A Worm AU where the Entities do things a little differently and Taylor's got an uncle that results in a different power set for her trigger event.
- Created
- Status
- Complete
- Watchers
- 3,736
- Recent readers
- 0
- Threadmarks
- 427
-
Statistics (312 threadmarks, 1.6m words)
User Total CmptrWz 312 Threadmarks Reader mode -
Loading…
-
Loading…
-
Loading…
-
Loading…
-
Loading…
Introduction
All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author of this story. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.
Before you get too far, I would like to provide some warnings:
- This story is not conflict-driven. If you expect your Worm to be conflict-driven, stay away.
- This story can very likely be described as "slice of life". If you don't like that, you may wish to leave.
- This story has been compared favorably and unfavorably to Taylor Varga. I used to say that if you don't like Taylor Varga you will probably not like this story either, but I'm told that's not true.
- I have previously self-labeled myself as (Crappy Author) in the Taylor Varga discord. Others disagree with me. My day job involves managing servers and programming, not writing text. Consider yourself warned.
- I have labeled myself as (Trolling Author) for a reason. Consider yourself warned.
A quick set of outside links:
- Mauling Snarks on TVTropes, which has a small pile of mistakes, but I don't have an account and haven't fixed them.
- Taylor Varga Discord, one of the places I hang out and am available.
- My version of the Excuse Generator, because I gave up trying to add to my local copy of the original one when I wanted Taylor Varga references.
YouTube PlaylistSoundcloud Compilation for a reading of Mauling Snarks, produced by @kip. And the Posting Thread for it.
This is my first solo fanfic in a while, and probably the oldest one you will be able to find by me at this point as my previous fanfic websites are all both under different names and long gone. As such I ask that you bear with me as I figure out what I am doing.
The idea for this story came to me when I read a slightly-related idea in a Worm ideas story on Fanfiction.net. That story no longer exists, and I do not know who the author was. I am taking this story a very different direction than they were headed, in part by kicking the AU aspect up a few notches.
Which brings me to a warning: This is very AU in certain respects, beyond Taylor getting a different power. Some of the changes have roots going back many years before the story starts. Others I am not sure why they are different, but they are. As such, if you see something that doesn't make sense right away due to how canon worked you may want to hold off to see if I explain where things went differently. Or just post, I may have honestly missed something and thus screwed up. Either way.
I appreciate constructive criticism, discussion, omakes, etc. and so forth.
I waited until I had at least 10 chapters after the prologue to start the thread because I hate running into fanfics that start off strong and then get nowhere. I continue to try and maintain at least a 10 chapter buffer. I will not be posting them all right away. Having a buffer is good, having a buffer I can edit to my heart's content because I made a mistake and need to correct for it is better.
When I reach a 15+ chapter buffer I tend to increase my posting rate.Also, a big thanks to the various people who have proof-read my Google Docs files and provided their opinions, most of whom regularly visit the Taylor Varga Discord.
I haven't actually tried to map most of them to SV usernames, especially given that I also have to map them from their Google names, but Jonakhensu and mp3.1415player are both included. If any others want to be mentioned let me know.
Last edited:
Prologue
Jacob had finally gotten around to using some of his vacation time, having scheduled time between both of his jobs to visit his brother-in-law and niece. He hadn't seen either since his half-sister's funeral a couple of years ago. To make matters worse, he hadn't heard from them in over a year and he was getting worried.
His occupation as a cape therapist had kept him quite busy, and he was in high demand. Which was one reason he hadn't been able to stop by for the past year. While not nearly as skilled with non-parahumans he still knew enough to suspect that his brother-in-law had fallen too far into depression and his niece was most likely all but on her own.
Pulling up to their house in his rental car he noted that the downstairs lights were on. Coupled with the car in the driveway that meant that they were, in fact, home. He grabbed his bag and hopped out of the car, heading up to the front door.
Dodging the broken step, which was concerning in that nobody had gotten around to fixing it, he tried the doorbell. Hearing nothing, another bad sign, he rapped on the door. He wasn't expecting his brother-in-law to all but rip the door off the hinges with a panicked look on his face, though.
"Jacob," his brother-in-law finally said, a forlorn look on his face.
"Danny," Jacob answered. "I guess I wasn't who you were expecting?"
"I was hoping Taylor had finally come home," Danny admitted. "Or at least that the police had come with news."
Well didn't that set red flags off.
"Where was she last known to be?" Jacob asked, after realizing that Danny wasn't going to provide more information without prodding. "When did you last see her?"
"I dropped her off at school this morning, watched her walk through the doors, then headed into work. When I got home there was a message on the answering machine from the school, they claimed she was absent today."
"Ok Danny, from what you said earlier I assume you called the police?"
"Of course. Though they said there wasn't much they could likely do unless they got lucky."
"I'm going to go check the school, see if I can spot anything there myself." Jacob then pulled a business card out of a pocket. "Here's one of my cards, in case you can't find my number. Call me if you hear anything."
Danny took the card and, after a moment, took Jacob's bag. "Thanks Jacob, please let me know if you find anything."
"Of course." Jacob headed back to the car. He knew that Taylor had ended up in Winslow, so that is where he headed.
Jacob pulled up to Winslow. He hoped that a janitor was still around to let him in, but wasn't holding out hope given that it was after dark and the lights were out. Still, he made his way to the door, but not before grabbing a small tool bag. Just in case.
As luck would have it, the lock didn't work due to what appeared to be old chewing gum jammed into it, and he was able to walk right in. A quick check out of curiosity showed that they hadn't even bothered to try and lock the door anyway, so either they knew about the gum or normally didn't lock the school after hours. He wasn't sure which was more concerning.
He made his way through the first floor of the school, making cursory checks in all the classrooms and restrooms. Finding nothing he made his way to the second floor, which also netted nothing, though there was an odd feeling in the back of his head. It dawned on him as he was entering the stairwell to head up to the third floor that he should have seen if he could find information on her locker or something in the office. Perhaps he would do that after he cleared the third floor, see if her jacket was here or something?
Of course, that plan didn't last long into entering the third floor hallway, what with the smell. Following his nose led him to a locker that was weeping something horrid. One of the only lockers on the floor with a second lock attached to the outside in addition to the built-in lock. At first he wanted nothing to do with whatever was in that thing, but something was nagging him about it. Deciding that regardless this needed to be investigated he made short work of the additional lock with the aid of a pair of bolt cutters, handling it with gloves just in case they wanted or needed to take fingerprints or something due to the mess, and then he pulled out a small lock pick set.
"I need more practice with these," Jacob mumbled, restarting for the fifth time. Another couple of attempts and he got it, releasing the key override to the locker's built-in combination lock. He then steeled himself for the smell to likely get worse and opened the locker.
He barely reacted in time to catch the body that fell out of the locker, and he ignored the waste spilling out around his feet. It took him a moment to realize that no, this wasn't a corpse, it was breathing. Unfortunately, it was also Taylor. He saw red for a moment, but quickly pushed it down as he had more immediate concerns.
Jacob watched as the ambulance that had responded to his emergency call pulled away. Danny had been informed and was likewise on his way to the same hospital. He would visit the hospital later, after ensuring that nothing was going to screw up the investigation into why and how Taylor was locked in that locker.
He knew there was no way she had locked herself in as a design feature of these lockers would prevent the door from closing if another lock was in the handle. Not to mention that she had been facing into the locker with no room to turn around and thus no way to even try and pull the door shut behind her.
