Taylor had completely forgotten about Christmas, which probably made it not being a holiday in the kingdom a good thing. Her father still wanted to get together for a meal though, which was fine by her. They'd agreed to skip gifts, partially on the basis that neither of them had anything they needed and she had far, far too much comparative 'buying power' right now. But holiday-like gatherings weren't exceptionally high on her list of annoyances today.
Complaints about 'unfair treatment' had started flowing in from Earth Bet, though most of them mirrored the complaints from other variants of Earth that had entitled groups of people that didn't like suddenly losing their perceived personal power. Where things differed, and she was being consulted, were the parahuman-related complaints. A combination of things, from the core powers themselves through to secondary items like tinkertech-accessed areas, and most of them were honestly ridiculous. The automated systems just wanted a more definitive assertion that the complaints were ridiculous than their own original determination.
Peeking at some other items that didn't really need her input had revealed things such as people being incredibly insistent that their family's land had been stolen from them. To the point of threatening harm in a couple of cases. Oddly, the only actual fights breaking out so far had been over specific jewelry pieces and who actually owned them when the determination made by the automated systems had been deemed 'wrong'. In all three cases it was the branch of the family that had essentially stolen the items that had brought it up at all.
Then there were a few issues from the Bureau's area of space. One attempted 'legal' challenge to control over the Belkan Empire by virtue of claiming that because Belka wasn't the kingdom's homeworld that they weren't actually in charge of the Empire itself, based entirely on the rules of a member kingdom of the old Empire that didn't apply to the entire Empire in the first place. Not that anyone else was likely to accept that planet's rulings in their own court over it, but an example might have to be made as in a few days they were likely to start making demands based on the 'findings' of their judges.
Of course, the massing of a 'take control of Please Ignore the Secret Kingdom by force' army, not even intending to go after Belka first, was another matter. The automated systems were recommending a different solution there that needed some thought, compared to the two smaller fleets that had assembled and were already on their way to Belka and were going to be intercepted by geese and cats. One might get Mouse Protector, but probably wouldn't because it wouldn't be insulting enough.
Dwight looked over information on Earth Aleph and the various responses to their 'uplift' videos there. An attempt had apparently been made to claim that the kingdom had to abide by the treaties with Earth Bet, but all the 'Haywire portals' had already been closed. None of those portals remaining between the two Earths triggered the termination of the treaties anyway, even if the kingdom had been willing to entertain the thought for any reason.
The damage caused to them by parahumans still allowed the kingdom to tap into their networks to provide the videos though, and there had been a lot of interest followed by a lot of attempted crackdowns to block them in some countries. But not all countries, which rapidly became an obvious problem for those trying to block them. Not letting your people access the videos meant that you were rapidly going to fall behind technologically.
"It's interesting that most governments on Aleph have realized that the uplift videos are potentially a bit of a trap," Dwight finally said.
"I think I missed that," Virgil replied.
"Oh, it's only when they're being provided to everyone and there are competing groups that have similar tech levels. The more authoritarian governments in particular generally want to control information, but if they do so with the uplift videos then the countries not trying to lock things down get a massive boost in comparison. But that essentially means letting their populations access the rest of the kingdom's information at the same time, which starts breaking down their ability to retain information control in other ways."
"Not that it isn't a trap to the less-controlling governments," Tracey added. "They've got a subtle background track of broader tolerance in general, which makes for a fun situation for the segments of society that would prefer to oppress those they see as 'outsiders'."
Virgil looked between the two of them. "So the uplift videos got a subtle social uplifting component included?"
"Yep."
"Riley's medical videos are a bit more of a direct attack there," Dwight added. "And are just as hard to justify blocking. Maybe harder, actually, given that they include a small pile of advanced medical knowledge. The ruling class is going to want that information available for their own benefit."
"Huh," Virgil said. "How intentional do you think that was?"
"If it wasn't fully intentional on the part of the automated systems then something might be wrong with them."
