Leechblade
Orientation Nitpicking
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Yes sir!
And probably beg Minerva to marry his son or some such.
Hybrid Hive: Eat Shard? (Worm/MGLN) (Complete)
- Thread starter CmptrWz
- Start date
- Crossover
I'm imagining Taylor's reply to be "I'm fucking exhausted, call back tomorrow"
Lung doesn't have a son, he has a daughter named Takara
Crazael
Rehydrated Demon King
- Location
- Lost to the vagaries of time.
I was imagining the encounter happening while she's on patrol. Basically, he shows with Oni Lee in full Gangster Boss fashion with half the ABB as an honor guard. He then politely asks to compare tales of their battles with Leviathan.
Salvare7097
be the salvation of the hopeless!
- Location
- [REDACTED] [O5 APPROVAL REQUIRED]
Remember the scene from Mauling snarks where Taylor interviews lung about fighting Leviathan. It would be really cool if some random journalist (Bagrat) To interview Taylor about her fight with leviathan.
Crazael
Rehydrated Demon King
- Location
- Lost to the vagaries of time.
I mean, technicallly she didnt interview him as the only question she asked was "will you tell your story?".
Isnt my realname
This isn't my real name.
- Location
- Not Here
Right author, wrong story.
Breadnaugt
Even in Death, I'm still Tasty
- Location
- Britland
So, been thinking about Taylor's multitasking ability.
Given Hive's manufacturing capability, she could probably produce a realistic gynoid body. There's really nothing stopping Taylor living multiple lives at once, even across multiple worlds, given their inter-dimensional transmission capacity.
Could be damn useful for the secret identity thing. Having 'Taylor' out and about while 'Minerva' is on patrol.
Given Hive's manufacturing capability, she could probably produce a realistic gynoid body. There's really nothing stopping Taylor living multiple lives at once, even across multiple worlds, given their inter-dimensional transmission capacity.
Could be damn useful for the secret identity thing. Having 'Taylor' out and about while 'Minerva' is on patrol.
Or, for that matter, potentially using some of the same tech as the drones to have 'Minerva' be in multiple places at once, should a fight call for it.
Breadnaugt
Even in Death, I'm still Tasty
- Location
- Britland
Well, she's already got a list of powers as long as her arm. Minerva having a 'clone' power too would fit right in.
... her facing Oni Lee, then teleporting in a hundred 'clones' would be hilarious.
- Location
- Belfast
Alternatively she could pull an Arpeggio and run a bunch of chibi mini mes instead of full bodies if she doesn't want to have a number of full size Taylors walking around...
Ace Dreamer
Verified Reality User
- Location
- Between The Unknown & The Known
You might want to look at Ack's Trump Card where Taylor has Alibi to help hide her (secret) identity - this isn't without problems...
Also, not sure how good Hive is at flesh-crafting - she didn't replace Missy's lost blood, though she did a thorough repair job, otherwise. Was she running off the 'life pattern', or DNA, to do the repairs, or what? You might wonder if Hive can raid shards (like Amy's) for their software, without having to eat them...
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Leechblade
Orientation Nitpicking
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Ah yes, Trump Card, home of the wackiest Straight Taylor pairing in history!
Also home of an endbringer fight nearly as awesome as this one.
Isnt my realname
This isn't my real name.
- Location
- Not Here
"Pairing". Right.
More of a Trio really...
Chapter 41 - May 15, 2011
Taylor had eaten and slept until dinner, doing little more than keeping an eye on the surveillance drones in an attempt to properly relax, at which point she was rested enough and got up in part so that she could eat again. It was at that point that she retrieved all of the combat drones in their standby forms for Hive to look at them, Hive bringing the training drones back from where they'd been sent to wait at the beach at the same time. Things that they should've taken care of before the nap was taken, but that Taylor hadn't given enough thought to before falling asleep.
"Thanks for not yelling at me using the central command unit while I slept," Taylor said as her father sat down next to her in the living room. He'd just ordered delivery for dinner.
"That...honestly hadn't occurred to me," he admitted. "I'll have to remember that I can do that next time something like this happens. Though watching the news go back over all of your footage while you were sleeping tempered my annoyance a little bit. Do your sensors detect radioactive material?"
"Most of them are not configured for that specifically," Hive answered. "Even if my Lord was reduced to the comfort layers of her Knight Armor she would remain protected from most radiation hazards, so detection isn't normally a high priority."
He nodded at that. "Which makes dodging to the side of the sub that was going to explode something I can't yell about. After all, it isn't like anything else had done so up to that point. Though the amount of history thrown around was a bit impressive even before that."
Taylor shrugged. "I was more concerned with them being large chunks of metal being thrown at me."
"Well, there are a dozen groups starting to make plans to see what, if anything, remains of a dozen wrecks now. Speculation includes that the Bismarck, Mashona, and even parts of the Titanic were dragged to your battle to be tossed at you in preparation for the K-219 that exploded on you. Most of the rest weren't as easily identified, one way or another. Of course, examining that part of the footage has been interspersed with analysis of how you did, combined with questions about why nobody joined you to help with the distraction. For the latter, Legend admitted that he was more focused on preparing for when you withdrew, not realizing just how much time was actually passing. Of course, the Protectorate was actually doing something, compared to Scion that flew by an hour after you were done."
"Ah. I hadn't really thought about others joining me so much as that the longer I kept Leviathan busy the better the on-shore defenses would be."
"Yeah, well, you made international news by driving an Endbringer off solo. I think the only reason that you aren't being swamped with requests for interviews is that none of the news agencies know how to contact you."
"Over three hundred attempts at contacting my Lord for an interview have been made," Hive corrected. "I've been responding with a form letter stating that she isn't available due to needing time to recover from the battle, though translating it to all seventeen languages used so far has proven to be an interesting test of my translation systems."
Taylor blinked at that. "You've got something working there?"
"It will need testing with real-time translation, but if I'm correct then you and Missy should be able to understand the basics of any language normally spoken in the area, though she'll need to be connected to Space to do so. Not that you've actually been exposed to many languages, I've been using television shows and radio newscasts in an attempt to calibrate the system. Written is a work in progress and I'm not sure if it works. I recommend visiting the library and looking through the foreign language books to see if that works like I'm hoping."
