- Harvi Leach - November 29, 2011
- Fortuna - November 29, 2011
- Yoshi Miyata - November 30, 0076, 2011
- Kevin Ayers - November 30, 2011
- Della Kay - December 2, 2011
- Devan Bloodworth - December 3, 2011
- Kamil Armstrong - December 3, 2011
- Athan Spyros - December 3, 2011
- Serafino Guerra - December 4, 2011
- Momoko Takamachi - December 5, 2011
- Tyron Gillian - December 6, 2011
- Einhard Stratos - December 9, 0076
- Landon Draper - December 10, 2011
- Greg Veder - December 10, 2011
- James Tagg - December 10, 2011
- Melanie Fitts - December 10, 2011
- Sidney Titus - December 10, 2011
- David Symons - December 10, 2011
- Paul Tyrell - December 10, 2011
- Rebecca Costa-Brown - December 10, 2011
- Aminatou Bɔadra - December 10, 2011
Harvi Leach - November 29, 2011
Harvi was nervous as he approached the vending machine, notebook in hand. He dabbled in engineering, but there was no room for a proper workshop in his apartment here in Albany. Certainly nothing like his grandfather's workshop back on the farm, anyway. This led to a lot of
designs that he couldn't properly test, but the kingdom's vending machines were supposed to be able to help you make things based on sketches.
There wasn't really anyone around right now, and as he walked up to one of the machines a button appeared. 'Design-a-thing'? He tapped it, and flipped through his notebook to the first of the designs he was hoping to be able to have built for testing. Looking back up at the screen...he saw a three-dimensional rendering of the sketch, with several areas highlighted in red? Frowning, he looked between them and the calculations on the notebook, then sighed. Most of those were the points he was unsure would hold up, and he made quick notes based on what was showing on the screen.
"I guess I don't need to test that one," he mumbled, flipping a couple of pages down, past several that would have one of the highlighted problems. When he got to the next design he thought wouldn't have any of those issues he looked up again, finding that the new sketch was now represented in three dimensions again, and had new highlighting. But this time it was questioning the
materials, pointing out where things would fail at different points if you made the main arm out of the different materials he'd been considering testing.
Nodding after a moment, he made more notes on that, then flipped through another few sheets to the next unrelated item, only for a thump to drop a notebook that looked very much like his current one into the output tray. Frowning, he picked that up and started flipping through it, finding that all of the various problems were highlighted with printed notes...and a few math errors were pointed out. Stuck to the back cover of the notebook was a sticky note...referencing a library book? One that looked to cover material science in some fashion, based on the title.
"Why you cheeky..." he said, shaking his head before looking up at the machine again...and finding a small video playing? One of his designs seemingly being tested in what looked like it could be his living room...and one of the support arms on the item
shattering and sending a piece of metal into the could-be-him man operating it.
...perhaps he could be a little less dismissive of the supertech vending machine's judgment.
Fortuna - November 29, 2011
Fortuna watched the teenage girl leave, confused about how that could possibly be the Number Man. Then again, she was a child again, so who was to say that they couldn't make an adult man into a teenage girl?
Why he would want that, or if he'd even been asked, was harder to say...and the resulting girl didn't seem to be
unhappy.
Maybe that was part of his punishment, somehow?
Speaking with the visitors had obviously caused some confusion with the adults, and over the next few hours she was fussed over before they obviously decided that she shouldn't be treated differently. Despite seemingly being why the 'people from beyond the sky' had come to help them, though there was some musing that she thought might be them thinking that she'd been saved by them before. Or that her parents had become monster people, maybe.
Hopefully Team Mana did a better job with Scion and the overall threat than she had been able to.
Yoshi Miyata - November 30, 0076, 2011
Yoshi stretched his arm, still somewhat amazed that it was fully intact after nearly being removed yesterday. Takamachi was really putting them through the wringer with the 'games' being used as training exercises, and he'd been stupid enough to ignore that his barrier jacket was failing. Granted, he'd also been in the middle of a swarm of the things keeping them distracted and off of Ryoichi.
