- Location
- Omniverse #1345
If you say "I know X" and then completely ignore X in the resulting comment it needs to be reiterated.
Magical Girl Escalation Taylor (Worm/Nanoha)
- Thread starter Silently Watches
- Start date
Reread it again then since you're circling in your own logic:
The first part of this quote is a small witty sarcasm on my part. The second part is an apology for the first part, explanation that I completely understand that he meant the entire planet, and reason why I presented the idea.
This will be my last comment on this as you made me feel that you're nothing more than a troll.
Silently Watches
Professional Stalker
- Location
- Right behind you
I guess it's a good thing I already have a story planned that focuses on enchanting stuff, because you guys are NOT giving me the opportunity to play with it in a quest format.
Trooper1023
Look, sir! Droids!
- Location
- NYC USA
Sorry, but didn't you originally hint at wanting to run the Calamity Witch option with this quest... way back at the beginning in 2016?
EDIT: That's a funny from Silently! Clearly he's looking for a change of pace!
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Silently Watches
Professional Stalker
- Location
- Right behind you
The new story will be an actual story, not a quest. I'll post it on FFN in a few weeks when I finish up Eternal Fantasy.
- Location
- Canada
As I said, you'll be forcing your views upon us, rather than bowing to our whims like a quest. Looking forward to your new story😃!
That said, if Magical Girl Escalation Taylor had been a story rather than a quest, are there any particular plot points you would have made happen that we didn't take? What were the most unexpected directions that the quest took you for writing the story?
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- Location
- Canada
I'd say no for Kayleigh, who has no first-hand experience with any direct combat. Missy and Laura have both been in conflict on different sides of the law, with Missy being more aggressive overall. If Standstill joins with Taylor's group for the attack, she'd also have some experience, but I don't see her as overly combative.
@Silently Watches has already stated that Taylor will be doing the heavy lifting with regards to the attack. At best the other girls will be handling any runners while Taylor eliminates the real priority targets and does most of the unfortunately high amount of killing of the Fallen and their victims.
Silently Watches
Professional Stalker
- Location
- Right behind you
Probably would have pulled in Purity as a magical girl during the Brockton Bay segment. I had an idea for Calamity Witch and Shadow Stalker interacting and actually getting to like each other, but that was just a passing fancy. I also, uh, kind of pictured the Privateers being a more central part of the story, even to the point of envisioning them getting a manatech flying ship with laser cannons or something else equally outlandish.
The entire team will go along to fight the Fallen. It wouldn't be much of a team debut if it wasn't a team effort, now would it?
It's kind of funny that people seem to have this opinion. Sarah would LOVE to be more combative. Her power just doesn't let her. It's literally the entire reason she joined the Adepts, to learn how to use her power on people and stay awake so she could continue to contribute.
Archeo Lumiere
The Prince's Archivist
- Location
- Lumiose City, Kalos
- Pronouns
- He/Him/They/Them
I kinda figured this was the case. She wants to be an EK, not an IE.
Exactly why I'm asking. Are they willing to kill? If not then maim for Taylor to finish the simurgh family off.
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FictionPack
Monochromatic Ursine
- Location
- Tennessee
- Pronouns
- He/Him
LancerisDead
Definitely not a cat
- Location
- Buenos Aires
She seems like the perfect person to sneak in the melee fisticuffs on-your-face I'd suggested to make Missy into.
I mean, the Belkans have an entire martial arts style based on magic. Ain't too much of a stretch to think Galea would have an equivalent.
*On connecting with a punch, Ragnarok is triggered*
LancerisDead
Definitely not a cat
- Location
- Buenos Aires
It works for Subaru!
Trooper1023
Look, sir! Droids!
- Location
- NYC USA
EXTINCTION KNIGHT! Give. Her. The Sword. NOW!
- Location
- Ural, Russia, Earth
The problem is, we already have Laura as melee fighter, and Missy as melee-ish fighter.EXTINCTION KNIGHT! Give. Her. The Sword. NOW!
Meanwhile, our support mages are Lacey, a pacifist, and Maclibuin, an ally, not a teammate. And Missy, kinda, but she's too busy with learning melee and summoning to dip into support.
Trooper1023
Look, sir! Droids!