"Ah."
"Right," her father said. "Good to know, I guess, let me know how it works out. Though thinking about reporters, while watching the news earlier I got to see the inside of a poorly maintained Endbringer shelter just outside of Boston and it got me thinking. My current options for getting out of here are all exposed to the elements. What do you think of the idea of buying a mobile home and leaving it at one of the three points over there?"
"I have sufficient material reserves to build quite a bit," Hive answered. "And excavating for a proper foundation would probably improve that. Building an actual structure that could withstand storms shouldn't be too difficult, if mildly time consuming. If my Lord allows it, I can start checking on construction methods to plan out a suitable structure."
Taylor blinked. "Sure, that sounds reasonable enough. I suppose that we don't need to worry about permits, given that the planet is essentially unused beyond us, right?"
Her father snorted. "That is one hell of a land claim. 'By virtue of being the only one who can reach it, I claim the entire planet!' At the same time, I'd appreciate it if you kept it capable of holding together without magic being needed to do so, even if magic improves that further."
"Of course," Hive responded. "I recommend using a point south of the sandy beach, where there's an inlet leading to a small lagoon."
Taylor blinked. "There's what there? I don't recall seeing that."
"It's a little over a mile south of the end of the beach, surrounded by trees and a collection of raised, more rocky terrain that I suspect was created by a meteorite impact in the past. There isn't enough of an internal beach for jogging along, but the geography should provide some basic protection from storms on its own and can be used to advantage for keeping things harder to spot in the event that we find that others can reach the area."
"Oh. Okay. That doesn't sound like a bad place to put something."
"I agree," her father said. "Taking advantage of natural terrain is a wonderful idea, though I think it would be a good idea to ensure that there is a way out without a boat or hiking over any dangerous terrain."
"I'll keep that in mind," Hive replied. "Lord, if you don't mind I'd like to deploy a few drones to examine the area in more detail."
Taylor shrugged. "Go for it, so long as you've got the energy to."
Hive retrieved a couple of drones in standby form to the rug in the hallway with a small flash of light. They quickly vanished from view as the device did its job and hid them and the brighter light show that was the dimensional transference to the beach.
Nodding, Taylor then frowned. "How long before food gets here, anyway?"
Her father sighed. "They weren't fully certain, on account of enough people doing some form of celebrating to be screwing up traffic and keeping places that stayed open busy. So when it gets here, and I'm positive that you'll know before I do if you're doing any checking of the area at all."
Missy looked around the cafeteria that Sherie had brought her to. Ethan was off to the side talking with a small group, but the overall number of people was fairly low. Apparently this was a gathering of those in the PRT who knew Wards identities, were off the clock this evening, and didn't have families waiting for them at home. It was a fairly small number of people, and as Missy sat down in a corner with a plate of food she noticed that they fell into at least three obvious groups.
The first group were those that were happy, or maybe just relieved. They were enjoying themselves, but with something keeping them from being ecstatic. Members of this group tended to be sitting down and eating more than moving around, unless being dragged around by someone else. Missy probably fell into that group, at least on the outside, but in some ways she was more annoyed that things had happened before she was ready to help. Of course, she was also worried about seeing a judge the next day, as with the Endbringer fight becoming a non-issue there was no reason to delay it.
The second group were those that were obviously worried or otherwise not enjoying themselves. Presumably some of them just weren't comfortable in this kind of social setting, but others were probably considering the implications of Brockton Bay now having someone who had effectively shown up the Triumvirate running around. Missy didn't think that Taylor would stray from the 'hero' category, but having someone like that around could also attract those wishing to prove themselves. Most of this group had a member of the last group trying to cheer them up.
Lastly, the third group were either good at ignoring things or hadn't considered any of the implications and were running around ecstatic, without any obvious care in the world. Those who had arranged for this gathering were likely included, based on previous experience with this kind of thing, not that any one person was obviously acting like they were in charge. Ethan looked, at first glance, to fall into this category, but it didn't take much to spot that he was playing things up. Usually when Sherie would give him a look.
Honestly, Missy would rather be back in the suite putting more focus into studying, but this wasn't a bad second choice of things to be doing. She only wished more discussion of the official PRT view of things was happening. Of course, it was entirely possible that nobody here knew what said view was and were avoiding speculation due to a lack of information, but it made figuring out what the official response to the day might be effectively impossible.
Well, it wasn't like Taylor was likely to need Missy to let her know of anything, it was just curiosity at this point.
Taylor and her father had, at Hive's request, looked through architectural styles with an eye towards treating the new structure as a vacation home. Just having a copy of their current home was considered, but discarded. They didn't want to get confused about which one they were in, and the copy wouldn't have the authentic history that the actual house had. On top of that, the house didn't really have a layout that was ideal for sitting next to the lagoon. For example, a structure with a wider front so that there could be at least two front bedrooms looking out over the lagoon seemed like it would be nicer.
After Hive was happy with the amount of information she had, Taylor had joined her father in watching more of the news while also looking through the various requests for interviews that had come in. The sheer number was impressive and there was a general trend of being willing to send a reporter to anywhere that she wanted to meet them at. Others included offers to pay for any travel or hotel arrangements needed, and four different talk show hosts had asked if she wanted to appear as a special guest.
"There's no reason for me to actually accept any of these interview requests, right?" she said during a commercial break.
"Only if you want to," her father replied. "Though taking a walk down the Boardwalk in the next week would probably be a good idea, just to be seen as out and unharmed. I doubt anyone thinks that you died, admittedly, especially after keeping Leviathan on the run for a couple hours after you left."
That had Taylor blinking. "I kept Leviathan on the run for a couple hours?"
"Surely you haven't missed some of the discussion about the fedora of doom? Why did you use that bullet shape on your last attack anyway?"
Oh, right, her final fuck-you homing bullet. She'd half forgotten about that one. "I wanted something larger than the blades, and that was one of the few that I've used multiple times."
"I would appreciate a copy of your notes on that spell, Lord," Hive added. "Since I didn't think that your efforts into making an unfolded mana construct were at the functional stage, but that last attack was obviously-unfolded mana."
