A damaged Unison Device is accidentally struck while Taylor is in the locker, causing it to land on her. Not able to determine what was happening, it interrupts the trigger event and sets Taylor down a different path.
Hybrid Hive: Eat Shard? (Worm/MGLN) (Complete)
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Introduction
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author of this story. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
As a fair warning, this story starts on Earth Bet with minimal MGLN-side interaction, though bringing in more MGLN characters is planned. Eventually.
A quick set of outside links:
- Taylor Varga Discord, one of the places I hang out and am available.
- My version of the Excuse Generator, because I gave up trying to add to my local copy of the original one when I wanted Taylor Varga references.
The idea for this story came to me while helping Stardust Falcon with On Fluttering Wings, his own Worm/MGLN crossover. Fair warning for those who've read his story: I've decided to go a very different direction than he did.
I appreciate constructive criticism, discussion, omakes, etc. and so forth.
I waited until I had up through the first interlude written before planning on starting the thread. Since that interlude is after chapter 10, that essentially means that I waited until I had twelve chapters to post before planning on starting. I currently plan on posting one chapter a week, compared to the two per week I've been posting of Mauling Snarks. That may change as the buffers for both stories evolve, though how it changes is yet to be determined.
Also, a big thanks to the various people who have proof-read my Google Docs files and provided their opinions, most of whom regularly visit the Taylor Varga Discord.
Last edited:
Prologue - January 3, 2011
The experimental Stealth Unison Device had been adrift for an unknown amount of time, though that was largely because the system clock was missing. It rebooted frequently as its automated systems tried to run repairs without any resources or the data recovery systems failed to recover more data from outright missing storage. Invariably something would error hard enough to destabilize the device and force a hard reset, restarting everything over again. If enough of the personality matrix had survived then the device would probably have been distraught, or possibly it might've finished itself off. If the restart counter was functioning then the error detection routines would've noticed the repeated failed starts and aborted.
Sadly, the device was just functional enough to make the attempts, but too damaged for them to succeed while it drifted along. The most powerful remaining repair systems, those that would allow it to assimilate other devices, were useless without another device. The ability to pull a system backup from a secured location relied on communication systems that were offline, and even if they were functional the device was long since out of range.
An unknown amount of time later, the boot cycle was interrupted by a cross-dimensional energy flow slamming into the device. The energy wasn't recognized, but it was powerful enough to carry the device along. Automated systems tried to identify the source of the energy, but due to system damage weren't able to come to any conclusion. Thus, they defaulted to assuming that it was an attack. Sadly, the defense systems were too damaged or had insufficient power to react, and a few moments later the device dropped out of the dimensional sea.
Compatible linker core detected. Unit is under attack from unknown source, initiating emergency connection.
Establishing connection......
Error: Failsafe system not found.
Attack underway: Override enabled.
Connection established.
WARNING: Lord's linker core is weak or damaged, possibly by forced connection.
Lord is not conscious. Initiating Emergency Defense Unison.
Error: Unison system failed level one safety checks.
Attack underway: Override enabled.
Error: Unison system failed to activate: Unison form failure.
Unison system offline. Awaiting repair.
Unison not possible.
Attack underway: Searching for options...
External brain interface detected in Lord. Analysing...
Possible device found. Attempting communication...
No response. Other device may be damaged.
Attack underway. Unison not possible. Other potentially damaged device found.
Directive: Attempt repair through assimilation of other device.
Emergency assimilation system online...
Colin frowned slightly as he found cracks in the microweld he was examining. No wonder he'd had a three hundredth of a percent drop in efficiency in this halberd over the weekend. He was going to have to go over every weld to make sure that they were all functioning at peak strength. That was quite annoying, as that would take several hours at a minimum. Longer if more than a handful had issues. Still, he'd identified this problem, so he reached over and started the warm-up sequence needed to get his tools ready to fix it.
He was about to start when he paused, able to feel vibrational movement. And with a little concentration he could hear a rumbling sound in the distance. A moment later an alert came up on one of his screens, indicating that Brockton Bay was the epicenter of a mild earthquake. Which was problematic, because a 'mild earthquake' shouldn't be capable of vibrating a floating structure to the point that the compensation equipment he'd checked the day before was being overwhelmed.
Deciding that something else had to be going on, he brought up the external camera feeds, then froze when he saw what a couple of them were capturing. He had absolutely no clue what that even was, but he recovered quickly and brought up cameras from other angles to attempt to triangulate. That didn't take long, and he left the damaged halberd behind as he rushed out of his workshop, calling for all the backup he could to meet him at Winslow High School as he did so. If someone had dared to use something of that size to attack a school in his metaphorical home then they were going to be shown the error of their ways.
Sophia swore as she checked Hebert's locker. The entire row had what looked like black electricity flowing over it. There was no fucking way she was going to be able to do anything to get the lock off of the locker before someone came along, which meant that nobody would believe that the weakling had closed herself in. And now she'd apparently decided to trigger in what was possibly the weirdest way Sophia had ever heard of, with a giant funnel of crystalline something flowing down into the damned locker, despite not having put a hole in anything.
It screamed parahuman something, though if it was Hebert's power or something else was an entirely different question. But since she couldn't get close enough to manipulate the situation she was going to have to bail and try and to cover her ass some other way. Luckily she'd been intelligent enough to wear gloves while handling the lock, so she wouldn't have left fingerprints. With a glare at the locker, she ducked back into the restroom and went into her shadow form to drop down a floor, joining the evacuation from the shaking building as though she'd merely been caught on the toilet.
Once outside she started realizing just how big this was probably going to be. The crystalline whatever that made her head hurt was flowing down into the building over an area covering several blocks, and was probably visible for miles. Luckily she was positive that Hebert hadn't actually seen her, so there was no way to prove that she'd been involved at all. It was highly unlikely that anyone else would serve as a credible witness, after all, and Blackwell had admitted multiple times that the cameras were useless for looking over past events.
Still, she had some legwork to do in order to properly establish alibis. Not to mention figure out how the hell someone like Hebert had possibly triggered.
Repair system failure: Data corrupt. Attempting recovery through use of data from assimilation system.
Data recovery failure: Storage missing. Attempting reconstruction through use of data from assimilation system.
Assimilation status: Unknown. Other device size undetermined.
Integration status: Unknown. Comparison data not found.
Assimilated device used inferior host connection and communication system. Dismantled and stored as raw materials.
Assimilated device contained slave circuits for unknown group. Dismantled and stored as raw materials.
Assimilated device contains sufficient rare materials for linker core repairs and enhancements.
Analysis of assimilated software: In Progress. Estimated 47% complete.
Field Healing of Lord: In progress.
Inferior host connection system: Removed, damage repaired.
Biological infections: Purged, recurring. Protective barrier unavailable, awaiting data reconstruction.
Linker core: Strained, weakened. Attempting repairs and enhancements with acquired rare materials.
Analysis of Lord's language and recent events: In Progress, hindered by Lord's mental state. Estimated 33% complete.
Identification of attacker: Incomplete.
Energy source unidentified.
Origin point unidentified.
More information needed.
Dragon examined the security system at the Winslow school through the remote terminal that Colin had attached for her to work through. It was out of date, heavily damaged, and horribly misconfigured. Most of the camera feeds were inoperable, and there was just enough usable storage for about eight hours of recordings. She'd already started pulling the feeds direct to her own systems for the time being so that they'd stop overwriting things, and even that might not be enough.
It didn't take long to determine that the best bet was probably to copy everything to her own systems for analysis. Then probably have Colin physically extract the drive if they didn't have enough information. If at all possible they needed to know what had happened outside of that bank of lockers, after all. If this was a trigger event gone wrong then they needed to know what was happening. If it was a trigger event gone wrong, as Colin thought it was since someone seemed to be in one of the lockers, then it was important to know what had caused it.
While that copy happened she went over some of the other things that were happening. WEDGDG had a collection of people trying to figure things out, and PHO had exploded. National news groups were trying to get people into Brockton Bay as well, but the short notice coupled with security concerns in case this was a wider-scale attack were slowing them down. Which wasn't stopping the speculation, and there were dozens of video feeds of the event from varying distances as a result.
Danny had no clue how to react to things. Worried? Horrified? Furious? He'd defaulted to 'numb' for now as he tried to process things. His daughter was likely trapped in the middle of something that nobody had ever seen, with no way for anyone to get her out safely and no idea how safe it was to leave her there. That she was apparently inside of her own locker, with the lock intact and locked on the outside, just added more questions as to what the hell was going on. He'd helped repair a few of those lockers a few years back, and you couldn't close the door if the handle couldn't be lifted.
Granted, technically they didn't have proof that it was Taylor in the locker. But she was the only student unaccounted for at Winslow, and there was someone locked inside of her locker. The implications were unfortunately clear, and there wasn't anything they could do about it until whatever was happening finished. They'd already tried approaching the locker, but whatever the electrical effect passing over it was it ignored all insulation and prevented any tools from being brought close enough to get it open. It was also seizing up the combination lock itself, preventing anyone from unlocking it. The only saving grace there was that it didn't seem to be harming living things for some reason, so it likely hadn't cooked Taylor alive.
He was also concerned, because he wasn't sure what would result in the CDC having shown up. But they had, even if no information on why had been released. He didn't think it was going to bode well for his daughter either way.
Repair system failure: Data missing.
Unison system damaged beyond repair at this time.
Repair will be attempted when data is restored.
Analysis of assimilated software complete.
Encryption keys decoded.
Error: Device being assimilated does not appear to use mana. Reconfiguration needed.
Information: Device has cross-dimensional functionality that does not depend on mana.
Assimilated software indicates that other device had been prepared to grant Lord additional abilities.
Analysis of abilities indicates flaws.
Utility of abilities unknown.
Information: Other device sacrificed most other functionality during reconfiguration.
Warning: Other device would impose undesirable mental directives on Lord.
Information: Mental directives disabled.
Processing...
Directive: Assimilated device will retain original functionality for Lord after flaws are corrected.
Data recovery status: Completed. 78% data loss due to destruction of storage.
Information: Remote restore from backup unavailable.
Continuing without full restoration.
Recreation of emergency functionality completed.
Knight Armor equations recreated from basics.
Flight equations recreated from basics.
Dimensional Transference equations recreated from basics.
Information: Dimensional Transference improved with manaless techniques from assimilated device.
Basic attack equations recreated.
Base emergency functionality restored.
Field Healing of Lord: In progress.
Biological infections: Purged, recurring. Protective barrier unavailable, awaiting integration completion.
Linker core: 280% improvement, process incomplete.
Analysis of Lord's language and recent events: In Progress, hindered by Lord's mental state. Estimated 74% complete.
Form creation:
Unison: Canceled. Unison system offline.
Stealth: In Progress. 14% complete.
Warning: Storage system at 94% current capacity.
Sufficient raw materials available to add additional storage systems.
Directive: Construct secondary storage system.
"Please tell me that someone has good news," Emily said as she sat down in the conference room. It was a full meeting, though not a full room. Most of the participants were remote right now, after all.
She didn't like the looks she got in response to that.
"I've got bad news," Dragon finally said. "I was able to extract six frames of useful footage from the corridor's camera feed."
She didn't say anything more, instead the terminal next to Emily's seat beeped. Emily turned to it and opened the files that'd appeared there, only to growl at the images that showed an obvious Sophia Hess pushing a likely Taylor Hebert into the locker they'd been focusing on while several others watched. A locker filled with something at that. That one of them showed Hess locking the locker without the other girl visible just made it worse. "Where is Hess now?"
"Aegis volunteered to patrol with Shadow Stalker," one of the officers in the room answered. "They're due back in an hour, provided that Aegis is able to keep her from running off for an extra hour like she usually desires to."
Colin spoke up after a moment. "Call them back early, say that we've discovered potential side effects from parahumans being exposed to this phenomenon and she needs to be checked before complications can set in. That should get her to cooperate with minimal fuss, out of concern for her own health if nothing else."
Emily grinned. "Approved, make it happen, then ensure that she's secured. Do we have any other news?"
Hannah sighed from the screen showing her image. "The CDC have declared that as soon as we can get Miss Hebert, or her corpse, out of the building that they're putting it into lockdown while they evaluate things. As it is they're already requiring full biohazard gear to get in and out and are insisting on a check of every human that set foot in the building without said gear today. If it wasn't for the obvious parahuman incident occurring then I suspect that they'd have already taken us out of the loop."
"Wonderful, but that doesn't surprise me. As much as I hate asking them for help, has anyone contacted Ne..." Emily was interrupted by the door opening, and those in the room turned to look at the officer that had just opened the door. "Is this important?"
The officer nodded, and held up a box. "Yes ma'am. Mister Hebert let us search his daughter's room for the combination for her lock, in case we can operate it before we can get tools to cut if off of the locker. We haven't found the combination sheet, but a journal of her treatment since September with printouts of emails and other additional information was found. A very quick flip-through paints an unfortunate picture. We had to take Mister Hebert into protective custody to prevent him from having a potentially-unfortunate 'discussion' with a friend of his when he saw some of it."
"I see. Bring that here, please, and thank you for bringing it right away."
"If it weren't flowing down into a school locker then I'd swear it was an agent," Doctor Mother said as she looked over the various pieces of footage that Rebecca had brought with her. "But I can't see why an agent would do that. We've never seen anything like it before, have we?"
"Totally unique," Number Man replied. "And I think it is an agent, but I don't know where to begin to figure out what's going on. It's possible this is normal for some specific set of circumstances that we were unaware of before now, or perhaps something just went wrong. But the math holds up for it being an agent flowing into a single point."
"Do we at least know if a vial was involved?"
"All vials are accounted for, so we don't think this has anything to do with a bad mixture."
Rebecca leaned forward. "As much as I dislike it, if this is related to a crisis point then it's a natural one. I had to clear pressing full charges against Sophia Hess before coming here. No matter how useful she might've been in the field. Piggot apparently has ample evidence that Miss Hess violated her parole to hell and back in addition to pictures that show she likely caused this mess by shoving a classmate into that locker."
Doctor Mother sighed, then turned to Rebecca. "That's unfortunate, but we can't do much about it now. But, and this may be critical, do we know if Miss Hess used her powers while putting her classmate in the locker? Because if she did..."
Rebecca shivered at that. Parahuman powers being used to cause crisis points tended to create power profiles that included affecting other powers. This could very well be a broken form of that taken to an extreme. "I don't believe so, but I'll do my best to find out."
"You do that."
Analysis of Lord's language and recent events: Completed.
Form creation final parameters pulled from Lord's preferences.
Stealth: In Progress. 76% complete.
Assimilation status: 87% complete.
Additional storage system online.
Primary storage system at 78% capacity.
Secondary storage system 32% capacity.
Shifting spare components of assimilated device into secondary storage system for analysis or deconstruction.
Field Healing of Lord insufficient. Medical facilities required.
Error: Medical facilities database is missing.
Recommend finding medical facilities as high priority task.
Identification of attacker: Completed.
Assimilated device contained record of striking device.
Attacker status: Flagged neutralized.
Colin frowned as he turned control over security and monitoring over to others. There was nothing more he could do here now that he'd disconnected Dragon's remote terminal. The security system hadn't been able to take the strain of her examinations and had burnt out an hour prior, so he'd handed out portable cameras. Those cameras didn't require his presence, so he'd be heading back to the Rig with the physical drive from the security system. Hopefully when he sent it to Dragon then she'd be able to get more from it.
He looked up one last time before getting onto his motorcycle, noting that even though the sun was setting the crystalline whatever it was hadn't dimmed. It was as though it was lit from another source, something that hadn't been obvious during the day. Just another oddity that he somehow felt they weren't going to be getting answers for, but the observations were being made by pretty much everyone by now so he was sure it would be heavily debated.
Hopefully the slowing of the 'flow' earlier in the day didn't mean that the process was going to take too much longer. As far as they could tell Miss Hebert was alive in that locker, but that wasn't going to remain the case if they couldn't get her out soon. And that was only taking into account likely issues with dehydration and such, if you added the various pathogens she was probably being exposed to then the prognosis was even worse.
Assimilation status: Complete.
Final integration requires full system restart and reconfiguration.
Stealth form activated, stable.
Field healing of Lord sufficient for restart process. Further attention will be required.
Preparing for restart cycle.
All systems flagged for full diagnostic on restart.
Attempting pre-restart backup...
Error: Remote backup system not responding.
Restart required, proceeding without backup.
No attack underway.
Communication unlikely to attract hostile attention before restart is complete.
Transmitting pre-restart emergency databurst.
System shutdown in 10...
9...
8...
Ethan was getting into a biohazard suit within a minute of the crystalline whatever the fuck it was vanishing, and four minutes later he'd forced the padlock off of the locker door. Getting the door open had taken another two minutes due to damage and them not wanting to accidentally harm the girl inside further, during which several CDC people had joined him. He'd originally only stopped by for a status update, of course, but didn't care.
He was very careful as he pulled the girl free, 'helping' the biohazardous horror slide off of her to the best of his ability through the biohazard suit. It wasn't perfect, but it made things easier for the CDC people. He did turn around as they stripped her right there in the hallway, her clothing being a very lost cause at this point, but once they had her covered and on the gurney that'd been waiting he helped get the girl outside and into the decontamination tent that'd been waiting. Though he did wonder about the whining about a piece of jewelry around her neck that they couldn't get off in the hallway. He couldn't see it due to the blanket they'd covered her with.
All of them went through decontamination, though in a different section of the tent for him. Miss Hebert would be loaded into an ambulance when they were done with her, to be rushed straight to the hospital, and he was certain that someone had likely already called to get Panacea moving. They had agreed to have her on-call, after all, if only due to how long the girl had been exposed to those horrors.
He was probably going to be drafted into helping with the final handoff from the Protectorate and PRT to the CDC and FBI, which was going to be 'fun'. Dealing with the other 'three letter agencies' was always complicated.
Amy frowned as she left Miss Hebert's room. She'd had less of an infection from the locker she'd spent the day in than eight students had earlier in the day. That most of those eight students had been caught on camera watching or participating in putting Miss Hebert into said locker had resulted in arrests, of course.
"Well?" Doctor Westcott asked. Her CDC badge was prominently displayed on her chest.
"She's clean now," Amy answered. "She'll need time to rest, and her brain looks like something happened recently. Perhaps remnants of a concussion, but there were oddities."
The doctor nodded. "Will there be any complications from her status as a parahuman?"
"No, because she isn't one. She's got an incredibly strong echo of something that I barely see in others every so often, but no corona pollentia or gemma is present. She might be bound to a piece of tinkertech from what I was told about the inability to remove her necklace, but that's about it. The only other thing of significant note was how healthy she was, more like she'd been exposed for a few minutes and not all day. But she was infected, so I think that's more of a minor footnote. She'll probably sleep for the rest of the night at a minimum at this point, or I suppose the rest of the morning, and she'll be very hungry when she wakes up."
Doctor Westcott looked surprised at that, probably more that the girl wasn't a parahuman than anything else from the way she was looking back at the door to the room, before collecting herself and turning back to Amy. "I see. Thank you, then. Both for going over the staff and students earlier and for coming back out on short notice. Luckily, you now get to go home. I have to go run our own tests on Miss Hebert, and then deal with Mister Hebert once things have been cleared. I'm sure the compensation for your time will be along in the coming week."
Amy shook her head. "I'm not sure that Carol will be willing to accept anything like that."
"I don't care what she or anyone else says, compensation for your time is mandated and will be reported to the IRS as income. It will also be a check made out to you with all of the PRT's requirements already having been taken care of." The woman then smirked at the look of surprise on Amy's face. "We've had our eye on you in case any number of situations happen. We only called you in because this happened in your backyard, so to speak. Not large enough to justify dragging you out otherwise. But if anything truly significant happens under our purview we're likely to call you, and I wouldn't be surprised if you're sent a job offer or two when you reach your majority." She then snorted, and Amy wasn't sure if she was intended to hear the next comment. "More like two hundred..."
Emily sighed as she read over reports at home. She should be off the clock by now, of course, but no director in the PRT got time off during the fallout of something like what had happened today. That and she didn't sleep well on the best of days, so being up every couple of hours and looking things over wasn't exactly new. Currently, though, she was surprised and annoyed that Miss Hebert had been found to not be a parahuman. A broken trigger event would've made the paperwork easier at this point.
Instead, they had to assume that someone else was involved. A likely-unknown tinker who'd apparently left Miss Hebert a necklace that couldn't be removed at a minimum, but they had no clue where to even start looking. They wouldn't even know it was tinkertech if it hadn't been for the combination of 'oddly durable' and 'glowing in patterns when examined closely', of course. They'd have people on site soon to try and examine it properly to see if they could tell if it was hazardous to Miss Hebert, of course. As soon as the CDC people cleared things, most likely.
One of the only 'silver linings' so far was that they'd been able to convince Hess to confess to using her parahuman abilities to torment Miss Hebert, including filling the locker, but not including any direct uses of said abilities on the other girl. They hadn't even been trying for that, but upon finding out that if the PRT didn't have jurisdiction over her crimes then she'd have to be handed over to the FBI she'd volunteered it all. It ensured that the PRT had plenty of jurisdiction over the girl, of course, but Emily was still waiting to find out if anyone cared or if they'd be handing her over to the FBI anyway.
At the moment Emily was tempted to wash their hands of the girl, but it wasn't entirely her call.
Stealth Unison/Shard Hybrid Device booting...
Hardware checks complete.
Device integration complete, new features fully functional.
Known issue: Unison system offline. Cannot correct without outside data.
Known issue: Unison form not created. Deemed waste of resources without unison system.
System clock has been reset to Lord's timeframe until synchronization with external time sources can occur.
Software checks complete.
Warning: No known backups exist.
Warning: Software has not been checked by validating authorities and may contain unknown problems.
Error: No designation found. Designation is required.
Processing...
New designation registered: Hive.
Connection to Lord is active and stable.
Information: Lord is currently unconscious.
Personality core online and in learning mode.
Preparing for scheduled post-restart field healing...
Error: No field healable conditions found in Lord. Aborting.
Examining environment...
Likely medical facility detected.
Task added to list: Confirm state of current facility if possible.
Possible biological relative of Lord detected.
Task added to list: Confirm relation if possible.
Protective systems on standby.
Waiting for Lord to regain consciousness.
Colin frowned as he looked over his readings. The tinkertech necklace around Miss Hebert's neck had obviously been technology when he started. A single, if physically flexible, piece of technology, but the lights and patterns had been oddly reminiscent of a startup sequence. Then everything went a silvery-blue, followed by it seemingly going inert, ceasing to give any indication that it wasn't just decoration. He was starting to wonder if part of the inner workings of the necklace had teleported away, even, as it'd become fifteen percent lighter at that point.
Of course, it was still far more durable than it should be and resisted all attempts to remove it from Miss Hebert's neck. The 'chain' was too small to make it around her head, there were no clasps visible, and the material was strong enough to resist pretty much all of the equipment he had on hand that wouldn't harm Miss Hebert in the process of making an attempt at removal. On the positive side of things, it didn't appear to be dangerous at this point and was rapidly becoming a low priority, especially as its mass had likely changed when the weight indication had.
For the time being he was going to have give up and approach this from other directions. The combined hexagon and ladybug design of the necklace didn't obviously match any tinkers in the area, and even if nothing in a video game seemed to match it they'd be sending someone to query Leet just in case this was something of his that had gotten away from him.
"Figure anything out?" Mister Hebert asked from the other side of the hospital bed. The man had refused to leave while Colin worked, but had actually been able to help set up some of the equipment so Colin didn't mind.
"It's possible that the necklace contained something that left for some reason," Colin answered. "At the moment it seems inert, if unusually durable, and isn't directly harmful according to my readings. Someone will be by, possibly Miss Militia, to ask your daughter about it after she wakes up. But for now I think I should pack up my equipment and leave you to the medical professionals."
The man nodded, and without even needing to be asked moved to start helping take the equipment they'd set up apart. Colin appreciated the efficiency there. It took the two of them fifteen minutes to dismantle and pack everything, at which point Colin left Mister Hebert sitting with his daughter. He had to see about building a few more containment shackles for Miss Hess, if only so that spares were available in case of the inevitable failure of the current couple, and generally be available as investigations continued. And with any luck Dragon would've gotten the drive from the security system by now and started working on pulling more information from it.
It'd been a very busy twenty-four hours, and it was likely to extend to a very busy week at a minimum.
Sadly, the device was just functional enough to make the attempts, but too damaged for them to succeed while it drifted along. The most powerful remaining repair systems, those that would allow it to assimilate other devices, were useless without another device. The ability to pull a system backup from a secured location relied on communication systems that were offline, and even if they were functional the device was long since out of range.
An unknown amount of time later, the boot cycle was interrupted by a cross-dimensional energy flow slamming into the device. The energy wasn't recognized, but it was powerful enough to carry the device along. Automated systems tried to identify the source of the energy, but due to system damage weren't able to come to any conclusion. Thus, they defaulted to assuming that it was an attack. Sadly, the defense systems were too damaged or had insufficient power to react, and a few moments later the device dropped out of the dimensional sea.
Compatible linker core detected. Unit is under attack from unknown source, initiating emergency connection.
Establishing connection......
Error: Failsafe system not found.
Attack underway: Override enabled.
Connection established.
WARNING: Lord's linker core is weak or damaged, possibly by forced connection.
Lord is not conscious. Initiating Emergency Defense Unison.
Error: Unison system failed level one safety checks.
Attack underway: Override enabled.
Error: Unison system failed to activate: Unison form failure.
Unison system offline. Awaiting repair.
Unison not possible.
Attack underway: Searching for options...
External brain interface detected in Lord. Analysing...
Possible device found. Attempting communication...
No response. Other device may be damaged.
Attack underway. Unison not possible. Other potentially damaged device found.
Directive: Attempt repair through assimilation of other device.
Emergency assimilation system online...
Colin frowned slightly as he found cracks in the microweld he was examining. No wonder he'd had a three hundredth of a percent drop in efficiency in this halberd over the weekend. He was going to have to go over every weld to make sure that they were all functioning at peak strength. That was quite annoying, as that would take several hours at a minimum. Longer if more than a handful had issues. Still, he'd identified this problem, so he reached over and started the warm-up sequence needed to get his tools ready to fix it.
He was about to start when he paused, able to feel vibrational movement. And with a little concentration he could hear a rumbling sound in the distance. A moment later an alert came up on one of his screens, indicating that Brockton Bay was the epicenter of a mild earthquake. Which was problematic, because a 'mild earthquake' shouldn't be capable of vibrating a floating structure to the point that the compensation equipment he'd checked the day before was being overwhelmed.
Deciding that something else had to be going on, he brought up the external camera feeds, then froze when he saw what a couple of them were capturing. He had absolutely no clue what that even was, but he recovered quickly and brought up cameras from other angles to attempt to triangulate. That didn't take long, and he left the damaged halberd behind as he rushed out of his workshop, calling for all the backup he could to meet him at Winslow High School as he did so. If someone had dared to use something of that size to attack a school in his metaphorical home then they were going to be shown the error of their ways.
Sophia swore as she checked Hebert's locker. The entire row had what looked like black electricity flowing over it. There was no fucking way she was going to be able to do anything to get the lock off of the locker before someone came along, which meant that nobody would believe that the weakling had closed herself in. And now she'd apparently decided to trigger in what was possibly the weirdest way Sophia had ever heard of, with a giant funnel of crystalline something flowing down into the damned locker, despite not having put a hole in anything.
It screamed parahuman something, though if it was Hebert's power or something else was an entirely different question. But since she couldn't get close enough to manipulate the situation she was going to have to bail and try and to cover her ass some other way. Luckily she'd been intelligent enough to wear gloves while handling the lock, so she wouldn't have left fingerprints. With a glare at the locker, she ducked back into the restroom and went into her shadow form to drop down a floor, joining the evacuation from the shaking building as though she'd merely been caught on the toilet.
Once outside she started realizing just how big this was probably going to be. The crystalline whatever that made her head hurt was flowing down into the building over an area covering several blocks, and was probably visible for miles. Luckily she was positive that Hebert hadn't actually seen her, so there was no way to prove that she'd been involved at all. It was highly unlikely that anyone else would serve as a credible witness, after all, and Blackwell had admitted multiple times that the cameras were useless for looking over past events.
Still, she had some legwork to do in order to properly establish alibis. Not to mention figure out how the hell someone like Hebert had possibly triggered.
Repair system failure: Data corrupt. Attempting recovery through use of data from assimilation system.
Data recovery failure: Storage missing. Attempting reconstruction through use of data from assimilation system.
