Ace Dreamer
Verified Reality User
- Location
- Between The Unknown & The Known
I want Taylor to accidental kidnap Doctor Who. I don't believe I've seen a story with that, and I doubt this story will go that way. 
Hybrid Hive: Eat Shard? (Worm/MGLN) (Complete)
- Thread starter CmptrWz
- Start date
- Crossover
FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
I want to see Taylor Accidentally the Butcher, as well as the S9, while training. Probably wont see that. But I'd like to.
EDIT: Note, I don't mean "take out the current person who is the Butcher or take out the S9 in person." I mean accidently take out their shards, thus removing them from the equation without realizing it (at first).
EDIT: Note, I don't mean "take out the current person who is the Butcher or take out the S9 in person." I mean accidently take out their shards, thus removing them from the equation without realizing it (at first).
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Arcane Howitzer
Serial Arcanist
- Location
- United States
She could probably work a magic-based cape name by "admitting" that she knows it isn't magic, but her power has a bit of a theme and she's trying to go with it. Because when your power keeps flashing literal magic runes (which she has already incorporated into her costume, mind you), you can either take the low-hanging fruit or be prepared to hunt much farther afield.
FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
Again, she wants to avoid the notice of the 'magic using gangs' that would try to kill or recruit her. Thus why mystical names are lumped in the "Not a good idea" pile along side German names, Asian names, and anything involving a blade or cutting (which would bring Jack Slash down on her head).
Jordisk
<Unverified N00B>
- Location
- Blind Eternities
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
And that is just restrictions on her NAME. For her actions, she cannot introduce technology to the people of Earth Bet, or drastically improve their lives (that would bring Sphere), she cannot display such overwhelming power that Crawler or the Butcher gets interested, she cannot provide too much of a detriment to the image of the PRT (that would get her labelled a villain), she cannot discover or spread knowledge about Cauldron (Because Contessa, among other methods) [Yes, she has found Cauldron's base, but as far as she knows it is a random alt-earth base. Maybe some tinker from Earth Bet, or even another earth, made it?], and many more.
- Location
- Omniverse #1345
It's very likely Contessa and other thinkers would just get a "Subject not found" error. Eventually she'll figure out she's strong enough to defeat the S9. (Particularly Jack - his thing secretly relies on his power cheating by asking other shards what their subjects are up to. Taylor has no such vulnerability.)
Jordisk
<Unverified N00B>
- Location
- Blind Eternities
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
While Jack's Master/Thinker power wouldn't work, Pre-cogs and the like would be able to find Taylor just fine. There is a difference between "able to find Taylor" and "able to predict Taylor". That difference is what is causing Coil's issues right now. His power can say "here is Taylor Hebert! Let me figure out what she is going to do..." and then get a error when she doesn't act according to the simulation. Similarly, Contessa and other Combat Thinkers would have to rely on human strength and training, rather than their powers, to stop her. We have already seen how Lisa's power reacts to mana constructs, freaking out because it can not detect anything, but Lisa's eyes are saying it is there.
- Pronouns
- Yes
Not really. It was quite popular during the 19th century, and you have all the popular beliefs about magic/superstition that persisted for a long time.
As for being burned at the stake, the most common reason for being burned at the stake was having property and no friends to stop the inquisitors from murdering you and claiming all your property. To the best of my knowledge claiming to have magic or not wouldn't really have an effect of the chances of being killed.
You missed the point. I'm not saying that given the popular perception in her society her avoiding the term is irrational. I'm saying the popular perception is based on irrational reactions by the majority of the population who don't understand why scientists object to the term magic and treat the scientific terms they hear as magic.
When you have such an attitude in society, avoiding the term personally makes sense, we're talking about the illogic of people mocking those who use it.
Morganite
Happiness is a large book.
- Location
- Dynamis - Firefly Alley
I want to combine these two ideas, an dhave Taylor drag Doctor Mother to a movie one day.
-Morgan.
Neruz
Rogue Spiderbanana
- Location
- The Land of Fire and Poison
My point was less about Taylor and more about the popular negative attitudes towards people who claim their powers are magic, like Myrrdin. It seems a bit silly to me to mock Myrrdin for his claims of being a wizard when by any reasonable definition of the term he is totally a wizard.
It's just one of those things that occurred to me one day while thinking about Worm; that powers absolutely are magic and that it is a bit odd that there aren't more people in-universe who have come out and said that, actually, yeah, Parahumans are magical and powers are magic.
I feel like that you replaced someone else's name with Taylor's. Otherwise, I don't get how it would be possible.
Fragnostic
Cheshire
- Location
- Neko City
Taylor as the cape recruited to investigate her own civilian identity. What's there not to understand?
FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
It's simple really. Taylor, in her cape identity, gets recruited by Cauldron and given the mission to infiltrate Brockton Bay and befriend Taylor Hebert as a means to gain information on the mysterious and problematic necklace.
And I got ninja'd just before hitting post.
Fragnostic
Cheshire
- Location
- Neko City
Speed posting no jutsu complete! Nin nin!
Brood Mother (andreykl)
- Location
- Odessa
OMAK Brood Mother
"Vista, come in" Piggot welcomed new arrival into conference room. "We were waiting for you."
"Hello. Ugh" Vista looked slightly intimidated by full protectorate roster being present and a lot of people she did not recognize "Director? If I may, why am I here?"
"New facts surfaced related to incident that took place four days ago, as an only direct witness with official capacity, we decided that you might be able to shed more light onto the situation. And we do have couple questions." clarified Piggot and without giving pause, addressed the audience "Everyone else, please keep interference to the minimum, we will discuss this after we will have everything listed. Armsmaster, please recount chronology of events and keep them on screen."
"21 February 2011 at 13:47 PRT call center was notified of empire capes fighting Squealer and Mush, Protectorate promptly responded to emergency." Started Armsmaster. "At 13:51 same day PRT received notification about Undersiders hitting private storehouse and again some of the protectorate roster responded to the emergency. At 14:15 and 14:22 two more calls were reported, one turned up to be fake later but PRT still had to send a team to investigate, another one turned out to be some broken beyond repair yet still active Leet-tech, which pulled in quite a few PRT teams to quarantine the area. In short, we got shorthanded and had no one to timely respond to the next emergency. Roughly at 14:35 started what we now call a 'Brood Mother hunt'. Slightly more then two minutes later, at 14:37 Vista dialed in console and reported gunfire half a block away from her location, she was ordered to evacuate immediately. Vista, I believe it will be better for you to continue from this point. I will add information where necessary and will be adding your report to the screen. Please start from the reason you were there."
"Ok. I was free after school and I knew of a PRT training facility that had some computers that I could use to do a project." started Vista, photo of the facility and city's map with a dot immediately appeared on screen "So I suited up and went there to do some studying. Once I reached the facility I prepared myself some tea and met Taylor Hebert who just finished her tutoring and was leaving the facility. Apparently computers lost internet connection for some reason so she spent no time idling on the net and just went straight home. I had no choice but to drink my tea and go elsewhere myself."
"Sorry for interruption." piped in Armsmaster "But internet cable of that facility was sabotaged, your first report did not mention missing internet connection, please add a follow up report mentioning this."
"Will do." Agreed Vista "While in there, first all light around me completely shut down, then a boom of a lightning arrived, and finally I heard what I believed to be gunfire. I wasn't able to pinpoint the location, so I just took cover and tried to report the situation in, but my HUD reported no connection to phone or network. Surprisingly my PRT phone was off and took longer to boot than usual. Once it booted, over a minute passed, I reported the situation to console and I got orders to retreat."
"Pause, please" asked Armsmaster "According to our data, a single use lightning attractor was installed in the drainage system under the road. Taylor Hebert was right on top of the attractor." On screen two images appeared. One of a road with pitch black spot on it and intact piece of asphalt in boot like form in the middle of said spot. To the side of the spot was a blackened half of 'under construction' sign that apparently was used to make sure Taylor Hebert will walk right where the generator was. On the second image some barrel-like device with couple antennas. "Roughly zero point ninety three billion joules, all concentrated on tight spot, electronics in twenty meter radius were fried completely, damaged within fifty meter radius, most things in two hundred meter radius were at least turned off or their safeties fried. Most things in the middle of the strike zone sans Taylor Hebert were vaporized. Vista, please continue."
"I was ordered to retreat, which meant rooftops. I went to the closest widow and got a nasty surprise – a lot of bugs were gathering outside the window and it made my power wonky. I reported the situation in and was ordered to either hide or retreat if I can find a secure route. Using my power I managed to peek trough windows without exposing myself. On the west side I saw Taylor Hebert running towards the facility I was in, clouds of dust raising from asphalt and soil, I assume those were bullets, large caliber ones. Couple red and green beams highlighted some of the particularly high dust-clouds, tinkertech lasers or something. And there were some more exotic effects, like some flowing whitish spheres. They hit Taylor, but to no apparent effect. I assume those were tinkertech as well? For all I know it might have been parahuman."
"As far as we know, one team did have a parahuman." supplied Armsmaster "A striker, but he had no chance to act and everything else was tinkertech, we collected remains of couple Toybox-made lasers, some fried tinkertech grenades, drugs, one broken tinkertech visor and we suspect there was a plasma delivery system that we weren't able to find, no intact tinkertech was recovered. Aside from tinker tech, the two mercenary teams were outfitted with a fearsome arsenal of heavy weaponry, the list can be found in the files on you tables, however I want to note that we recovered one heavily modified Panzerbuchse anti-tank rifle, three spent ammo cartridges for it and three single use RPGs, only one unspent. Regarding to miss Hebert surviving… we can only assume some kind of force field generated by her pendant, at least we found deformed bullets, remains of a grenade and other ammo, all bear signs of meeting something hard. Two anti-tank bullets are unaccounted for. Vista, please continue."
"Well, I was pretty much mesmerized by the sight, I have enough experience to recognize how much power was unleashed at the girl and she apparently shrugged it off." Vista continued on slightly nervously "At some point Taylor was thrown for couple meters, rose back and started running again. This let me to get a grip onto myself and I updated the console. While I was doing that two streaks of something went towards Taylor, she vanished in bright flash of light, the streaks went through empty air, one impacted the PRT building I was in, another the road meters away from where Taylor was." Images immediately appeared depicting damage to road from bullet and a hole from RPG, as well as destroyed wall of the facility. "At that moment I was shocked again because I assumed that she was vaporized by something so hot that it glowed. That's where things started to get even weirder. Transparent, slightly glowing hexagonal thingies appeared from air couple meters above where Taylor has been and went into different directions very fast. One of them reached mercenary that previously was aiming a tube at Taylor from a road level, from there around hexagonal-thingy a lot of other forms started to appear. Like, dozens. Those forms promptly blasted the mercenary in large explosion. Seconds later, one more hexagonal passed through wall near me and caused my wrapped space to the window and my power as a whole to completely shutdown. It was some very scary seconds with that drone passing less than a meter from me, a lot of loud explosions happening outside, a cloud of insects becoming heavier behind the window and me being absolutely defenseless… Fortunately the thing ignored me. From there I spent some more time in hiding, waiting for my power to restore" Vista avoided the fact that she was not just scared but terrified to the point she could not move. "After my power restored and signs of combat disappeared, I opted to wait for PRT troopers. From there I recone…"
"Please describe Hexagonal constructs in more details. Your visor feed vent missing." Interrupted Armsmaster.
"Well, roughly decimeter and a half in every direction, transparent and glowing color was pale white, 'ghostly' probably describes transparency and color in the best way. Surface was formed completely from large hexagons, hexagons looked like they had integrated circuitry, a lot of it. Those circuits looked a little less transparent and gave off less light and I think that light might have been of slightly different color. Each hexagon had five dots that reminded me of optics, but they were different enough to be some other kind of sensors. There were also inconsistencies inside of the thing, but I could not see it clearly enough. That's all I think."