"Er," Taylor said, blushing. "They still aren't functional? I can't get a spell to work, so I did that one manually."
There was a moment of silence before Hive responded to that. "May I ask what you mean by 'manually'?"
"I used several multitasking instances to unfold the mana construct while I held it in place. After all my work on trying to get it to function on mana constructs I knew exactly what I needed to do, but I still can't find any way to make it work in an equation. So instead I just did it without an equation."
"My Lord, I would appreciate it if you would demonstrate that soon, with proper sensory spells and equipment prepared to record it in greater detail."
"Er, okay."
"But not tonight," her father said. "Maybe tomorrow."
Taylor nodded in agreement, seeing no reason to argue there. Instead she continued looking through the messages that had been sorted out for her. She eventually reached the end of the interview requests, and hit the recruitment requests. These could be split into a few primary categories. First up, recruitment messages from the Protectorate and/or Wards. Twenty different regions were represented, in addition to a direct offer from Legend. Interestingly, the latter was one of three in the group that acknowledged that they didn't know for a fact how old 'Minerva' was. He'd also included an offer from the Guild, with a note that many Protectorate members were members of the Guild as well but that it wasn't actually a requirement to join it. At the very end he apologized for sending it instead of meeting with her in person, but others had demanded that a message be sent and he didn't know where to find her in person.
After that was recruitment messages from non-governmental groups. Some independent, some villains, and a few that were harder to tell. The Elite, for example, had multiple factions make offers, with varying hooks. New York was on the surface the least violent, not having mentioned much of anything that would involve fighting, but a couple others were close. Being associated with the organization as a whole didn't sound nice though. Among the nearly two thousand messages that fell into the overall category, only maybe a hundred were palatable to her.
And then there was the last major category, which was essentially resumes of people who wanted to be recruited. Some were parahumans, others were normals that were willing to play 'support staff', a number were somewhat obviously just looking for a way to figure out her secrets. She suspected that most of them wanted to share the spotlight, or assumed that fighting Leviathan solo meant that she was rich or going to be. Of course, she could say that in part because some of them basically admitted that their goals were essentially that.
"Why do people seem to think that I'm going to suddenly have more money than I know what to do with?" she finally asked out loud.
"I thought you already had more money than you knew what to do with," her father replied.
"Okay, yes, but I have a lot of people wanting to join my 'team', and a lot of them I think just want the free paycheck for doing little to nothing. Since I doubt that most of them know that I already have a pile of spare cash?"
He shrugged. "I don't know. People might decide to see if they can find ways to send you money, but I can't see it being that much without a confirmed destination for it. At least outside of those in the local area, anyway, who might be crazy enough to gather a pile of cash and hope they aren't mugged before they can give it to you."
She looked at her father, hoping that he was joking, but it didn't look like he was. Dammit.
That evening Taylor didn't sleep well, specifically since she wasn't that tired after spending hours asleep that afternoon. Despite that she did get to sleep, and she started the night by looking over Hive detailing the lagoon and surrounding terrain in the simulation system for a bit. The goal was apparently to figure out how to best excavate material to secure a foundation against being moved by storms. That quickly bored Taylor, and she changed her focus to reviewing the saved information from the battle with Leviathan. Her goals were to figure out where she could've done things better, identify what she needed to work on, and perhaps see if she could spot other potential weaknesses that she hadn't already picked up on that could possibly help with future Endbringer battles.
One thing that was obvious was that she wasn't used to 'blinking' around. That was still somewhat disorienting to her, and she'd hesitated the few times that she'd been using it to get in close in order to get her bearings. Less important was that she also needed time to recover when using it to dodge, but working to get around the disorientation when using it to attack would hopefully solve it for both use cases. Admittedly, it was a new trick and she'd not really gotten any training in with it before the fight, so she could probably be excused for not having it down yet.
Not having the combat drones ready to fire unfolded projectiles was something that she'd need to ensure didn't happen again, though keeping them entirely full of material for doing so might not be ideal either. Maybe against Behemoth that would be fine, but Ziz was known for throwing things around and Leviathan had just shown a willingness to as well. Actually, based on that, she should assume that if push came to shove then Behemoth would start lobbing terrain around as well, so some ability to dismantle and store the troublesome bits was probably a good idea. So no full combat drones at the start of a fight in order to have extra storage space available.
"Hey Hive," she sent, thinking about that but not wanting to return to the simulation system to talk.
"Yes Lord?" Hive responded.
"What do you think of having a storage area for matter used to create physical bullets? Something that the combat drones and such can dump excess matter into or refill from?"
"It sounds like a reasonable thing to do, though I'd imagine that they'd be filling up instead of dumping excess in?"
"Denying Leviathan ammo by having the drones add the material to their reserves was a decent tactic, but it won't work when they're full."
"That is a good point, Lord. I'll give it some thought."
"Thank you."
The other observation she had was that it had likely taken far too long to 'seed' the area with prepared mana for binding. Doing so primarily with bullets was, in many ways, a waste. Thinking about that, she smirked as she started designing a new spell specifically intended to constantly release the appropriate particles. To do so effectively she would ideally want a somewhat large surface area that could reasonably 'glow' without itself drawing significant attention as a reason for people to be concerned.
Her sixth idea for that, and first workable that didn't leave her constantly glowing, was an almost entirely intangible 'cape' that would glow on the inside, releasing lots of the binding particles to generate said glow. It should only be tangible to those using mana, so normal people grabbing it wouldn't be possible, and would detach or tear apart before any real force could be applied to the one wearing it even if someone did grab it. Building a layer on the inside of the construct, as laid out properly in the template she was making, was easy enough. It would only lightly glow while the 'generate binding particles' function was turned on, and with any luck would 'flutter' as the binding particles were released from it. When 'turned off' it would just be an intangible cape that hopefully looked cool on its own.
She'd wait until Hive wasn't using the simulation system to check that. In the meantime, she was also going to ponder ways to keep an Endbringer from pulling away like Leviathan had. A more comprehensive pattern of binds to prevent twisting, perhaps, by connecting over the torso area?
