Built To Last

Re Plurality/Gender fluidity and the QUD; I don't think it's outside the realm of possibily for a body to be desiged with a limited shapechanging ability (facial "bones" broken up into modular pieces that can be moved around to change the facial profile, fluid/gel filled sacs to adjust shape of chest/belly/hips on demand, adjustible voicebox, etc.)
 
Re Plurality/Gender fluidity and the QUD; I don't think it's outside the realm of possibily for a body to be desiged with a limited shapechanging ability (facial "bones" broken up into modular pieces that can be moved around to change the facial profile, fluid/gel filled sacs to adjust shape of chest/belly/hips on demand, adjustible voicebox, etc.)
That's fair. However.

Wouldn't it be funnier if people were carrying around like five different plug and play faces to swap around?
 
I: For voluntary systems, the simplest integrated indicator would just be to stick a color-changing thingy on the face somewhere.
 
Subversion 6-3
(Melissa)
By Sunday night (20th of February), I was just about ready to throw in the towel with regards to the inflatable teleporter idea. The special materials needed for teleportation just couldn't be made stretchy and flexible enough to fit through the damn two millimeter hole. Even if there was a Tinker who could make those materials, we wouldn't let them anywhere near this project without a lot more vetting, a shielded brain, and a Non-Disclosure Alteration.

That said, we had managed to stick a narrow drill through one of the portals and bore to open air. So if we somehow figured out a way to stuff some serious assets through there, we'd be just about set in terms of getting physical access to our power.

Emmy came to check in on me around midnight, and after I vented about the issues, she asked,

"Maybe we can make the hole bigger somehow?"

I blinked,

"Come to think of it, we do have records of Vista's power in action, and with Energy Teleportation we can mess with vacuum energy in the ways required to warp spacetime."

Emmy nodded.

"Thinking a bit deeper on it, we've actually got quite a few space warping options, but making the portal bigger is probably one of the simpler ways to do it."

I sighed,

"Guess we've got to get on with inventing a new technology again. Though fortunately this is one we've got a pretty good lead on how to accomplish."

(Marcus)
It was ten in the evening when I arrived at the Palanquin. While the infamous nightclub did seem like a good time, I was here for business, not pleasure. Behind my bandana mask, I was very carefully maintaining my composure as I approached the back entrance.

Unsurprisingly, said entrance was guarded. Still, I wasn't about to force my way past the couple men waiting by the door; if nothing else it would set completely the wrong tone for the conversation I was here to have.

The guard on my left noticed my approach first.

"State your business."

I came to a halt, nodded, and answered.

"I'm here to talk with Faultline about possible jobs, on behalf of Reliabuilt. You can call me Mr. E."

The guard on the left took out his encrypted walkie-talkie and started talking with the people inside.

Meanwhile the guard on the right looked me up and down with a mild expression of bemusement. I nodded at him, as if to acknowledge 'Why yes, I do look an awful lot like a gun-toting version of the black-clad swordsman from The Princess Bride.'

A few minutes passed, before the guard on the left said,

"Right. Come inside and go up the stairs on the right."

I did as requested, and soon enough I found myself in a room with five parahumans, two of them being Case 53s. Notably they didn't ask me to leave my weapons, which said interesting things about their assessment of me; especially since they knew I "worked for" a powerful Tinker.

Faultline spoke first, from behind her ballistic face shield.

"You're clearly not an assassin, or you wouldn't have bothered with making your presence known. Besides, Ruggedizer's rather fond of live-and-let-live, which is an attitude I can appreciate. So, what exactly is your job with Reliabuilt, Mr. E?"

I sat on one of the provided chairs as I answered,

"I suppose you could say I'm a fixer; my job is to make problems go away, and your crew has the potential to be rather influential in that regard."

"Oh, am I a problem?"

"No; aside from anything else, you keep the negative effects of your current jobs firmly outside city limits. I'm more interested in hiring your crew to make other problems go away."

"Go on; I'm listening."

"So, there's two offers on the table here. First, we're willing to offer a continuous retainer for you to only take jobs that don't require offensive violence, abduction, or theft of physical assets. We will compensate you for lost revenue as a result."

Everyone at the table looked a bit stunned at the idea. After a second, Faultline chuckled a bit.

