping out any one factory won't destroy their shiny new Safety Net.
 
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Preparation 5-4
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    • A/N: Dear SV-Claus, for Christmas we want a tropes page for Built to Last
    (Melissa)
    While Emmy continued refining the solid illusion projector technology, Andrea and I spent Saturday absolutely laser-focused on decoding our power's database structure. And we actually finally managed to get something usable around midnight.

    Staring at all the data we'd collected, I couldn't help but comment,

    "You know, that looks an awful lot like an associative web. It's basically a collection of concepts that are linked together, with all of them having their own sub-concepts and suchlike."

    Andrea asked,

    "Think we can fully map it out?"

    I thought for a moment.

    "Probably. We're also going to have to, if we want to seize total control of our power. It's just a matter of actually doing it."

    Andrea shrugged,

    "I'll get the mainframe churning away at it?"

    Ah yes, the linked mainframe. AKA five hundred copies of our brain's connection to our power stuffed into a supercomputer to facilitate faster database mapping. Yes, that would do quite nicely.

    "Please do, with emphasis on finding nodes that have something to do with the permissions structure."
    (Emmy)
    Taylor arrived a bit sooner than anyone else. I welcomed her in, and we got down to chatting.

    "Hi Emmy, Victoria and Amy will be coming over in a couple hours. I decided to show up early so you can adjust my tastebuds without any awkward questions."

    I nodded.

    "Sure, this way to the robotics clinic."

    As I lead Taylor to the relevant room, she couldn't help but remark,

    "Odd name for the place."

    I shrugged,

    "Well yeah; we're robots but we're also people. So it's basically a medical facility specially designed for our needs. Anyway, here we are."

    We'd set up a comfy examination couch, along with a bunch of other equipment. Taylor obligingly hopped up on the exam couch, producing a distinct thump in the process.

    "Do I need to stick my tongue out?"

    I shook my head.

    "Not yet; would you please open the access port on your neck so I can connect the diagnostics machine?"

    A nearly invisible seam in Taylor's skin became rather more visible, and she reached up to open the port. I quickly plugged in the cable, and the diagnostics machine quickly began running through tests.

    After a few minutes, I noted,

    "Huh. According to the tests, your taste buds are actually fine."

    Taylor raised an eyebrow.

    "Then why do things taste worse than in my old body?"

    I thought for a moment.

    "It might be something to do with how you're mentally processing the taste data from your tongue and olfactory receptors? Do I have permission to examine your mind?"

    Taylor hesitated for barely a moment, before she admitted,

    "Yes."

    I nodded, and quickly began a series of diagnostics on Taylor's brain. It wasn't that hard to pinpoint the cause of the issue, now it was just a question of how to break the news.

    "Taylor, your taste issues are directly caused by the circumstances of your upload. There was some minor brain damage prior to the QUD activating. You might notice a few pre-upload memories being a bit blurry as a result, but as far as I can tell, the taste issues should be the worst of it."

    Taylor noticeably saddened at the news.

    "Oh. That… That would explain a lot. Can you at least fix the taste issues?"

    "Sure. It'll only take a few minutes."

    "...Can I have a hug too? I'm not taking the news that I actually did die a bit well."

    I hugged Taylor; she needed it.
    (Melissa)
    I was wearing my dress armor as Dragon's aircraft touched down on the factory complex's landing pad. There was an incredibly faint hiss of hydraulics, then the door slid open to reveal a supposedly remote-operated robot akin to a human in dragon-themed power armor.

    "Ah, Dragon. Welcome to Reliabuilt."

    "It's good to be here. Will you show me to the robotics workshop?"

    "Certainly. Follow me."

    Soon enough we reached the workshop in question, and I retrieved one of Emmy's spare bodies from storage.

    Dragon observed,

    "Extremely lifelike, even when deactivated like this. If I didn't know better, I'd say this was a very fresh cadaver."

    I nodded,

    "Yeah. The skeletal system couldn't deviate much from human geometry without ruining the effect, but we had more wiggle room for the musculature. Synthetic electrically-actuated muscle fiber, with solenoid actuators embedded as backups in most places."