Monday morning Missy woke early to get ready for the day. She ate breakfast before she showered, did her hair up more nicely than usual, and put on the nicest clothing that she had available. Or the nicest clothing that still fit, anyway, after finding out that a couple of things didn't. She then sat down with a glass of water to wait things out while continuing to study in the multitasking system. As far as she could tell, she'd successfully gotten her 'talk to Space while not connected' mana usage down to 'you have to be literally next to her to notice' levels, which was surprisingly easy once you'd figured the trick out at all.
Honestly, despite learning it with the little bit of math involved, the communication trick was far easier without it. Which gave her hope for the 'sensing mana' side of things, which had no math at all. It did not give her hope for any of the other horribly convoluted equations. She was trying to understand them and how it all went together, but didn't think that she was having much luck. Most of it would be far easier if she could actually attempt to cast things.
"This stupid anchor creation spell is insane," she grumbled in the multitasking interface. She couldn't get the awesome Knight Armor spell working without it, after all.
"Learning that to a sufficient degree shouldn't be needed," Space offered. "It should only ever need to be cast once, and I am fully capable of helping you do so."
Missy blinked, then checked the time. She had at least forty-five minutes before she expected anyone to show up. She really, really shouldn't, but there was no guarantee that she would have any better time to try it. But was anyone monitoring her? "Do you think anyone is watching me in any meaningful way right now?"
"There are no active surveillance devices, audio or visual, that I am aware of in the suite. I have just checked with Hive, who is better at detecting these things, and she concurs. We cannot rule out long-range viewing abilities, but if those are a risk then it won't matter where you are."
"Okay then. Will this take more than half an hour?"
"No."
Missy grinned, moving to the center of the suite just to be safe, and allowed Space to walk her through the casting process. A light purple, that she'd probably describe as pastel, design that she recognized from Taylor casting things appeared at her feet even as Space glowed around her neck. She did her best to follow what was happening, and experiencing the casting was causing things to make a lot more sense to her. Relatively speaking, as in one in every fifty equation elements at best.
It only took a few minutes to go through the entire spell, and the sudden awareness of the area around her gave her a mild headache. The description including a note about sensing her surroundings was woefully inadequate, and she hadn't been ready for it in any way. While it wasn't 'seeing' her surroundings, she was getting way too much information back. Worse, if she recalled correctly, the storage area setup spell also gave awareness of the contents of the storage area, which meant that she wasn't going anywhere near it until she was used to this one.
Further, it was now clear that she really shouldn't have done this before going to the courthouse. Especially as the multitasking system wasn't helping nearly as much as Taylor's notes implied that it should, which likely meant that something else was crazy about the older girl beyond understanding the math. And, of course, without her medical kits she didn't have a ready supply of painkillers. Grumbling, she did her best to figure out how to deal with it over the next three quarters of an hour, at which point someone knocked on the door to the suite. That had features that felt oddly sputtering to her new senses.
Answering the door, she found Ethan there. "Hello there Missy, are you ready to leave?"
Missy nodded. "Yeah."
"No purse or something like that?"
She rolled her eyes. "I have two small ID cards and a cell phone. No keys, makeup, or other things. A purse would be overkill while I have pockets available."
"Okay then. Let's get going. With any luck we'll be able to get you moved out of here this afternoon."
Taylor sighed as she relaxed on the beach. Hive was off at the lagoon looking things over in more detail, which currently sounded boring. Casting anything 'dangerous' had been forbidden for the day, at least until her father came home from work, which included the unfolded mana construct trick. Really, she'd have stayed home if Hive hadn't wanted to get a more direct look at the lagoon area. She was half considering throwing her swimsuit Knight Clothing template on and going for a swim, except that she wasn't really in the mood to swim right now.
Admittedly, she had the new 'barrier particle generating cape' on, patterned in a solid color to match her Knight Armor with the full anchor hex pattern on it in silver. It worked fine, as shown when she occasionally toggled the generation mode on and off to ensure that it was working correctly. But that was about it for things that she'd accomplished so far today. Really, all she was doing to pass the time was working on designing a single mega-bullet to intentionally swamp the area with binding particles.
That she was designing it to work best with a template setup that currently only contained one entry, well, that was to be expected with something new. And if that entry just happened to look like a giant cartoon bomb, complete with a comically large lit fuse, well, that was her prerogative as the one designing and testing the thing.
"Lord?" Hive sent after almost two hours.
"Yes?" Taylor replied.
"I believe I've figured out how to begin, though obtaining several materials that I don't have much of may be a good idea. Copper, for example, for wiring. We can look into purchasing some later, but to start with I'd like to create several construction devices that can do most of the actual construction work."
"That sounds like a good idea, go for it, and I'm bored enough to start looking for places to purchase materials from. Do you want me to check on anything other than copper?"
"Thank you, and other things I could use more of include titanium, neodymium, praseodymium, promethium, and to a lesser extent silver and gold. If you can find exagranium then I'd appreciate it, but I'm not sure that its synthesis has been discovered yet here. I've been using trace amounts from the Shard-type devices so far, and I'm not sure if it's possible to stabilize it in meaningful quantities without mana anyway."
Well, she had a shopping list to figure out now, at least. Not to mention a substance to read up on in Hive's databases, because she didn't recall hearing about that one before.
Missy sat back down in the courtroom, having just spent twenty minutes in the judge's chambers with him and Doctor Yamada. Both had wanted to be sure that she wasn't just saying that she'd be happy to stay with the Walshes, and to ensure that she knew that other options could be found without her having to go back to her parents. Still, they were now apparently satisfied with her sincerity regarding the Walshes. Even if Ethan sputtered in some way and something weird happened around Sherie's skin on a regular basis.
It took another half an hour for things to be completed after that point, though she suspected that there was a lot more paperwork moving around behind the scenes. Because there was always more paperwork moving around behind the scenes, of course. But it was only half an hour before they left for the time being, to head back to the PRT building to collect her things before heading to actually see the house that she'd be staying in for at least the next few months.