"Okay, good point. Have you seen the messages about people from Bet looking for us?"
"...no?"
"Looks like we had a fan club that finally realized that we might be reachable now that they had more direct access to the kingdom's communications. Maybe once they got their devices?"
Well, that was interesting on its own and presented the question of what to do about it. They were very much not doing things the way they had when they were parahumans...
Danny still thought that Knight Object plates and silverware were cheating when it came to cleaning up, even if it made cleanup a lot easier. Just throw them out and dismiss them, leaving the filth on them in the trash can without needing to wash anything.
"So," he said, trying to ignore that Hive hadn't even thrown her items out. Just used a spell to strip the rest of the stuff off of her place setting before dismissing it. "Today isn't actually a holiday, and it looks like next week isn't either?"
"The calendar I whipped up for the kingdom doesn't track things the same way," Taylor pointed out. "Using it, the year doesn't flip over for a few more months."
"Oh. I hadn't noticed that."
"My Lord based things on data pulled from galactic observations," Hive said. "Instead of on any one planet or star system, despite having a primary planet and star system to base things off of. This has led those examining her system in the Bureau's space to decide that it was a replacement needed over long range travel, able to be used in a wider variety of situations, and there's a push to adopt it for long-term recordkeeping."
"Most people are just using their old date systems though," Taylor added. "Just with an acknowledgement that they don't actually line up to the kingdom's underlying calendar."
That was interesting to know, and did help explain a few things. "Still feels weird to not have Christmas and New Years as holidays."
"So take them off anyway, though without companies pushing some of them most holidays are going to feel a lot less important. Actually, the complete negation of the 'capitalist nightmare' has caused several religious leaders to praise the kingdom for allowing a return to religious fundamentals, even if they disagree with other policies."
"Policies that prevent them from indoctrination of people?"
"The good religious leaders didn't want to do that at all, but I believe that we're up to three different Popes that are annoyed at the Vatican no longer having its own laws or any real political power..."
Sherie shook her head as she saw a couple of police devices break up a drunken brawl. "Feels weird that we're in a post-scarcity world and people are still pulling that shit."
"People are still people," Ethan pointed out. "And I bet the police devices are only breaking it up because some of the participants haven't gotten their linker cores yet."
"...probably. Not sure why the kingdom is allowing so many people to delay getting them."
"My best guess is that nobody ramped up linker core production and there was a backlog to begin with. It's one of the few things that the kingdom does that doesn't need to be large-scale long-term."
That wasn't a horrible point. It was more bursty as planets joined, really. "So, how's Missy doing?"
"She pouted at being told that she had to wait until the Earth Bet new year to resume training, if only because her trainer is taking time off too, and then I distracted her by asking if she had anyone she was eyeing to date."
"You would do that."
"Wouldn't surprise me if she'd formed at least a minor crush on Taylor, honestly, but I think she'd prefer to date a boy. At the same time, I'm not sure that 'dating' had even crossed her mind. With any luck, thinking about it will keep her distracted for a few days."
"I suppose."
"How's your 'job hunting' going?"
She rolled her eyes. "As if that has any connection to the actual process at all. It's less finding a job and more deciding what you want to do and the kingdom pays you if it's even remotely beneficial."
"True, with exceptions for things that are essentially required to be handled by automated systems for various reasons. Still a valid question."
"I've not figured anything out yet, unless babysitting you is paying these days."
"Have you considered 'stay at home mom'?"
"...Missy moved out."
"Who said anything about her? All the factors holding us back before are kind of non-issues now."
...oh.
Fate rolled her eyes as Nanoha left the room. Far too much 'concern over the babies' today, though admittedly stemming from finding out that one of their coworkers had a miscarriage.
"She means well," Hayate noted.
"While ignoring why our situations are completely different," Fate retorted.
"Both that we have internal healing devices monitoring us at all times and that Beate refuses to be healed by the kingdom despite having been shot through the abdomen six different times."
