Taylor had returned home with Hive in order to eat lunch, after Hive had returned the full set of combat drones to be stored away. Apparently Hive had gone a different route than expected there and ensured that they all had a full complement of projectiles in a new ammo hopper and empty material stores. Plenty of ability to fire shots, and plenty of storage for anything being thrown at them or for clearing debris.
The search for places selling the materials that Hive wanted, on the other hand, hadn't gone as well. Mostly because Taylor wasn't sure how to deal with sending payments or receiving deliveries, which meant that she was going to have to talk to her father about it or find another source of materials. Presumably there were solutions that she just wasn't thinking about right now, she just didn't know what they were yet.
Watching the news while she ate, Taylor found her eye twitching occasionally. Apparently there were several groups looking to build monuments dedicated to her as the first one to drive off an Endbringer before it could cause any damage or kill anyone. That would've been bad enough, but the groups were already talking about competing to build the best one. As far as the reporters could tell, this was going to be in an attempt to lure her elsewhere so that she could protect other cities from the Endbringers.
Brockton Bay wasn't in the list of places aiming to attempt that bit of idiocy, thankfully. Or at least it wasn't yet, she supposed that someone in town might decide that it was a good idea. She might have to check to see if it was against the law to deface or destroy monuments that were dedicated to you. Somehow, she doubted that there were any exceptions for being the target of the monument without being asked if you wanted one, but she could hope.
She ended up turning the news off before they got around to anything else, not wanting to hear what else people were doing. Instead she finished eating and gathered things for a trip to the library. There wasn't a whole lot of reason to visit, admittedly, but she was curious about the translation system and how it functioned. Not to mention if she'd be able to tell that it was happening or not, because it was entirely possible that she wouldn't notice when things were being translated for her.
Leaving a note for her father, she jogged to the library, figuring that the extra exercise couldn't hurt.
Sherie had waited for Ethan to take a seat at the table, making Missy wonder how this was going to go down. They obviously suspected something based on having the kits, but determining what was a lot harder. Did they know about her solo patrols? Or that she'd hidden injuries that she'd gotten on regular patrols? Of course, since as far as they knew she didn't have access to her powers anymore they shouldn't expect her to do anything like that, unless they thought that she was going to try and go out without powers. Did they expect that?
"So," Ethan said, picking up one of the containers. "As you may know, recently your home life was investigated, and a bunch of conclusions were drawn. We don't agree with all of them, but we'll get to that. To paint a proper picture for you, we'll start with these kits of yours. The investigative squads found them, along with a lot of evidence of blood, in both of your parents' homes. Their assumptions included a high likelihood of physical abuse, but neither of your parents seem the type and proving it would be impossible."
"Instead," Sherie continued. "We're ignoring that your parents claimed you weren't going out on your own. They obviously weren't paying any attention at all, so you could've slipped out on a regular basis, and instead assuming that you were regularly going on unsanctioned solo patrols. Likely to get away from your home life. Further, while Ethan shouldn't have gotten copies of Panacea's report about how many scars you no longer have, he did get them. Based on that we believe that you definitely went up against Hookwolf like the rumors say you did."
"Wait," Missy said, some of what had been said finally making it through her shock and worry. "They thought my parents were abusing me?"
"Yep," Ethan answered. "With just enough evidence to convince them not to contest losing full custody of you, but not enough that they were likely to get any form of conviction on it. As I understand it, they were given the option of admitting that they'd severely neglected you or going to court and having to explain how it is you got all of the injuries you were hiding if they weren't being neglectful."
"Oh."
Sherie nodded. "This all, of course, became worse when the Youth Guard locked down everything after Hess's immensely stupid actions at the beginning of the year. They were even checking to ensure that all known copies of Wards costumes were accounted for, which of course made it impossible for you to go out on your own. So instead you eventually decided to visit Miss Hebert."
"And then a few days later you lock yourself in the PRT building and your powers are taken," Ethan added. "The timing was far too convenient, but the evidence left behind was far too convincing in an entirely different direction. We weren't even sure about things, at least until you started demonstrating abilities that you didn't have before."
Missy blinked. "What do you mean by that?"
"For starters," Sherie said. "Let's look at what we noticed today. You spent most of the morning distracted, yet avoided stepping in three different puddles that you weren't even looking for. At least six times you dodged an attempt by someone to grab your shoulder when there's no way that you could've seen them coming, and you frequently looked over at me when my own powers kicked in. A direct inversion of what most people do, which is looking at someone who started moving."