"Well, paying us to stay out of trouble is definitely a new one for me; we don't normally do protection rackets, but seeing as you approached first and waved rather a lot of money under my nose unprompted, I think I can make an exception this time. Though I'll want to discuss exact payment terms for that later. What's the second offer? The standard 'or else', perhaps?"

I shook my head,

"No actually. Basically, it's in everyone's interest for there to not be any new villains in Brockton Bay hurting people - even the extant villains would appreciate not having new competition. So we're interested in you keeping a look out for new parahumans - or just ones who are new in town - and pointing any you find our way, provided they aren't really nasty people already. We'd pay you per parahuman you point our way; we'd also offer a bounty for information on ones you don't think would be amenable towards using their powers in a productive occupation."

Faultline thought for a moment, before nodding.

"That's quite an interesting job offer you have in mind there. Even if we don't go for the retainer, we would definitely be interested in that recruitment and information bounties. Just one question about it; what if the parahumans we find are interested in joining our crew?"

I shrugged,

"If they want to join your crew, they want to join your crew. I'm not here to coerce anyone."

As Faultline leaned back to consider the offers, the orange-skinned teenage member of the crew (Newter) asked,

"So, is that everything you wanted to talk to us about, or is there more you want to bring up before we move on to the precise details of money changing hands?"

Oh, right. Bakuda.

"Actually, there is one more thing. We have reason to believe that a quite bluntly insane explosives Tinker by the name of Bakuda may come to Brockton Bay in the near-ish future. Since neutralizing Bakuda is likely to be an all-hands-on-deck situation, we'd like to draw up terms to quickly hire you to help deal with her if needed."

The other man at the table (Gregor the Snail) nodded,

"Contingency planning. That makes sense to me."

(Andrea)
Being completely honest, I spent the entirety of my day job shift on Monday worrying about Bakuda. That girl was completely off her rocker, I had absolutely no idea what sorts of munitions she might be capable of making… and most concerningly, her location was currently unknown. Since her appearance at Cornell University, there hadn't been a single reported sighting of Bakuda.

For all I knew she might have blown herself up, but there was absolutely no way I was that lucky.

Jumping at shadows of possible Bakuda sightings wasn't helpful, so I diverted my attention to figuring out better ways to secure Reliabuilt facilities against Bakuda's attacks. The anti-munitions systems would do a lot to prevent artillery-style attacks, and smuggling stuff inside a box or clothing could be dealt with by a robotic security checkpoint. How else could Bakuda get a bomb inside without it being noticed…

That's when the idea bubbled up in my mind, and I felt physically ill at the thought. Bakuda could hide bombs inside people. If she used anaesthesia throughout the whole implantation process, the terrified hapless victim might not even know they were on a ticking clock before they exploded. If they came to Reliabuilt HQ looking for a safe place after that… boom.

Right, let's think this through. How do we quickly check thousands of people for implanted bombs and save the ones who've been implanted? Also, the current anti-abduction measures for our people were definitely insufficient. They needed to be massively improved.

I spent four hours mulling over the various measures that could be taken and how to implement them. They'd need quite a bit of engineering to get working, but by four PM I had a pretty good idea of things we could do to mitigate the threat Bakuda posed. Then a notification on my news feed went off, and I took a look at it.

If I'd had blood, it would have run cold at the news; there had been a brief sighting of Bakuda, as she robbed a Wal-Mart near Albany, New York. She wasn't in Brockton Bay yet, but she was definitely a lot closer than she had been. Bakuda was coming… well, probably.

Still couldn't afford to take chances.

(Emmy)
Friday the 25th of February, yet another Tinker showed up at the Brockton Bay factory looking for work. Though unlike Trainwreck, this one arrived via mundane means; he just got off at the bus stop by the factory, walked up to the receptionist, and calmly explained that he was a Tinker looking for a job. Since my schedule today was mostly open, I found myself giving this Byung-Ho fellow an impromptu job interview less than an hour after he arrived.

A cursory examination had revealed that he was of Korean descent; he'd moved to America at the age of twenty eight, and he was currently fifty. Apparently he'd spent the last twenty years or so working for the Department of Defense in some obscure bureaucratic capacity.

When he showed up in the interview office, I gestured to the box of baked goods on the table and said,

"Help yourself."