To absolutely no surprise on her part, PRT staff had obviously gathered the things that she'd mostly packed up already and had it all ready to be loaded into the back of a car. That basically everything she had fit into the trunk of the car, minus two bags that were dropped into the back seat where she'd be sitting, was actually a little depressing. Not very much so, because ever since her parents had split up she'd kept herself to a minimum of stuff she cared about, but still a little.
Getting to what would be her new home didn't take all that long, though they took a roundabout route intentionally so that they could point out a couple of useful landmarks and two different bus stops in the area. Knowing where a local market was, as well as their preferred pizza place, seemed less useful overall, but she wasn't going to complain. Sherie also mentioned which bus routes the two bus stops were on.
Once at the house she was given keys and told how to arm and disarm the security system. They'd already had a code set up specifically for her, apparently in part so that both they and the company doing monitoring could tell who was coming and going. Included was a warning that windows couldn't be open beyond the first 'lock' point while the system was armed in any way, so if she had reason to open a window fully then the alarm had to be disarmed first. They then brought her stuff upstairs to what would be her bedroom, gave her a quick tour, and Ethan ordered pizza to be delivered so that she could enjoy the wonder that was their favorite pizza place.
"We have a few things we need to talk about," Sherie said once Ethan had finished placing the order. She grabbed a bag that had been sitting in the corner and pulled plastic boxes out of it. Plastic boxes that Missy recognized as soon as she laid eyes on them, given that they were her missing medical and sewing supplies.
Why hadn't she been given a teleportation spell for situations like this?
"Thanks for not yelling at me using the central command unit while I slept," Taylor said as her father sat down next to her in the living room. He'd just ordered delivery for dinner.
"That...honestly hadn't occurred to me," he admitted. "I'll have to remember that I can do that next time something like this happens. Though watching the news go back over all of your footage while you were sleeping tempered my annoyance a little bit. Do your sensors detect radioactive material?"
"Most of them are not configured for that specifically," Hive answered. "Even if my Lord was reduced to the comfort layers of her Knight Armor she would remain protected from most radiation hazards, so detection isn't normally a high priority."
He nodded at that. "Which makes dodging to the side of the sub that was going to explode something I can't yell about. After all, it isn't like anything else had done so up to that point. Though the amount of history thrown around was a bit impressive even before that."
Taylor shrugged. "I was more concerned with them being large chunks of metal being thrown at me."
"Well, there are a dozen groups starting to make plans to see what, if anything, remains of a dozen wrecks now. Speculation includes that the Bismarck, Mashona, and even parts of the Titanic were dragged to your battle to be tossed at you in preparation for the K-219 that exploded on you. Most of the rest weren't as easily identified, one way or another. Of course, examining that part of the footage has been interspersed with analysis of how you did, combined with questions about why nobody joined you to help with the distraction. For the latter, Legend admitted that he was more focused on preparing for when you withdrew, not realizing just how much time was actually passing. Of course, the Protectorate was actually doing something, compared to Scion that flew by an hour after you were done."
"Ah. I hadn't really thought about others joining me so much as that the longer I kept Leviathan busy the better the on-shore defenses would be."
"Yeah, well, you made international news by driving an Endbringer off solo. I think the only reason that you aren't being swamped with requests for interviews is that none of the news agencies know how to contact you."
"Over three hundred attempts at contacting my Lord for an interview have been made," Hive corrected. "I've been responding with a form letter stating that she isn't available due to needing time to recover from the battle, though translating it to all seventeen languages used so far has proven to be an interesting test of my translation systems."
Taylor blinked at that. "You've got something working there?"
"It will need testing with real-time translation, but if I'm correct then you and Missy should be able to understand the basics of any language normally spoken in the area, though she'll need to be connected to Space to do so. Not that you've actually been exposed to many languages, I've been using television shows and radio newscasts in an attempt to calibrate the system. Written is a work in progress and I'm not sure if it works. I recommend visiting the library and looking through the foreign language books to see if that works like I'm hoping."
"Ah."
"Right," her father said. "Good to know, I guess, let me know how it works out. Though thinking about reporters, while watching the news earlier I got to see the inside of a poorly maintained Endbringer shelter just outside of Boston and it got me thinking. My current options for getting out of here are all exposed to the elements. What do you think of the idea of buying a mobile home and leaving it at one of the three points over there?"
"I have sufficient material reserves to build quite a bit," Hive answered. "And excavating for a proper foundation would probably improve that. Building an actual structure that could withstand storms shouldn't be too difficult, if mildly time consuming. If my Lord allows it, I can start checking on construction methods to plan out a suitable structure."
Taylor blinked. "Sure, that sounds reasonable enough. I suppose that we don't need to worry about permits, given that the planet is essentially unused beyond us, right?"
Her father snorted. "That is one hell of a land claim. 'By virtue of being the only one who can reach it, I claim the entire planet!' At the same time, I'd appreciate it if you kept it capable of holding together without magic being needed to do so, even if magic improves that further."
"Of course," Hive responded. "I recommend using a point south of the sandy beach, where there's an inlet leading to a small lagoon."
Taylor blinked. "There's what there? I don't recall seeing that."
"It's a little over a mile south of the end of the beach, surrounded by trees and a collection of raised, more rocky terrain that I suspect was created by a meteorite impact in the past. There isn't enough of an internal beach for jogging along, but the geography should provide some basic protection from storms on its own and can be used to advantage for keeping things harder to spot in the event that we find that others can reach the area."
"Oh. Okay. That doesn't sound like a bad place to put something."
"I agree," her father said. "Taking advantage of natural terrain is a wonderful idea, though I think it would be a good idea to ensure that there is a way out without a boat or hiking over any dangerous terrain."
"I'll keep that in mind," Hive replied. "Lord, if you don't mind I'd like to deploy a few drones to examine the area in more detail."
Taylor shrugged. "Go for it, so long as you've got the energy to."
Hive retrieved a couple of drones in standby form to the rug in the hallway with a small flash of light. They quickly vanished from view as the device did its job and hid them and the brighter light show that was the dimensional transference to the beach.
Nodding, Taylor then frowned. "How long before food gets here, anyway?"