"Did you go through with having Akte file for her medical exam to include making her unable to have children due to the obvious medical risk?"
"No, because I didn't have to. The doctors made that determination on their own, and then outright told her that if she ever wants to have children then she's going to have to visit the kingdom's medical facility."
"With the expected rants from her about Belkan technology, or the doctors not knowing what they were doing?"
"...as far as I know, no."
"Really?"
"I was told her mother interrupted before she could get started and kept her gagged, then when the 'save her life' surgery was done hogtied her and dragged her to the kingdom's facility. Saying something about 'grandbabies are not optional', or so the story went."
"Would the kingdom really heal her against her will though, if her life wasn't in immediate danger?"
"Arguably, the failure of the nanotech holding her uterus together likely brings into question the nanotech replacing one of her lungs too. By the kingdom's standards she might qualify as an emergency patient."
Suzy stumbled as Casey pulled her along. With Earth Bet no longer needing Engel to show up every so often she'd been roped into helping with the whole 'professional child' thing more permanently, and couldn't argue that it wasn't generally fun to not need to act like an adult. This had come with her own set of alternate-age doppelgangers and even more clothing in their closets to go with the doppelgangers because she couldn't just wear Casey's stuff.
At the same time, for some reason her doppelganger had been stuck into an annoying dress today that prevented her from running properly while Casey was wearing a more sensible skirt. This doppelganger was also younger than Casey's, as though it was a younger relative that was being watched, with their actual selves in teenage form in another city.
They reached today's destination without any issue, and found a group of kids that were wandering around a little aimlessly. Some dressed like she was, others less restricted in their movements like Casey. Which helped explain why they were dressed differently, but not so much why she'd been made to be the less-mobile one of the two of them. Beyond minor details like Casey being more comfortable approaching groups, anyway.
...and just being insane, based on teenage them having literally dropped onto a group of teenagers thanks to another 'pulled over a railing' stunt.
Minerva stepped out of a portal into a field on Wednesday morning, dropping a backpack on the ground as the portal closed before she created a small table and a chair before retrieving a meal onto it. She was halfway through eating the meal when someone approached from the direction of the mountain that the field was a short distance from the base of.
"Er, what are you doing here?" the man called.
"Eating lunch so that you have plenty of time to prepare for me to walk through your base," Minerva replied.
"...what?"
"You're planning on using an army to defeat me. I decided to make it easy on you by coming to your army instead of making your army draw me out. But I'll be streaming it too, just so you know."
The man looked panicked and ran back the way he came. Minerva didn't rush to finish her meal, but did get the live streaming going. Near the end of the meal she had to throw a couple of shields up to stop several artillery strikes from obliterating the table before she was done eating. Once she was done and had cleaned up she put the backpack on, activated the tumbling system generator inside of it, and started walking towards the base. Flying or teleporting over would've made the wrong impression.
Just over the small hill between her and the base she found them digging in, various physical shields and equipment hastily moved into position. As soon as they saw her a bunch of magical shields were also cast. Her response was to start firing bullets shaped like rainbow-colored bouncy balls, though she wasn't sure that the cultural context existed for the balls themselves here. Regardless, they easily punched through the magical shields that weren't ready for spells using more physical dimensions than the Belkan Empire had in the past, followed by cratering the physical shields with little to no problems.
Mages further back started casting spells her way at that point, and she let the first volley hit her Knight Armor to zero effect before casting one of her shield drones to intercept most of those spells instead. By that point she'd reached the damaged physical shields and grabbed the three directly in front of her with telekinesis spells to tear them out of the ground. Abuse of multiple spells let her crumple them up into balls that she then launched at the mages firing at her from a distance to give them something to worry about.
Troops with physical weapons were just getting moving as she continued forward, and she brought out Hal 2 as they approached. Cutting edges on the blade made quick work of most of the devices brought against her, and knockout bullets took the mages out once their weapons were out of commission. Three had shield stacks up that made the cutting edges ineffective though, so she simply pointed at them with her free hand and hit them with overpowered knockout beams.
