Horologist (Worm AU/Altpower)

[We Just Write]

(logo provided by @DestinyPlayer and shaded by @ShadowVulpix)
WARNING: Contains Time Shenanigans, proceed at your own risk.

---

Date Point: July 24, 2008

I held up my creation to my mom, the erratically ticking wooden box in my hands churning away as it measured the passage of time, saying "Mom, I made you a gift! It's a clock!"

My mother set the mechanism on the table. Eventually, she noted "Wow, you actually made a working clock. I'm seriously impressed, little owl."

Looking at the rudimentary clock face mounted to the device, I shrugged as I replied "Yeah, it's not a very good clock, though. You hear that irregular tick? It'll probably be losing or gaining time basically at random as long as it's running. Still, it's my first working clock, and I want you to have it."

Mom pulled me into a hug, saying "It's amazing. Also, I noticed you saying it's your first clock, are you planning on building more?"

I nodded enthusiatically, saying "You bet, mom! I've got all the tools now, and now that I know what I'm doing, I'll be able to make way better clocks. I've been reading up on John Harrison's work, and I think I'll be trying to replicate his H4 naval chronometer's functionality as my next major milestone."

---

Date Point: February 16, 2009

The movement's ticking over perfectly now. Gear ratios are correctly calibrated, hands properly balanced, everything's working smoothly. Carefully, I close the casing of the newly constructed pocket watch, all the moving parts rendered in glorious Invar and Brass. Now I'll be setting it for the accuracy measurement and-

Dad interrupted, saying "Taylor, a man from the PRT just arrived, he says he wants to talk to you."

I immediately spun around in the carefully-arranged workspace that I'd turned the basement into, practically shouting "For the last time, I am not a Tinker! Just because I've started making high-quality timepieces from raw materials at age 13 does not mean I have powers, I worked for my skill at this! All my work has been fully comprehensible to normal humans, and I've even had independent clockmakers look it over before I started selling my work!"

At the top of the stairs to my workshop, I saw both my dad and a man in a suit with an inquisitive look on his face. I followed his gaze as he looked over the walls covered in diagrams of the insides of clocks, several of my previous timepieces representing major advances in quality, and then... my first. Most of my work was rendered in brass with recent pieces sometimes using Invar, but my first was wood.

Immediately, I snapped at the man as I marched up the stairs "Get out of my workshop. I am fully in compliance with all regulations pertinent to clockmaking, fire safety, and OSHA, so you have no business being here. Especially seeing as I am in no way a parahuman, therefore not under your jurisdiction."

Then I slammed the basement door in his face and went back to my clockmaking. All the better to avoid thinking about mom.

---

Date Point: October 1st, 2009

Honestly, I was a bit sad that Emma didn't have the grades to follow me here, but I wasn't too broken up about it. For some reason Emma had started being really mean to me whenever we met up, and that was enough for me to stop trying to contact her and spend more time perfecting my craft. So, I simply went to Arcadia without her.

So far, Arcadia was turning out really nice, even if I did have a well-deserved reputation as the nerdiest of all nerds. I mean, considering that when someone asked me about my watches I'd proceeded to more-or-less lecture him on every single detail of my craft until the next period, it was only to be expected. Still, one upside of this was that rich kids were apparently quite willing to get their hands on a genuine Hebert watch in exchange for a sizable sum of money. So Arcadia was also an excellent location for me to advertise and sell my watches along with the occasional wall clock.

Musings aside, today I was sitting down across the lunch table from Amy, performing spot checks on my latest watch after carefully cleaning up all the crumbs and grease from eating lunch. Generally, we got along OK. She liked that I didn't pester her for healing, and I liked that she was one of the few people aside from Dad who'd listen to me prattling on and on about how my clocks worked.

Today, I was talking to Amy about the next model of escapement I'd be using, which promised an utterly immense improvement in accuracy over my current timepieces.

In response, the off-duty healer noted "So, I guess that means soon you'll have another timepiece on your breakthrough shelf, then?"

I nodded enthusiastically as I replied "I certainly hope so! In another few months I'll be closing in on levels of accuracy previously exclusive to atomic clocks at this rate."

---

Date Point: November 1st, 2010

At breakfast, I was mulling over the next generation of clocks I'd be making, when my Dad awkwardly spoke up "Taylor, you probably won't want to hear this, but I don't think it's actually possible to make more accurate clocks than you're currently making."

I just scoffed, saying "That's nonsense dad, it's always possible to make a better clock."

Dad nodded, replying "I don't doubt that you'll be perfectly capable of making even better clocks, but I don't think more accuracy is possible. The reason being that your clocks are starting to warp reality in order to make the time they display correct."

That brought me up short as I put my hands in the 'time out' position and asked "Wait, what do you mean by my clocks starting to warp reality?"

With that, my dad gestured to the wall clock hanging up in the kitchen and answered "So, I forgot that you included automatic daylight savings time for that particular clock. I went to set it an hour back just after sunrise, and when I was done it was before dawn. Also, I'm pretty sure I got a glimpse of my past self going to set the clock back, but I didn't want to risk a paradox there so I just let it happen."

Grumbling, I got up from the table and marched over to that clock as I noted "Don't you start on about me being some sort of time Tinker too, my clocks are not capable of altering the flow of time, only measuring it!" With that, I set the clock forward by four hours, my father vanishing as the angle of the sun changed to be near its apex for today.

Oh.

Awkwardly, I set the clock back to a few moments after I left, time jerking backwards as my dad looked at me with a smug grin on his face. That was a "Told you so" expression if I'd ever seen one, and I didn't like it one bit.

