- Location
- Hug the Moebot; Save the world
Vista has had past interaction with the mysterious necklace and they might consider the possibility that its makers can track those who come into contact with it *shrug*.
Hybrid Hive: Eat Shard? (Worm/MGLN) (Complete)
- Thread starter CmptrWz
- Start date
- Crossover
Vista has had past interaction with the mysterious necklace and they might consider the possibility that its makers can track those who come into contact with it *shrug*.
Fragnostic
Cheshire
- Location
- Neko City
Or they might think the tinkers are pedophiles. There's like a billion possible misunderstandings to be made.
- Location
- Saipan
Considering the PRT thinks that Vista tried to kill herself, they'll probably go with a benevolent/ambivalent Big Brother group that checks up on 'persons of interest' and saved Vista from killing herself (good), while taking her power (bad).
Fragnostic
Cheshire
- Location
- Neko City
Yes but so far this group of persons of interests consists of two... underage girls.
FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
And a few AI, don't forget the AI.
- Location
- Odessa
It is very hard to judge good/bad without knowing motives and more of situation. There are so many reasons and possible motives for taking Vista's powers, so many conjectures that I don't think Protectorate is going to label it as good/bad at this point.
Example B:
As far as PRT knows Vista could have been going through second trigger due to 'near death' situation thus alerting 'creators of necklace'. And said creators just took Vista's power and healed Vista because they need her alive as sort-of anchor. (good that Vista survived, but otherwise, All bad)
Example G:
'depowering+necklace' was either the only method 'creators' had at hands to save Vista's life or decided that power itself (or PRT) was the source of the issue (caused depression/other mental influence, or girl needs to get out of unhealthy Ward's environment), necklace was set up to make sure there won't be a second attempt or complications to health. (All good)
That's too much conjecture... sans the 'Threat Up', PRT/Protectorate still knows nothing about the group and it's motives. 'Mistery Up' at best)
1. Children trigger more often
2. People that triggered as children generally get stronger powers.
3. There might be other reasons to target children, like higher adaptability and learning speed (easier to write data into their brains or teach).
4. Bakuda was a 'rush' job
Just this is enough to reasonably explain situation and there are other factors. Your conclusion is practically groundless, even if somebody might consider this as option, I don't think PRT will seriosly consider such case.
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Taylor has had near accidents developing her attacks.
Has this been from Hive having lost her safety and training procedures, from concentrating on redeveloping her library to protect Taylor, and or from avoiding stepping in unless the risk is too high?
If Danny understands this he may suggest spending some of Minerva's money on consultancy on safety management procedures.
In Maul, Taylor had the PRT procedures to mine. As Minerva, Taylor only has Hive as a sounding board and Hive is busy.
Access to a good, creative physicist and software engineer with safety critical software experience, both say University Lecturers would be a worthwhile investment.
Hive could maintain reasonable OpSec - though preventing them from recording the video conferences might be hard if Hive wishes to avoid disclosing too much.
That could also help in training Missy, and in future, Amy.
Alternately, Minerva's funds could be used to support Missy.
If Hive wishes to make a statement, putting up summary data from the solar system scan - say pressure, temperature, composition would make a strong one.
The Earth alone would be scary enough, more of the Solar System ...
Has this been from Hive having lost her safety and training procedures, from concentrating on redeveloping her library to protect Taylor, and or from avoiding stepping in unless the risk is too high?
If Danny understands this he may suggest spending some of Minerva's money on consultancy on safety management procedures.
In Maul, Taylor had the PRT procedures to mine. As Minerva, Taylor only has Hive as a sounding board and Hive is busy.
Access to a good, creative physicist and software engineer with safety critical software experience, both say University Lecturers would be a worthwhile investment.
Hive could maintain reasonable OpSec - though preventing them from recording the video conferences might be hard if Hive wishes to avoid disclosing too much.
That could also help in training Missy, and in future, Amy.
Alternately, Minerva's funds could be used to support Missy.
If Hive wishes to make a statement, putting up summary data from the solar system scan - say pressure, temperature, composition would make a strong one.
The Earth alone would be scary enough, more of the Solar System ...
FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
The assumption would be "mage training is safe normally", correct? Eh, I'd be willing to suggest that's not actually the case unless the training is done 100% in simulations. Nor does it help that Taylor and Hive are having to create those safety features you are expecting to already exist because Hive doesn't have any in her remaining database. They are literally having to build the equations from nothing. Thus any error in the math is potentially dangerous. And it's impossible to know there is an error in the math until things go sideways, and the two of them are sitting there trying to figure out why.
Taylor is taking every reasonable precaution, and even then there's been some near catastrophic problems due to math errors or erroneous initial assumptions the equation is based on. None of which were obvious until testing in the real world.
I'd be willing to hazard that mage training is horrifically dangerous. Especially the training of a combat mage. I'd further suggest that training a would-be mage in combat spells/tactics is usually not done until they have a good foundation of the basics. Basics which Taylor (and Nanoha) were never taught because they were thrown strait into the deep end of Combat Mage training.
Taylor is taking every reasonable precaution, and even then there's been some near catastrophic problems due to math errors or erroneous initial assumptions the equation is based on. None of which were obvious until testing in the real world.
I'd be willing to hazard that mage training is horrifically dangerous. Especially the training of a combat mage. I'd further suggest that training a would-be mage in combat spells/tactics is usually not done until they have a good foundation of the basics. Basics which Taylor (and Nanoha) were never taught because they were thrown strait into the deep end of Combat Mage training.
- Location
- Omniverse #1345
In the TSAB mage training is perfectly safe - because they've had a very long time to work on robust safeties. Taylor completely lacks those and is having to start from first principals.
It would be magic development that isn't really safe, and even there they have a significant leg up.
Czlyydwr Llrngwl
"Sell ya a door Learn gull," Czly/Celly for short
- Location
- Where the Beef is
- Pronouns
- Any
With Minerva developing an official presence and resources, I think the idea of getting a consultant or two is a decent one, especially if she's going to be teaching Missy magic as well. It might take some time to get them up to speed, but collaboration and peer review are basically the cornerstones of modern science. Taylor may have the multitasking system that can host multiple instances of herself, but that's still only copies of herself, that know what she knows and have the same assumptions. Explaining something to someone else is always a great way to find places where something is wonky, and inevitably they will also point some more out that still slip past. Picking up a programmer, mathematician, and/or physicist to get going with it at the same time as Missy would make the most of the time spent on teaching magical math, and let's be honest, they are all fields that attract colossal nerds. Just being offered the chance to learn the theory behind provable, repeatable spellcasting, even if they can't do it themselves without external equipment like the shield belts, is going to be like offering marshmallows to kindergartners as a reward for listening to storytime.
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- Location
- Belfast
*Vista tags along for her first training session*
"Ok, we'll start with some basic fitness to see where you stand, then we'll run you through some shooter drills, get you started on flight, and finish up with a light combat session Vs a few drones!"
"Sounds good!"