It was a couple of minutes later when a police car showed up, apologizing for taking so long due to the original car having smashed a rim in a particularly bad pothole, and Jacob led them to the scene.
"Did someone let you in?" one of the officers asked as he led them through the unlocked doors. "And if so where are they?"
"Doors were unlocked when I got here," Jacob answered. "In fact, near as I can tell they are all unlocked, like nobody cares to bother locking them. Haven't seen anyone else around, the alarm panel looks like it has been disconnected, and on a whim while waiting I checked and they apparently don't have long distance service on the phones. Not sure if the security cameras work, and if so where the recordings end up, but I wouldn't be surprised if those are more for show, and that everyone in the school knows it."
The officers did not look happy at that.
A couple minutes later initial observations were made and the officers were setting the initial cordon around the locker. Jacob described why he had been there and what he had done into a recorder for when the proper investigators finally arrived, but one of the officers had noted a couple of things Jacob had missed that opened some additional options for him.
Knowing there was nothing for him to do but sit around and worry with Danny at the hospital and that he couldn't poke around the school office for clues he decided to head back to Danny's house. Danny had, after all, given him permission to check for anything Taylor might have left behind that could help explain what had happened.
"Clever," Jacob said a couple hours later, having found a loose floorboard in Taylor's closet, with a notebook and pile of loose papers hidden in it. "Almost missed that, if it hadn't shifted while I was reaching up to feel for seams I likely would have missed it entirely."
Jacob collected the items and moved out into the room proper, where he had enough light to read by. If this turned out to be something personal not related to what had happened at school he would carefully put it back and likely apologize to Taylor for invading her privacy. It didn't take him long to realize that the loose papers were printouts of emails, headers and all. The notebook was a log of events, dated and with details such as whether or not they had been reported to teachers or the school office and what had been done as a result. He suspected the USB drive included contained digital copies of most of the information as well, though he didn't check as he didn't know what passwords Taylor and Danny used for the two somewhat dated computers in the house.
All in all it didn't paint a pretty picture. And if even a tenth of what was documented in the hardcopy alone was accurate then there were going to be some serious consequences for people. Even, or perhaps especially, if he and his associates had to come back on a job to ensure it.
Still, looking back over the names of Taylor's most frequent tormentors he realized that there were two that stuck out. Emma Barnes was, as far as he could recall, Taylor's best friend. What had happened to make them bitter enemies? The other he knew was familiar, but he couldn't figure out where he had heard of Sophia Hess before. Shrugging it off for now, he gathered the evidence, dropped it on top of a box of schoolbooks and such he had found nothing interesting in, and resumed looking just in case this was only one of several stashes.
"Good morning Director Piggot," Jacob said as he entered the office.
"Hello Jacob," Director Piggot said, gesturing for the man to sit across from her. "I heard you were on vacation, but not that you were going to be in the area. And I have told you to call me Emily."
"I came to visit with family," Jacob admitted. "Unfortunately when I showed up, admittedly without prior notice, it was to discover my niece Taylor had gone missing sometime between entering school and making it to homeroom. Which leads me to here."
"That is unfortunate," Emily said. "Moreso as the only reason I can come up with for why you are here is that you found evidence of parahuman involvement."
"Indeed," Jacob said as he pulled out the documentation he had recovered from Taylor's closet and placed on it on the desk. "I found my niece locked in a locker at Winslow, severely injured and unconscious, alongside biohazardous waste. Last I heard they were likely going to need to close the school down until it could be cleaned up. But one of the officers noted that it looked like a tampon was stuck in the metal of the locker. Not to the metal, but in it."
"I see," Emily said, her expression darkening. "That paints an unfortunate picture."
"This stack," Jacob tapped the pile of papers on top of a notebook, "appears to be documentation by my niece of a severe bullying campaign. What little I looked at mentions over a dozen students and indicates that the staff is likely ignoring or actively helping to cover up quite a bit."
Emily took a couple of the sheets off of the top, noting that they were hard copies of emails. This one was from Emma Barnes. If they could prove it was legitimate it was all but a confession that the girl had ruined a class project. After a moment she motioned for Jacob to continue.
"The three main instigators look to be Emma Barnes, who used to be Taylor's best friend but now apparently uses her knowledge to torment Taylor emotionally, Madison Clements, who at a quick glance handles most of the likely academic sabotage due to sharing most of Taylor's classes, and Sophia Hess, who handles most of the physical abuse."
Emily's expression had darkened some more, though Jacob wasn't sure why. He did, however, suspect she knew something, and that there was no way this was going to be swept under the rug. Which was, for now, the important part. It did not take long for him to relay everything else he knew of the situation.
Twenty minutes later Jacob was on his way to the hospital to see how things were going, and to bring Danny a change of clothes and breakfast. Future thought and planning into revenge for all of this, if needed, could wait until he knew how bad off Taylor was. Though if those responsible were lucky the law would deal with them first,
Emily looked over some more of the printed emails, and then flipped through the notebook looking at random pages. She had to stop and calm herself down several times. She took a moment to check the news, seeing a notice that Winslow was indeed closed. She fired off some orders to get PRT squads to Winslow to investigate, though she trusted that Jacob had not mislead her. Finally, she picked up her phone and selected a saved number.
"Good morning Director," Miss Militia answered. "How can I help you today?"
"I wish it were a good morning," Emily replied. "Have you seen the news about Winslow?"
"I was informed a few minutes ago. I assume that there is more going on there?"
"A trusted associate of the PRT brought evidence of parahuman involvement in what could very well be the attempted murder of a student. I need you to come look over some of the evidence."
"I will be there in half an hour."
"How is she?" Jacob asked Danny, noting that he looked horrible. Neither of them had actually gotten any sleep in the past day, though Jacob had kept himself as busy as he could getting things together to ensure that the investigation had the best chance of success.
"They aren't sure she will pull through without parahuman healing," Danny said after a couple of minutes. "At a minimum she will need parahuman healing to avoid needing her legs amputated."
"Has anyone said anything about having sent a request?"
"Apparently Carol Dallon has blocked having her called in on school nights if the patient can wait until her next scheduled visit, but Panacea is still scheduled to be here after school today, they have put Taylor on the top of her list. I already signed all of the waivers needed."
"If Panacea can't help her I have some contacts I can call in too. They may take a day or two to get here, though."
"Thanks Jacob, I don't know what I'd do without her. Losing Annette was bad enough. And I'm sorry for not staying in touch."
"On that front, as much as you hate the idea, I think we need to talk about your fear of cell phones. These days a good pair would allow yours to locate Taylor's if something like this happens again even if she couldn't call for assistance herself."
Danny glared at him, clearly unhappy about this particular topic. "Damn you for using logic and my fears against me."
"Family and friends sometimes need to do that for your own good. I'll even spring for getting a hands-free kit for your car so you don't need to fumble with the phone itself if someone calls while you are driving."
Danny sighed. "I guess it makes sense. I suppose you already know a good model and plan?"
"Of course." Danny wouldn't need to know that he was going to take advantage of his position with the PRT to get something a bit better than normally available. He especially wouldn't need to know that the phones would probably be more powerful than their dated computers at home were.
His occupation as a cape therapist had kept him quite busy, and he was in high demand. Which was one reason he hadn't been able to stop by for the past year. While not nearly as skilled with non-parahumans he still knew enough to suspect that his brother-in-law had fallen too far into depression and his niece was most likely all but on her own.