- Location
- NYC USA
OTOH, Laura has never held a actual melee weapon in her life, and has no Template to lean on for usage. She'll be months of practice before reaching even basic competence with her pole arm device. We give Sara EK template, and she can take charge of training both herself and Laura for melee with only a little work from Taylor. :lightbulb:
Silently Watches
Professional Stalker
- Location
- Right behind you
…Maybe?There IS someone else who can teach how to use melee weapons, but admittedly she has been busy for the last week or so.
- Location
- Ural, Russia, Earth
Miss Militia?
Realign 14.11
Silently Watches
Professional Stalker
- Location
- Right behind you
[] Accept one vial and trade the other for one favor
[] Have Lacey create a randomly generated Guardian Beast
Realign 14.11
You look from Legend to the shelves of vials he has just offered. Almost without thinking, you reach out and pull a tube off the shelf, wiping away the dust to reveal that the liquid in this one is mostly clear with flecks like pink glitter mixed within. A purple band is drawn around the metal caps on both ends of the otherwise glass tube.
Inside, you are torn with indecision. On the one hand, you understand just how valuable these are to him and Alexandria. Any vial they do not keep for themselves is a cape they can't directly bring in to the Protectorate, and considering that they know your feelings on joining, it would be a safe bet for them to assume people you give these vials to would hold a similar opinion.
On the other hand, you have to question the vials' usefulness to you. Once Tim puts the finishing touches on the Devices he's working on, you will have three new mages joining up with your little group. Offering the vials to Tim or Kayleigh, neither of whom have ever had parahuman powers, would be useless because their Devices would immediately disconnect them from those powers just as it did with Maclibuin.
Speaking of Tim, you also have to keep in mind that much like Cauldron and their vials, you now have the ability to give out magic to those who lack Linker Cores naturally. You will give Cauldron credit in that, if you understood Alexandria correctly, they were able to work out how the issues with their vials creating mutations while in Tim's serums those mutations are the goal rather than an unfortunate side effect. They are superior in that sense.
You look down and turn the vial over in your hands. Thinking about it that way, you could certainly see the appeal of keeping a vial on hand in case you run into somebody who does not have a Linker Core and does not want to take the risk that is inherent with his serum. You are under no misconceptions that Missy got extremely lucky with her mutation just being a punk rocker's hairstyle. The next person Tim gives a serum to might roll the dice and hit a low number instead.
And yet, do you really need them that badly?
"How much was Cauldron selling these vials for?" you ask after a moment. Mostly it is to give yourself time to think.
"The price depended on a number of factors," Alexandria replies. "Considering the one you are holding falls into the purple category, it would be worth several million dollars."
Your eyes jerk to meet her own. "Several million?!" Who in the world could even afford that?!
Alexandria's grin tells you she knows where your mind has gone. "Correct. Or, more accurately, it is the cash price. Money was not Cauldron's main need, so they were able to negotiate. Very few capes could purchase a power with only their own money, but they were more than willing to owe some favors instead to offset the price. That was the true currency Cauldron traded in."
Favors, huh? You roll the vial in your hands as a new thought crosses your mind. "Can I make a counteroffer, Legend?"
He tilts his head in curiosity and nods.
"You offered two vials. I'll take this one, but instead of the other, I'd like a favor of my own." You shrug. "I don't know what I'll use it for, but something tells me it'd be better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it."
Legend and Alexandria share a silent conversation, and after a moment Alexandria nods. "Fair enough," Legend tells you.
You toss the vial into the air and seal it away within Perfect Storm. "Excellent. Now let's get the rest of these vials out of here and back home."
Tuesday, August 14
Strange as it might sound, you have a hard time concentrating on classwork the next morning. Maybe it is the fact that the Triumvirate now owes you a multimillion dollar favor. Maybe it is the bottled superpower burning a hole in your metaphorical pocket. Maybe it is the fact that it is almost time to give Missy, Kayleigh, and Laura their Devices. Maybe it is that Dragon has already had success looking for the Fallen as they were en route somewhere or other, and currently she is plotting their most likely stop.
Or maybe it is just because classes right now are boring compared to everything else going on in your life.
Whatever the reason, you do not head to the cafeteria during your lunch break. Instead the bathroom provides a good place from which to teleport to the roof and from there to take to the air. You do not have a destination in mind, so rather than go anywhere in particular you allow yourself to drift through the sky wherever the winds want to take you. It is therefore a surprise when you find yourself over the river heading in the direction of the hospital where Lacey works.