*A few hours later*
"Taylor! That many drones is not a few! If that was a light combat session I don't want to know what you think is a heavy one!"
"But it was only 20 drones? They weren't allowed to fly ridiculously high or fast? Heck, there wasn't even a hurricane to provide adverse weather conditions!"
*Missy's response immediately begins to put the 'Sailor' into Sailor Scout*
Fragnostic
Cheshire
- Location
- Neko City
The AIs are also quite young... XD
The point was that there's plenty of room for misunderstandings, canon issues notwithstanding.
The entire pedophilia part was one of the most extreme cases because who cares children trigger the most if there's a group of older people observing younger people. Wait, I just described schools... and society in general. XD
Anyway. It's a joke.
FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
While by the time of MGLN magic has a "stun" setting that keeps things non-lethal, this by no means makes combat spells "safe". They can still cause serious injury, as is evidenced by the various times Nanoha and company need medical treatment during the Book of Darkness arc. And that was with the 'villains' not trying to kill them. it's also unclear when exactly the "stun" setting was developed. If it's something developed by TSAB mages, then Taylor and Hive would have no way of knowing about it. Remember also that even if there is a "stun" setting that's on by default, Taylor and Hive are unaware of it. Spells in stun setting still cause massive collateral damage. And Taylor has been training with combat drones, not living opponants. As such, even if her spells are in Stun mode, she has no way of knowing that they can't actually kill. Well, not directly kill anyway.
- Location
- Neptune
Why are you assuming that mage training starts and ends with combat spells with nothing more inbetween except more combat spells?
FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
I'm not. Taylor's mage training started and is ending with combat spells, which is very important to consider. And other major MGLN characters have the same issue. That said, Strikers does show that mages learn combat spells at a young age. It's not known if that's universal, or just those specific individuals though.
- Location
- Neptune
None of the characters have had proper mage training to start out with. They have been thrown into combat and had to learn on-the-fly. That's the opposite of training.
EiosChronos
Delusional Dreamer
- Location
- Gamindustri
To be fair, its mentioned in Nanoha that Signum can burn a forest down in an instant, but has trouble using her flames for something as small as heating a bathtub full of water due to never having thought to apply it that way.
FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
Not quite true. As I understand it, several of the supporting characters in Strikers had "proper" training. Raising Heart was training Nanoha as well, granted with a focus on combat and sealing. Fate also had "proper" training, again with a focus on combat and sealing. What we don't know is how exactly young mages are normally trained, just how the Protagonists were trained (and the bad habits they developed due to it).
I think that the first bunch of lessons for Missy would be on just the advanced mathematics/"programming" and sciences behind magic to begin with making it more resemble a stereotyped wizard apprenticeship rather than some kind of first-person shooter tutorial. This would allow Missy to leverage and explore magic to wherever her interests lie. Combat training could be done after she has decided how she prefers to use her magic which could affect what sort of combat style she would take up.
Crazael
Rehydrated Demon King
- Location
- Lost to the vagaries of time.
At the start of StrikerS, Teanna and Subaru are both currently in training. Caro has been trained in her specialties of summoning and boosting, but needs combat training. Eriol has some basic training, but needs more. More broadly, Chrono is very highly trained in a wide variety of areas, with a specialization in combat and investigation. Fate has also recieved fairly complete, if overly focused, training. Notably, it tskes several months before Fate can beat Chrono in a sparring match. Not because hes more powerful, because he's really not, but because he is much more well trained than she is.
- Location
- Argentina
It is worrysome that nowadays Taylor is more likely to get killed by an errror on the math that by her enemies.
No one here thinks Shadow Stalker is a real threat at all.
It would be quite hilarious if Shadow Stalker gets her Shard eaten as expected but the next day Taylor is in a fully body cast because she messed up with a spell again.
Chapter 36 - May 12, 2011
Thursday morning Taylor added making a quick shopping list to her routine, wanting to ensure that she picked up a couple of things needed for making her planned quickly-heated breakfast when she got home that afternoon. This stemmed in part from finding that they were nearly out of a few things, and in part from wanting to experiment a little bit by including some fresh fruit. The day's morning run was accomplished in the desert due to rain at both beaches, though they were on the lookout for possible sandstorms.
For demonstration purposes, they'd passed by where Hive had created the test portal to Mars. The crater was impressive, but Hive admitted that it was probably less than what a more stable version would generate with the new techniques. The previous attempt had been actively maintained, the new version wouldn't be. Hive had cast the updated version and deployed two surveillance drones to monitor it before they'd moved on, the new portal facing the opposite direction so that the craters could be directly compared when this one inevitably failed. There was a chance that it would last the full forty-eight hours that Hive had put on the timer, of course, but they weren't optimistic there.
The second portal that they left behind, connected to another part of the desert with a six-hour timer, was fully expected to close safely on its own at this point. Other portals had been opened as well, but they'd been practice for Taylor casting the spells to open them and the ones that could close them. The latter would, supposedly, also work on any of the ones that Haywire's tech had opened and on the ones they'd seen in the base that had started them on this research project in the first place.
Hive's request to cast the closing spell on all of the portals known to have been left behind by Haywire's tech as a safety precaution was declined on the basis of it drawing far too much attention. The portals were stable enough right now, and at least one of them was very obviously in use to communicate with Aleph. Sending a single drone to close the small portal Hive had noticed was leading to the otherwise empty Earth as a proof of concept had been all that Taylor and her father had been willing to allow, insisting that it happen from the empty Earth specifically, and that had worked fine.
As a final victory for the morning, they'd headed home just in time to see a sandstorm approaching, but without being caught in it.
Missy sighed as the door closed behind the nurse that had cleaned up after breakfast. She was bored but couldn't do much about it. Sure, she had plenty to read, but she wanted to be doing a hell of a lot more. Being unable to get a solid hour to herself in order to call Taylor and Lilia was getting annoying, but there wasn't much she could do about it. Then again, even if she could call them, there wasn't much she was going to be able to do other than talk for a few minutes. There had to be a learning curve on magic, after all, so she wasn't going to be going out and attacking gang idiots right out of the hospital from gaining the ability to do magic.
She hadn't gone from 'get powers' to 'go fight bad guys' instantly when she'd triggered, there was no way that magic was that quick and easy to learn without metaphorical training wheels being included. And she didn't want to be fighting with training wheels, thank you very much. That would be embarrassing and mean that she couldn't stand on her own, which was the opposite of why she went through with this whole thing anyway. The stories she'd found about magical girls being empowered just before winning their first fight could suck it.
That particular train of thought aside, she had overheard some talk about moving her into a guest suite soon, if they didn't find 'somewhere else' for her to stay, so perhaps she'd get more privacy then? Hopefully without the 'constantly coming into the room' dance that they'd been very obviously doing since she woke up. Though she hadn't actually gotten around to asking why she'd need somewhere to stay that wasn't with one of her parents. It was possible that something had happened to them, but if so it obviously wasn't important enough for them to have let her know. She at least hoped that one or both of them having died would be enough for someone to tell her, not that she wanted either to be dead.