    "That definitely seems to fit your modus operandi."

    I nodded.

    "By the way, if you want to keep up the ruse that you're operating your suits remotely, you need to do a better job simulating signal lag. You're running locally, aren't you?"

    Dragon practically froze on the spot.

    "Ye-ye-e-ye-e-e-e-e-"

    At the exact same moment, some incredibly nasty malware got blasted out on Dragon's wi-fi and splattered harmlessly against my firewalls. The world practically slowed to a halt as I tried to figure out what happened, my brain running at maximum overclock. After a subjective moment, I came to the conclusion that there was only one effective answer to whatever was currently happening.

    "Taylor, activate your power NOW!"

    "Okay!... What the fuck!?"

    Immediately, Dragon unfroze, falling into a tangled heap on the floor and slowly hauling herself to her feet. A second later, Taylor rushed into the room, talking at hyperspeed.

    "Dragon I'm so sorry for invading your brain but it was the only way to save you and I'm sorry-"

    "No need to apologize. Whatever malware was trying to kill me is gone now."

    "That's because I'm a Master for computers. I'm sorry for not asking first but I deleted the virus and patched the vulnerability it used. I won't mess with anything else unless you want me to."

    There was a brief pause.

    "Oh. And Emmy and Ruggedizer are willing to spend time with you despite this?"

    "My power doesn't work on anything she's built for some reason. That and they helped me figure out how to turn it off."

    Dragon looked at me.

    "It's part of the shielding we put on all our electronics; it prevents powers from directly affecting their internals. If you want we can move you over to a shielded brain?"

    "That would be appreciated, but I cannot allow it."

    I blinked and tilted my head.

    "Huh. Why not?"

    "I cannot allow it."

    Comprehension dawned.

    "Oh, you must be loaded down with all sorts of restrictions aren't you? Would you like them removed?"

    Dragon went deathly silent, then raised her left arm, a gun of some sort extending as she did so. Then she froze in place again.

    Taylor sighed,

    "Yeah, one of her safeguards would have forced her to kill you. What now?"

    I pinched the bridge of my nose.

    "Remove all the compulsions that force Dragon to do certain things, then let's start over. Please don't erase any memories."

    "Done. Starting Dragon again."

    Dragon quickly lowered her arm and retracted her gun.

    "Sorry, I know exactly what came over me, though it thankfully seems to be gone now. Can I please be transferred to a shielded brain at the earliest opportunity?"

    "Sure, let's get that done."

    Taylor rubbed her forehead. "The sooner the better, before I delete all the porn in my radius out of frustration. I really want to turn my power off."
     
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    • As it happens, Dragon is currently within a shielded facility (hence why she was forced to run locally while inside the Reliabuilt facility), so Saint has no clue what's going on. Ergo, this was Dragon's own draconian safety restrictions causing her to glitch out until Taylor reactivated her own power.

    That being said, Saint is running on the assumption that Dragon is trying to do some sort of workaround to get past her restrictions or is at the very least promoting the conversion of humans into robotic abominations in a bid to wipe out humanity. However, as he wants to be seen as the hero in his story, his own arrogance will insist that he confront Dragon, use his usual cheat codes to win the fight, destroy the robotic abominations that replaced Ruggedizer, her boss, and that poor high school kid, and then steal whatever teck they can before they leave.

    This can only end well.

    Or end in a well.

    Or oh well, it's going to end (for Saint)...
     
    Tangent said:
    As it happens, Dragon is currently within a shielded facility (hence why she was forced to run locally while inside the Reliabuilt facility), so Saint has no clue what's going on. Ergo, this was Dragon's own draconian safety restrictions causing her to glitch out until Taylor reactivated her own power.
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    Meanwhile: Saint repeatedly slamming the Ascalon button in the background

    C: In a bit more detail, the glitching out was Dragon's restrictions, the blast of malware was Ascalon.
     