Despite that lapse, they'd
still placed in the top quarter of the teams thanks to having noticed several patterns fast enough to take advantage of them. They just hadn't expected that opening that particular gate was going to set off an alarm and as such weren't ready for the swarm to descend on them.
Nobody had successfully made it to the end, and only two other teams had made it past their own versions of that gate.
It was certainly a lot more intense than normal training, and despite being incredibly unrealistic in several ways it was also more in line with what they
should be ready for in the field. At least when not running things like the tower defense stuff, anyway. Of course, it also helped that they were all naturally competitive and wanted to best each other's scores, which pushed them harder because it wasn't like an accuracy drill where there was a clear 'good enough'.
Of course, this was balanced out by Takamachi choosing the settings for them. 'You can get your fucking arm bitten off' on a first pass-through felt like it might be a little too high. Except that supposedly her kid had gone through on similar settings and
not gotten her arm bit off...which probably wasn't a fair comparison given that the kid was the reborn
Saint King.
Kevin Ayers - November 30, 2011
Kevin was a little annoyed with his father for thinking that Riley was a monster, especially after having had time to get to know
her instead of just what she'd done when she went by Bonesaw. Not that breaking free of
Jack Slash, killing him and most of the Slaughterhouse Nine before going on to
end Nilbog too, wasn't awesome even without having gotten to know Riley. She was even good at hand to hand fighting, given that she'd broken his arm when he'd gone after her with the bat.
And she was pretty. He'd not been sure about the change to purple hair and eyes at first, but they very obviously made
her more comfortable and he thought she looked even prettier when not afraid of being figured out. She could do with a little more not-purple in her clothing though, at least in his opinion, but he could also understand her being excited about having magic and latching onto the magic
being purple. It was just a little jarring, especially when he looked over pictures of her from before and after the change, and he'd liked that her eyes were different colors before.
The only thing that really annoyed him was that she was a little too focused on being a 'good girl' to counteract her previous 'bad girl'. As he saw it, even as Bonesaw she'd been doing her best. Just, you know, without realizing that
Jack was a monster and telling lies about what a good girl would do.
Della Kay - December 2, 2011
Della normally found being tasked with researching something to determine if it was suitable for children's programming to be annoying. Over ninety percent of things sent their way for evaluation didn't even have decent production values and were painful to watch for things that would go against network guidelines. The only saving grace was that they were generally
short.
Being pointed at the Team Mana website and what appeared to be a completed multi-season cartoon series was very much outside of the norm.
She'd started with the information available on the website, and based solely on the descriptions there quickly determined that it was likely some of the characters wouldn't fly in general. That was followed by using the episode guide to find episodes with each character represented, if not outright featured, to get a better handle on them. Watching those and taking notes was harder than expected due to how often she was giggling or outright laughing, but she hadn't even made it halfway through her cast list before she had enough to say that this wasn't going to be suitable by their standards.
Which didn't mean that she stopped watching, of course. Never let it be said that she didn't do proper diligence when tasked with evaluating things. She suspected that she was missing a good two-thirds of the jokes due to translation problems and
still found a number of things hilarious though, which said good things about the writing. It just wasn't up to the local standards for
children.
Devan Bloodworth - December 3, 2011
Devan started his morning by heading to the nearby vending machines with a couple of design sketches for a camera attachment. Katie had told him that the vending machines were a lot cheaper than other options for all kinds of things that you wouldn't think they 'offered' and she'd saved a bunch on some stuff, so it was worth a try. He had to wait in line due to others grabbing things, but was okay with that.
When his turn came up, he hit the button for 'Design-a-thing' and ensured that his sketches were visible. The machine sat there for a moment, and he frowned, before a
map came up? One that led to...the local camera store?
"I don't want to pay for their overpriced version," he grumbled, trying to decide if it was worth it to kick the machine.
The screen flashed, and showed the attachment he wanted...blown out into components, with prices on each of them? Plus information on the cost of packaging and printing for the box. A summary on the side listed total cost of components, labor, packaging, shipping, and then mark-ups for the manufacturer, distributor, and local store. At the end was the actual price being charged, which was a few bucks
less than what the thing apparently thought the attachment might be worth.