Armsmaster was supposed to be swinging by later, so perhaps she'd ask him for details then.
Heading home after tutoring by way of the store was slightly more annoying than Taylor had expected, what with an unusually long funeral procession crossing her path causing a significant delay. She'd missed getting across that street before it by about a minute and a half, and there really wasn't any good way around it. Worse, she was fairly certain that she'd been stalled by a funeral procession for an Empire member or similar, based on what she could see of the cars in the procession.
Alabaster being in the car taking up the position at the rear of the procession was another hint, of course.
It didn't take long after that for her to pick up what she needed to, at which point she took the bus the rest of the way home. She had just enough that it would've been awkward to carry them and not carrying them would probably have drawn far too much attention. That taking the bus helped make up for some of the time lost to waiting for the funeral procession go by was a side bonus.
Once things were put away Taylor headed to the beach. She had a collection of spells to test the new versions of now that Hive had reworked them to include the new tricks picked up from Missy's shard. Admittedly, she'd already cast a couple of things built with the new tricks, but there were others to test. Not to mention testing her own attempts at integrating the tricks into other spells.
Taylor started testing with sensor drones, which didn't seem to warrant the increased complexity when she cast them immediately around her current position. Casting them to the clearing and the beach at the other end of the continent showed actual improvements, and casting them to the desert showed significant boosts. The end result was the same in all cases, with the initial casting being the only difference, so leaving the original version as a 'point blank' option was probably not a bad idea.
Dimensional transference was next, and took five attempts before she got it correct. At first she couldn't figure out what was going wrong, as the transit path wasn't being defined properly while everything looked good, but she eventually spotted a dropped sign. Rotating by π was not the same as rotating by -π, even if the end result looked correct. Especially when dealing with multiple physical dimensions that didn't always line up as you might expect them to. The built-in safeties had ensured that her error merely resulted in a shutdown due to the transit path not being complete, even if she was only working with a couple of rocks. Once she had it working it was obviously superior, taking less power and having less transit time. Though she also realized that she might be geeking out a little too much over the transit time reduction when she finally figured out that the full third that it had shaved off amounted to a hundred milliseconds. Pretty much literally the blink of an eye.
Storing and retrieving items was actually simpler with the replaced routine for moving things in and out of the storage area, and the unaided range was greatly increased. Sadly, using a wrapped bullet for the spell endpoint didn't change possible range at all, meaning that there was a lot less need to use the bullet trick itself. Of course, the bullet still allowed what was now three times the range without a full dimensional transference, so it wasn't useless.
Remote-casting the simple scanning spell worked out great, allowing her to scan a small area pretty much anywhere within around six miles of her before power requirements started to spike. That was greatly improved over the approximately sixty feet she'd managed previously. The ultra-long-range scanning spell she already knew worked, of course, but she practiced that with a much smaller scan area as well. Not needing to have it pull matter to convert into powering the spell simplified it a bit too, and she could get just over thirty miles of range without straining herself.
Unfortunately, applying the new technique as a possible method to remote-cast bullets resulted in failure. She was starting to wonder if she'd ever have a non-workaround method to do that, because relying on 'wrap it in a sensor drone first' wasn't her preferred option. Though at least this time the failure was 'the bullet detonates immediately, delivering the innermost payload immediately'. Which meant that with precise targeting she could make explosions in thin air. It didn't work in water or solid matter though, as the bullet wouldn't even assemble well enough to explode.
She was preparing to do some testing of gathering and using electrons when Hive interrupted her.
"My Lord," the device said. "I'd like to confirm the initial spell set for Missy's new device."
Taylor blinked, then nodded. "That does make sense to take care of now, rather than after giving it to her. Actually, what's the base capability set, beyond the spatial manipulation trick?"
"Basic communications, artificial intelligence on approximately Hal's level, field healing, a fifteen slot multitasking system, and casting support systems are the primaries."
"Okay. Any combat capabilities at all?"
Hive shook her head. "Nothing beyond automated defenses, similar to what happened with Flechette in New York but with a hardware unit instead of software firing control."
"I guess that makes sense. So what spells do you already have in there?"
"I started with the mental communication and mana sensing primers that you wrote, though that isn't well documented right now. I then added the spells for creating and using the internal storage area, and will update the 'using' spells with the newer variant. The set of Knight Clothing, Armor, and Object, as well as the anchor creation spell as a required support component were included as a set, and I finished off with the short-range scanning spell as preparation for later taking in data from sensor drones. I'd like permission to include a basic uncolored Knight Armor template for her, as well as the Hex Shield as it's intended for defense and won't go against your father's desire to keep combat spells and devices away from her for now."
Taylor gave that some thought before nodding. "That all makes sense, and you have permission. Though you should probably slip a breathing mask into the initial collection. I suppose she won't need a communication watch while wearing the device either, unless it has some other form that would be more easily separated from her?"
"Only a standby form that looks like the pendant itself without a chain attached, it's intended to be a purely support device. Similar to how I function for you when in my stealth form, but less capable due to limitations in what I can safely construct."
"Okay. And you've got the combat device started too, I assume?"
"Started and finished, though I'm working on two more in order to have a spare, so that you can have one if desired, and to use up materials as I process things. They should be done by morning, since I finalized the base design earlier today. Along those lines, I've been preparing other things ahead of time as well, even if we're keeping them from her for now. In addition to the combat device, I've prepared stealth and shield generator units for her Knight Armor and a set of training drones. I also added in a set of spare surveillance drones while storing things in her future combat device. Customizing a cutting tool to go along with her choice in visual style will need to wait until we know what that style is. I'll have a breathing mask completed in a few minutes to store in Space."
Taylor blinked at that. "Store in what?"
"In order to properly set up the communication hardware I had to initialize and name her new device. I chose the name Space for it, both because referring to it can be easily misunderstood by those listening in before she gets used to mental communication and because it manipulates spatial dimensions."
"Ah. Is there anything else we need to worry about right now?"
Hive shook her head. "I don't believe so."
"Okay then, time to see if any of my ideas for electrical attacks from last night work in the real world."
Missy was confused, and had a mild headache. The latter was, admittedly, her own damn fault. She really should've taken a little more time to eat her root beer float. But she'd been distracted after meeting with Armsmaster and nearly two hours with Doctor Yamada and had an ice cream headache before she realized what she was doing wrong. That it was delicious probably hadn't helped.
Still, Armsmaster had admitted that her parents may actually lose custody of her, due to someone finally officially noticing some of their lack of acting like parents, but they were having trouble finding a place for her to stay while things shook out. To that end, her parents weren't allowed to come see her unless she wanted them to, thanks to an actual restraining order even, and she still wasn't in the mood for that confrontation. He'd also said that he'd used her situation to start attacking the Youth Guard, but she wasn't entirely sure how her losing her powers was enough to do much of anything. Especially as nobody had actually asked her for details, though she wasn't stupid enough to volunteer anything while things were seemingly going fine for her.