As Byung-Ho sat down, he answered,

"Not hungry. You want to know what I can make, yes?"

I nodded; seemed reasonable enough, and it would have to be discussed eventually.

"I make materials. Alloys, polymers, ceramics, and plenty of other substances. But for finished products I only have my own mind and skills to work with. Would you like samples?"

"Sure?"

With that, Byung-Ho opened his briefcase, passing me a few squares of interesting polymer materials.

"Not my best work; I don't have access to the facilities needed for high temperature metallurgy or ceramics work at the moment, so what I could produce for demonstration purposes is quite limited."

I thought for a moment. These were interesting materials, yes, but I didn't know if they were actually Tinkertech; it was still possible he was a fraud. But I couldn't just whip out my equipment and get analyzing right here and now, or I would absolutely blow my (barely there at all) legal cover.

"Would you be willing to wait here while I take these down to the lab to be analyzed?"

"Certainly; I don't have anywhere else I need to be today."

As I got up, I noted,

"If you get hungry or thirsty, you can push the call button and ask for consumables to be delivered. Bathroom is the first door on the right if you go down that hallway."

With that, I made my way into the parts of the factory that the regular employees weren't allowed in, but not to the places where we dealt with the alien security measures.

A quick look at these polymers, subjecting them to various stretch tests… and they were really really good. Byung-Ho would definitely be getting hired.

(A Bit Later…)
Later that day, Byung-Ho made his way to his newly… "rented" condominium; apparently it was just a very slow process of purchasing the unit, but he found that hard to wrap his brain around. His feelings on how things went were slightly conflicted; getting the job was great, but it did mean there were rather high expectations for what he would manage to achieve.

This was especially the case given he'd abandoned his former post to take this job; if his old employer ever learned of his sudden change in employment, they would be very very angry with him indeed. Perhaps it was good that his new workplace and residence were so fortified, then.

After a quick meal, Byung-Ho got out an old mechanical typewriter, and started typing up everything that had happened today. This at least was much like the old job; a detailed record of everything he took part in was crucial for good professional conduct.

On the other hand, this was the first time these records would be directly collected from him without him needing to send them. Byung-Ho still wasn't quite clear on how this was to be done, but his new employers were quite explicit that he didn't need to concern himself with the matter, so he didn't. Much.

Late at night, when Byung-Ho was fast asleep, a portal opened in his living room. A man quietly stepped through, retrieved the neatly typed report on the day's activities, and returned to whence he came. The former North Korean spy didn't even turn over in his slumber.
 
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...Wut da fuq did i just read?

clarification: north korean tinker spy with a handler that has access to wormholes
que the jontron what, what the fuck
 
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P: But yeah, if you actually stop and think for about forty seconds there's a rather obvious answer regarding which organization Byung-Ho is spying for.
 
"It is. It's not the only change too. I'm looking at the logs, and apparently John was an un-diagnosed transwoman."
Trans woman. The space is important.

Trans is an adjective in this case. It's short for "transgender" so the full phrase would be "transgender woman". "Trans" modifies "woman" like "short woman" or "white woman". Trans woman means "this is a specific type of woman", as in a woman with some specific characteristic (the adjective) which not all women share (such as being tall or short or black or white, etc).

Transwoman -- you no longer are using "transgender" (or "trans") as an adjective, but a prefix -- modifying the word "woman" to mean "across from woman", which grammatically says "This is NOT a woman, but at most something LIKE a woman". Transgender itself already uses that prefix (trans people are those whose gender is across or away from their assigned at birth gender) so "transwoman" would either mean "across or away from woman" or it's "transgenderwoman" which isn't a word (it's a compound of an adjective-noun pair, which is like saying "blackman" or "shortwoman")

It may seem like a minor grammatical quibble or correction, but it's a rather significant difference in meaning, and honestly the only reason I mention this is that while 99% of the time it's just a tiny grammar or style mistake (after all, your meaning was clear), some folks like to very firmly insist on "transwoman" out of pure bigotry as a way to emphasis that trans men aren't men and trans women aren't women.
 
C: Putting it bluntly, we're not going to let bigots ruin language for everyone else.
I spent that entire post explaining why "trans woman" is also grammatically correct and "transwoman" isn't.