Pulling up to their house in his rental car he noted that the downstairs lights were on. Coupled with the car in the driveway that meant that they were, in fact, home. He grabbed his bag and hopped out of the car, heading up to the front door.
Dodging the broken step, which was concerning in that nobody had gotten around to fixing it, he tried the doorbell. Hearing nothing, another bad sign, he rapped on the door. He wasn't expecting his brother-in-law to all but rip the door off the hinges with a panicked look on his face, though.
"Jacob," his brother-in-law finally said, a forlorn look on his face.
"Danny," Jacob answered. "I guess I wasn't who you were expecting?"
"I was hoping Taylor had finally come home," Danny admitted. "Or at least that the police had come with news."
Well didn't that set red flags off.
"Where was she last known to be?" Jacob asked, after realizing that Danny wasn't going to provide more information without prodding. "When did you last see her?"
"I dropped her off at school this morning, watched her walk through the doors, then headed into work. When I got home there was a message on the answering machine from the school, they claimed she was absent today."
"Ok Danny, from what you said earlier I assume you called the police?"
"Of course. Though they said there wasn't much they could likely do unless they got lucky."
"I'm going to go check the school, see if I can spot anything there myself." Jacob then pulled a business card out of a pocket. "Here's one of my cards, in case you can't find my number. Call me if you hear anything."
Danny took the card and, after a moment, took Jacob's bag. "Thanks Jacob, please let me know if you find anything."
"Of course." Jacob headed back to the car. He knew that Taylor had ended up in Winslow, so that is where he headed.
Jacob pulled up to Winslow. He hoped that a janitor was still around to let him in, but wasn't holding out hope given that it was after dark and the lights were out. Still, he made his way to the door, but not before grabbing a small tool bag. Just in case.
As luck would have it, the lock didn't work due to what appeared to be old chewing gum jammed into it, and he was able to walk right in. A quick check out of curiosity showed that they hadn't even bothered to try and lock the door anyway, so either they knew about the gum or normally didn't lock the school after hours. He wasn't sure which was more concerning.
He made his way through the first floor of the school, making cursory checks in all the classrooms and restrooms. Finding nothing he made his way to the second floor, which also netted nothing, though there was an odd feeling in the back of his head. It dawned on him as he was entering the stairwell to head up to the third floor that he should have seen if he could find information on her locker or something in the office. Perhaps he would do that after he cleared the third floor, see if her jacket was here or something?
Of course, that plan didn't last long into entering the third floor hallway, what with the smell. Following his nose led him to a locker that was weeping something horrid. One of the only lockers on the floor with a second lock attached to the outside in addition to the built-in lock. At first he wanted nothing to do with whatever was in that thing, but something was nagging him about it. Deciding that regardless this needed to be investigated he made short work of the additional lock with the aid of a pair of bolt cutters, handling it with gloves just in case they wanted or needed to take fingerprints or something due to the mess, and then he pulled out a small lock pick set.
"I need more practice with these," Jacob mumbled, restarting for the fifth time. Another couple of attempts and he got it, releasing the key override to the locker's built-in combination lock. He then steeled himself for the smell to likely get worse and opened the locker.
He barely reacted in time to catch the body that fell out of the locker, and he ignored the waste spilling out around his feet. It took him a moment to realize that no, this wasn't a corpse, it was breathing. Unfortunately, it was also Taylor. He saw red for a moment, but quickly pushed it down as he had more immediate concerns.
Jacob watched as the ambulance that had responded to his emergency call pulled away. Danny had been informed and was likewise on his way to the same hospital. He would visit the hospital later, after ensuring that nothing was going to screw up the investigation into why and how Taylor was locked in that locker.
He knew there was no way she had locked herself in as a design feature of these lockers would prevent the door from closing if another lock was in the handle. Not to mention that she had been facing into the locker with no room to turn around and thus no way to even try and pull the door shut behind her.
It was a couple of minutes later when a police car showed up, apologizing for taking so long due to the original car having smashed a rim in a particularly bad pothole, and Jacob led them to the scene.
"Did someone let you in?" one of the officers asked as he led them through the unlocked doors. "And if so where are they?"
"Doors were unlocked when I got here," Jacob answered. "In fact, near as I can tell they are all unlocked, like nobody cares to bother locking them. Haven't seen anyone else around, the alarm panel looks like it has been disconnected, and on a whim while waiting I checked and they apparently don't have long distance service on the phones. Not sure if the security cameras work, and if so where the recordings end up, but I wouldn't be surprised if those are more for show, and that everyone in the school knows it."
The officers did not look happy at that.
A couple minutes later initial observations were made and the officers were setting the initial cordon around the locker. Jacob described why he had been there and what he had done into a recorder for when the proper investigators finally arrived, but one of the officers had noted a couple of things Jacob had missed that opened some additional options for him.
Knowing there was nothing for him to do but sit around and worry with Danny at the hospital and that he couldn't poke around the school office for clues he decided to head back to Danny's house. Danny had, after all, given him permission to check for anything Taylor might have left behind that could help explain what had happened.
"Clever," Jacob said a couple hours later, having found a loose floorboard in Taylor's closet, with a notebook and pile of loose papers hidden in it. "Almost missed that, if it hadn't shifted while I was reaching up to feel for seams I likely would have missed it entirely."
Jacob collected the items and moved out into the room proper, where he had enough light to read by. If this turned out to be something personal not related to what had happened at school he would carefully put it back and likely apologize to Taylor for invading her privacy. It didn't take him long to realize that the loose papers were printouts of emails, headers and all. The notebook was a log of events, dated and with details such as whether or not they had been reported to teachers or the school office and what had been done as a result. He suspected the USB drive included contained digital copies of most of the information as well, though he didn't check as he didn't know what passwords Taylor and Danny used for the two somewhat dated computers in the house.
All in all it didn't paint a pretty picture. And if even a tenth of what was documented in the hardcopy alone was accurate then there were going to be some serious consequences for people. Even, or perhaps especially, if he and his associates had to come back on a job to ensure it.
Still, looking back over the names of Taylor's most frequent tormentors he realized that there were two that stuck out. Emma Barnes was, as far as he could recall, Taylor's best friend. What had happened to make them bitter enemies? The other he knew was familiar, but he couldn't figure out where he had heard of Sophia Hess before. Shrugging it off for now, he gathered the evidence, dropped it on top of a box of schoolbooks and such he had found nothing interesting in, and resumed looking just in case this was only one of several stashes.
"Good morning Director Piggot," Jacob said as he entered the office.
"Hello Jacob," Director Piggot said, gesturing for the man to sit across from her. "I heard you were on vacation, but not that you were going to be in the area. And I have told you to call me Emily."
"I came to visit with family," Jacob admitted. "Unfortunately when I showed up, admittedly without prior notice, it was to discover my niece Taylor had gone missing sometime between entering school and making it to homeroom. Which leads me to here."
"That is unfortunate," Emily said. "Moreso as the only reason I can come up with for why you are here is that you found evidence of parahuman involvement."
"Indeed," Jacob said as he pulled out the documentation he had recovered from Taylor's closet and placed on it on the desk. "I found my niece locked in a locker at Winslow, severely injured and unconscious, alongside biohazardous waste. Last I heard they were likely going to need to close the school down until it could be cleaned up. But one of the officers noted that it looked like a tampon was stuck in the metal of the locker. Not to the metal, but in it."