"Thank you, Vista, I will continue from here." Armsmaster motioned for girl to sit down. "Lets start with hexagonal energy constructs. There were two known types. First appear to function as either recon and teleportation beacon or as factory and guide for combat variant or variants of the same drone model. Combat variant or variants have at least three attack methods, but I must point out that it is unclear if all drones have similar weaponry or if there were different types, the result of all attack methods are on screen. All attack methods appear to be selectively and imperfectly Manton-limited."
"Wait, wait, wait, it leaves a hole like that and you say it is Manton-limited?!!" came an incredulous cry of Assault.
"I was getting there" clarified Armsmaster. "Please don't interrupt. All attacks appear to be non-lethal, somehow, they leave some very light burns, signed hair, even leave large bruises, render targets unconscious. In some cases we noticed signs of steel boiling, but no damage happened to the mercenary in contact with said steel. That's not normal Manton limit, normal limit prevents power from affecting living things, it does not limit powers from affecting living things by proxy, this one is the opposite – it looks like it deliberately suppressed harmful effects yet was perfectly fine with rendering target unconscious over unknown means. How that's possible I have no idea."
"Tinkers are bullshit" once again Assault interjected.
"That's the most likely theory." continued Armsmaster as if no disruption happened. In the case of Assault it was usually simpler to ignore and move on. "Variety of attacks, two types of constructs, method of arrival, quantity of constructs and even appearance of constructs make master-projection theory very unlikely. Moving on. Weapons. First, a ball of energy or plasma. There are couple of two to three meter craters left by shots that hit mercenaries who were priming grenades and last RPG, you can see those on top of the screen. Of note, grenades and other gear were either disintegrated or moved elsewhere, mercenaries were unconscious and mostly naked. Beam type attack - on the bottom left is what remained of the van mercenaries used as transport, it appear to be cleaved in half by a beam, the beam managed to disable everyone inside, most worryingly, there are no signs of beam being slowed down, dissipating or dispersing, despite being visible to observers. And finally a ball of energy. Mercenary's gear that was hit with it is on screen. According to witness statements, this one might be guided or self-guided as a compensation for it's lower firepower. While on theme of constructs, I must point out that while some of the equipment was essentially obliterated by them, some of it went missing from the second van or from ground with no signs of damage to surroundings, we believe that Brood Mother took it. Now to bugs." An ominous dark cloud appeared at the screen "The range of the bug controller is, frankly, terrifying. Bugs were gathered from a radius of two point half kilometers. I think I should note that it was exactly two point half, confirmed down to centimeters, no wavering, perfect circle, we have videos of bugs on dumpsters having a noticeable split. Bugs disabled two mercenaries that were in civilian garb, those mercenaries were coordinating the rest of the team and bugs disabled them prior to appearance of constructs. Judging by some toxins on the gear of offensive part of the team, chemical sprayers and no free skin, mercenaries might have expected bugs to attack. Bugs only started to dissipate shortly before PRT van arrived to evacuate Vista. Situation with Miss Hebert will be covered a bit later. I will just point out that I detected no emissions at the spot, not even changes in background radiation. Questions related to what we covered so far?"
"Who hired the mercenaries? They sound like something Coil would do." Asked one of PRT officers.
"Deputy director Renick." Armsmaster addressed one of the present men "I believe this was your vector of investigation."
"Khm. Both teams were hired independently" replied Rennik. "One from Germany, one from Africa, both are specialized in taking down capes. Tinkertech and heavy weaponry is theirs and was not provided by the contractor. Teams met at Palanquin incidentally, or they think it was an incident, where both went to make sure they won't have any issues with Faultline's crew. Recognized each other on sight and somehow found common ground. Hence a collaborated attack. Teams somehow acquired information on both Hebert's schedule and our patrol schedule. Their primary task seemed to be elimination of Taylor Hebert on film, hence the recording equipment, with secondary objective to retrieve and destroy her pendant. There also were individual instructions for each team for what to do if they fail to destroy the item. Assault happened during the day at that specific place due to heavy traffic separating this region and BBPD office, large open space that permits use of heavy weaponry and explosives, availability of escape routes. Someone really wanted the girl dead, they spent a lot of money to hire these teams. The request for recording and that they wanted the pendant destroyed, not stolen is also weird."
"Thank you. I must point out that pendant potentially interferes with thinker powers, so destroying it might be a temporary measure to make the power work, or for example to clear path to locating creators of the item who no doubt will cause second road block" clarified Armsmaster. "Anything else?"
"Why such attention to Brood Mother? I mean, they look powerful, they caused a fair bit of public unrest and disorder, we can't understand their actions, but so far they do not act openly villainous and keep to themselves." Asked PRT troop Captain Wellson. "Yet I can see here at least seven different departments that are not PRT or protectorate related."
"As much as I would like for it to be not the case, but there are couple tendencies that make a very worrying picture or make Brood Mother important." This time director Piggot decided to answer. "First. Our thinkers are completely trumped, we are operating on scraps of information, even cameras mercenaries were carrying were wiped, same for security feeds of the PRT facility, Vista's visor. Brood Mother has something to hide and does so very very thoughtfully. Second, there were concerns of self reproducing tinkertech. Either tinker in question can stably mass produce his drones which makes him very valuable or drones can self reproduce and self reproducing drones that are made from energy are likely to result in kill order. Third, in this fight only non lethal firepower was used by Brood Mother, but normally non-lethal weaponry is much harder to do than lethal one, estimates of potential firepower for unrestricted variants of those weapons are terrifying by themselves. Add on top of that, the ability to teleport using tiny stone as a beacon… State security services are really worried and are pushing the government, the government is pushing us in turn. The main line is: if Brood Mother decides that terrorism is a thing, there will be zero chances for us, so we need to find a counter. Fourth, Brood Mother is suspected if not of dimensional travel, than at least have cracked long range teleportation and can use it remotely on living targets, potentially can mass-teleport... Both technologies are immensely valuable even if we won't be able to reproduce them. And finally trumping by itself. Blackout is complete. Thinkers, precogs, tinkertech, other capes. No power proved to work on Brood Mother's tech, because no power sees it. Effect vary in range and can cover from just the pendant to pendant, wielder and area around. That's a trump effect of unprecedented power and versatility, so we are ordered to acquire services of Brood Mother and we need to test if it works on Simurgh or like protection against masters. I can list more reasons like the ability to organize literal biblical plague or that Brood Mother might be breaking couple laws related to dimensional travel, but those are very minor in comparison."
"Thank you director." Proceeded Armsmaster. "Anyone else?" no one answered, but a lot of people proceeded to scribe something in their notebooks, so Armsmaster switched the projector to show timeline of events. "According to our data, the battle lasted at most 4 minutes after constructs arrived, however insects continued to gather. At 14:49 cloud was so huge that E88 capes decided to retreat, merchants followed suit." Again an ominous dark cloud appeared on the screen, this time it was dissipating "One of freed PRT teams was immediately routed to pick up Vista. At 14:57 the cloud started rapidly dispersing, albeit in controllable fashion. We are still unsure of the purpose of the cloud, only two mercenaries were disabled by insects, both before constructs appeared. At 15:24 PRT van picked up Vista. Vista, please."
"I was on the way to the van, still a little shaky, when one of the troopers pointed out that mercenaries are alive, console decided that not only event already passed, the only lethal side was completely disabled, so if I'm up to it, I can show where and what happened. I was near the spot Taylor Hebert was killed at, when said girl, apparently well and alive, dropped on top of me like a sack of potatoes. I freaked out a bit, but managed to regain my balance. I checked on Taylor, who looked really dazed and even shakier than me, literally, she had trouble standing for couple minutes. Yet she was somehow unnaturally calm for such situation. I proceeded to report the incident in, troopers produced a blanket for Taylor and a coffee, led her to the van while I proceeded with the report."
"Stop please." Interrupted Miss Militia. "Vista, according to you, Taylor shown some unusual behavior?"
"Later in the van we were discussing situation" explained Vista "and Taylor said that teleporting was really disorienting. And she explained calmness as the result of logic and time. Being practice dummy for dozen armed men is not fun, but she had quite a bit of time to calm down, a beautiful beach nearby to speed up the process and since she reasoned teleporting her away from under fire is bothersome, nobody will do so just so that she would die from thirst or hunger. Taylor just resolved herself to wait and not to go too far from her initial location. Why? Is that important?"
"Merely making sure there were no master or stranger effects." Miss militia pressed on "Brood Mother shown some impressive capabilities and extreme degree of stealth, it is expected of them to cover all bases. Anything else of note about Taylor Hebert? Concerns? Worries? Anything that caught your eye?"
"No, I don't think so. Sans her being very smart and understanding dimensional surfaces…" Vista paused for a second "Are you suspecting her in being part of Brood Mother?"
"No we do not, just covering our bases" replied Miss Militia.
"Wait a bit, you said the girl understands dimensional surfaces? At her age?" piped in PRT officer from the power testing department.
"Well, she can decipher my drawings" shrugged Vista. "Which your department confirmed needs a whole degree in at least two fields of physics just to recognize and couple hours of work to decipher. She understood what I drew in couple minutes."
"Damn, I haven't met the girl and I already feel intimidated by her intellect alone."
"Order please." Piggot stopped her excitable subordinate. "Any more questions to Vista?" when nobody replied, Piggot continued "Armsmaster some of the present people are not in the know, so please explain why we have concerns."
"22 February at 16:00" Armsmaster started "I was collecting statement from one Taylor Hebert. In the process several inconsistencies arose. First she claimed that she did not recognize the place she was teleported to, my lie detector marke…" Immediately a hand arouse in the back drawing attention. Armsmaster sighted. "No, it is legal, it is accurate, not recognizable in court, see documentation in my file. Back on track. My lie detector marked it as lie. So I decided to clarify a bit. Couple questions later I started to strongly suspect that Miss Hebert was to that place at least once before and that it is not on Earth Bet. I threw in questions about the team that created the pendant and all pinged as truth, Taylor Hebert was never in contact with the team, team never contacted her and made no indication that team is observing her. I asked if Miss Hebert is aware of the capabilities of her device and she said no, which pinged as truth, e t c. Second inconsistency arose when I asked if she had any control over situation. She said that it was out of her control, but apparently she did have some control. When I asked if she can control the device, she said that the device does everything on its own and it was truth… Couple more questions mixed into the normal procedure and now I'm under opinion that miss Hebert is hiding some capabilities of interaction with the device. She can do something with it, probably give some small commands, but I can't tell what. I finalized the questioning by asking whether she knows anything about how the device works. Miss Hebert said, magic, and it was truth. Third and final inconsistency arose when I commented that we will look for a way to remove the necklace. Her answer about it probably being safer without the necklace was a lie. But I'm not quite sure what to make of it. Miss Hebert knows that not being a target is preferable and I made sure girl was aware of potential dangers, potential need for maintenance and other issues that can happen with tinkertech in the hands of civilians. However maintenance part probably does not apply in this case. Brood Mother can simply teleport parts in and out for maintenance."
"I was at the questioning." added Miss Militia "And most of her answers related to necklace seemed to avoid something, it was not obvious, but since I was clued in by Armsmaster about something being wrong, I listened attentively and I agree, Taylor Hebert was hiding something. The part that Armsmaster highlighted about magic and control over the device, he did so on my request. It felt like Taylor Hebert gave us truth without giving us truth. I think she suspects something about the device, that's the only conclusion I can come up with that will make 'magic' a truth – she has something, but she does not understand what she has."
"I still say, that's a straw, Miss Militia." commented Piggot. "She is in no connection with Brood Mother, as such she is unlikely to have information of value. For all we know she might have simply picked something up during Armsmaster's tests or figured out a way for the device to change color or act as a flashlight and made a huge personal secret out of it."
