She slammed the front door slightly, god that was embarrassing. And Amy, how could her sister do that to her. But she'd just gone on a date her first date, ever. She'd thought about dating but it never crossed her mind that her first date would be with a girl! She wasn't into girls, was she? Shit, did she give out some gay vibe. Was that what set Emma off? Were the other girls picking on her because they thought she was perving on them in the locker room?
It wasn't a bad date. The blonde bombshell, Victoria, had called her boyfriend to rearrange and discovered he was nearby. The date had been pushed up at that point. Much to her and Amy's discomfort. They'd been swept along the boardwalk window shopping everything had happened so fast that the first hint she'd not noticed who she was on a date with until a little boy asked Vicky, aka Glory Girl for an autograph please.
That made 'Amy' Amy Dallon, Panacea. The wonder healer, whose hand she held once again. It had just felt like the most natural thing in the world, walking down the street, holding hands with Amy. Oh god, did that make her gay? She hadn't really thought about her sexuality before, and now she couldn't stop! She needed more girl friends, more friends full stop. Was Amy her girlfriend, how did that work? Did she want a girlfriend? No, stop thinking about it!
She wanted to put her haul away in the basement, behind the protective barrier. But Dad would be home by now, and she couldn't think of a reason to go into the basement. As if responding to her thoughts Danny's head poked around the kitchen door.
"K.. Taylor, it's rather late. Where have you been?"
Taylor winced, ever since the Incident at school Danny had switched to speaking english at home. It felt weird, Mom had always insisted they speak a proper language at home.
"Ich.. I..I had a date" The kitchen became eerily quiet, though she could hear something bubbling away on the stovetop. She was shaking. She didn't even know if she was gay. What would her Dad think, how could she explain that it was all just a big misunderstanding. But that would hurt Amy. But it was a misunderstanding. Wasn't it?
"Come here Taylor" She dropped her bag near the stairs and slumped into the kitchen. The meal smelt wonderful which made her feel guilty. She'd eaten a full meal on her 'date' and half a dessert. No, friends split desserts didn't they. That's a normal friendship thing. Not a date thing. Danny gestured waiting for her to be seated before he joined her. They sat in silence for a few minutes the stew simmering away softly the only real sound. Her father cleared his throat
"So.. What's his name?"
"...Amy..."
"...Oh… Thats.. Er.. good.."
"...Do I give off gay vibes dad?"
"Er.. Yes?"
Oh god she was giving off gay vibes. When had she last looked at a guy. Think, think! Mike! She thought he looked really pretty… Wait wasn't he going by Toni now? The E88 had beat him up for… Shit.
"I'm sorry I should have called first please may I go to my room now?"
"...ok.."
She fled.
~~~
… Half a turn and done. The last piece slid home perfectly, the complex web of circuitry started to glow happily. Pulses of light danced from node to node. Her device was done. Not her mother's, her own device, one designed for combat. For the numerous guns that the gangs had. She could be a real hero now.
[Simulation complete, system integrity 100% Empress]
She opened her eyes. Her bedroom was dark and the house was silent. The simulations were intense, even with Gesichtskreis feeding her hints she'd still failed more often than not. Putting together a device was hard. Every component needed to be handmade to fit all the others. Gesichtskreis was practically simple compared to the device her mother had been working on. Despite it being heavily modified already. It was in the end just a library device. Designed to store textbooks, course material and reference guides. Annette had done a lot of work on it though, expanded the onboard Expert System into a Near Inteligence.
A lot of Gesichtskreis systems were cobbled together, improvised. It was easy to see if you knew what to look for. Taylor was terrified of the prospect of making repairs on her mother's device. Her own device whilst more complex was at least laid out in a logical pattern. Gesichtskreis was a hodgepodge mess of add ons and patchwork repairs over the course of a decade. NachtWall was comparatively simple in a way. Whilst the design was heavily reinforced over Gesichtskreis, and able to channel more power it was designed into the device. Rather than slapped on top of a nominally non-combat device.
Magical Engineering was hard though. Even with the designs already complete actually building the components took precisely shaped magical fields. The calculations alone made her head swim and unlike combat applications required delicate balancing of power. Too little and the shape would be wrong or the part wouldn't be infused fully. Too much and you'd end up with a crumpled mess of burning gold. Toxic burning gold. Toxic wasn't really accurate though. The contaminated material radiated mana. Normal people, or Nulls as mom's books called them, could only withstand so much mana exposure before they started getting sick. It varied from person to person. Anyone with an active linker core would survive much higher levels of exposure before feeling anything and would recover faster. In fact you'd likely have to be
inside an exploding mana engine to get sick if you had an active linker core.
Time to get to work. Her reading had added an urgency to her actions. The mana engine in the basement wasn't designed for long term operation. It wasn't built to the nice safe, Belkan code. Instead it was cobbled together out of scrap, an old Al-Hazard mana pump might have been safer than it. She couldn't just shut it down though, NachtWall was so very nearly complete but without the holding field it would collapse under it's own weight.
She crept down the stairs, carefully avoiding the creaky third step. Running a complex calculation to reduce her weight to further reduce the sound she made. The basement door opened silently, proof that oiling the hinges was worth the time and effort involved. In the basement she squeezed past a small pile of boxes next to the back wall, before stepping
through the wall. Her skin tingled slightly from the illusion barrier, it wouldn't stop anyone with an active linker core, but nulls would find a solid wall. Annette had been more worried about nulls finding this space than the off chance someone from home would stumble down here.
The room beyond was roughly triangular, with an arching, heavily reinforced ceiling. Looking like a cross between a bomb shelter and a church architecturally. Along one wall sat a workbench full of tools, Taylor had spent hours organizing and familiarising herself with each and every one. The other wall held the mana engine, looking more like a random collection of junk than a piece of high technology, a thick cable snaked over the floor and into a pedestal in the middle of the room.
Inside a glowing holding field sat NachtWall, gold and crystal circuitry held firmly in mid air. She could see the gaps in it's frame, places which she would hopefully soon fill. Large buffer coils coming close to the edge of the holding field, spiraling mana channels leading to the hellishly complex synthetic casting arrays. There, next to the primary logic core a gap for the self repair node, and another space next to the memory array orphaned connections for the holographic projectors. There were a half dozen other similar gaps, mostly for relatively simple buffer coils thankfully.
With a huff she started the first component. How hard could it really be?
