He probably still feels absolutely miserable on the inside, whenever he makes a mess, but he doesn't feel compelled to fix it or to murder people anymore, which flips him right back up to being overjoyed with his newly messy environs.
Hybrid Hive: Eat Shard? (Worm/MGLN) (Complete)
- Thread starter CmptrWz
- Start date
- Crossover
- Location
- Georgia
Only in the background, they haven't had any lines that I recall, just comments about them doing something or a character taking one to a location.
Isiri Pudireach
Predictive text can go duck itself
It doesn't help that there are probably thousands of them by now.
- Location
- Tokyo, Japan
*false British Accent* Wouldn't mind a scene where one of them doing a chat with a human cabbie in London, for that matter. I can see them sharing a pint or two. */false British Accent*
In all honesty, though, I'm intrigued by the new "people" joining the Kingdom via the former Automation Systems.
Lots of thousands if Taylor is stocking them per planet rather than per capita.
Hard no.
If you're going to kill someone by their own request, you'd better have informed consent. "He made a blustery statement which, taken literally, said to kill him, so we get to kill him" is not informed consent, and this sort of thing is why we even have the idea of "informed consent".
Also, there's a word for "forced to work in your prison." It's "slavery".
Ah, no, that would be the word for "mind controlled at minimum thousands of people against their will". The word for "Forced to work in your prison" is hyperbole. They (the ones in charge of mind-controlling thousands or more) refused to participate in a reform program aimed at allowing them to become safe (ie: non-mind controlling monster) members of society.
Can we please not have another massive derail about how Taylor is the worst most evil villain ever to vill because she's dealing with actual monsters in an appropriate way? Particularly when it's not even based on the actual story content (again)?
Rajvik_wolfboy
Wolf amongst the stars.
- Location
- Florida
Also, and let me point this out as someone who HAS BEEN TO PRISON!
Usually the jobs they have you do in prison are things like cook the food, do the laundry, and minor maintenance to the yard and buildings. its not like in Shawshank Redemption where your out doing heavy labor or making big rocks into small ones, or even making license plates. the hardest labor i've seen is the prison keeping a VEGETABLE GARDEN to help supplement the kitchen supplies. You do not get to sit on your 455 unless you are so dangerous (read your charges are so serious/escape risk) that they can't risk the chance of you making a break for it and escaping for ANY length of time
Usually the jobs they have you do in prison are things like cook the food, do the laundry, and minor maintenance to the yard and buildings. its not like in Shawshank Redemption where your out doing heavy labor or making big rocks into small ones, or even making license plates. the hardest labor i've seen is the prison keeping a VEGETABLE GARDEN to help supplement the kitchen supplies. You do not get to sit on your 455 unless you are so dangerous (read your charges are so serious/escape risk) that they can't risk the chance of you making a break for it and escaping for ANY length of time
Isiri Pudireach
Predictive text can go duck itself
There is also the fact that the life imprisonment and the community service were two completely separate punishments.
There's nothing saying the 'life imprisonment' group had to do any work
- Location
- Texas
- Pronouns
- He
Especially considering that Taylor basically runs a post-scarcity civilization. I suspect there would be mandatory counseling sessions, however, because anyone who thinks that they are allowed to forcibly remove another person's free will has some issues.
- Location
- Georgia
I had interpreted that scene as being after Kingdom had exhausted all attempts at getting him to accept a non death sentence, with the speech being when his sentence was being carried out, but I concede that your interpretation could make sense, too. Regardless of this person's post, the actual story had a lot more than "I would rather die than X" going on before they got to the point of actually killing them. At some point, you have to accept their decision to die because you can't ethically* reform somebody who is dead set against reform.
*Mana has the knowledge to be able to literally go in and change his mind, but is being very ethical about refusing to use that in most cases. I know I would much rather be killed than have my mind twisted to fit somebody else's idea of what I should be.
Crazael
Rehydrated Demon King
- Location
- Lost to the vagaries of time.
To be fair, they did repeatedly ask him to confirm that he would only accept death rather than life imprisonment. And, when it became clear his intent was to make a show if his own execution and turn himself into a martyr, they made it impossible for him to do that.
Scarlet Rose
Verified Furry
- Pronouns
- Female/Genderless
Now, after reading the comments, I NEED an Accord pov interlude 🥺
I do hope he's happier now without that parasite.
Was this Accord the one doing the OCD breaking training with the jeans and shirt?
I do hope he's happier now without that parasite.
Was this Accord the one doing the OCD breaking training with the jeans and shirt?
Isnt my realname
This isn't my real name.
- Location
- Not Here
No, I think you're remembering the Accord from Mauling Snarks.
In this story, Accord POV appears in Interlude 11, Interlude 17, and Interlude 18.
EDIT: I still think the Accord you're thinking of is the Mauling Snarks one, but I just had a quick looksee and couldn't find the reference.
Last edited:
- Location
- Oregon, USA
While I don't know the specific chapter, I do remember the scene in Mauling Snarks. It was when Accord ended up going to Kurt and Lacey's bar.
Chapter 192 - November 1, 2011
Tuesday morning had Missy enduring complaints from Ethan that she'd missed the opportunity to wear an amusing costume to school the day before. Not that she had any clue what she'd have worn that would've been appropriate for the beginning of a week of carpentry beyond dressing up as a proper carpenter or something. The couple of students that had worn costumes had them essentially destroyed just from moving a small amount of wood around, though it was possible that something homemade and thus a lot less cheaply produced might've held up better.
"So how is your spell creation going?" Sherie finally asked to change the subject.
"I finally broke down and asked the kingdom's systems if there was something obvious I was missing," Missy admitted.
"Oh?"
"According to the systems, the successes I've already had are impossible. So this is probably something they can't properly represent with the math they know of. But they did point out a couple of things I was doing backwards anyway. I mis-read a couple of things we picked up from somewhere in the Bureau's area and hadn't noticed because doing them backwards didn't fail outright."
"Better not tell Amy then. Taylor being good at spell creation is expected, but if you're doing things that the automated systems can't too..."
"She'll be fine with it. The automated systems likely couldn't have figured out my folding-space attack either. That said, we're on the same level there with trying to safely dismantle it. Once you fold things up they're incredibly hard to unfold safely, so the best bet is to just find a place that nobody cares about for a few minutes to let it all unfold violently. At least so far."
"Ah."
Missy frowned a little. "What do you think about the idea of Expanse showing up on an Earth other than Earth Bet?"