"I see," Emily said, her expression darkening. "That paints an unfortunate picture."
"This stack," Jacob tapped the pile of papers on top of a notebook, "appears to be documentation by my niece of a severe bullying campaign. What little I looked at mentions over a dozen students and indicates that the staff is likely ignoring or actively helping to cover up quite a bit."
Emily took a couple of the sheets off of the top, noting that they were hard copies of emails. This one was from Emma Barnes. If they could prove it was legitimate it was all but a confession that the girl had ruined a class project. After a moment she motioned for Jacob to continue.
"The three main instigators look to be Emma Barnes, who used to be Taylor's best friend but now apparently uses her knowledge to torment Taylor emotionally, Madison Clements, who at a quick glance handles most of the likely academic sabotage due to sharing most of Taylor's classes, and Sophia Hess, who handles most of the physical abuse."
Emily's expression had darkened some more, though Jacob wasn't sure why. He did, however, suspect she knew something, and that there was no way this was going to be swept under the rug. Which was, for now, the important part. It did not take long for him to relay everything else he knew of the situation.
Twenty minutes later Jacob was on his way to the hospital to see how things were going, and to bring Danny a change of clothes and breakfast. Future thought and planning into revenge for all of this, if needed, could wait until he knew how bad off Taylor was. Though if those responsible were lucky the law would deal with them first,
Emily looked over some more of the printed emails, and then flipped through the notebook looking at random pages. She had to stop and calm herself down several times. She took a moment to check the news, seeing a notice that Winslow was indeed closed. She fired off some orders to get PRT squads to Winslow to investigate, though she trusted that Jacob had not mislead her. Finally, she picked up her phone and selected a saved number.
"Good morning Director," Miss Militia answered. "How can I help you today?"
"I wish it were a good morning," Emily replied. "Have you seen the news about Winslow?"
"I was informed a few minutes ago. I assume that there is more going on there?"
"A trusted associate of the PRT brought evidence of parahuman involvement in what could very well be the attempted murder of a student. I need you to come look over some of the evidence."
"I will be there in half an hour."
"How is she?" Jacob asked Danny, noting that he looked horrible. Neither of them had actually gotten any sleep in the past day, though Jacob had kept himself as busy as he could getting things together to ensure that the investigation had the best chance of success.
"They aren't sure she will pull through without parahuman healing," Danny said after a couple of minutes. "At a minimum she will need parahuman healing to avoid needing her legs amputated."
"Has anyone said anything about having sent a request?"
"Apparently Carol Dallon has blocked having her called in on school nights if the patient can wait until her next scheduled visit, but Panacea is still scheduled to be here after school today, they have put Taylor on the top of her list. I already signed all of the waivers needed."
"If Panacea can't help her I have some contacts I can call in too. They may take a day or two to get here, though."
"Thanks Jacob, I don't know what I'd do without her. Losing Annette was bad enough. And I'm sorry for not staying in touch."
"On that front, as much as you hate the idea, I think we need to talk about your fear of cell phones. These days a good pair would allow yours to locate Taylor's if something like this happens again even if she couldn't call for assistance herself."
Danny glared at him, clearly unhappy about this particular topic. "Damn you for using logic and my fears against me."
"Family and friends sometimes need to do that for your own good. I'll even spring for getting a hands-free kit for your car so you don't need to fumble with the phone itself if someone calls while you are driving."
Danny sighed. "I guess it makes sense. I suppose you already know a good model and plan?"
"Of course." Danny wouldn't need to know that he was going to take advantage of his position with the PRT to get something a bit better than normally available. He especially wouldn't need to know that the phones would probably be more powerful than their dated computers at home were.
Chapter 1
Taylor winced a little as she opened her eyes. A quick glance around her and she knew that she was in a hospital, though not which one. Her father was on her left and Panacea was on her right. Which probably meant she was in Brockton General. She could tell Panacea was still working, though, and she didn't think she would be able to speak yet.
Ooooh, Panacea has a snark. Hello!
[Query]
Well, you are there, it would be rude to ignore you. How are you?
[Boredom]
Awww, why are you bored?
[Repetition. Monotony.]
Well, I suppose it would be boring only working at healing humans all the time. Or perhaps just animals? How do you feel about plants?
Oooh, tingly throat. "Hello?" Dang, that was barely a whisper.
[Interest. Curiosity. Despair.]
Why wouldn't she..oh, right, she is likely afraid of being seen like Nilbog. But that isn't her fault. Maybe she just needs a poke?
"Sorry about that, try again?" Panacea said.
"Hello?" Taylor tried again. Much better. "You should buy a greenhouse." Panacea blinked. Taylor then turned to look at her father, who appeared to be slightly in shock, and like he hadn't slept in a day or two. "Hi dad." Crap, the last thing she remembered before waking up here was getting shoved into a locker, which means dad must know about the bullying now. Either that or someone at Winslow is much better at covering up than she would expect.
"Taylor," Danny said, carefully leaning over to hug her. "Why didn't you tell me? Jacob said your notes went back months."
Jacob? Uncle Jacob? Wow, she hadn't spoken to or heard from him for a while. Wait, he found her notes? Why was he in her closet?
"Why a greenhouse?" Panacea muttered.
"So that you and your snark can play with the plants, of course," Taylor answered. "So that your snark doesn't drive you crazy with boredom." Huh, that was straightforward, why did Panacea look confused?
Ooooh, could you and Panacea make rainbow roses?
[Affirmative]
I may want some of those!
"So is Uncle Jacob here?" Taylor asked. Danny looked confused.
"Yea," Danny finally answered. "He's waiting outside."
"Not that I want to interrupt," Panacea said. "But there are a couple of things we need to talk about."
Danny sat back in his chair and they both looked towards Panacea. One should always pay attention to the doctor when they tell you things, you might not recover properly otherwise.
"To start with, Taylor, you are going to be quite hungry for a few days," Panacea started. "You will need to eat quite a bit more as you recover."
"I'll make sure she eats plenty," Danny said.
"You will also want to avoid anything too strenuous for the same few days," Panacea continued. "I did what I could, but I can't heal the remnants of your concussion."
No brains?
[Annoyance]
Oh, she is just afraid to touch brains. I guess that makes sense, given that a mistake could change someone in who knows what ways.
"We have a family member that should be able to help keep an eye on her," Danny said. "Even if it annoys her while she recovers."
"Lastly, I am required by law to inform you that Taylor triggered in the past 48 hours," Panacea said. "Before you ask, I can see that her brain is still healing from the trigger event, which was most likely in the locker she was locked inside of. In another day or two I wouldn't be able to tell anymore." She then pulled out a few pamphlets from a bag she had with her and handed them to Danny. "These cover some details about dealing with the aftermath of trigger events, contact numbers for the PRT and Protectorate, the unwritten rules and how they generally work, and how New Wave works and how to contact us. The latter is more of a courtesy, the law only requires that I provide the first couple when a minor is found to have triggered recently."
"How can you give us a copy of the unwritten rules if they are unwritten?" Taylor asked. Because that totally made no sense.
"Obviously they are typed and not written," Panacea deadpanned. Huh, she had that response ready, she must get that one a lot. "More seriously, in this case unwritten mostly refers to the fact that they aren't, in fact, laws."
"Do you have to report that she triggered?" Danny asked.