It appeared that the stupid vending machines only let you get away with knock-off stuff if they thought that the original manufacturers were being unreasonable. Which was nice to know, but
incredibly annoying personally.
Kamil Armstrong - December 3, 2011
Kamil had seen, in person and on video, a
lot of parahuman introductions. Today, he'd seen the first official
mage introduction, and it set quite the high bar. Not that it was likely a fair comparison to whatever might come later, given that most of the excitement was more tied to who the mage being introduced
used to be. Baltimore was going to have quite the problems in the coming hours and days, and likely-former Director Carr was going to have to answer a
lot of questions.
But there had already been a lot of questions regarding Baltimore from the anti-corruption work, so this just sped things along. More interesting were some of the other details revealed, such as the controls and restrictions the kingdom was putting on the mages they were helping with. That transferring mages to other departments would likely be counterproductive unless the kingdom approved was very good to know, not that Boston needed any mages right now. Well, aside from the monitoring and therapy for
every mage aspect.
It would be
really nice if they could manage that for anyone with a gun, but the resources needed to make it happen were far beyond what Earth could provide. They couldn't even manage it for the much smaller number of parahumans, but the kingdom was...well, far beyond anything else he'd ever personally heard of before they showed up and started revealing more of their capabilities. He'd even wondered if some of their initial requests for materials were more to see how much 'locals' were willing to help out with before revealing the full capabilities behind the kingdom itself.
Shaking his head, because going down that train of thought was going to get him nowhere, he instead focused back on the press conference and what it meant. The biggest thing he could think of was that from the point of view of the PRT and Protectorate, the ENE region had likely just switched from existing due to the number of parahumans in Brockton Bay to existing as a specialist department for
mages.
...one that was practically next door to Boston, and he'd already had a couple of the local parahumans murmuring about Team Mana and the kingdom for reasons he didn't understand. Keeping an eye on the more...impulsive parahumans was going to be needed.
Athan Spyros - December 3, 2011
Athan grinned as he made it back to shore, even if his side hurt a little from the kick that Expanse had used to send him into the water. For some reason his back didn't hurt from landing back-first on the water though, which was a little weird. His internal protections would keep him from being seriously injured, but how could he resist being launched like that from what looked like a simple kick?
The only thing that could've made it more awesome would've been if Queen Minerva had been the one practicing.
Climbing onto the beach, he was met by one of the nurses waiting there. They were supposed to be machines, which helped explain why they were all identical, but he wasn't sure if he believed that. The bruising from the kick was quickly taken care of, as well as some water that he'd not successfully coughed up yet.
"There you go," the nurse said. "All better."
He paused, blinking. "Aren't you going to tell me not to do that again?"
"You weren't seriously injured
or being reckless."
"But I volunteered to be launched into the ocean by a kick."
"And your aid as a test subject for someone learning a spell that can only be properly tested on an actual person means that you'll be paid a small amount."
He blinked at that. "Wait, I'm going to get
paid for doing that?"
"Yes."
Holy crap. First they pay him for passing his classes, and now they're paying him to be a test dummy for an awesome attack spell?
Serafino Guerra - December 4, 2011
Serafino wasn't entirely sure what he should think about the little ice cream scoop kid stepping in to stand up against a pile of frankly-terrorist troublemakers, but couldn't exactly argue against the kid's effectiveness. Even if the flying plush refrigerator was a bit more informed on a number of things than the kid was. Then again, the kid was just a kid, so maybe the machine intelligence minder being more informed was expected?
Whatever the situation there, it resulted in a very direct reveal of corruption in the local police force, which was definitely appreciated and made his own job easier. Having direct evidence of warnings being ignored
because family of the officers were planning on participating was particularly damning, but then it had turned out that the same officers had known about the illegal acquisition of weapons for the group too.
It was also nice of the kid to do all the weapon disabling stuff before moving in. Made disarming everyone a lot safer, though only afterwards did anyone think to ask what would happen to the
already primed grenades when whatever he did wore off. One of the bomb squad techs had been crazy enough to dismantle one of the things without knowing though, and there was a suspicion that the trick had simply absorbed the striker's energy. The same
hadn't been done to the guns though, which was a shame for those who had tried to fire too many times and ended up with significantly blocked barrels.