Both adults blinked a couple of times, then looked contemplative. Ethan nodded first. "That makes sense, even if Bet is the one with the most trouble. Other Earths have their own parahuman-related issues, and the network is even less likely to throw up alerts when things happen away from Scion. Besides, the geese have already started spreading that way."
"Wait," Sherie said. "They have?"
"Oh yeah. Nothing major yet, and I don't think they've even become known enough to be notable. Well, there are cats and dogs and even crows involved now, to blend in better everywhere when they aren't making a point of being blatantly obvious. Honestly, the geese are only the bulk of things here because they're known and to make a point that would be lost on other societies. The automated system in charge of all of that is doing its best to abuse every loophole it can find, or at least that's what it looks like to me. My review of what they're up to this morning included mention of foiling a kidnapping with a dog device on Aleph and a crow device breaking a phone line on an Earth we don't have a name for."
"...breaking a phone line?" Missy asked.
"Stopped a guard from alerting people that the police had shown up and that someone should book it down a secret tunnel. I think they're having problems getting the law-checking side of things to let them implement mice and rats for more internal damage to structures."
"Oh."
"But yeah, you showing up to stop someone from being incredibly violent or something like that on another Earth should be fine. Just check with the lawbot to ensure that your interfering won't seemingly create a pile of legal issues first."
Amy was bored in class, so had multitasking instances working on figuring out options for Rainbow's next appearance and date ideas. On the former, there were amazingly few 'Rainbow-appropriate' targets available...if you were looking for actual fights. There were other options though, such as visiting areas with homeless kids or perhaps interfering with 'Lost Garden' that had been moving towards Brockton Bay at one point but had changed their mind and stalled out in Western Massachusetts. They were in the middle of a forest area right now, seemingly undecided about what they wanted to do next. And you could argue that the bulk of the group was 'homeless kids', for that matter, though more teenagers than younger kids.
As for the date side of things, Brockton Bay was starting to feel creepy with how many federal agents were keeping an eye on Taylor...and now Amy as well, presumably in case someone tried to grab her for leverage on Taylor. Visiting the resort was technically an option, though the second one in Bureau space was probably the better bet. Either way there were plenty of date-like things to do there in various ways, but some of the non-kingdom Bureau-area worlds felt like an even better option in their own way. Experience something new in a location that was safe but not in the kingdom where Taylor might have to be 'Queen' and didn't have literal teams of people following them around for their own supposed protection.
Unfortunately, 'discouraging' the protection details from following them around wasn't really a good option. They were just doing their jobs, because Taylor was 'important', and it was theoretically a good thing. When you didn't have multiple ways of noticing them keeping tabs on every move you made throughout the city, anyway. It was likely that they were normally a lot less blatantly obvious in their monitoring.
The automated systems could've been a little less insulting when pointing all of that out though.
Of course, there was also wondering about Taylor being 'hopeful' about figuring something out this week...without specifying exactly what. Sure, Amy could just ask...but that potentially invited a bunch of information that would just induce headaches. Better to stick to the unimportant stuff until something else comes up more generally.
Fate sighed as they sat there guarding the only real combatant the facility had while security and nurse devices from the Usagi secured the facility and the test subjects within it. "This was supposed to be challenging. Not a complete curbstomp."
"They sent all of us in direct contradiction to normal local-space operating directives," Hayate retorted. "Of course it was a curbstomp."
"All 'too much power in one unit' rules were suspended in light of the kingdom's existence," Rein corrected. "And this would've been a curbstomp for Vivio, let alone any one of us."
"...you might have a point there. Why was this listed as needing us?"
"Because a year ago if we'd barged in here like we did then we'd be dead," Nanoha replied, getting looks from the rest of them. "What?"
"Nothing we did was enough to warrant breaking a sweat," Fate replied. "Why would we be dead?"
"The incredibly subtle virus designed to get around magical protections that fired off my 'biological attack attempted' alerts in Unmei every six seconds for the first twenty minutes after we entered the facility, before the nurse and security devices started clearing things with their sweeps? Which was mentioned in the kingdom's briefing for why this facility was a problem to begin with, for that matter. Reading that or having the alerts set up for biological attacks and other sudden healings like the manuals recommended should've told you."
A quick check of Natane's logs told Fate that she'd also gotten hit by attempts repeatedly for the first twenty minutes or so. "Huh. I set those as a summary for when I drop my protections after combat for anything the healing system could deal with. Didn't think I needed the distraction in the middle of a fight."
"I suppose that makes sense. Really, the biggest reason to come out here immediately was to stop things before they lost containment next month and the entire planet had to be quarantined. If we hadn't come then the kingdom likely would've. Or at least that's my interpretation of the last couple of pages of the kingdom's briefing."
Based on Hayate and Rein frowning, they had to do a better job reading the mission briefings. Or at least stop skimming over sections that were 'informational' when the summary said 'none of this is a threat to you', perhaps.
Kurt hadn't expected his morning to start with alerts about automated systems trying to overstep their bounds and being noticed by other automated systems. Except that the first group of automated systems was now apparently machine intelligence people? That were aiming to locate and abuse loopholes to help people across various planets, apparently. Whatever. They'd overstepped bounds and been caught, and he'd needed most of the morning and a good portion of the afternoon to fix things. His best guess for where they'd gone wrong was not understanding that while some financial transactions were considered theft to the kingdom that didn't mean they were illegal in the societies they'd occurred in.
Once things were fixed, and a basic lesson in where the machine intelligences had gone wrong had been given, he was then asked for his input on potential 'community service' work to serve as punishment and rehabilitation.
"For this scope of crime you'd want any such 'community service' to ideally be financial in scope," Kurt muttered to himself as he read over things. "But not in any manner that involves actually interacting with funds?"
"Indeed," the 'judge' device agreed. "They'll be forbidden from directly manipulating funds other than their own for twice the duration of their community service."
"Hmmm. Well, I do have a couple of 'back burner' projects that might work. What do you think about 'independent tax audits' of the rich across various planets and tax systems?"
"Not actually correcting things, but seeing if any given individual or corporate entity has actually been paying their taxes correctly according to local laws and documenting either that things are reasonably correct or where the locals can find the intentional mistakes?"
"Yeah."
"That sounds ideal, as to do so they'll need to learn about each financial system to ensure that they get things correct. Something they obviously hadn't done before going on their 'steal from the thieves to give back to those they stole from' campaign. Do you have a list ready?"
"No, but I have a routine prepared to list the potentials in any given financial system. That's probably the better choice as you can have them specifically target the planets they originally interfered with first."
"Wonderful! If you can send that over then I think it will work wonderfully."
"Do we need to get Taylor to sign off on any of this?"