Her father sighed. "They weren't fully certain, on account of enough people doing some form of celebrating to be screwing up traffic and keeping places that stayed open busy. So when it gets here, and I'm positive that you'll know before I do if you're doing any checking of the area at all."
Missy looked around the cafeteria that Sherie had brought her to. Ethan was off to the side talking with a small group, but the overall number of people was fairly low. Apparently this was a gathering of those in the PRT who knew Wards identities, were off the clock this evening, and didn't have families waiting for them at home. It was a fairly small number of people, and as Missy sat down in a corner with a plate of food she noticed that they fell into at least three obvious groups.
The first group were those that were happy, or maybe just relieved. They were enjoying themselves, but with something keeping them from being ecstatic. Members of this group tended to be sitting down and eating more than moving around, unless being dragged around by someone else. Missy probably fell into that group, at least on the outside, but in some ways she was more annoyed that things had happened before she was ready to help. Of course, she was also worried about seeing a judge the next day, as with the Endbringer fight becoming a non-issue there was no reason to delay it.
The second group were those that were obviously worried or otherwise not enjoying themselves. Presumably some of them just weren't comfortable in this kind of social setting, but others were probably considering the implications of Brockton Bay now having someone who had effectively shown up the Triumvirate running around. Missy didn't think that Taylor would stray from the 'hero' category, but having someone like that around could also attract those wishing to prove themselves. Most of this group had a member of the last group trying to cheer them up.
Lastly, the third group were either good at ignoring things or hadn't considered any of the implications and were running around ecstatic, without any obvious care in the world. Those who had arranged for this gathering were likely included, based on previous experience with this kind of thing, not that any one person was obviously acting like they were in charge. Ethan looked, at first glance, to fall into this category, but it didn't take much to spot that he was playing things up. Usually when Sherie would give him a look.
Honestly, Missy would rather be back in the suite putting more focus into studying, but this wasn't a bad second choice of things to be doing. She only wished more discussion of the official PRT view of things was happening. Of course, it was entirely possible that nobody here knew what said view was and were avoiding speculation due to a lack of information, but it made figuring out what the official response to the day might be effectively impossible.
Well, it wasn't like Taylor was likely to need Missy to let her know of anything, it was just curiosity at this point.
Taylor and her father had, at Hive's request, looked through architectural styles with an eye towards treating the new structure as a vacation home. Just having a copy of their current home was considered, but discarded. They didn't want to get confused about which one they were in, and the copy wouldn't have the authentic history that the actual house had. On top of that, the house didn't really have a layout that was ideal for sitting next to the lagoon. For example, a structure with a wider front so that there could be at least two front bedrooms looking out over the lagoon seemed like it would be nicer.
After Hive was happy with the amount of information she had, Taylor had joined her father in watching more of the news while also looking through the various requests for interviews that had come in. The sheer number was impressive and there was a general trend of being willing to send a reporter to anywhere that she wanted to meet them at. Others included offers to pay for any travel or hotel arrangements needed, and four different talk show hosts had asked if she wanted to appear as a special guest.
"There's no reason for me to actually accept any of these interview requests, right?" she said during a commercial break.
"Only if you want to," her father replied. "Though taking a walk down the Boardwalk in the next week would probably be a good idea, just to be seen as out and unharmed. I doubt anyone thinks that you died, admittedly, especially after keeping Leviathan on the run for a couple hours after you left."
That had Taylor blinking. "I kept Leviathan on the run for a couple hours?"
"Surely you haven't missed some of the discussion about the fedora of doom? Why did you use that bullet shape on your last attack anyway?"
Oh, right, her final fuck-you homing bullet. She'd half forgotten about that one. "I wanted something larger than the blades, and that was one of the few that I've used multiple times."
"I would appreciate a copy of your notes on that spell, Lord," Hive added. "Since I didn't think that your efforts into making an unfolded mana construct were at the functional stage, but that last attack was obviously-unfolded mana."
"Er," Taylor said, blushing. "They still aren't functional? I can't get a spell to work, so I did that one manually."
There was a moment of silence before Hive responded to that. "May I ask what you mean by 'manually'?"
"I used several multitasking instances to unfold the mana construct while I held it in place. After all my work on trying to get it to function on mana constructs I knew exactly what I needed to do, but I still can't find any way to make it work in an equation. So instead I just did it without an equation."
"My Lord, I would appreciate it if you would demonstrate that soon, with proper sensory spells and equipment prepared to record it in greater detail."
"Er, okay."
"But not tonight," her father said. "Maybe tomorrow."
Taylor nodded in agreement, seeing no reason to argue there. Instead she continued looking through the messages that had been sorted out for her. She eventually reached the end of the interview requests, and hit the recruitment requests. These could be split into a few primary categories. First up, recruitment messages from the Protectorate and/or Wards. Twenty different regions were represented, in addition to a direct offer from Legend. Interestingly, the latter was one of three in the group that acknowledged that they didn't know for a fact how old 'Minerva' was. He'd also included an offer from the Guild, with a note that many Protectorate members were members of the Guild as well but that it wasn't actually a requirement to join it. At the very end he apologized for sending it instead of meeting with her in person, but others had demanded that a message be sent and he didn't know where to find her in person.
After that was recruitment messages from non-governmental groups. Some independent, some villains, and a few that were harder to tell. The Elite, for example, had multiple factions make offers, with varying hooks. New York was on the surface the least violent, not having mentioned much of anything that would involve fighting, but a couple others were close. Being associated with the organization as a whole didn't sound nice though. Among the nearly two thousand messages that fell into the overall category, only maybe a hundred were palatable to her.
And then there was the last major category, which was essentially resumes of people who wanted to be recruited. Some were parahumans, others were normals that were willing to play 'support staff', a number were somewhat obviously just looking for a way to figure out her secrets. She suspected that most of them wanted to share the spotlight, or assumed that fighting Leviathan solo meant that she was rich or going to be. Of course, she could say that in part because some of them basically admitted that their goals were essentially that.
"Why do people seem to think that I'm going to suddenly have more money than I know what to do with?" she finally asked out loud.
"I thought you already had more money than you knew what to do with," her father replied.