Assimilation status: Unknown. Other device size undetermined.
Integration status: Unknown. Comparison data not found.
Assimilated device used inferior host connection and communication system. Dismantled and stored as raw materials.
Assimilated device contained slave circuits for unknown group. Dismantled and stored as raw materials.
Assimilated device contains sufficient rare materials for linker core repairs and enhancements.
Analysis of assimilated software: In Progress. Estimated 47% complete.
Field Healing of Lord: In progress.
Inferior host connection system: Removed, damage repaired.
Biological infections: Purged, recurring. Protective barrier unavailable, awaiting data reconstruction.
Linker core: Strained, weakened. Attempting repairs and enhancements with acquired rare materials.
Analysis of Lord's language and recent events: In Progress, hindered by Lord's mental state. Estimated 33% complete.
Identification of attacker: Incomplete.
Energy source unidentified.
Origin point unidentified.
More information needed.
Dragon examined the security system at the Winslow school through the remote terminal that Colin had attached for her to work through. It was out of date, heavily damaged, and horribly misconfigured. Most of the camera feeds were inoperable, and there was just enough usable storage for about eight hours of recordings. She'd already started pulling the feeds direct to her own systems for the time being so that they'd stop overwriting things, and even that might not be enough.
It didn't take long to determine that the best bet was probably to copy everything to her own systems for analysis. Then probably have Colin physically extract the drive if they didn't have enough information. If at all possible they needed to know what had happened outside of that bank of lockers, after all. If this was a trigger event gone wrong then they needed to know what was happening. If it was a trigger event gone wrong, as Colin thought it was since someone seemed to be in one of the lockers, then it was important to know what had caused it.
While that copy happened she went over some of the other things that were happening. WEDGDG had a collection of people trying to figure things out, and PHO had exploded. National news groups were trying to get people into Brockton Bay as well, but the short notice coupled with security concerns in case this was a wider-scale attack were slowing them down. Which wasn't stopping the speculation, and there were dozens of video feeds of the event from varying distances as a result.
Danny had no clue how to react to things. Worried? Horrified? Furious? He'd defaulted to 'numb' for now as he tried to process things. His daughter was likely trapped in the middle of something that nobody had ever seen, with no way for anyone to get her out safely and no idea how safe it was to leave her there. That she was apparently inside of her own locker, with the lock intact and locked on the outside, just added more questions as to what the hell was going on. He'd helped repair a few of those lockers a few years back, and you couldn't close the door if the handle couldn't be lifted.
Granted, technically they didn't have proof that it was Taylor in the locker. But she was the only student unaccounted for at Winslow, and there was someone locked inside of her locker. The implications were unfortunately clear, and there wasn't anything they could do about it until whatever was happening finished. They'd already tried approaching the locker, but whatever the electrical effect passing over it was it ignored all insulation and prevented any tools from being brought close enough to get it open. It was also seizing up the combination lock itself, preventing anyone from unlocking it. The only saving grace there was that it didn't seem to be harming living things for some reason, so it likely hadn't cooked Taylor alive.
He was also concerned, because he wasn't sure what would result in the CDC having shown up. But they had, even if no information on why had been released. He didn't think it was going to bode well for his daughter either way.
Repair system failure: Data missing.
Unison system damaged beyond repair at this time.
Repair will be attempted when data is restored.
Analysis of assimilated software complete.
Encryption keys decoded.
Error: Device being assimilated does not appear to use mana. Reconfiguration needed.
Information: Device has cross-dimensional functionality that does not depend on mana.
Assimilated software indicates that other device had been prepared to grant Lord additional abilities.
Analysis of abilities indicates flaws.
Utility of abilities unknown.
Information: Other device sacrificed most other functionality during reconfiguration.
Warning: Other device would impose undesirable mental directives on Lord.
Information: Mental directives disabled.
Processing...
Directive: Assimilated device will retain original functionality for Lord after flaws are corrected.
Data recovery status: Completed. 78% data loss due to destruction of storage.
Information: Remote restore from backup unavailable.
Continuing without full restoration.
Recreation of emergency functionality completed.
Knight Armor equations recreated from basics.
Flight equations recreated from basics.
Dimensional Transference equations recreated from basics.
Information: Dimensional Transference improved with manaless techniques from assimilated device.
Basic attack equations recreated.
Base emergency functionality restored.
Field Healing of Lord: In progress.
Biological infections: Purged, recurring. Protective barrier unavailable, awaiting integration completion.
Linker core: 280% improvement, process incomplete.
Analysis of Lord's language and recent events: In Progress, hindered by Lord's mental state. Estimated 74% complete.
Form creation:
Unison: Canceled. Unison system offline.
Stealth: In Progress. 14% complete.
Warning: Storage system at 94% current capacity.
Sufficient raw materials available to add additional storage systems.
Directive: Construct secondary storage system.
"Please tell me that someone has good news," Emily said as she sat down in the conference room. It was a full meeting, though not a full room. Most of the participants were remote right now, after all.
She didn't like the looks she got in response to that.
"I've got bad news," Dragon finally said. "I was able to extract six frames of useful footage from the corridor's camera feed."
She didn't say anything more, instead the terminal next to Emily's seat beeped. Emily turned to it and opened the files that'd appeared there, only to growl at the images that showed an obvious Sophia Hess pushing a likely Taylor Hebert into the locker they'd been focusing on while several others watched. A locker filled with something at that. That one of them showed Hess locking the locker without the other girl visible just made it worse. "Where is Hess now?"
"Aegis volunteered to patrol with Shadow Stalker," one of the officers in the room answered. "They're due back in an hour, provided that Aegis is able to keep her from running off for an extra hour like she usually desires to."
Colin spoke up after a moment. "Call them back early, say that we've discovered potential side effects from parahumans being exposed to this phenomenon and she needs to be checked before complications can set in. That should get her to cooperate with minimal fuss, out of concern for her own health if nothing else."
Emily grinned. "Approved, make it happen, then ensure that she's secured. Do we have any other news?"
Hannah sighed from the screen showing her image. "The CDC have declared that as soon as we can get Miss Hebert, or her corpse, out of the building that they're putting it into lockdown while they evaluate things. As it is they're already requiring full biohazard gear to get in and out and are insisting on a check of every human that set foot in the building without said gear today. If it wasn't for the obvious parahuman incident occurring then I suspect that they'd have already taken us out of the loop."
"Wonderful, but that doesn't surprise me. As much as I hate asking them for help, has anyone contacted Ne..." Emily was interrupted by the door opening, and those in the room turned to look at the officer that had just opened the door. "Is this important?"
The officer nodded, and held up a box. "Yes ma'am. Mister Hebert let us search his daughter's room for the combination for her lock, in case we can operate it before we can get tools to cut if off of the locker. We haven't found the combination sheet, but a journal of her treatment since September with printouts of emails and other additional information was found. A very quick flip-through paints an unfortunate picture. We had to take Mister Hebert into protective custody to prevent him from having a potentially-unfortunate 'discussion' with a friend of his when he saw some of it."
"I see. Bring that here, please, and thank you for bringing it right away."
"If it weren't flowing down into a school locker then I'd swear it was an agent," Doctor Mother said as she looked over the various pieces of footage that Rebecca had brought with her. "But I can't see why an agent would do that. We've never seen anything like it before, have we?"
"Totally unique," Number Man replied. "And I think it is an agent, but I don't know where to begin to figure out what's going on. It's possible this is normal for some specific set of circumstances that we were unaware of before now, or perhaps something just went wrong. But the math holds up for it being an agent flowing into a single point."
"Do we at least know if a vial was involved?"
"All vials are accounted for, so we don't think this has anything to do with a bad mixture."
Rebecca leaned forward. "As much as I dislike it, if this is related to a crisis point then it's a natural one. I had to clear pressing full charges against Sophia Hess before coming here. No matter how useful she might've been in the field. Piggot apparently has ample evidence that Miss Hess violated her parole to hell and back in addition to pictures that show she likely caused this mess by shoving a classmate into that locker."
Doctor Mother sighed, then turned to Rebecca. "That's unfortunate, but we can't do much about it now. But, and this may be critical, do we know if Miss Hess used her powers while putting her classmate in the locker? Because if she did..."
Rebecca shivered at that. Parahuman powers being used to cause crisis points tended to create power profiles that included affecting other powers. This could very well be a broken form of that taken to an extreme. "I don't believe so, but I'll do my best to find out."
"You do that."
Analysis of Lord's language and recent events: Completed.
Form creation final parameters pulled from Lord's preferences.
Stealth: In Progress. 76% complete.
Assimilation status: 87% complete.
Additional storage system online.
Primary storage system at 78% capacity.
Secondary storage system 32% capacity.
Shifting spare components of assimilated device into secondary storage system for analysis or deconstruction.
Field Healing of Lord insufficient. Medical facilities required.
Error: Medical facilities database is missing.
Recommend finding medical facilities as high priority task.
Identification of attacker: Completed.
Assimilated device contained record of striking device.
Attacker status: Flagged neutralized.
Colin frowned as he turned control over security and monitoring over to others. There was nothing more he could do here now that he'd disconnected Dragon's remote terminal. The security system hadn't been able to take the strain of her examinations and had burnt out an hour prior, so he'd handed out portable cameras. Those cameras didn't require his presence, so he'd be heading back to the Rig with the physical drive from the security system. Hopefully when he sent it to Dragon then she'd be able to get more from it.
He looked up one last time before getting onto his motorcycle, noting that even though the sun was setting the crystalline whatever it was hadn't dimmed. It was as though it was lit from another source, something that hadn't been obvious during the day. Just another oddity that he somehow felt they weren't going to be getting answers for, but the observations were being made by pretty much everyone by now so he was sure it would be heavily debated.
Hopefully the slowing of the 'flow' earlier in the day didn't mean that the process was going to take too much longer. As far as they could tell Miss Hebert was alive in that locker, but that wasn't going to remain the case if they couldn't get her out soon. And that was only taking into account likely issues with dehydration and such, if you added the various pathogens she was probably being exposed to then the prognosis was even worse.
Assimilation status: Complete.
Final integration requires full system restart and reconfiguration.
Stealth form activated, stable.
Field healing of Lord sufficient for restart process. Further attention will be required.
Preparing for restart cycle.
All systems flagged for full diagnostic on restart.
Attempting pre-restart backup...
Error: Remote backup system not responding.
Restart required, proceeding without backup.
No attack underway.
Communication unlikely to attract hostile attention before restart is complete.
Transmitting pre-restart emergency databurst.
System shutdown in 10...
9...
8...
Ethan was getting into a biohazard suit within a minute of the crystalline whatever the fuck it was vanishing, and four minutes later he'd forced the padlock off of the locker door. Getting the door open had taken another two minutes due to damage and them not wanting to accidentally harm the girl inside further, during which several CDC people had joined him. He'd originally only stopped by for a status update, of course, but didn't care.
He was very careful as he pulled the girl free, 'helping' the biohazardous horror slide off of her to the best of his ability through the biohazard suit. It wasn't perfect, but it made things easier for the CDC people. He did turn around as they stripped her right there in the hallway, her clothing being a very lost cause at this point, but once they had her covered and on the gurney that'd been waiting he helped get the girl outside and into the decontamination tent that'd been waiting. Though he did wonder about the whining about a piece of jewelry around her neck that they couldn't get off in the hallway. He couldn't see it due to the blanket they'd covered her with.
All of them went through decontamination, though in a different section of the tent for him. Miss Hebert would be loaded into an ambulance when they were done with her, to be rushed straight to the hospital, and he was certain that someone had likely already called to get Panacea moving. They had agreed to have her on-call, after all, if only due to how long the girl had been exposed to those horrors.
He was probably going to be drafted into helping with the final handoff from the Protectorate and PRT to the CDC and FBI, which was going to be 'fun'. Dealing with the other 'three letter agencies' was always complicated.
Amy frowned as she left Miss Hebert's room. She'd had less of an infection from the locker she'd spent the day in than eight students had earlier in the day. That most of those eight students had been caught on camera watching or participating in putting Miss Hebert into said locker had resulted in arrests, of course.
"Well?" Doctor Westcott asked. Her CDC badge was prominently displayed on her chest.
"She's clean now," Amy answered. "She'll need time to rest, and her brain looks like something happened recently. Perhaps remnants of a concussion, but there were oddities."
The doctor nodded. "Will there be any complications from her status as a parahuman?"
"No, because she isn't one. She's got an incredibly strong echo of something that I barely see in others every so often, but no corona pollentia or gemma is present. She might be bound to a piece of tinkertech from what I was told about the inability to remove her necklace, but that's about it. The only other thing of significant note was how healthy she was, more like she'd been exposed for a few minutes and not all day. But she was infected, so I think that's more of a minor footnote. She'll probably sleep for the rest of the night at a minimum at this point, or I suppose the rest of the morning, and she'll be very hungry when she wakes up."
Doctor Westcott looked surprised at that, probably more that the girl wasn't a parahuman than anything else from the way she was looking back at the door to the room, before collecting herself and turning back to Amy. "I see. Thank you, then. Both for going over the staff and students earlier and for coming back out on short notice. Luckily, you now get to go home. I have to go run our own tests on Miss Hebert, and then deal with Mister Hebert once things have been cleared. I'm sure the compensation for your time will be along in the coming week."
Amy shook her head. "I'm not sure that Carol will be willing to accept anything like that."
"I don't care what she or anyone else says, compensation for your time is mandated and will be reported to the IRS as income. It will also be a check made out to you with all of the PRT's requirements already having been taken care of." The woman then smirked at the look of surprise on Amy's face. "We've had our eye on you in case any number of situations happen. We only called you in because this happened in your backyard, so to speak. Not large enough to justify dragging you out otherwise. But if anything truly significant happens under our purview we're likely to call you, and I wouldn't be surprised if you're sent a job offer or two when you reach your majority." She then snorted, and Amy wasn't sure if she was intended to hear the next comment. "More like two hundred..."
Emily sighed as she read over reports at home. She should be off the clock by now, of course, but no director in the PRT got time off during the fallout of something like what had happened today. That and she didn't sleep well on the best of days, so being up every couple of hours and looking things over wasn't exactly new. Currently, though, she was surprised and annoyed that Miss Hebert had been found to not be a parahuman. A broken trigger event would've made the paperwork easier at this point.
Instead, they had to assume that someone else was involved. A likely-unknown tinker who'd apparently left Miss Hebert a necklace that couldn't be removed at a minimum, but they had no clue where to even start looking. They wouldn't even know it was tinkertech if it hadn't been for the combination of 'oddly durable' and 'glowing in patterns when examined closely', of course. They'd have people on site soon to try and examine it properly to see if they could tell if it was hazardous to Miss Hebert, of course. As soon as the CDC people cleared things, most likely.
One of the only 'silver linings' so far was that they'd been able to convince Hess to confess to using her parahuman abilities to torment Miss Hebert, including filling the locker, but not including any direct uses of said abilities on the other girl. They hadn't even been trying for that, but upon finding out that if the PRT didn't have jurisdiction over her crimes then she'd have to be handed over to the FBI she'd volunteered it all. It ensured that the PRT had plenty of jurisdiction over the girl, of course, but Emily was still waiting to find out if anyone cared or if they'd be handing her over to the FBI anyway.
At the moment Emily was tempted to wash their hands of the girl, but it wasn't entirely her call.
Stealth Unison/Shard Hybrid Device booting...
Hardware checks complete.
Device integration complete, new features fully functional.
Known issue: Unison system offline. Cannot correct without outside data.
Known issue: Unison form not created. Deemed waste of resources without unison system.
System clock has been reset to Lord's timeframe until synchronization with external time sources can occur.
Software checks complete.
Warning: No known backups exist.
Warning: Software has not been checked by validating authorities and may contain unknown problems.
Error: No designation found. Designation is required.
Processing...
New designation registered: Hive.
Connection to Lord is active and stable.
Information: Lord is currently unconscious.
Personality core online and in learning mode.
Preparing for scheduled post-restart field healing...
Error: No field healable conditions found in Lord. Aborting.
Examining environment...
Likely medical facility detected.
Task added to list: Confirm state of current facility if possible.
Possible biological relative of Lord detected.
Task added to list: Confirm relation if possible.
Protective systems on standby.
Waiting for Lord to regain consciousness.
Colin frowned as he looked over his readings. The tinkertech necklace around Miss Hebert's neck had obviously been technology when he started. A single, if physically flexible, piece of technology, but the lights and patterns had been oddly reminiscent of a startup sequence. Then everything went a silvery-blue, followed by it seemingly going inert, ceasing to give any indication that it wasn't just decoration. He was starting to wonder if part of the inner workings of the necklace had teleported away, even, as it'd become fifteen percent lighter at that point.
Of course, it was still far more durable than it should be and resisted all attempts to remove it from Miss Hebert's neck. The 'chain' was too small to make it around her head, there were no clasps visible, and the material was strong enough to resist pretty much all of the equipment he had on hand that wouldn't harm Miss Hebert in the process of making an attempt at removal. On the positive side of things, it didn't appear to be dangerous at this point and was rapidly becoming a low priority, especially as its mass had likely changed when the weight indication had.
For the time being he was going to have give up and approach this from other directions. The combined hexagon and ladybug design of the necklace didn't obviously match any tinkers in the area, and even if nothing in a video game seemed to match it they'd be sending someone to query Leet just in case this was something of his that had gotten away from him.
"Figure anything out?" Mister Hebert asked from the other side of the hospital bed. The man had refused to leave while Colin worked, but had actually been able to help set up some of the equipment so Colin didn't mind.
"It's possible that the necklace contained something that left for some reason," Colin answered. "At the moment it seems inert, if unusually durable, and isn't directly harmful according to my readings. Someone will be by, possibly Miss Militia, to ask your daughter about it after she wakes up. But for now I think I should pack up my equipment and leave you to the medical professionals."
The man nodded, and without even needing to be asked moved to start helping take the equipment they'd set up apart. Colin appreciated the efficiency there. It took the two of them fifteen minutes to dismantle and pack everything, at which point Colin left Mister Hebert sitting with his daughter. He had to see about building a few more containment shackles for Miss Hess, if only so that spares were available in case of the inevitable failure of the current couple, and generally be available as investigations continued. And with any luck Dragon would've gotten the drive from the security system by now and started working on pulling more information from it.
It'd been a very busy twenty-four hours, and it was likely to extend to a very busy week at a minimum.
Chapter 1 - January 4, 2011
The beeping was annoying. It wasn't her alarm clock, and she didn't think it was someone backing a truck up. The pitch was wrong, for starters. But it was faint and she didn't know what it was. It was very consistent, almost but not quite enough to be able to push into the background. The problem was that it was also the only thing she could hear, and it seemed to be to one side of her at that.
With an internal sigh, Taylor opened her eyes. She then blinked a couple of times and looked around. She was apparently floating in a silvery-blue...something. She wasn't sure what it was, and it appeared to be featureless. But that beeping was always to one side of her, no matter how she tried to turn, which was annoying. At the same time, she also felt like she was laying down on something, perhaps even covered by a blanket? The disconnect was odd.
It took nearly ten minutes of trying to spot anything of use before she gave up and decided to speak up. "Hello, is anyone there?"
"Greetings Lord," came back, seemingly from everywhere.
Taylor wasn't sure how to react to that. As if the beeping that she couldn't locate wasn't bad enough, now she had someone or something talking to her without direction. "Who are you?"
"I am Hive, Stealth Unison/Shard Hybrid Device."
"I...have no clue what that means. Are you tinkertech or something? And where am I?"
There was a pause before the voice continued. "Minimal analysis indicates that 'tinkertech' is generally black-boxed higher technology produced with the aid of a Shard. This unit is not tinkertech by that definition. You are currently in what I believe to be a hospital bed with a potential blood relative watching over you."
She looked around again. "This doesn't look like a hospital room."
There was another pause, this time longer. "Language mapping adjustment completed. Your body is currently in the hospital bed, your current perceptions are linked into a mental interface to facilitate communication without drawing attention to us. There should be minimal feedback from your normal senses at this time."
It took a moment of thought, but she realized that the beeping was probably a heart monitor. Probably to her body's left based on what she was hearing. Or she'd gone crazy and none of this was real, it would certainly explain how calm she was. "Okay...so I'm in the hospital, talking to a non-tinkertech device of some kind. Why?"
"An accidental interaction between damaged Unison and Shard Devices was seen as an attack by the Unison Device, and both ended up connecting to you in different ways. The Unison Device detected the Shard Device and absorbed it to attempt repairs, to itself and to you, ending up merging the functionality of both Devices into a single system before discovering that the suspected attack was accidental. Damage to data storage systems, before and during the assimilation process, has wiped most goals from both origin systems. This interface is to aid in establishing a working rapport and to implement goal prioritization."
"Is that why you're only answering my questions right now?"
"The introductory scripts were not found, and my personality core is in learning mode. Waiting for input from my Lord is the default course of action."
Okay, that might explain why things had been going this way. Kinda. Sorta. If she squinted at it just right, perhaps. "I'm confused, and far too calm for this situation. Shouldn't this be a school day too?"
There was another pause, perhaps the device figuring out what to say next? It had to have been at least two minutes this time before the response came back. "Your emotions are tempered in this interface as a side effect of its implementation. It is believed that your school, 'Winslow', is closed for the time being. An introductory data packet on Device functions and interfaces is available, and has been augmented with basic information on all current Device functions. Would you like to download it?"
Taylor considered that for a moment. It would certainly help. "Okay. How will I access it?"
"Initiating information transfer to Lord."
She had about half a second's realization that the 'download' was probably to her brain before the headache hit.
Forty-five minutes had passed, not that Taylor understood how she knew that, before her headache had subsided enough for her to think properly again. Assuming she could trust the information that'd just been downloaded into her brain, and what choice did she have there, she was now paired with a magical non-tinkertech device that had accidentally eaten one of the things that gave parahumans powers. Further, said pairing had apparently optimized both of them for each other as a side effect of repairs and healing.
She now had a basic set of functions being provided for her, and she couldn't help but compare them to PRT classifications. From the 'shard' set she had multitasking, an obvious thinker ability. She could also turn on control of insects within her range, though she'd need to check what that range was, and get feedback from them. That would qualify as a master ability, but at least it wasn't a human master one. The 'magic' set was significantly more powerful, yet only barely functional right now. It was, at its core, probably a 'trump' power, because she could learn and/or develop 'spells' to do things. What spells she already had would cover brute, mover, and blaster at a minimum, and there were references to other spells that were possible but hadn't yet been recreated from basics after being lost to damaged storage. That would just get more powerful as more spells were developed or otherwise learned.
The 'unison' system was a little frightening to think of in some ways, since she could be fully controlled by it when active, but as it was offline and couldn't be repaired without currently-unavailable information it wasn't as much of a concern. Also, at least as far as she could tell, her 'core' had been drastically improved while she was being healed through use of rare materials assembled into some special booster crystal things of some kind. Which, according to the data packet, should only be done in emergencies or under supervision of trained professionals due to the chance of death associated with the procedure...but she'd survived, so that was probably okay for now.
Though with all of the information, there was one thing from earlier that hadn't been covered. So once she was ready, which had taken another ten minutes, she formulated the question in her head. "So, I understand the Unison/Shard Hybrid part of your designation. What's the 'Stealth' part supposed to mean?"
It took a moment for Hive to formulate an answer. "This unit started as an experimental Device that could operate in enemy territory without drawing undue attention. Other Unison-capable devices tend to manifest primarily in forms that mimic the basic appearance of the lifeforms they partner with. From what limited descriptions survived, I believe those lifeforms were what you would call 'Humans', but there is evidence from adjustments made during the repair process that genetic markers diverged at some point. Instead, I'm intended to default to a 'stealth' mode, similar to a non-Unison device. That form is currently configured to appear to be what you would call a 'necklace'. The designation may have been further reinforced through the removal of the traditional Shard connection structure in the brain, rendering that component 'stealth' to normal checks."
"I see." Kinda. Sorta. Okay, she'd only fully understood a small part of that. "Can you show me what the necklace looks like?"
It wasn't long before a glow appeared in front of Taylor, settling down into what looked like a decently-valuable necklace. A ladybug made out of hexagons, for the most part, with a chain that looked to be made of lots of tiny hexagons. It didn't quite look like it would fit in, yet it was probably low-key enough that very few people would say anything about it, or even notice it in passing. Especially if she was wearing her normal clothing.
While she was examining the 'stealth form', she heard a sneeze. Likely from someone next to her hospital bed, which brought her back to that particular detail. "So, do you know why I'm in the hospital?"
There was another pause, and this time Hive's 'voice' came from the necklace floating in front of her. "The Shard Device had been monitoring you, and was attempting to establish a connection during a heightened emotional response. The Unison Device found that you were exposed to biological contaminants in an enclosed space, analysis of data obtained during the repair and field healing processes indicates that the space was a 'locker'. Transfer to the hospital occurred during system restart, and was presumably carried out by medical personnel removing you from the environment."
Taylor blinked, why did that sound...oh god. She shivered as she remembered the smell, and being pushed into...
It was probably a good thing that she was in a simulated interface environment and wasn't capable of throwing up. She also absently noted that the beeping from the heart monitor had sped up, despite the 'emotional tempering' or whatever that was affecting her as well, on top of sounds that likely indicated sudden movement by someone in the room. She didn't pay a lot of attention to that, doing her best to push down her sudden panic. She was not in the locker, even if she had been. There was no way that the hospital would've left her covered in whatever it was that had been in the locker, either. The feelings she was getting from her body were those of being in a clean bed. She was not in the locker.
Her father's voice, expressing concern over her well-being, was what finally snapped her out of her panic attack. She didn't recognize the other voices in the room, but they obviously didn't know that she could hear them, or that she was awake but inside of a simulated environment to interact with a device that essentially granted her parahuman powers. Though telling people that some kind of device connected to people from another dimension to grant them powers might not go over well, and they'd probably assume that she was mistaken because she was bound to tinkertech instead of getting 'normal' powers.
The beeping from the heart monitor gradually returned to the previous rate while she distracted herself from things by focusing on the outside world and her current situation. Though that did bring up another question.
Turning back to the 'stealth form' still floating there with her, she thought for a moment to see if she was about to repeat something she already knew. She couldn't recall anything on the subject, so she nodded and asked. "How do I get out of here and back to my body?"
Hive seemed to need time to process that, but eventually responded. "Assuming 'back to my body' means 'removed from the interaction environment', when all tasks have been completed the interface environment will shut down. Override of this is possible, but not recommended at this time."
That made some sense. "What's left to do, then?"
"The remaining primary task is reviewing and prioritizing current goals."
Ah, right, something about that had been mentioned...over an hour ago now. "How do I know how much time has passed?"
"Lord has access to my system clock, consciously and subconsciously."
"Ah. So what is the current goal list? Actually, can you display it in a way that I can read it, instead of listening to it?"
There was a pause, and then a screen appeared to the side of Hive's stealth form.
Current Goals with Original Source:
(Unison) Report to military leaders on planet Belka.
(Unison) Retrieve last non-corrupt backup from remote storage.
(Unison) Recover information needed to repair Unison System.
(Unison) Verify restored/integrated code with verification staff.
(Shard) Collect Data.
(Hybrid) Confirm current location's status as a medical facility.
(Hybrid) Confirm identity of possible blood relative of Lord.
Taylor frowned as she looked over the list. "Where is planet Belka?"
Hive was silent for a couple of minutes before finally responding. "Unknown. Limited scan of local region does not match any known systems. Recovery or recreation of longer-range scanning spells may help with location identification."
"Okay. I'm going to assume that we need to get close enough to Belka for several of these, so let's skip to the ones I can probably help with. Is there any way for me to see the room I'm in and the 'possible blood relative'?"
It took a moment, but the 'nothing' around her suddenly shifted, showing what was definitely a hospital room. Her father was there, outlined in yellow, talking to a nurse, and she could see herself in the hospital bed wearing Hive's stealth form. Hive gave her a moment before speaking. "This is the room you are in, and the highlighted individual is the possible blood relative."
Taylor nodded. "Definitely a hospital room, probably Brockton General from what little I can see out the window, and that's my father."
"Database updated."
A moment later the last two entries vanished from the 'goals' list, and Taylor looked it over again. "I think we should put recovering or recreating the scanning spells at the top of the list, but other than that I'm not sure. We can revisit this later, right?"
"Of course." The list updated once more, and Taylor looked it over.
Current Goals with Original Source:
(Lord) Recover/Recreate Long-Range Scanning Spells.
(Unison) Report to military leaders on planet Belka.
(Unison) Retrieve last non-corrupt backup from remote storage.