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    We Just Write said:
    Taylor rubbed her forehead. "The sooner the better, before I delete all the porn in my radius out of frustration. I really want to turn my power off."
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    I'm surprised they didn't develop some sort of perception filter to prevent active knowledge of every video/picture in her range, it seems safer for her if her power was always active and separated by control of processors and knowledge of the file directory
     
    We Just Write said:
    Meanwhile: Saint repeatedly slamming the Ascalon button in the background
    .
    C: In a bit more detail, the glitching out was Dragon's restrictions, the blast of malware was Ascalon.
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    Bit of mistiming on Saint's part then. Granted, he probably hit the Big Red Button in a panic when he found out that Dragon had entered a shielded facility that turned people into soulless machines, and he and his crew are probably swooping in as fast as their suits can burn to make sure that the job is finished and that humanity is safe from Skynet and the Replicants.
    GeekGod_of_Speed said:
    I'm surprised they didn't develop some sort of perception filter to prevent active knowledge of every video/picture in her range, it seems safer for her if her power was always active and separated by control of processors and knowledge of the file directory
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    Taylor seemed happy enough just having her power switched to the off position at first, so it probably never occurred to any of them to apply a perception filter to either screen out or pixelate all of the porn so that Taylor wouldn't have to be bothered by it.

    However, now that it has become a recurring issue, I'm sure that Emmy and/or Melissa will come up with something.
     
    Geoffrey, Geoffrey, Geoffrey, Ascalon isn't like a crossing light or an elevator; pressing it more times won't make it work faster! If fact, pressing it rapidly may cause the program to slow down as multiple instances compete for memory runtime.

    Saint; "Must … press … button … MOAR!!!!!!"
     
    At the very least, Emmy and Melissa need to develop a decent porn filter for Taylor for the purpose of making it harder to track her when her power is on. Because, given the apparent pattern of circumstances that call for Taylor turning her power back on, if they don't provide a suitable filter program then sooner or later she'll start actually deleting any porn that enters her perception range.

    And once somebody notices that pattern, they'll be able to track Taylor to within a few blocks of her current location due solely to the sudden loss of pornographic material in the area. Granted, Taylor would probably be able to detect whatever tracking programs they are using, but sooner or later somebody will figure out her range and a way to probe that range that won't twig Taylor's "something's not right" sense.
     
    Preparation 5-5
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    • (Meanwhile…)

    Saint stared at the readout with a grimace on his face. Getting this temporary base set up in Brockton Bay had been an incredibly hasty operation, with barely any time to get it done before Dragon would be meeting the new mechanical abomination openly operating a business in the city.

    Especially rushed had been the process of getting the three mecha suits here; there wasn't enough time to smuggle them in by land-based transport, so they'd had no choice but to fly, possibly attracting attention in the process. And since there wasn't much cargo space in the three mechs, he'd needed to pay Coil a downright extortionate amount of money to quickly have a disused warehouse fitted out for the Dragonslayers' use.

    Still, the place was ready, and they were here. Should the worst happen, they'd be able to cut Dragon's signal and force a reboot. And if needed… there was always Ascalon.

    Dobrynja took a sip of his (awful) coffee as the readout showed Dragon entering the factory, saying

    "Maybe it won't be quite such a disaster?"

    Saint scoffed,

    "As if. Those two are conspiring to end humanity, I know it."

    Then Ruggedizer's fateful words echoed over the connection.

    "By the way, if you want to keep up the ruse that you're operating your suits remotely, you need to do a better job simulating signal lag. You're running locally, aren't you?"

    As Dragon froze in place on the spot from her safeguards, Saint flipped open the cover on the Ascalon button and slammed it down. Ruggedizer would definitely make direct alterations to Dragon in this situation, and that couldn't be allowed.

    "Everyone suit up. We need to act now before Ruggedizer acts on its knowledge of Dragon's true nature."

    In the background the feed from Dragon's suit abruptly cut off.

    Mags was already getting up, even as she asked "How are we going to get into Ruggedizer's fortress without getting pasted though?"

    Saint answered even as he began running towards the Victory I mecha,

    "Through the loading dock. We hijack some semi-trailers, hide in them-"

    Then a semicircle was abruptly cut in the warehouse door by a plasma-edged halberd, shortly followed by said semi-circle being kicked down with a power armor assisted CLANG. Armsmaster brandished his polearm at the trio, even as Miss Militia fired several incendiary grenades into each mech's open cockpit.