"But this straw is the only thing we have" defended Miss Militia. "Can we really disregard it?"
"We can't, yet we should: unfortunately the girl is not in any legal trouble, she is not parahuman and we can't press her to answer on mere suspicion." concluded Piggot "Not without getting ourselves into lots of trouble with minimal gain. Frustratingly enough, we even recognized pendant as officially hers since the thing was apparently inert and of no importance, now it came back to bite us. And that is without knowing what Brood Mother will do if we decide to press. Vista, anything you think you should add?"
"No, I can't think of anything."
"In such case, thank you, you are free to go, if we keep you here any longer, youth guard might start to stir."
"Good day… Oh, before I go. Why Brood Mother?"
"For being total mother hens and selecting a bug theme. If they want to complain, they are free to do so personally."
P.S. Got inspired by discussion about Taylor attacking from different dimension while spawning a lot of bullets. Unfortunately omak was meant to be short, simple dialogue between Taylor and Amsmaster where Taylor constantly gives 'It's magic' answer thus frustrating him to no end, as well as inquires why 'Brood Mother', but omak tuned out to be much longer and more boring than I wanted it to.
"Vista, come in" Piggot welcomed new arrival into conference room. "We were waiting for you."
"Hello. Ugh" Vista looked slightly intimidated by full protectorate roster being present and a lot of people she did not recognize "Director? If I may, why am I here?"
"New facts surfaced related to incident that took place four days ago, as an only direct witness with official capacity, we decided that you might be able to shed more light onto the situation. And we do have couple questions." clarified Piggot and without giving pause, addressed the audience "Everyone else, please keep interference to the minimum, we will discuss this after we will have everything listed. Armsmaster, please recount chronology of events and keep them on screen."
"21 February 2011 at 13:47 PRT call center was notified of empire capes fighting Squealer and Mush, Protectorate promptly responded to emergency." Started Armsmaster. "At 13:51 same day PRT received notification about Undersiders hitting private storehouse and again some of the protectorate roster responded to the emergency. At 14:15 and 14:22 two more calls were reported, one turned up to be fake later but PRT still had to send a team to investigate, another one turned out to be some broken beyond repair yet still active Leet-tech, which pulled in quite a few PRT teams to quarantine the area. In short, we got shorthanded and had no one to timely respond to the next emergency. Roughly at 14:35 started what we now call a 'Brood Mother hunt'. Slightly more then two minutes later, at 14:37 Vista dialed in console and reported gunfire half a block away from her location, she was ordered to evacuate immediately. Vista, I believe it will be better for you to continue from this point. I will add information where necessary and will be adding your report to the screen. Please start from the reason you were there."
"Ok. I was free after school and I knew of a PRT training facility that had some computers that I could use to do a project." started Vista, photo of the facility and city's map with a dot immediately appeared on screen "So I suited up and went there to do some studying. Once I reached the facility I prepared myself some tea and met Taylor Hebert who just finished her tutoring and was leaving the facility. Apparently computers lost internet connection for some reason so she spent no time idling on the net and just went straight home. I had no choice but to drink my tea and go elsewhere myself."
"Sorry for interruption." piped in Armsmaster "But internet cable of that facility was sabotaged, your first report did not mention missing internet connection, please add a follow up report mentioning this."
"Will do." Agreed Vista "While in there, first all light around me completely shut down, then a boom of a lightning arrived, and finally I heard what I believed to be gunfire. I wasn't able to pinpoint the location, so I just took cover and tried to report the situation in, but my HUD reported no connection to phone or network. Surprisingly my PRT phone was off and took longer to boot than usual. Once it booted, over a minute passed, I reported the situation to console and I got orders to retreat."
"Pause, please" asked Armsmaster "According to our data, a single use lightning attractor was installed in the drainage system under the road. Taylor Hebert was right on top of the attractor." On screen two images appeared. One of a road with pitch black spot on it and intact piece of asphalt in boot like form in the middle of said spot. To the side of the spot was a blackened half of 'under construction' sign that apparently was used to make sure Taylor Hebert will walk right where the generator was. On the second image some barrel-like device with couple antennas. "Roughly zero point ninety three billion joules, all concentrated on tight spot, electronics in twenty meter radius were fried completely, damaged within fifty meter radius, most things in two hundred meter radius were at least turned off or their safeties fried. Most things in the middle of the strike zone sans Taylor Hebert were vaporized. Vista, please continue."
"I was ordered to retreat, which meant rooftops. I went to the closest widow and got a nasty surprise – a lot of bugs were gathering outside the window and it made my power wonky. I reported the situation in and was ordered to either hide or retreat if I can find a secure route. Using my power I managed to peek trough windows without exposing myself. On the west side I saw Taylor Hebert running towards the facility I was in, clouds of dust raising from asphalt and soil, I assume those were bullets, large caliber ones. Couple red and green beams highlighted some of the particularly high dust-clouds, tinkertech lasers or something. And there were some more exotic effects, like some flowing whitish spheres. They hit Taylor, but to no apparent effect. I assume those were tinkertech as well? For all I know it might have been parahuman."
"As far as we know, one team did have a parahuman." supplied Armsmaster "A striker, but he had no chance to act and everything else was tinkertech, we collected remains of couple Toybox-made lasers, some fried tinkertech grenades, drugs, one broken tinkertech visor and we suspect there was a plasma delivery system that we weren't able to find, no intact tinkertech was recovered. Aside from tinker tech, the two mercenary teams were outfitted with a fearsome arsenal of heavy weaponry, the list can be found in the files on you tables, however I want to note that we recovered one heavily modified Panzerbuchse anti-tank rifle, three spent ammo cartridges for it and three single use RPGs, only one unspent. Regarding to miss Hebert surviving… we can only assume some kind of force field generated by her pendant, at least we found deformed bullets, remains of a grenade and other ammo, all bear signs of meeting something hard. Two anti-tank bullets are unaccounted for. Vista, please continue."
"Well, I was pretty much mesmerized by the sight, I have enough experience to recognize how much power was unleashed at the girl and she apparently shrugged it off." Vista continued on slightly nervously "At some point Taylor was thrown for couple meters, rose back and started running again. This let me to get a grip onto myself and I updated the console. While I was doing that two streaks of something went towards Taylor, she vanished in bright flash of light, the streaks went through empty air, one impacted the PRT building I was in, another the road meters away from where Taylor was." Images immediately appeared depicting damage to road from bullet and a hole from RPG, as well as destroyed wall of the facility. "At that moment I was shocked again because I assumed that she was vaporized by something so hot that it glowed. That's where things started to get even weirder. Transparent, slightly glowing hexagonal thingies appeared from air couple meters above where Taylor has been and went into different directions very fast. One of them reached mercenary that previously was aiming a tube at Taylor from a road level, from there around hexagonal-thingy a lot of other forms started to appear. Like, dozens. Those forms promptly blasted the mercenary in large explosion. Seconds later, one more hexagonal passed through wall near me and caused my wrapped space to the window and my power as a whole to completely shutdown. It was some very scary seconds with that drone passing less than a meter from me, a lot of loud explosions happening outside, a cloud of insects becoming heavier behind the window and me being absolutely defenseless… Fortunately the thing ignored me. From there I spent some more time in hiding, waiting for my power to restore" Vista avoided the fact that she was not just scared but terrified to the point she could not move. "After my power restored and signs of combat disappeared, I opted to wait for PRT troopers. From there I recone…"
"Please describe Hexagonal constructs in more details. Your visor feed vent missing." Interrupted Armsmaster.
"Well, roughly decimeter and a half in every direction, transparent and glowing color was pale white, 'ghostly' probably describes transparency and color in the best way. Surface was formed completely from large hexagons, hexagons looked like they had integrated circuitry, a lot of it. Those circuits looked a little less transparent and gave off less light and I think that light might have been of slightly different color. Each hexagon had five dots that reminded me of optics, but they were different enough to be some other kind of sensors. There were also inconsistencies inside of the thing, but I could not see it clearly enough. That's all I think."
"Thank you, Vista, I will continue from here." Armsmaster motioned for girl to sit down. "Lets start with hexagonal energy constructs. There were two known types. First appear to function as either recon and teleportation beacon or as factory and guide for combat variant or variants of the same drone model. Combat variant or variants have at least three attack methods, but I must point out that it is unclear if all drones have similar weaponry or if there were different types, the result of all attack methods are on screen. All attack methods appear to be selectively and imperfectly Manton-limited."
"Wait, wait, wait, it leaves a hole like that and you say it is Manton-limited?!!" came an incredulous cry of Assault.
"I was getting there" clarified Armsmaster. "Please don't interrupt. All attacks appear to be non-lethal, somehow, they leave some very light burns, signed hair, even leave large bruises, render targets unconscious. In some cases we noticed signs of steel boiling, but no damage happened to the mercenary in contact with said steel. That's not normal Manton limit, normal limit prevents power from affecting living things, it does not limit powers from affecting living things by proxy, this one is the opposite – it looks like it deliberately suppressed harmful effects yet was perfectly fine with rendering target unconscious over unknown means. How that's possible I have no idea."
"Tinkers are bullshit" once again Assault interjected.
"That's the most likely theory." continued Armsmaster as if no disruption happened. In the case of Assault it was usually simpler to ignore and move on. "Variety of attacks, two types of constructs, method of arrival, quantity of constructs and even appearance of constructs make master-projection theory very unlikely. Moving on. Weapons. First, a ball of energy or plasma. There are couple of two to three meter craters left by shots that hit mercenaries who were priming grenades and last RPG, you can see those on top of the screen. Of note, grenades and other gear were either disintegrated or moved elsewhere, mercenaries were unconscious and mostly naked. Beam type attack - on the bottom left is what remained of the van mercenaries used as transport, it appear to be cleaved in half by a beam, the beam managed to disable everyone inside, most worryingly, there are no signs of beam being slowed down, dissipating or dispersing, despite being visible to observers. And finally a ball of energy. Mercenary's gear that was hit with it is on screen. According to witness statements, this one might be guided or self-guided as a compensation for it's lower firepower. While on theme of constructs, I must point out that while some of the equipment was essentially obliterated by them, some of it went missing from the second van or from ground with no signs of damage to surroundings, we believe that Brood Mother took it. Now to bugs." An ominous dark cloud appeared at the screen "The range of the bug controller is, frankly, terrifying. Bugs were gathered from a radius of two point half kilometers. I think I should note that it was exactly two point half, confirmed down to centimeters, no wavering, perfect circle, we have videos of bugs on dumpsters having a noticeable split. Bugs disabled two mercenaries that were in civilian garb, those mercenaries were coordinating the rest of the team and bugs disabled them prior to appearance of constructs. Judging by some toxins on the gear of offensive part of the team, chemical sprayers and no free skin, mercenaries might have expected bugs to attack. Bugs only started to dissipate shortly before PRT van arrived to evacuate Vista. Situation with Miss Hebert will be covered a bit later. I will just point out that I detected no emissions at the spot, not even changes in background radiation. Questions related to what we covered so far?"
"Who hired the mercenaries? They sound like something Coil would do." Asked one of PRT officers.
"Deputy director Renick." Armsmaster addressed one of the present men "I believe this was your vector of investigation."
"Khm. Both teams were hired independently" replied Rennik. "One from Germany, one from Africa, both are specialized in taking down capes. Tinkertech and heavy weaponry is theirs and was not provided by the contractor. Teams met at Palanquin incidentally, or they think it was an incident, where both went to make sure they won't have any issues with Faultline's crew. Recognized each other on sight and somehow found common ground. Hence a collaborated attack. Teams somehow acquired information on both Hebert's schedule and our patrol schedule. Their primary task seemed to be elimination of Taylor Hebert on film, hence the recording equipment, with secondary objective to retrieve and destroy her pendant. There also were individual instructions for each team for what to do if they fail to destroy the item. Assault happened during the day at that specific place due to heavy traffic separating this region and BBPD office, large open space that permits use of heavy weaponry and explosives, availability of escape routes. Someone really wanted the girl dead, they spent a lot of money to hire these teams. The request for recording and that they wanted the pendant destroyed, not stolen is also weird."