"Transgenderwoman" isn't a word (whereas "transgender woman" is just a standard adjective-noun pair), and "transwoman" means "across from a woman" or "on the other side of woman", which is...not the case. Except for those bigots
 
Morat is correct from a grammatical sense, but probably could have phrased it better. As it stands, the wording of the text implies that trans men aren't men and that trans women aren't women. Which is a position both sides are in opposition to.
 
Absolutely makes sense that they would be pulling resources to get spy's in there such an influential Tinker making such big moves, and they can't be blocked due to dimensional shielding

That is absolutely something the Control Freaks at the worlds largest Pot are interested in infiltrating
 
Speaking as an amateur playwright, Chekhov's guns can be hard to write well. A lot of people seem to forget to actually fire them. I won't be prescriptive, unless you ask, so I'll just say I'm looking forward to the payoff.
 
If the CUI, which is the only other large organization I can think of that does sneaky shit like this, had access to portals like that there would be a hell of a lot more kidnapped and brainwashed capes.

This is definitely just Cauldron. Hopefully they're being sensible about things, namely how Reliabuilt isn't doing more than disrupting their little feudal experiment and that's massively outweighted by how she's spreading very useful techs for their efforts.
 
I spent that entire post explaining why "trans woman" is also grammatically correct and "transwoman" isn't.

"Transgenderwoman" isn't a word (whereas "transgender woman" is just a standard adjective-noun pair), and "transwoman" means "across from a woman" or "on the other side of woman", which is...not the case. Except for those bigots
More importantly, it's a dogwhistle term so trans women are justifiably on alert when reading it.
 
Notice of Discontinuation
C: Due to us wanting to work on other things and not feeling any more inspiration to write this particular story, we are officially discontinuing Built to Last. That said, we're not leaving you completely in the lurch; we wrote a rough outline of how the rest of the story would go, and we have no objections to another author picking up where we left off.

Arc 6: Subversion: Emmy and Melissa hack the shit out of their Shard, and learn even more Horrible Eldritch Lore in the process. Trainwreck shows up looking for work, as does an OC Cauldron Tinker sent as an informant. Construction on the bridge commences.

Arc 7: Explosion: Bakuda starts shelling the Reliabuilt compound to try and prove herself the superior Tinker. It doesn't go well for her. Things escalate to the point where Lung eliminates Bakuda himself as a liability, and he does diplomatic outreach towards Reliabuilt shortly afterwards. The Manchester factory opens for business immediately after the debacle.

Arc 8: Exploration: The crew create their first proper dimensional travel technology, and start scouting for a suitable alternate Earth to co-opt for their usage. The gate machine is kept in some of the secretive sub-sub-basements of the Manchester factory. Armsmaster makes final preparations to upload. Trainwreck uploads, and is welcomed to the crew in full.

Micro-Arc: Exclusion: The crew learns of Cauldron and their activities, and quickly pegs them as completely and utterly compromised by the Entities. They subsequently resolve to keep their operations as disconnected from Cauldron as possible.

Arc 9: Construction: Building forces to secretly invade the Eagleton Quarantine Zone. Meanwhile, construction of the new bridge really kicks into high gear. Armsmaster is uploaded, and Dragon manages to induct him into the anti-Shard conspiracy.

Arc 10: Invasion: The Elite try to force Ruggedizer into the fold, sending Bastard Son to get it done. At roughly the same time, Emmy and Melissa are secretly conquering the Eagleton Quarantine Zone (with Taylor's assistance). Bastard Son ends up getting his upper body vaporized when one of Ruggedizer's killbots tracks him to his current hideout.

Arc 11: Colonization: A synthetic civilization is founded on an unoccupied Earth, specifically chosen for not being heavily surveilled by the Entities. As a collaborative project between Ruggedizer and Armsmaster, they produce an anti-Endbringer weapon in the form of a two meter blade of pure quantum fuckery on the end of a polearm, which uses quantum teleportation to sunder any and all connections in matter the blade passes through. This weapon is dubbed the Shear. As a side tangent, the Travelers come to Brockton Bay in order to get Noelle uploaded. This successfully cures her condition.