"Okay, yes, but I have a lot of people wanting to join my 'team', and a lot of them I think just want the free paycheck for doing little to nothing. Since I doubt that most of them know that I already have a pile of spare cash?"
He shrugged. "I don't know. People might decide to see if they can find ways to send you money, but I can't see it being that much without a confirmed destination for it. At least outside of those in the local area, anyway, who might be crazy enough to gather a pile of cash and hope they aren't mugged before they can give it to you."
She looked at her father, hoping that he was joking, but it didn't look like he was. Dammit.
That evening Taylor didn't sleep well, specifically since she wasn't that tired after spending hours asleep that afternoon. Despite that she did get to sleep, and she started the night by looking over Hive detailing the lagoon and surrounding terrain in the simulation system for a bit. The goal was apparently to figure out how to best excavate material to secure a foundation against being moved by storms. That quickly bored Taylor, and she changed her focus to reviewing the saved information from the battle with Leviathan. Her goals were to figure out where she could've done things better, identify what she needed to work on, and perhaps see if she could spot other potential weaknesses that she hadn't already picked up on that could possibly help with future Endbringer battles.
One thing that was obvious was that she wasn't used to 'blinking' around. That was still somewhat disorienting to her, and she'd hesitated the few times that she'd been using it to get in close in order to get her bearings. Less important was that she also needed time to recover when using it to dodge, but working to get around the disorientation when using it to attack would hopefully solve it for both use cases. Admittedly, it was a new trick and she'd not really gotten any training in with it before the fight, so she could probably be excused for not having it down yet.
Not having the combat drones ready to fire unfolded projectiles was something that she'd need to ensure didn't happen again, though keeping them entirely full of material for doing so might not be ideal either. Maybe against Behemoth that would be fine, but Ziz was known for throwing things around and Leviathan had just shown a willingness to as well. Actually, based on that, she should assume that if push came to shove then Behemoth would start lobbing terrain around as well, so some ability to dismantle and store the troublesome bits was probably a good idea. So no full combat drones at the start of a fight in order to have extra storage space available.
"Hey Hive," she sent, thinking about that but not wanting to return to the simulation system to talk.
"Yes Lord?" Hive responded.
"What do you think of having a storage area for matter used to create physical bullets? Something that the combat drones and such can dump excess matter into or refill from?"
"It sounds like a reasonable thing to do, though I'd imagine that they'd be filling up instead of dumping excess in?"
"Denying Leviathan ammo by having the drones add the material to their reserves was a decent tactic, but it won't work when they're full."
"That is a good point, Lord. I'll give it some thought."
"Thank you."
The other observation she had was that it had likely taken far too long to 'seed' the area with prepared mana for binding. Doing so primarily with bullets was, in many ways, a waste. Thinking about that, she smirked as she started designing a new spell specifically intended to constantly release the appropriate particles. To do so effectively she would ideally want a somewhat large surface area that could reasonably 'glow' without itself drawing significant attention as a reason for people to be concerned.
Her sixth idea for that, and first workable that didn't leave her constantly glowing, was an almost entirely intangible 'cape' that would glow on the inside, releasing lots of the binding particles to generate said glow. It should only be tangible to those using mana, so normal people grabbing it wouldn't be possible, and would detach or tear apart before any real force could be applied to the one wearing it even if someone did grab it. Building a layer on the inside of the construct, as laid out properly in the template she was making, was easy enough. It would only lightly glow while the 'generate binding particles' function was turned on, and with any luck would 'flutter' as the binding particles were released from it. When 'turned off' it would just be an intangible cape that hopefully looked cool on its own.
She'd wait until Hive wasn't using the simulation system to check that. In the meantime, she was also going to ponder ways to keep an Endbringer from pulling away like Leviathan had. A more comprehensive pattern of binds to prevent twisting, perhaps, by connecting over the torso area?
Monday morning Missy woke early to get ready for the day. She ate breakfast before she showered, did her hair up more nicely than usual, and put on the nicest clothing that she had available. Or the nicest clothing that still fit, anyway, after finding out that a couple of things didn't. She then sat down with a glass of water to wait things out while continuing to study in the multitasking system. As far as she could tell, she'd successfully gotten her 'talk to Space while not connected' mana usage down to 'you have to be literally next to her to notice' levels, which was surprisingly easy once you'd figured the trick out at all.
Honestly, despite learning it with the little bit of math involved, the communication trick was far easier without it. Which gave her hope for the 'sensing mana' side of things, which had no math at all. It did not give her hope for any of the other horribly convoluted equations. She was trying to understand them and how it all went together, but didn't think that she was having much luck. Most of it would be far easier if she could actually attempt to cast things.
"This stupid anchor creation spell is insane," she grumbled in the multitasking interface. She couldn't get the awesome Knight Armor spell working without it, after all.
"Learning that to a sufficient degree shouldn't be needed," Space offered. "It should only ever need to be cast once, and I am fully capable of helping you do so."
Missy blinked, then checked the time. She had at least forty-five minutes before she expected anyone to show up. She really, really shouldn't, but there was no guarantee that she would have any better time to try it. But was anyone monitoring her? "Do you think anyone is watching me in any meaningful way right now?"
"There are no active surveillance devices, audio or visual, that I am aware of in the suite. I have just checked with Hive, who is better at detecting these things, and she concurs. We cannot rule out long-range viewing abilities, but if those are a risk then it won't matter where you are."
"Okay then. Will this take more than half an hour?"
"No."
Missy grinned, moving to the center of the suite just to be safe, and allowed Space to walk her through the casting process. A light purple, that she'd probably describe as pastel, design that she recognized from Taylor casting things appeared at her feet even as Space glowed around her neck. She did her best to follow what was happening, and experiencing the casting was causing things to make a lot more sense to her. Relatively speaking, as in one in every fifty equation elements at best.
It only took a few minutes to go through the entire spell, and the sudden awareness of the area around her gave her a mild headache. The description including a note about sensing her surroundings was woefully inadequate, and she hadn't been ready for it in any way. While it wasn't 'seeing' her surroundings, she was getting way too much information back. Worse, if she recalled correctly, the storage area setup spell also gave awareness of the contents of the storage area, which meant that she wasn't going anywhere near it until she was used to this one.