"Thank you. I must point out that pendant potentially interferes with thinker powers, so destroying it might be a temporary measure to make the power work, or for example to clear path to locating creators of the item who no doubt will cause second road block" clarified Armsmaster. "Anything else?"
"Why such attention to Brood Mother? I mean, they look powerful, they caused a fair bit of public unrest and disorder, we can't understand their actions, but so far they do not act openly villainous and keep to themselves." Asked PRT troop Captain Wellson. "Yet I can see here at least seven different departments that are not PRT or protectorate related."
"As much as I would like for it to be not the case, but there are couple tendencies that make a very worrying picture or make Brood Mother important." This time director Piggot decided to answer. "First. Our thinkers are completely trumped, we are operating on scraps of information, even cameras mercenaries were carrying were wiped, same for security feeds of the PRT facility, Vista's visor. Brood Mother has something to hide and does so very very thoughtfully. Second, there were concerns of self reproducing tinkertech. Either tinker in question can stably mass produce his drones which makes him very valuable or drones can self reproduce and self reproducing drones that are made from energy are likely to result in kill order. Third, in this fight only non lethal firepower was used by Brood Mother, but normally non-lethal weaponry is much harder to do than lethal one, estimates of potential firepower for unrestricted variants of those weapons are terrifying by themselves. Add on top of that, the ability to teleport using tiny stone as a beacon… State security services are really worried and are pushing the government, the government is pushing us in turn. The main line is: if Brood Mother decides that terrorism is a thing, there will be zero chances for us, so we need to find a counter. Fourth, Brood Mother is suspected if not of dimensional travel, than at least have cracked long range teleportation and can use it remotely on living targets, potentially can mass-teleport... Both technologies are immensely valuable even if we won't be able to reproduce them. And finally trumping by itself. Blackout is complete. Thinkers, precogs, tinkertech, other capes. No power proved to work on Brood Mother's tech, because no power sees it. Effect vary in range and can cover from just the pendant to pendant, wielder and area around. That's a trump effect of unprecedented power and versatility, so we are ordered to acquire services of Brood Mother and we need to test if it works on Simurgh or like protection against masters. I can list more reasons like the ability to organize literal biblical plague or that Brood Mother might be breaking couple laws related to dimensional travel, but those are very minor in comparison."
"Thank you director." Proceeded Armsmaster. "Anyone else?" no one answered, but a lot of people proceeded to scribe something in their notebooks, so Armsmaster switched the projector to show timeline of events. "According to our data, the battle lasted at most 4 minutes after constructs arrived, however insects continued to gather. At 14:49 cloud was so huge that E88 capes decided to retreat, merchants followed suit." Again an ominous dark cloud appeared on the screen, this time it was dissipating "One of freed PRT teams was immediately routed to pick up Vista. At 14:57 the cloud started rapidly dispersing, albeit in controllable fashion. We are still unsure of the purpose of the cloud, only two mercenaries were disabled by insects, both before constructs appeared. At 15:24 PRT van picked up Vista. Vista, please."
"I was on the way to the van, still a little shaky, when one of the troopers pointed out that mercenaries are alive, console decided that not only event already passed, the only lethal side was completely disabled, so if I'm up to it, I can show where and what happened. I was near the spot Taylor Hebert was killed at, when said girl, apparently well and alive, dropped on top of me like a sack of potatoes. I freaked out a bit, but managed to regain my balance. I checked on Taylor, who looked really dazed and even shakier than me, literally, she had trouble standing for couple minutes. Yet she was somehow unnaturally calm for such situation. I proceeded to report the incident in, troopers produced a blanket for Taylor and a coffee, led her to the van while I proceeded with the report."
"Stop please." Interrupted Miss Militia. "Vista, according to you, Taylor shown some unusual behavior?"
"Later in the van we were discussing situation" explained Vista "and Taylor said that teleporting was really disorienting. And she explained calmness as the result of logic and time. Being practice dummy for dozen armed men is not fun, but she had quite a bit of time to calm down, a beautiful beach nearby to speed up the process and since she reasoned teleporting her away from under fire is bothersome, nobody will do so just so that she would die from thirst or hunger. Taylor just resolved herself to wait and not to go too far from her initial location. Why? Is that important?"
"Merely making sure there were no master or stranger effects." Miss militia pressed on "Brood Mother shown some impressive capabilities and extreme degree of stealth, it is expected of them to cover all bases. Anything else of note about Taylor Hebert? Concerns? Worries? Anything that caught your eye?"
"No, I don't think so. Sans her being very smart and understanding dimensional surfaces…" Vista paused for a second "Are you suspecting her in being part of Brood Mother?"
"No we do not, just covering our bases" replied Miss Militia.
"Wait a bit, you said the girl understands dimensional surfaces? At her age?" piped in PRT officer from the power testing department.
"Well, she can decipher my drawings" shrugged Vista. "Which your department confirmed needs a whole degree in at least two fields of physics just to recognize and couple hours of work to decipher. She understood what I drew in couple minutes."
"Damn, I haven't met the girl and I already feel intimidated by her intellect alone."
"Order please." Piggot stopped her excitable subordinate. "Any more questions to Vista?" when nobody replied, Piggot continued "Armsmaster some of the present people are not in the know, so please explain why we have concerns."
"22 February at 16:00" Armsmaster started "I was collecting statement from one Taylor Hebert. In the process several inconsistencies arose. First she claimed that she did not recognize the place she was teleported to, my lie detector marke…" Immediately a hand arouse in the back drawing attention. Armsmaster sighted. "No, it is legal, it is accurate, not recognizable in court, see documentation in my file. Back on track. My lie detector marked it as lie. So I decided to clarify a bit. Couple questions later I started to strongly suspect that Miss Hebert was to that place at least once before and that it is not on Earth Bet. I threw in questions about the team that created the pendant and all pinged as truth, Taylor Hebert was never in contact with the team, team never contacted her and made no indication that team is observing her. I asked if Miss Hebert is aware of the capabilities of her device and she said no, which pinged as truth, e t c. Second inconsistency arose when I asked if she had any control over situation. She said that it was out of her control, but apparently she did have some control. When I asked if she can control the device, she said that the device does everything on its own and it was truth… Couple more questions mixed into the normal procedure and now I'm under opinion that miss Hebert is hiding some capabilities of interaction with the device. She can do something with it, probably give some small commands, but I can't tell what. I finalized the questioning by asking whether she knows anything about how the device works. Miss Hebert said, magic, and it was truth. Third and final inconsistency arose when I commented that we will look for a way to remove the necklace. Her answer about it probably being safer without the necklace was a lie. But I'm not quite sure what to make of it. Miss Hebert knows that not being a target is preferable and I made sure girl was aware of potential dangers, potential need for maintenance and other issues that can happen with tinkertech in the hands of civilians. However maintenance part probably does not apply in this case. Brood Mother can simply teleport parts in and out for maintenance."
"I was at the questioning." added Miss Militia "And most of her answers related to necklace seemed to avoid something, it was not obvious, but since I was clued in by Armsmaster about something being wrong, I listened attentively and I agree, Taylor Hebert was hiding something. The part that Armsmaster highlighted about magic and control over the device, he did so on my request. It felt like Taylor Hebert gave us truth without giving us truth. I think she suspects something about the device, that's the only conclusion I can come up with that will make 'magic' a truth – she has something, but she does not understand what she has."
"I still say, that's a straw, Miss Militia." commented Piggot. "She is in no connection with Brood Mother, as such she is unlikely to have information of value. For all we know she might have simply picked something up during Armsmaster's tests or figured out a way for the device to change color or act as a flashlight and made a huge personal secret out of it."
"But this straw is the only thing we have" defended Miss Militia. "Can we really disregard it?"
"We can't, yet we should: unfortunately the girl is not in any legal trouble, she is not parahuman and we can't press her to answer on mere suspicion." concluded Piggot "Not without getting ourselves into lots of trouble with minimal gain. Frustratingly enough, we even recognized pendant as officially hers since the thing was apparently inert and of no importance, now it came back to bite us. And that is without knowing what Brood Mother will do if we decide to press. Vista, anything you think you should add?"
"No, I can't think of anything."
"In such case, thank you, you are free to go, if we keep you here any longer, youth guard might start to stir."
"Good day… Oh, before I go. Why Brood Mother?"
"For being total mother hens and selecting a bug theme. If they want to complain, they are free to do so personally."
P.S. Got inspired by discussion about Taylor attacking from different dimension while spawning a lot of bullets. Unfortunately omak was meant to be short, simple dialogue between Taylor and Amsmaster where Taylor constantly gives 'It's magic' answer thus frustrating him to no end, as well as inquires why 'Brood Mother', but omak tuned out to be much longer and more boring than I wanted it to.
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Ahhh, but Taylor is no longer little.
And I don't expect to be making any more overt owl references.
Because Taylor doesn't want an obvious insect-based link to Hive's stealth form of a ladybug necklace?
Also, have a threadmark.
- Location
- Venezuela
Hey, nice story here. Though I have some gripes with it that other people have already commented on, as that would be nothing new and your fans get overprotective (granted, some complaints where bad, but there was a good amount of honest, noninsulting and constructive criticisms too) I'll just name one thing that silently drives me mad:
Shards can't deal with magic. They get absolutely no selled by it. And Tattletale gets absolutely nothing from her. Well, at least she doesn't just drop on the floor screaming in pain like she just looked at some horrific and incompresible cthulhu, so there is that for you.
Yeah, no. Just no. God I get tired of this shit with fanfics. Entities are made to deal with, learn, reverse enginner and adapt every scrap of knowledge, information, technology and other such means of understanding and altering the universe to their advantage. You can't just slap them with an outside context problem/power and watch them suffer, because understating and reverse engineering things outside of their knowledge and turning them to their advantage are what they are damn made for.
They have, somehow, not ever encountered magic or something close to it. Ok. That is still believable, if far fetched. Thinker shards have problems with magic. That's also understandable, they have no previous knowledge of anything she does. But shouldn't they be learning something already? Tattletale shard specially, as it's basically THE shard for analyzing and extrapolating stuff, should be slowly but constantly gathering scraps of information that help make better asumptions. And Coils precog shard should be getting slowly debuged, though with her so far from him and not really showing off her abilities the simulation wouldn't be reliable for some time.
Maybe Eden, the Thinker entity and the one mostly responsible for doing changes on the fly and adapting to things, being dead and Scion being a useless emo have crippled the system, so the shards can't learn and adapt on the whole, but individually they damn well should be able to do small bugfixes taking into account new data. The tinkers too, though their powers are not really attuned for the task, their shards should still be able to get something, inspiration if nothing else. Eventually. If I remember right, information sharing only happens on Trigger events, between a parent shard and its bud if they're close enough, and all its pretty active on cluster triggers.
I just hope this gets addressed someway other that "lol, nope, entities get bluescreened by magic. Forever." If you want to nerf precog and thinkers, you don't really need to. Magic should logically already cause bugs in their logic, thinkers are also human and are falible, and Cauldron is fucking stupid and useless. Even the Simmurgh should have to make at least a couple tries to understand her, though yes, she would eventually get a very acuratte model about Taylor. Like Contessa has about Eidolon, a guy who is literally blocked by her power; by extrapolating past and current information and building a mental model of how he acts and what he has been show to be capable.
True, little time has passed and she hasn't really exhibited what she can do close to shard users that could learn something from it, but all signs point to this happening and it just irks me.