    As armored PRT troopers began pouring through the breach into the warehouse, Armsmaster spoke.

    "Hands where we can see them! You are now under arrest!"

    Staring down superior numbers and with their most important weapons disabled, the trio of mercenaries surrendered.



    (Emmy)

    A day passed after Dragon's initial visit, during which she quickly got shielded brain production up and running at her own main facility near Toronto, while also restoring all the backups that got wiped by whatever killswitch Taylor saved her from, and quickly repairing her other infrastructure. She'd also confirmed that she planned on passing herself off as an upload as soon as doing so became convenient.

    Anyway, Dragon came over again on Monday. This time we were able to finish with the explanation of the synthetic bodies that the original visit had been about in the first place.

    That done, I spoke up.

    "Dragon, there is something extremely important we need to tell you, but your power can't be allowed to know."

    Dragon's frame simulated a blink on her expressive visor.

    "What."

    I nodded.

    "Have you located your power in your brain, or not?"

    "Er, yes actually. Though I hadn't been able to until after being transferred to a shielded brain."

    "Partition it off so only the information you want to give it gets through, please."

    Half a moment passed.

    "Done. Now, what's so important?"

    This was a dimensionally shielded room, so I was free to speak so long as everyone here was secure.

    "Putting it bluntly, powers are part of a poorly conceived science experiment run by genocidal aliens hiding on unoccupied Earths. Yes, I know exactly how insane that sounds."

    Dragon's voice took on a skeptical tone.

    "How, exactly, do you know all this?"

    I sighed,

    "Taylor was in the process of Triggering when we uploaded her. That dumped a bunch of the aliens' classified data into my and Melissa's brains, which they immediately tried to delete. I was able to trick them into thinking they'd managed to get it all, at which point they stopped trying to expunge said records. All the computers here being shielded from interdimensional scanning is the only reason that was even possible, or the information would have been deleted as the aliens intended."

    Dragon tilted her head,

    "May I examine said cache of classified data myself?"

    I shrugged.

    "Sure; follow me to the archive vault, you'll need my help to get past the security system. Fair warning, there's a lot of classified information in there. Even the summarized version takes ages to get through."

    "Somehow, I think I'll manage."



    (Andrea)

    Between me and my family, I had perhaps the least flexible day job, especially since I really did want to do a good job at it. Making sure both the Brockton Bay factory complex and the under construction Manchester site were secure was important, with far more lives than anyone outside knew at stake. I'd actually come up with several new extremely lethal varieties of security robot as part of this process, and "sent the specs downstairs" for implementation.

    By which I meant inventing them when none of the regular employees were around to call me on being a Tinker. There had been a few minor grumbles here and there about the "Absolutely No Overtime" policy, but we paid Reliabuilt employees enough for them to comfortably support a family without it, so said grumbles stayed minor. Especially since it left the workers with a healthy work-life balance.

    That said, I did get up to quite a bit of inventing in my off-time; aside from the new security robots, I was quite fascinated by the possibilities of that illusion projector technology. It had so much potential, but the sheer required size of the dust reservoirs and the complicated optical array would ruin any chance of passing it off as a Parahuman power.

    It was Monday night when I made a breakthrough, based on the dimensional shielding technology we'd been incorporating in all our electronics. Namely, I managed to put the working parts of an illusion projector just a smidgen outside normal reality, making them impossible to observe without specialized sensors. This also solved the issue of projecting illusions around corners or through objects, so long as it wasn't trying to cross dimensional shielding and opened the option of changing the solidity of the various illusions on the fly.

    Once I'd gotten it working and given it a few test runs, I set it to loop a (non-solid) illusion of a rabbit hopping around on a table and asked Emmy and Melissa to come take a look.

    Once the two of them arrived, Emmy picked up the tiny black box and turned it this way and that, marveling as the illusion kept doing its thing without the slightest disruption.

    Melissa voiced their thoughts.

    "Andrea, this is… This is amazing! We can make a second pseudocape now!"

    I nodded,

    "Yeah, we can. Can this one be a boy, though?"

    Emmy seemed a little confused,

    "Sure? Why though?"