How the hell none of the guns had
exploded was still a bit of a mystery though.
Momoko Takamachi - December 5, 2011
Momoko shook her head as she put the still from the 'eloping' down. "You know, I'd honestly dismissed the idea of grandchildren that were directly related to me."
"I'm well aware," Shiro replied, taking a sip of his tea. "You did a very good job of hiding your disappointment from little Nanoha when you realized that her attraction to Fate wasn't a mere schoolgirl crush. Then you held out hope that the advanced magical civilization she was working with had options, only to find out that it wasn't the kind of thing that had survived their wars if it had existed before."
"And then she adopted Vivio, continuing a more recent family tradition of sorts, and I was prepared to be happy enough that I got a granddaughter out of things at all. Yet all of a sudden she's the first one of the three married
and an expecting father."
"I have to admit that I hadn't expected that at all. Eloping in front of a supernova was less surprising, honestly."
"Sadly true. It had long since become obvious that she'd never sit down long enough to have a child unless someone forced her to, but getting around that by being the
father..."
"She definitely isn't used to the idea, based on her flinching whenever Vivio called her
Nanoha-papa."
Momoko giggled. "Oh yes, that was adorable."
"And with this new kingdom's medical technology,
we can visit on a whim too, so there won't be any excuse for not visiting when the grandkids are born."
Ooooh. She hadn't considered that, after all the medical quarantine concerns for visiting before now.
Tyron Gillian - December 6, 2011
Tyron frowned as he listened to Amanda's report. When she finished, he looked down at his minimal notes. "So the kingdom has started something big, but you have no actual ability to tell what that
is."
"Yes, sir," Amanda replied, obviously unhappy with the inability to tell him more.
"But based on what you
can't determine, we can probably assume that it's related to the larger threat they've got to deal with."
"Er, maybe?"
"Even if you can't find out what it is, I'd be willing to put money on it being a military operation of some kind. Feels a bit too much like they suddenly realized that they need a lot more firepower a lot sooner than expected and are ramping up to meet the demand."
She nodded. "That could fit things. Ship tracking has dropped off significantly as well, actually."
He blinked. "Ship tracking?"
"Yes. Previously I could look at maps and see where all of their ships were deployed, but now only a few are visible."
"Ah. No longer reporting where they are because they were tapped for an essentially military operation would make a lot of sense as well. With any luck I won't have to deal with an idiot taking over from me."
"Previous timelines still make a number of things incredibly unlikely."
"I've been repeatedly assured that the previous timelines provided were unlikely to stay accurate and have a meeting tomorrow that's likely to elaborate on that, luckily."
Einhard Stratos - December 9, 0076
Einhard wasn't sure what to think about the rumor that three younger students had left the school due to being taught by Please Ignore the Secret Kingdom. On the surface it wasn't a big deal, because students came and went all the time, but there were only three students
at all that had been associated with the kingdom. Most importantly, one of them was Vivio, the Saint King reborn.
The very
existence of the younger girl had created conflicting feelings in her, which she attributed to her ancestor's influence. But while those feelings still existed, there were also the feelings of needing to 'be the strongest'...and with Please Ignore the Secret Kingdom suddenly around that felt like an impossibility.
Nobody seemed like they had a hope of standing up to the kingdom's mages, with even young Rainbow being more than a match for most.
Her musings on this had kept her from noticing where she was going after school, and she found herself outside of the kingdom's gym. Vivio and her friends were almost certainly there today...but Einhard wasn't a member, and was unlikely to be accepted. Shaking her head, she turned away from the building, only to find herself staring at a nurse?
"Good afternoon," the nurse said, half-bowing. "This is the sixth time you've wandered here on your own."
"Perhaps?" Einhard replied.
"At a minimum, we can tell that you have an incompletely healed fracture in your left ulna, and would not be surprised if there are less obvious issues. Would you like to come into the medical center for a quick checkup?"