With that said, nice story. It's still enjoyable and I'm not hate posting and demanding you change how you write, just mentioning what I see as a plot hole in the metaphysics of the wormverse that admitedly annoys me. Maybe when she finally starts going out and doing stuff my fears will slowly be proven wrong, but until then.
Thanks for your work, and thanks for your time reading this.
Shards can't deal with magic. They get absolutely no selled by it. And Tattletale gets absolutely nothing from her. Well, at least she doesn't just drop on the floor screaming in pain like she just looked at some horrific and incompresible cthulhu, so there is that for you.
Yeah, no. Just no. God I get tired of this shit with fanfics. Entities are made to deal with, learn, reverse enginner and adapt every scrap of knowledge, information, technology and other such means of understanding and altering the universe to their advantage. You can't just slap them with an outside context problem/power and watch them suffer, because understating and reverse engineering things outside of their knowledge and turning them to their advantage are what they are damn made for.
They have, somehow, not ever encountered magic or something close to it. Ok. That is still believable, if far fetched. Thinker shards have problems with magic. That's also understandable, they have no previous knowledge of anything she does. But shouldn't they be learning something already? Tattletale shard specially, as it's basically THE shard for analyzing and extrapolating stuff, should be slowly but constantly gathering scraps of information that help make better asumptions. And Coils precog shard should be getting slowly debuged, though with her so far from him and not really showing off her abilities the simulation wouldn't be reliable for some time.
Maybe Eden, the Thinker entity and the one mostly responsible for doing changes on the fly and adapting to things, being dead and Scion being a useless emo have crippled the system, so the shards can't learn and adapt on the whole, but individually they damn well should be able to do small bugfixes taking into account new data. The tinkers too, though their powers are not really attuned for the task, their shards should still be able to get something, inspiration if nothing else. Eventually. If I remember right, information sharing only happens on Trigger events, between a parent shard and its bud if they're close enough, and all its pretty active on cluster triggers.
I just hope this gets addressed someway other that "lol, nope, entities get bluescreened by magic. Forever." If you want to nerf precog and thinkers, you don't really need to. Magic should logically already cause bugs in their logic, thinkers are also human and are falible, and Cauldron is fucking stupid and useless. Even the Simmurgh should have to make at least a couple tries to understand her, though yes, she would eventually get a very acuratte model about Taylor. Like Contessa has about Eidolon, a guy who is literally blocked by her power; by extrapolating past and current information and building a mental model of how he acts and what he has been show to be capable.
True, little time has passed and she hasn't really exhibited what she can do close to shard users that could learn something from it, but all signs point to this happening and it just irks me.
With that said, nice story. It's still enjoyable and I'm not hate posting and demanding you change how you write, just mentioning what I see as a plot hole in the metaphysics of the wormverse that admitedly annoys me. Maybe when she finally starts going out and doing stuff my fears will slowly be proven wrong, but until then.
Thanks for your work, and thanks for your time reading this.
Chapter 16 - April 13, 2011
Wednesday afternoon Taylor found that all the stoplights to be removed had been disconnected with temporary stop signs and warnings of the impending work put up. She took a few minutes to examine the area with insects in order to figure out the likely scope of that for her own reference before continuing home. The package sitting on the front steps was carefully examined before being brought inside, then scanned in her room before being brought back downstairs for her father to open. It wasn't likely that a box of paperwork was going to be a physical threat beyond papercuts, after all.
With that taken care of, she deployed her 'cameras' before heading back upstairs and checking to make sure the beach was clear. Finding nothing wrong there she transferred over, then carefully adjusted the Knight Armor template to include a name patch before casting the spell. To her embarrassment, this took three attempts to get right. The first time she'd somehow put the patch on the inside of the jacket and the second time she'd transposed the r and the v in Minerva.
Hive had apparently made a tweaked 'wrapper' bullet that could target locations and was using it to 'unload' training drones. Taylor was a bit shocked when she looked out over the water at the collection of them. "How many did you make?"
Tilting her head, Hive gestured at the collection. "I stopped at two hundred and sixteen, but I've only deployed thirty-six for now."
"I didn't think I'd quite gotten the hang of working with seven."
"If the programming I've put into them works then they'll work as six groups of six. Two on defense to keep you from shooting them down, two attacking with mana-based attacks, and two simulating firearms with more solid mana techniques. They'll stay together to provide a focused fire situation to test your shields. You did come up with a couple of potential shield designs earlier, correct?"
Taylor nodded. "I did. Untested designs, but I came up with them."
Hive smirked. "What better way to test them then under live fire conditions?"
Grumbling, Taylor cast the flight spell and the first shield design. It was reminiscent of a police riot shield, a partial cylinder with a window cast as though it were part of her Knight Armor, but without the anchor to her. Into it she'd laid as much protective magic as she could. She then deployed Hal and took to the air. It didn't take long to determine that while useful, the 'riot shield' design wasn't maneuverable enough when she was surrounded.
In mid-air she dismantled the riot shield and brought up a smaller hexagonal shield that she'd based on the static hex shield spell. Slightly curved in the front, it wasn't as protective as the riot shield but was lighter and more maneuverable. It worked out far better for reacting to shots from around her, but still wasn't enough for the amount of fire coming at her. Granted, short of an all out gang war she didn't expect to be surrounded by people attacking her anytime soon. That and she wasn't sure that she had to worry about bullets at all, since only the mana attacks were doing significant damage to any of her protections.
Eventually the training drones shut down and Taylor came in for a landing next to Hive. Who appeared to be running tests with a single training drone. "Trying to make this even harder for me?"
Hive shook her head. "No, my Lord. I'm tweaking data gathering routines. I was unable to pick up on any long-range mana signatures, but I'm hoping that by setting up a larger array that I'll have more luck. To that end, I've got a software configuration for the training drones that should allow for a much wider spread. I deploy the drones out, then have each drone deploy six sensor drone spells. The resulting array should hopefully be large enough to pick up on things the smaller array I'd tried before missed."
"So you're looking to double the effective radius of your sensor net by using the training drones as relays?"
"Essentially, though I'll also be casting my original sensor drone net as well within the radius that I deploy the training drones in. As such I will need more of the multitasking hardware when I make the attempt."
Taylor shrugged and retrieved a bottle of water. "I'm guessing that either they aren't out there or are far enough away at this point to make communication difficult. But it would be nice to know either way."
After some recovery time Taylor switched to practicing on the beach with a cutting tool. With any luck she'd be able to train herself to not bring the cut line across her own body.
That evening Taylor reduced the range of her overnight insect control based monitoring to free up some additional multitasking hardware for Hive. Approaching twenty thousand additional sensor sets to tie into the sensor array necessitated using more hardware. Instead, Taylor's focus was coming up with a better shield design, and she was using the simulation system to try out various things.
Right now one of her main problems was intercepting incoming attacks with any of the shields available. Snap-casting the hex shield spell was something she could do, but it tended to anchor in place. The more solid shield designs were held, which limited how she could use them itself. They also took more time to cast, but didn't anchor in place. Adding one or two as optional pieces of her Knight Armor template to simplify casting them slightly was already on her to-do list, but they weren't really an independent spell at this point.
'Strapping on' an instance of the smaller hexagonal solid shield allowed for freeing up her hand to use when casting, but that didn't work out nearly as well on both arms. She found it getting in the way of some movements with Hal, though it might not be as bad with a cutting tool instead. Perhaps she needed to make something a little more 'active'? If she could get the shield to float off of her body wherever she put it then with any luck she could keep it out of the way.
"My Lord," Hive called from where she'd inserted herself into the simulation, interrupting Taylor's train of thought.
Taylor turned to her. "What's up?"
"I've found something odd, though it doesn't translate well to three dimensions. It's simple enough to build a representation of, if you'd permit me to utilize the simulation system to do so."
"Oh. Okay, you have me curious now anyway."
It wasn't long before Taylor and Hive were floating in a large void, various spheres floating around them. Each sphere, when examined, contained what looked like part of the solar system. One of those spheres was in the dead center of things. It took a moment to realize that there was a veil of some kind, with harder to see spheres outside of it. Thanks to a minimum of dimensional shenanigans it was obviously centered on and yet not centered on the central sphere, depending on your choice of dimensional axis.
Hive looked things over before nodding, then traced two dotted lines through the space created. The first was between the center sphere and one of the others, the second was from the 'veil' and ended halfway down the first.
"My Lord," Hive said, gesturing at the surroundings. "This is a loose representation of the local dimensional space. Each little sphere is a version of your planet and its star system, with the one in the center being the one that your people know as 'Earth Bet'." She then pointed at the other sphere connected with a dotted line. "This is the Earth upon which the Shard-type device I absorbed once resided. It also happens to be the barren planet with the powerful storms that we'd planned for possible more difficult flight tests in."
Hive then moved along the other dotted line to the 'veil'. "This line represents the approach vector of the Unison-style device I started out as. It comes in from a ragged 'gap' in this shroud over the entire region. There are barely-lingering traces of mana along the entire line, which I was able to pick up and follow to the shroud. In another month I wouldn't have been able to spot it at all. The shroud is negatively impacting mana usage within it, though I don't believe that is the intent behind its creation. Oddly, by Shard-type dimensional manipulation techniques, the shroud is exactly centered on Earth Bet's star system."
After a moment, the device turned back to Taylor and continued. "I only fully realized that the shroud was there when I punched two much more precise holes in it to deposit training drones outside of it. Mana-type dimensional manipulation techniques put Earth Bet near the edge. You've left several holes in it as well while casting sensor drones, but those are smaller and seem to be rapidly repairing themselves."
Taylor frowned. "So something has put up this shroud, as you call it, around Earth Bet? For what reason?"
"I suspect that it's a method used to contain and isolate the Shard-style devices, but cannot be certain. I've also done a rough analysis of worlds based on the Shard-type centering. Within a few dimensions of Earth Bet things appear to have been largely left alone. After that, things rapidly shift, with it appearing that Shard-type devices have been deployed to a little over half of the dimensions. I don't have exact counts and would need to do recon runs to figure out more, but do not believe that to be a prudent course of action at this time."
"Ah. So this is more to inform me of things?"
"I'd also like permission to see if I can replicate the likely-unintentional mana suppression effect. It's noticeable in the performance of the training drones inside and outside of the shroud. If it is an intended effect then a stronger version could be used against you in the future. Training to become acclimated to such a tactic would be beneficial."
Taylor considered that. "I can't see a reason not to. Being able to could be useful later as well."
Hive then looked forlornly at the representation of the 'torn gap'. "Sadly, I can't properly detect things on the other side of my approach vector from here. I suspect that's the general direction to search at this time, but the distance will be problematic. I'll need to work out a better solution for increasing operational range for scanning or we'll need to risk moving much closer to the gap to scan that side of the shroud."
Thursday afternoon Taylor ended up staying behind after tutoring to work on things that were due after the week off of school, if only so that she didn't need to come back over the week-long break to explain how she'd used software she didn't have access to at home. Sure, she could've done so the following day, but she didn't anticipate any more work of that sort to come in tomorrow's sessions and getting it all out of the way appealed to her.
That hadn't taken excessively long, after which she'd ended up wandering over to the Boardwalk instead of heading home. Hive had considered various things and thought that picking up some simple jewelry could be beneficial for forming the base of future device standby forms. She'd agreed, and had plenty of money. And who'd think anything odd about a teenage girl with money available buying jewelry, right?
She ended up spending two hours looking around, astounded at how expensive most of the stuff was. Eventually she spent fifty dollars on an assortment of cheap necklaces in different styles, all of them obviously having fake jewels and being plated metals at best. None of that really mattered, since anything they made based on them wouldn't need the originals at all. Instead she dropped the bag with that purchase into her backpack so that Hive could store them for analysis and made her way home.