"And then there are other things," Ethan said. "Such as you doing something significant this morning. I don't know what it was, but I know you did it, and that's after somehow saying 'hello' in a way that at least three dozen people that we know of across six cities and towns heard. Nobody else seemed to hear you asking 'Space' to connect to you after that, though I was in the room directly below you the day I heard it."
Well...that was a thing. Crap.
"As such," Sherie said, not giving Missy a chance to respond. "We're running on the assumption that you approached Miss Hebert, who we believe to actually be Minerva but could've just been a middleman, and chose to have your powers removed in exchange for new abilities. We don't know how that works, but if they're even a fraction as effective as what was demonstrated this weekend then it was probably a good trade."
"And then," Ethan continued. "Because you were annoyed with them, you decided to give the middle finger to the PRT and have your powers removed while in the building. Which worked incredibly well, given the fires it lit under people."
Missy's head was spinning, but she latched onto a single detail, looking at Sherie. "What was that about your powers?"
"Wonderful deflection," Ethan said. "Won't work, but I'm amazed that you didn't figure it out already. Still, we probably should've started with some of that, given how lax we are with our powers around the house..."
Sherie sighed. "Yes, there is that, and we were going to until she pretty much proved that several of our suspicions were correct. But I suppose now is as good a time as any other. Since you haven't figured it out yet, I'm Battery."
"And I'm Assault."
Missy looked between the two, decided that she was an idiot, and slammed her head onto the table. "I'm doomed to be forced back into the Wards."
"And ruin you getting Armsmaster to pull the stick out of his ass? Hell no."
"What?"
"At least sit back up," Sherie said, prompting Missy to slightly tilt her head to give the woman a look. Though she also sat back up after a moment. "No, we aren't going to force you back into the Wards. Actually, we couldn't even if we wanted to. The rules won't let us, even if we were willing to tell anyone else about what's going on with you."
Ethan nodded. "You can be forced into the Wards exactly once, and only if you were never a Ward to begin with. Once a Ward leaves, for any reason, they can't be made to join again without wanting to join again, by their own admission and through sixteen different forms being signed in front of mutually exclusive witnesses outside of the view of parents and guardians. It's to stop parents from moving their kids in and out of the Wards as they feel is convenient. Of course, at that point the parents have to agree that the kid can't be removed by the parents without the kid's approval under similar circumstances, for similar reasons."
"Of course, then there's the detail that you were the first Ward ever to be ejected from the program due to no longer being a parahuman. Which means that legally, you aren't a parahuman, and thus you can't be a Ward, no matter what other abilities you seem to have picked up."
Missy blinked. "Really?"
"Of course," Ethan said. "We won't even stop you from going out to patrol, though we will insist that you not do so alone or without at least leaving a note saying that you're doing so. Oh, and if you get hurt? You tell us. No hiding that you got hurt and taking care of your own serious injuries. Though we do have some other questions, and ideally want to know what kind of training you're going to be getting in your new abilities."
"For example," Sherie continued. "Whose idea was it for you to fake a suicide attempt?"
Missy stared at her, trying to figure out what the hell had happened to make people think that. She came up with nothing, so resorted to asking. "Fake a what? Where the hell did that come from?"
"Huh. You didn't arrange for it to look like you'd entered the PRT building intending to commit suicide? Why else would you have left a knife with your blood on it around and have significant blood loss? None of the others who've had their powers taken had that happen."
That had Missy blinking. "There was a problem with taking my powers, but I don't...oh, that knife. Right, the idiot that was trying to slice me with the blunt side and I didn't notice until I'd grabbed it."
Ethan stared at her. "You, completely on accident, helped to create a scene that had everyone thinking you tried to kill yourself?"
"I guess?"
"Sheesh. Now I wonder what you might've pulled off if you'd been trying."
It'd taken a little longer than anticipated to reach the library, but Taylor had braved the idiots running around and made it there without any serious incident. She'd also learned that no, Brockton Bay wasn't excluded from the 'monument to Minerva' craze, but instead it was tempered by a 'fear of Minerva' movement that was keeping any plans for a monument from making any significant progress. Given that it looked like a good number of the 'fear' groups included a sizable amount of probable gang members, though, she found herself not caring too much about them.
The only other thing of note that she'd picked up being discussed was people questioning if 'Minerva' had a vehicle of any kind, compared to just flying around, and the speculation as to what it would be like if she did. Which had her wondering what some of the laws might be for such a situation, and while she could probably check online it likely wouldn't be a problem to check the reference collection while she was in the library anyway.