She had to admit that one of their devices exploding due to that overloading it hadn't been expected, and she sighed when it happened before moving over and ensuring that the knocked-out mage wasn't going to bleed out from where her hand used to be. That done, the approach to the main base continued, with a couple of shields to prevent artillery from striking too close to the already-downed mages behind her.
The first actual problem came in the form of three elite fighters, two of them ranged, working as a team. These were the actual plan for defeating her, a group that had decided that they'd examined her fighting style and that it had 'glaring weaknesses'. Her not being in the air was throwing them off already, but they didn't let that stop them as they tried to punch through her shields with ranged attacks as the close-range member of the three darted in.
Actual effort had to be put towards blocking the ranged attacks as they were specifically designed to pierce through shields and were varied enough to find minor problems across different layers of shielding. Manifesting a shield spell in front of each attack, of the perfect shield to stop it each time, stopped the spells from being effective. The close-range member then engaged her, only to run into problems getting past the shield drone. It was honestly somewhat pathetic as they'd swing their weapon and just bounce off of one of the drone segments, but eventually they tuned their weapon to be able to punch through.
She caught the shaft of the weapon, pulsed a bullet into its shielding, and used telekinesis to crush the shaft and render the weapon useless. That was followed by needing to stop one of their nominal allies from putting a spell through their body to try to reach her, which was where she decided to shut down the two firing at her from range. Hal 2 was put away and she fired knockout beams at both long-range mages, seemingly poorly aiming to miss them only for the beams to swing towards the two at the last moment to hit them in the sides.
Leaving the disarmed close-range mage to stare at the two halves of their weapon, Minerva continued forward to where a large number of ground troops were gathered. Deciding that she'd wasted enough time as it was, she just fired a knockout beam and passed it over the group multiple times to knock them all out. Picking her way over the unconscious bodies was interrupted by another artillery strike needing to be blocked so as to not hurt the unconscious mages.
The complete disregard for their own people was getting annoying.
By the time she reached the 'command center' of the base it had been evacuated of people, but not of equipment. She was planning on making a show of disabling everything, but halfway to the primary server room she had to throw a bubble shield around her to stop the orbital strike fired at her position. That obliterated the building and left her in a crater, causing her to twitch a little. Sixteen bullets were fired straight up into the air, followed by twenty more sent out in front of her path, before she climbed out of the crater.
It seemed that the ship in orbit hadn't expected the sixteen bullets to do anything and hadn't taken any measures to stop them, resulting in its weapon systems being knocked offline. Most important there was the ship's Arc-en-ciel that they'd been repositioning to try to fire and would've been difficult to stop from harming the unconscious mages that were too close to her. The twenty sent ahead took out the artillery through destroying barrels and power linkages.
By the time she reached the artillery line the area seemed to be deserted, but she decided that was close enough for her purposes. Everyone had retreated inside of the 'sacred mountain', which was merely a code name for it being a massive secure bunker. Intended to withstand even the fabled Warship, though it hadn't ever done so as this planet didn't have the dual-moon power system to park the Warship between.
Spinning up a lot more multitasking instances was needed before feeding hyperdense matter into a matter to energy spell and funneling the resulting mana into over a thousand Starlight Breakers. Each spell was individually aimed, and when she was ready she triggered all of them at the same time. The rainbow light was blinding if you weren't ready for it, and thirty seconds later the mountain was full of holes. Most went clear through, but a number of them terminated where specific people had been standing.
When the light died down, there were two people left standing in the area. Minerva, and the leader of the planet. The latter was in need of a new pair of pants. Nodding, she slipped the still-active tumbling system off of her back and left it there before taking a portal out.
Nanoha stared at the image of the 'sacred mountain'. "You have got to be kidding me."