"This is far below the level the Queen would need to personally deal with, beyond a basic summary note to her, and your position has you overseeing financial crime. Bringing the Queen in to personally approve of the punishment is only needed if you feel it to be necessary."
That surprised Kurt. "...she actually delegated legitimate responsibilities?"
The judge device shook its head. "She automated everything with specific cut-outs to trusted people for oversight where the automation fails to come up with solutions. As far as the overall system can tell, she wants things to run without her needing to worry about anything once the proverbial kinks are worked out."
Okay, yes, that did sound like what Taylor and Hive had collectively done with the kingdom. Kurt just hadn't realized how far that had gone already. Or that he was one of the 'trusted people' ironing out the kinks in the punishment side of things.
Taylor's day had been reasonably straightforward. No major alerts from the kingdom, the dyson sphere project was making actual progress, and the 'demonstration attack' had silenced most of those concerned about the safety of the kingdom's cities. As a bonus, it had also caused a cancellation of two other planned attempts to try to 'reclaim Belka' on behalf of 'rightful inheritors'. Kurt had been busy with something in the financial side of things, Hive was distracted examining the pocket reality and the side effects of 'punching holes' in it, Colin was working on plans to convert more parahumans into mages.
...now if only the analysis of the boot-up process on the stupid isolated shards would stop running into dead ends.
Designing a better 'vending machine' setup than Tracey had come up with was a nice side project though. It might have made sense to build it like any number of Earth-style machines on the surface, but starting from scratch allowed for handling much larger items through alternate delivery methods, like the front opening up in multiple ways to expose the purchased item. That had led into a foray into other vending options, such as a variety of foods. Most of which would probably feel ridiculous to be able to order 'made on the spot' from a vending machine.
The 'wedding cake in fifteen minutes' was definitely showing off, even if she'd slowed it down significantly from what they could manage. Burgers and other sandwiches made-to-order were also slightly tricky to set up so you could watch them being made, lasagna had been interesting to get to layer properly in a manner that wasn't obviously cheating, and pizza had been a trivial and boring afterthought. Then she'd let more automated systems figure out 'other regional items' that she'd be far less familiar with, so long as they could make it all 'fit' inside of a single vending machine with the other options.
Once the base machines were done, she'd very carefully ensured that the automated systems wouldn't have problems triggering 'free samples' for the homeless, bonus dessert items or gift-like things for kids on their birthdays, and other such 'shenanigans'. Mostly out of curiosity about which 'loopholes' would be used in an attempt to justify any given actions by those tweaking the automated systems to do any of it.
Everything should be installed at all the healing booth locations in a couple of days, with most of the delay being intentional so that Dwight and Virgil had time to make some of the advertising/demonstration videos for the initial 'gadget' type offerings. She was curious what they'd do with a couple of her quick creations.
Hayate was a little annoyed that it had taken until Wednesday morning to get back home, but understood why the Bureau wanted to be very careful with a bunch of people who had been experimented on with incredibly dangerous viruses and immune system modifications. No matter how much they were willing to trust the kingdom's healing capabilities. Some things just shouldn't be left to trusting that things will be fine because someone else was taking care of it.
"Do I want to know why you four are sniffing things?" Hayate asked as she looked over the four Wolkenritter. The girls were in wolf-girl forms, but the scene was definitely weird.
"Our noses work differently when we're like this," Shamal explained. "Zafira is helping us figure out what we're actually smelling."
"Not made any easier by not knowing how to describe some of the scents," Signum added.
"You two just suck at descriptions," Vita challenged. "He's not had any problem understanding which scents I've described."
"Doesn't help that your noses are all too human in shape to properly track smells with," Zafira pointed out. "But yes, the squirt is the only one of you three that seems to be able to describe what her nose is picking up with any accuracy."
"And here I just used the simulation trainer to figure out cat senses," Hayate commented. "Though I didn't notice that much of a difference. But if you four are doing this kind of thing then you're probably going to be fine for any participation you want to do in working with the kingdom over the coming days."
"I'm still going to pass and stick with working with kids in the dojo once school lets out for the day. Playing leader to a bunch of automated stuff going against those that aren't really a threat doesn't sound like anything I'm interested in doing."
"The rest of us want to see what 'Earth Bet' is like after years of what we'd consider 'lost logia' attacks," Signum answered. "Though we're...less enthused about the kingdom's reported combat training methods, no matter how much Nanoha wants to try another hurricane."
"I don't know how to properly judge it," Hayate admitted. "Japan hasn't requested any help, and I was never that familiar with other parts of the planet back home beyond what came up in films and television shows."
Hannah sighed as she looked at Suzy. "You pulled a girlfriend out of her life without any warning?"
"Not actually sure if it should be girlfriend or boyfriend," Suzy countered, blushing. "The therapist devices are working with Casey on that part, and I suspect that the alternate form system is possibly going to make it both? And I wasn't expecting things to go that way."
"...right, because apparently your horrible jokes and puns were enough to put them off of dating you. What are your enemies going to think of this?"
"Very little?"
"Surely they'd notice that someone they'd been watching for years as part of keeping tabs on your own movements has up and vanished."
"Well, probably, but the geese ambushed them trying to ambush Mouse Protector two hours ago. Remote depowering to keep the ones with mover powers from getting away, some injuries, and being in the middle of a murder attempt against a hero came together nicely to allow the state police to arrest them. I spent an hour calling family and friends and the rest just demanded that I visit every so often...and invite them to any future weddings."
Hannah blinked a couple of times. "The geese managed to get the entire coalition of villains you'd humiliated in a single action, while they were trying to kill the Mouse Protector device?"
Suzy grinned. "Yep. I'd never have been able to manage it myself because 'tag and harass them' doesn't help keep people who can teleport out of containment foam in custody. The automated systems behind the geese spent a couple of days setting it all up though. Scarily competent in a good way there, even if the write-up indicates that most of it was the group being predictable and overly reliant on being able to use their powers to escape capture."
"Huh."
"As far as I know, the only enemy left looking for me is Ravager, and the only reason she hasn't been depowered is because the rest of her 'cluster' went hero instead of villain. But she's focused on finding someone who can 'finish me off' instead of doing so personally. Er, the system has been looking for ways to screw her over, specifically, but apparently keeps running into legal hurdles?"
"She is difficult to contain safely and provoking her further doesn't sound like the best idea. It's too bad that she can't be depowered without affecting the rest of the cluster."
"Well, I had a thought on that, based on a comment Casey made when I was talking about some of what we know, and I suppose that Ravager might be a good test case..."