After several moments of awkward silence punctuated only by the ticking of my apparently time-warping clock, I said "So. This obviously needs to be investigated more thoroughly. After I get home from school, I'll use the wall clock to loop back around so that I can use the workshop while past-me is taking classes and assemble an exact replica of that clock so I can figure out exactly how it's distorting time. No-one is going to believe that a clock that screws with time when changed isn't Tinker-tech, so I need to figure out how to make my revenue clocks not do that, while still maintaining the extremely high quality I'm known for."

Dad nodded, before noting "That sounds like a plan."

That's the exact moment when I rewound into the kitchen, telling my past self "Hey. Figured that since we all knew about the time travel by this point it would be a good time to arrive."

My past self nodded to me and noted "I guess I can use the workshop later. Anyway, I'd best be getting ready for school now."

With that, I went my separate ways, my past self packing our bag for school as I went downstairs into my workshop. Coincidentally, I also had a large number of watches and other timepieces down here; I made sure to test my clocks for at least a month to make sure they worked right before I even considered selling them. This also meant that I had about five different watches on my testing rack at any given time; these days I was averaging a bit more than a watch per week, which was a very good rate seeing as I was doing everything by hand directly from raw Invar, Brass, and glass.

The very first thing I did was therefore to test each of my watches-in-testing for anomalous behavior. To my great relief, the oldest two watches on my testing rack were not causing any temporal anomalies, meaning that none of my time-warping clocks had yet been released to the general public. The fourth and fifth watches behaved like the wall clock, in that setting their time caused time travel; the biggest difference there is that I could walk around with the watch strapped to me, bringing it with me when I time traveled. The third watch meanwhile demonstrated interesting transitional behavior; it didn't alter time in any way, but whenever I tried to set it wrong it immediately snapped back to the correct time.

Now that I knew what I was looking for, I brought watches 2, 3, and 4 over to my workbench and took a look at their internals, trying to figure out exactly where the anomalous behavior was coming from. At first, it didn't seem like anything untoward was going on, simply having assembled an extremely high-precision timepiece. However, I knew that couldn't be the case, since that wouldn't be causing the observed temporal anomalies.

Then, after sitting and staring at the insides of my watches for several minutes, I finally saw, the flow of time itself laying bare before my eyes. Watch number two was the first I made that interfaced with time's flow at all, minute eddies of time inside the mechanism keeping the movement perfectly synchronized with the rate of time at its location. Watch 3 and 4 meanwhile were even more interfaced with the flow of time itself, the chronal eddies making up significant parts of their workings that until recently I had completely failed to realize I was creating. In fact, now that I could see all the parts of my new temporal-linked clocks, it was pretty clear that most of the physical components were entirely unnecessary. I'd still need the escapement, clock face, and controls to make them work, but with time itself taking up most of the slack I could do away with most of the complicated inner workings; I wouldn't even need to include power sources any more.

Then, my mood soured. Yes, I'd unlocked a whole new level of clockmaking I never thought possible, but I couldn't show it to anyone except Dad. If it got out that my clocks were working without most of the normal internal mechanisms, I'd almost immediately get called a Tinker. That meant my revenue clocks would have to keep using the older, inferior techniques I had been working with up to this point. The only way I'd be able to show off my full capabilities would be if I joined the cape scene, but I really didn't want to do that and risk getting murdered by a supervillain.

Though maybe, if I could figure out a way to minimize the risks it would be OK? I really need to see what else I can do with these time-warping clocks of mine, then I can make a decision.

 

[Jackofcookiejars]

Would the (frame?) be frozen while the display ignores everything he tries to do?
Would time personify itself to beat him and then go back to normal?
Would a time traveling Taylor from an undetermined point in the future show up to prevent it?

Click to shrink...

And now I have some ideas. Damn you ADHD, allow me to write what I want! In the mean time, have some short snippets about your questions.

For the first,
"Alright, one stopwatch, coming up." Clockblocker said, miming the action of rolling up sleeves.
"You froze it, right?" Gallant asks, as the piece of tinker-tech continued to move.
"Yep." Clockblocker replied, he started pushing on the watch, to prove that he had frozen it.
"Then why does it continue to measure time?"
"If I knew that, I'd be able to afford the watch this is based on. I'd make millions."

For the second,
"Alright, one stopwatch, coming up." Clockblocker said, miming the action of rolling up sleeves. Just before he could touch it a hand, made out of what could best be described as melted clocks, reached out of it to punch him.
"Vista, if another hand tries to punch him, keep it away from him." Aegis commands, "Clock, do it again." This time, instead of a punch to the face, it aimed for the gut area. Vista turned and puked as it entered her space-warp, and the punch landed on Clockblocker.
Clockblocker was gasping for air as he spoke, "Next time, you're getting punched because of power interactions."

For the last,
"I need your clothes, your boots, and your motorcycle." Taylor says, stepping towards the Wards trying to touch her watch. Clockblockers eyes flash in recognition, while Vista and Aegis slowly start to back away.
"Forgot to say please." Clockblocker responds, seemingly completely forgetting about the watch. He walks closer to Taylor and mimes putting out a cigar on her chest. She knew what to do from here, the PHO post she read would guide her. She punched Clockblocker in the face, ran over to her watch, picked it up, and ran away.

► Clockblocker (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)
Replied on February 4, 2011:
And this is why I'm no longer allowed to reference movies on patrol.