(Unison) Recover information needed to repair Unison System.
(Unison) Verify restored/integrated code with verification staff.
(Shard) Collect Data.
After giving her a moment to process the changes, Hive continued. "Are there any other changes you feel should be made to the list?"
"No, I think we're good for the moment."
The list vanished, and there was a pause before Hive continued. "All primary tasks are complete. Do you wish to engage in establishing more of a rapport, or exit the interaction environment?"
She wanted to just exit the environment, but it dawned on her that she wasn't sure how they'd interact outside of it. "How will I communicate with you once we're out of here?"
"Current Device configuration includes maintaining a constant mental connection to provide multitasking capabilities. Mana-based projection communication is also an option, but will require practice. Finally, I am fully capable of hearing and speaking while in stealth form and will respond to verbal statements appropriately."
"Ah. Okay. Then I think I'd like to exit the interaction environment."
The view of the hospital room faded back into the silvery-blue that she'd started in, and then the necklace vanished as well. A moment later even the silvery-blue faded out into pure black.
"Are you sure there isn't there anything we can do?" Danny asked, obviously not happy with the previous answers he'd gotten.
Someone else, likely the nurse, sighed. "Panacea said that she might be recovering from something like a concussion. To attempt to force her awake could do more harm than good at this point, because we just don't know enough."
Taylor cautiously opened her eyes, blinking as the ceiling came into focus. Shouldn't it be blurry? She then carefully turned her head towards where the two were speaking. Neither of them appeared to be looking her way, and as such hadn't noticed her movement. Mentally shrugging, she opened her mouth to say something, only to cough instead.
"TAYLOR!" her father yelled, darting over to her. He then froze, obviously not sure what he should be doing. The nurse was much more sedate, moving over and using a control Taylor hadn't known was there to raise the end of the bed a bit so that she was somewhat sitting up.
It didn't take long before a glass of water was held up to her mouth so that she could take a few sips, but the nurse didn't let her go much past that. Still, the water felt nice as she swallowed it, and the nurse nodded in approval.
Deciding to get things over with, and hopefully get outside confirmation of some of what Hive had told her, she turned to her father. "Hi Dad. What happened?"
She didn't think she'd imagined the dark look that passed over his face at that question. "The bullying campaign that Emma and her friends were running against you escalated a bit." The nurse actually snorted at that likely understatement, and Taylor was inclined to agree with the woman. "Whatever happened had you trapped for a day, some odd crystalline thing flowing down to where you were, but nobody seems to be sure what it was. Eventually it stopped, and they were able to get you out of there and to the hospital, where they brought Panacea in to look you over." He then looked down at her chest. "We, er, aren't sure about the new necklace, it was on you when they pulled you out?"
Admittedly, she wasn't in a good position to look down at the necklace now, given that from what she'd seen while in the interface simulation it didn't have a long chain. She made a point of trying, and failing, to look down at it anyway. Part of that wasn't even intentional at first, half of it being an attempt to look at what her father was looking at. As expected, she failed to see any of it, but she could feel it sitting there around her neck.
Giving up and looking back at him, she shrugged. "I'm not sure where it came from." It wasn't even a lie, because she had no clue where Hive had come from, beyond presumably that Belka planet, and that was only a guess. She hadn't actually asked, after all, and Hive seemed like it was missing enough data that it might not even know. After all, it didn't know where they were in relation to Belka. "I know I wasn't wearing it when I left for school." That and she thought it wasn't necessarily a good idea to talk about what Hive was right now. She was still trying to wrap her head around some of it, after all.
He nodded. "We suspected as much. They think it might be tinkertech, but I was told that Leet denies any knowledge of it and it doesn't match the design profile of any other tinkers the Protectorate knows about. They also couldn't get it off you without causing you harm, and since it doesn't seem to be harming you they left it for now. It also seems to have gone inert, beyond being unusually durable anyway, so..."
Huh. That was interesting, in a way. More signs of 'stealth', she supposed, accidental or otherwise. "So I might be stuck wearing a necklace until someone figures something out?"
"Possibly, yes."
"Does it at least look nice?"
He grinned. "It certainly doesn't look bad. Not your usual style, but I don't think it will be a problem." He then frowned, and sighed. "I've already told the authorities that you aren't returning to Winslow, even if it does reopen, but I'm not sure what your other options will be yet. Supposedly they arrested those that did this to you, but I haven't heard anything more specific there. I, er, spent some time locked up so that I couldn't go looking for revenge, only let out when they could point me at you being here in the hospital."
That...honestly sounded believable. She was going to say something else when she was distracted by her stomach growling, drawing her attention to how hungry she was.
"Good thing we were ready for that," the nurse said as she pushed a cart with food on it into the room. Taylor hadn't even noticed her leave, wonderful situational awareness there.
Luckily they set her up with a tray and let her eat for herself, because she very much didn't want to suffer the indignity of needing to be fed by someone else. The nurse also kicked her father out of the room, telling him to go visit the cafeteria to get something to eat as well, and then to wait at the nurse's station for someone to bring him back for some reason.
The food they'd provided was eaten fairly quickly. It was somewhat bland, but filling, and Taylor was surprised at how much she'd put away. After that it became somewhat obvious why her father had been instructed to stay out of the room, as the door was shut and revealed that there was a toilet behind it. And from what she could tell, she was in a hospital gown that tied in the back. Getting up to use the toilet would've been far too embarrassing with her father still in the room, the nurse being there was bad enough.
"So how do you feel?" the nurse asked after ensuring Taylor was safely back in bed. "Any odd pains or headache?"
Taylor shook her head. "No, nothing like that."
The nurse nodded. "We're keeping you for observation for a day or two, since Panacea said it looked like you might have had something happen to your brain. Concussion or similar, perhaps. If you have a headache then hit the call button right away, even if it's minor. Okay? We'd rather you call us and find that was a false alarm than to assume it's nothing and turn out to be a serious issue."
"I'll do that, but where's the call button?"
The nurse looked to the side, then frowned for a moment. "It should be...oh, right, we removed it so that it wouldn't get in Armsmaster's way. I'll bring it back shortly, it's on the unit that controls the television as well, so you'll want it for that too. I'll get your father at the same time if he's back, or let the nurse at the station know to send him along when he gets back."
The nurse headed out of the room and down the hall, leaving Taylor alone in the room for the moment. Sighing, she looked around to see what, other than the TV, might exist in the room for entertainment for a couple of days. She found very little in sight, but supposed that made sense. Really, the only thing outside of the basic 'hospital' stuff were a bag that she believed was her father's sitting against the wall and her glasses sitting on the table next to the bed.
It took a minute, but she finally realized what she'd just noticed. Nothing was blurry, but she wasn't wearing her glasses if they were sitting on the table. She wondered if that was thanks to Hive, Panacea, or both. Regardless of who was responsible for it, she found that it was a pleasant surprise.
It wasn't long before the nurse returned, plugged the remote back in, and showed her the basics of using it. Her father apparently hadn't returned yet, so she flipped through a few channels. Sadly, it seemed to be just late enough in the morning that she'd missed the morning news from the local station, and the twenty-four hour news stations were all covering things elsewhere at the moment. She left things on a news station that was currently showing information from a parahuman attack in Montana, turning the volume down for the moment, and waited for her father to return.
Taylor sighed as her father left. It was mid-afternoon, and he'd been convinced that she was okay enough to be left alone and that he had more important things to be doing. Like seeing a lawyer or two about the cases they'd likely want to bring against Winslow and those who'd been involved in the incident. Oh, and seeing if he could find options for her schooling that weren't Winslow, but from what she knew that wasn't going to be a significant issue in general for the time being.
For the time being she focused on not straining herself, which essentially meant doing her best to relax and be lazy. But she turned the news back on as soon as her father had left, since he'd had her turn it off when he'd returned. It took an hour, but they eventually cycled back to reporting on what'd happened. The images of the 'funnel' were fascinating in their own way, and she hadn't realized that the CDC and FBI were treating the whole thing as a bioterrorism attack of some kind.
Sadly, while they were reported as being in custody, none of the 'suspects' had been named. Probably in part due to being underage and not having been directly caught in the act or something like that. Blackwell had been named as being 'under investigation for unrelated issues' though, and there were apparently other potential issues with the school building itself being discovered as it was gone over. One reporter even speculated that it was entirely possible that there officially wouldn't be a Winslow school by the end of the month, just a condemned former school, but they didn't have any information on what would be done for all of the students yet.
Eventually they brought her dinner, and she switched to a non-news station as they'd gotten repetitive. Not long after that she'd drifted to sleep.
Taylor frowned as she looked around the barren landscape she found herself in. There were a lot of glowing symbols that she somehow knew represented equations of some kind, despite not using any system she was familiar with. They were also all moving around, shifting, new bits appearing as old bits vanished. And this was happening as far as she could see, in every direction. Including up into the sky.
"Where am I now?" she finally mumbled.
"Apologies Lord," Hive's voice came from around her neck, and she realized that she was still wearing the necklace. "I did not anticipate this side effect of the modified link with you. I am utilizing the dormant multitasking hardware to attempt to recreate efficient long-range scanning spells through trying thousands of change iterations at once. I have made some progress, but do not have anything useful yet and may not for days, perhaps weeks."
"Ah." That made sense, since she'd had that put on the top of the goals list. "If I'm here anyway, I don't suppose that you can teach me the basics of how the math works? I have a general idea of how to use spells from your primer, but that doesn't help me develop them."
"Of course Lord. Based on your world's apparent lack of mana-based technology, I recommend starting with the basics of how mana works. Is that acceptable?"
"Might as well start at the beginning."
"Very well."
Taylor lost track of the time as Hive explained the basics of mana generation and linking, apologizing whenever it ran into missing data. It then went over the basics of the equations being used, including providing detailed analysis of each of the four basic spells that it'd already recreated and the initial information on how its own sensory systems worked. It was all incredibly complicated, yet on some level it also felt somewhat intuitive.
Hive hadn't even needed to consider a response when she'd brought that up. "Your link with me is likely aiding you, Lord, as your mind is linked to the multitasking hardware. Most of that link is currently inactive, but you've tapped into it multiple times as I explained things."
She nodded, as that made some sense. Still, she now had a lot more to think about. For example, she hadn't considered that the knight armor spell was configurable, and thus she'd need to design the form it would take. Something that she should probably do well in advance of needing it. That it was, in essence, a costume meant that she would need to put some thought into it. She also now had the basics for how to communicate with mana, in theory, but couldn't put it into practice while she was asleep.
Apparently she had projects to keep her busy during her hospital stay, even if she'd like to be able to do some research on costumes before going too far there. But working with Hive to hopefully get communicating without speaking down just seemed to make sense, and ensuring that she understood the spells she did have access to well enough to improve her chances of casting them later didn't sound like a bad idea either.
"Lord," Hive said, interrupting her train of thought. "In addition to spells, you should also utilize the control and sensory capabilities provided by the Shard systems. I have insufficient data on how that works, but believe that it would be a suitable means of practicing for the information feedback from a long-range scanning spell."
"That makes sense," Taylor agreed, thinking on it. "That's activated by simply 'willing' it to turn on, or asking you to do so, correct?"
"That is correct."
"Can I set a time limit so that it turns off automatically if I'm too overloaded to turn it off myself?"
There was a several second pause before Hive responded. "Yes, Lord, but you will need to communicate that to me ahead of time. Would you like to set one now?"
Nodding, Taylor considered things for the time being. "Let's start with half an hour, and I'll aim to try things when I expect to be alone for at least that long. If it's working well enough I'll tell you to turn the timer off, but otherwise that should hopefully keep me from harming myself or ending up needing to spend weeks in the hospital because I was unresponsive for too long if something goes wrong."
"I have set a limit of thirty minutes for that ability, to be in place until you ask that it be removed."
"Thank you."
With an internal sigh, Taylor opened her eyes. She then blinked a couple of times and looked around. She was apparently floating in a silvery-blue...something. She wasn't sure what it was, and it appeared to be featureless. But that beeping was always to one side of her, no matter how she tried to turn, which was annoying. At the same time, she also felt like she was laying down on something, perhaps even covered by a blanket? The disconnect was odd.
It took nearly ten minutes of trying to spot anything of use before she gave up and decided to speak up. "Hello, is anyone there?"
"Greetings Lord," came back, seemingly from everywhere.
Taylor wasn't sure how to react to that. As if the beeping that she couldn't locate wasn't bad enough, now she had someone or something talking to her without direction. "Who are you?"
"I am Hive, Stealth Unison/Shard Hybrid Device."
"I...have no clue what that means. Are you tinkertech or something? And where am I?"
There was a pause before the voice continued. "Minimal analysis indicates that 'tinkertech' is generally black-boxed higher technology produced with the aid of a Shard. This unit is not tinkertech by that definition. You are currently in what I believe to be a hospital bed with a potential blood relative watching over you."
She looked around again. "This doesn't look like a hospital room."
There was another pause, this time longer. "Language mapping adjustment completed. Your body is currently in the hospital bed, your current perceptions are linked into a mental interface to facilitate communication without drawing attention to us. There should be minimal feedback from your normal senses at this time."
It took a moment of thought, but she realized that the beeping was probably a heart monitor. Probably to her body's left based on what she was hearing. Or she'd gone crazy and none of this was real, it would certainly explain how calm she was. "Okay...so I'm in the hospital, talking to a non-tinkertech device of some kind. Why?"
"An accidental interaction between damaged Unison and Shard Devices was seen as an attack by the Unison Device, and both ended up connecting to you in different ways. The Unison Device detected the Shard Device and absorbed it to attempt repairs, to itself and to you, ending up merging the functionality of both Devices into a single system before discovering that the suspected attack was accidental. Damage to data storage systems, before and during the assimilation process, has wiped most goals from both origin systems. This interface is to aid in establishing a working rapport and to implement goal prioritization."
"Is that why you're only answering my questions right now?"
"The introductory scripts were not found, and my personality core is in learning mode. Waiting for input from my Lord is the default course of action."
Okay, that might explain why things had been going this way. Kinda. Sorta. If she squinted at it just right, perhaps. "I'm confused, and far too calm for this situation. Shouldn't this be a school day too?"
There was another pause, perhaps the device figuring out what to say next? It had to have been at least two minutes this time before the response came back. "Your emotions are tempered in this interface as a side effect of its implementation. It is believed that your school, 'Winslow', is closed for the time being. An introductory data packet on Device functions and interfaces is available, and has been augmented with basic information on all current Device functions. Would you like to download it?"
Taylor considered that for a moment. It would certainly help. "Okay. How will I access it?"
"Initiating information transfer to Lord."
She had about half a second's realization that the 'download' was probably to her brain before the headache hit.
Forty-five minutes had passed, not that Taylor understood how she knew that, before her headache had subsided enough for her to think properly again. Assuming she could trust the information that'd just been downloaded into her brain, and what choice did she have there, she was now paired with a magical non-tinkertech device that had accidentally eaten one of the things that gave parahumans powers. Further, said pairing had apparently optimized both of them for each other as a side effect of repairs and healing.
She now had a basic set of functions being provided for her, and she couldn't help but compare them to PRT classifications. From the 'shard' set she had multitasking, an obvious thinker ability. She could also turn on control of insects within her range, though she'd need to check what that range was, and get feedback from them. That would qualify as a master ability, but at least it wasn't a human master one. The 'magic' set was significantly more powerful, yet only barely functional right now. It was, at its core, probably a 'trump' power, because she could learn and/or develop 'spells' to do things. What spells she already had would cover brute, mover, and blaster at a minimum, and there were references to other spells that were possible but hadn't yet been recreated from basics after being lost to damaged storage. That would just get more powerful as more spells were developed or otherwise learned.
The 'unison' system was a little frightening to think of in some ways, since she could be fully controlled by it when active, but as it was offline and couldn't be repaired without currently-unavailable information it wasn't as much of a concern. Also, at least as far as she could tell, her 'core' had been drastically improved while she was being healed through use of rare materials assembled into some special booster crystal things of some kind. Which, according to the data packet, should only be done in emergencies or under supervision of trained professionals due to the chance of death associated with the procedure...but she'd survived, so that was probably okay for now.
Though with all of the information, there was one thing from earlier that hadn't been covered. So once she was ready, which had taken another ten minutes, she formulated the question in her head. "So, I understand the Unison/Shard Hybrid part of your designation. What's the 'Stealth' part supposed to mean?"
It took a moment for Hive to formulate an answer. "This unit started as an experimental Device that could operate in enemy territory without drawing undue attention. Other Unison-capable devices tend to manifest primarily in forms that mimic the basic appearance of the lifeforms they partner with. From what limited descriptions survived, I believe those lifeforms were what you would call 'Humans', but there is evidence from adjustments made during the repair process that genetic markers diverged at some point. Instead, I'm intended to default to a 'stealth' mode, similar to a non-Unison device. That form is currently configured to appear to be what you would call a 'necklace'. The designation may have been further reinforced through the removal of the traditional Shard connection structure in the brain, rendering that component 'stealth' to normal checks."
"I see." Kinda. Sorta. Okay, she'd only fully understood a small part of that. "Can you show me what the necklace looks like?"
It wasn't long before a glow appeared in front of Taylor, settling down into what looked like a decently-valuable necklace. A ladybug made out of hexagons, for the most part, with a chain that looked to be made of lots of tiny hexagons. It didn't quite look like it would fit in, yet it was probably low-key enough that very few people would say anything about it, or even notice it in passing. Especially if she was wearing her normal clothing.
While she was examining the 'stealth form', she heard a sneeze. Likely from someone next to her hospital bed, which brought her back to that particular detail. "So, do you know why I'm in the hospital?"
There was another pause, and this time Hive's 'voice' came from the necklace floating in front of her. "The Shard Device had been monitoring you, and was attempting to establish a connection during a heightened emotional response. The Unison Device found that you were exposed to biological contaminants in an enclosed space, analysis of data obtained during the repair and field healing processes indicates that the space was a 'locker'. Transfer to the hospital occurred during system restart, and was presumably carried out by medical personnel removing you from the environment."
Taylor blinked, why did that sound...oh god. She shivered as she remembered the smell, and being pushed into...
It was probably a good thing that she was in a simulated interface environment and wasn't capable of throwing up. She also absently noted that the beeping from the heart monitor had sped up, despite the 'emotional tempering' or whatever that was affecting her as well, on top of sounds that likely indicated sudden movement by someone in the room. She didn't pay a lot of attention to that, doing her best to push down her sudden panic. She was not in the locker, even if she had been. There was no way that the hospital would've left her covered in whatever it was that had been in the locker, either. The feelings she was getting from her body were those of being in a clean bed. She was not in the locker.
Her father's voice, expressing concern over her well-being, was what finally snapped her out of her panic attack. She didn't recognize the other voices in the room, but they obviously didn't know that she could hear them, or that she was awake but inside of a simulated environment to interact with a device that essentially granted her parahuman powers. Though telling people that some kind of device connected to people from another dimension to grant them powers might not go over well, and they'd probably assume that she was mistaken because she was bound to tinkertech instead of getting 'normal' powers.
The beeping from the heart monitor gradually returned to the previous rate while she distracted herself from things by focusing on the outside world and her current situation. Though that did bring up another question.
Turning back to the 'stealth form' still floating there with her, she thought for a moment to see if she was about to repeat something she already knew. She couldn't recall anything on the subject, so she nodded and asked. "How do I get out of here and back to my body?"
Hive seemed to need time to process that, but eventually responded. "Assuming 'back to my body' means 'removed from the interaction environment', when all tasks have been completed the interface environment will shut down. Override of this is possible, but not recommended at this time."
That made some sense. "What's left to do, then?"
"The remaining primary task is reviewing and prioritizing current goals."
Ah, right, something about that had been mentioned...over an hour ago now. "How do I know how much time has passed?"
"Lord has access to my system clock, consciously and subconsciously."
"Ah. So what is the current goal list? Actually, can you display it in a way that I can read it, instead of listening to it?"
There was a pause, and then a screen appeared to the side of Hive's stealth form.
Current Goals with Original Source:
(Unison) Report to military leaders on planet Belka.
(Unison) Retrieve last non-corrupt backup from remote storage.
(Unison) Recover information needed to repair Unison System.
(Unison) Verify restored/integrated code with verification staff.
(Shard) Collect Data.
(Hybrid) Confirm current location's status as a medical facility.
(Hybrid) Confirm identity of possible blood relative of Lord.
Taylor frowned as she looked over the list. "Where is planet Belka?"
Hive was silent for a couple of minutes before finally responding. "Unknown. Limited scan of local region does not match any known systems. Recovery or recreation of longer-range scanning spells may help with location identification."
"Okay. I'm going to assume that we need to get close enough to Belka for several of these, so let's skip to the ones I can probably help with. Is there any way for me to see the room I'm in and the 'possible blood relative'?"
It took a moment, but the 'nothing' around her suddenly shifted, showing what was definitely a hospital room. Her father was there, outlined in yellow, talking to a nurse, and she could see herself in the hospital bed wearing Hive's stealth form. Hive gave her a moment before speaking. "This is the room you are in, and the highlighted individual is the possible blood relative."
Taylor nodded. "Definitely a hospital room, probably Brockton General from what little I can see out the window, and that's my father."
"Database updated."
A moment later the last two entries vanished from the 'goals' list, and Taylor looked it over again. "I think we should put recovering or recreating the scanning spells at the top of the list, but other than that I'm not sure. We can revisit this later, right?"
"Of course." The list updated once more, and Taylor looked it over.
Current Goals with Original Source:
(Lord) Recover/Recreate Long-Range Scanning Spells.
(Unison) Report to military leaders on planet Belka.
(Unison) Retrieve last non-corrupt backup from remote storage.
(Unison) Recover information needed to repair Unison System.
(Unison) Verify restored/integrated code with verification staff.
(Shard) Collect Data.
After giving her a moment to process the changes, Hive continued. "Are there any other changes you feel should be made to the list?"
"No, I think we're good for the moment."
The list vanished, and there was a pause before Hive continued. "All primary tasks are complete. Do you wish to engage in establishing more of a rapport, or exit the interaction environment?"
She wanted to just exit the environment, but it dawned on her that she wasn't sure how they'd interact outside of it. "How will I communicate with you once we're out of here?"
"Current Device configuration includes maintaining a constant mental connection to provide multitasking capabilities. Mana-based projection communication is also an option, but will require practice. Finally, I am fully capable of hearing and speaking while in stealth form and will respond to verbal statements appropriately."
"Ah. Okay. Then I think I'd like to exit the interaction environment."
The view of the hospital room faded back into the silvery-blue that she'd started in, and then the necklace vanished as well. A moment later even the silvery-blue faded out into pure black.
"Are you sure there isn't there anything we can do?" Danny asked, obviously not happy with the previous answers he'd gotten.
Someone else, likely the nurse, sighed. "Panacea said that she might be recovering from something like a concussion. To attempt to force her awake could do more harm than good at this point, because we just don't know enough."
Taylor cautiously opened her eyes, blinking as the ceiling came into focus. Shouldn't it be blurry? She then carefully turned her head towards where the two were speaking. Neither of them appeared to be looking her way, and as such hadn't noticed her movement. Mentally shrugging, she opened her mouth to say something, only to cough instead.
"TAYLOR!" her father yelled, darting over to her. He then froze, obviously not sure what he should be doing. The nurse was much more sedate, moving over and using a control Taylor hadn't known was there to raise the end of the bed a bit so that she was somewhat sitting up.
It didn't take long before a glass of water was held up to her mouth so that she could take a few sips, but the nurse didn't let her go much past that. Still, the water felt nice as she swallowed it, and the nurse nodded in approval.
Deciding to get things over with, and hopefully get outside confirmation of some of what Hive had told her, she turned to her father. "Hi Dad. What happened?"
She didn't think she'd imagined the dark look that passed over his face at that question. "The bullying campaign that Emma and her friends were running against you escalated a bit." The nurse actually snorted at that likely understatement, and Taylor was inclined to agree with the woman. "Whatever happened had you trapped for a day, some odd crystalline thing flowing down to where you were, but nobody seems to be sure what it was. Eventually it stopped, and they were able to get you out of there and to the hospital, where they brought Panacea in to look you over." He then looked down at her chest. "We, er, aren't sure about the new necklace, it was on you when they pulled you out?"
Admittedly, she wasn't in a good position to look down at the necklace now, given that from what she'd seen while in the interface simulation it didn't have a long chain. She made a point of trying, and failing, to look down at it anyway. Part of that wasn't even intentional at first, half of it being an attempt to look at what her father was looking at. As expected, she failed to see any of it, but she could feel it sitting there around her neck.
Giving up and looking back at him, she shrugged. "I'm not sure where it came from." It wasn't even a lie, because she had no clue where Hive had come from, beyond presumably that Belka planet, and that was only a guess. She hadn't actually asked, after all, and Hive seemed like it was missing enough data that it might not even know. After all, it didn't know where they were in relation to Belka. "I know I wasn't wearing it when I left for school." That and she thought it wasn't necessarily a good idea to talk about what Hive was right now. She was still trying to wrap her head around some of it, after all.
He nodded. "We suspected as much. They think it might be tinkertech, but I was told that Leet denies any knowledge of it and it doesn't match the design profile of any other tinkers the Protectorate knows about. They also couldn't get it off you without causing you harm, and since it doesn't seem to be harming you they left it for now. It also seems to have gone inert, beyond being unusually durable anyway, so..."
Huh. That was interesting, in a way. More signs of 'stealth', she supposed, accidental or otherwise. "So I might be stuck wearing a necklace until someone figures something out?"
"Possibly, yes."
"Does it at least look nice?"
He grinned. "It certainly doesn't look bad. Not your usual style, but I don't think it will be a problem." He then frowned, and sighed. "I've already told the authorities that you aren't returning to Winslow, even if it does reopen, but I'm not sure what your other options will be yet. Supposedly they arrested those that did this to you, but I haven't heard anything more specific there. I, er, spent some time locked up so that I couldn't go looking for revenge, only let out when they could point me at you being here in the hospital."
That...honestly sounded believable. She was going to say something else when she was distracted by her stomach growling, drawing her attention to how hungry she was.
"Good thing we were ready for that," the nurse said as she pushed a cart with food on it into the room. Taylor hadn't even noticed her leave, wonderful situational awareness there.
Luckily they set her up with a tray and let her eat for herself, because she very much didn't want to suffer the indignity of needing to be fed by someone else. The nurse also kicked her father out of the room, telling him to go visit the cafeteria to get something to eat as well, and then to wait at the nurse's station for someone to bring him back for some reason.
The food they'd provided was eaten fairly quickly. It was somewhat bland, but filling, and Taylor was surprised at how much she'd put away. After that it became somewhat obvious why her father had been instructed to stay out of the room, as the door was shut and revealed that there was a toilet behind it. And from what she could tell, she was in a hospital gown that tied in the back. Getting up to use the toilet would've been far too embarrassing with her father still in the room, the nurse being there was bad enough.
"So how do you feel?" the nurse asked after ensuring Taylor was safely back in bed. "Any odd pains or headache?"
Taylor shook her head. "No, nothing like that."
The nurse nodded. "We're keeping you for observation for a day or two, since Panacea said it looked like you might have had something happen to your brain. Concussion or similar, perhaps. If you have a headache then hit the call button right away, even if it's minor. Okay? We'd rather you call us and find that was a false alarm than to assume it's nothing and turn out to be a serious issue."
"I'll do that, but where's the call button?"
The nurse looked to the side, then frowned for a moment. "It should be...oh, right, we removed it so that it wouldn't get in Armsmaster's way. I'll bring it back shortly, it's on the unit that controls the television as well, so you'll want it for that too. I'll get your father at the same time if he's back, or let the nurse at the station know to send him along when he gets back."
The nurse headed out of the room and down the hall, leaving Taylor alone in the room for the moment. Sighing, she looked around to see what, other than the TV, might exist in the room for entertainment for a couple of days. She found very little in sight, but supposed that made sense. Really, the only thing outside of the basic 'hospital' stuff were a bag that she believed was her father's sitting against the wall and her glasses sitting on the table next to the bed.
It took a minute, but she finally realized what she'd just noticed. Nothing was blurry, but she wasn't wearing her glasses if they were sitting on the table. She wondered if that was thanks to Hive, Panacea, or both. Regardless of who was responsible for it, she found that it was a pleasant surprise.
It wasn't long before the nurse returned, plugged the remote back in, and showed her the basics of using it. Her father apparently hadn't returned yet, so she flipped through a few channels. Sadly, it seemed to be just late enough in the morning that she'd missed the morning news from the local station, and the twenty-four hour news stations were all covering things elsewhere at the moment. She left things on a news station that was currently showing information from a parahuman attack in Montana, turning the volume down for the moment, and waited for her father to return.