"I don't think I want to know, and if the kingdom's systems don't already know then it's on you to decide if you want to suggest it or not."
Danny hadn't expected to get a request for his opinion from the kingdom this morning, beyond the Colin-originating question about whether or not the Dockworkers might be a good source of potential mages. That it was an opinion on a potential experiment was another matter entirely, and it looked like Hive might've prompted the automated systems to seek out an opinion from someone who wasn't Taylor.
"So," he said in a simulation interface, talking to a generic-looking 'scientist' avatar. "You want to see if you can disconnect an individual from a shard and convince the shard to ignore them."
"Without processing the Shard device, yes," the scientist-AI agreed. "An interesting proposal was recently made for a way to possibly do that."
"But the procedure is, legally, 'invasive'?"
"...sadly, yes."
"Are you willing to elaborate?"
"We know that genetics are a significant component of the targeting system, to the point where clones are likely viable ways to 'duplicate' powers if you can convince the Shard device to establish a full connection. Further, we know which portions of the genetic code are considered important, and how much of a deviation is permitted. Identical twins are accounted for, with special handling, but changing a target's genetics after 'inducing death' from the point of view of the Shard device should be enough to depower and prevent a reconnection event."
Okay, 'change their genetics, possibly against their will' was indeed a bit of an 'invasive' procedure. "What kinds of side effects would you expect that to cause?"
"...out of six hundred evaluated candidates we expect that most would at worst see slight hair color changes or minor changes in melanin levels. A dozen would end up significantly healthier as we remove genetic problems, and one would possibly find it significantly harder to conceive a child."
"Just one out of six hundred?"
"We're fairly certain that the only reason they can conceive at all right now is because their Shard device is involved, and only because of how their 'powers' work. Based on what we know about 'trigger events', this is likely because they had problems conceiving before the Shard fully connected to them."
Ah. That sounded more like a pre-existing condition than a true side effect. "So you'd like to target some of these six hundred to see what happens when you force a disconnection and then make the changes prior to letting them be 'seen' by the network again?"
"Indeed."
"Are they all villains?"
"They are all lawbreakers, but several are not considered 'villains' for various reasons."
Danny frowned. "Lawbreakers by whose standards?"
"The kingdom's and their home communities. I have a set of profiles, if you'd like to review them?"
Sighing, because this was a lot more work than he'd expected, he accepted the twelve profiles. They wanted six total test subjects, but were apparently expecting him to reject some of their choices. Something that would prove to be accurate when he decided that the ones trying to do the right thing should probably be left alone for now.
Fate had decided to look over their mail after lunch, not expecting there to be much of interest. Most of it was junk, some of it was the stubborn attempts to curry favor with them to get close to Vivio, more of it were the newer attempts to curry favor with them to get access to the kingdom's more advanced technology, and the only things worth paying significant attention to were the reports on how Vivio was doing in school.
...praising Vivio for helping her friends now that Corona and Rio were jumping ahead seemed a bit silly though. It was almost certainly more that their kingdom-provided internal devices also counted as personal tutors. The three girls spent more time at the combat gym trying to figure out how to be 'creepy fighters' than working on homework together. Well, they might use multitasking instances to work on their homework too, come to think of it. Hmmm.
Whatever. They were getting their homework done either way.
"Huh," Fate said as she continued reading things from the school. "Vivio asked about bringing a pet to school."
"What?" Nanoha asked. "Since when does she have a pet?"
"I don't know. There aren't exactly a lot of details here. They mention another student having a well-behaved pet that they'd brought in, Vivio asking if anyone can bring pets in, and mention either 'well-behaved' or 'properly contained' as requirements."
"...maybe we should check with Aina? We might've missed a pet being obtained in the past couple of days while we were stopping a viral outbreak."
"Can you see her letting Vivio get a pet without checking with us first?"
"Yes."
Fate blinked. "Why would she do that?"
Nanoha shrugged. "If it came from the kingdom, or perhaps Ixveria?"
"Oh."
Taylor stretched as the school day came to an end. She'd been bored most of the day hoping projects would bear fruit on a couple of things, but discussion about the original moon landings in her first class of the day had caused her to spend time figuring out a new kind of shield. Not that she'd started with it being a shield, of course, but that was where she'd ended up.
"Tomorrow is going to suck," Amy grumbled.
"Why?" Taylor asked.
"One-day warning of needing to give short presentations in class, so see how well we can improvise on short notice or something like that."
"Huh. None of my classes have done that."
"This is supposed to help simulate suddenly finding out that you need to meet with clients, which isn't really part of your courses."
"Ah. True. How are they handling you doing driving classes twice a week these weeks?"
"I'm nowhere near the only one, and some of the others are apparently looking at driving-adjacent business stuff. Apparently we should be happy that we don't have to learn to drive large trucks after learning to drive cars."
"Not sure that I'll even be doing much driving of cars when we're done, but that's good to know."
"So what are you up to this afternoon?"
"I have a couple of things to check on, and some new stuff to test. No homework to speak of because I had plenty of time during my before-lunch free period to finish it all."
"Yeah, lucky you there."
They parted ways, observers unlikely to notice that they continued chatting via magical communication.
"So is this new stuff interesting?" Amy asked.
"Maybe," Taylor conceded. "Would be a different way to construct a shield, I think."
"Oh. Do we need more ways to make shields?"
"Probably not, but having more options is rarely a bad idea either. I'm also curious if this can deal with the space-folding beam and a couple of other things. Highly unlikely to help there, admittedly, but I won't know unless I try."
"Sounds more potentially useful than I originally thought then."
"What about your afternoon, beyond your homework?"
"...mostly just the homework. Maybe a trip to the grocery store. Trying to figure out what we should do the next time we go out, maybe? Unless you have any ideas for the latter."
"Er...not really? The therapist devices keep saying that I should try experimenting more with age-shifting or alternate form stuff. Not sure if a 'go out as children' playdate would really count as a date activity though."
"Well, 'playdate' does include the word 'date' in it..."
Dinah stared at the pictures she'd just been handed. "Why would I have any need to look at diaper designs?"
"A combination of things," Mister Chambers said. "The primary one is that we weren't expecting a 'scary' Ward to be considered desirable for parents with young children, but questions about when 'Doll' diapers would be available have actually been coming in. We don't produce them for anyone over fourteen, but you're young enough and your agreement with the Wards says that at your age you get initial approval or rejection of these marketing decisions and designs. This would've come up when doing initial marketing discussions with your parents had we anticipated the desire."
"...people want Doll-themed diapers for their kids?"
"Yes, and from a surprisingly large portion of the country. You're only the fourth Ward to have requests for diaper designs out of their general area of the country as well, with Vista having been the third."