"I am actually required to keep it a secret," Panacea answered. "Similar to Doctor/Patient rules. Some of that is covered in the unwritten rules pamphlet, and that is one of the few things that does, in fact, have a legal basis. At any rate, you are encouraged to talk to the PRT about power testing, even if Taylor doesn't join the Wards. All of New Wave has done so, they can sometimes find aspects of powers that weren't immediately obvious."
"Thank you," Taylor said. Now that she thought about it, probably a good idea to be on the good side of someone who could probably turn you into a particularly unruly shrubbery if you pissed her off. "For everything."
"You are welcome," Panacea said. "Now then, unless you want others to know that Taylor has triggered you may want to hide the pamphlets for the time being. Have a nice day."
Panacea left as Danny put the pamphlets into a folder he had with him. A minute later Uncle Jacob came in. Taylor did not get a chance to say hello before Uncle Jacob had come over and wrapped her up in a hug.
Oooh. Hello there, you partnered with my uncle?
[Affirmation]
How are you?
[Content]
Good for you. Plenty of variety there?
[...Affirmation. Dejection?]
Plenty of parahumans, but he rarely looks for new kinds of blades? Huh. Maybe I should look into getting him a sword for Christmas.
[Interest. Excitement.]
"I'm sorry I searched your room," Uncle Jacob finally said. Huh? Oh, right, dad said something about that. "But we needed to know who may have locked you in that locker."
"It's alright," Taylor answered. For some reason she knew that Uncle Jacob got her out of the locker, and that later he slipped on the loose floorboard while looking for places up higher? "Why were you looking for places up high in my closet? There has never been anything up there that I know of."
"Because a lot of houses have access panels for things hidden in closets, some of which end up being accessible dead space later," Uncle Jacob answered. Then froze. "How did you know that?"
"I think your snark showed me," Taylor answered.
[Affirmation]
"Yea, your snark just told me that it did," Taylor continued. "Was it not supposed to?"
Uncle Jacob looked over at Danny. "I think we are going to need to chat when we get back to your house."
"Most likely," Danny answered, giving both of them a look.
"Can we stop at Fugly's?" Taylor asked. "I'm starving."
Taylor ended up going home with her father while Jacob swung by Fugly's. On the way home she was informed that, regardless of when Winslow re-opened, she wasn't going back there. Which led to a quick explanation that her locker had been so bad that the school had to be closed until it was decontaminated.
She didn't think it was that bad, herself, but then again she barely remembered entering the locker. Which kinda made her happy, actually, because that meant she didn't have to remember any of her apparent twelve or more hours trapped in the thing. On the other hand, that meant she had a bad enough head injury that she wasn't storing memories correctly, which was a bad thing. Perhaps she should just leave that alone.
Once they made it home Taylor grabbed a bag of chips to snack on while she read the pamphlets Panacea had provided. Her father cleaned up the mess that he had left the day before (was it really only a day?) when he had rushed to the hospital. She had offered to help, but was barred from doing so because she was supposed to be taking it easy.
Uncle Jacob arrived with enough takeout for five people just after Taylor had finished reading the last pamphlet. Apparently New Wave offered various forms of advice and assistance even if you didn't join, especially legal help for recent triggers needing it, especially in cases where the recent trigger injured someone before they even realized they had triggered. After giving it some thought Taylor didn't think joining New Wave would be a good idea, though, as the loss of Fleur did not have them allow capes to join without going public with their identity and as much as the unwritten rules were supposed to protect the families of capes her father had no powers of his own.
As they sat down to eat a silent agreement was reached that they would talk after dinner was consumed. Taylor surprised herself by eating a little more than twice what she normally would, but Panacea had said she was going to be unusually hungry. Uncle Jacob and her father finished the rest off, showing that they had not eaten much themselves over the past day.
Still, the reprieve from the coming discussion had to end eventually. It lasted slightly longer as she was once again relegated to 'resting' while Uncle Jacob and her father cleaned up. So far it wasn't quite at the level of being annoying, but she suspected it would not be long before she was going to annoyed at the two of them not letting her do anything.
Finally everyone was sitting around the table with a drink each, the pamphlets having been placed between them. Danny had opted for a coffee while Jacob and Taylor had cups of tea.
"You will want to read these later," Jacob said to Danny, gesturing at the pamphlets. "But I already know what they say and Taylor has read them." He picked up the unwritten rules pamphlet. "This one is one of the more important for Taylor, though."
"Because unlike most capes I automatically identify that people are parahumans," Taylor supplied. "As such I need to keep that a secret, especially when they are out of costume."
"More so than that," Jacob said, looking at Taylor. "I suspect you get enough information to identify which parahuman they are. My abilities let me identify conscious parahumans automatically, but only that they are parahumans, though that isn't quite working with you. I have to go to some effort to figure out which parahuman they might be if I want to know that, and even then I usually have to interact with them to do so."
"Yea, I am not sure I can stop myself from figuring some of that out," Taylor admitted. "I will have to try and focus more on the person when they are not in costume, I guess? For some reason it became easier with you, but I think that is because your snark is trying to stay silent."
"Let's go back to the fact that you are a parahuman," Danny said, looking at Jacob. "Which I was previously unaware of and am interested in the story behind it, or at least as much as you are willing to tell us. Also, did Annette know?"
"Yes, well, there are reasons for the secrecy," Jacob said. "Amongst them that my situation is a bit more unusual than most. Annette did know, though, and likely would have gotten in touch with me the instant anyone else in the family triggered anyway when she was alive."
"Your snark did tell me enough to identify you before it went silent," Taylor said, looking at her uncle. "I am quite curious. How did Jack Slash end up working with the PRT?"
The answer was delayed a bit by Danny having to recover from choking on his coffee, including cleaning the table up and getting him a new shirt. Eventually, though, Jacob was able to answer.
"Back when the Slaughterhouse Nine first started up things were just as bad as you would expect," Jacob started. "But it didn't take long for some of us to realize that running around killing indiscriminately was a bad idea. King, however, didn't agree, and couldn't be convinced otherwise. It didn't take me long to realize that a mental component of his power made it so he never would be convinced otherwise. I believe that was when I realized that my power had a thinker component that helped me understand and generally communicate other parahumans, in fact." Jacob took a sip of his tea, a bit of a distant look on his face as he thought back. "When we were finally able to kill King that left the problem of what to do with the members that couldn't be redeemed. I was personally happy that Grey Boy was already out of the picture, as King was the only one that could deal with him at the time, but we had to carefully arrange for some of the others to be killed off without drawing suspicion that it was intentional. At least until only one was left, anyway. Luckily I had already started working with the PRT on that, in part thanks to Harbinger's help." Jacob took a moment to look at the two of them. "Yes, he is still around, no I won't tell you where or what he is doing." Danny and Taylor nodded. "Right, at any rate now the nine are more of a support group for capes that need violence to stay sane, targeting those that are known to have evaded justice for their crimes to sate those that need it to not turn to crime themselves."
"That...sounds a bit unbelievable," Danny finally said. "Especially with what the current members of the nine frequently do."
"They do less wanton violence than you would expect," Jacob said. "For example, I think I have killed all of five people in the past two years, only one was a cape, yet have a couple hundred supposed kills in that time period due to being blamed for collateral damage from gang members. Mostly the idiots that fell on their own knives, I think. I never did bother trying to figure out why I was being blamed. The others have similar things going on, reputation has caused massively inflated numbers."
"How much are you allowed to tell us about the other members?" Taylor asked after they had digested that. "Given that you seem to be claiming there are good reasons for them to participate in those activities in the first place?"