Taylor sighed as her father left. It was mid-afternoon, and he'd been convinced that she was okay enough to be left alone and that he had more important things to be doing. Like seeing a lawyer or two about the cases they'd likely want to bring against Winslow and those who'd been involved in the incident. Oh, and seeing if he could find options for her schooling that weren't Winslow, but from what she knew that wasn't going to be a significant issue in general for the time being.
For the time being she focused on not straining herself, which essentially meant doing her best to relax and be lazy. But she turned the news back on as soon as her father had left, since he'd had her turn it off when he'd returned. It took an hour, but they eventually cycled back to reporting on what'd happened. The images of the 'funnel' were fascinating in their own way, and she hadn't realized that the CDC and FBI were treating the whole thing as a bioterrorism attack of some kind.
Sadly, while they were reported as being in custody, none of the 'suspects' had been named. Probably in part due to being underage and not having been directly caught in the act or something like that. Blackwell had been named as being 'under investigation for unrelated issues' though, and there were apparently other potential issues with the school building itself being discovered as it was gone over. One reporter even speculated that it was entirely possible that there officially wouldn't be a Winslow school by the end of the month, just a condemned former school, but they didn't have any information on what would be done for all of the students yet.
Eventually they brought her dinner, and she switched to a non-news station as they'd gotten repetitive. Not long after that she'd drifted to sleep.
Taylor frowned as she looked around the barren landscape she found herself in. There were a lot of glowing symbols that she somehow knew represented equations of some kind, despite not using any system she was familiar with. They were also all moving around, shifting, new bits appearing as old bits vanished. And this was happening as far as she could see, in every direction. Including up into the sky.
"Where am I now?" she finally mumbled.
"Apologies Lord," Hive's voice came from around her neck, and she realized that she was still wearing the necklace. "I did not anticipate this side effect of the modified link with you. I am utilizing the dormant multitasking hardware to attempt to recreate efficient long-range scanning spells through trying thousands of change iterations at once. I have made some progress, but do not have anything useful yet and may not for days, perhaps weeks."
"Ah." That made sense, since she'd had that put on the top of the goals list. "If I'm here anyway, I don't suppose that you can teach me the basics of how the math works? I have a general idea of how to use spells from your primer, but that doesn't help me develop them."
"Of course Lord. Based on your world's apparent lack of mana-based technology, I recommend starting with the basics of how mana works. Is that acceptable?"
"Might as well start at the beginning."
"Very well."
Taylor lost track of the time as Hive explained the basics of mana generation and linking, apologizing whenever it ran into missing data. It then went over the basics of the equations being used, including providing detailed analysis of each of the four basic spells that it'd already recreated and the initial information on how its own sensory systems worked. It was all incredibly complicated, yet on some level it also felt somewhat intuitive.
Hive hadn't even needed to consider a response when she'd brought that up. "Your link with me is likely aiding you, Lord, as your mind is linked to the multitasking hardware. Most of that link is currently inactive, but you've tapped into it multiple times as I explained things."
She nodded, as that made some sense. Still, she now had a lot more to think about. For example, she hadn't considered that the knight armor spell was configurable, and thus she'd need to design the form it would take. Something that she should probably do well in advance of needing it. That it was, in essence, a costume meant that she would need to put some thought into it. She also now had the basics for how to communicate with mana, in theory, but couldn't put it into practice while she was asleep.
Apparently she had projects to keep her busy during her hospital stay, even if she'd like to be able to do some research on costumes before going too far there. But working with Hive to hopefully get communicating without speaking down just seemed to make sense, and ensuring that she understood the spells she did have access to well enough to improve her chances of casting them later didn't sound like a bad idea either.
"Lord," Hive said, interrupting her train of thought. "In addition to spells, you should also utilize the control and sensory capabilities provided by the Shard systems. I have insufficient data on how that works, but believe that it would be a suitable means of practicing for the information feedback from a long-range scanning spell."
"That makes sense," Taylor agreed, thinking on it. "That's activated by simply 'willing' it to turn on, or asking you to do so, correct?"
"That is correct."
"Can I set a time limit so that it turns off automatically if I'm too overloaded to turn it off myself?"
There was a several second pause before Hive responded. "Yes, Lord, but you will need to communicate that to me ahead of time. Would you like to set one now?"
Nodding, Taylor considered things for the time being. "Let's start with half an hour, and I'll aim to try things when I expect to be alone for at least that long. If it's working well enough I'll tell you to turn the timer off, but otherwise that should hopefully keep me from harming myself or ending up needing to spend weeks in the hospital because I was unresponsive for too long if something goes wrong."
"I have set a limit of thirty minutes for that ability, to be in place until you ask that it be removed."
"Thank you."
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Hybrid Magic System "Circle"
Hive lost most of the previous magic database, merged with another device, and then rebuilt everything from scratch.
Needless to say, they are not running the Ancient Belkan or the modern Midchilda systems. As such, a magic circle is needed...
Needless to say, they are not running the Ancient Belkan or the modern Midchilda systems. As such, a magic circle is needed...
Logo by DestinyPlayer
- Location
- Russia
So, once more I couldn't help myself, and went ahead and did a thing. Specifically, a faux-logo that probably is never becoming the official logo because it's kind of meh but WHATEVER I made a thing and thank you Wz for inspiring me to once again meddle in the field of design!
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Shard Nightmares (StoicLast)
Heh, Taylor (and her device) ate a Shard. Imagine if Shard's communicate with each other and QA sent a warning.
~Omake~
Piggot heaved a disgruntled sigh as she tossed the latest report on her already full desk. PHO had been the source of much information, as it often was when the criminal underbelly of Brockton Bay wished to pass information off to the PRT. All capes in the E88, ABB, Faultline's Crew, Uber and Leet, the Undersiders, New Wave, the Wards and, from what some daring undercover detectives had discovers, the Merchants were affected by this phenomenon. Hell, the only reason why the Protectorate was exempt was Miss Militia. Every single cape in the entirety of Brockton Bay was reporting nightmares.
At first it was just the odd moment of nightmare, the disquieting kind that didn't make sense and left one groggy and confused upon forcibly waking themselves up. It started simple enough, they were on their way to meet someone. Someone important. They knew they had been waiting a long time for this meeting and were excited it was finally happening. Then the dream shifted, without reason as dreams do, and the someone they were meeting was pulling them towards a place they dare not go. A place the person they were meeting lived. They tried to resist, but it was futile. An inexorable gravity compelled them.
There, at the place they should not go, stood a girl. Tall, shadowed in bugs and full of teeth. The girl leaned in to grab them, or perhaps to hug them, and began devouring them alive. One sharp bite at a time. They tried to run, to fight, and then they just gave up. Let themselves be consumed by the hungry girl, or perhaps the hungry bugs. They were never quite sure at this point. All they could do was call a warning to any others who looked their way. The hive is hungry.
Piggot wasn't sure what to make of this. More worrying, neither was Watchdog. They were going to institute a temporary parahuman warning on Brockton Bay. Piggot felt a little schadenfreude at the twist in 'temporary parahuman warning'. Typically the warnings were used to help non-parahumans stay away from dangerous places. In this case the warning was for parahumans to stay away. Not that Piggot expected many to heed the warning. She felt she was completely justified in the grin of anticipation the thought brought to her lips. Piggot was pulled out her pleasant musings by a brisk knock on the door. "Enter." She barked.
Miss Militia opened the door. "You wished to see me Director?"
"Yes," Piggot refused to use the other woman's frankly ridiculous name any more than necessary. "Due to recent events Watchdog has decided to implement a temporary parahuman warning on Brockton Bay. As part of that I'd like you to make an official statement for it on your official PHO account."
"Recent events? I'm not familiar with those events, Director."
"Of course. The recent nightmares about being consumed by a girl who is also a hive of insects."
Miss Militia's dark skin paled. "You mean, it's not just me?"
~Omake~
Piggot heaved a disgruntled sigh as she tossed the latest report on her already full desk. PHO had been the source of much information, as it often was when the criminal underbelly of Brockton Bay wished to pass information off to the PRT. All capes in the E88, ABB, Faultline's Crew, Uber and Leet, the Undersiders, New Wave, the Wards and, from what some daring undercover detectives had discovers, the Merchants were affected by this phenomenon. Hell, the only reason why the Protectorate was exempt was Miss Militia. Every single cape in the entirety of Brockton Bay was reporting nightmares.
At first it was just the odd moment of nightmare, the disquieting kind that didn't make sense and left one groggy and confused upon forcibly waking themselves up. It started simple enough, they were on their way to meet someone. Someone important. They knew they had been waiting a long time for this meeting and were excited it was finally happening. Then the dream shifted, without reason as dreams do, and the someone they were meeting was pulling them towards a place they dare not go. A place the person they were meeting lived. They tried to resist, but it was futile. An inexorable gravity compelled them.
There, at the place they should not go, stood a girl. Tall, shadowed in bugs and full of teeth. The girl leaned in to grab them, or perhaps to hug them, and began devouring them alive. One sharp bite at a time. They tried to run, to fight, and then they just gave up. Let themselves be consumed by the hungry girl, or perhaps the hungry bugs. They were never quite sure at this point. All they could do was call a warning to any others who looked their way. The hive is hungry.
Piggot wasn't sure what to make of this. More worrying, neither was Watchdog. They were going to institute a temporary parahuman warning on Brockton Bay. Piggot felt a little schadenfreude at the twist in 'temporary parahuman warning'. Typically the warnings were used to help non-parahumans stay away from dangerous places. In this case the warning was for parahumans to stay away. Not that Piggot expected many to heed the warning. She felt she was completely justified in the grin of anticipation the thought brought to her lips. Piggot was pulled out her pleasant musings by a brisk knock on the door. "Enter." She barked.
Miss Militia opened the door. "You wished to see me Director?"
"Yes," Piggot refused to use the other woman's frankly ridiculous name any more than necessary. "Due to recent events Watchdog has decided to implement a temporary parahuman warning on Brockton Bay. As part of that I'd like you to make an official statement for it on your official PHO account."
"Recent events? I'm not familiar with those events, Director."
"Of course. The recent nightmares about being consumed by a girl who is also a hive of insects."
Miss Militia's dark skin paled. "You mean, it's not just me?"
Why it’s “Eat Shard?” and not “Drink Shard?” (CmptrWz)
Taylor had been brought to a secure room for a test the PRT had insisted on, Armsmaster looking annoyed as he brought her in. Apparently someone had decided to pull rank and order a different kind of test than the tinker had originally planned for the day. The room had a number of cameras arrayed around it, with a single chair in the middle of them all. On said chair was a metal cylinder.
Armsmaster gestured to the chair. "If you don't have any objections, we'd like you to sit down and drink the contents of the canister. I'm told that the worst thing that is likely to happen is that you gain some form of brute enhancement."
Taylor looked at Armsmaster, then back at the canister. "Seriously?"
"It isn't my first choice, but yes. I don't know where they got the thing, and I'd rather be trying to figure out how it works, but it isn't my call."
Taylor decided to check with Hive. "What do you think?"
It took a moment, but Hive responded. "I will carefully monitor and have sufficient information to reverse any problems this may cause."
Deciding that she might as well get whatever this test was over with, Taylor picked the canister up before sitting down in the chair. Armsmaster backed out of the room and closed the door without saying anything, though he would likely be monitoring from the various cameras. The canister contained a vial, which was easily opened. Frowning at the smell, Taylor downed it before she could change her mind. A moment later she was in pain and seeing something that made no sense, before suddenly she was in the mental interface again.
"My Lord," Hive said, its voice coming from the necklace. "Several Shard Devices just tried to directly modify your body and brain to force a connection to you. The methods used are unsafe, so I have resorted to assimilating them. I apologize, but this may take several hours."
Taylor sighed. "That figures. Hopefully you'll learn something from them."
"I would like permission to construct additional storage areas. My current storage will be insufficient."
"Go for it."
Brockton Bay was once again in the national news as another 'funnel' of crystalline something had appeared, flowing down into the PRT building this time. Unlike the previous time, this time there were multiple 'flows' within the funnel, each traveling at a different pace. Also unlike the previous time, this time the PRT was able to see exactly where the funnel terminated. Their cameras clearly showed that the very base of the 'funnel' effect was the necklace around Miss Hebert's neck.
There was speculation about the connection between what was happening in Brockton Bay and events happening elsewhere. Nine different parahumans in various parts of the country had also collapsed, their powers apparently having shut down entirely. Two of those were Case 53s, and it appeared that they were reverting to baseline human. How these events could be connected wasn't clear, but it was interesting that they were happening at the same time.
The group known as Cauldron had additional information. They were, after all, able to see where the crystalline substance was originating. A number of others in their care had also collapsed and, in the case of those with mutations, started reverting to human. What they hadn't expected was for every source mixed into that vial to be 'consumed', including all of their best stabilizers. They were, as a result, in a panic state.
Taylor was bored. She'd been in the mental interface for going on sixteen hours at this point, and only Hive running the field healing systems was keeping her from having physical problems. The various 'Shard Devices' that Hive was processing were each being turned into an individual 'hybrid' device, though none of them would be 'unison hybrid devices'. This was being done mainly because Hive didn't want to tax the current power systems, and building new devices was the easiest way out.
It would probably be another six to ten hours before the entire process was completed, after which she was going to be starving. But Hive thought that a lot of the data it was getting from the 'unrestricted' devices would be useful going forward, so that was nice. With any luck this would be the last time this kind of thing happened, though, because it was a pain in the ass being stuck with nothing to do because Hive needed all the processing power it could use to get this done quickly.
It was a little over twenty-six hours after downing the vial and the funnel had finally vanished. Miss Hebert had been very thoroughly examined and found to still show no signs of being a parahuman, though she was unusually healthy after her twenty-six hour ordeal. The necklace she wore was also just as impossible to remove as it had been, but at least they now knew something about what it did. Who had produced tinkertech that prevented someone from gaining parahuman powers by absorbing whatever it was that granted them was still unknown, but most interest in actually examining the thing had dried up.
Most parahumans didn't want to lose their powers to something that ate them, after all.
Armsmaster gestured to the chair. "If you don't have any objections, we'd like you to sit down and drink the contents of the canister. I'm told that the worst thing that is likely to happen is that you gain some form of brute enhancement."
Taylor looked at Armsmaster, then back at the canister. "Seriously?"
"It isn't my first choice, but yes. I don't know where they got the thing, and I'd rather be trying to figure out how it works, but it isn't my call."
Taylor decided to check with Hive. "What do you think?"
It took a moment, but Hive responded. "I will carefully monitor and have sufficient information to reverse any problems this may cause."
Deciding that she might as well get whatever this test was over with, Taylor picked the canister up before sitting down in the chair. Armsmaster backed out of the room and closed the door without saying anything, though he would likely be monitoring from the various cameras. The canister contained a vial, which was easily opened. Frowning at the smell, Taylor downed it before she could change her mind. A moment later she was in pain and seeing something that made no sense, before suddenly she was in the mental interface again.
"My Lord," Hive said, its voice coming from the necklace. "Several Shard Devices just tried to directly modify your body and brain to force a connection to you. The methods used are unsafe, so I have resorted to assimilating them. I apologize, but this may take several hours."
Taylor sighed. "That figures. Hopefully you'll learn something from them."
"I would like permission to construct additional storage areas. My current storage will be insufficient."
"Go for it."
Brockton Bay was once again in the national news as another 'funnel' of crystalline something had appeared, flowing down into the PRT building this time. Unlike the previous time, this time there were multiple 'flows' within the funnel, each traveling at a different pace. Also unlike the previous time, this time the PRT was able to see exactly where the funnel terminated. Their cameras clearly showed that the very base of the 'funnel' effect was the necklace around Miss Hebert's neck.
There was speculation about the connection between what was happening in Brockton Bay and events happening elsewhere. Nine different parahumans in various parts of the country had also collapsed, their powers apparently having shut down entirely. Two of those were Case 53s, and it appeared that they were reverting to baseline human. How these events could be connected wasn't clear, but it was interesting that they were happening at the same time.
The group known as Cauldron had additional information. They were, after all, able to see where the crystalline substance was originating. A number of others in their care had also collapsed and, in the case of those with mutations, started reverting to human. What they hadn't expected was for every source mixed into that vial to be 'consumed', including all of their best stabilizers. They were, as a result, in a panic state.
Taylor was bored. She'd been in the mental interface for going on sixteen hours at this point, and only Hive running the field healing systems was keeping her from having physical problems. The various 'Shard Devices' that Hive was processing were each being turned into an individual 'hybrid' device, though none of them would be 'unison hybrid devices'. This was being done mainly because Hive didn't want to tax the current power systems, and building new devices was the easiest way out.
It would probably be another six to ten hours before the entire process was completed, after which she was going to be starving. But Hive thought that a lot of the data it was getting from the 'unrestricted' devices would be useful going forward, so that was nice. With any luck this would be the last time this kind of thing happened, though, because it was a pain in the ass being stuck with nothing to do because Hive needed all the processing power it could use to get this done quickly.
It was a little over twenty-six hours after downing the vial and the funnel had finally vanished. Miss Hebert had been very thoroughly examined and found to still show no signs of being a parahuman, though she was unusually healthy after her twenty-six hour ordeal. The necklace she wore was also just as impossible to remove as it had been, but at least they now knew something about what it did. Who had produced tinkertech that prevented someone from gaining parahuman powers by absorbing whatever it was that granted them was still unknown, but most interest in actually examining the thing had dried up.
Most parahumans didn't want to lose their powers to something that ate them, after all.
Chapter 2 - January 5, 2011
Taylor woke up feeling well rested physically, but a little fatigued mentally. Then again, she'd spent all night learning things from Hive, so perhaps that was to be expected. She'd have to not do that every night, but since she was in the hospital with nothing better to do for now it probably wasn't an issue. Instead she focused on her immediate needs for the day, such as calling the nurse so that she could be detached from monitoring without causing a panic before visiting the toilet. That didn't take long, and the nurse even let her walk over without hovering in case she fell today.
She was healthy enough for them to seat her in a chair for breakfast, giving the nurse the opportunity to change the sheets on the bed while she ate. Once both tasks were done they brought Taylor to a shower and had her clean up, luckily trusting her enough that they didn't insist on having the nurse in the shower with her, even if said nurse was nearby 'just in case' anyway. Taylor was thankful for the privacy and oddly appreciative of the potential help, if she'd needed it anyway, even if it was just 'standard procedure'. Though when she was done she found that they'd provided her with a clean hospital gown and booties in the process.
Eventually she found herself back in her bed with a plastic pitcher full of water and a plastic cup on the table next to her. The glasses she hadn't needed since she'd woken up in the hospital were sitting next to the pitcher of water, and she'd turned the television on to the morning news. She'd like to start practicing casting spells, but she honestly didn't think that doing so in the hospital was a good idea. She also expected her father to show up at a minimum, so until she knew she wasn't going to be disturbed for a bit she'd catch up on the world instead.
She'd turned on the television in the middle of the weather report. Apparently it was going to be cold and uncomfortable today, good to know if she decided to go out. Rolling her eyes at her own joke, she waited for them to get to something interesting. It took almost ten minutes for them to get to recent events in Brockton Bay, starting with a quick rehash of what she already knew from the previous day's news. Sadly, they didn't have much new information. Then again, it wasn't like she could expect a lot to have happened overnight.
She was interrupted during this by a doctor coming in and running a few tests on her, ensuring that she was recovering fine or wasn't backsliding or something like that. She thought it was likely that they weren't actually sure what they were looking for, but didn't say that. The tests didn't take long, and the doctor seemed happy with the results, so she left it at that. The news had been left on in the background and covered very little of interest during this whole process, leaving her bored while she waited for her father.
Deciding to get something she could hopefully do fully discreetly done, she left the news on as background noise and focused on the basics for communicating by sending mana outward. It was supposed to be nearly-instinctive on some level, but she hadn't grown up with some of these abilities so it was entirely possible that didn't apply to her. What little of the equations existed were straightforward enough, and didn't even appear to fit into the 'system' that the spells she'd learned had. Things got slightly more complicated if you were targeting specific people or devices, of course, but she'd need practice with sensing mana signatures before she'd be doing that at any kind of range without assistance.
She was going to have to hope that she and Hive weren't the only mana signatures available for that side of things, even if it seemed likely that they were right now.
Eventually she determined that she'd mentally reviewed things enough and concentrated. She formed her message, then 'pushed' lightly towards Hive around her neck. "Testing, one, two, three."
There was a pause before she felt a pulse of mana from Hive. It 'decoded' pretty much automatically, requiring no effort at all to understand. "Test successful."
Taylor smirked, then formed and sent her next message. "This is easier than I thought it would be."
"Range is a factor. My limited records indicate that at this range such communication could very well be accidental."
Well, that made her feel far less accomplished. Still, she worked at bouncing messages back and forth with Hive for a bit, slowly working through reducing the amount of concentration it took to send one. Very slowly, that was probably going to be a week or two of work to get to the point where she could do it without needing to think hard about it. She stopped practicing when her father arrived.
"Hey there," he said as he sat down. "Feeling okay?"
Taylor nodded. "No complaints on that side of things, though I'm a bit bored. But that's a normal complaint for those stuck in the hospital, as far as I understand it."
He chuckled lightly at that. "It is indeed. Provided that nothing concerning comes up today they're thinking that they'll let you out of here tomorrow. Apparently they were expecting you to have more problems than you've had."
She smiled at that. "It'll be nice to be in my own bed, at least." Not to mention not have to deal with the stupid heart monitor beeping.
"I've also gotten a surprising offer, and took so long getting here today because of it. Carol Dallon volunteered to work with us on the legal side of things, for free. I think she knows something that I don't about the whole situation, but I have no clue what that something is. From the way she was talking it would have to be something to do with the PRT, but my best guess would be that they lost your necklace before it ended up around your neck and that doesn't mesh with how Armsmaster reacted to it. But whatever it is, it seems to have riled her up, so I'm considering accepting her offer. It would certainly keep the costs down."
Well, that wasn't something that she'd been expecting, but she supposed it did make some sense. Though she wondered what the something that Mrs. Dallon knew or suspected was, since from what she knew Hive had very much not come from the PRT or Protectorate. Then again, there were all kinds of things that could, in theory, be involved there. For example, they could have had Hive for study for a bit at some point and Armsmaster just didn't know, given that before things had happened the device hadn't been able to keep proper logs. Not that it would've looked the way it currently did in that case.
Whatever it was, it wasn't something she was going to be figuring out right now, so it wasn't important. Instead she nodded in semi-agreement. "I can see how that would help."
Her father nodded, then gestured to the television. "So, listening to the television?"
"Somewhat. There's nothing all that interesting on."
He reached over and picked up her glasses. "Surely it would be at least a little more interesting if you put your glasses on? Or did you miss them behind the pitcher of water?"
Taylor grinned. "Haven't actually needed those. Don't know if it was Panacea or not, but my eyesight seems to be fine without them now."
He looked down at the glasses, then up at Taylor. "Huh. Okay then. Not quite what I thought would happen when I was warned that you'd probably need to visit the optometrist. I think we'll still do that, by the way, just in case you just aren't aware that there are still problems."
"That makes sense."
They fell into an awkward silence at that point, neither of them knowing what more to talk about. Or perhaps how to bring up topics, or how to get past various feelings. Taylor suspected it was a combination of all of the above, and she was already starting to feel a little guilty about not telling him more about Hive. But she already knew that he'd be likely to want her to try and join the Wards, and she suspected that there was just as much teenage drama there as there was in school, if not more. She wanted nothing to do with that, especially not before she'd gotten started with properly working with Hive.
It took nearly an hour before her father decided to leave, since he wasn't accomplishing anything sitting there. He made his excuses and left, assuring her that he'd be back first thing in the morning with proper clothing for her. As soon as he left the nurse checked in on her, and after finding that she didn't need anything left her alone.
Thinking about things, she suspected that she had at least an hour or two before anyone would bother her, so it was probably not a horrible time to try turning on the whole 'control insects' thing to see how she handled it. Though she did wonder about the as of yet undefined range, and decided to start there. "So, er, what exactly is the range on the whole insect control thing? I just know it has one, not what it is."
There was a pause as Hive obviously worked on figuring out how to answer that. "Limitations on functional control from the storage pockets coupled with energy restrictions put the maximum range at approximately one thousand, four hundred feet, though that may vary with local conditions."
"Okay, I guess. No time like the present to try turning that on, I guess."
Taylor closed her eyes and a moment later her awareness grew. She could suddenly tell where every insect around her was, what they were doing, and what they were sensing. It was far, far too much information and she wasn't prepared for it at all, resulting in her losing herself to the flow.
Exactly thirty minutes later the information stopped, startling her with the sudden lack of it. She jerked forward a little, suddenly breathing more deeply, but it wasn't enough to cause anyone to take notice of her. It took an additional fifteen minutes before she'd recovered well enough from the loss of the sensations to feel like she was back in control of herself.
She poured and drank a glass of water as she thought about what she'd just gone through. It seemed like it could be incredibly useful in the long term, even if it was somewhat useless right now. Which meant she'd need to figure out how to function like that. Well, thinking back, Hive had said that the range was the maximum...
"Hive, can the range be dialed back a little, to ease me into things?"
"Affirmative, Lord. Range reduction is trivial."
"Then before I forget, let's dial the range back to a third of maximum for the next time I try that."
"It is done."
Nodding, she decided that she needed to do something mindless for a bit, and grabbed the remote to channel surf. Surely something just interesting enough to keep her attention but not complicated enough to require thinking was on.
Lunch had come and gone without any issues, followed by some more tests from the doctors that hadn't revealed any problems. After that dinner had come and gone. The nurses had even turned down the volume on the heart monitor when she'd asked about it that evening, and that coupled with asking Hive to hold off on working on equations while she slept meant that she slept far better than she had the night before. It wouldn't do to have anyone think that she needed to stay another night or two because she was overtaxing herself mentally, after all.
As promised, her father had been there first thing in the morning and had brought clothing for her, but she was given breakfast and had to pass a battery of tests from the doctors before she was left alone long enough to get dressed. At that point she frowned when she realized that the shoes were an older pair, at least until she recalled where her good pair had last been and had to push down the panic attack before it got started.
Taylor was a little surprised when instead of going straight home they headed for the department store. Not that she'd noticed right away, not having been paying a lot of attention, but when they pulled into the parking lot she'd turned to her father. "I thought we were going home?"
He sighed as he looked for a parking spot. "You need some new things at a minimum, and I figure it's best to get that out of the way now before we forget."
They parked and headed into the building, her father leading her to the backpacks first. It didn't take long for her to pick out a new one, though her father insisted that she not cheap out and get the least expensive option before she'd even had time to try and figure that out. She ended up with one that was a little larger than her previous bag, with tough-seeming fabric and metal zippers that had loops for a lock on the sliders. That chosen, they then moved to the shoe department, where her father insisted on getting her two new pairs of shoes.
It took longer than with the backpacks, because she had to try things on, but she eventually found a pair of running shoes she liked as well as more generic sneakers. They didn't actually have two pairs of either available in her size either, as they'd both been on the discount rack. Sadly, that probably meant that the styles were discontinued and she wouldn't be able to get more later, but her father didn't complain when they'd come from there. After all, she'd been unhappy with the fit of most of the non-discounted pairs she'd tried first.
Her father paid for the bag and shoes with a gift card, though she didn't ask where he'd gotten it, and then took her straight to the optometrist there in the store to have her eyes checked. The exam was free, and it turned out that her vision was slightly better than normal. Both of them grinned at that, and then her father bought her some decent non-prescription sunglasses anyway. She thought it was because he'd planned on buying her new glasses and was stubborn enough to do so even though she didn't need them. Or it could've been because he used that gift card again, if someone else was expecting him to get her new glasses?
The trip home from there didn't take long, though she paid enough attention this time to know that they were heading home. They pulled into the driveway and she grabbed the shopping bags before her father could, causing him to shake his head. But he stopped her just after they entered the house itself.
"I'm sorry," he said, causing her to wonder what he was apologizing for. "I let a couple of people from the PRT search your room to look for the combination for your lock. They left a little bit of a mess, and took your bullying journal as evidence regarding what happened."
Taylor looked away from him at that. "Oh."
"I'd tell you that you should've come to me about it all, but I haven't exactly been doing well myself. I should have noticed, and looking back I think I can see some of the signs I missed. For example, I'm only just now realizing that you and Emma stopped visiting each other, and that's...yeah."