The session with Doctor Yamada had been downright weird. Questions and discussion that was obviously the woman digging for something, but Missy couldn't figure out what. The only parts that made sense to her were the ones relating to her powers being gone and how she felt about that. Which, once she thought about it, was weird. Despite the boredom from staying in the hospital with little to do, she didn't feel restless. Like there wasn't a nagging voice in the back of her head telling her to do things, or at least that was what they'd come up with for a description.
Missy just wished she knew what the hell the woman had been digging for in general. That was going to bother her until she had something else to distract her, and she didn't think an impending shift of scenery to a guest suite was going to be enough. Though she did wonder about the fact that they'd apparently collected her things from both of her parents, and according to Armsmaster it had been done without her parents present. In particular, she wondered if they spotted her hidden medical and makeup stashes. More importantly, if they had would they realize that she used them to hide that she'd been going out on patrols on her own?
Taylor smiled as she packaged up breakfast for the next day. Her father had agreed with the choices for Missy's device, and it was looking like the girl was going to be sleeping outside of the hospital room tonight. Hopefully that meant that she would have some time for Hive to pop over and deliver Space. It was better news than the results of her working on a controlled electrical attack, none of her flow limiters seeming to want to work in the real world at all. The only reason the day's set of tests hadn't been pretty much guaranteed lethal was because she hadn't gathered a lot of electrons to feed them.
Really, at this point it would be nice if Hess would make a move somewhere so that they'd at least know where she might be. If she had booked it somewhere across the country instead of heading for Brockton Bay then the electrical spells wouldn't be nearly as important to work on. But no, they had nothing to go on and thus there was no excuse for bumping their priority down in the list of things to work on.
"Hey," her father said, interrupting her train of thought. "I don't suppose Hive can answer a quick question?"
"I don't see why she can't," Taylor admitted, prodding Hive's stealth form. "Though I'm curious what you want to ask her instead of me."
"I'm curious as to why she's running through Miss Biron's shard so quickly, compared to taking her time on the last one."
"The next Endbringer attack is due any time," Hive replied. "While the last one didn't impact this region, the next one might, and I'd rather be prepared even if I hope that it won't happen here."
He grimaced at that. "Now I'm wishing that I hadn't asked. It's never nice to consider that the next Endbringer attack could be where you live and work. Worse, Hive preparing for it reminds me that there's a good chance that you're going to want to take a shot at one of the things if they come close enough."
Taylor wanted to deny that, but he was probably right. At the same time, she wasn't sure if she was up to that particular level of battle yet. "I'm not sure how I'd fare. I might be better off joining the search and rescue teams."
"Taylor, I've seen some of your training. Even if you were doing search and rescue work I'd fully expect you to be firing off attacks constantly as well, and likely doing a decent job of helping the battle as a result."
That wasn't what she was expecting. "What?"
"I've given this some thought. If the next Endbringer attack looks like it'll affect this area then I'm giving you permission to participate, so long as you agree to get yourself out of the fight if you're seriously injured. Your mother probably wouldn't have had it any other way, to be honest, especially if you can actually do some real damage to one of the things. At the same time, I don't want you running halfway across the globe to join in on a battle that's nowhere near here." He then paused and grimaced. "And despite the chances of it being basically zero, I think I'm preemptively barring you from going hunting for them between attacks. I have no interest in you doing something crazy like flying off into orbit to attack the Simurgh."
Taylor paused at that. "Could I actually do that?"
"Even if the answer is yes, no you can't."
"It would probably be best to launch such an assault with the combat drones anyway," Hive noted. "They should be much harder for the 'scream' to influence, if it can influence them or my Lord at all, and are significantly more expendable."
Taylor blinked, seeing the logic easily. "That's true, but there are some things that I already know just work better when I'm casting them personally."
"NO," her father interrupted. "With or without using drones to do so, no attacking Endbringers unless you're intercepting an attack by one of them on somewhere in New England."
She nodded. "That doesn't mean that I can't consider tactics though. I mean, personally speaking, I'd rather try and intercept an Endbringer before it reaches us. Much harder for the battle to do damage to the landscape if it isn't happening here."
"Okay, yes, that would likely be preferable. But again, only if they're obviously attacking the region and you ensure that you can get out in the event of serious injury."
"I suspect that Hive and Hal would both be capable of getting me out even if I can't do so myself."
He stared at her before nodding. "Right. I'd much rather lose the house and most of the landscape than lose you."
Missy had given the guest suite an examination under the guise of figuring out where everything was. That she had no clue where anything was kept in the suite happened to help immensely, further helped by finding that her stuff had been spread around the suite in occasionally weird ways. Or at least weird to her. Though when she was done the only things she hadn't found were her medical and makeup stashes, and she still didn't know what to think on that front.
The other thing she hadn't found was any indication that they had cameras in the suite. Alerts on the door were almost a given, but there didn't seem to be any cameras. Which was a good thing, and as soon as she had a handle on how often they were checking on her she might be able to call Taylor or Lilia. Of course, she had to hope that they didn't have microphones in the suite as well, but that should be easy enough to deal with. Play some music and whisper one of the code phrases she had, then hope that she got a response.
Though she felt a little silly, having thought that the code phrases were going over the top, only to now possibly need them. Lilia's insistence that they were already programmed into the necklace was the only reason that she'd gone along with the ruse, but the original plan of ditching one of her parents like she normally would once the initial ruckus had settled down wasn't happening. Which, of course, meant that she had to be sneakier. She just hoped that Taylor, Lilia, and Mister Hebert hadn't seen this coming even though she was blindsided by it.
Dropping down into a comfortable chair, she decided to turn on the television in the suite and see what the news was saying. Maybe they'd say something about what was going on with the Youth Guard?
That evening Taylor ended up spending time on considering how she'd approach each Endbringer at this point. Behemoth couldn't really be intercepted, due to how he traveled underground, and would be an 'attack from range' exercise. Ziz would be best engaged at high altitude, to remove as many possible items for use with telekinetic blocking as possible. Even then, the strategy would likely need to be 'try to attack from range and overwhelm with bullets', at least barring some other way to attack her. Getting too close seemed like it would be a problem.
Those two were, unfortunately, reasonably straightforward with her current skills. By comparison, Leviathan most certainly wasn't. The only way to intercept the seagoing Endbringer was to do so at sea, and that meant attacking in its element. There would be no shortage of water for the macro hydrokinetic to throw at her or to use to defend itself. She'd likely need to stay flying in the air and fire blasts into the water, hoping that they could even get close. Even that wasn't guaranteed to keep her out of the line of fire of water blasts.
In all three cases, combat drones seemed to be the only good way to 'close in'. Pepper them with lots of bullets herself, and use the drones to launch various attacks otherwise. If she was lucky then she might even get one of the drones safely into cutting distance, but short of one of the Endbringers pouncing her she wasn't going to try and use Hal or a cutting tool for that. Even then she'd hopefully be getting the hell out of there instead of being forced to attack at that range.