 

[We Just Write]

The first thing I did after determining I needed to explore my capabilities was get my most recent watch (and the self-correcting one) on, and walk to the backyard. Then, I activated the date-setting switch, and began turning the knob back in time. I barely got back a few days before the watch abruptly popped its casing open and spewed several pieces out onto the grass, several of the temporal eddies inside the mechanism spinning out of control as well. Checking the date on my self-correcting watch revealed that I was in fact on the day when I had initially built the watch in question.

Shoving the unbuilt timepiece into my pocket, I let myself back in through the back door. Both my dad and my past self were out at the moment, so as long as I locked up properly to avoid gaslighting my past self I'd be able to use the wall clock without any issues. I did so, catching a brief glimpse of my past self heading for the backyard as I marched down the stairs to the workshop.

Next, I put together a basic stopwatch; this took a couple of hours. Normally it would have needed about a weekend for me to put this together, but being able to simply omit a lot of the normal mechanical parts allowed me to put it together in a mere three hours. Soon enough, I had the stopwatch ticking nicely in my hand. Now I walked over to my testing rack, returning watches 2, 3, and 4 to it.

Turning around, I could clearly see that I had a mundane but extremely good watch on the rack along with three varying temporal-linked clocks, all neatly ticking away. The instant I hit the button to stop the stopwatch from ticking, every last watch on the rack abruptly stopped. Idly, I picked up one of my screwdrivers and let go of it in midair, seeing it suspended in unmoving stasis.

I clicked the stopwatch back on, and the screwdriver fell the couple inches I'd lifted it up by, impacting the table with a dull 'thunk'. Also, all the watches on my testing rack started up again, which was really nice; I'd hate to have broken them somehow. Actually, that brought to mind an interesting point I should check. Quickly, I retrieved Watch 4 from the rack and stopped time again.

Leaving the stopwatch floating in midair, I set watch number 4 ahead by exactly one second. The stopwatch vanished, the world around me jerking back into motion, and watch number 4 ticking along like nothing had happened. Curious, I stood in a location my past self wouldn't see and rewound back a minute, getting to see myself pick up the stopwatch and abruptly vanish.

So, apparently that stopwatch is still stuck at it's temporal position, then? Setting the clock back again, I tried to land on the exact second of the time stop. Abruptly, everything stopped ticking as I was once again confronted with the stopwatch suspended in midair. Figuring that I'd experimented with it enough, I grabbed the stopwatch and started it up again.

Actually, this brings to mind an idea for how to solve a rather significant problem with making a Tinker persona for the cape scene. Namely, while I've got my workshop, I really can't afford to have it also be the place where I make time-linked clocks. Given I tend to invite people here for various reasons, having it full of time machines was a surefire way to get labeled a Tinker. Fortunately, I think I have a solution for that now.

When Dad came home, I was waiting for him at the table with a neatly-typed two-page proposal for joining the Cape scene with a minimum of risk, along with the stopwatch I had made for testing purposes. As my father sat down, he asked "So, did you figure out why the clock is a time machine, then?"

I simply nodded, saying "Yes, yes I did. Apparently, a few weeks ago I started using time itself as a component in my clocks and didn't notice. Anyway, you're probably not going to like hearing this, but I think I want to become a hero."

Immediately, my dad just stared before saying "No, I can't... I can't risk losing you. What if you get killed by a supervillain? What if you get kidnapped and I never see you again?"

I nodded slowly and solemnly, before I slid the proposal over to where he was sitting and said "I'm aware of the risks, Dad. Those pages right there include all my ideas for minimizing them."

Silently, my Dad picked up the pages and began reading. Several minutes passed as he went over the various sections of my proposal, his worried expression softening as he did so. Eventually, he set down the pages and told me "Taylor, I'm going to go over pretty much all the points you raised in that proposal. Please let me finish before you start answering."

I nodded, and Dad said "First of all, the general idea of recruiting people to help is good in principle, but actually doing so on any large scale is easier said than done. Not only will you need a source of funding to pay them all more than what you can get from your watch sales, but from the outside you look an awful lot like a Parahuman. Groups of Parahumans with supporting unpowered personnel tend to get called gangs, even if they're engaging in heroic activities."

My father continued, noting "That said, I fully support your idea of creating a time-stopped version of the house for use as a workshop for your more exotic clocks. As you pointed out, having your normal workshop full of time machines is a recipe for disaster sooner or later. I'd be fully onboard with it even if I were going to block you from entering the Cape scene."

Dad was still talking, as he noted "In addition, I also really like your idea of making automatic safety watches that reverse or stop time if you're about to be seriously injured, immobilized, or Mastered. In fact, this is such an excellent idea that I'm going to make it a requirement: There will be absolutely no appearances from you in a cape identity until you have a working safety watch, which you will have protecting you at all times. In fact, have a redundant spare with you at all times too, just in case the first one breaks somehow and you need to escape."

I nodded enthusiastically as Dad finished by noting "Lastly, your thoughts on general methods of operating as a hero are fairly intelligent; you can dictate where and when you get involved in a situation, so there's no reason to get involved in chaotic and risky fights if you can simply neutralize a villain before they know you're there. Same goes for playing up the angle of being a mysterious operator who appears and vanishes as necessary; it's a good idea that fully leverages your ability to time travel in order to maximize your ability to dictate when and where you make an appearance."

There were a few moments of silence, before I asked "So, the sooner I get that time-stopped Workshop up and running, the more operational timeline I'll have to work with. Given that, can I pull an all-nighter to get it built?"