Taylor didn't know what to say to that, and her father didn't seem to know what to say either. Instead he waved her towards the stairs, allowing her to go see the mess for herself. She did so, thankful for the excuse to avoid any number of conversations that they should probably be having. When she made it upstairs she found that things weren't as bad as she'd feared.
That evening Taylor decided that her father was being very annoying. She was home, and in theory should have more privacy to work on things with Hive. In practice her father was hovering, giving her less privacy than she'd had at the hospital. Granted, Hive was working on things while she wasn't doing much, but it was still aggravating. She wanted to try and start casting spells, even if she was going to be doing things the 'hard' way due to the 'unison' system being offline.
Ideally, she wanted to be able to cast the basics without leaning on Hive, to the best of her ability, just because that would then give her an ability that would be difficult to take from her. Hive thought that was prudent, and pointed out that it was fairly certain that devices were occasionally separated from their owners/Lords/whatever as a means of control. Plus if the Unison system was ever repaired it would make them even more effective as an added bonus.
Sighing to herself after her father's latest checkup, which doubled as a reminder that dinner would be ready soon, she wondered what Hive might have retained regarding others with 'Unison Devices'. It was fairly likely that she had the first 'Hybrid Unison/Shard Device' ever, of course.
Focusing on her question, which was noticeably easier than it had been but still required concentration, she sent it to Hive. "So, do you recall anything about your previous Lords, or others that used unison devices?"
She could feel that Hive was working on an answer, and left it to it. That continued throughout an awkwardly silent dinner and into the evening. She'd just given up on the news having anything worth saying and returned to her room when Hive finally answered.
"Data on previous Lords is fragmented, both my own and others. I do not believe I had significant interaction with others due to being experimental when I was damaged. Seven of the nine Lords in my records used a non-Unison Device to aid them, in Unison or otherwise. The last two may have done so as well, but my records are incomplete. I do not know which of the nine were my own Lords, if any of them were."
That was interesting. And of course she only had Hive right now. "I don't suppose there's any chance that you know how to build non-unison devices?"
"Basic device construction is possible with my existing data banks and available resources through repurposing of internal repair systems, but specific blueprints are not available. Experimentation and simulation will be required."
"Okay. Probably best to figure out the scanning stuff first, then work on that."
"Agreed."
"Anything else?"
"All known Lords appear to have kept themselves in good physical shape. This is presumably because battle can be taxing."
Crap. She was going to have to start an exercise routine, despite having access to what appeared to be literal magic. Well, at least she had running shoes already...
Four days later Taylor finally got a break from her father's hovering. It was Monday morning and he couldn't take more time off of work, so he was leaving her home alone with instructions to call him at work if anything happened. The past few days had been horribly annoying on that front. Yes, they'd learned that Winslow was officially closed for the rest of the school year, but they hadn't figured out what to do with the students yet. Mrs. Dallon had come over and talked over things with them, or more generally Danny while Taylor was in the room, but seemed to be annoyed at not being able to say certain things yet. And Taylor had worked with Hive for a couple of nights on acclimating to the insect control and sensing ability as well as learning the math that made up spells and on the limits of Knight Armor design.
On the latter, the important detail seemed to be a complete lack of limits. You could make a Knight Armor take forms that shouldn't be possible for normal clothing to take, and it didn't seem to matter if it looked like a thong and pasties or a full nun's habit, it would protect you just the same. Which meant that she could, as an example, just take whatever she was wearing on any given day and replace with Knight Armor that looked exactly like what she'd been wearing. Minus things that she'd want to take off later, of course.
The hard part there would doing so in a manner that didn't have people unable to interact with her. That is, having minimal barriers in the mix instead of the full set. She'd want to design a full design at some point, of course, but the 'limited' variant should be easier to cast as well. Also, there was apparently likely to be a bit of a 'flash' when she activated the thing, so she wanted to do so away from windows, since they didn't have drapes that blocked enough light. She'd already considered and rejected using her closet for the initial tests for reasons she was not thinking about.
Thus, once she was certain her father wouldn't be turning around and coming straight home, Taylor made her way into the basement. Yes, it had a couple of small windows, but they were filthy and barely let any light in, so it shouldn't be as noticeable as elsewhere in the house. Even the bathroom had a window that could catch a neighbor's attention if lights were flashing from it. Still, as an added precaution she took some boxes and jammed them in the windows to further block any light. She was hoping that the light didn't ignore solid objects, but that was another reason to be in the basement. Hopefully if it did ignore solid objects then she'd be far enough from outside for it to not be noticable either.
Thus prepared, Taylor checked with Hive to see if it approved of her modification to things. "So, do you think the modification to the Knight Armor spell to scan the clothing it's storing will function properly?"
"It passes all simulation checks, though complicates the initial setup slightly. Though I've checked, and I believe the 'Knight Clothing' spell is essentially a pared-down variant of the 'Knight Armor' spell, possibly specifically for situations like this. I only found two references to the spell, neither complete, so I can't be certain."
"So I should probably consider this to be the first attempt at casting 'Knight Clothing'? Works for me."
Focusing on the equations, Taylor carefully fed mana into the spell. It didn't take long before it hit the critical point and the spell cast, bathing the area in a muted flash of light, one that left momentary spots in her eyes. She'd skipped the entire 'summon anchoring pattern and run a sequence' for this version, as she wasn't layering enough protections to need it and was hoping she could get it to be much more subtle later. Still, she grinned as she could feel the trickle of mana powering the jacket, then looked down and gagged. Somehow she'd ended up in eye-watering tie-dye clothing, had shoes on her hands and feet, and appeared to be wearing a shirt instead of pants.
"I think I screwed something up," she mumbled.
"Indeed," Hive answered, audibly since Taylor had actually spoken aloud. "I believe you misplaced an exponent in the scanning routine."
Frowning, Taylor canceled the spell, glad that her original clothing reappeared properly. At least she hadn't screwed that up, though she was wearing older clothing just in case something did go wrong there. She then focused on the equations again, trying to find where she'd made the mistake. It took a few minutes, but she finally spotted where she thought she'd made the mistake. She shifted a couple of things around, then tried again.
This time it was obvious that she'd done something wrong, because she couldn't see due to something covering her face. Growling, she canceled the spell.
It took a moment, but Hive chimed in. "I believe you reversed the scan that time."
Taylor snarled. "I noticed." She then examined the equations again, spotted where she felt she'd gone wrong this time, and very carefully checked over that entire section. Double-checking everything once more, she cast the spell again. This time she could still see, which was good, but when she looked down she appeared to be naked. She bit back a scream as she canceled the spell and her original clothing came back.
"Would you like me to send you the completed equation again? You appear to have multiple mistakes in the dynamic templating system."
Sighing, Taylor nodded. "I think you'd better."
By the end of the day Taylor was able to properly deploy her Knight Clothing every third or so attempt, which was a significant improvement over her morning. She'd ended up sitting down at lunch and coming up with a 'basic' template that wasn't scanning her current clothing, at least as a stop-gap in case she needed the protection before she'd gotten the thing down. Basic sneakers, jeans, and a hoodie. That she could deploy easily enough, because the spell expected a static template. But wearing the same thing every day would probably draw attention, if only from her father, so she wanted to get the other variant down completely. She just had to work with Hive to figure out why the dynamic template wasn't working reliably, and whether or not it was actually a problem with her casting.
Sadly, she'd had to stop for the day, because her father was due home soon. So instead she'd retreated to her room in normal non-magical clothing and was considering 'costume' choices. The Knight Armor spell was, as far as they could tell from what remained of Hive's memory, normally used to deploy something surprisingly similar to Earth's knights of old in several respects. She wasn't sure that she wanted to go with that kind of appearance, but it would make sense on a number of levels and could prevent issues with discrepancies between her actual size due to the protective layers and her apparent size due to the appearance component. Because of course she was going to cram as many protective layers in as she could in that case.
It wasn't until after dinner that she questioned why she was working to design what amounted to an incredibly protective costume. Yes, the spell was there, and it would be nice to be able to use the full version, but what would she do with it? She didn't see herself going out and fighting crime. The low-level version was because she lived in Brockton Bay, where protection was always welcome, and because she'd basically been told that she shouldn't be playing with flight or dimensional transferences until she had protection.
She spent over two hours debating things with herself, before eventually deciding that she still had some desire to be a hero. On her own terms, granted, but she wanted to be a hero. And it would be far easier to be a hero if she was well protected from possible harm, hence the high-level Knight Armor protection. Of course, that would the first step. Then she needed to learn to take advantage of her potential for high-level movement. Dimensional Transference seemed like the kind of thing that would let her find a safe place to play with blaster abilities, supposedly useful for popping around planets just as much as it was useful for popping between planets.
The insect controlling bit she figured would be incredibly useful for recon, distractions, and keeping the house free of pests. She wasn't entirely sure what else to use it for yet, though she figured she'd have more ideas if it was the only thing Hive let her do. As it was, she was splitting her planning and focus across multiple facets of what the hybrid device could do, and that was the least immediately useful ability. That and it was the hardest to train with, she kept getting lost in the sensations even with the smaller range.
Flight, unlike the rest of the bag of tricks, she just wanted to be able to do. And once she could it was probably going to be hard to hold back from using that particular skill, in or out of 'costume' as it were. She'd heard stories of Glory Girl flying in the halls of Arcadia and getting in trouble for it, so it obviously wasn't a desire or issue limited to her. Sadly, unless she revealed things then she wasn't going to be able to safely fly out of a costume. Which was probably another good reason to make up a full, identity-concealing Knight Armor. She wouldn't be able to safely fly on Bet without one.
Sighing, she got off of her bed and made her way to the bathroom. She needed to brush her teeth, use the toilet, and get ready to go to bed. It didn't take long to take care of all of that, at which point she shut off the lights, crawled under the covers, and had Hive start up an hour of insect control. She lasted almost two minutes before losing herself to the information overload this time, and wouldn't succeed in regaining herself before the hour was up. That was still a significant improvement over losing herself immediately, but she wasn't able to think much on it before sleep claimed her.
Hive had even determined that she'd need restful sleep, and had paused working on figuring out scanning equations in massively parallel operations for the evening. They'd figure them out eventually, since they knew they were possible, and a few hours break from working on the task so that Taylor could rest properly wasn't going to be a major problem in figuring things out.
She was healthy enough for them to seat her in a chair for breakfast, giving the nurse the opportunity to change the sheets on the bed while she ate. Once both tasks were done they brought Taylor to a shower and had her clean up, luckily trusting her enough that they didn't insist on having the nurse in the shower with her, even if said nurse was nearby 'just in case' anyway. Taylor was thankful for the privacy and oddly appreciative of the potential help, if she'd needed it anyway, even if it was just 'standard procedure'. Though when she was done she found that they'd provided her with a clean hospital gown and booties in the process.
Eventually she found herself back in her bed with a plastic pitcher full of water and a plastic cup on the table next to her. The glasses she hadn't needed since she'd woken up in the hospital were sitting next to the pitcher of water, and she'd turned the television on to the morning news. She'd like to start practicing casting spells, but she honestly didn't think that doing so in the hospital was a good idea. She also expected her father to show up at a minimum, so until she knew she wasn't going to be disturbed for a bit she'd catch up on the world instead.
She'd turned on the television in the middle of the weather report. Apparently it was going to be cold and uncomfortable today, good to know if she decided to go out. Rolling her eyes at her own joke, she waited for them to get to something interesting. It took almost ten minutes for them to get to recent events in Brockton Bay, starting with a quick rehash of what she already knew from the previous day's news. Sadly, they didn't have much new information. Then again, it wasn't like she could expect a lot to have happened overnight.
She was interrupted during this by a doctor coming in and running a few tests on her, ensuring that she was recovering fine or wasn't backsliding or something like that. She thought it was likely that they weren't actually sure what they were looking for, but didn't say that. The tests didn't take long, and the doctor seemed happy with the results, so she left it at that. The news had been left on in the background and covered very little of interest during this whole process, leaving her bored while she waited for her father.
Deciding to get something she could hopefully do fully discreetly done, she left the news on as background noise and focused on the basics for communicating by sending mana outward. It was supposed to be nearly-instinctive on some level, but she hadn't grown up with some of these abilities so it was entirely possible that didn't apply to her. What little of the equations existed were straightforward enough, and didn't even appear to fit into the 'system' that the spells she'd learned had. Things got slightly more complicated if you were targeting specific people or devices, of course, but she'd need practice with sensing mana signatures before she'd be doing that at any kind of range without assistance.
She was going to have to hope that she and Hive weren't the only mana signatures available for that side of things, even if it seemed likely that they were right now.
Eventually she determined that she'd mentally reviewed things enough and concentrated. She formed her message, then 'pushed' lightly towards Hive around her neck. "Testing, one, two, three."
There was a pause before she felt a pulse of mana from Hive. It 'decoded' pretty much automatically, requiring no effort at all to understand. "Test successful."
Taylor smirked, then formed and sent her next message. "This is easier than I thought it would be."
"Range is a factor. My limited records indicate that at this range such communication could very well be accidental."
Well, that made her feel far less accomplished. Still, she worked at bouncing messages back and forth with Hive for a bit, slowly working through reducing the amount of concentration it took to send one. Very slowly, that was probably going to be a week or two of work to get to the point where she could do it without needing to think hard about it. She stopped practicing when her father arrived.
"Hey there," he said as he sat down. "Feeling okay?"
Taylor nodded. "No complaints on that side of things, though I'm a bit bored. But that's a normal complaint for those stuck in the hospital, as far as I understand it."
He chuckled lightly at that. "It is indeed. Provided that nothing concerning comes up today they're thinking that they'll let you out of here tomorrow. Apparently they were expecting you to have more problems than you've had."
She smiled at that. "It'll be nice to be in my own bed, at least." Not to mention not have to deal with the stupid heart monitor beeping.
"I've also gotten a surprising offer, and took so long getting here today because of it. Carol Dallon volunteered to work with us on the legal side of things, for free. I think she knows something that I don't about the whole situation, but I have no clue what that something is. From the way she was talking it would have to be something to do with the PRT, but my best guess would be that they lost your necklace before it ended up around your neck and that doesn't mesh with how Armsmaster reacted to it. But whatever it is, it seems to have riled her up, so I'm considering accepting her offer. It would certainly keep the costs down."
Well, that wasn't something that she'd been expecting, but she supposed it did make some sense. Though she wondered what the something that Mrs. Dallon knew or suspected was, since from what she knew Hive had very much not come from the PRT or Protectorate. Then again, there were all kinds of things that could, in theory, be involved there. For example, they could have had Hive for study for a bit at some point and Armsmaster just didn't know, given that before things had happened the device hadn't been able to keep proper logs. Not that it would've looked the way it currently did in that case.
Whatever it was, it wasn't something she was going to be figuring out right now, so it wasn't important. Instead she nodded in semi-agreement. "I can see how that would help."
Her father nodded, then gestured to the television. "So, listening to the television?"
"Somewhat. There's nothing all that interesting on."
He reached over and picked up her glasses. "Surely it would be at least a little more interesting if you put your glasses on? Or did you miss them behind the pitcher of water?"
Taylor grinned. "Haven't actually needed those. Don't know if it was Panacea or not, but my eyesight seems to be fine without them now."
He looked down at the glasses, then up at Taylor. "Huh. Okay then. Not quite what I thought would happen when I was warned that you'd probably need to visit the optometrist. I think we'll still do that, by the way, just in case you just aren't aware that there are still problems."
"That makes sense."
They fell into an awkward silence at that point, neither of them knowing what more to talk about. Or perhaps how to bring up topics, or how to get past various feelings. Taylor suspected it was a combination of all of the above, and she was already starting to feel a little guilty about not telling him more about Hive. But she already knew that he'd be likely to want her to try and join the Wards, and she suspected that there was just as much teenage drama there as there was in school, if not more. She wanted nothing to do with that, especially not before she'd gotten started with properly working with Hive.
It took nearly an hour before her father decided to leave, since he wasn't accomplishing anything sitting there. He made his excuses and left, assuring her that he'd be back first thing in the morning with proper clothing for her. As soon as he left the nurse checked in on her, and after finding that she didn't need anything left her alone.
Thinking about things, she suspected that she had at least an hour or two before anyone would bother her, so it was probably not a horrible time to try turning on the whole 'control insects' thing to see how she handled it. Though she did wonder about the as of yet undefined range, and decided to start there. "So, er, what exactly is the range on the whole insect control thing? I just know it has one, not what it is."
There was a pause as Hive obviously worked on figuring out how to answer that. "Limitations on functional control from the storage pockets coupled with energy restrictions put the maximum range at approximately one thousand, four hundred feet, though that may vary with local conditions."
"Okay, I guess. No time like the present to try turning that on, I guess."
Taylor closed her eyes and a moment later her awareness grew. She could suddenly tell where every insect around her was, what they were doing, and what they were sensing. It was far, far too much information and she wasn't prepared for it at all, resulting in her losing herself to the flow.
Exactly thirty minutes later the information stopped, startling her with the sudden lack of it. She jerked forward a little, suddenly breathing more deeply, but it wasn't enough to cause anyone to take notice of her. It took an additional fifteen minutes before she'd recovered well enough from the loss of the sensations to feel like she was back in control of herself.
She poured and drank a glass of water as she thought about what she'd just gone through. It seemed like it could be incredibly useful in the long term, even if it was somewhat useless right now. Which meant she'd need to figure out how to function like that. Well, thinking back, Hive had said that the range was the maximum...
"Hive, can the range be dialed back a little, to ease me into things?"
"Affirmative, Lord. Range reduction is trivial."
"Then before I forget, let's dial the range back to a third of maximum for the next time I try that."
"It is done."
Nodding, she decided that she needed to do something mindless for a bit, and grabbed the remote to channel surf. Surely something just interesting enough to keep her attention but not complicated enough to require thinking was on.
Lunch had come and gone without any issues, followed by some more tests from the doctors that hadn't revealed any problems. After that dinner had come and gone. The nurses had even turned down the volume on the heart monitor when she'd asked about it that evening, and that coupled with asking Hive to hold off on working on equations while she slept meant that she slept far better than she had the night before. It wouldn't do to have anyone think that she needed to stay another night or two because she was overtaxing herself mentally, after all.
As promised, her father had been there first thing in the morning and had brought clothing for her, but she was given breakfast and had to pass a battery of tests from the doctors before she was left alone long enough to get dressed. At that point she frowned when she realized that the shoes were an older pair, at least until she recalled where her good pair had last been and had to push down the panic attack before it got started.
Taylor was a little surprised when instead of going straight home they headed for the department store. Not that she'd noticed right away, not having been paying a lot of attention, but when they pulled into the parking lot she'd turned to her father. "I thought we were going home?"
He sighed as he looked for a parking spot. "You need some new things at a minimum, and I figure it's best to get that out of the way now before we forget."
They parked and headed into the building, her father leading her to the backpacks first. It didn't take long for her to pick out a new one, though her father insisted that she not cheap out and get the least expensive option before she'd even had time to try and figure that out. She ended up with one that was a little larger than her previous bag, with tough-seeming fabric and metal zippers that had loops for a lock on the sliders. That chosen, they then moved to the shoe department, where her father insisted on getting her two new pairs of shoes.
It took longer than with the backpacks, because she had to try things on, but she eventually found a pair of running shoes she liked as well as more generic sneakers. They didn't actually have two pairs of either available in her size either, as they'd both been on the discount rack. Sadly, that probably meant that the styles were discontinued and she wouldn't be able to get more later, but her father didn't complain when they'd come from there. After all, she'd been unhappy with the fit of most of the non-discounted pairs she'd tried first.
Her father paid for the bag and shoes with a gift card, though she didn't ask where he'd gotten it, and then took her straight to the optometrist there in the store to have her eyes checked. The exam was free, and it turned out that her vision was slightly better than normal. Both of them grinned at that, and then her father bought her some decent non-prescription sunglasses anyway. She thought it was because he'd planned on buying her new glasses and was stubborn enough to do so even though she didn't need them. Or it could've been because he used that gift card again, if someone else was expecting him to get her new glasses?
The trip home from there didn't take long, though she paid enough attention this time to know that they were heading home. They pulled into the driveway and she grabbed the shopping bags before her father could, causing him to shake his head. But he stopped her just after they entered the house itself.
"I'm sorry," he said, causing her to wonder what he was apologizing for. "I let a couple of people from the PRT search your room to look for the combination for your lock. They left a little bit of a mess, and took your bullying journal as evidence regarding what happened."
Taylor looked away from him at that. "Oh."
"I'd tell you that you should've come to me about it all, but I haven't exactly been doing well myself. I should have noticed, and looking back I think I can see some of the signs I missed. For example, I'm only just now realizing that you and Emma stopped visiting each other, and that's...yeah."
Taylor didn't know what to say to that, and her father didn't seem to know what to say either. Instead he waved her towards the stairs, allowing her to go see the mess for herself. She did so, thankful for the excuse to avoid any number of conversations that they should probably be having. When she made it upstairs she found that things weren't as bad as she'd feared.
That evening Taylor decided that her father was being very annoying. She was home, and in theory should have more privacy to work on things with Hive. In practice her father was hovering, giving her less privacy than she'd had at the hospital. Granted, Hive was working on things while she wasn't doing much, but it was still aggravating. She wanted to try and start casting spells, even if she was going to be doing things the 'hard' way due to the 'unison' system being offline.
Ideally, she wanted to be able to cast the basics without leaning on Hive, to the best of her ability, just because that would then give her an ability that would be difficult to take from her. Hive thought that was prudent, and pointed out that it was fairly certain that devices were occasionally separated from their owners/Lords/whatever as a means of control. Plus if the Unison system was ever repaired it would make them even more effective as an added bonus.
Sighing to herself after her father's latest checkup, which doubled as a reminder that dinner would be ready soon, she wondered what Hive might have retained regarding others with 'Unison Devices'. It was fairly likely that she had the first 'Hybrid Unison/Shard Device' ever, of course.
Focusing on her question, which was noticeably easier than it had been but still required concentration, she sent it to Hive. "So, do you recall anything about your previous Lords, or others that used unison devices?"
She could feel that Hive was working on an answer, and left it to it. That continued throughout an awkwardly silent dinner and into the evening. She'd just given up on the news having anything worth saying and returned to her room when Hive finally answered.
"Data on previous Lords is fragmented, both my own and others. I do not believe I had significant interaction with others due to being experimental when I was damaged. Seven of the nine Lords in my records used a non-Unison Device to aid them, in Unison or otherwise. The last two may have done so as well, but my records are incomplete. I do not know which of the nine were my own Lords, if any of them were."
That was interesting. And of course she only had Hive right now. "I don't suppose there's any chance that you know how to build non-unison devices?"
"Basic device construction is possible with my existing data banks and available resources through repurposing of internal repair systems, but specific blueprints are not available. Experimentation and simulation will be required."
"Okay. Probably best to figure out the scanning stuff first, then work on that."
"Agreed."
"Anything else?"
"All known Lords appear to have kept themselves in good physical shape. This is presumably because battle can be taxing."
Crap. She was going to have to start an exercise routine, despite having access to what appeared to be literal magic. Well, at least she had running shoes already...
Four days later Taylor finally got a break from her father's hovering. It was Monday morning and he couldn't take more time off of work, so he was leaving her home alone with instructions to call him at work if anything happened. The past few days had been horribly annoying on that front. Yes, they'd learned that Winslow was officially closed for the rest of the school year, but they hadn't figured out what to do with the students yet. Mrs. Dallon had come over and talked over things with them, or more generally Danny while Taylor was in the room, but seemed to be annoyed at not being able to say certain things yet. And Taylor had worked with Hive for a couple of nights on acclimating to the insect control and sensing ability as well as learning the math that made up spells and on the limits of Knight Armor design.
On the latter, the important detail seemed to be a complete lack of limits. You could make a Knight Armor take forms that shouldn't be possible for normal clothing to take, and it didn't seem to matter if it looked like a thong and pasties or a full nun's habit, it would protect you just the same. Which meant that she could, as an example, just take whatever she was wearing on any given day and replace with Knight Armor that looked exactly like what she'd been wearing. Minus things that she'd want to take off later, of course.
The hard part there would doing so in a manner that didn't have people unable to interact with her. That is, having minimal barriers in the mix instead of the full set. She'd want to design a full design at some point, of course, but the 'limited' variant should be easier to cast as well. Also, there was apparently likely to be a bit of a 'flash' when she activated the thing, so she wanted to do so away from windows, since they didn't have drapes that blocked enough light. She'd already considered and rejected using her closet for the initial tests for reasons she was not thinking about.
Thus, once she was certain her father wouldn't be turning around and coming straight home, Taylor made her way into the basement. Yes, it had a couple of small windows, but they were filthy and barely let any light in, so it shouldn't be as noticeable as elsewhere in the house. Even the bathroom had a window that could catch a neighbor's attention if lights were flashing from it. Still, as an added precaution she took some boxes and jammed them in the windows to further block any light. She was hoping that the light didn't ignore solid objects, but that was another reason to be in the basement. Hopefully if it did ignore solid objects then she'd be far enough from outside for it to not be noticable either.
Thus prepared, Taylor checked with Hive to see if it approved of her modification to things. "So, do you think the modification to the Knight Armor spell to scan the clothing it's storing will function properly?"
"It passes all simulation checks, though complicates the initial setup slightly. Though I've checked, and I believe the 'Knight Clothing' spell is essentially a pared-down variant of the 'Knight Armor' spell, possibly specifically for situations like this. I only found two references to the spell, neither complete, so I can't be certain."
"So I should probably consider this to be the first attempt at casting 'Knight Clothing'? Works for me."
Focusing on the equations, Taylor carefully fed mana into the spell. It didn't take long before it hit the critical point and the spell cast, bathing the area in a muted flash of light, one that left momentary spots in her eyes. She'd skipped the entire 'summon anchoring pattern and run a sequence' for this version, as she wasn't layering enough protections to need it and was hoping she could get it to be much more subtle later. Still, she grinned as she could feel the trickle of mana powering the jacket, then looked down and gagged. Somehow she'd ended up in eye-watering tie-dye clothing, had shoes on her hands and feet, and appeared to be wearing a shirt instead of pants.
"I think I screwed something up," she mumbled.
"Indeed," Hive answered, audibly since Taylor had actually spoken aloud. "I believe you misplaced an exponent in the scanning routine."
Frowning, Taylor canceled the spell, glad that her original clothing reappeared properly. At least she hadn't screwed that up, though she was wearing older clothing just in case something did go wrong there. She then focused on the equations again, trying to find where she'd made the mistake. It took a few minutes, but she finally spotted where she thought she'd made the mistake. She shifted a couple of things around, then tried again.
This time it was obvious that she'd done something wrong, because she couldn't see due to something covering her face. Growling, she canceled the spell.
It took a moment, but Hive chimed in. "I believe you reversed the scan that time."
Taylor snarled. "I noticed." She then examined the equations again, spotted where she felt she'd gone wrong this time, and very carefully checked over that entire section. Double-checking everything once more, she cast the spell again. This time she could still see, which was good, but when she looked down she appeared to be naked. She bit back a scream as she canceled the spell and her original clothing came back.
"Would you like me to send you the completed equation again? You appear to have multiple mistakes in the dynamic templating system."
Sighing, Taylor nodded. "I think you'd better."
By the end of the day Taylor was able to properly deploy her Knight Clothing every third or so attempt, which was a significant improvement over her morning. She'd ended up sitting down at lunch and coming up with a 'basic' template that wasn't scanning her current clothing, at least as a stop-gap in case she needed the protection before she'd gotten the thing down. Basic sneakers, jeans, and a hoodie. That she could deploy easily enough, because the spell expected a static template. But wearing the same thing every day would probably draw attention, if only from her father, so she wanted to get the other variant down completely. She just had to work with Hive to figure out why the dynamic template wasn't working reliably, and whether or not it was actually a problem with her casting.
Sadly, she'd had to stop for the day, because her father was due home soon. So instead she'd retreated to her room in normal non-magical clothing and was considering 'costume' choices. The Knight Armor spell was, as far as they could tell from what remained of Hive's memory, normally used to deploy something surprisingly similar to Earth's knights of old in several respects. She wasn't sure that she wanted to go with that kind of appearance, but it would make sense on a number of levels and could prevent issues with discrepancies between her actual size due to the protective layers and her apparent size due to the appearance component. Because of course she was going to cram as many protective layers in as she could in that case.