It is even more of a surprise when you get there and look down at a little garden and walking area outside one of the buildings to find someone in a familiar robe sitting there as well.
You drop to the ground close to Lacey and let your eyes scan the multitude of screens in front of her. "And you make fun of how I choose to spend my free time."
"Yes, I do. It seems like if you aren't running out of the house to get into fights or cause chaos, you spend all your time on the web."
"And this is?" you ask, pointing to what is obviously a webpage. It may not be PHO, but it can not be that much better.
The sigh she lets out is long and stressed. "Work stuff.
"Everyone who works in the ER has to go through and complete some yearly stroke treatment course online," she says when it becomes clear you will not take her silence for an answer. She gives one of the screens a glare. "Since I work there too, even if I have nothing at all to do with anybody with a stroke, I have to take it too."
"And all the other screens?"
"Nursing textbooks and websites to figure out what in the world any of it means in the first place," she says with another sigh. "When I first started, I thought it'd be going into somebody's room, healing them, and moving on to the next room. Kind of like what Panacea did back in Brockton Bay. The doctor in charge of the ER department is a hardass, though. He told me my first day on, 'I'm fine with you working here, but if you plan to touch any of my patients, you better be able to tell me what's going wrong and what you're doing to fix it. If you don't, you won't work in my ER'."
"That was a jerk thing to say," you tell her.
She winces, which causes you to frown harder. "I thought the same thing at first," she admits slowly, "but after I thought I healed somebody's infected wound and she came back a few days later with an abscess in that same spot that needed surgery, I kind of see where Dr. Kumar's coming from."
Lacey pulls off a piece of bread from the hoagie in her hand and tosses it onto the ground before taking a bite of the exposed innards. You are about to make a comment about how she could have gotten the sandwich without the bread when you see a white dove walk out from under the bench and peck at the bit of bread. "Planning on becoming the bird-whisperer of Philly?" you ask instead.
A shrug is the first response you get. "He just likes me, I guess. I found him flapping around on the ground a few weeks back. He had a broken wing, and I had a little free time, so I healed it up. The next day he was back again. It isn't that he can't fly, because I've seen him do it. He just doesn't leave. He must think this is his turf or something."
You watch the next piece of bread land a little closer than the first. A quick glance at Lacey shows that she did not do it intentionally, but that does not stop the dove from walking closer to gulp it down. "Or maybe he recognizes you as the person who healed him and wants you to stick around."
"Maybe." She looks up at you to find you looking at the bird instead, and she follows your eyes only to find that the dove has waddled even closer to her foot than before. "Maybe," she repeats in a gentler voice. "I guess I'll have to disappoint him, then. It isn't like I can take him home."
"Why not? Samantha won't bother him."
"You know that, and I know that, but he sure doesn't."
You open your mouth to reply, but your first response is drowned out by your second thought. Slowly, you mutter, "I don't know about that."
One of Lacey's biggest problems, from your perspective anyway, is how she views magic. Probably it's the result of her understanding coming from watching and listening to you, but you remember how resistant she has been to anything revolving around getting into fights. She viewed magic as just another form of cape life, and even though she is now using magic to heal, that is essentially all she has done with it. She needs something to reinforce the idea that magic is not just about putting the hurt on other people. This might be just the thing.
Sure enough, she looks up at you with some suspicion. "What are you thinking?"
You look a little harder at the dove. "I can think of a way for him to know what's going on. The same way we know Samantha wouldn't hurt him."
It takes a moment, but the meaning behind your words clicks in Lacey's mind. "You want me to make him a familiar like Samantha?"
You hold your tongue for a moment so the urge to correct her terminology passes. "Why not? It keeps him safe from any hawks or cats or stray dogs wandering over and turning him into a snack, so you don't have to worry about him. It means you're guaranteed to stick around, so he doesn't have to worry about you. Seems like a win-win to me." Your voice softens. "Samantha and I have already taught other people how to do this. She says it doesn't hurt at all to be turned into a Guardian Beast. If anything, she said she prefers how she is now to back when she was a normal raccoon, although that might have something to do with the lack of opposable thumbs."
Lacey snickers at that for just a moment before looking down at the dove. She pulls off yet another bite of bread, but this one she does not drop. Instead she reaches down to hold it at eye level with the bird.
He looks at the bread, looks up at her, looks back at the bread, and comes closer to take a few bites.