That seemed a bit bizarre. She knew that they were planning on making Doll, er, dolls, plush instead of hard, but why would parents want creepy Ward diapers?
"Combined with that," Mister Chambers continued. "And something I honestly expect you to deny, by the way, is a request to do a PR event at a daycare or similar with your smaller self seemingly wearing an approved design." He then picked up a sheet of paper from the side and slid it over. "Here are sample numbers from several former Wards, though this isn't a guarantee and remember that most of the funds would go into your trust account."
The numbers shown on the sheet included a couple of 'local only' distribution sets that were honestly a bit insane, and then there was Vista's 'national' distribution. Though those were the overall profits, followed by the splits between national, regional, and individual accounts. Based on this, Brockton Bay had likely suffered a noticeable drop in funding when Vista had 'died' just because they pulled her diaper line.
This did bring up another question though. "How many other 'for little kids' things did you skip due to my 'creepy' factor?"
Mister Chambers shrugged. "Clothing in smaller sizes, mostly, but that's still the same clothing designs. Nothing extra to approve unless someone tries to revive the old PRT cartoon and we need 'cartoon' versions of Wards."
Well, that made some sense. "I'm not sold on the idea of 'Doll' diapers, but either way I really don't want to run around in a diaper, even for a single PR event."
"As I mentioned, I didn't really expect you to. The only Ward to ever wear their diaper design ended up doing so as part of their normal costume."
That had Dinah blinking. "Someone let a kid still in diapers join the Wards?"
"An unfortunate child in California ended up needing them for a few months after an injury. I'm not even sure if anyone noticed that it was diapers under the rest of their costume instead of the shorts they were originally patterned after though. If anyone did then they didn't make a big deal out of it, but of course PHO wasn't as popular then either."
And that probably explained why she'd never heard of a Ward in diapers before.
"Still, let's go over the designs," Mister Chambers said. "As you might have noticed, we're avoiding putting an actual image of you in the designs, which is a general policy. The normal procedure would be to aim for something that calls out to your costume, but you're consistently inconsistent with most of it, which is why the design department has instead focused on your more-consistent accessories."
Well, that did explain the parasol and knife as the primary focuses in the designs.
"So how is your spell creation going?" Sherie finally asked to change the subject.
"I finally broke down and asked the kingdom's systems if there was something obvious I was missing," Missy admitted.
"Oh?"
"According to the systems, the successes I've already had are impossible. So this is probably something they can't properly represent with the math they know of. But they did point out a couple of things I was doing backwards anyway. I mis-read a couple of things we picked up from somewhere in the Bureau's area and hadn't noticed because doing them backwards didn't fail outright."
"Better not tell Amy then. Taylor being good at spell creation is expected, but if you're doing things that the automated systems can't too..."
"She'll be fine with it. The automated systems likely couldn't have figured out my folding-space attack either. That said, we're on the same level there with trying to safely dismantle it. Once you fold things up they're incredibly hard to unfold safely, so the best bet is to just find a place that nobody cares about for a few minutes to let it all unfold violently. At least so far."
"Ah."
Missy frowned a little. "What do you think about the idea of Expanse showing up on an Earth other than Earth Bet?"
Both adults blinked a couple of times, then looked contemplative. Ethan nodded first. "That makes sense, even if Bet is the one with the most trouble. Other Earths have their own parahuman-related issues, and the network is even less likely to throw up alerts when things happen away from Scion. Besides, the geese have already started spreading that way."
"Wait," Sherie said. "They have?"
"Oh yeah. Nothing major yet, and I don't think they've even become known enough to be notable. Well, there are cats and dogs and even crows involved now, to blend in better everywhere when they aren't making a point of being blatantly obvious. Honestly, the geese are only the bulk of things here because they're known and to make a point that would be lost on other societies. The automated system in charge of all of that is doing its best to abuse every loophole it can find, or at least that's what it looks like to me. My review of what they're up to this morning included mention of foiling a kidnapping with a dog device on Aleph and a crow device breaking a phone line on an Earth we don't have a name for."
"...breaking a phone line?" Missy asked.
"Stopped a guard from alerting people that the police had shown up and that someone should book it down a secret tunnel. I think they're having problems getting the law-checking side of things to let them implement mice and rats for more internal damage to structures."
"Oh."
"But yeah, you showing up to stop someone from being incredibly violent or something like that on another Earth should be fine. Just check with the lawbot to ensure that your interfering won't seemingly create a pile of legal issues first."
Amy was bored in class, so had multitasking instances working on figuring out options for Rainbow's next appearance and date ideas. On the former, there were amazingly few 'Rainbow-appropriate' targets available...if you were looking for actual fights. There were other options though, such as visiting areas with homeless kids or perhaps interfering with 'Lost Garden' that had been moving towards Brockton Bay at one point but had changed their mind and stalled out in Western Massachusetts. They were in the middle of a forest area right now, seemingly undecided about what they wanted to do next. And you could argue that the bulk of the group was 'homeless kids', for that matter, though more teenagers than younger kids.
As for the date side of things, Brockton Bay was starting to feel creepy with how many federal agents were keeping an eye on Taylor...and now Amy as well, presumably in case someone tried to grab her for leverage on Taylor. Visiting the resort was technically an option, though the second one in Bureau space was probably the better bet. Either way there were plenty of date-like things to do there in various ways, but some of the non-kingdom Bureau-area worlds felt like an even better option in their own way. Experience something new in a location that was safe but not in the kingdom where Taylor might have to be 'Queen' and didn't have literal teams of people following them around for their own supposed protection.
Unfortunately, 'discouraging' the protection details from following them around wasn't really a good option. They were just doing their jobs, because Taylor was 'important', and it was theoretically a good thing. When you didn't have multiple ways of noticing them keeping tabs on every move you made throughout the city, anyway. It was likely that they were normally a lot less blatantly obvious in their monitoring.
The automated systems could've been a little less insulting when pointing all of that out though.
Of course, there was also wondering about Taylor being 'hopeful' about figuring something out this week...without specifying exactly what. Sure, Amy could just ask...but that potentially invited a bunch of information that would just induce headaches. Better to stick to the unimportant stuff until something else comes up more generally.
Fate sighed as they sat there guarding the only real combatant the facility had while security and nurse devices from the Usagi secured the facility and the test subjects within it. "This was supposed to be challenging. Not a complete curbstomp."
"They sent all of us in direct contradiction to normal local-space operating directives," Hayate retorted. "Of course it was a curbstomp."