Dad thought for a moment, before he answered "Possibly. Given that you've been awake for about sixteen hours from your perspective, and you'll be working on a device that will perform some rather drastic time alterations, I'm going to insist that you get some sleep first." As dad spoke, he gestured to the wall clock.

This is about when I walked downstairs from my bedroom and told my past self "Dad's right. Get some sleep. I'll get the time stop up and running tonight, along with the accessor watches."

About like I remembered, my past self simply nodded to me, before she walked over to the wall clock and disappeared off into the past. Afterwards, Dad commented "You know, one of these days I'm going to get one of these time loop hand-offs to last long enough for you to play a card game against yourself."

I simply fired back "I'd lose. Anyway, I need to get on with making the time stop device."

With that, I walked downstairs into the basement and got to work. First thing's first, I needed the actual time stop clock itself. For this particular purpose, I would actually be using two separate clock faces driven by the same escapement. The first would be tied to the external time of the universe, while the second would control the elapsed perpendicular time on the Hebert property. After all, I really didn't want to be the only non-timestopped thing in the house when working; that would get really creepy, really fast. Plus, if I was going to be working on clocks, there needed to be at least some kind of time flowing in the workshop in order for me to test things, and skipping out of the timestop to do so would defeat the purpose of having it.

Building the combined clock took about four hours, aided greatly by the fact that it didn't need to be a watch, and could therefore be significantly bigger, so that I wouldn't need to be quite so precise with fitting the parts together. I also didn't decorate this particular clock at all. It was a boring sheet metal box with a timekeeping mechanism inside, and that was final. The last feature I added was an alarm that would automatically set the clock into time freezing mode at exactly 8:00 AM on November 2, right down to the second.

The clock complete, I got it ticking, and after a bit of fiddling with Watch 4, I managed to get myself into the perpendicular time to see if it worked, only to be confronted by my future self holding up a pair of what looked like basic time/date wristwatches with a few extra buttons and a nice-looking polished brass casing. The me that was to come then said "Good news, the time stop works. You still need to go back and make these watches for one-press timestop access."

Nodding, I used Watch 4 to slip back to just after I made the dual-display time stopper, and got to work putting together a pair of watches. I had a sneaking suspicion that I was starting to warp time even without the use of a clock, so I set up Watch 3 and Watch 1 where I could see them when working. After all, there was no way whatsoever I should have finished even the stopwatch in less than a weekend, and I'd put that thing together in mere hours.

Timepieces set, I got down to the business of making two identical wristwatches. The timekeeping mechanisms would be time-linked so I didn't need a Tourbillon for orientation compensation, that simplified the design immensely. The same went for most of the geartrain used to drive the date counter; completely unnecessary when I had time-linkage to work with.

Then came the... unconventional design features; this clock was going to be set an awful lot more than any conventional timepiece, so I made the controls for that a lot more accessible; there was a single button that would activate time-setting mode on the left side of the case, and two rings around the outside of the case that could be spun to change the time and date; the inner ring changed the time of day, the outer ring changed the date. However, they wouldn't take effect until the set time button was pressed again, allowing for much more precise time travel. Just in case, I also included a cancel button just below the set button; hitting that would snap the display back to its previous position without any effect.

The right side of the watch meanwhile featured another two buttons; the top right button would immediately snap the watch back to 8:00 AM on November 2nd 2010 with wearer in tow, no matter what the watch's current time was. The bottom right button was a convenience control that only did anything if the watch was currently in that specific moment, and would snap the wearer back to whatever time they were at prior to snapping to the timestop. The last control was a button I'd routed straight through the axis of rotation for the hands; this would simply stop or start time at whatever moment the watch currently occupied.

Sure enough, I finished both watches, looking at my pre-existing ones that I'd used to keep track of how long this took. My self-correcting watch was showing that I'd taken about eight hours leaving me with just half an hour before the time stop kicked in. Meanwhile my mundane watch was showing an elapsed time closer to an entire week.

Well, well, well, that's certainly interesting.

 

[We Just Write]

WoG: Taylor does not have a total monopoly on time shenanigans. That said, she is almost certainly the most potent and versatile source of such.

 

[We Just Write]

So, I drew Taylor's new watches from Gearing Up.

 

[We Just Write]

After the timestop activated, Dad and I were staring out of the field of motion making up our property at the unmoving world. From our current position, we could see birds stopped in midair, trucks locked in place, and a static unchanging sky. After watching for a few moments, Dad voiced the sentiment we were both feeling when he said "Well, that's utterly disturbing to look at. I vote we go inside and have breakfast."

The house still had power at the moment, but only because we'd lugged the backup generator out of storage and I'd thrown together a temporal motor to turn the shaft instead of the generator's normal engine. That said, internet and telephone service? Flat out not happening. Same went for the gas and water lines, though I had some ideas for a way around that problem based on a temporal oscillator. I really wanted to get the toilets in the timestop up and running, so that Dad and I wouldn't need to pop a minute or two into the future whenever we needed to go. Thankfully that hadn't happened yet, but it would only be a matter of time.

All that accounted for, we opted for toast and microwaved sausages, with milk as our drink for this morning. As we ate, Dad asked "So. I know that the house is time stopped, but what I'm wondering is why our brief pops into the future for bathroom usage haven't revealed the house in a completely different state. Basically, where did everything we both know you're planning to make go?"