That seems to be all the proof she needs that she and this bird might as well be made for each other. "How difficult is this spell?"
"I'll have Perfect Storm send it to Asclepius. Let your Device handle the calculations. You'll be busy reciting the incantation." Your eyes flick to the red gem of your staff. «Uh, Storm? I think we'll need to change the incantation for Lacey, too. No talk of destroying her enemies or anything.»
An elaborate runic circle spreads out beneath her, purple in color rather than the orange of your own sigil. The dove turns its head as the light show begins, but it is easily distracted by another piece of sandwich. "Repeat after me," you tell Lacey. "A contract offered…"
"A contract offered, a new life promised," she says, pausing as you feed her the incantation line by line. "My will uplifts you. My mana sustains you. Your purpose: to defend me and my ideals, to support me in all things, to walk the road of life at my side. Agree to these terms, accept my contract, and become something new!"
Everything in front of Lacey turns into light, and you squint your eyes shut in time so it does not completely blind you the way it did when you taught the PRT mages how to create their own Guardian Beasts. Once was more than enough, twice if you include creating Samantha. Only once the light no longer threatens to sear your retinas do you open your eyes and look at what you and Lacey have accomplished.
Despite your assumptions about the bird's gender, it is not a boy but a girl who kneels at Lacey's feet. She looks only a couple of years older than you if you focus on her face, but it is hard to tell for sure thanks to the pure white feathers coming off her head. She has a similar appearance to Tim's own Beasts, actually, though there is something less wild about her appearance. A flash of grey on her shoulder catches your attention, and you crane your neck to discover that the color you saw was part of a large tattoo of wings drawn on her back in gunmetal ink.
"…Hi, there," Lacey says, somehow startled at the result of the ritual despite knowing Samantha for essentially all of the raccoon-woman's existence. "What… What's your name?"
"My name?" the girl repeats. She lifts her coal-black eyes to stare up at Lacey. "I… I don't know. Should I know?"
"Guardian Beasts are like children," you tell Lacey gently. "Sam didn't come into being with a name. We, their mages, are the ones who have to give them those."
Lacey opens then closes her mouth, and you can hear the swallow she tries to hide. "Like children, huh?" she says almost to herself in a thick voice. Reaching out, she strokes the bird-girl's cheek with the back of two fingers. "Olivia."
The newly christened Olivia smiles brightly at having a name of her own. You, on the other hand, cannot help but be surprised at how quickly Lacey went from not knowing what to do to coming up with that. "Does that name have some kind of special meaning to you?" you ask after a moment.
"It's one of the names Kurt and I picked out for if we had a daughter. Before we found out we couldn't have children."
You stare at her in surprise. It has never been something you thought all that hard about, but you know that she and Kurt are only a year or two younger than your dad. Despite that, and despite many other former dockworkers having kids of their own, it never crossed your mind why they did not. You just sort of assumed they had not wanted kids, even though they were more than welcoming when you moved into their home after the aftermath of the fight against Behemoth.
She looks up to give you a sad smile in response to your gobsmacked expression. "We talked about adoption, too, but that was around the same time that ships were being sunk in the bay to create the Ship Graveyard, and we realized we didn't exactly have the money to raise a kid in the first place. After that, it just got pushed onto the back burner and forgotten."
"I'm sorry. I didn't know."
"How could you?" she asks with a shrug. "It isn't like it was something we advertised." She turned her attention back to Olivia. "Now we have to figure out what to do with you. We can't exactly have you walking around the hospital naked."
"She looks like she's just an inch or two shorter than me," you point out. It makes her tall for a girl, but Lacey is likewise both tall and broad for a woman. If anything, it will only further the impression people might have that they are related. "They won't fit great, but it's better than nothing."
"Thank you," Olivia says in a soft voice that, despite your best efforts, you cannot help but compare to a coo.
You shake your head and start preparing the spell to teleport back to the apartment. It is only as you vanish from the hospital grounds that you realize the next issue sure to come up, and the thought puts a smile on your face.
How in the world will Kurt keep his sanity with a fourth female in the house?
Olivia's character sheet added to Allies tab.
This is probably the best time we're going to get to talk about XP. I mentioned it in the Informational tab, but at the end of every week non-template mages will gain 1 XP, and then we will have a vote on whether or not to spend it. We have it real easy this week because the only mage you have any control over right now is Lacey, so this will be a good test run. When we have more characters to work with, they will all be in the same format as below.