The other thing that she realized was that, regardless of which Endbringer she was working with, step one pretty much had to be a few sensor drones to see what she could find out about them. If she wasn't afraid of triggering something unpleasant then she'd probably try and send sensor drones to scan them ahead of time. As it was, that would definitely be too risky, but not having proper data for targeting them with homing bullets would limit her a bit until she could get said data. Doing that would probably be easiest with Behemoth, unless he could obliterate them before they finished forming. Ziz would be next on the easiest, but would be most likely to be able to stop her from forming them at all. Leviathan...would be difficult, unless she knew what approach was being used and could 'mine' it with sensors ahead of time.
All things considered, right now the best case scenario was that she could do significant damage and slow down one of the Endbringers while learning more for the future. Conversely, the worst case scenario was that they were immune to mana attacks and she was essentially useless against them. In the latter case she'd be pretty much forced to do search and rescue work during an attack. Obviously she was going to hope that the things weren't immune to her attacks, but short of actually attacking one she couldn't be certain either way and she should be ready for everything between the two extremes.
It was shortly after midnight when she was interrupted from going through plans, Hive shifting forms getting her attention.
"What's up?" Taylor asked, leaving her physical self sleeping for now.
"Missy just called," Hive responded. "I can tell that they're monitoring the hallway, but not the inside of the suite she's in. I'll pop over and deliver Space to her."
"Ah, okay."
A dimensional transference had Hive popping across town to the PRT building. Taylor did her best to not distract her, and half an hour later she returned.
"How did it go?" Taylor asked as Hive switched back to stealth form.
"It went fine," Hive responded. "I fully powered up her augmentation unit as she was healed up enough for it while I was there, but I also had to correct the mana tuning on Space once I did so. That wasn't unexpected, and Space should be able to keep itself properly tuned to Missy from now on."
"Tuning?"
"Devices work best with those they're tuned to, though it isn't always necessary. The communication watches don't really care, for example. For something that's going to mentally interface with her for casting support the tuning needs to be fairly precise. I'd also gotten it close enough, but it would've taken a couple of weeks for Space to adjust on its own. Doing that adjustment myself was the faster option."
"Ah. So you're tuned to me?"
"To what my records indicate might be an unsafe degree, to be honest."
That hadn't been the answer Taylor had been expecting. "Unsafe how?"
"Admittedly, it's an incomplete paragraph from a larger document, but it implies that a Unison device that is too closely tuned to a given user can result in a number of problems. The actual list of problems didn't survive, so I'm not actually certain what they are."
"Oh. How do you know that we're possibly that closely 'tuned'?"
There was a pause, likely as Hive figured out how to explain things. "In a device like Hal, the mana interface module is the primary tuning point, but other aspects are generally involved as well. Personality, output frequencies, even the mental interface parameters all play a factor. Depending on the goal, a device can be properly tuned in a number of ways. Filling gaps in the user's capabilities, tempering problematic portions of their personality, boosting their existing skills or personality."
"Okay..."
"My original programming included all of this as part of assisting in tuning other devices for my Lord, both with and without being in Unison. The problem arises in that, as a Unison device, I have my own core, with its own leanings and specialties. Balancing that with my Lord's core requires self-tuning as well."
"That makes sense."
Hive paused again, and Taylor raised a mental eyebrow to prompt the device to continue. "The potential problem point here is that I appear to have tuned my own core to yours, though even now I'm not entirely sure how I did so. It's entirely possible that it was pure chance, the two cores syncing to one another during the repair, healing, and augmentation process. There are still differences, if only because my core's absolute base construction is different than one in an organic being such as yourself, but my mana is synced with your own to a degree that my own automatic tuning routines occasionally error out on, and you likely haven't noticed but every so often there's an apparently spontaneous transfer of mana between our two cores, generally your larger core feeding mine mana apparently directly."
That...made less sense. "What does that mean?"
"I honestly don't know, Lord, but I suspect that I might not be able to survive your passing without an expert who does know what it means being available to help with complications that arise."
Missy was grinning after Lilia had left. She was going to have to practice connecting to Space, but that was okay. For now she ensured that she was connected to the internal multitasking system, since Lilia had explained that she should be able to use it while sleeping. Also that she shouldn't do so nightly, admittedly, but that was a concern for her future self. For now she wanted to get started on learning things.
The three instances of her inside of the system each focused on a different thing. One examined the base controls, which for now was basically turning on and off the spatial manipulation system. She left that off for now, not wanting to screw up and 'use her powers' only to be shoved back into the Wards because of it. A second instance of her was looking over the mental communication and mana sensing primers, Lilia having recommended that she do so in order to improve her ability to connect to Space.
That left the last instance of her, which was cracking open the documentation on the spell for making a secret storage pocket, because that sounded way too useful. Sure, she'd only need to cast it once, at which point she apparently should only need the spell that let her store and retrieve objects from it, but until the space was created she couldn't play with the store and retrieve spells at all.
It was with a dawning horror that she realized that the 'spell' was an ungodly amount of math that she couldn't even begin to make heads or tails of.
For demonstration purposes, they'd passed by where Hive had created the test portal to Mars. The crater was impressive, but Hive admitted that it was probably less than what a more stable version would generate with the new techniques. The previous attempt had been actively maintained, the new version wouldn't be. Hive had cast the updated version and deployed two surveillance drones to monitor it before they'd moved on, the new portal facing the opposite direction so that the craters could be directly compared when this one inevitably failed. There was a chance that it would last the full forty-eight hours that Hive had put on the timer, of course, but they weren't optimistic there.
The second portal that they left behind, connected to another part of the desert with a six-hour timer, was fully expected to close safely on its own at this point. Other portals had been opened as well, but they'd been practice for Taylor casting the spells to open them and the ones that could close them. The latter would, supposedly, also work on any of the ones that Haywire's tech had opened and on the ones they'd seen in the base that had started them on this research project in the first place.
Hive's request to cast the closing spell on all of the portals known to have been left behind by Haywire's tech as a safety precaution was declined on the basis of it drawing far too much attention. The portals were stable enough right now, and at least one of them was very obviously in use to communicate with Aleph. Sending a single drone to close the small portal Hive had noticed was leading to the otherwise empty Earth as a proof of concept had been all that Taylor and her father had been willing to allow, insisting that it happen from the empty Earth specifically, and that had worked fine.
As a final victory for the morning, they'd headed home just in time to see a sandstorm approaching, but without being caught in it.
Missy sighed as the door closed behind the nurse that had cleaned up after breakfast. She was bored but couldn't do much about it. Sure, she had plenty to read, but she wanted to be doing a hell of a lot more. Being unable to get a solid hour to herself in order to call Taylor and Lilia was getting annoying, but there wasn't much she could do about it. Then again, even if she could call them, there wasn't much she was going to be able to do other than talk for a few minutes. There had to be a learning curve on magic, after all, so she wasn't going to be going out and attacking gang idiots right out of the hospital from gaining the ability to do magic.