"I..." she started, about to decline, before pausing because that had started with a description of an actual problem. "My left ulna?"
"Approximately a third of the way down the forearm, yes."
Okay, that did sound like a problem, and she had been feeling sore there since she'd fallen during some training a couple weeks ago, so she nodded and the nurse led her into the medical facility next to the gym. She was ushered straight into an examination room and made to sit in a chair, but no attempt to get her to change into any kind of medical gown happened.
Two hours later she'd leave the facility, her physical injuries healed and with a report on an odd addition to her magic that she suspected was tied to her ancestor's knowledge and memories...plus an offer, if she wanted it removed and her parents agreed, to join the kingdom's gym...
Landon Draper - December 10, 2011
Landon hadn't expected the new Protectorate members press conference to reveal that parahumans could become mages...or that Brockton Bay was now
all mages instead of parahumans. Including all the kids, though it felt a little bit obvious that Doll was a mage. She had the mage-style insane durability, at least. But it had also been revealed that magic could
duplicate parahuman powers. To the point where nobody had guessed that a bunch of parahumans in Brockton Bay were no longer
parahumans.
Though it was almost guaranteed that the government had known, based on the changed laws. Covering their asses on that front if they knew it was coming, or it had already started? Whatever the explanation, it was definitely an interesting situation and changed the proverbial 'balance of power' quite a bit. On the other hand, the kingdom had very much blown that out of the water
already, at least in the immediate area, so perhaps it didn't mean much at all yet.
Well, beyond that
nobody was transferring out of the area without the kingdom's approval, but it honestly felt like Brockton Bay had just become the PRT and Protectorate headquarters for mages. By Monday there were likely to be complaints about Armsmaster being in charge of the Protectorate in that light, because being a
mage might make him 'unsuitable' for leading
parahumans.
"This is going to be interesting," Judi commented from where she'd flopped down on the couch.
He looked at his sister, then nodded. "Yeah."
"Makes me wonder how many parahumans can be mages, and if that's the kind of thing that helps you get powers to begin with though..."
Okay, that was an interesting question. It seemed unlikely, but then again so did parahuman powers
and magic. At the same time, he could've sworn that there were discussions about this kind of thing before and it wasn't the case...though that could've just been PHO posters coming to insane conclusions. He'd have to check.
Greg Veder - December 10, 2011
Greg frowned as he looked at the streams that Team Mana had started up. A multiversal threat, and one of the streams was following
Scion? Even he wasn't normally willing to entertain the theories that the golden man was a major threat. The man was a bit
dim at times, or so it seemed, but never really seemed like he was a threat unless someone managed to convince him that some kind of evil act was a heroic one.
Of course, those were his thoughts up until the obviously-information stream started up. Within a couple of minutes there were
trillions of deaths attributed, and he didn't think that the kingdom was one to fabricate something like that. The first image of a pair of metallic beings fighting what looked like it might be some alien race's version of parahumans was particularly jarring, even if neither of them was golden.
That the kingdom was apparently ready to evacuate everyone was suddenly feeling like a very, very good thing. And his most recent 'time out' ban on PHO not having expired was probably not that bad of a thing in context either, actually.
James Tagg - December 10, 2011
James had spent quite a lot of time conflicted about Team Mana and the kingdom they apparently hailed from. On one hand, they were doing an incredible job of improving things in a number of ways, the least of which was removing the threat of the Endbringers. But on the other hand, there was always the chance that they were, long-term,
worse than the Endbringers had ever been. He'd also gotten the impression over time that they
were working on something 'bigger', but had never been able to figure out
what.
Today, they'd revealed the 'what'. To 'the kingdom', Scion was obviously just as bad as, if not
worse than, the Endbringers...and based on what was being shown was very likely part of the origin of the Endbringers themselves. Which nicely validated concerns about him and where he'd come from, honestly, though it brought up a lot of other questions at the same time. And frankly, based on what he'd seen of the kingdom compared to what he'd seen of Scion and the Endbringers? He'd take the kingdom any day of the week.
He wouldn't necessarily
like it, admittedly, because he didn't know enough about any of the options to make a truly informed decision.