"What?" Fate asked, looking at the image. "Over a thousand Starlight Breakers doesn't phase you, but the mountain afterwards does?"
"I think it's a pun. In English."
"...what is?"
Hayate looked at the image Nanoha was looking at and snickered. "Oh, that's a good one."
Fate sighed. "What am I missing?"
Nanoha quickly traced out letters in the pattern of holes on the mountain.
Holey Mountain
"...still don't get it," Fate admitted.
Hayate snickered again. "Holy, as in sacred, and holey, as in full of holes, are pronounced the same in English. She made the 'sacred mountain' into a proper holy location."
"Seriously?"
"Yep."
Amy shook her head as she read the day's news highlights. "It took them two days to notice that you left an anti-manalink device running in the backpack."
"They were a little distracted," Taylor retorted. "Though doing all of that while wearing the thing has caused a couple of other groups to rethink plans. Admittedly, it did help a bit with the close-range fighter, but the range wasn't turned up enough to do much more than hinder me."
"Which is probably why they took so long to notice. Only when they got right on top of it did the effects hit them. Still insane that they didn't check the backpack you dropped there immediately. What if it had been a bomb?"
"Presumably they determined that if I'd wanted to kill them then I had plenty of chances to do so."
Well, yes, that was a good point. Going out of her way to ensure that nobody died was seen as going above and beyond in a way that no other Belkan ruler would've even considered.
"Also," Taylor continued. "I'm kind of surprised that they don't realize that I cheated by grabbing all their attack profiles ahead of time to use to optimize my shielding."
"...why would they even consider that as a possibility?" Amy asked. "You walked in, ignored basically everything they threw at you, obliterated their 'impervious' bunker, and then left."
"Well, I sent them a link to the attack plan twenty-seven hours before showing up. They seem to have decided that it was a joke, but in reviewing things afterwards it seems that I missed them taking it seriously enough to ensure that the ship would be in orbit for the orbital strike. Plus half of their fortifications took longer than my meal to set up."
"You...published your attack plan ahead of time?"
"Publically, though last I checked the Bureau is the only other group that grabbed a copy."
...telling the enemy where you were going to be showing up to kick their ass with enough time for them to prepare, only to kick their ass anyway, was an entirely different level of flex.
"Looks like the last shards are being processed," Emily noted after dinner a week into January. "Closing out the era of parahumans once and for all."
"Isn't that a little ahead of schedule?" Riley asked. "I thought it was going to be next week before they were done."
"That was before a bunch self-destructed to try and take out the processors that grabbed them in a last-ditch effort to take out an enemy."
"Oh, right."
"Feels a bit weird. Spent most of my life dealing with parahumans, and now there aren't any."
"Just a lot of former parahumans like me?"
"No, you're fine. It's the former parahumans that resent the former part that are the problem now, and none of them are my problem. That said, I did get a bit of a job offer, if you're up for some traveling?"
Riley looked interested. "What kind of traveling?"
"Exploring the galaxy to look for other civilizations. There are supposedly at least twelve others that the 'Entities' considered before focusing on humanity, and who knows how many more that just didn't get noticed."
"Not hunting down other Entities?"
"Nope. Perfectly willing to let that be handled by others. I'd rather remain close enough to 'home' to come back for vacations without issue. Bay and Ray may be willing to join us, and I suspect Kevin will follow you anywhere right now. Plenty of room on the ship we'd be taking either way."
It would take more than an evening to decide properly, of course, but it seemed likely that they'd end up going.
Kurt looked over the list of groups approved for going out hunting Entities, civilizations, or both. Probably both, as hunting civilizations is something Entities were probably already doing themselves. Each group would get a Cherry-class ship, a rough initial exploration pattern to keep them all split up, and quite a bit of exploration leeway as they traveled far outside of the kingdom's borders.