Shaking her head and focusing on her first task, she double-checked where the foreign language collections were and headed in that general direction. Two full rows of Japanese, a row of Chinese, and a row split between Spanish and German. She started in the latter row, since at least the characters would look somewhat familiar and identifying where words started and ended shouldn't be a problem. Nobody else was in the immediate area, so she stood in the middle of the row and looked at the titles on either side of her.
At first she understood barely anything, a few words that she'd heard of Spanish. But it didn't take long for the meanings behind the titles to start filtering to her. It wasn't that she suddenly understood what she was actually reading, exactly, but she knew what it meant. Mostly. It was far better than being entirely clueless, at least. She moved into the Chinese row and found that it was similar, after a moment of focus, but didn't feel like it lined up as nicely in her head. Perhaps because things were just that different? Moving into the first Japanese row felt similar to the Chinese row.
Eventually she grabbed a book off of a shelf and flipped to a random page. It took a few seconds, but she was able to tell what things meant, though it appeared that it wasn't read left to right and top to bottom. If it was then it was gibberish, anyway. Looking at things, she suspected that it was read top to bottom first, which made a lot more sense when she tried focusing on it that way. It still didn't make full sense, but getting a few lines right to left instead of left to right seemed to correct that.
Going so far against her normal instincts when reading was difficult, and not reading the words so much as getting a general meaning made it unlikely that she was going to be enjoying foreign literature in this manner anytime soon. Shaking her head, she returned the book to the shelf and headed for the reference desk, more specifically the shelf of reference books next to it that couldn't be taken out.
It didn't take long before she'd found two specific books in the collection. One of them was more of a glorified pamphlet, covering what it would take to get a driver's license. The other covered the legal definitions of vehicle types, both in the state and when crossing state lines. Confirming that the first contained nothing not already available on the relevant government website only took a few minutes, but the second contained a pile of information that was harder to find on public websites.
While she flipped through the entire book on vehicle types, stopping on a couple of things regarding the distinctions between non-commercial vehicle types, she was more interested in what officially constituted a 'tinkertech' vehicle. Except that she couldn't find anything about them in the book. She ended up going back and swapping out the first two books for a few others, but couldn't find anything on tinkertech vehicles in any of them.
Eventually she resorted to searching with Hive's search engine, and what came back surprised her. Officially, there was little to no regulation on tinkertech vehicles that didn't fit the definitions of specific kinds of non-tinkertech vehicles. You could get in trouble for driving on the road without being road legal, for flying in airspace without following FAA rules, or by not following Coast Guard regulations while on the water. If you didn't meet any of those classifications then the government basically threw up their hands and did their best to ignore you.
Well, they ignored you unless you were near active military bases, Washington DC, or any location otherwise protected by the Secret Service. In those cases they were much more likely to crack down on you, as a number of parahumans had apparently discovered the hard way. At least one of which had been shot down with a surface to air missile, survived, and been shot down a second time by the same surface installation a month later.
She figured that perhaps there was just too much variation in tinkertech, not to mention too many villains that would just ignore the laws while making it harder for heroes, to bother with attempting to legally regulate things. Which probably meant that she could get away with quite a bit when it came down to having a vehicle, but couldn't come up with a good reason to have one right now.
They'd taken a short break to absorb things, partially inspired by Ethan starting to laugh when what had happened accidentally had finally hit home with him. That had turned into a longer break when food had arrived, and then the neighbors stopped by before they'd finished eating. Ellen and Sam apparently lived next door and had seen them arrive with Missy, but they'd waited until they'd finished making the fresh cookies that they'd already been working on to actually come over and introduce themselves.
Bringing a large plate of said cookies over with them helped to alleviate any and all annoyance that the interruption caused.
Sadly, the two had left, and now it was time to resume talking about things.
"So," Ethan said. "I find myself curious, do you know how to do anything that was used against Leviathan?"
Missy shrugged. "In theory? I have the defensive spells. I think. In practice? The math is making my head spin."
"The math? What math?"
"Magic is apparently most reliably accomplished through horrendously complicated mathematical equations that can tell the normal laws of physics to shut up and get out of the way when applied in the correct manner."
"Hold up," Sherie said. "They call it magic? Why?"
"I dunno. I didn't name it, but I think it fits well enough. At least it isn't coming from a giant crystalline something that can be absorbed by magic being used to pull it through a structure connecting it to your brain."
The two adults nodded slowly at that, but a moment later Sherie blanched. "Holy crap. Did I drink bits of one of those things?"
Missy looked curious, and Ethan actually backed away. Sherie saw the look on Missy's face, then turned to Ethan. He gestured at her. "Nope. Not going there. That's your story to tell, and I promised several times over to never tell anyone even with your permission unless you were dead and it was a life or death situation for someone else. And you fought me over the latter concessions."