Lacey: 3 XP
[ ] Learn a spell (Modification tier only)
[ ] Save XP
[] Have Lacey create a randomly generated Guardian Beast
Realign 14.11
You look from Legend to the shelves of vials he has just offered. Almost without thinking, you reach out and pull a tube off the shelf, wiping away the dust to reveal that the liquid in this one is mostly clear with flecks like pink glitter mixed within. A purple band is drawn around the metal caps on both ends of the otherwise glass tube.
Inside, you are torn with indecision. On the one hand, you understand just how valuable these are to him and Alexandria. Any vial they do not keep for themselves is a cape they can't directly bring in to the Protectorate, and considering that they know your feelings on joining, it would be a safe bet for them to assume people you give these vials to would hold a similar opinion.
On the other hand, you have to question the vials' usefulness to you. Once Tim puts the finishing touches on the Devices he's working on, you will have three new mages joining up with your little group. Offering the vials to Tim or Kayleigh, neither of whom have ever had parahuman powers, would be useless because their Devices would immediately disconnect them from those powers just as it did with Maclibuin.
Speaking of Tim, you also have to keep in mind that much like Cauldron and their vials, you now have the ability to give out magic to those who lack Linker Cores naturally. You will give Cauldron credit in that, if you understood Alexandria correctly, they were able to work out how the issues with their vials creating mutations while in Tim's serums those mutations are the goal rather than an unfortunate side effect. They are superior in that sense.
You look down and turn the vial over in your hands. Thinking about it that way, you could certainly see the appeal of keeping a vial on hand in case you run into somebody who does not have a Linker Core and does not want to take the risk that is inherent with his serum. You are under no misconceptions that Missy got extremely lucky with her mutation just being a punk rocker's hairstyle. The next person Tim gives a serum to might roll the dice and hit a low number instead.
And yet, do you really need them that badly?
"How much was Cauldron selling these vials for?" you ask after a moment. Mostly it is to give yourself time to think.
"The price depended on a number of factors," Alexandria replies. "Considering the one you are holding falls into the purple category, it would be worth several million dollars."
Your eyes jerk to meet her own. "Several million?!" Who in the world could even afford that?!
Alexandria's grin tells you she knows where your mind has gone. "Correct. Or, more accurately, it is the cash price. Money was not Cauldron's main need, so they were able to negotiate. Very few capes could purchase a power with only their own money, but they were more than willing to owe some favors instead to offset the price. That was the true currency Cauldron traded in."
Favors, huh? You roll the vial in your hands as a new thought crosses your mind. "Can I make a counteroffer, Legend?"
He tilts his head in curiosity and nods.
"You offered two vials. I'll take this one, but instead of the other, I'd like a favor of my own." You shrug. "I don't know what I'll use it for, but something tells me it'd be better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it."
Legend and Alexandria share a silent conversation, and after a moment Alexandria nods. "Fair enough," Legend tells you.
You toss the vial into the air and seal it away within Perfect Storm. "Excellent. Now let's get the rest of these vials out of here and back home."
xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Tuesday, August 14
Strange as it might sound, you have a hard time concentrating on classwork the next morning. Maybe it is the fact that the Triumvirate now owes you a multimillion dollar favor. Maybe it is the bottled superpower burning a hole in your metaphorical pocket. Maybe it is the fact that it is almost time to give Missy, Kayleigh, and Laura their Devices. Maybe it is that Dragon has already had success looking for the Fallen as they were en route somewhere or other, and currently she is plotting their most likely stop.
Or maybe it is just because classes right now are boring compared to everything else going on in your life.
Whatever the reason, you do not head to the cafeteria during your lunch break. Instead the bathroom provides a good place from which to teleport to the roof and from there to take to the air. You do not have a destination in mind, so rather than go anywhere in particular you allow yourself to drift through the sky wherever the winds want to take you. It is therefore a surprise when you find yourself over the river heading in the direction of the hospital where Lacey works.
It is even more of a surprise when you get there and look down at a little garden and walking area outside one of the buildings to find someone in a familiar robe sitting there as well.
You drop to the ground close to Lacey and let your eyes scan the multitude of screens in front of her. "And you make fun of how I choose to spend my free time."