She hadn't gone from 'get powers' to 'go fight bad guys' instantly when she'd triggered, there was no way that magic was that quick and easy to learn without metaphorical training wheels being included. And she didn't want to be fighting with training wheels, thank you very much. That would be embarrassing and mean that she couldn't stand on her own, which was the opposite of why she went through with this whole thing anyway. The stories she'd found about magical girls being empowered just before winning their first fight could suck it.
That particular train of thought aside, she had overheard some talk about moving her into a guest suite soon, if they didn't find 'somewhere else' for her to stay, so perhaps she'd get more privacy then? Hopefully without the 'constantly coming into the room' dance that they'd been very obviously doing since she woke up. Though she hadn't actually gotten around to asking why she'd need somewhere to stay that wasn't with one of her parents. It was possible that something had happened to them, but if so it obviously wasn't important enough for them to have let her know. She at least hoped that one or both of them having died would be enough for someone to tell her, not that she wanted either to be dead.
Armsmaster was supposed to be swinging by later, so perhaps she'd ask him for details then.
Heading home after tutoring by way of the store was slightly more annoying than Taylor had expected, what with an unusually long funeral procession crossing her path causing a significant delay. She'd missed getting across that street before it by about a minute and a half, and there really wasn't any good way around it. Worse, she was fairly certain that she'd been stalled by a funeral procession for an Empire member or similar, based on what she could see of the cars in the procession.
Alabaster being in the car taking up the position at the rear of the procession was another hint, of course.
It didn't take long after that for her to pick up what she needed to, at which point she took the bus the rest of the way home. She had just enough that it would've been awkward to carry them and not carrying them would probably have drawn far too much attention. That taking the bus helped make up for some of the time lost to waiting for the funeral procession go by was a side bonus.
Once things were put away Taylor headed to the beach. She had a collection of spells to test the new versions of now that Hive had reworked them to include the new tricks picked up from Missy's shard. Admittedly, she'd already cast a couple of things built with the new tricks, but there were others to test. Not to mention testing her own attempts at integrating the tricks into other spells.
Taylor started testing with sensor drones, which didn't seem to warrant the increased complexity when she cast them immediately around her current position. Casting them to the clearing and the beach at the other end of the continent showed actual improvements, and casting them to the desert showed significant boosts. The end result was the same in all cases, with the initial casting being the only difference, so leaving the original version as a 'point blank' option was probably not a bad idea.
Dimensional transference was next, and took five attempts before she got it correct. At first she couldn't figure out what was going wrong, as the transit path wasn't being defined properly while everything looked good, but she eventually spotted a dropped sign. Rotating by π was not the same as rotating by -π, even if the end result looked correct. Especially when dealing with multiple physical dimensions that didn't always line up as you might expect them to. The built-in safeties had ensured that her error merely resulted in a shutdown due to the transit path not being complete, even if she was only working with a couple of rocks. Once she had it working it was obviously superior, taking less power and having less transit time. Though she also realized that she might be geeking out a little too much over the transit time reduction when she finally figured out that the full third that it had shaved off amounted to a hundred milliseconds. Pretty much literally the blink of an eye.
Storing and retrieving items was actually simpler with the replaced routine for moving things in and out of the storage area, and the unaided range was greatly increased. Sadly, using a wrapped bullet for the spell endpoint didn't change possible range at all, meaning that there was a lot less need to use the bullet trick itself. Of course, the bullet still allowed what was now three times the range without a full dimensional transference, so it wasn't useless.
Remote-casting the simple scanning spell worked out great, allowing her to scan a small area pretty much anywhere within around six miles of her before power requirements started to spike. That was greatly improved over the approximately sixty feet she'd managed previously. The ultra-long-range scanning spell she already knew worked, of course, but she practiced that with a much smaller scan area as well. Not needing to have it pull matter to convert into powering the spell simplified it a bit too, and she could get just over thirty miles of range without straining herself.
Unfortunately, applying the new technique as a possible method to remote-cast bullets resulted in failure. She was starting to wonder if she'd ever have a non-workaround method to do that, because relying on 'wrap it in a sensor drone first' wasn't her preferred option. Though at least this time the failure was 'the bullet detonates immediately, delivering the innermost payload immediately'. Which meant that with precise targeting she could make explosions in thin air. It didn't work in water or solid matter though, as the bullet wouldn't even assemble well enough to explode.
She was preparing to do some testing of gathering and using electrons when Hive interrupted her.
"My Lord," the device said. "I'd like to confirm the initial spell set for Missy's new device."
Taylor blinked, then nodded. "That does make sense to take care of now, rather than after giving it to her. Actually, what's the base capability set, beyond the spatial manipulation trick?"
"Basic communications, artificial intelligence on approximately Hal's level, field healing, a fifteen slot multitasking system, and casting support systems are the primaries."
"Okay. Any combat capabilities at all?"
Hive shook her head. "Nothing beyond automated defenses, similar to what happened with Flechette in New York but with a hardware unit instead of software firing control."
"I guess that makes sense. So what spells do you already have in there?"
"I started with the mental communication and mana sensing primers that you wrote, though that isn't well documented right now. I then added the spells for creating and using the internal storage area, and will update the 'using' spells with the newer variant. The set of Knight Clothing, Armor, and Object, as well as the anchor creation spell as a required support component were included as a set, and I finished off with the short-range scanning spell as preparation for later taking in data from sensor drones. I'd like permission to include a basic uncolored Knight Armor template for her, as well as the Hex Shield as it's intended for defense and won't go against your father's desire to keep combat spells and devices away from her for now."
Taylor gave that some thought before nodding. "That all makes sense, and you have permission. Though you should probably slip a breathing mask into the initial collection. I suppose she won't need a communication watch while wearing the device either, unless it has some other form that would be more easily separated from her?"
"Only a standby form that looks like the pendant itself without a chain attached, it's intended to be a purely support device. Similar to how I function for you when in my stealth form, but less capable due to limitations in what I can safely construct."
"Okay. And you've got the combat device started too, I assume?"
"Started and finished, though I'm working on two more in order to have a spare, so that you can have one if desired, and to use up materials as I process things. They should be done by morning, since I finalized the base design earlier today. Along those lines, I've been preparing other things ahead of time as well, even if we're keeping them from her for now. In addition to the combat device, I've prepared stealth and shield generator units for her Knight Armor and a set of training drones. I also added in a set of spare surveillance drones while storing things in her future combat device. Customizing a cutting tool to go along with her choice in visual style will need to wait until we know what that style is. I'll have a breathing mask completed in a few minutes to store in Space."
Taylor blinked at that. "Store in what?"
"In order to properly set up the communication hardware I had to initialize and name her new device. I chose the name Space for it, both because referring to it can be easily misunderstood by those listening in before she gets used to mental communication and because it manipulates spatial dimensions."
"Ah. Is there anything else we need to worry about right now?"
Hive shook her head. "I don't believe so."
"Okay then, time to see if any of my ideas for electrical attacks from last night work in the real world."