In the end she didn't have any time to run off to practice, but she'd known that was going to happen. Besides, she was still working on some ideas she had for shields and wasn't ready to actually cast any of them. She focused on some of that while she got started on making dinner.
After dinner Taylor was kept from escaping to her room by her father. "What's up?"
He sighed. "The PRT wants to bring you to New York for additional testing of your necklace. Apparently they have some equipment there that they can't bring here."
Taylor blinked at that. "New York?"
"Yep. They've offered to pay for a hotel room, all travel, the standard thousand dollars an hour while actually testing, plus a thousand dollars for each of the four days you'd be traveling or there. Half of the latter would be provided directly to you on arrival as 'spending money' in case you wanted to shop while there."
"Ah." That was unexpected. "When were they wanting to do this?"
"They want to bring you down Tuesday and bring you back Friday, with only a couple hours each on Wednesday and Thursday likely to be used for actually scanning you and the necklace. They claim that you'd have plenty of time to see some sights if you wanted to."
"Are you comfortable with me making the trip?"
He sighed. "They brought it up yesterday, and I spent some time talking with Carol about it earlier today. She thinks it would be best to go along with it, mainly for your safety in case they can pick up something that wasn't obvious with equipment they could field here. At the same time, if you have something else you'd rather be doing next week we're both fairly certain that they'll accept that and merely ask to schedule the trip for later."
Taylor easily spotted the unspoken implication that never going was probably not an option. And it wasn't like she had concrete plans for the week. She'd have likely just tried to spend all day training if left to her own devices, after all. Which might not be a bad thing from her point of view, but if she repeatedly exhausted herself then her father might get curious as to what she was up to. Besides, if this scanning device they couldn't move was that powerful then they might get useful data out of it.
Having basically decided to go for it, she sighed as well. Mostly for effect. "Might as well get it over with then."
Her father nodded. "I'll let them know and ask when they'll want to pick you up on Tuesday."
Friday morning Taylor was dropped off at tutoring by her father, who told her that he'd be picking her up that afternoon as well. He didn't tell her why, but ensured that she wasn't planning on staying late afterwards so that he knew when to arrive. Which probably meant that she wasn't getting any practice in today. At least she'd have plenty of time to refine her shield thoughts.
Tutoring was light on the new material front, and she'd already gotten and completed her assignments for the coming week. Most of which she'd done last night with a couple of spare instances of herself, so she wasn't submitting any of it yet. No need to draw attention to having completed all of it that quickly when they expected it to take her at least three days. There was being a good student and then there was not outing that she had what would probably be considered a thinker power or two.
She ended up sitting on a bench outside at the end of the day, her father obviously running a little late. Hive had spent most of the day splitting focus between 'figure out how the shroud suppresses mana' and 'find ways to scan further' and didn't seem to be having much luck either way. Taylor tried to not disturb her and instead people-watched with insects while she waited for her father.
Eventually he pulled up, and she slipped into the passenger seat. "So what's going on that means I can't head home on my own?"
He sighed. "We're going to get you a mobile phone, because you're out on your own often enough to make it a safety issue."
She blinked at that. "But..."
"No buts. I've given it some serious thought and know that I can't bring myself to even carry one, but you don't drive a car and do spend a significant amount of time moving around town on foot. I don't care if you prefer to only use it for emergencies or use it more frequently, but if you get hurt then I don't want you to have to rely on finding a payphone. Especially since you won't have any idea where to look for one in New York."
That was an incredibly hard argument to refute, above and beyond starting with a statement of no rebuttals being accepted. And it could nicely answer the question of how she could be on the phone when nowhere near home, not that she'd had that situation actually come up yet. On the other hand, she wasn't sure how she felt about having a mobile phone. Sure, you could call the dance with the cordless phone at home making it into what could be seen as one, but she didn't really want that to count.
"My Lord," Hive sent, interrupting her somewhat circular train of thought. "I should be able to easily ensure that you can communicate without the phone present, just as the handset for the system at your home isn't needed."
"Like making the phone a device?"
"I can already interface with the cellular communication network, and it would be a simple software upgrade to make other communication-enabled devices capable of doing the same. The hardware IDs and access codes used by the individual phones are easily copied as well. I would only desire to re-make the phone itself as a learning exercise and to ensure that it has a larger operational range."
That made far too much sense. Though it did bring up other questions. "Can you make calls without any of the IDs and access codes?"
"Trivially, my Lord. The system allows for a number of emergency calls from unregistered and unknown devices, and bypassing those restrictions to call other numbers is surprisingly easy. There are also a number of other access points, likely created using 'tinkertech', that allow for decidedly non-standard numbering that can be tapped into instead."
"Non-standard numbering?"
"Several phones tied into those systems appear to use sixteen or thirty-two digit phone numbers that are only valid when dialed by other mobile phone devices in their immediate region. There also appears to be a pseudo-international calling system that I could tie into. Code 804, with an eight digit number system behind it. Only accessible from what I believe are North American Numbering System networks. It appears that forty numbers are registered in it currently, by what I believe to be at least three different groups based on what I can tell of their connection methods."
Taylor found that to be interesting. "Are you suggesting we tap into that as well?"
"It would be a trivial way to obtain valid contact numbers and the original creators of the system don't seem to mind the other two groups using it. The most likely creators of the interface based on connection method seem to only have four numbers registered. 22853766, 26683772, 37668437, and 58789966. The largest group all start with 35483 followed by an incrementing three digit number. I found the system when I discovered the 53378237 and 82375337 numbers being used more locally and traced them back."
"And those are the only numbers in use?"
"That is correct. I have checked every other number and no others are in use."
"Huh. Well, might as well try it. See if they do something to indicate that they object and all afterwards. If they do we just do something different."
It wasn't much longer before her father had navigated traffic and found a parking space, after which he dragged her into the local branch of one of the mobile phone carriers. They spent the next hour with her looking at phones and him doing his best to ensure that the plan attached to said phone was the best deal he could get. This particular carrier didn't have anything fancy on the phone front. Some of the phones were basically a small handset, others folded in half. The remainder was made up of a selection of 'bag' phones that doubled as being able to be installed in a car.
Her final choice was a slightly-fancy multiple-mode folding model that didn't have the best 'talk time' but was also one of the smaller choices when folded up. Apparently it was one of the more portable ones as far as traveling went, able to talk to multiple kinds of towers instead of the single kind most of the rest could deal with, which was enough to convince her father that it was a good choice. She talked him out of the extra charger option, but didn't complain about the clip-on pouch.
It took another three quarters of an hour to go over the paperwork and make initial payments, only five minutes to actually set the phone up, and then they left for home. And by that time Hive had already pulled off making her connection into the phone system and set up +804 66463782 for use by Taylor as 'Minerva' going forward, though wanted to deploy a specialized relay device intended to maintain the connection once they were home.
That evening they hid the new relay unit inside of a wall by way of retrieving it from storage directly into the wall, after which Taylor allowed Hive to store the new phone so that it could be rebuilt into something better. She claimed that she was charging it when she didn't have it with her afterwards. After going to bed she worked her way through more iterations on shield designs and simulated practice with Hal and the cutting tools. The latter was actually better in some ways than real-world practice, as far as learning not to cut herself, because she could skip simulating the sensor unit tied to her core. That forced her to learn without the handicap of constantly knowing where the blades were thanks to the sensor unit.
Hive also had some of the training drones out and deployed on either side of the 'shroud', scanning it from both sides in various ways in an attempt to learn as much about it as possible. That didn't seem to be going exceptionally well on the 'figure out what it does' or 'figure out how to make a new one' fronts, but she was getting better at detecting that it existed and coming up with ways to detect other instances of similar constructs. Supposedly, they'd only ever find out if they worked on other instances if one was found.
Both of them were silently hoping that never actually happened at this point.
Saturday morning Hive left a freshly-rebuilt phone on Taylor's desk. To her senses, even without the sensor unit, it was obviously using mana as a power source now. At the same time, it seemed to work identically to how it had the day before. Assuming you ignored that she didn't need to touch the keys anymore, amongst other things. But her father could pick it up and use it without being likely to notice any changes.
Speaking of her father, he ensured that she had the thing and that it looked like she'd ensured it was charged before they left on their run. Not that it could be charged with the original cable anymore, of course. Now it was basically charged by being in proximity to her or Hive and she didn't need it specifically available to make or receive calls. She'd proven that to herself by calling her voicemail from an instance of her inside the multitasking hardware.
They'd swung by where the light systems along her normal route home were being torn out so that her father could take a look, and to her surprise they were already removed. Apparently they'd made quick work of the whole thing, meaning that the crews installing the new systems could get started Monday or Tuesday. The Dockworkers were apparently working on another intersection set or two over the weekend, eager to get things finished and the invoice for the work submitted for payment.
Taylor was given first shot at the shower after they made it home, after which she got dressed and deployed her Knight Clothing. That was followed by making an attempt at pancakes for breakfast. She didn't quite get them correct, but they were still edible enough. Her father insisted on cleaning up afterwards, and it was then that she realized that she wasn't sure what to do with the day. Sure, she'd continue on working on things like her shield designs in the background, but she didn't have a whole lot to do with her physical self. Not without vanishing in a way that could make her father suspicious, anyway.
For the time being she ended up dropping down in front of the television. The news wasn't covering anything of immediate interest and she wasn't interested in cartoons. Sadly, her options seemed to be limited to the two right now, so she left the news on. The weather report had come up for the second time since she started, her father having joined her partway through, when the phone rang. He got up to answer it, since at this point in time he was the only one that called looking for her.
So, of course, a minute later he came back into the room and handed her the cordless phone. "It's for you."
Blinking, Taylor took the phone from him and held it up to her head. "Hello?"
"Hi, it's Amy," came back, causing Taylor to blink. "Er, are you busy today? I'm not allowed to go to the hospital and Vicky is insisting I do something out of the house and I really don't want to join her and Dean..."
"What would we do, exactly?"
There was a moment of silence from the other end of the line, and Taylor was half considering ways to determine if the call had ended before Amy sighed. "I don't know. Vicky's usually the one dragging me out. Don't you have any ideas?"
Taylor flinched. "Um, not really. More used to being dragged out myself. Kinda. It's been a while."
Her father sighed. "You sound hopeless. Go see a movie, or visit the arcade. Maybe go bowling?"
"Oooh," Amy said on the other end of the line, obviously having overheard that. "I don't think I've gone bowling since Vicky was banned."
Taylor blinked at that. "Banned?"
"She got too excited and damaged the lane by throwing the ball too hard."
"Ah. So you'd like to do so again?"
"Yeah. And it would ensure that I don't have to watch Vicky and Dean making out."
"Okay. But where does one go bowling on a Saturday morning?"
There was another pause. "I...don't know, actually. I forget where we used to go."
Taylor got up and headed for the hallway where she thought the phone book was. "I'll check the phone book."
"Right. I'd do the same, but I have no clue where ours even is."
It took a few minutes for Taylor to find the correct entries in the phone book, mainly because she'd foolishly started with the white pages and neither of the bowling alleys in town were listed under 'bowling' there. It turned out that Taylor was more familiar with the candlepin bowling alley while the Dallons used to go ten pin bowling. The former was already open, but they opted to go to the latter because both of them were old enough to handle proper bowling balls.
They decided to try and meet there for lunch, since there was a restaurant built into the place, and Amy mentioned that they'd probably need to rent shoes on top of everything else. Which led into a quick tale about Vicky having to sit out one time years prior because she'd worn sandals and thus hadn't had socks with her.
After the call had ended Taylor stared at the handset. "I just agreed to meet with Panacea for lunch and an attempt at bowling where I'm likely to make a complete fool of myself. What the hell was I thinking?"
Her father snorted at that. "You're finally making friends again, or so it seems. Go make sure that you're ready, and don't forget your phone. Do you want a ride there?"
She shook her head. "No, I can get there easily enough."