Twitching slightly, Sherie didn't argue that point. Instead she took a moment before visibly collecting herself, and then sighed before she turned to Missy. "Long story short, I understand going to someone else for powers. I don't understand going to someone to trade powers, though, since you had some very impressive abilities and did so before finding out that Minerva could take on an Endbringer."
Thinking about that, Missy mentally sighed and turned on the spatial manipulation system. She then gestured, and the surface of the table expanded significantly. "It wasn't much of a trade?"
"But..." Ethan said, before gesturing at the drastically expanded table surface. "I know for a fact that you were asked about your powers and didn't have them. Did you outright lie just to ensure you were pulled from the Wards?"
"I had a placeholder necklace that didn't contain bits of the crystalline thing that granted my powers as Vista."
"Holy crap. Are they accepting applications?"
Sherie slapped him off the back of the head. "No. There's enough going on without needing to explain changes to your brain at your next physical. Which, may I remind you, is sometime in the next two months."
Taylor was on her way home from the library, having spent some extra time looking up how to arrange for possible delivery points that didn't require having a home or business address. There were, in fact, several ways that had come into existence for independent tinkers to order materials that didn't require revealing addresses. The easiest to use were the offices of a couple of nationwide delivery companies that had agreements with various suppliers. It cost extra, though was generally available in 'one-off' and 'monthly charge' variants.
Sadly, Brockton Bay didn't have any available offices, which was surprising because she'd have thought that the known non-government tinkers would be taking advantage of it. Still, the lack of said offices meant that if she wanted to go that route she was going to have to travel a bit further. To that end she was building a list of somewhat nearby offices that she could pop over to at some point to enquire about things.
She'd just identified that there was a suitable office by the state police location that she'd turned money in at when she got a call from Missy. Spinning up an extra multitasking instance to answer the call barely took any thought at all.
"Hello Missy," Taylor answered.
"Hi Taylor," Missy replied. "I have a new place to stay, but my new guardians are a bit more observant than I thought they'd be."
"Okay..."
"They're basically positive that you're Minerva, but don't have actionable proof. They also figured out that I'd gotten powers that weren't my original ones, and they'd like some time to talk to you about things."
That...was completely and entirely unexpected. "What kinds of things?"
"So far? Mostly how dangerous the training is, I think. Oh, and how long it takes to adapt to the anchor sensor thing, because I've had a low-level headache since casting that this morning and keep getting distracted by random things it picks up."
"Ah. Well, I think most of the initial possibly-dangerous bits were already taken care of by me making mistakes. I, er, didn't get headaches or have issues with the sensor, do you have the multitasking system active?"
"I do, and it isn't helping."
"Lord," Hive interjected. "Your own connection is abnormal, possibly unique and in hindsight dangerous to try and reproduce. Space is intentionally far less capable on that front in order to prevent possible issues from others trying to do the same thing."
Taylor blinked, but supposed that made sense. "Okay. In that case I have no clue."
Missy harrumphed. "Great. Is the storage space going to be just as bad?"
"That one should be less detailed and far more static in what it can see most of the time, so probably not."
"Okay. Is there any chance of you visiting tonight or tomorrow to talk?"
"I'll have to check with my father."
"I guess that makes sense. Let me know."
Resisting the urge to shake her head, Taylor added that to the list of things to talk with her father about when he got home. Assuming she beat him home, anyway, otherwise it would be when she got home.
Taylor sat at the table across from her father, having just explained everything from her day so far.
"Well," he said. "I suppose that the Dockworkers can't be the only ones with brains in town."
That had her blinking. "What?"
"I'm positive that a number of my coworkers have decided that you and Minerva are one and the same, but aren't willing to come out and say anything. I've played dumb, so if they do know then I might've convinced them that I'm not in the know. Honestly, I'm more surprised that the PRT and Protectorate haven't approached you, but they likely have their own reasons for that."
"They believe that Minerva is a clone of my Lord," Hive piped up. "Though I don't know how they came to that conclusion."
Taylor blinked. "Okay...then how do you know that they believe that?"
"Armsmaster's discussions with Hal have heavily hinted at it, in a manner that the man may believe is 'subtle'. I'm not sure if he knows what subtle actually is, though."
"Oh."
"Trust me," her father said. "He can be subtle, as many have seen him use that to great effect in a confrontation, but I'm also certain that he's got issues with social interactions."
Taylor shrugged. "Whatever. It's nice to know at least part of how they're looking at things, but I think I'm more concerned about Missy right now."