"All 'too much power in one unit' rules were suspended in light of the kingdom's existence," Rein corrected. "And this would've been a curbstomp for Vivio, let alone any one of us."
"...you might have a point there. Why was this listed as needing us?"
"Because a year ago if we'd barged in here like we did then we'd be dead," Nanoha replied, getting looks from the rest of them. "What?"
"Nothing we did was enough to warrant breaking a sweat," Fate replied. "Why would we be dead?"
"The incredibly subtle virus designed to get around magical protections that fired off my 'biological attack attempted' alerts in Unmei every six seconds for the first twenty minutes after we entered the facility, before the nurse and security devices started clearing things with their sweeps? Which was mentioned in the kingdom's briefing for why this facility was a problem to begin with, for that matter. Reading that or having the alerts set up for biological attacks and other sudden healings like the manuals recommended should've told you."
A quick check of Natane's logs told Fate that she'd also gotten hit by attempts repeatedly for the first twenty minutes or so. "Huh. I set those as a summary for when I drop my protections after combat for anything the healing system could deal with. Didn't think I needed the distraction in the middle of a fight."
"I suppose that makes sense. Really, the biggest reason to come out here immediately was to stop things before they lost containment next month and the entire planet had to be quarantined. If we hadn't come then the kingdom likely would've. Or at least that's my interpretation of the last couple of pages of the kingdom's briefing."
Based on Hayate and Rein frowning, they had to do a better job reading the mission briefings. Or at least stop skimming over sections that were 'informational' when the summary said 'none of this is a threat to you', perhaps.
Kurt hadn't expected his morning to start with alerts about automated systems trying to overstep their bounds and being noticed by other automated systems. Except that the first group of automated systems was now apparently machine intelligence people? That were aiming to locate and abuse loopholes to help people across various planets, apparently. Whatever. They'd overstepped bounds and been caught, and he'd needed most of the morning and a good portion of the afternoon to fix things. His best guess for where they'd gone wrong was not understanding that while some financial transactions were considered theft to the kingdom that didn't mean they were illegal in the societies they'd occurred in.
Once things were fixed, and a basic lesson in where the machine intelligences had gone wrong had been given, he was then asked for his input on potential 'community service' work to serve as punishment and rehabilitation.
"For this scope of crime you'd want any such 'community service' to ideally be financial in scope," Kurt muttered to himself as he read over things. "But not in any manner that involves actually interacting with funds?"
"Indeed," the 'judge' device agreed. "They'll be forbidden from directly manipulating funds other than their own for twice the duration of their community service."
"Hmmm. Well, I do have a couple of 'back burner' projects that might work. What do you think about 'independent tax audits' of the rich across various planets and tax systems?"
"Not actually correcting things, but seeing if any given individual or corporate entity has actually been paying their taxes correctly according to local laws and documenting either that things are reasonably correct or where the locals can find the intentional mistakes?"
"Yeah."
"That sounds ideal, as to do so they'll need to learn about each financial system to ensure that they get things correct. Something they obviously hadn't done before going on their 'steal from the thieves to give back to those they stole from' campaign. Do you have a list ready?"
"No, but I have a routine prepared to list the potentials in any given financial system. That's probably the better choice as you can have them specifically target the planets they originally interfered with first."
"Wonderful! If you can send that over then I think it will work wonderfully."
"Do we need to get Taylor to sign off on any of this?"
"This is far below the level the Queen would need to personally deal with, beyond a basic summary note to her, and your position has you overseeing financial crime. Bringing the Queen in to personally approve of the punishment is only needed if you feel it to be necessary."
That surprised Kurt. "...she actually delegated legitimate responsibilities?"
The judge device shook its head. "She automated everything with specific cut-outs to trusted people for oversight where the automation fails to come up with solutions. As far as the overall system can tell, she wants things to run without her needing to worry about anything once the proverbial kinks are worked out."
Okay, yes, that did sound like what Taylor and Hive had collectively done with the kingdom. Kurt just hadn't realized how far that had gone already. Or that he was one of the 'trusted people' ironing out the kinks in the punishment side of things.
Taylor's day had been reasonably straightforward. No major alerts from the kingdom, the dyson sphere project was making actual progress, and the 'demonstration attack' had silenced most of those concerned about the safety of the kingdom's cities. As a bonus, it had also caused a cancellation of two other planned attempts to try to 'reclaim Belka' on behalf of 'rightful inheritors'. Kurt had been busy with something in the financial side of things, Hive was distracted examining the pocket reality and the side effects of 'punching holes' in it, Colin was working on plans to convert more parahumans into mages.
...now if only the analysis of the boot-up process on the stupid isolated shards would stop running into dead ends.
Designing a better 'vending machine' setup than Tracey had come up with was a nice side project though. It might have made sense to build it like any number of Earth-style machines on the surface, but starting from scratch allowed for handling much larger items through alternate delivery methods, like the front opening up in multiple ways to expose the purchased item. That had led into a foray into other vending options, such as a variety of foods. Most of which would probably feel ridiculous to be able to order 'made on the spot' from a vending machine.
The 'wedding cake in fifteen minutes' was definitely showing off, even if she'd slowed it down significantly from what they could manage. Burgers and other sandwiches made-to-order were also slightly tricky to set up so you could watch them being made, lasagna had been interesting to get to layer properly in a manner that wasn't obviously cheating, and pizza had been a trivial and boring afterthought. Then she'd let more automated systems figure out 'other regional items' that she'd be far less familiar with, so long as they could make it all 'fit' inside of a single vending machine with the other options.
Once the base machines were done, she'd very carefully ensured that the automated systems wouldn't have problems triggering 'free samples' for the homeless, bonus dessert items or gift-like things for kids on their birthdays, and other such 'shenanigans'. Mostly out of curiosity about which 'loopholes' would be used in an attempt to justify any given actions by those tweaking the automated systems to do any of it.
Everything should be installed at all the healing booth locations in a couple of days, with most of the delay being intentional so that Dwight and Virgil had time to make some of the advertising/demonstration videos for the initial 'gadget' type offerings. She was curious what they'd do with a couple of her quick creations.
Hayate was a little annoyed that it had taken until Wednesday morning to get back home, but understood why the Bureau wanted to be very careful with a bunch of people who had been experimented on with incredibly dangerous viruses and immune system modifications. No matter how much they were willing to trust the kingdom's healing capabilities. Some things just shouldn't be left to trusting that things will be fine because someone else was taking care of it.
"Do I want to know why you four are sniffing things?" Hayate asked as she looked over the four Wolkenritter. The girls were in wolf-girl forms, but the scene was definitely weird.