A moment later he was pulled out of his musing by the
Endbringer sirens going off. He was on his feet in an instant, but then paused as the precise pattern of the tones registered. Major conflict, not local, but be prepared for evacuation orders. A moment later he noticed a shift in one of the feeds he'd had up, and saw that Scion was leaving Earth?
It appeared that a quick call to see if he needed to go into the office was in order, as much as he wanted to keep watching what was going on.
Melanie Fitts - December 10, 2011
Melanie frowned as she watched a
child distract what could very well be one of the biggest threats to humanity, a likely destroyer of who knew how many civilizations, with no apparent backup. At least until you realized that the
environment itself was backing the kid up, anyway, but that didn't feel like it was enough for letting a kid run around like this. Except that it was also very obviously
planned, and paying attention to some of the other feeds seemed to show a lot of things getting into position.
Bits about how parahuman powers came to be showing up in the 'information' feed wasn't exactly unexpected, nor did it really reveal anything she couldn't have figured out on her own by now.
Watching as Scion repeatedly fell for the same trick was...less than reassuring in some ways, and frankly bizarre in others. There was a distinct lack of critical thinking that honestly fit with what she knew of the golden man, but at the same time he was normally seen as much more
effective despite that. But then there was the fact that this seemed to be more of a game-like 'series of puzzles' situation than a
fight, with brute force just not having any obvious effect at all.
That said, just being able to no-sell everything Scion threw at the environment was honestly insanely impressive all on its own. Being able to manage that made having a child keeping Scion busy a lot more reasonable, as he'd need to plow through the environment he apparently wasn't able to plow through to truly harm the kid. Actually, based on how things were going, the kid could even be a fake. She certainly hadn't directly attacked in any way she had in other engagements, though that could also be part of ensuring that she wasn't seen as a
direct threat. As it was, he seemed to be treating this as 'needs to grab her in order to get information
from her' exercise...
Sidney Titus - December 10, 2011
Sidney had to admit that someone with planning skills had been involved with Rainbow's little distraction run, and he was positive that's what it was. He felt that her
not attacking, and not having her minder plush drone with her, were both intentional to keep Scion's attention on
her and not the various things Minerva was likely preparing in the background. He also found himself severely reevaluating Scion, and parahuman powers in general, and was
incredibly happy to have already had the bit of alien who-knew-what disconnected from his brain.
As for the distraction, it was also obviously nearing time to end it. They'd spent quite some time in what would appear to be a child's game, with simple puzzles and far too many bright colors, but had gradually transitioned out of that environment and into a more realistic environment that still seemed to take design cues that were definitely not of Earth origin. The new environment also included quite a few statues of the species that had been taken out in the past and that Scion had essentially ignored. He'd spent more time determining that he still couldn't just force his way through the environment than examining the statues.
Rainbow breaking out of the forest and into a clearing with a large structure in it was an obvious end point for the distraction, made even more obvious by pairs of
metallic statues being present. Representations of those involved in the destruction of previous civilizations, there to bear witness to the confrontation? The girl booked it for the top of the structure and the temple-like building there, but Scion seemed to be emboldened by the place and got in front of her.
It was
very hard to find fault with Minerva's incredibly distracting entrance at that point, though he needed to check the information feed to know what the hell she was doing. Seeing a mention that Scion was effectively acting as a
boss from a video game was unexpected...yet strangely fitting, given the entire distraction that had been used against him.
David Symons - December 10, 2011
As much as David hadn't wanted to learn more about how badly Cauldron had failed in general and he had failed personally, it was far too enticing to watch as Scion was taken out. The period of time where a
child was distracting the thing was both amusing and annoying, but watching Minerva take everything thrown at her and throw it right back was awe-inspiring.
It was also jealousy-inducing, because he'd wanted to be the one managing that kind of thing, but he'd come to realize that using the tools of the Entities against them was just asking to fail. Always had been, and Minerva was in a far better position to handle the problem than he'd ever been. But watching the show drastically reduced the jealousy, because he didn't think that he'd have been able to handle a number of the tricks thrown
at Minerva.