"Yes, I do. It seems like if you aren't running out of the house to get into fights or cause chaos, you spend all your time on the web."
"And this is?" you ask, pointing to what is obviously a webpage. It may not be PHO, but it can not be that much better.
The sigh she lets out is long and stressed. "Work stuff.
"Everyone who works in the ER has to go through and complete some yearly stroke treatment course online," she says when it becomes clear you will not take her silence for an answer. She gives one of the screens a glare. "Since I work there too, even if I have nothing at all to do with anybody with a stroke, I have to take it too."
"And all the other screens?"
"Nursing textbooks and websites to figure out what in the world any of it means in the first place," she says with another sigh. "When I first started, I thought it'd be going into somebody's room, healing them, and moving on to the next room. Kind of like what Panacea did back in Brockton Bay. The doctor in charge of the ER department is a hardass, though. He told me my first day on, 'I'm fine with you working here, but if you plan to touch any of my patients, you better be able to tell me what's going wrong and what you're doing to fix it. If you don't, you won't work in my ER'."
"That was a jerk thing to say," you tell her.
She winces, which causes you to frown harder. "I thought the same thing at first," she admits slowly, "but after I thought I healed somebody's infected wound and she came back a few days later with an abscess in that same spot that needed surgery, I kind of see where Dr. Kumar's coming from."
Lacey pulls off a piece of bread from the hoagie in her hand and tosses it onto the ground before taking a bite of the exposed innards. You are about to make a comment about how she could have gotten the sandwich without the bread when you see a white dove walk out from under the bench and peck at the bit of bread. "Planning on becoming the bird-whisperer of Philly?" you ask instead.
A shrug is the first response you get. "He just likes me, I guess. I found him flapping around on the ground a few weeks back. He had a broken wing, and I had a little free time, so I healed it up. The next day he was back again. It isn't that he can't fly, because I've seen him do it. He just doesn't leave. He must think this is his turf or something."
You watch the next piece of bread land a little closer than the first. A quick glance at Lacey shows that she did not do it intentionally, but that does not stop the dove from walking closer to gulp it down. "Or maybe he recognizes you as the person who healed him and wants you to stick around."
"Maybe." She looks up at you to find you looking at the bird instead, and she follows your eyes only to find that the dove has waddled even closer to her foot than before. "Maybe," she repeats in a gentler voice. "I guess I'll have to disappoint him, then. It isn't like I can take him home."
"Why not? Samantha won't bother him."
"You know that, and I know that, but he sure doesn't."
You open your mouth to reply, but your first response is drowned out by your second thought. Slowly, you mutter, "I don't know about that."
One of Lacey's biggest problems, from your perspective anyway, is how she views magic. Probably it's the result of her understanding coming from watching and listening to you, but you remember how resistant she has been to anything revolving around getting into fights. She viewed magic as just another form of cape life, and even though she is now using magic to heal, that is essentially all she has done with it. She needs something to reinforce the idea that magic is not just about putting the hurt on other people. This might be just the thing.
Sure enough, she looks up at you with some suspicion. "What are you thinking?"
You look a little harder at the dove. "I can think of a way for him to know what's going on. The same way we know Samantha wouldn't hurt him."
It takes a moment, but the meaning behind your words clicks in Lacey's mind. "You want me to make him a familiar like Samantha?"
You hold your tongue for a moment so the urge to correct her terminology passes. "Why not? It keeps him safe from any hawks or cats or stray dogs wandering over and turning him into a snack, so you don't have to worry about him. It means you're guaranteed to stick around, so he doesn't have to worry about you. Seems like a win-win to me." Your voice softens. "Samantha and I have already taught other people how to do this. She says it doesn't hurt at all to be turned into a Guardian Beast. If anything, she said she prefers how she is now to back when she was a normal raccoon, although that might have something to do with the lack of opposable thumbs."
Lacey snickers at that for just a moment before looking down at the dove. She pulls off yet another bite of bread, but this one she does not drop. Instead she reaches down to hold it at eye level with the bird.
He looks at the bread, looks up at her, looks back at the bread, and comes closer to take a few bites.
That seems to be all the proof she needs that she and this bird might as well be made for each other. "How difficult is this spell?"
"I'll have Perfect Storm send it to Asclepius. Let your Device handle the calculations. You'll be busy reciting the incantation." Your eyes flick to the red gem of your staff. «Uh, Storm? I think we'll need to change the incantation for Lacey, too. No talk of destroying her enemies or anything.»
