Hybrid Hive: Eat Shard? (Worm/MGLN) (Complete)

Not to mention the fact that the government keeps the prisoners around in those black sites because they might need them again. Otherwise you just kill them, and since it's a black site, the person just disappeared, never to be seen again. (Sort of like Contessa having a portal opened behind someone's head, shooting them, and then dropping the body on Random World #9735 - no one will ever see them again, and no one not In The Know will know that they're dead.)
 
Sand won't save you now.

Google it; Derek Lowe explains everything you need to know.
One of my jobs over the years had me dealing with 90# slabs of pure lithium. It was stored in sealed caskets filled with argon. When the fire department came by to do a hazmat inspection, we decided if the lithium ever caught fire they would set up a 100 yard perimeter and let it burn.
Lithium burning will ignite concrete, CO2, etc. nasty stuff!
The fluorine compounds are way worse than that!
 
Legally a prison with no way out violates the US constitution, so they would need to at least pretend such an exit actually existed.

Obviously the government didn't actually think said portals did exist, it was just an excuse for the public.
Part of the worldbuilding, that we first see in Canary's interlude iirc, is that the world is so fucked up that these utterly blatant violations of the Constitution happen and no one cares. Canary's trial couldn't have been more of a kangaroo court if they tried.

Yes, the Birdcage is unconstitutional. It doesn't matter, it's happening anyway.
 
Legally a prison with no way out violates the US constitution, so they would need to at least pretend such an exit actually existed.

Obviously the government didn't actually think said portals did exist, it was just an excuse for the public.
I don't think that it matters that it violates the US Constitution because for one cauldron just doesn't give a rip, and two it's in the middle of the Canada boonies not the US.
And yes that doesn't make sense why they can extricate criminals to a country that they don't belong to to imprison them into a prison that doesn't belong to their system.
 
There is no "official" method of getting people out. The Birdcage is designed so that things go in but nothing ever leaves. There's exactly one way of leaving in canon, and that's Doormaker and Clairvoyant.

What are you talking about? Governments love black sites where they can throw people and never hear from them again. It's the public that cares about human rights and so on, and as far as the public knows, it's literally impossible to ever leave the Birdcage.

There being a secret way out of the Birdcage doesn't help justify the prison because the people who care don't know it exists.

Legally a prison with no way out violates the US constitution, so they would need to at least pretend such an exit actually existed.

Obviously the government didn't actually think said portals did exist, it was just an excuse for the public.

I always found this idea one of the more bafflingly stupid ones in canon.

In this case, the "inescapable" prison still needs a release method, and it must be known. Not to the public, but to the government.

Regardless of what form that may take, the simple questions needs to be asked and answered.

1. What if someone innocent gets thrown in.

This is the legal thing, otherwise it would not be allowed to exist by U.S. Law.

2. What if someone important gets thrown in and is needed? Like, say, a foreign leader gets tossed in and they need to release him to avoid a war?

3. What if the Birdcage becomes compromised and people are thrown in, like say the President? They need to get them out, and the U.S. would not stand for that option not existing.

They would have to know and verify that the release method works, because very few countries would stand for it otherwise. Even if they have no intention of using it, it needs to exist.
 
Last edited:
I have to wonder what she'd have spent those ten years working on, in her civilian guise. A flying car could be fun, to start with. And imagine the looks she could get by explaining her ideas for a legal system...
 
So are we going to get a "Eat Shard Gaiden" about the other other Taylor that got split off and sent elsewhere? Not sure where she could go though, since this one got sent to "canon" and all. Maybe some other franchise? Hum.

Thanks for the story.
 
Well, that's one way to deal with Contessa. Give her more problems than she can solve and make her collapse from exhaustion. Though personally I think she has subordinates that help her with problems that doesn't need her personal touch.
 
Well, that's one way to deal with Contessa. Give her more problems than she can solve and make her collapse from exhaustion. Though personally I think she has subordinates that help her with problems that doesn't need her personal touch.
Instructing subordinates would take as much time as just doing things herself, unless she lets them use their own judgement. At which point they're not doing what she does, they're doing what she already uses every organization to do at will.
 