"Well," Jacob pondered. "I suppose so long as I don't tell you civilian names I can cover the basics of all of them." He went on to give details on each current member of the nine and why they were there, starting with himself.
Jack Slash, as Jacob's cape identity, functioned more as a PRT liaison and therapist than anything else, monitoring the others and trying to keep them from going too far. He did have his own non-cape therapist he had to visit as well, because he was able to see that his powers had affected his mentality too. While he tried to mainly use scare tactics he would occasionally need to step in and attack directly, mainly doing so when Bonesaw ended up over her head and the Siberian was otherwise occupied. That was the type of situation that resulted in his one cape kill in the past year.
Speaking of Bonesaw, she had triggered at a young age, and it didn't take long to find out that her powers pushed her to experiment on living humans, especially parahumans. Once that experimentation has borne results she is free to use what she learns in more controlled situations, but her power insists on pain and torture during the experimentation phase. Thus she gets pointed at villainous parahumans who have escaped justice and gang members with sufficient crimes on their records to experiment with new techniques before her urges get too strong to ignore and she starts going after anyone around her.
The Siberian is complicated, but has minimal drive to actually cause harm and as such has ended up being more of an enforcer within the nine, most outright kills being their specific parahuman targets that were otherwise hard to deal with or collateral damage incidents in fights with gang members, many of those while keeping an eye on Bonesaw. Taylor got the impression that there was something else Jacob knew that he was avoiding saying, mainly because his snark kept almost letting something through to her.
Mannequin is known to have major mental issues and a death-wish, being broken in some way that Jacob can't find. One of the only reasons he hasn't been put out of his misery is that he is willing to be pointed at specific parahuman targets while they try and find a way to heal him. A side effect of his issues is that he tends to ignore bystanders when fighting, so he does have a number of innocent kills. Jacob personally figured that in some of those cases it was a matter of taking idiots out of the gene pool, given that they had stuck around to watch dangerous capes fight instead of getting out of the way, though admitted that might be his power talking. His therapist apparently brings that up every few sessions to keep him from forgetting.
Crawler is driven to find someone who might be able and willing to kill him, in general. He can't help it and goes stir-crazy if he goes too long without entering a serious fight with someone new. The fact that only the worst villains are generally willing to try and kill him instead of capturing means it is fairly easy to direct him at the right targets. Jacob did mention that everyone wished they had a decent way to get him to Endbringer fights, but he never seemed to be able to get to a rally point in time.
Shatterbird has two modes to her power, though he wouldn't describe the lesser-known one, and she is driven to use the more destructive mode in populated areas frequently. If she doesn't intentionally use the destructive mode in that way for long enough it tends to go off while she is sleeping, staying out of control until she wakes up. Due to the need for the areas to be populated they try and aim for gang-infested territories for her, but collateral damage is an unfortunate fact of life with her. Jacob admitted, though he probably shouldn't have, that when not running around as Shatterbird she operated as a Protectorate hero. But he didn't say which one, or where she was stationed.
Hatchet Face Jacob was lucky with, for some reason his power only disabled the blade projection portion of "Jack's" power, so Jacob was able to get close to him and used some mid-battle therapy to get him recovering from the trauma of his trigger event. He still has a drive to kill parahumans, though, a need that will build into him going on a rampage if he doesn't give into it every so often. So long as he so much as makes serious attempts often enough he remains sane enough to not go after people indiscriminately. To get maximum utility out of the smallest number of parahumans being targeted by the nine he generally ends up finishing off those that Bonesaw experimented on, meaning Bonesaw technically has a surprisingly small lifetime parahuman kill count.
Finally, Burnscar apparently suffers in different ways depending on if she uses her powers or not, varying from suicidally depressed when not using them to insanely reckless when using them for too long. It is a delicate balance, and it was discovered that the extremes are buffered quite a bit if she kills someone with her powers every few months. She officially 'joined' the nine shortly after Protectorate thinkers figured that part out. And apparently she has a preference for targeting those that physically abuse others.
"I am still disturbed by the thought that the Slaughterhouse Nine, reportedly some of the most dangerous parahumans out there, are actually a therapy group," Danny finally admitted. "Though being affiliated with the PRT would explain why the Triumvirate have never just taken them out." Then he got a worried look. "Are you going to be in trouble for telling us any of this?"
"Nope," Jacob answered, grinning a bit. "I ensured that I would be permitted to explain to family in the event of another family member triggering. Specifically the entire immediate family of and/or those already living with any family member that triggered. The likelihood of similar powers alone warranted caution in the secrecy part of the contracts given my cape identity. Though now that it has come up I suspect they are going to kick themselves when they realize that they forgot to include getting said family to sign NDAs in the conditions that allow me to tell you all of this."
Some more small talk and finishing of their drinks was all that happened after that. They would likely get into more serious discussions about how to handle things the following day.
Taylor was right about things starting to get annoying when she was shuffled off to bed after her first yawn, not even allowed to rinse her own teacup. Jacob followed Taylor upstairs (because apparently she was too fragile right now to be trusted to stairs? Really?) and, after some hovering to ensure she was ok throughout the entire preparing for bed dance, headed to the guest room.
Then again, once she was in bed Taylor lasted all of five minutes before slipping into dreams, so perhaps some caution may have been warranted.
Ooooh, Panacea has a snark. Hello!
[Query]
Well, you are there, it would be rude to ignore you. How are you?
[Boredom]
Awww, why are you bored?
[Repetition. Monotony.]
Well, I suppose it would be boring only working at healing humans all the time. Or perhaps just animals? How do you feel about plants?
Oooh, tingly throat. "Hello?" Dang, that was barely a whisper.
[Interest. Curiosity. Despair.]
Why wouldn't she..oh, right, she is likely afraid of being seen like Nilbog. But that isn't her fault. Maybe she just needs a poke?
"Sorry about that, try again?" Panacea said.
"Hello?" Taylor tried again. Much better. "You should buy a greenhouse." Panacea blinked. Taylor then turned to look at her father, who appeared to be slightly in shock, and like he hadn't slept in a day or two. "Hi dad." Crap, the last thing she remembered before waking up here was getting shoved into a locker, which means dad must know about the bullying now. Either that or someone at Winslow is much better at covering up than she would expect.
"Taylor," Danny said, carefully leaning over to hug her. "Why didn't you tell me? Jacob said your notes went back months."
Jacob? Uncle Jacob? Wow, she hadn't spoken to or heard from him for a while. Wait, he found her notes? Why was he in her closet?
"Why a greenhouse?" Panacea muttered.
"So that you and your snark can play with the plants, of course," Taylor answered. "So that your snark doesn't drive you crazy with boredom." Huh, that was straightforward, why did Panacea look confused?
Ooooh, could you and Panacea make rainbow roses?
[Affirmative]
I may want some of those!
"So is Uncle Jacob here?" Taylor asked. Danny looked confused.
"Yea," Danny finally answered. "He's waiting outside."
"Not that I want to interrupt," Panacea said. "But there are a couple of things we need to talk about."
Danny sat back in his chair and they both looked towards Panacea. One should always pay attention to the doctor when they tell you things, you might not recover properly otherwise.
"To start with, Taylor, you are going to be quite hungry for a few days," Panacea started. "You will need to eat quite a bit more as you recover."
"I'll make sure she eats plenty," Danny said.