Arc 12: Hydration: Leviathan comes to Brockton Bay. While there is significant collateral damage, Leviathan is quickly intercepted by Armsmaster, and absolutely mutilated with the Shear. Leviathan runs for his fucking life, leaving 90% of buildings undamaged and the city's government intact. Incidentally, only Leviathan's tail (containing its core) escaped, leaving behind an almost-complete Endbringer corpse. The new bridge shrugged off the fuckery like it was nothing.

Arc 13: Reconstruction: The world-shaking news that an Endbringer decisively lost without Scion's intervention echoes across the globe. Meanwhile, the damage to Brockton Bay is being quickly repaired, and there's a major surge in Uploading patients after Panacea completely and utterly burns out. The Neohadean robot civilization continues to grow in secret.

Arc 14: Intrusion: The Slaughterhouse Nine finally makes its appearance; not wanting to get splattered, they opt for a mostly indirect method of causing problems, kidnapping people, doing horrific things to them, and making sure the aftermath is visible to the public. The only one who actually tries to infiltrate one of Ruggedizer's bases is Mannequin, who attempts to sneak into the Brockton Bay factory. This results in his unceremonious demise. After that, the Nine leave town.

Arc 15: Abduction: Being absolutely livid at the Nine for what they did in Brockton Bay, the crew opt to do something about Jack Slash before his next "show". As it turns out, they do need some practice at suborning intact Warrior Shards, calling for a test subject no-one will miss. Since Jack Slash fits the bill quite nicely there, they kidnap him and start experimenting.

Arc 16: Transmission: Fairly quickly, the Reliabuilt crew realize they hit upon an absolutely critical asset in the form of the Broadcast Shard. After completely and utterly suborning control over it, they begin mapping out the many, many Shards operating in the vicinity of the Earths. Towards the end of the arc, they find the cluster of Shards composing the Warrior Entity. Back on Bet, there's a mass migration towards Brockton Bay and Manchester, while plenty of other cities are practically begging Reliabuilt to set up branches there.

Arc 17: Usurpation: With the Broadcast Shard under their control and the Shard network mapped, the Reliabuilt crew begin quietly suborning Shards one after another. Extreme precautions are taken to avoid alerting the Warrior Entity of what exactly is going on. Meanwhile a massive superweapon is being constructed on NeoHadea.

Arc 18: Elimination: With the superweapon completed and the Shard Network suborned, the Reliabuilt crew launch a multi-pronged attack on the Warrior Entity. The suborned Shards do an excellent job of drawing the Warrior's attention, opening it up for a sucker-punch from the interdimensional doom cannon built on NeoHadea. This blasts a massive hole in the Warrior's defenses, most importantly breaking the sandboxing barriers preventing dimensional travel to the Warrior's core Shards. The Warrior Entity manages to block the beam from inflicting continued damage, but between the injuries it's already received and the continued attack from the suborned Shards it's effectively stunlocked. The NeoHadean robot armies surge through the breach and start tearing the Warrior Entity apart from the inside. The crew now have uncontested admin control over the source of Parahuman abilities.

Arc 19: Reparation: The Reliabuilt crew quickly exploit their newfound control over the Shard Network to arrange "accidents" for all the really bad villains on the various Earths. Meanwhile they completely change how getting powers works, putting them in the hands of people inclined to use them for constructive purposes and actually requiring informed consent about what the whole deal entails.

Arc 20: Disclosure: To much controversy, Ruggedizer goes public about the source of Parahuman abilities. The diplomatic mess caused by the Neohadean civilization along with open inter-Earth travel is bad enough, but people really don't like the crew playing favorites by refusing to tech-uplift dictatorships and generally having decent conduct strings attached to their help. Meanwhile, Cauldron gets unceremoniously shitcanned.

Epilog: A few centuries down the line, a space fleet operated by the Inter-Earth Federation happens upon another batch of Entities parasitizing a civilization. After some basic investigation to check for benign symbiosis, the Entities in question are simply demolished with starship weapons fire. Diplomatic contact with the locals ensues.
 
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Well, I confess to being slightly disappointed, but I wish you all the best in your future endeavors, and I'm quite grateful for the outline. Thank you for the fic, it's been a pleasure and I'll certainly read whatever you choose to write next!
(Parse that as wishing "you all" the best, not wishing you "all the best", to be clear.)
 
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