It wasn't until after dinner that she questioned why she was working to design what amounted to an incredibly protective costume. Yes, the spell was there, and it would be nice to be able to use the full version, but what would she do with it? She didn't see herself going out and fighting crime. The low-level version was because she lived in Brockton Bay, where protection was always welcome, and because she'd basically been told that she shouldn't be playing with flight or dimensional transferences until she had protection.
She spent over two hours debating things with herself, before eventually deciding that she still had some desire to be a hero. On her own terms, granted, but she wanted to be a hero. And it would be far easier to be a hero if she was well protected from possible harm, hence the high-level Knight Armor protection. Of course, that would the first step. Then she needed to learn to take advantage of her potential for high-level movement. Dimensional Transference seemed like the kind of thing that would let her find a safe place to play with blaster abilities, supposedly useful for popping around planets just as much as it was useful for popping between planets.
The insect controlling bit she figured would be incredibly useful for recon, distractions, and keeping the house free of pests. She wasn't entirely sure what else to use it for yet, though she figured she'd have more ideas if it was the only thing Hive let her do. As it was, she was splitting her planning and focus across multiple facets of what the hybrid device could do, and that was the least immediately useful ability. That and it was the hardest to train with, she kept getting lost in the sensations even with the smaller range.
Flight, unlike the rest of the bag of tricks, she just wanted to be able to do. And once she could it was probably going to be hard to hold back from using that particular skill, in or out of 'costume' as it were. She'd heard stories of Glory Girl flying in the halls of Arcadia and getting in trouble for it, so it obviously wasn't a desire or issue limited to her. Sadly, unless she revealed things then she wasn't going to be able to safely fly out of a costume. Which was probably another good reason to make up a full, identity-concealing Knight Armor. She wouldn't be able to safely fly on Bet without one.
Sighing, she got off of her bed and made her way to the bathroom. She needed to brush her teeth, use the toilet, and get ready to go to bed. It didn't take long to take care of all of that, at which point she shut off the lights, crawled under the covers, and had Hive start up an hour of insect control. She lasted almost two minutes before losing herself to the information overload this time, and wouldn't succeed in regaining herself before the hour was up. That was still a significant improvement over losing herself immediately, but she wasn't able to think much on it before sleep claimed her.
Hive had even determined that she'd need restful sleep, and had paused working on figuring out scanning equations in massively parallel operations for the evening. They'd figure them out eventually, since they knew they were possible, and a few hours break from working on the task so that Taylor could rest properly wasn't going to be a major problem in figuring things out.
Chapter 3 - January 18, 2011
It'd taken a week to figure out where they were going wrong with the Knight Clothing spell, and it turned out to be a facepalm-worthy moment when they'd figured it out. Template selection was partially a metaphysical 'embed the template into your linker core' when it wasn't in the device itself, and there was a mental selection step in the equations. They hadn't removed that component, so the dynamic template wasn't always being 'chosen' properly. The breakthrough there had been the sudden appearance of the 'stopgap' template amongst the failures, and the implications thereof. Luckily that had replaced 'naked' in the screwup list, removing that embarrassment, but it'd still taken a bit to adjust the equations to remove that element from them.
During that week Mrs. Dallon had, somehow, arranged for private tutors paid by someone else, something that nobody else from Winslow was getting, with the hope that Taylor could enter Arcadia in September. This was partially because her grades had been good enough for the school a couple of years ago and they had evidence that her current grades were due to academic sabotage. But there was another aspect to things, something that both Heberts were sure Mrs. Dallon wanted to tell them but couldn't yet. They suspected it tied into the 'someone else', which they also didn't know the identity of yet. Those lessons would start at the end of the month, partially due to a need to source the tutors in question.
Still, it was now Tuesday and Taylor was going to be making a trip to the library. Both as a test of the Knight Clothing spell and to do research for the Knight Armor template she was working on. She'd have started researching sooner, but her father hadn't wanted her going out on her own for the past week and yesterday had been a holiday that the library was closed for anyway. He'd acquiesced to her desire to at least visit the library to 'prepare for her tutors', though, so she was able to make the trip. He'd even gotten her a bus pass and given her money to buy lunch.
She'd waited for her father to leave for work, then retreated to the basement to apply her Knight Clothing. Getting rid of the flash, or at least muting it a bit, was on her list of goals now, but she wasn't sure it was ever going away as it didn't seem to be part of the spell itself, but rather a side effect of the magic doing things instead. She might have to do something like get blackout curtains for her bedroom or something so that she could just use the spell in there. Once she was somewhat protected she went to leave the house, only to realize that her key had been in her pocket. That was now stored wherever it was her clothing went when she cast the spell.
"How am I supposed to lock up?" she mumbled. She hadn't considered this particular problem, after all. And applying the Knight Clothing outside didn't seem like a good way to stay unnoticed.
"My Lord," Hive responded. "Storing of small items such as your key and currency are well within my capabilities."
Taylor blinked a couple of times, then sighed. "That's probably the best way to handle things. Is it going to be attention-getting to use that trick?"
"If we make a minor adjustment to the barrier layers then I should be able to make them appear inside of the 'pockets' of the duplicated clothing, thus hiding any incidental light from their storage and retrieval."
That had her blinking again, then looking down at her Knight Clothing. "I...how the hell did I not consider being able to use the pockets? I feel like an idiot."
It'd taken an hour to adjust things and get her casting the new version of the spell, after which she'd finally left the house. She'd tested in the basement and thought that the light from things being stored and retrieved was minor enough to be missed, but she still didn't want to be doing so incredibly obviously out in the open. So making things appear inside of pockets, bags, etc and having them vanish in the same places was the preferred solution for now.
Getting across town to the library hadn't taken too long, at least compared to walking, but it had been long enough for her to muse on how easy the storage trick would make certain illegal activities such as shoplifting. Get caught? They empty your pockets and bag and the stolen items aren't there at all. There were probably villains that did exactly that, even. It was probably a good thing that she was aiming to be a hero if she entered into the game at all.
Once she'd gotten off at the library she started by looking through a few things, gathering a couple of books to look over from a schoolwork point of view because that's what she was supposed to be there for. But her real goal was to find information on armor worn in history. Hive's records had generalities, but no actual usable designs, and what was there could very well be misinterpretation anyway. So looking up real armor that'd been used by real people made a lot more sense. It didn't take long to find some hopefully useful reference books, which she added to the 'schoolwork' books and took to a quiet corner of the library to look through.
Sadly, when she got to looking over information about armor it quickly became obvious that there were plenty of artistic depictions of armor for women, some more realistic than others, but very few accurate historic depictions. From what little she was finding, most women that ended up in armor probably had cast-off pieces from men or something like that, because fighting was a male thing or something. She'd admittedly stopped looking at most of the information when it became obvious that it wasn't going to tell her much.
Grumbling, she'd dropped that set of books onto the reshelving cart and started over, looking for the basics of armor design. If nothing suitable existed then she wanted something that looked like it was properly protective, at least. Even if the appearance and the reality were very different things when it came to the Knight Armor spell. After all, part of her goal was to ensure that people didn't look at her and instantly assume she had barriers around her. Let them spend time figuring out how to bypass her armor when it was effectively the last flimsy line of defense, not the first.
By the time she'd left the library she had an idea of what to attempt to do for armor, and a lot of information on why various things were and weren't done over the years. Thanks to that she was considering several options for armor that at least looked functional, even if it was more illusion than substance on that front. But she'd also determined that she had at least one other problem to solve, and that was that it was very difficult to use a restroom when you couldn't pull down your pants due to layers of barriers. Eating would likely be similarly problematic, since her head was protected.
Clearly the Knight Clothing spell needed more work. Accessing pockets had been an acceptable oversight, but not being able to deal with either end of her digestive system was going to be a problem. Hive thought that they could make some of the barriers more flexible in various ways, such as allowing her to reach through them with things without allowing others to do the same. That would allow for full protection on her pockets while letting her use them, as well as give her the ability to pass food and drink through to her face. At the same time, adjustments would be needed to allow her to shift the clothing to use the restroom, even if it wasn't coming off entirely.
On some level she was annoyed that they had to go through all of this, because surely someone else had figured it all out before. But Hive had lost any records of how these problems had been overcome by others, assuming they'd been seen as problems anyway. It was entirely possible that the society that had created the spells in the first place didn't see them as problems for various reasons, such as just dropping the thing to eat and use the restroom. Which was wonderful until you were on Earth Bet and being attacked while eating or using the restroom was likely.
Dealing with this without needing to hide flashes of light throughout the day while she dropped and re-cast the Knight Clothing spell was going to be a problem if they couldn't adjust the spell properly. Luckily, she was fairly certain that the Knight Armor spell didn't need to be quite that flexible, though being able to open up the helmet she was putting on it so that she could eat with the full protections up was going to be taken into account.
Since none of that was solvable before she was going to need to get a slightly late lunch, on top of it being discovered because she had to use a restroom, she ended up dropping the spell in a library restroom before leaving. If she was feeling particularly paranoid then she'd use the restroom at wherever she stopped for food and re-cast the spell there when she was done eating. Also, she still didn't have to worry about pickpockets because her stuff was still stored by Hive, and could be retrieved in her real pockets as easily as they could in the Knight Clothing pockets.
Perhaps she should look into other items to have Hive hold onto for her as a just in case action? Basic defensive tools like pepper spray and such, for example. It was something to consider, at least. Not to mention that she really needed to examine what Hive could do more closely, since until it'd come up there hadn't been any indication that it could store things for her. It made sense, given other things that had been mentioned, but she didn't think that being surprised by that kind of thing was a good idea going forward.
Oh well, all of that could wait until after she'd had lunch.
The restrooms she had access to after lunch hadn't been conducive to stealthy casting of spells involving flashes of light, so Taylor returned home in her normal clothing. Her key manifested in her pocket long enough for her to retrieve it to unlock the door, then vanished again when she was inside. She locked the door behind her for good measure, then went to the kitchen for a glass of water.
"So," she said after she'd taken a few sips of the water. "What can you do that I may not be aware of, or could've missed the implications of? Things like the storing things for me bit."
There was a pause while Hive prepared an answer, and Taylor consumed most of her glass of water during it. "My Lord, at this time there are only a couple of things that I believe you are unaware of or may have overlooked. To start with, my repair systems can be repurposed to produce other things given suitable raw materials. For example, I could easily reproduce the key and currency that you've stored, or produce similar items up to my storage limit. We already have a tentative plan to use this to create a lesser device for your day to day usage."
Taylor nodded. "I suppose I had overlooked the possible utility there."
"Further, I feel a need to clarify measurements. At this time, I can easily store and retrieve objects in the vicinity of one hundred cubic feet without using my repair systems to process things directly, though larger objects will both take more time and will result in larger flashes of light. I also have limited storage for such larger objects, but can break them down into resources if we're collecting them for that purpose."
That had her blinking. "That sounds...potentially useful. Can you store parts of larger objects?"
"The equations favor complete objects, but if storing objects for raw materials it may be easiest to render them into smaller chunks. In addition to making it easier to store, this would be a decent exercise for control of offensive spells."
Well, that made sense in a couple of ways. It was annoying in others, but that was still much more capability than she'd though Hive had a few minutes ago. "Okay. Anything else?"
"I can transmit and receive signals in several ways. While mana-based communications are the easiest, the Shard component of my current configuration utilizes a number of different communication methods to grant you the ability to control insects. This can be leveraged to interface with other wireless communication systems in use on this planet at a minimum, though protocols will need to be deciphered for many of them."
That sounded quite useful in some ways. Even if it was just to be able to listen to the radio or something like that. Provided, of course, that Hive was able to figure out how to do that. "I suppose that sounds like a decent back-burner project." She then sighed. "Do you have anything else?"
"Not at this time, Lord."
"Then I suppose this is a good time to make another attempt at not losing myself to controlling insects. Maybe having a goal to focus on will help me concentrate?"
With that she went up to her room, figuring that being in bed 'taking a nap' was safer than having 'fallen asleep on the couch' or similar, in the event her father came home before she'd recovered.
By Friday Taylor thought she had a decent idea on how to start building the template for her Knight Armor, but had realized that she needed to decide on a theme. Which was harder, because she didn't want to go with anything that hinted too much at Hive's appearance. At least visually, the hexagonal magical anchor that would pop up with more significant casting was hopefully not enough of a link for people to make a connection to the ladybug design built out of hexagons.
She and Hive had also figured out how to let her eat, through both the Knight Clothing and the Knight Armor. That had also been the first step in being able to use a restroom, because being able to wipe herself was a good thing there. They were still working on the proper equations to allow her to pull down her simulated pants so that she didn't make a mess in them. Even if Hive had admitted that, 'in an emergency', it could clean her up or remove waste from her body for her. There was no way she was resorting to that except in an emergency, but it was technically an option.
They'd also made some progress with scanning magic, somewhat interestingly through Hive deciding to devote minimal time to figuring out basic radio signals. Deciphering them with the Shard hardware had been easy enough, but considered 'wasteful', so that had been converted to a mana-based system. That had turned out to be more efficient than expected and slotted nicely into the attempts to build a scanning system. As a result the 'back-burner' project had been bumped up a little in priority.
Sadly, in other areas there wasn't as much progress. Taylor wanted to be able to be far away from home before she tried flight or offensive spells, and until they had a suitable longer-range scanning spell working it was going to be difficult to find a safe place to reach with Dimensional Transference. At least one safe and suitably remote enough for her purposes at this point. The progress with controlling insects felt incredibly slow, but she was seeing some improvement there on top of Hive noting that she was using less of the multitasking system over time in her attempts to compensate.
She'd just finished recovering from another attempt at controlling insects when her father arrived home, a little earlier than usual. Curious, she made her way downstairs to greet him, only to find that he had a bundle of papers with him.
"Hey dad," she said, getting his attention. "Bringing work home with you?"
He was obviously mildly startled by her speaking, but shook his head. "No, this actually pertains to you and your necklace. Apparently there's significant interest in everything surrounding it, and the PRT wants permission to have tinkers and thinkers take a look at it." He waved the documents he was holding for emphasis. "This is a potential contract for them doing so, including monetary compensation for each session. The proposed rate is an even thousand dollars per hour or portion thereof."
It was Taylor's turn to be startled. "What?"
"I'm going to want Carol to look over this, of course, but I think it would be a good way to get you some savings and spending money with minimal effort on your part. If they figure things out then you're hopefully safer, and if they don't you're out a few hours and should be significantly better off financially."
Taylor took a deep breath, and decided to check with Hive about what it thought. Because a thousand dollars an hour was a lot of money for very little work on her part. "Do you think that they'll be able to figure anything out if they scan you?"
Hive processed that for a moment before responding. "I do not believe so, Lord. Without mana-based techniques they are likely incapable of accessing my inner workings, and the strength enhancements on my current form should resist most manaless attacks without issue at any level that does not simultaneously risk your own life. Further, it's possible that I may be able to learn more about how they do detect things from their attempts, which would only help the development of the scanning spells."
"That makes it sound even better, get paid and possibly get information that we can use to improve upon things. But we definitely need to make sure they won't be allowed to harm me first."
With that settled Taylor focused on her father again. "Provided that there are clauses to ensure that they don't harm me then I think I'm okay with them doing their thing."
Her father grinned. "They have some in here, part of what I want to do with Carol is go over them to ensure that they're airtight. Speaking of which, she's going to be bringing pizza over, she finally got permission to tell us something and doesn't want to give them time to revoke that permission before she can inform us about it."
"Okay. I suppose I should prepare the table then?"
He nodded, and Taylor ensured that the kitchen table was ready for the three to sit down and eat. Her father put aside the potential contract to be reviewed by Mrs. Dallon, and it wasn't long before the woman arrived with a couple of pizzas. She insisted that they eat first, then she'd inform them of things. They did so in silence for various reasons.
Once they'd had their fill, and done minimal cleanup, Mrs. Dallon sighed. "I apologize, but this isn't going to be pleasant on several levels." That had the Heberts slightly worried. "I was able to ensure that you don't need to sign non-disclosure agreements for this, in part because I suspect it will become public knowledge eventually. Over the past two weeks the PRT has made or arranged for fifteen arrests regarding the overall situation at Winslow. Fourteen of those arrests were of PRT staff, the most serious of which was Sophia Hess's handler who was actively hiding reports that went against the girl's probation terms. The last, of course, was Miss Hess herself, for violating her probationary terms to such a heinous degree. She admitted to using her parahuman abilities to perform theft and academic sabotage in an attempt to get the PRT to claim jurisdiction over her crimes, but I'm reliably informed that Director Piggot turned her over to the FBI this morning."
Taylor stared in shock at Mrs. Dallon. Hess...had to have been Shadow Stalker, if only by process of elimination. Only two females, and Hess couldn't pull off being Vista. "She was a Ward?"
Mrs. Dallon sighed again. "She was technically forced into the Wards as a condition of her probation, and as far as anyone can tell toed the line whenever with the Wards. She should have been kicked to juvenile detention a week after being forced into the Wards, before she was even introduced as a Ward, but I suspect that her handler didn't want her as a black mark on their record and started hiding information. So on paper, and in front of her fellow Wards, she seemed to be doing just enough to fit in. Had even one more Ward been attending Winslow it wouldn't have worked."
Sadly, Taylor could see that kind of thing working. Sophia was very good at playing roles, which had only been enhanced by her association with Emma. She could be the bitch one moment and the model student track star the instant a teacher saw her, after all. Extending that to having a 'model Ward' personality was far too easy to see. That wasn't going to help her trust the PRT or Wards anytime soon, though, because it was obvious that someone had screwed up bigtime.
They sat there in silence for a few minutes, before her father sighed. "Okay, given this revelation, can I assume that the PRT is the one paying for the tutors?"
Mrs. Dallon nodded. "Yes. In part because I convinced them that doing so was a good PR move for when this goes public, since I doubt they'll be able to keep a lid on it for more than a couple of months. Tops. That she was the only one academically sabotaged by a Ward is another factor, of course. It wouldn't be fair to judge her on her records from Winslow after that. I couldn't swing them setting up a trust fund, though, since they've only been 'responsible' for this school year. That was an intentional stretch to get them to agree to the tutors anyway, I didn't expect them to go along with it."
That left them in silence for a few more minutes, before her father got up and grabbed the contract from where he'd put it aside. He handed it to Mrs. Dallon before sitting back down. "That arrived at my office today. I assume you have something to do with them not just trying to claim jurisdiction over 'obvious' and 'potentially harmful' tinkertech?"
She looked over the contract briefly before nodding. "Yes, this does seem to stem from one argument I was making a few days ago. After all, Armsmaster decided it was essentially inert and there's no proof that it has caused or will cause any harm." She then paused, and examined part of the contract. "Wow. They went straight for big money per hour? Someone must really want to get a look at the necklace. I'm sure that I can work with that to ensure that things are safe for Taylor."
Taylor took a deep breath in an attempt to calm herself. It didn't quite work, but it was good enough to ask a question. "What if I don't want to trust the PRT in this?"
Mrs. Dallon grimaced. "Sadly, I'm going to have to recommend that you go along with the contract once it's properly hammered out. Otherwise they're more likely to find an excuse to do things without paying you or even ensuring your safety. The contract will offer you protection and give you recourse options in the event of problems that you wouldn't have otherwise, and making them pay for your time incentivises them to not waste your time."
Which meant, of course, that it was probably a damned if they do, damned if they don't situation, with the contract being the better of the two options for a number of reasons.
Mrs. Dallon had left a couple hours later, after sitting down with the two of them and going over the contract in full and getting their input on things. Taylor had asked for a clause stating that they need to let her know more than a day in advance or she could refuse in general, her father wanted significantly more stringent safety protocol rules. They decided to leave the money side of things alone for now, but would be asking for a limit in how many hours a month they could use before Taylor could outright refuse more. That was, of course, to be asked for in the guise of not harming her schoolwork.
Both adults had looked at her oddly when she asked if they could ensure that she could ask questions of those examining the necklace. Her excuse was that she'd like to know what they thought they were doing to the thing hanging around her neck, which was readily accepted. Figuring out a proper 'legalese' wording for the request was more difficult, of course, and would probably result in at least two back and forth passes. Not that the rest of the contract wasn't going to be subject to that kind of thing anyway.
Mrs. Dallon had left with a pile of notes and the original contract. If the PRT was looking to get someone looking at the necklace soon then they probably wouldn't drag their feet, so they could probably expect a revised version by Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest.
"That was exhausting," her father said once Mrs. Dallon had pulled away.
Taylor nodded. "Isn't that the norm for legal stuff?"
"Yep."
They busied themselves with cleaning up the rest of the dinner mess, then they retreated into their own personal spaces for the time being. Taylor knew that was probably somewhat unhealthy of them, on some level, but didn't really care.
Saturday morning brought with it a significant change in Taylor's routine. Her father had apparently come to a decision on things and woke her up early.
"We're both out of shape," was his explanation, and he told her to put on clothing that would be suitable to exercise in. She did so, not entirely sure what was going on, only to find that he'd decided that they both needed to be in better shape. His reasoning was that she needed to be able to deal with things if she was out and about during the day, that he'd been slacking and being teased about it at work, and that if she was going to have new running shoes then she should use them.
In reality, she thought that he wanted to ensure that she was safe and able to defend herself, and was using the excuse that he was out of shape as well for a bit of potential bonding time. Apparently they would be running in the neighborhood to start with, until he felt that they could both handle more. And, to her surprise, she did better than he did that morning. Then again, she'd been dealing with things like gym class and dodging the trio in various ways, so the main surprise was that she was in better shape than she'd thought. Or perhaps that her father was in worse shape?
On the other hand, she also knew that she wouldn't have lasted much longer, which was a bit of an embarrassment. If she ever wanted to be a proper hero then she'd need to be in much better shape than Winslow's crappy gym classes had her in. Maybe one of the tutors would be able to help her with that when they started up in just over a week?
After that they'd recovered for a bit and had breakfast, showered to deal with sweat, and then they'd gone on a shopping trip. Her father had insisted on getting her pepper spray 'just in case'. This was followed by grumbling about not being able to get her a proper set of knuckles for self-defense. She suspected that she wasn't supposed to hear that part. But they did find her a small belt-worn pouch to put the pepper spray in, as well as a couple of belts that would work with it.
That took them clear until lunchtime, so they picked up something to eat, and then they headed across town to pick up a set of weights from a Dockworker that didn't need or want them anymore. Weights that, when they got home, Taylor was both shown how to safely use and made to promise that, for the time being, she'd only use with proper supervision. Which meant, amongst other things, not using them when she was home alone and thus had nobody to help her if she injured herself.
With all of that taken care of her father finally let her go do her own thing.
That evening, after her father had gone to sleep, Taylor snuck down to the basement. Her goals were twofold. She wanted to practice with some variants on the Knight Clothing spell and she was going to 'store' most of the weight set long enough for Hive to analyse each piece. When they had suitable raw materials available a second set could be produced for her own use. She'd already had Hive examine the can of pepper spray as well, on top of leaving it stored so that she didn't need to remember it every day.
She spent over an hour casting variations of the Knight Clothing spell while Hive examined the weights, then carefully retrieved each piece and put it back where it belonged. That done she carefully made her way back upstairs, getting a glass of water as an excuse for why she'd been downstairs at all on the way in case her father had woken up in the meantime. The rest of the night was spent 'dreaming' with Hive, working on lessons in mana usage and trying to integrate some of what they'd already learned into the spells available.
During that week Mrs. Dallon had, somehow, arranged for private tutors paid by someone else, something that nobody else from Winslow was getting, with the hope that Taylor could enter Arcadia in September. This was partially because her grades had been good enough for the school a couple of years ago and they had evidence that her current grades were due to academic sabotage. But there was another aspect to things, something that both Heberts were sure Mrs. Dallon wanted to tell them but couldn't yet. They suspected it tied into the 'someone else', which they also didn't know the identity of yet. Those lessons would start at the end of the month, partially due to a need to source the tutors in question.
Still, it was now Tuesday and Taylor was going to be making a trip to the library. Both as a test of the Knight Clothing spell and to do research for the Knight Armor template she was working on. She'd have started researching sooner, but her father hadn't wanted her going out on her own for the past week and yesterday had been a holiday that the library was closed for anyway. He'd acquiesced to her desire to at least visit the library to 'prepare for her tutors', though, so she was able to make the trip. He'd even gotten her a bus pass and given her money to buy lunch.
She'd waited for her father to leave for work, then retreated to the basement to apply her Knight Clothing. Getting rid of the flash, or at least muting it a bit, was on her list of goals now, but she wasn't sure it was ever going away as it didn't seem to be part of the spell itself, but rather a side effect of the magic doing things instead. She might have to do something like get blackout curtains for her bedroom or something so that she could just use the spell in there. Once she was somewhat protected she went to leave the house, only to realize that her key had been in her pocket. That was now stored wherever it was her clothing went when she cast the spell.
"How am I supposed to lock up?" she mumbled. She hadn't considered this particular problem, after all. And applying the Knight Clothing outside didn't seem like a good way to stay unnoticed.
"My Lord," Hive responded. "Storing of small items such as your key and currency are well within my capabilities."
Taylor blinked a couple of times, then sighed. "That's probably the best way to handle things. Is it going to be attention-getting to use that trick?"
"If we make a minor adjustment to the barrier layers then I should be able to make them appear inside of the 'pockets' of the duplicated clothing, thus hiding any incidental light from their storage and retrieval."
That had her blinking again, then looking down at her Knight Clothing. "I...how the hell did I not consider being able to use the pockets? I feel like an idiot."
It'd taken an hour to adjust things and get her casting the new version of the spell, after which she'd finally left the house. She'd tested in the basement and thought that the light from things being stored and retrieved was minor enough to be missed, but she still didn't want to be doing so incredibly obviously out in the open. So making things appear inside of pockets, bags, etc and having them vanish in the same places was the preferred solution for now.
Getting across town to the library hadn't taken too long, at least compared to walking, but it had been long enough for her to muse on how easy the storage trick would make certain illegal activities such as shoplifting. Get caught? They empty your pockets and bag and the stolen items aren't there at all. There were probably villains that did exactly that, even. It was probably a good thing that she was aiming to be a hero if she entered into the game at all.
Once she'd gotten off at the library she started by looking through a few things, gathering a couple of books to look over from a schoolwork point of view because that's what she was supposed to be there for. But her real goal was to find information on armor worn in history. Hive's records had generalities, but no actual usable designs, and what was there could very well be misinterpretation anyway. So looking up real armor that'd been used by real people made a lot more sense. It didn't take long to find some hopefully useful reference books, which she added to the 'schoolwork' books and took to a quiet corner of the library to look through.
Sadly, when she got to looking over information about armor it quickly became obvious that there were plenty of artistic depictions of armor for women, some more realistic than others, but very few accurate historic depictions. From what little she was finding, most women that ended up in armor probably had cast-off pieces from men or something like that, because fighting was a male thing or something. She'd admittedly stopped looking at most of the information when it became obvious that it wasn't going to tell her much.
Grumbling, she'd dropped that set of books onto the reshelving cart and started over, looking for the basics of armor design. If nothing suitable existed then she wanted something that looked like it was properly protective, at least. Even if the appearance and the reality were very different things when it came to the Knight Armor spell. After all, part of her goal was to ensure that people didn't look at her and instantly assume she had barriers around her. Let them spend time figuring out how to bypass her armor when it was effectively the last flimsy line of defense, not the first.
By the time she'd left the library she had an idea of what to attempt to do for armor, and a lot of information on why various things were and weren't done over the years. Thanks to that she was considering several options for armor that at least looked functional, even if it was more illusion than substance on that front. But she'd also determined that she had at least one other problem to solve, and that was that it was very difficult to use a restroom when you couldn't pull down your pants due to layers of barriers. Eating would likely be similarly problematic, since her head was protected.
Clearly the Knight Clothing spell needed more work. Accessing pockets had been an acceptable oversight, but not being able to deal with either end of her digestive system was going to be a problem. Hive thought that they could make some of the barriers more flexible in various ways, such as allowing her to reach through them with things without allowing others to do the same. That would allow for full protection on her pockets while letting her use them, as well as give her the ability to pass food and drink through to her face. At the same time, adjustments would be needed to allow her to shift the clothing to use the restroom, even if it wasn't coming off entirely.
On some level she was annoyed that they had to go through all of this, because surely someone else had figured it all out before. But Hive had lost any records of how these problems had been overcome by others, assuming they'd been seen as problems anyway. It was entirely possible that the society that had created the spells in the first place didn't see them as problems for various reasons, such as just dropping the thing to eat and use the restroom. Which was wonderful until you were on Earth Bet and being attacked while eating or using the restroom was likely.