Nodding, I swallowed my current bite of food and answered "So, unlike a simple time stop which is effectively an extreme time dilation gradient, the house is not being subjected to such effects. What I actually did is define an additional timelike axis; the stopped house is still moving through time, just at a ninety degree angle from the rest of the universe. Let's call this perpendicular time, and what people normally experience as prograde time. As for the version of the house in prograde time, from the perspective of prograde time there was no point at which the house was actually absent, so it was duplicated for each time axis. Anyway, we're conscious observers and therefore inherently quantum systems, which renders us exempt to that particular mode of temporal duplication thanks to the no-cloning theorem; since we were expecting to end up in the stopped house, here we are."

There was a brief pause, as Dad and I processed what I just said. This pause abruptly ended when I blurted out "HOW IN THE WORLD DID I KNOW THAT!?"

To this, Dad replied with a weary tone "I don't know; we both know that you've been tested for being a Tinker repeatedly and come up negative each time, but all of those tests were before your clocks started telling time what it is, instead of telling what time it is. On top of that, we've also done all the research on Trigger Events, and nothing that's happened recently remotely qualifies."

I couldn't help but chuckle at the wordplay, before going back to being serious "Dad, this is really worrying for me; my mind is changing in ways I don't understand, I'm able to see the flow of time itself, and measurements have revealed that I've started subconsciously warping time when clockmaking in order to get more done than I have any right to. At this point even I'd be wondering if I were a Tinker, except that some part of my subconscious keeps screaming at me that I'm not whenever I think that way."

Dad simply shrugged, noting "Sorry, but I don't have any answers that you don't. Anyway, on a somewhat more productive note, I hope you get the toilets in this version of the house up and running soon. Also making those safety watches."

I nodded, then answered "First thing's first, I'll be making a temporal duplicator machine; entirely aside from the household utilities, I'll be needing parts and supplies to make all this stuff, and the supply in the workshop is very limited. If I put together a machine that lets me make duplicates of stuff at the touch of a button, it handily solves all those problems. I'll probably even be able to make copies of my clocks that way, so that I only need to put together the original, then can just run off however many I need."

Dad simply grinned, noting "I guess you're still planning on founding a Time Patrol, then? Either way, I say you get to it."

With that, I marched down to the basement, and got to work on my temporal duplicator machine. The temporal mechanism was going to be the easy part; most of the challenge would come from making the tray able to seamlessly slide in and out of the machine's working volume, and keeping people from getting bits caught in there. I had it put together in about an hour; now that I knew about my time distortion effect, I was exploiting it for all it was worth. Regardless of production time, the final result looked an awful lot like a microwave oven, except with only two buttons; operating it was as simple as putting a tray in with what you wanted to duplicate, closing the door, opening the door again to remove whatever you put in, closing the door, hitting the rewind button, and taking out your newly copied item.

I immediately used this to restock all my clock-making supplies. In mere minutes I'd fully restocked on sheet metal, Brass, Invar, glass, spring steel, and the super-Luminova paint I used to make my watches glow in the dark. I'd wanted to use Tritium for my luminous displays, but both my father and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had vetoed giving me access to radioactive gasses. Spoilsports.

Musing aside, next up I needed to make the temporal oscillators to get the utilities working, and also maintain the house's air quality. The clock part was fairly straightforward, since I'd just built a mechanism that did almost the same exact thing; that part took me a mere half-hour to build the first of, then I just ran it through the duplicator a few times.

Next up, I needed to connect these devices to the lines for water, gas, sewage, and the ventilation system. Fortunately, the water and gas lines were still at full pressure since we'd had them shut since the timestop started, and the sewerage lines were mercifully clear due to proactive planning on the part of my Dad. So I wouldn't need to try and open up the pipes to get them into the correct state for the temporal oscillators or anything. A few well-placed band-clamps later, the temporal oscillators were installed, and the time-stopped version of our house now had the full range of utilities available for use, along with a guarantee that the air quality would stay fairly pleasant.

After a very relieving bathroom break that didn't require leaving the timestop, I immediately got to the next project of making an automatic safety watch. First step, list design priorities: whatever else it did, I needed something that would keep me from getting killed. On top of that, it would be really nice not to get seriously injured, captured, or unintentionally get outed as having a connection to my hero persona. Also, suddenly vanishing when the safety kicked in would be a dead giveaway; fortunately the wall clock had conclusively proven that I could make a device that screwed with time in a way that gave no outward hint of what just happened. That coupled with the knowledge from nowhere about conscious observers getting some sort of privilege gave me the idea to build a clock that would induce mental time travel, sending the wearer's mind back in time by a set amount and merging with their past self's mind.

I was pretty sure I could do that fairly easily; the hard part would be making the watch able to sense incoming problems in order to actually activate the rewind function automatically. After puzzling over the problem for a few moments, the idea arose that I might be able to have the watch pass itself information from future states, effectively predicting how long until a given future event would take place. Of course, this would have to be based on elapsed subjective time, otherwise constantly bouncing between prograde and perpendicular time would cause all sorts of problems. Grinning, I immediately began work on a prototype of the safety watch, with the only criteria that would cause a rollback being a physical injury in the next 100 milliseconds, with no severity threshold.

Getting the watch ticking, I immediately grabbed a hammer and swung it at my thumb. The next thing I knew, I was staring at the pile of parts that would have become my prototype safety watch. Alright, let's build this thing for real. This time I included a severity threshold so that minor bumps, scrapes, and scratches wouldn't cause an automatic reset. I also included being unwillingly immobilized, being unwillingly Mastered, being subjected to hostile time alterations, and being disconnected from the paired safety watch as things that would cause the watch's user to be rewound. All that said, I completely encased the mechanism in brass aside from the 'pair to user' button, which would also function to manually activate the rewind once paired; this was one clock face that I most emphatically did not want visible.