"You will also want to avoid anything too strenuous for the same few days," Panacea continued. "I did what I could, but I can't heal the remnants of your concussion."
No brains?
[Annoyance]
Oh, she is just afraid to touch brains. I guess that makes sense, given that a mistake could change someone in who knows what ways.
"We have a family member that should be able to help keep an eye on her," Danny said. "Even if it annoys her while she recovers."
"Lastly, I am required by law to inform you that Taylor triggered in the past 48 hours," Panacea said. "Before you ask, I can see that her brain is still healing from the trigger event, which was most likely in the locker she was locked inside of. In another day or two I wouldn't be able to tell anymore." She then pulled out a few pamphlets from a bag she had with her and handed them to Danny. "These cover some details about dealing with the aftermath of trigger events, contact numbers for the PRT and Protectorate, the unwritten rules and how they generally work, and how New Wave works and how to contact us. The latter is more of a courtesy, the law only requires that I provide the first couple when a minor is found to have triggered recently."
"How can you give us a copy of the unwritten rules if they are unwritten?" Taylor asked. Because that totally made no sense.
"Obviously they are typed and not written," Panacea deadpanned. Huh, she had that response ready, she must get that one a lot. "More seriously, in this case unwritten mostly refers to the fact that they aren't, in fact, laws."
"Do you have to report that she triggered?" Danny asked.
"I am actually required to keep it a secret," Panacea answered. "Similar to Doctor/Patient rules. Some of that is covered in the unwritten rules pamphlet, and that is one of the few things that does, in fact, have a legal basis. At any rate, you are encouraged to talk to the PRT about power testing, even if Taylor doesn't join the Wards. All of New Wave has done so, they can sometimes find aspects of powers that weren't immediately obvious."
"Thank you," Taylor said. Now that she thought about it, probably a good idea to be on the good side of someone who could probably turn you into a particularly unruly shrubbery if you pissed her off. "For everything."
"You are welcome," Panacea said. "Now then, unless you want others to know that Taylor has triggered you may want to hide the pamphlets for the time being. Have a nice day."
Panacea left as Danny put the pamphlets into a folder he had with him. A minute later Uncle Jacob came in. Taylor did not get a chance to say hello before Uncle Jacob had come over and wrapped her up in a hug.
Oooh. Hello there, you partnered with my uncle?
[Affirmation]
How are you?
[Content]
Good for you. Plenty of variety there?
[...Affirmation. Dejection?]
Plenty of parahumans, but he rarely looks for new kinds of blades? Huh. Maybe I should look into getting him a sword for Christmas.
[Interest. Excitement.]
"I'm sorry I searched your room," Uncle Jacob finally said. Huh? Oh, right, dad said something about that. "But we needed to know who may have locked you in that locker."
"It's alright," Taylor answered. For some reason she knew that Uncle Jacob got her out of the locker, and that later he slipped on the loose floorboard while looking for places up higher? "Why were you looking for places up high in my closet? There has never been anything up there that I know of."
"Because a lot of houses have access panels for things hidden in closets, some of which end up being accessible dead space later," Uncle Jacob answered. Then froze. "How did you know that?"
"I think your snark showed me," Taylor answered.
[Affirmation]
"Yea, your snark just told me that it did," Taylor continued. "Was it not supposed to?"
Uncle Jacob looked over at Danny. "I think we are going to need to chat when we get back to your house."
"Most likely," Danny answered, giving both of them a look.
"Can we stop at Fugly's?" Taylor asked. "I'm starving."
Taylor ended up going home with her father while Jacob swung by Fugly's. On the way home she was informed that, regardless of when Winslow re-opened, she wasn't going back there. Which led to a quick explanation that her locker had been so bad that the school had to be closed until it was decontaminated.
She didn't think it was that bad, herself, but then again she barely remembered entering the locker. Which kinda made her happy, actually, because that meant she didn't have to remember any of her apparent twelve or more hours trapped in the thing. On the other hand, that meant she had a bad enough head injury that she wasn't storing memories correctly, which was a bad thing. Perhaps she should just leave that alone.
Once they made it home Taylor grabbed a bag of chips to snack on while she read the pamphlets Panacea had provided. Her father cleaned up the mess that he had left the day before (was it really only a day?) when he had rushed to the hospital. She had offered to help, but was barred from doing so because she was supposed to be taking it easy.
Uncle Jacob arrived with enough takeout for five people just after Taylor had finished reading the last pamphlet. Apparently New Wave offered various forms of advice and assistance even if you didn't join, especially legal help for recent triggers needing it, especially in cases where the recent trigger injured someone before they even realized they had triggered. After giving it some thought Taylor didn't think joining New Wave would be a good idea, though, as the loss of Fleur did not have them allow capes to join without going public with their identity and as much as the unwritten rules were supposed to protect the families of capes her father had no powers of his own.
As they sat down to eat a silent agreement was reached that they would talk after dinner was consumed. Taylor surprised herself by eating a little more than twice what she normally would, but Panacea had said she was going to be unusually hungry. Uncle Jacob and her father finished the rest off, showing that they had not eaten much themselves over the past day.
Still, the reprieve from the coming discussion had to end eventually. It lasted slightly longer as she was once again relegated to 'resting' while Uncle Jacob and her father cleaned up. So far it wasn't quite at the level of being annoying, but she suspected it would not be long before she was going to annoyed at the two of them not letting her do anything.
Finally everyone was sitting around the table with a drink each, the pamphlets having been placed between them. Danny had opted for a coffee while Jacob and Taylor had cups of tea.
"You will want to read these later," Jacob said to Danny, gesturing at the pamphlets. "But I already know what they say and Taylor has read them." He picked up the unwritten rules pamphlet. "This one is one of the more important for Taylor, though."
"Because unlike most capes I automatically identify that people are parahumans," Taylor supplied. "As such I need to keep that a secret, especially when they are out of costume."
"More so than that," Jacob said, looking at Taylor. "I suspect you get enough information to identify which parahuman they are. My abilities let me identify conscious parahumans automatically, but only that they are parahumans, though that isn't quite working with you. I have to go to some effort to figure out which parahuman they might be if I want to know that, and even then I usually have to interact with them to do so."
"Yea, I am not sure I can stop myself from figuring some of that out," Taylor admitted. "I will have to try and focus more on the person when they are not in costume, I guess? For some reason it became easier with you, but I think that is because your snark is trying to stay silent."
"Let's go back to the fact that you are a parahuman," Danny said, looking at Jacob. "Which I was previously unaware of and am interested in the story behind it, or at least as much as you are willing to tell us. Also, did Annette know?"
"Yes, well, there are reasons for the secrecy," Jacob said. "Amongst them that my situation is a bit more unusual than most. Annette did know, though, and likely would have gotten in touch with me the instant anyone else in the family triggered anyway when she was alive."
"Your snark did tell me enough to identify you before it went silent," Taylor said, looking at her uncle. "I am quite curious. How did Jack Slash end up working with the PRT?"
The answer was delayed a bit by Danny having to recover from choking on his coffee, including cleaning the table up and getting him a new shirt. Eventually, though, Jacob was able to answer.