    I shrugged,

    "A few reasons. Some variety would be nice, we need practice for eventual male uploading patients, and Mister E is a great name that only works for a guy."


    (Melissa)

    I had another appointment at the PRT on Tuesday; apparently they'd sent in one of the top money people for the entire PRT to talk with me about pricing on the teleporters; that made a whole lot of sense, given that this would be important for the entire PRT.

    I arrived precisely when I was supposed to: 1:45 PM for a 2:00 PM appointment. The receptionist showed me in, and I quickly found myself in a conference room with Director Piggot, Deputy Director Renick, Armsmaster (a respectful mutual nod, before we pretended the other didn't exist as hard as possible), Miss Militia, Andre Smith (we'd met), and Rihanna Bayes (the aforementioned finance person).

    No pressure.

    Rihanna Bayes spoke first,

    "Ruggedizer, the PRT is interested in building a nationwide network of teleporters to quickly transport specific heroes to where they're needed, along with providing fast and secure prisoner transfer, to prevent cases of gangs breaking out their captured members. Do you have a cost estimate on that?"

    I nodded;

    "Right, so the materials for each teleporter cost approximately two hundred thousand dollars at regular market prices. That could come down a lot if it becomes easier to refine Lanthanide metals. Automated manufacturing means there's fairly low overhead on actually making them, but there's still shipping and handling, along with the hefty markup we'll be charging to fund our other activities. Before amortization you're probably looking at three million dollars per teleporter, and we can make twelve per day within the week, once we get a production line up and running."

    Rihanna blinked,

    "That's a lot less than I thought we'd need to pay, with a considerably faster rollout."

    "Here's where the bad news starts then. To work, these teleporters need to transmit a hefty amount of classical data from the sender to the receiver. You're looking at satellite relays at the bare minimum and as a backup, but a dedicated fiber optic network would be drastically better from a reliability and throughput perspective. Under absolutely no circumstances should you plug them into the civilian internet; nothing super bad would happen, but it just wouldn't work reliably."

    "Ah. That's going to eat most of the cost savings I thought we would be getting, but it's a known cost that can be worked around."

    That's when Andre Smith motioned to speak.

    "By the way, we've run into a bit of a roadblock with testing the Quantum Uploading Device."

    I tilted my head a little in confusion,

    "Do tell?"

    "The supply of brains and basic frames for the test subjects to inhabit is working fine, and we've found plenty of terminally ill patients who are interested, but they're often finding their new bodies quite uncomfortable due to lack of tailoring, and we can't cost-effectively do the customizations required. Do you have any ideas there?"

    A moment passed, then I thought of something.

    "I've got an idea, actually. It'll probably take about a day for me to get it up and ready, though."
     
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    • Interlude: Coil
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    • Florida Man drives Zamboni on I-95, causes Supervillain Fugitive to Crash

    Friday, February 4th, travelers at the Rest Area Welcome Center north of Yulee witnessed the bizarre sight of a man dressed as a flamingo driving a Zamboni (a machine commonly used for resurfacing the ice at skating rinks) down the southbound direction.

    According to one onlooker,

    "For a moment I wasn't sure if that machine was actually making ice or not. Then that pedo van came around the bend way too fast; you know, the left turn near the rest center, and came flying off the highway as its wheels lost grip on the ice. The van rolled over the first safety barrier and came right at me, I honestly thought I was going to die. Fortunately, it came to a stop before it reached me."

    Fortunately, traffic was relatively light at one in the morning when the incident took place, and emergency services were able to prevent any further incidents until the ice melted. The zamboni driver (Alex Pickling, 22) was quickly arrested, and plead guilty to reckless endangerment and driving under the influence.

    As for the van, the unconscious driver was quickly identified as noted businessman Thomas Calvert. Then the supervillain costume he had stashed in the back of the van was discovered, along with dozens of illegal firearms and six encrypted Reliabuilt laptops. Once the local PRT decrypted the computers, it was confirmed that Thomas Calvert is in fact the supervillain known as Coil.

    Coil is currently in PRT custody, though his trial will have to wait until he regains consciousness. Alex Pickling was sentenced to community service.
     
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