Safety watch complete, I immediately ran it through the duplicator until I had sixty four of the things; I did the same for the time manipulator watch I was wearing, just so that I'd have a lot of extras in case I wanted to recruit people. That done, I paired one of the safety watches to myself, and brought another up to Dad. Seeing me, he asked "So, I'm guessing that you have everything done you want to for right now?"

Nodding, I answered "Yep. Got the duplicator running, rigged up the utilities for the timestop, and I not only made a safety watch, I ran off sixty four of them using the aforementioned duplicator."

Holding out the circular brass device about 12 millimeters across to my dad, I told him "As soon as you push that button on the side, the watch will pair to you. Any time you would be seriously physically injured, unwillingly immobilized, Mastered, subjected to hostile time alterations, or disconnected from the watch, it will rewind you by an hour or until your most recent period of consciousness. Hitting the button again will also activate a rewind after the initial pairing. It runs on your subjective time, so there's no reason to worry about popping in or out of the timestop."

Dad simply stared at the innocuous brass item, and silently nodded as he took the device and pressed the button. After a few moments, he noted "So, that's everything we wanted to do in order to get your initial setup complete. I guess now we finally leave the timestop, and you get ready for school?"

I smiled and replied "One last thing before school; my workshop in prograde time still has a few time manipulators lying around. I need to clean those up before I forget about them, or something unfortunate could happen. Also, I need to modify the wall clock to disable its time travel functionality. From here on out, the only way to get to or before this moment is if I deliberately let someone do it, and that is final."

---

After cleaning up my workshop and tweaking the wall clock, I gladly hopped on the bus and rode to Arcadia. Getting there took about ten minutes as always, with me gladly showing off my new time manipulator watch to my friend Mandy on the bus, though I didn't say it was a time manipulator, nor did I allow her to fiddle with it. Honestly, by this point it would be more suspicious if I didn't show up wearing a brand new wristwatch every few weeks.

Either way, homeroom went pretty much like normal, as did History, Biology and Mathematics, then came lunch. As usual, I sat across from Amy. We chatted about random things for a few minutes, before I said "Amy, I'd like it if you came over to my house after school today. There's something really important I want to share with you."

Amy looked around, before asking "Just how important is this?"

I just held out my hand for her to hold. Amy immediately got my drift and held hands as I used my other hand to activate the timestop for my new watch. Immediately, Amy's eyes went wide, and I said "Seriously, we need to talk. But only after school. If we move too much in the timestop it will be immediately obvious to everyone that something weird just happened."

Amy held extremely still as she replied "Got it." and I started time back up again.

 

[We Just Write]

Amy was used to keeping secrets. The identities of the Wards were just the tip of the iceberg there, compared to her love of her sister, the fact that her own powers went far beyond mere healing, and even that she knew she was the biological daughter of a supervillain. So when Taylor revealed that her latest watch was capable of stopping time, it was just one more secret to add to the pile.

Either way, given Taylor's insistence on coming over after school to talk about it, Amy was once again finding herself skipping out on her duties as a healer to go look at her friend's clocks. One flight by Vicky Airways later, she arrived at the Hebert house. Taylor met Amy at the door near-instantly after the doorbell was rung, and greeted her with a "Come in Amy!"

Amy nodded and said "Sure thing, Taylor." as she walked through the door.

Meanwhile, Victoria turned to fly off again with a perfunctory "See you later Amy!"

Before she could do that however, Taylor called out "Victoria, wait! I want you here for this too."

Turning back, the teenage Alexandria Package nodded and replied "Sure thing, Taylor."

As soon as the door closed, Taylor nodded to both Amy and Victoria held out her hand. The Dallon sisters immediately got the implied message and grabbed Taylor's hand, Amy getting a snapshot of her biology even as Taylor pressed a different button on her new watch. Abruptly, the angle of the sun through the window changed, and Taylor finally said "So, we're in the frozen moment now. If you want to freak out, go right ahead."

Victoria just raised an eyebrow before asking "Why would I freak out? Yeah you've apparently got a secret timestop base, but that's awesome, not scary."

Meanwhile, Amy simply shook her head as she sat down on the couch, saying "Honestly, given the time stop you demonstrated at school I was kind of expecting something like this. The fact that you've apparently got a time machine strapped to your wrist wasn't too much of a leap from there. Anyway, you pretty clearly want to tell me what you've been up to, so spill."

So Taylor did, sitting on the couch as she recounted her tale of discovering that she was building clocks capable of warping time, setting up the timestop base, and worrying about if she was still human.

At this last point, Amy spoke up, noting "So, about that. Biologically you're still fully human with all your organs in the right places and such. You still don't have either a Corona Pollentia or a Corona Gemma, so you don't meet the medical definition of a Parahuman." with a shrug, Amy noted "That said, if you're planning on making heroic appearances the PRT will probably stick you with a Tinker rating anyway."

Nodding, Taylor asked "Anyway, is it OK if I give you both some things? Amy, you're always complaining about not having enough time to both heal people and be yourself; if I give you a temporal manipulator watch and a safety, that won't be an issue."

As Amy nodded, Victoria raised her hand and asked "So, why are you giving me a watch, then?"

At this, Taylor simply answered "Because we've known each other for a while now, and I kind of like you. I know you're not completely invincible, and I really don't want to see you get hurt. Giving you a safety watch takes care of that."