The weird thing was that this was all volunteers, from all over the kingdom and even some Bureau-area planets that hadn't joined the kingdom but where the volunteers were apparently itching for something 'big' to do. Zero attempt was being made to do an official search on Taylor's end, but she also wasn't stopping those that wanted to go hunting from doing so. Further, the automated systems were half hoping that this turned into a major 'expansion event' for the kingdom in the form of spreading out to new worlds throughout at least the Milky Way, if not other galaxies once exploration footholds could be set up.
Really, the only sticking point was how long it would take to build up proper staging areas at that kind of distance. The Cherry class ships weren't going to be specced out for large-scale construction, focusing more on being 'colony ships' that could sustain themselves nearly indefinitely instead. Requests would be sent back to the kingdom for a construction fleet to make the trip out to any given potential foothold location and depending on various factors could be anything from a few Blueberries to a Coconut making the trip.
He also found the rules interesting. Requesting a foothold setup was, essentially, asking to be back under the more direct supervision of the kingdom. Whether this was to discourage doing so or to simply make it obvious that it was a major step to take when far from the kingdom's borders was harder to say, but it made sense in many ways. A foothold would be a dedicated travel and supply area with the potential to be colonized and turned into a proper kingdom planet.
Anyone wanting to actually be in charge where they ended up had to instead build themselves up sufficiently before asking for an embassy. That was intended to show that you had become largely self-sufficient instead of relying on the kingdom's handouts, and predictions were that it was going to be rare. Most of the exploring groups wanted to keep exploring, not settle down to set up a kingdom. The ones that were hoping to set up kingdoms in places weren't predicted to ever get to that point unless they lucked out in conquering some existing civilization that was in the middle of a self-destructive war or something like that.
The end result was essentially 'swarming' a very large area with explorers, though they'd barely make a dent even then. Galaxies are big, even before you get into how many different dimensions they were going to be searching through starting from both around Earth Bet and the Bureau's space. High mana, low mana, a weird filament of anti-mana that one scientist had discovered and wanted to follow to see if there was anything interesting where it was coming from or going to.
Who knew what they'd run into out there, and there were concerns that the 'exploring other dimensions only' groups might even run into other Earth Bets with their own Entity problems, but possibly without a Unison Device having stepped in.
Cross-dimensional events like that were, supposedly, likely to be much rarer than distant versions of the origin world of the Entities spawning groups that had never interacted with one another.
"Funny how the only ships getting proper names are considered to be on the 'small' side of things," Taylor said as she looked over the list of Cherry class ships preparing to depart a month after the official end of the shards in the local region. "But I kind of started that trend with the Usagi, didn't I?"
"Yep," Amy agreed. "Though I note that you don't have a personal ship yet. I'd half expect you to have a personal Coconut or something, if only by the insistence of the automated systems."
"Belkan royalty didn't tend to go that route. Flagships, and then the whole 'ruling from the Warship' thing, but very little in the way of personal ships. They were too easily targeted. But that doesn't mean I don't have one."
"You have a personal ship and I've never seen it?"
"You've visited it three times in the past month."
"...I have?"
"Yep."
"Knowingly?"
"Yes."
"...is it a Coconut?"
Taylor shook her head. "No. It isn't any pie class ship, though I've got twelve Coconut class ships as escorts."
Amy frowned at that, obviously thinking and probably doing some searches. "Is it something stupidly small that the automated systems decided needed Coconut class ships to hide it?"
"No."
"I'm a bit at a loss then."
Taylor grinned, and a couple minutes later they stepped out into the observation area of a Blueberry. She gestured out the window. "That's, officially, my personal ship."
Amy looked out the window, then back at Taylor. "That's your workshop."
"Workshop one, yes."
"...it's an enclosed star, not a ship."
"It started being a ship when I built the engines on it. Twelve Coconuts can dock to its surface in a dodecahedron pattern and it turns out that the engine design gets better as you scale it up."
"How much better are you talking?"
"We're just outside of the Sculptor galaxy. Took the workshop two weeks to get here."
"...what?"