Instructing subordinates would take as much time as just doing things herself, unless she lets them use their own judgement. At which point they're not doing what she does, they're doing what she already uses every organization to do at will.
Depends on how much instruction they need. It's not like she has to walk them through every little thing they need to do. One part of the Path is picking the right person for the job, and the other part is giving them just the right push to do it. So one person could be dropped off without any directions whatsoever, while another gets a page of written instructions.
 
huh, so one instance of Taylor-clone stayed in HH-verse to be Minerva, and this one went to canon-Worm to be Stella... does this mean that the 3rd instance went to canon-Nanoha?
how would that even turn out? she wouldn't be an outside context problem; random magical princess clones of fallen empires is what nanoha-verse does.
and she doesn't (yet) have the overwhelming capacity that HH Taylor does, so she cant just stomp, and the TSB might be able to detect her entrance, so she might not be able to just go hide and grow...
She might have to get political from a position of parity, rather than supremacy... might be interesting.
 
The main way i can see this NG+ ending, is Taylor managing to send a massive beacon out along any vaguely possible dimensional axis, and a Taylor picking it up. Would be interesting to see maybe Taylor Varga picking up the signal, or Scaling Up Missy Lady noticing it.
 
how would that even turn out? she wouldn't be an outside context problem; random magical princess clones of fallen empires is what nanoha-verse does.
and she doesn't (yet) have the overwhelming capacity that HH Taylor does, so she cant just stomp, and the TSB might be able to detect her entrance, so she might not be able to just go hide and grow...
Have you forgotten why she was an outside context problem to the TSAB in Hybrid Hive? She still has the dimensional superiority and everything that comes with that.
 
I really don't know why people are hung up on Birdcage being unconstitutional.

Real life matters carefully tiptoed around, in Worm the Simurgh Quarantine Zones exist.

And as I have pointed out, SQZ (wow it even looks like "excuse" when abbreviated) is a particularly inhumane prison by all reasonable measures.

A place where you are imprisoned in without a trial, without parole, for life, with no guards to keep the order among the inmates and AFAIK no supplies brought in to tend to your needs - be it food, water, or medicine.

All that, for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
 
Last edited:
Depends on how much instruction they need. It's not like she has to walk them through every little thing they need to do. One part of the Path is picking the right person for the job, and the other part is giving them just the right push to do it. So one person could be dropped off without any directions whatsoever, while another gets a page of written instructions.
Why does she need employees for that? She can just use whoever.
 
I really don't know why people are hung up on Birdcage being unconstitutional.

Real life matters carefully tiptoed around, in Worm the Simurgh Quarantine Zones exist.

And as I have pointed out, SQZ (wow it even looks like "excuse" when abbreviated) is a particularly inhumane prison by all reasonable measures.

A place where you are imprisoned in without a trial, without parole, for life, with no guards to keep the order among the inmates and AFAIK no supplies brought in to tend to your needs - be it food, water, or medicine.

All that, for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Simurgh quarantine isn't prison. It's quarantine. People sometimes choose to pretend that public health interventions are the same thing as criminal punishements, but they're deeply not.
 
Simurgh quarantine isn't prison. It's quarantine. People sometimes choose to pretend that public health interventions are the same thing as criminal punishements, but they're deeply not.

True, it's a ship's own crew who raise the yellow banner (basically a yellow flag on a ship means: "I am under quarantine."). Generally it's they themselves who realise they have a problem needing quarantine.
 
Y'all do know that the Birdcage is actually in Canada?
Yes, it is in Canada. Which makes it doubly-illegal that the Americans are sending prisoners to it. Regardless of its location, the US has rules, not for "prisons that they run", but for "prisons they use". Further, they have rules about where a person can be sent to prison, usually stuff about the nearest prison of the appropriate security and federal/state/county status.
 
Last edited:
I expect there's some backhanded loophole somewhere like the 'cage officially being an embassy and all the US prisoners are officially diplomatic envoys.
 
I expect there's some backhanded loophole somewhere like the 'cage officially being an embassy and all the US prisoners are officially diplomatic envoys.
Except that it is explicitly "interment in the baumann parahuman containment center" as a prison sentence. You cannot be "sentenced" to the diplomat service, much less an embassy.
 
I kind of want to see the third clone end up in Stargate and instead of downplaying like Stella go the other way and go full Minerva.

"You're a god? We've got a lot of slugs saying that"
*Does something with Mana that can't be copied by the Goa'uld*
"Ok, that's a step up as far as tricks go, but we've met Oma Desala and the Nox."

Also see her clowning on the Ascended Ancients / Ori. Actually, her arriving during the Apophis arc would be a good time for her to make a big impression.
 
Last edited:
Why yes, I've been playing a lot of Skyrim lately...

It would be interesting to see her arrive and just casually conquer the entire setting. There are a lotta gods there that could use a solid asswhuppin, after all.

But my favored choice would be canon Nanoha. She'd start out as a peer, but rapidly grow to a superior.

Or maybe this one gets tossed into 40k. Just to see how she handles the Immaterium.
 
Back
Top