"Our noses work differently when we're like this," Shamal explained. "Zafira is helping us figure out what we're actually smelling."
"Not made any easier by not knowing how to describe some of the scents," Signum added.
"You two just suck at descriptions," Vita challenged. "He's not had any problem understanding which scents I've described."
"Doesn't help that your noses are all too human in shape to properly track smells with," Zafira pointed out. "But yes, the squirt is the only one of you three that seems to be able to describe what her nose is picking up with any accuracy."
"And here I just used the simulation trainer to figure out cat senses," Hayate commented. "Though I didn't notice that much of a difference. But if you four are doing this kind of thing then you're probably going to be fine for any participation you want to do in working with the kingdom over the coming days."
"I'm still going to pass and stick with working with kids in the dojo once school lets out for the day. Playing leader to a bunch of automated stuff going against those that aren't really a threat doesn't sound like anything I'm interested in doing."
"The rest of us want to see what 'Earth Bet' is like after years of what we'd consider 'lost logia' attacks," Signum answered. "Though we're...less enthused about the kingdom's reported combat training methods, no matter how much Nanoha wants to try another hurricane."
"I don't know how to properly judge it," Hayate admitted. "Japan hasn't requested any help, and I was never that familiar with other parts of the planet back home beyond what came up in films and television shows."
Hannah sighed as she looked at Suzy. "You pulled a girlfriend out of her life without any warning?"
"Not actually sure if it should be girlfriend or boyfriend," Suzy countered, blushing. "The therapist devices are working with Casey on that part, and I suspect that the alternate form system is possibly going to make it both? And I wasn't expecting things to go that way."
"...right, because apparently your horrible jokes and puns were enough to put them off of dating you. What are your enemies going to think of this?"
"Very little?"
"Surely they'd notice that someone they'd been watching for years as part of keeping tabs on your own movements has up and vanished."
"Well, probably, but the geese ambushed them trying to ambush Mouse Protector two hours ago. Remote depowering to keep the ones with mover powers from getting away, some injuries, and being in the middle of a murder attempt against a hero came together nicely to allow the state police to arrest them. I spent an hour calling family and friends and the rest just demanded that I visit every so often...and invite them to any future weddings."
Hannah blinked a couple of times. "The geese managed to get the entire coalition of villains you'd humiliated in a single action, while they were trying to kill the Mouse Protector device?"
Suzy grinned. "Yep. I'd never have been able to manage it myself because 'tag and harass them' doesn't help keep people who can teleport out of containment foam in custody. The automated systems behind the geese spent a couple of days setting it all up though. Scarily competent in a good way there, even if the write-up indicates that most of it was the group being predictable and overly reliant on being able to use their powers to escape capture."
"Huh."
"As far as I know, the only enemy left looking for me is Ravager, and the only reason she hasn't been depowered is because the rest of her 'cluster' went hero instead of villain. But she's focused on finding someone who can 'finish me off' instead of doing so personally. Er, the system has been looking for ways to screw her over, specifically, but apparently keeps running into legal hurdles?"
"She is difficult to contain safely and provoking her further doesn't sound like the best idea. It's too bad that she can't be depowered without affecting the rest of the cluster."
"Well, I had a thought on that, based on a comment Casey made when I was talking about some of what we know, and I suppose that Ravager might be a good test case..."
"I don't think I want to know, and if the kingdom's systems don't already know then it's on you to decide if you want to suggest it or not."
Danny hadn't expected to get a request for his opinion from the kingdom this morning, beyond the Colin-originating question about whether or not the Dockworkers might be a good source of potential mages. That it was an opinion on a potential experiment was another matter entirely, and it looked like Hive might've prompted the automated systems to seek out an opinion from someone who wasn't Taylor.
"So," he said in a simulation interface, talking to a generic-looking 'scientist' avatar. "You want to see if you can disconnect an individual from a shard and convince the shard to ignore them."
"Without processing the Shard device, yes," the scientist-AI agreed. "An interesting proposal was recently made for a way to possibly do that."
"But the procedure is, legally, 'invasive'?"
"...sadly, yes."
"Are you willing to elaborate?"
"We know that genetics are a significant component of the targeting system, to the point where clones are likely viable ways to 'duplicate' powers if you can convince the Shard device to establish a full connection. Further, we know which portions of the genetic code are considered important, and how much of a deviation is permitted. Identical twins are accounted for, with special handling, but changing a target's genetics after 'inducing death' from the point of view of the Shard device should be enough to depower and prevent a reconnection event."
Okay, 'change their genetics, possibly against their will' was indeed a bit of an 'invasive' procedure. "What kinds of side effects would you expect that to cause?"
"...out of six hundred evaluated candidates we expect that most would at worst see slight hair color changes or minor changes in melanin levels. A dozen would end up significantly healthier as we remove genetic problems, and one would possibly find it significantly harder to conceive a child."
"Just one out of six hundred?"
"We're fairly certain that the only reason they can conceive at all right now is because their Shard device is involved, and only because of how their 'powers' work. Based on what we know about 'trigger events', this is likely because they had problems conceiving before the Shard fully connected to them."
Ah. That sounded more like a pre-existing condition than a true side effect. "So you'd like to target some of these six hundred to see what happens when you force a disconnection and then make the changes prior to letting them be 'seen' by the network again?"
"Indeed."
"Are they all villains?"
"They are all lawbreakers, but several are not considered 'villains' for various reasons."
Danny frowned. "Lawbreakers by whose standards?"
"The kingdom's and their home communities. I have a set of profiles, if you'd like to review them?"
Sighing, because this was a lot more work than he'd expected, he accepted the twelve profiles. They wanted six total test subjects, but were apparently expecting him to reject some of their choices. Something that would prove to be accurate when he decided that the ones trying to do the right thing should probably be left alone for now.
Fate had decided to look over their mail after lunch, not expecting there to be much of interest. Most of it was junk, some of it was the stubborn attempts to curry favor with them to get close to Vivio, more of it were the newer attempts to curry favor with them to get access to the kingdom's more advanced technology, and the only things worth paying significant attention to were the reports on how Vivio was doing in school.
...praising Vivio for helping her friends now that Corona and Rio were jumping ahead seemed a bit silly though. It was almost certainly more that their kingdom-provided internal devices also counted as personal tutors. The three girls spent more time at the combat gym trying to figure out how to be 'creepy fighters' than working on homework together. Well, they might use multitasking instances to work on their homework too, come to think of it. Hmmm.
Whatever. They were getting their homework done either way.
"Huh," Fate said as she continued reading things from the school. "Vivio asked about bringing a pet to school."