Missy was confused, and had a mild headache. The latter was, admittedly, her own damn fault. She really should've taken a little more time to eat her root beer float. But she'd been distracted after meeting with Armsmaster and nearly two hours with Doctor Yamada and had an ice cream headache before she realized what she was doing wrong. That it was delicious probably hadn't helped.
Still, Armsmaster had admitted that her parents may actually lose custody of her, due to someone finally officially noticing some of their lack of acting like parents, but they were having trouble finding a place for her to stay while things shook out. To that end, her parents weren't allowed to come see her unless she wanted them to, thanks to an actual restraining order even, and she still wasn't in the mood for that confrontation. He'd also said that he'd used her situation to start attacking the Youth Guard, but she wasn't entirely sure how her losing her powers was enough to do much of anything. Especially as nobody had actually asked her for details, though she wasn't stupid enough to volunteer anything while things were seemingly going fine for her.
The session with Doctor Yamada had been downright weird. Questions and discussion that was obviously the woman digging for something, but Missy couldn't figure out what. The only parts that made sense to her were the ones relating to her powers being gone and how she felt about that. Which, once she thought about it, was weird. Despite the boredom from staying in the hospital with little to do, she didn't feel restless. Like there wasn't a nagging voice in the back of her head telling her to do things, or at least that was what they'd come up with for a description.
Missy just wished she knew what the hell the woman had been digging for in general. That was going to bother her until she had something else to distract her, and she didn't think an impending shift of scenery to a guest suite was going to be enough. Though she did wonder about the fact that they'd apparently collected her things from both of her parents, and according to Armsmaster it had been done without her parents present. In particular, she wondered if they spotted her hidden medical and makeup stashes. More importantly, if they had would they realize that she used them to hide that she'd been going out on patrols on her own?
Taylor smiled as she packaged up breakfast for the next day. Her father had agreed with the choices for Missy's device, and it was looking like the girl was going to be sleeping outside of the hospital room tonight. Hopefully that meant that she would have some time for Hive to pop over and deliver Space. It was better news than the results of her working on a controlled electrical attack, none of her flow limiters seeming to want to work in the real world at all. The only reason the day's set of tests hadn't been pretty much guaranteed lethal was because she hadn't gathered a lot of electrons to feed them.
Really, at this point it would be nice if Hess would make a move somewhere so that they'd at least know where she might be. If she had booked it somewhere across the country instead of heading for Brockton Bay then the electrical spells wouldn't be nearly as important to work on. But no, they had nothing to go on and thus there was no excuse for bumping their priority down in the list of things to work on.
"Hey," her father said, interrupting her train of thought. "I don't suppose Hive can answer a quick question?"
"I don't see why she can't," Taylor admitted, prodding Hive's stealth form. "Though I'm curious what you want to ask her instead of me."
"I'm curious as to why she's running through Miss Biron's shard so quickly, compared to taking her time on the last one."
"The next Endbringer attack is due any time," Hive replied. "While the last one didn't impact this region, the next one might, and I'd rather be prepared even if I hope that it won't happen here."
He grimaced at that. "Now I'm wishing that I hadn't asked. It's never nice to consider that the next Endbringer attack could be where you live and work. Worse, Hive preparing for it reminds me that there's a good chance that you're going to want to take a shot at one of the things if they come close enough."
Taylor wanted to deny that, but he was probably right. At the same time, she wasn't sure if she was up to that particular level of battle yet. "I'm not sure how I'd fare. I might be better off joining the search and rescue teams."
"Taylor, I've seen some of your training. Even if you were doing search and rescue work I'd fully expect you to be firing off attacks constantly as well, and likely doing a decent job of helping the battle as a result."
That wasn't what she was expecting. "What?"
"I've given this some thought. If the next Endbringer attack looks like it'll affect this area then I'm giving you permission to participate, so long as you agree to get yourself out of the fight if you're seriously injured. Your mother probably wouldn't have had it any other way, to be honest, especially if you can actually do some real damage to one of the things. At the same time, I don't want you running halfway across the globe to join in on a battle that's nowhere near here." He then paused and grimaced. "And despite the chances of it being basically zero, I think I'm preemptively barring you from going hunting for them between attacks. I have no interest in you doing something crazy like flying off into orbit to attack the Simurgh."
Taylor paused at that. "Could I actually do that?"
"Even if the answer is yes, no you can't."
"It would probably be best to launch such an assault with the combat drones anyway," Hive noted. "They should be much harder for the 'scream' to influence, if it can influence them or my Lord at all, and are significantly more expendable."
Taylor blinked, seeing the logic easily. "That's true, but there are some things that I already know just work better when I'm casting them personally."
"NO," her father interrupted. "With or without using drones to do so, no attacking Endbringers unless you're intercepting an attack by one of them on somewhere in New England."
She nodded. "That doesn't mean that I can't consider tactics though. I mean, personally speaking, I'd rather try and intercept an Endbringer before it reaches us. Much harder for the battle to do damage to the landscape if it isn't happening here."
"Okay, yes, that would likely be preferable. But again, only if they're obviously attacking the region and you ensure that you can get out in the event of serious injury."
"I suspect that Hive and Hal would both be capable of getting me out even if I can't do so myself."
He stared at her before nodding. "Right. I'd much rather lose the house and most of the landscape than lose you."
Missy had given the guest suite an examination under the guise of figuring out where everything was. That she had no clue where anything was kept in the suite happened to help immensely, further helped by finding that her stuff had been spread around the suite in occasionally weird ways. Or at least weird to her. Though when she was done the only things she hadn't found were her medical and makeup stashes, and she still didn't know what to think on that front.
The other thing she hadn't found was any indication that they had cameras in the suite. Alerts on the door were almost a given, but there didn't seem to be any cameras. Which was a good thing, and as soon as she had a handle on how often they were checking on her she might be able to call Taylor or Lilia. Of course, she had to hope that they didn't have microphones in the suite as well, but that should be easy enough to deal with. Play some music and whisper one of the code phrases she had, then hope that she got a response.
Though she felt a little silly, having thought that the code phrases were going over the top, only to now possibly need them. Lilia's insistence that they were already programmed into the necklace was the only reason that she'd gone along with the ruse, but the original plan of ditching one of her parents like she normally would once the initial ruckus had settled down wasn't happening. Which, of course, meant that she had to be sneakier. She just hoped that Taylor, Lilia, and Mister Hebert hadn't seen this coming even though she was blindsided by it.
Dropping down into a comfortable chair, she decided to turn on the television in the suite and see what the news was saying. Maybe they'd say something about what was going on with the Youth Guard?
That evening Taylor ended up spending time on considering how she'd approach each Endbringer at this point. Behemoth couldn't really be intercepted, due to how he traveled underground, and would be an 'attack from range' exercise. Ziz would be best engaged at high altitude, to remove as many possible items for use with telekinetic blocking as possible. Even then, the strategy would likely need to be 'try to attack from range and overwhelm with bullets', at least barring some other way to attack her. Getting too close seemed like it would be a problem.