"Right. Might as well come clean on a few things, especially as I think I'd like to meet her new guardians myself, but I don't know if it's a good idea to head over there openly."
That had her wondering what he wanted to do. "Okay, so..."
"Do they have anywhere that we could teleport to without others seeing the flash of light?"
Oooh. Right. Openly as in being seen going over. That made more sense. "I can ask."
"You do that. Beyond that, though, I'm thinking that Minerva needs to be seen out in public tomorrow morning. Maybe wander the Boardwalk a bit, eat lunch out where people can see you?"
"Er, okay. Won't that draw extra attention to me, given how most teenagers will be in school?"
"Not really, schools were shut down for a couple of days. I suppose you didn't notice because your tutoring was called off even before Leviathan came?"
"Oh. I guess the library was a little more crowded than it should've been on a school day."
"The only question is what you should do if reporters approach you, and I imagine that they will. And before you say anything, ignoring them or running away isn't a good option."
Taylor pouted at that. "But they're going to be incredibly annoying."
"And you only have yourself to blame for that. They'd want to talk to you even if you'd only delayed Leviathan. Instead you went too far and drove the beast off solo. At the same time, though, they will want answers that you don't have to give. Lots of them. Who you really are, how your abilities work, where your home base is, and other things like that. I wouldn't recommend declining to answer the first few questions about how it felt to fight Leviathan, or what your motivations were, but I also don't think that you should be afraid to tell them to move on to another topic after you've discussed one enough."
"Bah!"
Missy watched as Ethan checked all of the windows in the basement. They'd taken time to clear out a space down there, being one of the few places that should be easy enough to keep stray light from escaping from. As it was, two of the four windows were already not a problem, but he was checking them and the boards that had been temporarily attached over the other two anyway.
"I think we're good," he said. "Just need to wait for Sherie to tell us that we're okay from the outside."
"We're good there," Sherie called from the top of the stairs. "I even found the ring that I dropped a couple weeks back, which was an unexpected bonus. Gave me a reason to be poking around when the neighbors noticed too."
"I guess we're ready then."
Missy nodded. "Okay Taylor, we're ready here."
"Alright," Taylor replied. "I've got the targeting data from Space, so we'll be there in a moment."
Missy didn't have time to wonder when Space had sent targeting data before there was a bright flash of light and the basement had three more people in it. Taylor and her father looked oddly disheveled, with Lilia looking less so while riding on Taylor's shoulder.
"What happened to you?" Missy asked.
"My crazy daughter made a truck-sized bullet," Mister Hebert replied. "Truck-shaped too, but forgot to account for 'minimum safe distance' no longer being the same as her smaller ones."
"That sounds like a fun story," Ethan said. "Welcome to our humble abode, Mister and Miss Hebert, though I apologize for the mess. We don't usually have visitors arrive in the basement, after all. I'm Ethan Walsh, and I believe you've already met Miss Biron here. Shall we head upstairs so I can introduce you to my better half?"
Missy found herself wondering why Taylor wanted or needed a truck-sized, or shaped, bullet as they went upstairs and everyone was properly introduced to one another. That included finding out that Lilia went by Hive when not in costume, which felt like it was backwards. Then again, if told that 'Taylor' and 'Minerva' were the same person, out of context, she'd be hard pressed to tell you which was the cape name there either.
"So," Ethan said once everyone was settled. "What was that about a truck bullet?
"Needed something that could store more of a punch than my normal bullets for a project," Taylor answered. "Since I want to deliver a specific payload I had the idea of using a delivery truck for the appearance, instead of just a giant ball of light, after the 'giant bomb' didn't fly correctly."
"Only she set it up with an explosive payload and didn't send it far enough away," Mister Hebert continued. "Admittedly, it went off over the water, so no real harm was done, but we were a little too close."
"I'm confused," Sherie admitted. "But I suspect that some of our discussion will clear that up. Still, to be fair, not to mention in the interest of transparency, you should know at least one more thing about us."
"That you're Battery, and he's Assault?" Taylor asked, which caused everyone else to turn to look at her. "I've been around his sputtering core before, out on the Rig, and when you aren't moving an energy field builds up near your skin. It wasn't hard to figure out."
"At least we all suck at hiding our identities from each other," Ethan groused, before he sighed. "What's that about a sputtering core?"
"Your linker core has started to collapse but is fighting the process," Hive responded.
"I have no idea what that means."
"It means that you once had the potential to become a mage, but it's no longer safe to attempt to bring you down that path. To attempt to intervene to stop the collapse would be almost guaranteed to kill you instead."
"Oh."