"Okay. Don't hesitate to call if you feel that you need a ride home. Like if you wear yourself out because you don't know your limits."
Taylor rolled her eyes. "I doubt that it's going to be that bad. Will you even be home?"
"I don't have any plans for the day, so I should be here. Unless something unexpected comes up, of course."
She nodded, and made her way upstairs. She needed to make sure that she was wearing something suitably flexible and probably that her shoes were real. No need to accidentally get too far away while wearing rentals and have them vanish on her. Her father would likely be double-checking that her phone was physically on her as well, even if she'd want to keep it 'stored' to make it harder for anyone to steal it from her.
Actually, that would be an interesting idea. Make a copy of her phone or wallet as part of her Knight Clothing, specifically so that if someone did steal it then it would vanish on them when they got far enough away from her. Sure, there were a number of problems with the idea, but the mental image of the thief's bafflement as they found the stolen goods had literally vanished on them was highly amusing to her.
Maybe she could do that and blame it on the group supposedly looking out for her?
With that taken care of, she deployed her 'cameras' before heading back upstairs and checking to make sure the beach was clear. Finding nothing wrong there she transferred over, then carefully adjusted the Knight Armor template to include a name patch before casting the spell. To her embarrassment, this took three attempts to get right. The first time she'd somehow put the patch on the inside of the jacket and the second time she'd transposed the r and the v in Minerva.
Hive had apparently made a tweaked 'wrapper' bullet that could target locations and was using it to 'unload' training drones. Taylor was a bit shocked when she looked out over the water at the collection of them. "How many did you make?"
Tilting her head, Hive gestured at the collection. "I stopped at two hundred and sixteen, but I've only deployed thirty-six for now."
"I didn't think I'd quite gotten the hang of working with seven."
"If the programming I've put into them works then they'll work as six groups of six. Two on defense to keep you from shooting them down, two attacking with mana-based attacks, and two simulating firearms with more solid mana techniques. They'll stay together to provide a focused fire situation to test your shields. You did come up with a couple of potential shield designs earlier, correct?"
Taylor nodded. "I did. Untested designs, but I came up with them."
Hive smirked. "What better way to test them then under live fire conditions?"
Grumbling, Taylor cast the flight spell and the first shield design. It was reminiscent of a police riot shield, a partial cylinder with a window cast as though it were part of her Knight Armor, but without the anchor to her. Into it she'd laid as much protective magic as she could. She then deployed Hal and took to the air. It didn't take long to determine that while useful, the 'riot shield' design wasn't maneuverable enough when she was surrounded.
In mid-air she dismantled the riot shield and brought up a smaller hexagonal shield that she'd based on the static hex shield spell. Slightly curved in the front, it wasn't as protective as the riot shield but was lighter and more maneuverable. It worked out far better for reacting to shots from around her, but still wasn't enough for the amount of fire coming at her. Granted, short of an all out gang war she didn't expect to be surrounded by people attacking her anytime soon. That and she wasn't sure that she had to worry about bullets at all, since only the mana attacks were doing significant damage to any of her protections.
Eventually the training drones shut down and Taylor came in for a landing next to Hive. Who appeared to be running tests with a single training drone. "Trying to make this even harder for me?"
Hive shook her head. "No, my Lord. I'm tweaking data gathering routines. I was unable to pick up on any long-range mana signatures, but I'm hoping that by setting up a larger array that I'll have more luck. To that end, I've got a software configuration for the training drones that should allow for a much wider spread. I deploy the drones out, then have each drone deploy six sensor drone spells. The resulting array should hopefully be large enough to pick up on things the smaller array I'd tried before missed."
"So you're looking to double the effective radius of your sensor net by using the training drones as relays?"
"Essentially, though I'll also be casting my original sensor drone net as well within the radius that I deploy the training drones in. As such I will need more of the multitasking hardware when I make the attempt."
Taylor shrugged and retrieved a bottle of water. "I'm guessing that either they aren't out there or are far enough away at this point to make communication difficult. But it would be nice to know either way."
After some recovery time Taylor switched to practicing on the beach with a cutting tool. With any luck she'd be able to train herself to not bring the cut line across her own body.
That evening Taylor reduced the range of her overnight insect control based monitoring to free up some additional multitasking hardware for Hive. Approaching twenty thousand additional sensor sets to tie into the sensor array necessitated using more hardware. Instead, Taylor's focus was coming up with a better shield design, and she was using the simulation system to try out various things.
Right now one of her main problems was intercepting incoming attacks with any of the shields available. Snap-casting the hex shield spell was something she could do, but it tended to anchor in place. The more solid shield designs were held, which limited how she could use them itself. They also took more time to cast, but didn't anchor in place. Adding one or two as optional pieces of her Knight Armor template to simplify casting them slightly was already on her to-do list, but they weren't really an independent spell at this point.
'Strapping on' an instance of the smaller hexagonal solid shield allowed for freeing up her hand to use when casting, but that didn't work out nearly as well on both arms. She found it getting in the way of some movements with Hal, though it might not be as bad with a cutting tool instead. Perhaps she needed to make something a little more 'active'? If she could get the shield to float off of her body wherever she put it then with any luck she could keep it out of the way.
"My Lord," Hive called from where she'd inserted herself into the simulation, interrupting Taylor's train of thought.
Taylor turned to her. "What's up?"
"I've found something odd, though it doesn't translate well to three dimensions. It's simple enough to build a representation of, if you'd permit me to utilize the simulation system to do so."
"Oh. Okay, you have me curious now anyway."
It wasn't long before Taylor and Hive were floating in a large void, various spheres floating around them. Each sphere, when examined, contained what looked like part of the solar system. One of those spheres was in the dead center of things. It took a moment to realize that there was a veil of some kind, with harder to see spheres outside of it. Thanks to a minimum of dimensional shenanigans it was obviously centered on and yet not centered on the central sphere, depending on your choice of dimensional axis.
Hive looked things over before nodding, then traced two dotted lines through the space created. The first was between the center sphere and one of the others, the second was from the 'veil' and ended halfway down the first.
"My Lord," Hive said, gesturing at the surroundings. "This is a loose representation of the local dimensional space. Each little sphere is a version of your planet and its star system, with the one in the center being the one that your people know as 'Earth Bet'." She then pointed at the other sphere connected with a dotted line. "This is the Earth upon which the Shard-type device I absorbed once resided. It also happens to be the barren planet with the powerful storms that we'd planned for possible more difficult flight tests in."
Hive then moved along the other dotted line to the 'veil'. "This line represents the approach vector of the Unison-style device I started out as. It comes in from a ragged 'gap' in this shroud over the entire region. There are barely-lingering traces of mana along the entire line, which I was able to pick up and follow to the shroud. In another month I wouldn't have been able to spot it at all. The shroud is negatively impacting mana usage within it, though I don't believe that is the intent behind its creation. Oddly, by Shard-type dimensional manipulation techniques, the shroud is exactly centered on Earth Bet's star system."
After a moment, the device turned back to Taylor and continued. "I only fully realized that the shroud was there when I punched two much more precise holes in it to deposit training drones outside of it. Mana-type dimensional manipulation techniques put Earth Bet near the edge. You've left several holes in it as well while casting sensor drones, but those are smaller and seem to be rapidly repairing themselves."
Taylor frowned. "So something has put up this shroud, as you call it, around Earth Bet? For what reason?"
"I suspect that it's a method used to contain and isolate the Shard-style devices, but cannot be certain. I've also done a rough analysis of worlds based on the Shard-type centering. Within a few dimensions of Earth Bet things appear to have been largely left alone. After that, things rapidly shift, with it appearing that Shard-type devices have been deployed to a little over half of the dimensions. I don't have exact counts and would need to do recon runs to figure out more, but do not believe that to be a prudent course of action at this time."
"Ah. So this is more to inform me of things?"
"I'd also like permission to see if I can replicate the likely-unintentional mana suppression effect. It's noticeable in the performance of the training drones inside and outside of the shroud. If it is an intended effect then a stronger version could be used against you in the future. Training to become acclimated to such a tactic would be beneficial."
Taylor considered that. "I can't see a reason not to. Being able to could be useful later as well."
Hive then looked forlornly at the representation of the 'torn gap'. "Sadly, I can't properly detect things on the other side of my approach vector from here. I suspect that's the general direction to search at this time, but the distance will be problematic. I'll need to work out a better solution for increasing operational range for scanning or we'll need to risk moving much closer to the gap to scan that side of the shroud."
Thursday afternoon Taylor ended up staying behind after tutoring to work on things that were due after the week off of school, if only so that she didn't need to come back over the week-long break to explain how she'd used software she didn't have access to at home. Sure, she could've done so the following day, but she didn't anticipate any more work of that sort to come in tomorrow's sessions and getting it all out of the way appealed to her.
That hadn't taken excessively long, after which she'd ended up wandering over to the Boardwalk instead of heading home. Hive had considered various things and thought that picking up some simple jewelry could be beneficial for forming the base of future device standby forms. She'd agreed, and had plenty of money. And who'd think anything odd about a teenage girl with money available buying jewelry, right?
She ended up spending two hours looking around, astounded at how expensive most of the stuff was. Eventually she spent fifty dollars on an assortment of cheap necklaces in different styles, all of them obviously having fake jewels and being plated metals at best. None of that really mattered, since anything they made based on them wouldn't need the originals at all. Instead she dropped the bag with that purchase into her backpack so that Hive could store them for analysis and made her way home.
In the end she didn't have any time to run off to practice, but she'd known that was going to happen. Besides, she was still working on some ideas she had for shields and wasn't ready to actually cast any of them. She focused on some of that while she got started on making dinner.
After dinner Taylor was kept from escaping to her room by her father. "What's up?"
He sighed. "The PRT wants to bring you to New York for additional testing of your necklace. Apparently they have some equipment there that they can't bring here."
Taylor blinked at that. "New York?"
"Yep. They've offered to pay for a hotel room, all travel, the standard thousand dollars an hour while actually testing, plus a thousand dollars for each of the four days you'd be traveling or there. Half of the latter would be provided directly to you on arrival as 'spending money' in case you wanted to shop while there."
"Ah." That was unexpected. "When were they wanting to do this?"
"They want to bring you down Tuesday and bring you back Friday, with only a couple hours each on Wednesday and Thursday likely to be used for actually scanning you and the necklace. They claim that you'd have plenty of time to see some sights if you wanted to."
"Are you comfortable with me making the trip?"
He sighed. "They brought it up yesterday, and I spent some time talking with Carol about it earlier today. She thinks it would be best to go along with it, mainly for your safety in case they can pick up something that wasn't obvious with equipment they could field here. At the same time, if you have something else you'd rather be doing next week we're both fairly certain that they'll accept that and merely ask to schedule the trip for later."
Taylor easily spotted the unspoken implication that never going was probably not an option. And it wasn't like she had concrete plans for the week. She'd have likely just tried to spend all day training if left to her own devices, after all. Which might not be a bad thing from her point of view, but if she repeatedly exhausted herself then her father might get curious as to what she was up to. Besides, if this scanning device they couldn't move was that powerful then they might get useful data out of it.
Having basically decided to go for it, she sighed as well. Mostly for effect. "Might as well get it over with then."
Her father nodded. "I'll let them know and ask when they'll want to pick you up on Tuesday."
Friday morning Taylor was dropped off at tutoring by her father, who told her that he'd be picking her up that afternoon as well. He didn't tell her why, but ensured that she wasn't planning on staying late afterwards so that he knew when to arrive. Which probably meant that she wasn't getting any practice in today. At least she'd have plenty of time to refine her shield thoughts.
Tutoring was light on the new material front, and she'd already gotten and completed her assignments for the coming week. Most of which she'd done last night with a couple of spare instances of herself, so she wasn't submitting any of it yet. No need to draw attention to having completed all of it that quickly when they expected it to take her at least three days. There was being a good student and then there was not outing that she had what would probably be considered a thinker power or two.