Victoria simply shrugged, saying "Makes sense to me."

Taylor smiled, noting "Alright, if you wait for a little bit I'll have a time manipulator and a safety watch for both of you."

With that, Taylor got up off the couch and walked out of the room, her long braided ponytail swishing behind her as she exited. Amy and Victoria glanced at each other for mere moments, before Taylor came back, holding a small tray with four devices on it. Taylor quickly set the tray down, pointing to the pair of what looked like normal wristwatches as she said "OK, so these are the time manipulator watches. I'll explain how they work in a bit."

Pointing to the other pair of devices, Taylor continued "These are the safety watches. They pair to you when you press the button, and afterwards they're keyed to your elapsed subjective time. If something any nastier than a minor bump or scratch is about to happen to you, they immediately rewind your subjective timeline by an hour or until your most recent period of consciousness, merging your mind with that of your past self. You can also manually trigger a rewind by pressing the button again. Please note that the criteria for rollback include emotional harm."

With that, Taylor handed a safety watch to Amy and Victoria, each of whom followed the very simple instructions to get theirs ticking, before pocketing it.

Taylor nodded and noted "Good, that should keep you safe in case something is about to go wrong. Now, here's how to use the time manipulator watches."

A few subjective hours and a stop by an ice cream parlor later, Amy was staring at the house she'd spent the last nine years growing up in, Vicky standing right next to her and holding her hand. The gentle rhythms of her sister's biology were reassuring as she walked through the front door.

Right off the doors, they were confronted by an irate lawyer. "There you are, girls. Care to explain your whereabouts?" - Carol inquired ominously - "I`ve called the hospital, and you`re not there. I`ve called the school, and you`re not there either. So where were you all this time?"

Sighing, Amy offered in return - "We were visiting a friend."

Carol snorted. "A friend." - she repeated, tilting her head - "You went to visit... a friend. You did not call ahead, you skipped a hospital visit... all for the sake of visiting a friend, did I get that right? Was this friend dying at the very least, to necessitate such an urgent visit?"

"Yeah!" - Victoria broke into the conversation cheerfully - "Just went to visit Taylor. No biggie. She lives all the way near the docks, so I had to carry Ames over, yanno?"

Carol`s eyes suddenly narrowed. "Taylor who, honey?" - she quipped in low voice. Amy suppressed a shudder of revulsion. She hated this particular tone Carol would adapt. It usually meant she`s about to yell. More specifically, yell about things she held close to chest and flatly refused to discuss with anyone, but somehow expected them to be self-evident and obvious to any other member of family.

"Taylor Hebert! Come on, I told you about her. The girl that makes those awesome watches and is in our class, you remember?" - Victoria plowed on, lifting her sleeve to show off the gift. Carol`s face slackened for a moment, then solidified into a rictus of disgust.

"Take this off, right now." - she ordered frigidly - "You too, Amy. Both of you, hand those watches over. And do not EVER again approach that girl or her rotten family again. Or, heaven forebid, accept 'gifts' from them."

She could practically hear the 'quotes' around the word 'gift'.

"..No."

- she ventured finally, looking Carol straight in the eyes, daring her to try again. Vicky blinked at both of them, caught flat-footed by sudden flood of hostility. Just as Carol opened her mouth to shout...

-kcitkcitkcit-

Suddenly, Amy was back in the ice cream shop, mood thoroughly ruined. Turning towards her sister as she clicked her time-stop on, she asked Victoria "Do you remember anything that hasn't happened yet?"

Victoria nodded as she answered "If you mean mom snapping at you, then yeah."

Sighing, Amy griped "Just once, I wish Mom would actually encourage me to have a life outside being a healer. Or show any real affection at all, generally."

Gesturing to the pocket where her safety watch was quietly ticking away, Victoria noted "Well, we've certainly got all the tries we could possibly need. I'm sure we'll get through to her eventually."

-kcitkcitkcit-

Amy hit the timestop button as soon as she rewound, before she grumped "Didn't work, we have to try something else."

-kcitkcitkcit-
-kcitkcitkcit-
-kcitkcitkcit-
-kcitkcitkcit-
-kcitkcitkcit-
kcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcit

Immediately after rewinding, Amy fell sobbing into Victoria's chest, not even bothering to stop time as she cried. The gentle stroking of her sister's hands running through her hair as she let the tears flow.

After a few moments, Amy managed to get out between the sobs "I just can't do this anymore! We've tried everything we can think of, and no matter what mom still doesn't accept me."

Vicky simply kept up the gentle stroking with one hand as she sighed, before answering "Yeah. We're fifty loops in and at this point we've just got to admit defeat. Mom can go yell at herself in the mirror if she wants, but we are not going through that again."

After a few moments of silence, Amy managed to pull herself together enough to agree with "Clear on that point. Where else can we go aside from Taylor's freaky time stop base, though?"

To this, Victoria simply chuckled and noted "You just answered your own question, Ames." and pulled out her safety watch.

Straightening herself up, Amy pulled her safety watch out as well. With a sad smile, she said "Ready when you are Vicky."

-kcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcitkcit-

Back on the couch in Taylor's base, Amy and Victoria glanced to each other before Victoria blurted out "Taylor, we need to move in with you. Mom's just being really awful to both of us, and we can't stand it anymore."

Taylor jerked back slightly, before apparently reaching the logical conclusion that her friends had just looped back with the safety watches they'd just paired to. After a moment, Taylor nodded, noting "Fortunately the item duplicator takes care of the basic necessity costs for the most part, so we can actually afford to do that. That said, we can't really do much for your wardrobe unless you want to go get your stuff from your mom's house."