An elaborate runic circle spreads out beneath her, purple in color rather than the orange of your own sigil. The dove turns its head as the light show begins, but it is easily distracted by another piece of sandwich. "Repeat after me," you tell Lacey. "A contract offered…"
"A contract offered, a new life promised," she says, pausing as you feed her the incantation line by line. "My will uplifts you. My mana sustains you. Your purpose: to defend me and my ideals, to support me in all things, to walk the road of life at my side. Agree to these terms, accept my contract, and become something new!"
Everything in front of Lacey turns into light, and you squint your eyes shut in time so it does not completely blind you the way it did when you taught the PRT mages how to create their own Guardian Beasts. Once was more than enough, twice if you include creating Samantha. Only once the light no longer threatens to sear your retinas do you open your eyes and look at what you and Lacey have accomplished.
Despite your assumptions about the bird's gender, it is not a boy but a girl who kneels at Lacey's feet. She looks only a couple of years older than you if you focus on her face, but it is hard to tell for sure thanks to the pure white feathers coming off her head. She has a similar appearance to Tim's own Beasts, actually, though there is something less wild about her appearance. A flash of grey on her shoulder catches your attention, and you crane your neck to discover that the color you saw was part of a large tattoo of wings drawn on her back in gunmetal ink.
"…Hi, there," Lacey says, somehow startled at the result of the ritual despite knowing Samantha for essentially all of the raccoon-woman's existence. "What… What's your name?"
"My name?" the girl repeats. She lifts her coal-black eyes to stare up at Lacey. "I… I don't know. Should I know?"
"Guardian Beasts are like children," you tell Lacey gently. "Sam didn't come into being with a name. We, their mages, are the ones who have to give them those."
Lacey opens then closes her mouth, and you can hear the swallow she tries to hide. "Like children, huh?" she says almost to herself in a thick voice. Reaching out, she strokes the bird-girl's cheek with the back of two fingers. "Olivia."
The newly christened Olivia smiles brightly at having a name of her own. You, on the other hand, cannot help but be surprised at how quickly Lacey went from not knowing what to do to coming up with that. "Does that name have some kind of special meaning to you?" you ask after a moment.
"It's one of the names Kurt and I picked out for if we had a daughter. Before we found out we couldn't have children."
You stare at her in surprise. It has never been something you thought all that hard about, but you know that she and Kurt are only a year or two younger than your dad. Despite that, and despite many other former dockworkers having kids of their own, it never crossed your mind why they did not. You just sort of assumed they had not wanted kids, even though they were more than welcoming when you moved into their home after the aftermath of the fight against Behemoth.
She looks up to give you a sad smile in response to your gobsmacked expression. "We talked about adoption, too, but that was around the same time that ships were being sunk in the bay to create the Ship Graveyard, and we realized we didn't exactly have the money to raise a kid in the first place. After that, it just got pushed onto the back burner and forgotten."
"I'm sorry. I didn't know."
"How could you?" she asks with a shrug. "It isn't like it was something we advertised." She turned her attention back to Olivia. "Now we have to figure out what to do with you. We can't exactly have you walking around the hospital naked."
"She looks like she's just an inch or two shorter than me," you point out. It makes her tall for a girl, but Lacey is likewise both tall and broad for a woman. If anything, it will only further the impression people might have that they are related. "They won't fit great, but it's better than nothing."
"Thank you," Olivia says in a soft voice that, despite your best efforts, you cannot help but compare to a coo.
You shake your head and start preparing the spell to teleport back to the apartment. It is only as you vanish from the hospital grounds that you realize the next issue sure to come up, and the thought puts a smile on your face.
How in the world will Kurt keep his sanity with a fourth female in the house?
Olivia's character sheet added to Allies tab.
This is probably the best time we're going to get to talk about XP. I mentioned it in the Informational tab, but at the end of every week non-template mages will gain 1 XP, and then we will have a vote on whether or not to spend it. We have it real easy this week because the only mage you have any control over right now is Lacey, so this will be a good test run. When we have more characters to work with, they will all be in the same format as below.
Lacey: 3 XP
[ ] Learn a spell (Modification tier only)
[ ] Save XP
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Kurt: "I picked a hell of a day to quit drinking."
Lacey: *dope smacks Kurt*