She ended up sitting on a bench outside at the end of the day, her father obviously running a little late. Hive had spent most of the day splitting focus between 'figure out how the shroud suppresses mana' and 'find ways to scan further' and didn't seem to be having much luck either way. Taylor tried to not disturb her and instead people-watched with insects while she waited for her father.
Eventually he pulled up, and she slipped into the passenger seat. "So what's going on that means I can't head home on my own?"
He sighed. "We're going to get you a mobile phone, because you're out on your own often enough to make it a safety issue."
She blinked at that. "But..."
"No buts. I've given it some serious thought and know that I can't bring myself to even carry one, but you don't drive a car and do spend a significant amount of time moving around town on foot. I don't care if you prefer to only use it for emergencies or use it more frequently, but if you get hurt then I don't want you to have to rely on finding a payphone. Especially since you won't have any idea where to look for one in New York."
That was an incredibly hard argument to refute, above and beyond starting with a statement of no rebuttals being accepted. And it could nicely answer the question of how she could be on the phone when nowhere near home, not that she'd had that situation actually come up yet. On the other hand, she wasn't sure how she felt about having a mobile phone. Sure, you could call the dance with the cordless phone at home making it into what could be seen as one, but she didn't really want that to count.
"My Lord," Hive sent, interrupting her somewhat circular train of thought. "I should be able to easily ensure that you can communicate without the phone present, just as the handset for the system at your home isn't needed."
"Like making the phone a device?"
"I can already interface with the cellular communication network, and it would be a simple software upgrade to make other communication-enabled devices capable of doing the same. The hardware IDs and access codes used by the individual phones are easily copied as well. I would only desire to re-make the phone itself as a learning exercise and to ensure that it has a larger operational range."
That made far too much sense. Though it did bring up other questions. "Can you make calls without any of the IDs and access codes?"
"Trivially, my Lord. The system allows for a number of emergency calls from unregistered and unknown devices, and bypassing those restrictions to call other numbers is surprisingly easy. There are also a number of other access points, likely created using 'tinkertech', that allow for decidedly non-standard numbering that can be tapped into instead."
"Non-standard numbering?"
"Several phones tied into those systems appear to use sixteen or thirty-two digit phone numbers that are only valid when dialed by other mobile phone devices in their immediate region. There also appears to be a pseudo-international calling system that I could tie into. Code 804, with an eight digit number system behind it. Only accessible from what I believe are North American Numbering System networks. It appears that forty numbers are registered in it currently, by what I believe to be at least three different groups based on what I can tell of their connection methods."
Taylor found that to be interesting. "Are you suggesting we tap into that as well?"
"It would be a trivial way to obtain valid contact numbers and the original creators of the system don't seem to mind the other two groups using it. The most likely creators of the interface based on connection method seem to only have four numbers registered. 22853766, 26683772, 37668437, and 58789966. The largest group all start with 35483 followed by an incrementing three digit number. I found the system when I discovered the 53378237 and 82375337 numbers being used more locally and traced them back."
"And those are the only numbers in use?"
"That is correct. I have checked every other number and no others are in use."
"Huh. Well, might as well try it. See if they do something to indicate that they object and all afterwards. If they do we just do something different."
It wasn't much longer before her father had navigated traffic and found a parking space, after which he dragged her into the local branch of one of the mobile phone carriers. They spent the next hour with her looking at phones and him doing his best to ensure that the plan attached to said phone was the best deal he could get. This particular carrier didn't have anything fancy on the phone front. Some of the phones were basically a small handset, others folded in half. The remainder was made up of a selection of 'bag' phones that doubled as being able to be installed in a car.
Her final choice was a slightly-fancy multiple-mode folding model that didn't have the best 'talk time' but was also one of the smaller choices when folded up. Apparently it was one of the more portable ones as far as traveling went, able to talk to multiple kinds of towers instead of the single kind most of the rest could deal with, which was enough to convince her father that it was a good choice. She talked him out of the extra charger option, but didn't complain about the clip-on pouch.
It took another three quarters of an hour to go over the paperwork and make initial payments, only five minutes to actually set the phone up, and then they left for home. And by that time Hive had already pulled off making her connection into the phone system and set up +804 66463782 for use by Taylor as 'Minerva' going forward, though wanted to deploy a specialized relay device intended to maintain the connection once they were home.
That evening they hid the new relay unit inside of a wall by way of retrieving it from storage directly into the wall, after which Taylor allowed Hive to store the new phone so that it could be rebuilt into something better. She claimed that she was charging it when she didn't have it with her afterwards. After going to bed she worked her way through more iterations on shield designs and simulated practice with Hal and the cutting tools. The latter was actually better in some ways than real-world practice, as far as learning not to cut herself, because she could skip simulating the sensor unit tied to her core. That forced her to learn without the handicap of constantly knowing where the blades were thanks to the sensor unit.
Hive also had some of the training drones out and deployed on either side of the 'shroud', scanning it from both sides in various ways in an attempt to learn as much about it as possible. That didn't seem to be going exceptionally well on the 'figure out what it does' or 'figure out how to make a new one' fronts, but she was getting better at detecting that it existed and coming up with ways to detect other instances of similar constructs. Supposedly, they'd only ever find out if they worked on other instances if one was found.
Both of them were silently hoping that never actually happened at this point.
Saturday morning Hive left a freshly-rebuilt phone on Taylor's desk. To her senses, even without the sensor unit, it was obviously using mana as a power source now. At the same time, it seemed to work identically to how it had the day before. Assuming you ignored that she didn't need to touch the keys anymore, amongst other things. But her father could pick it up and use it without being likely to notice any changes.
Speaking of her father, he ensured that she had the thing and that it looked like she'd ensured it was charged before they left on their run. Not that it could be charged with the original cable anymore, of course. Now it was basically charged by being in proximity to her or Hive and she didn't need it specifically available to make or receive calls. She'd proven that to herself by calling her voicemail from an instance of her inside the multitasking hardware.
They'd swung by where the light systems along her normal route home were being torn out so that her father could take a look, and to her surprise they were already removed. Apparently they'd made quick work of the whole thing, meaning that the crews installing the new systems could get started Monday or Tuesday. The Dockworkers were apparently working on another intersection set or two over the weekend, eager to get things finished and the invoice for the work submitted for payment.
Taylor was given first shot at the shower after they made it home, after which she got dressed and deployed her Knight Clothing. That was followed by making an attempt at pancakes for breakfast. She didn't quite get them correct, but they were still edible enough. Her father insisted on cleaning up afterwards, and it was then that she realized that she wasn't sure what to do with the day. Sure, she'd continue on working on things like her shield designs in the background, but she didn't have a whole lot to do with her physical self. Not without vanishing in a way that could make her father suspicious, anyway.
For the time being she ended up dropping down in front of the television. The news wasn't covering anything of immediate interest and she wasn't interested in cartoons. Sadly, her options seemed to be limited to the two right now, so she left the news on. The weather report had come up for the second time since she started, her father having joined her partway through, when the phone rang. He got up to answer it, since at this point in time he was the only one that called looking for her.
So, of course, a minute later he came back into the room and handed her the cordless phone. "It's for you."
Blinking, Taylor took the phone from him and held it up to her head. "Hello?"
"Hi, it's Amy," came back, causing Taylor to blink. "Er, are you busy today? I'm not allowed to go to the hospital and Vicky is insisting I do something out of the house and I really don't want to join her and Dean..."
"What would we do, exactly?"
There was a moment of silence from the other end of the line, and Taylor was half considering ways to determine if the call had ended before Amy sighed. "I don't know. Vicky's usually the one dragging me out. Don't you have any ideas?"
Taylor flinched. "Um, not really. More used to being dragged out myself. Kinda. It's been a while."
Her father sighed. "You sound hopeless. Go see a movie, or visit the arcade. Maybe go bowling?"
"Oooh," Amy said on the other end of the line, obviously having overheard that. "I don't think I've gone bowling since Vicky was banned."
Taylor blinked at that. "Banned?"
"She got too excited and damaged the lane by throwing the ball too hard."
"Ah. So you'd like to do so again?"
"Yeah. And it would ensure that I don't have to watch Vicky and Dean making out."
"Okay. But where does one go bowling on a Saturday morning?"
There was another pause. "I...don't know, actually. I forget where we used to go."
Taylor got up and headed for the hallway where she thought the phone book was. "I'll check the phone book."
"Right. I'd do the same, but I have no clue where ours even is."
It took a few minutes for Taylor to find the correct entries in the phone book, mainly because she'd foolishly started with the white pages and neither of the bowling alleys in town were listed under 'bowling' there. It turned out that Taylor was more familiar with the candlepin bowling alley while the Dallons used to go ten pin bowling. The former was already open, but they opted to go to the latter because both of them were old enough to handle proper bowling balls.
They decided to try and meet there for lunch, since there was a restaurant built into the place, and Amy mentioned that they'd probably need to rent shoes on top of everything else. Which led into a quick tale about Vicky having to sit out one time years prior because she'd worn sandals and thus hadn't had socks with her.
After the call had ended Taylor stared at the handset. "I just agreed to meet with Panacea for lunch and an attempt at bowling where I'm likely to make a complete fool of myself. What the hell was I thinking?"
Her father snorted at that. "You're finally making friends again, or so it seems. Go make sure that you're ready, and don't forget your phone. Do you want a ride there?"
She shook her head. "No, I can get there easily enough."
"Okay. Don't hesitate to call if you feel that you need a ride home. Like if you wear yourself out because you don't know your limits."
Taylor rolled her eyes. "I doubt that it's going to be that bad. Will you even be home?"
"I don't have any plans for the day, so I should be here. Unless something unexpected comes up, of course."
She nodded, and made her way upstairs. She needed to make sure that she was wearing something suitably flexible and probably that her shoes were real. No need to accidentally get too far away while wearing rentals and have them vanish on her. Her father would likely be double-checking that her phone was physically on her as well, even if she'd want to keep it 'stored' to make it harder for anyone to steal it from her.
Actually, that would be an interesting idea. Make a copy of her phone or wallet as part of her Knight Clothing, specifically so that if someone did steal it then it would vanish on them when they got far enough away from her. Sure, there were a number of problems with the idea, but the mental image of the thief's bafflement as they found the stolen goods had literally vanished on them was highly amusing to her.
Maybe she could do that and blame it on the group supposedly looking out for her?
I on the whole, agree with this. But I'd like to point out that it looks like, Entities need big data sets to learn things. Which means one person using a whole new thing means they'll be taking a very long time to adjust to handle it.
Say a wizard shows up and casts Fireball. OK They know he can do that, and they saw all that... but what's the variance on that? They're gonna need to see him cast it like 1000 times under different circumstances to properly model it, is basically my thought. Or they now know "Fireball" exists but they have no idea about "Greater Fireball" which messes them up.
Which IMO means that Thinker/Prediction shards should start getting worse as rather then 'I have no idea' they start making the wrong conclusions like how Tattletale get's junk data and end up backfiring as the power 'looks' like it's working now but instead gives them entirely the wrong data, or data that's off too much ectera.
I would like to see more of that stuff where the Shards try to learn something new but uh, oh boy with Eden dead and Scion being Scion (Even without it'd take a large amount) but with it their usual learning attempts are even worse than usual, even like "oh boy we figured out how to do that new-" *Error Occurs* "-oh no."
Course the current update has me wondering if they've accidentally or purposefully sealed themselves off from magic. Perhaps an evolutionary quirk or a side effect of how they dimensionally travel.
Easy to guess or figure out:
Cauldron, Contessa, Dr Mother, Kurt Wynn, Elite, Leet/Uber, Uber/Leet, something-Minerva