"What?" Nanoha asked. "Since when does she have a pet?"
"I don't know. There aren't exactly a lot of details here. They mention another student having a well-behaved pet that they'd brought in, Vivio asking if anyone can bring pets in, and mention either 'well-behaved' or 'properly contained' as requirements."
"...maybe we should check with Aina? We might've missed a pet being obtained in the past couple of days while we were stopping a viral outbreak."
"Can you see her letting Vivio get a pet without checking with us first?"
"Yes."
Fate blinked. "Why would she do that?"
Nanoha shrugged. "If it came from the kingdom, or perhaps Ixveria?"
"Oh."
Taylor stretched as the school day came to an end. She'd been bored most of the day hoping projects would bear fruit on a couple of things, but discussion about the original moon landings in her first class of the day had caused her to spend time figuring out a new kind of shield. Not that she'd started with it being a shield, of course, but that was where she'd ended up.
"Tomorrow is going to suck," Amy grumbled.
"Why?" Taylor asked.
"One-day warning of needing to give short presentations in class, so see how well we can improvise on short notice or something like that."
"Huh. None of my classes have done that."
"This is supposed to help simulate suddenly finding out that you need to meet with clients, which isn't really part of your courses."
"Ah. True. How are they handling you doing driving classes twice a week these weeks?"
"I'm nowhere near the only one, and some of the others are apparently looking at driving-adjacent business stuff. Apparently we should be happy that we don't have to learn to drive large trucks after learning to drive cars."
"Not sure that I'll even be doing much driving of cars when we're done, but that's good to know."
"So what are you up to this afternoon?"
"I have a couple of things to check on, and some new stuff to test. No homework to speak of because I had plenty of time during my before-lunch free period to finish it all."
"Yeah, lucky you there."
They parted ways, observers unlikely to notice that they continued chatting via magical communication.
"So is this new stuff interesting?" Amy asked.
"Maybe," Taylor conceded. "Would be a different way to construct a shield, I think."
"Oh. Do we need more ways to make shields?"
"Probably not, but having more options is rarely a bad idea either. I'm also curious if this can deal with the space-folding beam and a couple of other things. Highly unlikely to help there, admittedly, but I won't know unless I try."
"Sounds more potentially useful than I originally thought then."
"What about your afternoon, beyond your homework?"
"...mostly just the homework. Maybe a trip to the grocery store. Trying to figure out what we should do the next time we go out, maybe? Unless you have any ideas for the latter."
"Er...not really? The therapist devices keep saying that I should try experimenting more with age-shifting or alternate form stuff. Not sure if a 'go out as children' playdate would really count as a date activity though."
"Well, 'playdate' does include the word 'date' in it..."
Dinah stared at the pictures she'd just been handed. "Why would I have any need to look at diaper designs?"
"A combination of things," Mister Chambers said. "The primary one is that we weren't expecting a 'scary' Ward to be considered desirable for parents with young children, but questions about when 'Doll' diapers would be available have actually been coming in. We don't produce them for anyone over fourteen, but you're young enough and your agreement with the Wards says that at your age you get initial approval or rejection of these marketing decisions and designs. This would've come up when doing initial marketing discussions with your parents had we anticipated the desire."
"...people want Doll-themed diapers for their kids?"
"Yes, and from a surprisingly large portion of the country. You're only the fourth Ward to have requests for diaper designs out of their general area of the country as well, with Vista having been the third."
That seemed a bit bizarre. She knew that they were planning on making Doll, er, dolls, plush instead of hard, but why would parents want creepy Ward diapers?
"Combined with that," Mister Chambers continued. "And something I honestly expect you to deny, by the way, is a request to do a PR event at a daycare or similar with your smaller self seemingly wearing an approved design." He then picked up a sheet of paper from the side and slid it over. "Here are sample numbers from several former Wards, though this isn't a guarantee and remember that most of the funds would go into your trust account."
The numbers shown on the sheet included a couple of 'local only' distribution sets that were honestly a bit insane, and then there was Vista's 'national' distribution. Though those were the overall profits, followed by the splits between national, regional, and individual accounts. Based on this, Brockton Bay had likely suffered a noticeable drop in funding when Vista had 'died' just because they pulled her diaper line.
This did bring up another question though. "How many other 'for little kids' things did you skip due to my 'creepy' factor?"
Mister Chambers shrugged. "Clothing in smaller sizes, mostly, but that's still the same clothing designs. Nothing extra to approve unless someone tries to revive the old PRT cartoon and we need 'cartoon' versions of Wards."
Well, that made some sense. "I'm not sold on the idea of 'Doll' diapers, but either way I really don't want to run around in a diaper, even for a single PR event."
"As I mentioned, I didn't really expect you to. The only Ward to ever wear their diaper design ended up doing so as part of their normal costume."
That had Dinah blinking. "Someone let a kid still in diapers join the Wards?"
"An unfortunate child in California ended up needing them for a few months after an injury. I'm not even sure if anyone noticed that it was diapers under the rest of their costume instead of the shorts they were originally patterned after though. If anyone did then they didn't make a big deal out of it, but of course PHO wasn't as popular then either."
And that probably explained why she'd never heard of a Ward in diapers before.
"Still, let's go over the designs," Mister Chambers said. "As you might have noticed, we're avoiding putting an actual image of you in the designs, which is a general policy. The normal procedure would be to aim for something that calls out to your costume, but you're consistently inconsistent with most of it, which is why the design department has instead focused on your more-consistent accessories."
Well, that did explain the parasol and knife as the primary focuses in the designs.
- Location
- Livin' in the Land of the LOST! *roar*
As bizarre as Armsmaster-themed panties? ( Merchandise ) Then again, underoos made a business model of it, more or less...
ProtagNeptune
[Cute is Justice] ଘ(੭ˊ꒳ˋ)੭✧
- Location
- The Local Reality (A Shitty Game)
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
...well they made those Armsmaster Panties so yeah why not Vista Diapers. 
Its weird at first glance, but makes some sense in context. Protectorate/Wards are going to fill a lot of the comicbook/movie roles for media and tie ins. Vista is going to be swappable for a Disney Princess in most merchandising roles for example.
- Location
- United States of America
There's a capacity joke in there some where, I know it.
Its possibly a dopplganger device thing
Windborne
Devourer of Stories
- Location
- Oregon
Fair point on the Armsmaster panties. And yeah I suppose it's not really unusual, just that it would absolutely not be what I thought of for merchandising. Wards themed Tabletop Games, Figurines, Posters, or even a Soda Can Cozy come to mind first.