Further, it was now clear that she really shouldn't have done this before going to the courthouse. Especially as the multitasking system wasn't helping nearly as much as Taylor's notes implied that it should, which likely meant that something else was crazy about the older girl beyond understanding the math. And, of course, without her medical kits she didn't have a ready supply of painkillers. Grumbling, she did her best to figure out how to deal with it over the next three quarters of an hour, at which point someone knocked on the door to the suite. That had features that felt oddly sputtering to her new senses.
Answering the door, she found Ethan there. "Hello there Missy, are you ready to leave?"
Missy nodded. "Yeah."
"No purse or something like that?"
She rolled her eyes. "I have two small ID cards and a cell phone. No keys, makeup, or other things. A purse would be overkill while I have pockets available."
"Okay then. Let's get going. With any luck we'll be able to get you moved out of here this afternoon."
Taylor sighed as she relaxed on the beach. Hive was off at the lagoon looking things over in more detail, which currently sounded boring. Casting anything 'dangerous' had been forbidden for the day, at least until her father came home from work, which included the unfolded mana construct trick. Really, she'd have stayed home if Hive hadn't wanted to get a more direct look at the lagoon area. She was half considering throwing her swimsuit Knight Clothing template on and going for a swim, except that she wasn't really in the mood to swim right now.
Admittedly, she had the new 'barrier particle generating cape' on, patterned in a solid color to match her Knight Armor with the full anchor hex pattern on it in silver. It worked fine, as shown when she occasionally toggled the generation mode on and off to ensure that it was working correctly. But that was about it for things that she'd accomplished so far today. Really, all she was doing to pass the time was working on designing a single mega-bullet to intentionally swamp the area with binding particles.
That she was designing it to work best with a template setup that currently only contained one entry, well, that was to be expected with something new. And if that entry just happened to look like a giant cartoon bomb, complete with a comically large lit fuse, well, that was her prerogative as the one designing and testing the thing.
"Lord?" Hive sent after almost two hours.
"Yes?" Taylor replied.
"I believe I've figured out how to begin, though obtaining several materials that I don't have much of may be a good idea. Copper, for example, for wiring. We can look into purchasing some later, but to start with I'd like to create several construction devices that can do most of the actual construction work."
"That sounds like a good idea, go for it, and I'm bored enough to start looking for places to purchase materials from. Do you want me to check on anything other than copper?"
"Thank you, and other things I could use more of include titanium, neodymium, praseodymium, promethium, and to a lesser extent silver and gold. If you can find exagranium then I'd appreciate it, but I'm not sure that its synthesis has been discovered yet here. I've been using trace amounts from the Shard-type devices so far, and I'm not sure if it's possible to stabilize it in meaningful quantities without mana anyway."
Well, she had a shopping list to figure out now, at least. Not to mention a substance to read up on in Hive's databases, because she didn't recall hearing about that one before.
Missy sat back down in the courtroom, having just spent twenty minutes in the judge's chambers with him and Doctor Yamada. Both had wanted to be sure that she wasn't just saying that she'd be happy to stay with the Walshes, and to ensure that she knew that other options could be found without her having to go back to her parents. Still, they were now apparently satisfied with her sincerity regarding the Walshes. Even if Ethan sputtered in some way and something weird happened around Sherie's skin on a regular basis.
It took another half an hour for things to be completed after that point, though she suspected that there was a lot more paperwork moving around behind the scenes. Because there was always more paperwork moving around behind the scenes, of course. But it was only half an hour before they left for the time being, to head back to the PRT building to collect her things before heading to actually see the house that she'd be staying in for at least the next few months.
To absolutely no surprise on her part, PRT staff had obviously gathered the things that she'd mostly packed up already and had it all ready to be loaded into the back of a car. That basically everything she had fit into the trunk of the car, minus two bags that were dropped into the back seat where she'd be sitting, was actually a little depressing. Not very much so, because ever since her parents had split up she'd kept herself to a minimum of stuff she cared about, but still a little.
Getting to what would be her new home didn't take all that long, though they took a roundabout route intentionally so that they could point out a couple of useful landmarks and two different bus stops in the area. Knowing where a local market was, as well as their preferred pizza place, seemed less useful overall, but she wasn't going to complain. Sherie also mentioned which bus routes the two bus stops were on.
Once at the house she was given keys and told how to arm and disarm the security system. They'd already had a code set up specifically for her, apparently in part so that both they and the company doing monitoring could tell who was coming and going. Included was a warning that windows couldn't be open beyond the first 'lock' point while the system was armed in any way, so if she had reason to open a window fully then the alarm had to be disarmed first. They then brought her stuff upstairs to what would be her bedroom, gave her a quick tour, and Ethan ordered pizza to be delivered so that she could enjoy the wonder that was their favorite pizza place.
"We have a few things we need to talk about," Sherie said once Ethan had finished placing the order. She grabbed a bag that had been sitting in the corner and pulled plastic boxes out of it. Plastic boxes that Missy recognized as soon as she laid eyes on them, given that they were her missing medical and sewing supplies.
Why hadn't she been given a teleportation spell for situations like this?
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Okay, I was wrong. Taylor is just as absurdly talented as Nanoha was at that point in her training.
Leechblade
Orientation Nitpicking
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Well looks like Brockton Bay's resident jailbreaker has caught on to the fact that Taylor's apprentice isn't quite as goody two shoes as everyone else thinks. Bwahahahaha
Leechblade
Orientation Nitpicking
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Possibly, and restocking from the boat graveyard for steel slugs would help her home as well.
Granted, Taylor cheats by using the multitasking hardware repurposed from the QA shard...
Leechblade
Orientation Nitpicking
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Oh snap. How many years of training has she squeezed into only a few months with that thing.
- Location
- Salt Lake City, UT, USA
It might be a better question to ask how many decades.
- Location
- Wales
And just like nanoha she probably doesn't realise how bullshit she is at this point.
Still doesn't detract from her going "Yeah, the equations are too hard to work out so I just did it without them."
That's like saying "We couldn't work out the plotting for a moon landing, so we just did it all on instinct."