Those two were, unfortunately, reasonably straightforward with her current skills. By comparison, Leviathan most certainly wasn't. The only way to intercept the seagoing Endbringer was to do so at sea, and that meant attacking in its element. There would be no shortage of water for the macro hydrokinetic to throw at her or to use to defend itself. She'd likely need to stay flying in the air and fire blasts into the water, hoping that they could even get close. Even that wasn't guaranteed to keep her out of the line of fire of water blasts.
In all three cases, combat drones seemed to be the only good way to 'close in'. Pepper them with lots of bullets herself, and use the drones to launch various attacks otherwise. If she was lucky then she might even get one of the drones safely into cutting distance, but short of one of the Endbringers pouncing her she wasn't going to try and use Hal or a cutting tool for that. Even then she'd hopefully be getting the hell out of there instead of being forced to attack at that range.
The other thing that she realized was that, regardless of which Endbringer she was working with, step one pretty much had to be a few sensor drones to see what she could find out about them. If she wasn't afraid of triggering something unpleasant then she'd probably try and send sensor drones to scan them ahead of time. As it was, that would definitely be too risky, but not having proper data for targeting them with homing bullets would limit her a bit until she could get said data. Doing that would probably be easiest with Behemoth, unless he could obliterate them before they finished forming. Ziz would be next on the easiest, but would be most likely to be able to stop her from forming them at all. Leviathan...would be difficult, unless she knew what approach was being used and could 'mine' it with sensors ahead of time.
All things considered, right now the best case scenario was that she could do significant damage and slow down one of the Endbringers while learning more for the future. Conversely, the worst case scenario was that they were immune to mana attacks and she was essentially useless against them. In the latter case she'd be pretty much forced to do search and rescue work during an attack. Obviously she was going to hope that the things weren't immune to her attacks, but short of actually attacking one she couldn't be certain either way and she should be ready for everything between the two extremes.
It was shortly after midnight when she was interrupted from going through plans, Hive shifting forms getting her attention.
"What's up?" Taylor asked, leaving her physical self sleeping for now.
"Missy just called," Hive responded. "I can tell that they're monitoring the hallway, but not the inside of the suite she's in. I'll pop over and deliver Space to her."
"Ah, okay."
A dimensional transference had Hive popping across town to the PRT building. Taylor did her best to not distract her, and half an hour later she returned.
"How did it go?" Taylor asked as Hive switched back to stealth form.
"It went fine," Hive responded. "I fully powered up her augmentation unit as she was healed up enough for it while I was there, but I also had to correct the mana tuning on Space once I did so. That wasn't unexpected, and Space should be able to keep itself properly tuned to Missy from now on."
"Tuning?"
"Devices work best with those they're tuned to, though it isn't always necessary. The communication watches don't really care, for example. For something that's going to mentally interface with her for casting support the tuning needs to be fairly precise. I'd also gotten it close enough, but it would've taken a couple of weeks for Space to adjust on its own. Doing that adjustment myself was the faster option."
"Ah. So you're tuned to me?"
"To what my records indicate might be an unsafe degree, to be honest."
That hadn't been the answer Taylor had been expecting. "Unsafe how?"
"Admittedly, it's an incomplete paragraph from a larger document, but it implies that a Unison device that is too closely tuned to a given user can result in a number of problems. The actual list of problems didn't survive, so I'm not actually certain what they are."
"Oh. How do you know that we're possibly that closely 'tuned'?"
There was a pause, likely as Hive figured out how to explain things. "In a device like Hal, the mana interface module is the primary tuning point, but other aspects are generally involved as well. Personality, output frequencies, even the mental interface parameters all play a factor. Depending on the goal, a device can be properly tuned in a number of ways. Filling gaps in the user's capabilities, tempering problematic portions of their personality, boosting their existing skills or personality."
"Okay..."
"My original programming included all of this as part of assisting in tuning other devices for my Lord, both with and without being in Unison. The problem arises in that, as a Unison device, I have my own core, with its own leanings and specialties. Balancing that with my Lord's core requires self-tuning as well."
"That makes sense."
Hive paused again, and Taylor raised a mental eyebrow to prompt the device to continue. "The potential problem point here is that I appear to have tuned my own core to yours, though even now I'm not entirely sure how I did so. It's entirely possible that it was pure chance, the two cores syncing to one another during the repair, healing, and augmentation process. There are still differences, if only because my core's absolute base construction is different than one in an organic being such as yourself, but my mana is synced with your own to a degree that my own automatic tuning routines occasionally error out on, and you likely haven't noticed but every so often there's an apparently spontaneous transfer of mana between our two cores, generally your larger core feeding mine mana apparently directly."
That...made less sense. "What does that mean?"
"I honestly don't know, Lord, but I suspect that I might not be able to survive your passing without an expert who does know what it means being available to help with complications that arise."
Missy was grinning after Lilia had left. She was going to have to practice connecting to Space, but that was okay. For now she ensured that she was connected to the internal multitasking system, since Lilia had explained that she should be able to use it while sleeping. Also that she shouldn't do so nightly, admittedly, but that was a concern for her future self. For now she wanted to get started on learning things.
The three instances of her inside of the system each focused on a different thing. One examined the base controls, which for now was basically turning on and off the spatial manipulation system. She left that off for now, not wanting to screw up and 'use her powers' only to be shoved back into the Wards because of it. A second instance of her was looking over the mental communication and mana sensing primers, Lilia having recommended that she do so in order to improve her ability to connect to Space.
That left the last instance of her, which was cracking open the documentation on the spell for making a secret storage pocket, because that sounded way too useful. Sure, she'd only need to cast it once, at which point she apparently should only need the spell that let her store and retrieve objects from it, but until the space was created she couldn't play with the store and retrieve spells at all.
It was with a dawning horror that she realized that the 'spell' was an ungodly amount of math that she couldn't even begin to make heads or tails of.
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- Location
- Texas, United States
I hadn't thought about it in a while, but spells are using a ridiculous amount of math by now, aren't they. Are we on the "Taylor is really good at math" train, or is this a function of multitasking plus a unison system?
Ah yes, the bane of so many students. Math.
It's doubly ironic due to how little use math is beyond basic algebra for most careers in the modern world, and how damn critically important it is in Nanoha verse.
Hope you like studying Vista, we can already picture your agonized wail of despair from here.
It's doubly ironic due to how little use math is beyond basic algebra for most careers in the modern world, and how damn critically important it is in Nanoha verse.
Hope you like studying Vista, we can already picture your agonized wail of despair from here.
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- Location
- Saipan
BWAHAHAHAHA! That's hilarious! If the PRT does have those stashes then they'll think that Missy was physically abused by her parents and hiding it, and that was one of the reasons she tried to commit suicide. I wonder how much of a gut punch that'll be to the Protectorate heroes, finding out that their Ward was 'abused' under their noses, and with them none the wiser.
Edit: reading the Vista PoV in the last couple of chapters with the knowledge that the PRT thinks she tried to commit suicide is amazing, if only because I love the trope where everyone misunderstands the motive/personality of a character when it's done right. And you, my good author, have done it beautifully.
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