Dealing with this without needing to hide flashes of light throughout the day while she dropped and re-cast the Knight Clothing spell was going to be a problem if they couldn't adjust the spell properly. Luckily, she was fairly certain that the Knight Armor spell didn't need to be quite that flexible, though being able to open up the helmet she was putting on it so that she could eat with the full protections up was going to be taken into account.
Since none of that was solvable before she was going to need to get a slightly late lunch, on top of it being discovered because she had to use a restroom, she ended up dropping the spell in a library restroom before leaving. If she was feeling particularly paranoid then she'd use the restroom at wherever she stopped for food and re-cast the spell there when she was done eating. Also, she still didn't have to worry about pickpockets because her stuff was still stored by Hive, and could be retrieved in her real pockets as easily as they could in the Knight Clothing pockets.
Perhaps she should look into other items to have Hive hold onto for her as a just in case action? Basic defensive tools like pepper spray and such, for example. It was something to consider, at least. Not to mention that she really needed to examine what Hive could do more closely, since until it'd come up there hadn't been any indication that it could store things for her. It made sense, given other things that had been mentioned, but she didn't think that being surprised by that kind of thing was a good idea going forward.
Oh well, all of that could wait until after she'd had lunch.
The restrooms she had access to after lunch hadn't been conducive to stealthy casting of spells involving flashes of light, so Taylor returned home in her normal clothing. Her key manifested in her pocket long enough for her to retrieve it to unlock the door, then vanished again when she was inside. She locked the door behind her for good measure, then went to the kitchen for a glass of water.
"So," she said after she'd taken a few sips of the water. "What can you do that I may not be aware of, or could've missed the implications of? Things like the storing things for me bit."
There was a pause while Hive prepared an answer, and Taylor consumed most of her glass of water during it. "My Lord, at this time there are only a couple of things that I believe you are unaware of or may have overlooked. To start with, my repair systems can be repurposed to produce other things given suitable raw materials. For example, I could easily reproduce the key and currency that you've stored, or produce similar items up to my storage limit. We already have a tentative plan to use this to create a lesser device for your day to day usage."
Taylor nodded. "I suppose I had overlooked the possible utility there."
"Further, I feel a need to clarify measurements. At this time, I can easily store and retrieve objects in the vicinity of one hundred cubic feet without using my repair systems to process things directly, though larger objects will both take more time and will result in larger flashes of light. I also have limited storage for such larger objects, but can break them down into resources if we're collecting them for that purpose."
That had her blinking. "That sounds...potentially useful. Can you store parts of larger objects?"
"The equations favor complete objects, but if storing objects for raw materials it may be easiest to render them into smaller chunks. In addition to making it easier to store, this would be a decent exercise for control of offensive spells."
Well, that made sense in a couple of ways. It was annoying in others, but that was still much more capability than she'd though Hive had a few minutes ago. "Okay. Anything else?"
"I can transmit and receive signals in several ways. While mana-based communications are the easiest, the Shard component of my current configuration utilizes a number of different communication methods to grant you the ability to control insects. This can be leveraged to interface with other wireless communication systems in use on this planet at a minimum, though protocols will need to be deciphered for many of them."
That sounded quite useful in some ways. Even if it was just to be able to listen to the radio or something like that. Provided, of course, that Hive was able to figure out how to do that. "I suppose that sounds like a decent back-burner project." She then sighed. "Do you have anything else?"
"Not at this time, Lord."
"Then I suppose this is a good time to make another attempt at not losing myself to controlling insects. Maybe having a goal to focus on will help me concentrate?"
With that she went up to her room, figuring that being in bed 'taking a nap' was safer than having 'fallen asleep on the couch' or similar, in the event her father came home before she'd recovered.
By Friday Taylor thought she had a decent idea on how to start building the template for her Knight Armor, but had realized that she needed to decide on a theme. Which was harder, because she didn't want to go with anything that hinted too much at Hive's appearance. At least visually, the hexagonal magical anchor that would pop up with more significant casting was hopefully not enough of a link for people to make a connection to the ladybug design built out of hexagons.
She and Hive had also figured out how to let her eat, through both the Knight Clothing and the Knight Armor. That had also been the first step in being able to use a restroom, because being able to wipe herself was a good thing there. They were still working on the proper equations to allow her to pull down her simulated pants so that she didn't make a mess in them. Even if Hive had admitted that, 'in an emergency', it could clean her up or remove waste from her body for her. There was no way she was resorting to that except in an emergency, but it was technically an option.
They'd also made some progress with scanning magic, somewhat interestingly through Hive deciding to devote minimal time to figuring out basic radio signals. Deciphering them with the Shard hardware had been easy enough, but considered 'wasteful', so that had been converted to a mana-based system. That had turned out to be more efficient than expected and slotted nicely into the attempts to build a scanning system. As a result the 'back-burner' project had been bumped up a little in priority.
Sadly, in other areas there wasn't as much progress. Taylor wanted to be able to be far away from home before she tried flight or offensive spells, and until they had a suitable longer-range scanning spell working it was going to be difficult to find a safe place to reach with Dimensional Transference. At least one safe and suitably remote enough for her purposes at this point. The progress with controlling insects felt incredibly slow, but she was seeing some improvement there on top of Hive noting that she was using less of the multitasking system over time in her attempts to compensate.
She'd just finished recovering from another attempt at controlling insects when her father arrived home, a little earlier than usual. Curious, she made her way downstairs to greet him, only to find that he had a bundle of papers with him.
"Hey dad," she said, getting his attention. "Bringing work home with you?"
He was obviously mildly startled by her speaking, but shook his head. "No, this actually pertains to you and your necklace. Apparently there's significant interest in everything surrounding it, and the PRT wants permission to have tinkers and thinkers take a look at it." He waved the documents he was holding for emphasis. "This is a potential contract for them doing so, including monetary compensation for each session. The proposed rate is an even thousand dollars per hour or portion thereof."
It was Taylor's turn to be startled. "What?"
"I'm going to want Carol to look over this, of course, but I think it would be a good way to get you some savings and spending money with minimal effort on your part. If they figure things out then you're hopefully safer, and if they don't you're out a few hours and should be significantly better off financially."
Taylor took a deep breath, and decided to check with Hive about what it thought. Because a thousand dollars an hour was a lot of money for very little work on her part. "Do you think that they'll be able to figure anything out if they scan you?"
Hive processed that for a moment before responding. "I do not believe so, Lord. Without mana-based techniques they are likely incapable of accessing my inner workings, and the strength enhancements on my current form should resist most manaless attacks without issue at any level that does not simultaneously risk your own life. Further, it's possible that I may be able to learn more about how they do detect things from their attempts, which would only help the development of the scanning spells."
"That makes it sound even better, get paid and possibly get information that we can use to improve upon things. But we definitely need to make sure they won't be allowed to harm me first."
With that settled Taylor focused on her father again. "Provided that there are clauses to ensure that they don't harm me then I think I'm okay with them doing their thing."
Her father grinned. "They have some in here, part of what I want to do with Carol is go over them to ensure that they're airtight. Speaking of which, she's going to be bringing pizza over, she finally got permission to tell us something and doesn't want to give them time to revoke that permission before she can inform us about it."
"Okay. I suppose I should prepare the table then?"
He nodded, and Taylor ensured that the kitchen table was ready for the three to sit down and eat. Her father put aside the potential contract to be reviewed by Mrs. Dallon, and it wasn't long before the woman arrived with a couple of pizzas. She insisted that they eat first, then she'd inform them of things. They did so in silence for various reasons.
Once they'd had their fill, and done minimal cleanup, Mrs. Dallon sighed. "I apologize, but this isn't going to be pleasant on several levels." That had the Heberts slightly worried. "I was able to ensure that you don't need to sign non-disclosure agreements for this, in part because I suspect it will become public knowledge eventually. Over the past two weeks the PRT has made or arranged for fifteen arrests regarding the overall situation at Winslow. Fourteen of those arrests were of PRT staff, the most serious of which was Sophia Hess's handler who was actively hiding reports that went against the girl's probation terms. The last, of course, was Miss Hess herself, for violating her probationary terms to such a heinous degree. She admitted to using her parahuman abilities to perform theft and academic sabotage in an attempt to get the PRT to claim jurisdiction over her crimes, but I'm reliably informed that Director Piggot turned her over to the FBI this morning."
Taylor stared in shock at Mrs. Dallon. Hess...had to have been Shadow Stalker, if only by process of elimination. Only two females, and Hess couldn't pull off being Vista. "She was a Ward?"
Mrs. Dallon sighed again. "She was technically forced into the Wards as a condition of her probation, and as far as anyone can tell toed the line whenever with the Wards. She should have been kicked to juvenile detention a week after being forced into the Wards, before she was even introduced as a Ward, but I suspect that her handler didn't want her as a black mark on their record and started hiding information. So on paper, and in front of her fellow Wards, she seemed to be doing just enough to fit in. Had even one more Ward been attending Winslow it wouldn't have worked."
Sadly, Taylor could see that kind of thing working. Sophia was very good at playing roles, which had only been enhanced by her association with Emma. She could be the bitch one moment and the model student track star the instant a teacher saw her, after all. Extending that to having a 'model Ward' personality was far too easy to see. That wasn't going to help her trust the PRT or Wards anytime soon, though, because it was obvious that someone had screwed up bigtime.
They sat there in silence for a few minutes, before her father sighed. "Okay, given this revelation, can I assume that the PRT is the one paying for the tutors?"
Mrs. Dallon nodded. "Yes. In part because I convinced them that doing so was a good PR move for when this goes public, since I doubt they'll be able to keep a lid on it for more than a couple of months. Tops. That she was the only one academically sabotaged by a Ward is another factor, of course. It wouldn't be fair to judge her on her records from Winslow after that. I couldn't swing them setting up a trust fund, though, since they've only been 'responsible' for this school year. That was an intentional stretch to get them to agree to the tutors anyway, I didn't expect them to go along with it."
That left them in silence for a few more minutes, before her father got up and grabbed the contract from where he'd put it aside. He handed it to Mrs. Dallon before sitting back down. "That arrived at my office today. I assume you have something to do with them not just trying to claim jurisdiction over 'obvious' and 'potentially harmful' tinkertech?"
She looked over the contract briefly before nodding. "Yes, this does seem to stem from one argument I was making a few days ago. After all, Armsmaster decided it was essentially inert and there's no proof that it has caused or will cause any harm." She then paused, and examined part of the contract. "Wow. They went straight for big money per hour? Someone must really want to get a look at the necklace. I'm sure that I can work with that to ensure that things are safe for Taylor."
Taylor took a deep breath in an attempt to calm herself. It didn't quite work, but it was good enough to ask a question. "What if I don't want to trust the PRT in this?"
Mrs. Dallon grimaced. "Sadly, I'm going to have to recommend that you go along with the contract once it's properly hammered out. Otherwise they're more likely to find an excuse to do things without paying you or even ensuring your safety. The contract will offer you protection and give you recourse options in the event of problems that you wouldn't have otherwise, and making them pay for your time incentivises them to not waste your time."
Which meant, of course, that it was probably a damned if they do, damned if they don't situation, with the contract being the better of the two options for a number of reasons.
Mrs. Dallon had left a couple hours later, after sitting down with the two of them and going over the contract in full and getting their input on things. Taylor had asked for a clause stating that they need to let her know more than a day in advance or she could refuse in general, her father wanted significantly more stringent safety protocol rules. They decided to leave the money side of things alone for now, but would be asking for a limit in how many hours a month they could use before Taylor could outright refuse more. That was, of course, to be asked for in the guise of not harming her schoolwork.
Both adults had looked at her oddly when she asked if they could ensure that she could ask questions of those examining the necklace. Her excuse was that she'd like to know what they thought they were doing to the thing hanging around her neck, which was readily accepted. Figuring out a proper 'legalese' wording for the request was more difficult, of course, and would probably result in at least two back and forth passes. Not that the rest of the contract wasn't going to be subject to that kind of thing anyway.
Mrs. Dallon had left with a pile of notes and the original contract. If the PRT was looking to get someone looking at the necklace soon then they probably wouldn't drag their feet, so they could probably expect a revised version by Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest.
"That was exhausting," her father said once Mrs. Dallon had pulled away.
Taylor nodded. "Isn't that the norm for legal stuff?"
"Yep."
They busied themselves with cleaning up the rest of the dinner mess, then they retreated into their own personal spaces for the time being. Taylor knew that was probably somewhat unhealthy of them, on some level, but didn't really care.
Saturday morning brought with it a significant change in Taylor's routine. Her father had apparently come to a decision on things and woke her up early.
"We're both out of shape," was his explanation, and he told her to put on clothing that would be suitable to exercise in. She did so, not entirely sure what was going on, only to find that he'd decided that they both needed to be in better shape. His reasoning was that she needed to be able to deal with things if she was out and about during the day, that he'd been slacking and being teased about it at work, and that if she was going to have new running shoes then she should use them.
In reality, she thought that he wanted to ensure that she was safe and able to defend herself, and was using the excuse that he was out of shape as well for a bit of potential bonding time. Apparently they would be running in the neighborhood to start with, until he felt that they could both handle more. And, to her surprise, she did better than he did that morning. Then again, she'd been dealing with things like gym class and dodging the trio in various ways, so the main surprise was that she was in better shape than she'd thought. Or perhaps that her father was in worse shape?
On the other hand, she also knew that she wouldn't have lasted much longer, which was a bit of an embarrassment. If she ever wanted to be a proper hero then she'd need to be in much better shape than Winslow's crappy gym classes had her in. Maybe one of the tutors would be able to help her with that when they started up in just over a week?
After that they'd recovered for a bit and had breakfast, showered to deal with sweat, and then they'd gone on a shopping trip. Her father had insisted on getting her pepper spray 'just in case'. This was followed by grumbling about not being able to get her a proper set of knuckles for self-defense. She suspected that she wasn't supposed to hear that part. But they did find her a small belt-worn pouch to put the pepper spray in, as well as a couple of belts that would work with it.
That took them clear until lunchtime, so they picked up something to eat, and then they headed across town to pick up a set of weights from a Dockworker that didn't need or want them anymore. Weights that, when they got home, Taylor was both shown how to safely use and made to promise that, for the time being, she'd only use with proper supervision. Which meant, amongst other things, not using them when she was home alone and thus had nobody to help her if she injured herself.
With all of that taken care of her father finally let her go do her own thing.
That evening, after her father had gone to sleep, Taylor snuck down to the basement. Her goals were twofold. She wanted to practice with some variants on the Knight Clothing spell and she was going to 'store' most of the weight set long enough for Hive to analyse each piece. When they had suitable raw materials available a second set could be produced for her own use. She'd already had Hive examine the can of pepper spray as well, on top of leaving it stored so that she didn't need to remember it every day.
She spent over an hour casting variations of the Knight Clothing spell while Hive examined the weights, then carefully retrieved each piece and put it back where it belonged. That done she carefully made her way back upstairs, getting a glass of water as an excuse for why she'd been downstairs at all on the way in case her father had woken up in the meantime. The rest of the night was spent 'dreaming' with Hive, working on lessons in mana usage and trying to integrate some of what they'd already learned into the spells available.
Chapter 4 - January 26, 2011
Wednesday morning had started with Taylor being dragged out of bed bright and early for the daily morning run with her father, followed by breakfast and him leaving for work. That left her home alone once more, and with most of the day to herself she had plans. She was getting annoyed with how little progress was being made on some specific fronts, one of which was her ability to manage the insect controlling.
In theory it shouldn't be that difficult, but in practice she just wasn't getting it. And since Hive thought that it would be good training for managing the inputs from scanning magic it seemed important to continue on it, even if they hadn't constructed suitable scanning spells yet. As a result she'd decided that it was time to stop coddling herself, have Hive pump the range up to max, and drop into an attempt for several hours at a time if need be.
Hive had cautioned against it, but wasn't going to stop her from trying. Probably because it didn't have any better ideas for getting her acclimated to things, or perhaps because it seemed to defer to her wishes on everything. She wasn't sure, and she wasn't questioning it at this point.
Instead, she'd cleaned up from the morning run and laid down on her bed. Once settled she'd taken a couple of deep breaths in an attempt to calm herself. "Okay Hive, turn on the insect control."
"At once, my Lord," Hive responded, and a moment later she was struggling to not lose herself in the sensations. It wasn't easy, as there were a lot more than she'd been practicing with up to this point, and it wasn't long before she was lost in them.
Taylor groaned as she rolled out of bed, falling to the ground instead of catching herself. She had a massive headache, feeling like someone had wailed on her brain with a sledgehammer or something like that, but she really needed to use the bathroom as well. She ended up crawling to the bathroom, and nearly forgot to pull down her pants before she used the toilet. That turned into at least half an hour of sitting there, unwilling or unable to think.
Eventually she'd recovered enough to wonder what, exactly, had happened. Which she articulated to the best of her ability. Sadly, at the moment that boiled down to a couple of words. "Wha happen?"
Noting how long things took was currently beyond her, but it seemed like several minutes before a voice she didn't recognize right away responded. "Emergency shutdown was engaged when automated systems detected that to continue would cause irreparable brain damage, my Lord."
That took a while for her to parse, helped by the pain in her head diminishing ever so slowly. She'd be embarrassed later when she realized that it'd taken her several minutes to even identify the voice as Hive. "Brain damage?"
"The sheer number of inputs from the insect control systems far exceeded your brain's ability to process, even with the multitasking systems providing outside assistance. In the hour between shutdown and your awakening I detected accelerated healing and adjustment of your brain, I suspect in part fueled by your mana stores helping along your desire to accomplish this task resulting in an adaptation to assist you with the rush of information. I have recorded the mana linkage patterns for later review, but have not had time to decipher them. For your own safety the insect control system is currently locked until you have recovered from this attempt, I estimate that will take at least four days, during which I will also refrain from utilizing the multitasking systems while you're sleeping."
That took an uncomfortably long time to process, and a bit longer for her to realize she had to agree with for the time being, after which Taylor realized that she was sitting there on the toilet. And had been for a while, given the state of things. She carefully cleaned herself up, flushed the toilet, and then fell down again because she'd tried to walk without pulling her pants back up.
Eventually she made it back to her bed, where she promptly fell into a dreamless sleep.
Somehow Taylor had recovered enough to fake it through dinner that evening, but wasn't up to a discussion about the updated contract that they'd sent to her father. Luckily he didn't seem to want an in-depth discussion, merely to let her know that it looked good to him but that he'd be checking with Carol in the morning. He did seem surprised that it looked like they'd acquiesced to all of their requests without complaint, but she didn't have the mental power available to wonder about that.
It said something about how distant the two had grown that she was able to 'fake it' and not have her father even ask if something was wrong.
After dinner they'd cleaned up and gone downstairs to use the weight set. Taylor probably went too far, since she only stopped when the pain from her muscles was noticeable over the pain in her head. But she was still able to move enough to clean up and go to bed, so that was probably okay. She would sleep without dreaming, Hive refusing to stress her brain any more after what she'd done to it that day.
It was Friday, two days later, before Taylor's headache had mostly subsided, at least to a point where she could ignore it. Hive still wasn't letting her do anything 'stressful', but she could at least focus on things properly again. Mostly. But she had to wait before doing anything of interest, because Mrs. Dallon was coming over first thing with the contract for her and her father to sign, before the PRT could decide they wanted more changes. Which meant he hadn't left for work yet.
Taylor was currently paying for her couple of days of altered pain perception, her limbs feeling like she'd abused them far too much. As a result she was currently collapsed on the couch while her father cleaned up the breakfast dishes. He'd chuckled and pointed out that feeling like she currently did was perfectly normal 'early on', at least from his experience, and that she'd learn how to properly tell where her limits were eventually. Fat lot of good that did her now.
Eventually he'd finished with the dishes and settled into his chair, turning on the morning news. There'd apparently been some kind of large battle in New York last night, one that neither of them cared about. The FBI and CDC were being closed-lipped about suspects and charges in the bioterrorism incident at Winslow High School, but that wasn't surprising as most of the suspects were minors. They did learn that secondary charges had been filed by the state against a number of teachers, and Blackwell had apparently been blacklisted from holding any position of authority in a school in the region on top of charges filed against her that probably made her ineligible anywhere reasonable anyway.
Taylor thought she'd merely thought 'good riddance' to the last bit of news, only for her father to verbally agree with her. "She definitely deserved it, with the things she was burying over the past year and a half. Did you hear about the list of things they found had been covered up in the news Wednesday?"
Blinking in surprise, she shook her head. "No, I was mostly ignoring the news over the past couple of days."
"Apparently there were literally hundreds of ignored yet actionable reports made to the woman, sitting in a filing cabinet in the main office. If a complaint was against any number of students that participated in things that secured the school funding then it was ignored. Exceptions were made for 'well connected' students, of course, which seems to have been 'anyone who would actually sue them' as far as the reporters could tell."
That made far too much sense in a number of ways. And Hess probably fell into multiple categories from day one. Sports star, friends with 'my father is a lawyer' Emma, and then a Ward with any money for having one in the school on top of it all this year.
Musing on that was cut short by the sound of a car pulling into the driveway, and it wasn't long before Mrs. Dallon had them both reading over the entire contract so that they knew what it said. Because even if your lawyer says that it's okay to sign something that doesn't excuse you from reading it for yourself. As far as they could tell there was nothing unexpected. They'd limited things to eight hours a month before she could refuse without a reason, included clauses that said that scheduling had to be such that schooling of any kind wasn't impacted, with several days notice preferred but at least twenty four hours required before a desired session. The list of safety precautions was significant and gave her and her father veto on any given test that could possibly harm her as well, though it only specified that he be told in advance of her showing up.
All in all the contract was well written, gave her and her father much more control than expected, and included transportation to and from the PRT building or the Protectorate Headquarters ENE, aka the Rig, for scheduled sessions. Something that they hadn't thought to ask for originally, because a thousand dollars minimum per session covered any costs along those lines nicely. The whole thing also only lasted for the remainder of the calendar year, after which a new contract would be needed if the PRT wanted to continue to have people look at Hive.
Taylor was honestly hoping that they'd have given up their desire to examine things by then.
Signing it took a couple of minutes, after which Mrs. Dallon asked them if they understood the document and had signed it voluntarily for the purpose stated within it. When they both answered 'yes' she then notarized the document for them, something that she explained that she could do because she wasn't otherwise named in the contract or benefiting from it directly.
"I'll get this to the PRT this morning," Mrs. Dallon said as she packed everything up.
"Thank you," Taylor and her father said, almost in unison. Twenty minutes later Taylor was finally alone in the house, and decided to do some chores while she worked on other things. That this included getting a load of laundry going while she was in the basement testing the latest variant of the Knight Clothing spell was just using her time wisely.
Hive hadn't been idle over the past couple of days and had figured out a couple of the problem points in the spell equations. It complicated several sections, but not to an extreme. Some experimentation showed that one headache was that if she fully removed and let go of a garment, now that she could, then the spell-created clothing would dissolve within a second or so. The barriers didn't meaningfully vanish, since the clothing wasn't much of a protection in this case, but she had to drop and re-cast the spell to get the lost garment back.
Taylor currently thought that it would be better to 'anchor' the garments so that they couldn't be fully removed to prevent that from happening, but doing so was apparently much more complicated. On the other hand, not anchoring the clothing to her gave her other options, such as having a badass longcoat that she could cast off and have dissolve in mid-air, should she ever want to be Mouse Protector levels of dramatic.
Just in case she ever needed it, she ended up adding that to her list of thoughts for her Knight Armor template, or an alternate thereof. Because casting off something like that to reveal the armor did sound cool, if limited in scope for when it would be useful. When she needed to make an entrance, primarily, would know that she needed to well in advance...this was where 'better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it' came into play.
Actually, she had an additional thought there. "Hive, can we manifest Knight Clothing or Knight Armor components afterwards? To replace removed garments or add additional ones?"
Hive processed that question for five minutes before responding. "Lord, it should be possible to manifest additional components. The full layering sequence used for the Knight Armor is, in effect, manifesting individual components in layers. Splitting out specific components of a template to manifest, or manifesting additional templates in their entirety, should not be difficult. However, identifying subcomponents of the dynamic template may be difficult, since the template will no longer be available. I recommend starting with producing additional templates for smaller garments or additions for initial practice, or using a static template. Also, note that this will not affect the protective barriers as they have additional anchor components."
That had, of course, led to her designing a collection of additional garments. She'd decided to start with hats for now, because being able to manifest a hat at any time seemed like a useful trick. Several basic baseball cap designs, two different sun hats, a trilby, a fedora, and a cowboy hat. These were all embedded into a single 'hats template' so that she could practice pulling specific ones out at the same time.
Her first actual attempt, just after lunch, had been a complete failure in some respects. Yes, she successfully summoned the baseball cap she wanted, without the other hats, and even placed it in her hand so that she could put it on properly. But the entire previous Knight Clothing spell had been canceled and replaced by the new element. And she'd thought that she was past that particular embarrassment when she'd built a proper static template.
Apparently they were going to need to see about building an adjusted spell that only layered onto the existing clothing/armor instead of replacing it, which would take more time. Especially since she wasn't going to be allowed to help during her sleep until she'd recovered.
Saturday had turned into another shopping day, this time to ensure that there were sufficient 'school' supplies available for Taylor on Monday. Her previous supplies hadn't exactly survived Winslow, after all. They ended up purchasing a bulk pack of notebooks, a couple boxes each of pens and pencils, and even a new basic calculator. Books and such were being provided, and apparently classes were being held in a rented area just off of the Boardwalk. Which would provide a somewhat safe way for her to get lunch if she didn't bring one.
They also visited where her tutors would be meeting her, or at least the outside of said building, so that Taylor would know where she was going Monday morning. Assuming her father didn't just drive her there for the first week or two. Taylor was betting that it would be at least that long before she was making her own way over, anyway. Luckily she'd still be making her own way home, so she wouldn't feel entirely like a child.
The rest of the weekend had gone by without much in the way of interesting things happening. Taylor couldn't play with much with her father home, Hive was still insisting that she needed to finish recovering before doing anything 'stressful', and not much else was going on. Though by the end of the weekend her headache had essentially fully subsided, which was nice.
Monday morning Taylor found her prediction of being driven to where she'd be tutored to be fully accurate. Just in case it became a problem, she'd skipped on using the Knight Clothing spell for now. Hopefully she could use a restroom before leaving the building to apply it as a precaution, not to mention when returning to drop it if she'd just gone to get lunch. Not that she'd be doing that today, having packed a bag lunch.
Over the course of the morning she was introduced to each of her tutors and what subjects they'd be covering. None of them covered physical education, sadly, so she was mostly on her own there beyond what her father helped with. But they were going to be continuing her programming classes, and there was a small computer lab she was given access to that she could use to work on any of her assignments on nights and weekends. Which was nice, since she didn't actually have a worthwhile computer to use at home right now.
Sadly, there were cameras in the room with the computers, or she'd have considered storing one long enough for Hive to get a scan to make a copy of it. Oh well, perhaps she'd end up with enough money from the PRT having people look at Hive to afford a decent enough replacement?
After lunch they got started on the actual tutoring, and the tutors she saw that afternoon spent their time figuring out where she was in their subjects. Something that would probably continue until they all had an idea of where she was and how far they had to go. Hopefully things would go well, with them only having her to worry about and all. No need to keep things to the slowest student's progress or anything like that.
She did find that the restrooms were well designed for keeping her applying or removing the Knight Clothing spell from being spotted, barring someone having done the unthinkable and hidden a camera she couldn't spot inside them anyway. As a result she was planning on donning the protective garb when she was done for the day, both to be in the habit and because this was Brockton Bay.
The only other thing of note was the Boardwalk Enforcers that she'd spotted keeping an eye on the building when she'd left. They didn't seem to be doing anything but watching, but that was okay with her. She figured that the PRT had probably asked them to be on the lookout for potential trouble.
It'd taken until Thursday for Hive to be satisfied that she'd fully recovered from her previous run with insect controlling. Taylor wasn't sure if it was a coincidence or not that she'd finished the 'where are you?' phase of the tutoring and moved into learning new things then too. Either way, that evening she joined Hive in her dreams again. Hive had made some decent progress towards scanning spells, and had mostly disassembled the Knight Armor equations into component 'stages' so that they could build a new spell up from the 'layering' portion of things.
They went over the entire equation from start to finish anyway, and as a result found the portion that controlled whether or not a previous protection layer was removed before the new one was placed. It was currently hardcoded to do so, but changing that to allow for a choice of replacing or adding onto the existing protection layer seemed like it wouldn't be that hard to do. After all, the inputs were currently pretty much restricted to a single template, if that in the case of the dynamic template version. Adding a second input didn't seem like it would be that bad.