Her abilities, actually magic or not, were distinct from the Entities and could thus trivially ignore what they threw out...to a degree. It was obvious that she was being careful about several things that she tried to look nonchalant about not having any effect on her at all, but he could spot her moving out of the way of the worst aspects a couple of times. Not that he could blame her for things like
not touching a black hole, doubly so after seeing what a moving one did to Scion.
Paul Tyrell - December 10, 2011
Paul hadn't expected today to be the day that Minerva removed Scion as a threat, though he wasn't entirely in agreement with her seeming attempts to
communicate with the thing pretending to be a man. The streams admitted that this was a multiversal threat, and instead of taking it out with extreme prejudice she was trying to convince it to talk!?!
He wanted to do things far more ethically than Cauldron had ever done them, but thought that opening communication with the things aiming to replace the universe with one that would only support their form of life was very much insane. Which could mean that the girl had stronger morals than he did, admittedly, and that could only be a good thing from the point of view of how much power she could obviously bring to bear.
At the same time, seeing how much power
Scion could bring to bear, and yet have completely ignored, was eye-opening. Had this been brought against them there wouldn't have been any hope of victory, yet here he was watching every trick ignored or negated and frequently
improved upon on the spot. That had to include a significant amount of intelligence gathering in real time to know what abilities were being prepared, how to negate them if needed, and then how to improve them.
Ensuring that Scion couldn't reuse abilities was another matter. Removing his agents from play, presumably, in the same way they'd been removing them for months. Just a lot more targeted and with obviously larger capacity in their abilities than they'd had early on.
As much as it might've been nice to be more involved with the final acts here, it was also nice to be on the sidelines while someone else took care of things.
...though he had to admit that watching Minerva parody Shakespeare with Scion's removed head was a little weird.
Rebecca Costa-Brown - December 10, 2011
Rebecca shook her head as Minerva seemed to be entering into her endgame with Scion. It felt like it had been a waste of time, unless there was some other reason to distract the Entity while things were handled elsewhere before finishing it off. But perhaps that was part of why the girl was better-suited to the task of stopping the Entities? More compassion, or at least less willingness to compromise her own morals, was definitely good when you had access to that much power. Doubly so given the apparent size of the warships.
Real ships shouldn't be able to be trivially mistaken for moons, yet the kingdom apparently had two that could trivially pretend to be moons and several more that were built on similar scales.
Still, seeing the Entity stopped at every turn, and even outdone, was...liberating in its own way. A seemingly unstoppable force had been stopped...by a different, but much less likely to genocide entire civilizations, unstoppable force. Having a friendly unstoppable force running around was nice on its own, and she was positive that the kingdom was
far better than Cauldron had ever hoped to be. It had been obvious that Team Mana was better even before ending up living in the kingdom and seeing how they treated their citizens, even those that were theoretically criminals.
Aminatou Bɔadra - December 10, 2011
Aminatou watched as Scion's body collapsed on the screen, sighing a moment later. "So, that's apparently one step of who knows how many needed to solve the real problem. Perhaps the rest can be done more openly now."
"Less 'openly' and more 'rapidly'," her minder said. "There should be no more local threat within three months."
"...three months?"
"Yes, and that's on the far end of the estimates."
"
Three months?"
"The Queen is very good at controlling and utilizing exponential growth in manners safer than any of the automated systems or machine intelligences can manage, even if she's had an accident or two that have turned out for the best."
"But...there are
how many agents out there?"
"An ever-dwindling number. The Queen had the ability to process over six hundred trillion 'agents' at a time this morning and that's already gone up significantly. Quadrillions by the middle of tomorrow, quintillions the day after, edging into sextillions the day after that."
She didn't even have any way of conceptualizing growth rates like that or what they represented...but it was probably the kind of thing needed to fully clean up after the Entities, so perhaps it was good that Minerva
could. "I...think this is an occasion where a drink would be appropriate."
"I suppose that you're lucky that the therapist network agrees that this is 'worthy of celebration'."
It was worth getting blackout drunk, in her opinion, but she wasn't allowed to drink that much even in celebration.