Immediately, Amy jerked back like she'd been bitten, saying "No,I.. I just can't deal with her." memories of dozens of failed attempts to get her mother to react with anything resembling basic affection echoing through her minds.

Sighing, Taylor noted "I don't mean with your mom present. We can just go get your stuff from the version of the world in the Frozen Moment, and there would literally be nothing your mom could do to stop us."

As Amy sniffled a bit, Vicky replied "That sounds good to me. Anything else?"

This is when the watchmaker's father made his presence known, entering the room as he said "Well, there's a couple of things. From the outside world's perspective, the events that lead to you coming to this decision never happened; if you suddenly join the Hebert Family it will look an awful lot like you were Mastered, and we don't need that kind of heat. So we need to stage an extremely public falling out between you and your mother."

Quietly, Amy nodded, having silently been dreading needing to interact with Carol again. Meanwhile, Danny continued "Also, I'll need to get some bunk beds and maybe persuade Taylor to make a bigger duplicator. This house isn't set up to sleep four, and if we'll be adopting you that needs to change."

This is when Amy finally got together enough composure to speak again, saying "So, I only have to be in the same room as Carol one more time, then. Except no, because I'll need to do that one time over and over again until we get it perfectly. Anything else that I need to be aware of?"

---

A/N: The section with Carol yelling at Amy and Vicky was written by a friend from Discord after much discussion of how to make the scene work. I used her work with her permission and minor grammar fixes.

 

[We Just Write]

If it's skill, could Victor copy/steal it?

Click to shrink...

I looked at the Nazi cape who had just tapped me on the shoulder, spinning on my heel to do so.

Victor meanwhile was not looking at anything, writhing and screaming in pain on the ground as he tried to claw his own eyes out, flashes of blue escaping from between the gaps in his fingers.

Groaning, I snapped back to my workshop and got back to making clocks.

 

[We Just Write]

A/N: So, the same Discord friend who did the dialog for Carol Dallon decided to take a crack at redoing the "Victor gets himself a very bad time" Omake. Here you go.

---

Victor rather enjoyed coffee. True, it was a product that`s been traditionally produced by untermensch, and some of his fellows would refuse to touch something so obviously "sullied". But he did not share this opinion. Was it not the natural order for subhumans to toil in labor for the benefit of their betters? And benefit he did. Taking another sniff of the cup, he paused to let the aroma unfold fully. Ah, the bitter and nuanced fragrance... He shook his head bemusedly, and took a cautious sip. It was still hot, of course. Only a barbarian would let a cup of coffee cool.

He was not planning on anything in particular this day, but as befits a good businessman, he was always on the lookout for new opportunities. And one just seemed to have passed by. Not a lot of people knew that Victor`s powers came with an innate sense for those with abilities worth the effort. Talents stood out to him in the crowd, like fireflies among the gnats. Well, normally, that is. The one that passed him by right now had the intensity of searchlight. Casting aside his pensive mood, he drained the cup in one go and stood up abruptly, dropping the banknote on the table. He would be back to enjoy a cup of coffee properly afterwards, of course, but right now? The opportunity beckons.

Slipping out of the cafe, he called upon his considerable hoard of talents, bringing forth the competency in sneaking and tailing. The girl in front of him... Hm. He did not recognise her. Someone insignificant then, but how does one without reknown develop that kind of talent? Obsessed hobbyist? Here undercover? Natural genius? Victor chuckled. Whichever it was, the skill of that magnitude had to be his. Even if it was a skill at babysitting. He simply couldn`t bear to pass a competence this bright. Catching up to the girl, he passed by, "accidentally" brushing her hand with his. That would be sufficient to... to.. tooooo.... OOH GOD WHY!?

He clenched his teeth, forcing the yelp of pain down as the world swirled before his eyes. 'I had no idea my power could be overloaded.' would the be coherent sum of the emotions he was experiencing at the moment. That, and 'I`m about to collapse on the street!' That simply couldn`t happen - should the police pick him and put him to hospital while he looks like he`s suffering a stroke, his civilian identity would be known. So, in spite of pain lancing through his skull, he continued on as if merely hurrying somewhere, turning sharply into the nearest alley. He only had enough time to hit the "emergency alarm" shortcut on his phone before his conscience gave way to the swirling chaos of incomprehending the time that wasn`t.

Taylor wrinkled her nose as some blonde guy brushed past her. Goodness, it`s like he couldn`t take extra half a step to the side. Self-important jackass. Probably from Empire, come to think of it, useless poseurs the lot of them. She snorted at that thought and tossed the encounter out of her head.

 

[We Just Write]

A/N: More from that same Discord friend

---

Lisa stared. She knew that looks extremely conspicuous, but damn...!

Taylor Hebert.

Locally famous for making handcrafted watches.

Seven of them purchased by Accord via assorted proxies.

Accord considers her watches to be works of art, carries the last update as his personal watch.

Not a parahuman.

Temporal anomaly.

It was that last one that made her stop and stare. Her powers helpfully pointed out minuscule inconsistencies in position. Three... no, four separate "pauses". What is she doing?

Covertly assesses local chronological situation.

Is annoyed.

Could use a hand.

Can hard-counter Coil`s powers.

Mind made up, Lisa sauntered onwards. "Hello there?" - she offered with a smile - "My name is Lisa, and I have a hunch we could help each other."