In practice it proved to be a little more difficult, as the 'template input' portion of the equation was removed from the 'strip previous protections' portion. To keep the inputs together they had to string another variable into several sections of the overall equation. That was complicated to get right without breaking other elements of things, and they hadn't finished by the time Taylor woke up Friday morning.
Taylor waved to the Boardwalk Enforcers as she left her final tutoring session of the week, before she started to jog towards home. She'd had the idea to do so when her father had dropped her off that morning. It was a good way to get some extra exercise and to save some money on the bus fare, at least on nice enough days. Then again, the afternoons had been much nicer than the mornings all week.
She didn't have a tutoring session the next day, but she had been asked to attend the first 'look over Hive' session, as she was thinking of them. That was tomorrow afternoon, and she'd be picked up just after lunch. But that should mean that she'd have plenty of time to recover from another attempt at controlling insects, even if she was going to have to keep this session much shorter than her previous one.
One problem with jogging home instead of taking the bus was that it took longer than she'd expected, but she felt a lot less sweaty than she'd expected as well. Perhaps all of the exercise was paying off faster than expected? But because she'd taken longer she couldn't actually attempt an insect control session before her father made it home and be aware enough at dinnertime, so instead she decided to get started on preparing something for dinner instead.
While doing that she was discussing what they needed to do tomorrow afternoon with Hive.
"So I need to ask them what they think they're doing to discover information about you, in hopes that it gives you enough of a clue for what to watch for. What if they're wrong?"
Hive had pondered that for a minute. "Why would they be wrong?"
"Because I seem to recall hearing that most tinkers can't actually explain their tech, which means that what they think it does and what it actually does may be two very different things."
"That would complicate matters. Even so, knowing how they think things are working may be beneficial, and there is always the possibility that they are correct. Perhaps we should also focus on what pieces of the equipment are involved in the process, so that I might know which components are the best to attempt to monitor?"
"That can't hurt, I just wouldn't assume that they're telling the truth. They might believe it's the truth, of course, but if they can't explain how their tech works?"
"Of course."
Sadly, it hadn't taken much thought to determine that she was going to have to go without her Knight Clothing active, because the barriers would likely become very obvious. In a similar vein, she was going to have to keep her key and wallet out of storage so that there weren't any awkward questions regarding where she was keeping them. Doing her best to hide what she and Hive could do was already becoming quite annoying.
Dinner had gone smoothly, as had weight training, at which point Taylor prepared for bed early. Having done so, she ensured that she would hopefully appear to be sleeping if her father looked in on her before having Hive turn on the insect control. On the lower range and with a thirty minute time limit, since the full range and several hours attempt had gone so poorly.
It took a few minutes to realize that things were going a lot more smoothly this time. Yes, there was still far too much information for her to process normally, but at the same time she was able to filter some of it out. Or perhaps prioritize it would be the better term? And for the first time she was fairly certain that she was also able to tell insects what to do and have them follow her directions.
She still ended up losing herself to the inputs and sensations, but only in the last few minutes. She'd barely held it together before then, and it only took a few minutes for her to recover. After which she lay there in bed thinking about it.
"Hive, I assume that you'd agree that I did much better that time?"
"Yes, my Lord. The altered pathways in your brain seem to be built around better interfacing with the multitasking hardware. Further, shortly after you lost control at the end your mana started to form the patterns I'd previously observed, though the timer ran out before it could accomplish anything."
"Do you think it's safe to try and form those patterns directly?"
"I sadly have no data on that, and my simulations have not come up with a good reason why that mana pattern is doing what it does. At least two aspects of the linkage are foreign to me and I have not figured out the entirety of their function, especially as they seem to be modifiers of some kind. Without more information I've found that I cannot map the results to a proper equation."
Taylor sighed at that. It couldn't be that easy. "Perhaps the only way I'm going to improve is with steadily longer sessions, then. Go long enough for those mana linkages to form and do their thing, but not long enough to cause significant problems."
"That seems to be the safest course of action. I can also attempt to examine the link structures as they function to hopefully determine how to represent and reproduce the effects."
Well, at least they had a possible course of action there. Sadly, tonight wasn't the time to enact it, as she would be expected to get up and run with her father in the morning. So instead she rolled over and did her best to drift off to sleep. She and Hive had agreed that each night of dream-working should be followed by one of normal sleep, so when she did fall asleep it was proper, restful sleep and not a night of mental effort.
Saturday morning had started off with the new normal run, though Taylor was unhappy with how it turned out. She thought she'd done so well jogging home from tutoring the day before, yet this morning she was sweating like crazy when they finished their shorter session. Sure, they'd gone further together today than they had a few days ago, but it was nothing like the distance she'd covered in her jog the day before. Perhaps she hadn't been properly exerting herself coming home?
They both showered before having breakfast, after which her father sat down with her in the kitchen. He stared at her for a few minutes before sighing. "I know we agreed to this, but I'm not sure that I fully agree with them running tests on your necklace."
Taylor shrugged. "We both know that it was either agree to let them or end up having them force the issue when they found a suitable excuse."
"I know. But with the other things they botched recently?"
"I'm going to make sure that they explain things before they even begin, even if they want to count that as not being part of the time they're working. If any of it sounds like it could hurt me then I'll veto it. Besides, didn't you already get a list of things they were planning on trying?"
Her father nodded. "I did, and none of it sounds like it has any chance of harming you, at least as far as I understand things. The most dangerous things they want to try involve trying to cut the necklace off of you, and in both cases they've apparently got something that will wrap around the necklace before attempting to cut it. No chance of things making contact with you, and they still plan on slipping an extra shield piece between you and the tool."
"Which means that there isn't much to worry about. They do their thing, and regardless of if any of it is successful I get paid for my time. And if they successfully cut it off then that's that and I move on with my life." Not that she expected them to succeed, and even if they did she thought that Hive would find its way back to her somehow. It'd implied that was possible during some of their lessons, after all.
"That is a possibility to look forward to, isn't it? Somehow I doubt it'll be that simple, though. Tinkertech rarely is, as I understand it. Especially when nobody knows which tinker built it."
Taylor ended up filling the rest of the morning with completing the homework that her tutors had assigned. It didn't need to be done today, and in a couple of cases didn't need to be done until mid-week, but getting it out of the way seemed like a good idea. Eventually her father called her down from her room to eat lunch, and she'd finished all but two assignments. One of which she had been in the middle of, the other was a programming assignment and she was going to need to swing by and use the computer lab to complete it. Or stay after her last tutoring session Monday or Tuesday, anyway.
Lunch was eaten in silence, neither wanting to discuss the afternoon's activities. They quickly cleaned up, interrupted by a call from the PRT letting them know that a van was on the way to pick Taylor up. She collected what little she was bringing, which basically amounted to her wallet and a house key, then waited with her father for the van to arrive.
When it did arrive her father hugged her, told her to stay safe, and watched as she walked outside to the van. She suspected that he continued to watch until the van had left his sight, but couldn't prove it. Today's session was apparently in the PRT building, and not out on the Rig, so the ride didn't take that long and didn't involve crossing the water. She was let out of the van in front of the PRT building, where a PRT officer was waiting for her.
"Good afternoon Miss Hebert," the officer greeted.
"Good afternoon," Taylor replied.
"If you'll follow me we can get you checked in. I'm told that they took over a conference room for the day, so at least you should have a reasonably comfortable seat while they do their things."
Taylor tried to smile at that, but at this point she was far too nervous. It probably showed, because the officer didn't try to make any more small talk. Instead she was brought inside, her picture taken, and an ID badge printed off. Apparently future visits wouldn't require the picture taking portion, now that they had her picture on file. With that completed she was brought straight to a conference room.
In theory it shouldn't be that difficult, but in practice she just wasn't getting it. And since Hive thought that it would be good training for managing the inputs from scanning magic it seemed important to continue on it, even if they hadn't constructed suitable scanning spells yet. As a result she'd decided that it was time to stop coddling herself, have Hive pump the range up to max, and drop into an attempt for several hours at a time if need be.
Hive had cautioned against it, but wasn't going to stop her from trying. Probably because it didn't have any better ideas for getting her acclimated to things, or perhaps because it seemed to defer to her wishes on everything. She wasn't sure, and she wasn't questioning it at this point.
Instead, she'd cleaned up from the morning run and laid down on her bed. Once settled she'd taken a couple of deep breaths in an attempt to calm herself. "Okay Hive, turn on the insect control."
"At once, my Lord," Hive responded, and a moment later she was struggling to not lose herself in the sensations. It wasn't easy, as there were a lot more than she'd been practicing with up to this point, and it wasn't long before she was lost in them.
Taylor groaned as she rolled out of bed, falling to the ground instead of catching herself. She had a massive headache, feeling like someone had wailed on her brain with a sledgehammer or something like that, but she really needed to use the bathroom as well. She ended up crawling to the bathroom, and nearly forgot to pull down her pants before she used the toilet. That turned into at least half an hour of sitting there, unwilling or unable to think.
Eventually she'd recovered enough to wonder what, exactly, had happened. Which she articulated to the best of her ability. Sadly, at the moment that boiled down to a couple of words. "Wha happen?"
Noting how long things took was currently beyond her, but it seemed like several minutes before a voice she didn't recognize right away responded. "Emergency shutdown was engaged when automated systems detected that to continue would cause irreparable brain damage, my Lord."
That took a while for her to parse, helped by the pain in her head diminishing ever so slowly. She'd be embarrassed later when she realized that it'd taken her several minutes to even identify the voice as Hive. "Brain damage?"
"The sheer number of inputs from the insect control systems far exceeded your brain's ability to process, even with the multitasking systems providing outside assistance. In the hour between shutdown and your awakening I detected accelerated healing and adjustment of your brain, I suspect in part fueled by your mana stores helping along your desire to accomplish this task resulting in an adaptation to assist you with the rush of information. I have recorded the mana linkage patterns for later review, but have not had time to decipher them. For your own safety the insect control system is currently locked until you have recovered from this attempt, I estimate that will take at least four days, during which I will also refrain from utilizing the multitasking systems while you're sleeping."
That took an uncomfortably long time to process, and a bit longer for her to realize she had to agree with for the time being, after which Taylor realized that she was sitting there on the toilet. And had been for a while, given the state of things. She carefully cleaned herself up, flushed the toilet, and then fell down again because she'd tried to walk without pulling her pants back up.
Eventually she made it back to her bed, where she promptly fell into a dreamless sleep.
Somehow Taylor had recovered enough to fake it through dinner that evening, but wasn't up to a discussion about the updated contract that they'd sent to her father. Luckily he didn't seem to want an in-depth discussion, merely to let her know that it looked good to him but that he'd be checking with Carol in the morning. He did seem surprised that it looked like they'd acquiesced to all of their requests without complaint, but she didn't have the mental power available to wonder about that.
It said something about how distant the two had grown that she was able to 'fake it' and not have her father even ask if something was wrong.
After dinner they'd cleaned up and gone downstairs to use the weight set. Taylor probably went too far, since she only stopped when the pain from her muscles was noticeable over the pain in her head. But she was still able to move enough to clean up and go to bed, so that was probably okay. She would sleep without dreaming, Hive refusing to stress her brain any more after what she'd done to it that day.
It was Friday, two days later, before Taylor's headache had mostly subsided, at least to a point where she could ignore it. Hive still wasn't letting her do anything 'stressful', but she could at least focus on things properly again. Mostly. But she had to wait before doing anything of interest, because Mrs. Dallon was coming over first thing with the contract for her and her father to sign, before the PRT could decide they wanted more changes. Which meant he hadn't left for work yet.
Taylor was currently paying for her couple of days of altered pain perception, her limbs feeling like she'd abused them far too much. As a result she was currently collapsed on the couch while her father cleaned up the breakfast dishes. He'd chuckled and pointed out that feeling like she currently did was perfectly normal 'early on', at least from his experience, and that she'd learn how to properly tell where her limits were eventually. Fat lot of good that did her now.
Eventually he'd finished with the dishes and settled into his chair, turning on the morning news. There'd apparently been some kind of large battle in New York last night, one that neither of them cared about. The FBI and CDC were being closed-lipped about suspects and charges in the bioterrorism incident at Winslow High School, but that wasn't surprising as most of the suspects were minors. They did learn that secondary charges had been filed by the state against a number of teachers, and Blackwell had apparently been blacklisted from holding any position of authority in a school in the region on top of charges filed against her that probably made her ineligible anywhere reasonable anyway.
Taylor thought she'd merely thought 'good riddance' to the last bit of news, only for her father to verbally agree with her. "She definitely deserved it, with the things she was burying over the past year and a half. Did you hear about the list of things they found had been covered up in the news Wednesday?"
Blinking in surprise, she shook her head. "No, I was mostly ignoring the news over the past couple of days."
"Apparently there were literally hundreds of ignored yet actionable reports made to the woman, sitting in a filing cabinet in the main office. If a complaint was against any number of students that participated in things that secured the school funding then it was ignored. Exceptions were made for 'well connected' students, of course, which seems to have been 'anyone who would actually sue them' as far as the reporters could tell."
That made far too much sense in a number of ways. And Hess probably fell into multiple categories from day one. Sports star, friends with 'my father is a lawyer' Emma, and then a Ward with any money for having one in the school on top of it all this year.
Musing on that was cut short by the sound of a car pulling into the driveway, and it wasn't long before Mrs. Dallon had them both reading over the entire contract so that they knew what it said. Because even if your lawyer says that it's okay to sign something that doesn't excuse you from reading it for yourself. As far as they could tell there was nothing unexpected. They'd limited things to eight hours a month before she could refuse without a reason, included clauses that said that scheduling had to be such that schooling of any kind wasn't impacted, with several days notice preferred but at least twenty four hours required before a desired session. The list of safety precautions was significant and gave her and her father veto on any given test that could possibly harm her as well, though it only specified that he be told in advance of her showing up.
All in all the contract was well written, gave her and her father much more control than expected, and included transportation to and from the PRT building or the Protectorate Headquarters ENE, aka the Rig, for scheduled sessions. Something that they hadn't thought to ask for originally, because a thousand dollars minimum per session covered any costs along those lines nicely. The whole thing also only lasted for the remainder of the calendar year, after which a new contract would be needed if the PRT wanted to continue to have people look at Hive.
Taylor was honestly hoping that they'd have given up their desire to examine things by then.
Signing it took a couple of minutes, after which Mrs. Dallon asked them if they understood the document and had signed it voluntarily for the purpose stated within it. When they both answered 'yes' she then notarized the document for them, something that she explained that she could do because she wasn't otherwise named in the contract or benefiting from it directly.
"I'll get this to the PRT this morning," Mrs. Dallon said as she packed everything up.
"Thank you," Taylor and her father said, almost in unison. Twenty minutes later Taylor was finally alone in the house, and decided to do some chores while she worked on other things. That this included getting a load of laundry going while she was in the basement testing the latest variant of the Knight Clothing spell was just using her time wisely.
Hive hadn't been idle over the past couple of days and had figured out a couple of the problem points in the spell equations. It complicated several sections, but not to an extreme. Some experimentation showed that one headache was that if she fully removed and let go of a garment, now that she could, then the spell-created clothing would dissolve within a second or so. The barriers didn't meaningfully vanish, since the clothing wasn't much of a protection in this case, but she had to drop and re-cast the spell to get the lost garment back.
Taylor currently thought that it would be better to 'anchor' the garments so that they couldn't be fully removed to prevent that from happening, but doing so was apparently much more complicated. On the other hand, not anchoring the clothing to her gave her other options, such as having a badass longcoat that she could cast off and have dissolve in mid-air, should she ever want to be Mouse Protector levels of dramatic.
Just in case she ever needed it, she ended up adding that to her list of thoughts for her Knight Armor template, or an alternate thereof. Because casting off something like that to reveal the armor did sound cool, if limited in scope for when it would be useful. When she needed to make an entrance, primarily, would know that she needed to well in advance...this was where 'better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it' came into play.
Actually, she had an additional thought there. "Hive, can we manifest Knight Clothing or Knight Armor components afterwards? To replace removed garments or add additional ones?"
Hive processed that question for five minutes before responding. "Lord, it should be possible to manifest additional components. The full layering sequence used for the Knight Armor is, in effect, manifesting individual components in layers. Splitting out specific components of a template to manifest, or manifesting additional templates in their entirety, should not be difficult. However, identifying subcomponents of the dynamic template may be difficult, since the template will no longer be available. I recommend starting with producing additional templates for smaller garments or additions for initial practice, or using a static template. Also, note that this will not affect the protective barriers as they have additional anchor components."
That had, of course, led to her designing a collection of additional garments. She'd decided to start with hats for now, because being able to manifest a hat at any time seemed like a useful trick. Several basic baseball cap designs, two different sun hats, a trilby, a fedora, and a cowboy hat. These were all embedded into a single 'hats template' so that she could practice pulling specific ones out at the same time.
Her first actual attempt, just after lunch, had been a complete failure in some respects. Yes, she successfully summoned the baseball cap she wanted, without the other hats, and even placed it in her hand so that she could put it on properly. But the entire previous Knight Clothing spell had been canceled and replaced by the new element. And she'd thought that she was past that particular embarrassment when she'd built a proper static template.
Apparently they were going to need to see about building an adjusted spell that only layered onto the existing clothing/armor instead of replacing it, which would take more time. Especially since she wasn't going to be allowed to help during her sleep until she'd recovered.
Saturday had turned into another shopping day, this time to ensure that there were sufficient 'school' supplies available for Taylor on Monday. Her previous supplies hadn't exactly survived Winslow, after all. They ended up purchasing a bulk pack of notebooks, a couple boxes each of pens and pencils, and even a new basic calculator. Books and such were being provided, and apparently classes were being held in a rented area just off of the Boardwalk. Which would provide a somewhat safe way for her to get lunch if she didn't bring one.
They also visited where her tutors would be meeting her, or at least the outside of said building, so that Taylor would know where she was going Monday morning. Assuming her father didn't just drive her there for the first week or two. Taylor was betting that it would be at least that long before she was making her own way over, anyway. Luckily she'd still be making her own way home, so she wouldn't feel entirely like a child.
The rest of the weekend had gone by without much in the way of interesting things happening. Taylor couldn't play with much with her father home, Hive was still insisting that she needed to finish recovering before doing anything 'stressful', and not much else was going on. Though by the end of the weekend her headache had essentially fully subsided, which was nice.
Monday morning Taylor found her prediction of being driven to where she'd be tutored to be fully accurate. Just in case it became a problem, she'd skipped on using the Knight Clothing spell for now. Hopefully she could use a restroom before leaving the building to apply it as a precaution, not to mention when returning to drop it if she'd just gone to get lunch. Not that she'd be doing that today, having packed a bag lunch.
Over the course of the morning she was introduced to each of her tutors and what subjects they'd be covering. None of them covered physical education, sadly, so she was mostly on her own there beyond what her father helped with. But they were going to be continuing her programming classes, and there was a small computer lab she was given access to that she could use to work on any of her assignments on nights and weekends. Which was nice, since she didn't actually have a worthwhile computer to use at home right now.
Sadly, there were cameras in the room with the computers, or she'd have considered storing one long enough for Hive to get a scan to make a copy of it. Oh well, perhaps she'd end up with enough money from the PRT having people look at Hive to afford a decent enough replacement?
After lunch they got started on the actual tutoring, and the tutors she saw that afternoon spent their time figuring out where she was in their subjects. Something that would probably continue until they all had an idea of where she was and how far they had to go. Hopefully things would go well, with them only having her to worry about and all. No need to keep things to the slowest student's progress or anything like that.
She did find that the restrooms were well designed for keeping her applying or removing the Knight Clothing spell from being spotted, barring someone having done the unthinkable and hidden a camera she couldn't spot inside them anyway. As a result she was planning on donning the protective garb when she was done for the day, both to be in the habit and because this was Brockton Bay.
The only other thing of note was the Boardwalk Enforcers that she'd spotted keeping an eye on the building when she'd left. They didn't seem to be doing anything but watching, but that was okay with her. She figured that the PRT had probably asked them to be on the lookout for potential trouble.
It'd taken until Thursday for Hive to be satisfied that she'd fully recovered from her previous run with insect controlling. Taylor wasn't sure if it was a coincidence or not that she'd finished the 'where are you?' phase of the tutoring and moved into learning new things then too. Either way, that evening she joined Hive in her dreams again. Hive had made some decent progress towards scanning spells, and had mostly disassembled the Knight Armor equations into component 'stages' so that they could build a new spell up from the 'layering' portion of things.
They went over the entire equation from start to finish anyway, and as a result found the portion that controlled whether or not a previous protection layer was removed before the new one was placed. It was currently hardcoded to do so, but changing that to allow for a choice of replacing or adding onto the existing protection layer seemed like it wouldn't be that hard to do. After all, the inputs were currently pretty much restricted to a single template, if that in the case of the dynamic template version. Adding a second input didn't seem like it would be that bad.
In practice it proved to be a little more difficult, as the 'template input' portion of the equation was removed from the 'strip previous protections' portion. To keep the inputs together they had to string another variable into several sections of the overall equation. That was complicated to get right without breaking other elements of things, and they hadn't finished by the time Taylor woke up Friday morning.
Taylor waved to the Boardwalk Enforcers as she left her final tutoring session of the week, before she started to jog towards home. She'd had the idea to do so when her father had dropped her off that morning. It was a good way to get some extra exercise and to save some money on the bus fare, at least on nice enough days. Then again, the afternoons had been much nicer than the mornings all week.
She didn't have a tutoring session the next day, but she had been asked to attend the first 'look over Hive' session, as she was thinking of them. That was tomorrow afternoon, and she'd be picked up just after lunch. But that should mean that she'd have plenty of time to recover from another attempt at controlling insects, even if she was going to have to keep this session much shorter than her previous one.
One problem with jogging home instead of taking the bus was that it took longer than she'd expected, but she felt a lot less sweaty than she'd expected as well. Perhaps all of the exercise was paying off faster than expected? But because she'd taken longer she couldn't actually attempt an insect control session before her father made it home and be aware enough at dinnertime, so instead she decided to get started on preparing something for dinner instead.
While doing that she was discussing what they needed to do tomorrow afternoon with Hive.
"So I need to ask them what they think they're doing to discover information about you, in hopes that it gives you enough of a clue for what to watch for. What if they're wrong?"
Hive had pondered that for a minute. "Why would they be wrong?"
"Because I seem to recall hearing that most tinkers can't actually explain their tech, which means that what they think it does and what it actually does may be two very different things."
"That would complicate matters. Even so, knowing how they think things are working may be beneficial, and there is always the possibility that they are correct. Perhaps we should also focus on what pieces of the equipment are involved in the process, so that I might know which components are the best to attempt to monitor?"
"That can't hurt, I just wouldn't assume that they're telling the truth. They might believe it's the truth, of course, but if they can't explain how their tech works?"
"Of course."
Sadly, it hadn't taken much thought to determine that she was going to have to go without her Knight Clothing active, because the barriers would likely become very obvious. In a similar vein, she was going to have to keep her key and wallet out of storage so that there weren't any awkward questions regarding where she was keeping them. Doing her best to hide what she and Hive could do was already becoming quite annoying.
Dinner had gone smoothly, as had weight training, at which point Taylor prepared for bed early. Having done so, she ensured that she would hopefully appear to be sleeping if her father looked in on her before having Hive turn on the insect control. On the lower range and with a thirty minute time limit, since the full range and several hours attempt had gone so poorly.
It took a few minutes to realize that things were going a lot more smoothly this time. Yes, there was still far too much information for her to process normally, but at the same time she was able to filter some of it out. Or perhaps prioritize it would be the better term? And for the first time she was fairly certain that she was also able to tell insects what to do and have them follow her directions.
She still ended up losing herself to the inputs and sensations, but only in the last few minutes. She'd barely held it together before then, and it only took a few minutes for her to recover. After which she lay there in bed thinking about it.
"Hive, I assume that you'd agree that I did much better that time?"
"Yes, my Lord. The altered pathways in your brain seem to be built around better interfacing with the multitasking hardware. Further, shortly after you lost control at the end your mana started to form the patterns I'd previously observed, though the timer ran out before it could accomplish anything."
"Do you think it's safe to try and form those patterns directly?"
"I sadly have no data on that, and my simulations have not come up with a good reason why that mana pattern is doing what it does. At least two aspects of the linkage are foreign to me and I have not figured out the entirety of their function, especially as they seem to be modifiers of some kind. Without more information I've found that I cannot map the results to a proper equation."
Taylor sighed at that. It couldn't be that easy. "Perhaps the only way I'm going to improve is with steadily longer sessions, then. Go long enough for those mana linkages to form and do their thing, but not long enough to cause significant problems."
"That seems to be the safest course of action. I can also attempt to examine the link structures as they function to hopefully determine how to represent and reproduce the effects."
Well, at least they had a possible course of action there. Sadly, tonight wasn't the time to enact it, as she would be expected to get up and run with her father in the morning. So instead she rolled over and did her best to drift off to sleep. She and Hive had agreed that each night of dream-working should be followed by one of normal sleep, so when she did fall asleep it was proper, restful sleep and not a night of mental effort.
Saturday morning had started off with the new normal run, though Taylor was unhappy with how it turned out. She thought she'd done so well jogging home from tutoring the day before, yet this morning she was sweating like crazy when they finished their shorter session. Sure, they'd gone further together today than they had a few days ago, but it was nothing like the distance she'd covered in her jog the day before. Perhaps she hadn't been properly exerting herself coming home?
They both showered before having breakfast, after which her father sat down with her in the kitchen. He stared at her for a few minutes before sighing. "I know we agreed to this, but I'm not sure that I fully agree with them running tests on your necklace."
Taylor shrugged. "We both know that it was either agree to let them or end up having them force the issue when they found a suitable excuse."
"I know. But with the other things they botched recently?"
"I'm going to make sure that they explain things before they even begin, even if they want to count that as not being part of the time they're working. If any of it sounds like it could hurt me then I'll veto it. Besides, didn't you already get a list of things they were planning on trying?"
Her father nodded. "I did, and none of it sounds like it has any chance of harming you, at least as far as I understand things. The most dangerous things they want to try involve trying to cut the necklace off of you, and in both cases they've apparently got something that will wrap around the necklace before attempting to cut it. No chance of things making contact with you, and they still plan on slipping an extra shield piece between you and the tool."
"Which means that there isn't much to worry about. They do their thing, and regardless of if any of it is successful I get paid for my time. And if they successfully cut it off then that's that and I move on with my life." Not that she expected them to succeed, and even if they did she thought that Hive would find its way back to her somehow. It'd implied that was possible during some of their lessons, after all.
"That is a possibility to look forward to, isn't it? Somehow I doubt it'll be that simple, though. Tinkertech rarely is, as I understand it. Especially when nobody knows which tinker built it."
Taylor ended up filling the rest of the morning with completing the homework that her tutors had assigned. It didn't need to be done today, and in a couple of cases didn't need to be done until mid-week, but getting it out of the way seemed like a good idea. Eventually her father called her down from her room to eat lunch, and she'd finished all but two assignments. One of which she had been in the middle of, the other was a programming assignment and she was going to need to swing by and use the computer lab to complete it. Or stay after her last tutoring session Monday or Tuesday, anyway.
Lunch was eaten in silence, neither wanting to discuss the afternoon's activities. They quickly cleaned up, interrupted by a call from the PRT letting them know that a van was on the way to pick Taylor up. She collected what little she was bringing, which basically amounted to her wallet and a house key, then waited with her father for the van to arrive.
When it did arrive her father hugged her, told her to stay safe, and watched as she walked outside to the van. She suspected that he continued to watch until the van had left his sight, but couldn't prove it. Today's session was apparently in the PRT building, and not out on the Rig, so the ride didn't take that long and didn't involve crossing the water. She was let out of the van in front of the PRT building, where a PRT officer was waiting for her.
"Good afternoon Miss Hebert," the officer greeted.
"Good afternoon," Taylor replied.
"If you'll follow me we can get you checked in. I'm told that they took over a conference room for the day, so at least you should have a reasonably comfortable seat while they do their things."
Taylor tried to smile at that, but at this point she was far too nervous. It probably showed, because the officer didn't try to make any more small talk. Instead she was brought inside, her picture taken, and an ID badge printed off. Apparently future visits wouldn't require the picture taking portion, now that they had her picture on file. With that completed she was brought straight to a conference room.