"Back when the Slaughterhouse Nine first started up things were just as bad as you would expect," Jacob started. "But it didn't take long for some of us to realize that running around killing indiscriminately was a bad idea. King, however, didn't agree, and couldn't be convinced otherwise. It didn't take me long to realize that a mental component of his power made it so he never would be convinced otherwise. I believe that was when I realized that my power had a thinker component that helped me understand and generally communicate other parahumans, in fact." Jacob took a sip of his tea, a bit of a distant look on his face as he thought back. "When we were finally able to kill King that left the problem of what to do with the members that couldn't be redeemed. I was personally happy that Grey Boy was already out of the picture, as King was the only one that could deal with him at the time, but we had to carefully arrange for some of the others to be killed off without drawing suspicion that it was intentional. At least until only one was left, anyway. Luckily I had already started working with the PRT on that, in part thanks to Harbinger's help." Jacob took a moment to look at the two of them. "Yes, he is still around, no I won't tell you where or what he is doing." Danny and Taylor nodded. "Right, at any rate now the nine are more of a support group for capes that need violence to stay sane, targeting those that are known to have evaded justice for their crimes to sate those that need it to not turn to crime themselves."
"That...sounds a bit unbelievable," Danny finally said. "Especially with what the current members of the nine frequently do."
"They do less wanton violence than you would expect," Jacob said. "For example, I think I have killed all of five people in the past two years, only one was a cape, yet have a couple hundred supposed kills in that time period due to being blamed for collateral damage from gang members. Mostly the idiots that fell on their own knives, I think. I never did bother trying to figure out why I was being blamed. The others have similar things going on, reputation has caused massively inflated numbers."
"How much are you allowed to tell us about the other members?" Taylor asked after they had digested that. "Given that you seem to be claiming there are good reasons for them to participate in those activities in the first place?"
"Well," Jacob pondered. "I suppose so long as I don't tell you civilian names I can cover the basics of all of them." He went on to give details on each current member of the nine and why they were there, starting with himself.
Jack Slash, as Jacob's cape identity, functioned more as a PRT liaison and therapist than anything else, monitoring the others and trying to keep them from going too far. He did have his own non-cape therapist he had to visit as well, because he was able to see that his powers had affected his mentality too. While he tried to mainly use scare tactics he would occasionally need to step in and attack directly, mainly doing so when Bonesaw ended up over her head and the Siberian was otherwise occupied. That was the type of situation that resulted in his one cape kill in the past year.
Speaking of Bonesaw, she had triggered at a young age, and it didn't take long to find out that her powers pushed her to experiment on living humans, especially parahumans. Once that experimentation has borne results she is free to use what she learns in more controlled situations, but her power insists on pain and torture during the experimentation phase. Thus she gets pointed at villainous parahumans who have escaped justice and gang members with sufficient crimes on their records to experiment with new techniques before her urges get too strong to ignore and she starts going after anyone around her.
The Siberian is complicated, but has minimal drive to actually cause harm and as such has ended up being more of an enforcer within the nine, most outright kills being their specific parahuman targets that were otherwise hard to deal with or collateral damage incidents in fights with gang members, many of those while keeping an eye on Bonesaw. Taylor got the impression that there was something else Jacob knew that he was avoiding saying, mainly because his snark kept almost letting something through to her.
Mannequin is known to have major mental issues and a death-wish, being broken in some way that Jacob can't find. One of the only reasons he hasn't been put out of his misery is that he is willing to be pointed at specific parahuman targets while they try and find a way to heal him. A side effect of his issues is that he tends to ignore bystanders when fighting, so he does have a number of innocent kills. Jacob personally figured that in some of those cases it was a matter of taking idiots out of the gene pool, given that they had stuck around to watch dangerous capes fight instead of getting out of the way, though admitted that might be his power talking. His therapist apparently brings that up every few sessions to keep him from forgetting.
Crawler is driven to find someone who might be able and willing to kill him, in general. He can't help it and goes stir-crazy if he goes too long without entering a serious fight with someone new. The fact that only the worst villains are generally willing to try and kill him instead of capturing means it is fairly easy to direct him at the right targets. Jacob did mention that everyone wished they had a decent way to get him to Endbringer fights, but he never seemed to be able to get to a rally point in time.
Shatterbird has two modes to her power, though he wouldn't describe the lesser-known one, and she is driven to use the more destructive mode in populated areas frequently. If she doesn't intentionally use the destructive mode in that way for long enough it tends to go off while she is sleeping, staying out of control until she wakes up. Due to the need for the areas to be populated they try and aim for gang-infested territories for her, but collateral damage is an unfortunate fact of life with her. Jacob admitted, though he probably shouldn't have, that when not running around as Shatterbird she operated as a Protectorate hero. But he didn't say which one, or where she was stationed.
Hatchet Face Jacob was lucky with, for some reason his power only disabled the blade projection portion of "Jack's" power, so Jacob was able to get close to him and used some mid-battle therapy to get him recovering from the trauma of his trigger event. He still has a drive to kill parahumans, though, a need that will build into him going on a rampage if he doesn't give into it every so often. So long as he so much as makes serious attempts often enough he remains sane enough to not go after people indiscriminately. To get maximum utility out of the smallest number of parahumans being targeted by the nine he generally ends up finishing off those that Bonesaw experimented on, meaning Bonesaw technically has a surprisingly small lifetime parahuman kill count.
Finally, Burnscar apparently suffers in different ways depending on if she uses her powers or not, varying from suicidally depressed when not using them to insanely reckless when using them for too long. It is a delicate balance, and it was discovered that the extremes are buffered quite a bit if she kills someone with her powers every few months. She officially 'joined' the nine shortly after Protectorate thinkers figured that part out. And apparently she has a preference for targeting those that physically abuse others.
"I am still disturbed by the thought that the Slaughterhouse Nine, reportedly some of the most dangerous parahumans out there, are actually a therapy group," Danny finally admitted. "Though being affiliated with the PRT would explain why the Triumvirate have never just taken them out." Then he got a worried look. "Are you going to be in trouble for telling us any of this?"
"Nope," Jacob answered, grinning a bit. "I ensured that I would be permitted to explain to family in the event of another family member triggering. Specifically the entire immediate family of and/or those already living with any family member that triggered. The likelihood of similar powers alone warranted caution in the secrecy part of the contracts given my cape identity. Though now that it has come up I suspect they are going to kick themselves when they realize that they forgot to include getting said family to sign NDAs in the conditions that allow me to tell you all of this."
Some more small talk and finishing of their drinks was all that happened after that. They would likely get into more serious discussions about how to handle things the following day.
Taylor was right about things starting to get annoying when she was shuffled off to bed after her first yawn, not even allowed to rinse her own teacup. Jacob followed Taylor upstairs (because apparently she was too fragile right now to be trusted to stairs? Really?) and, after some hovering to ensure she was ok throughout the entire preparing for bed dance, headed to the guest room.
Then again, once she was in bed Taylor lasted all of five minutes before slipping into dreams, so perhaps some caution may have been warranted.
- Location
- The general area. Possibly behind you.
First post!
Nice to see it here, I'm very interested to see where it goes...
Keep on writin' as they say. Don't they? They should.
Nice to see it here, I'm very interested to see where it goes...
Keep on writin' as they say. Don't they? They should.
RoaSiD
A͘͟l͜͠w̢̕͜a̢ý̶͜s̕͜ ͘Wa̢̛͜t͠c̨̕̕hi̕͘͠n͢͠g
- Location
- The Blind Eternities
I'm going to have to agree with mpi there, defiantly interested in this. there's already a fair bit of actual humour, and almost total cannon derailment. It's not the first time I've seen Uncle Jack, but this is a more original one.
- Location
- Bellona
Yes, I like this too. Shiny new story smell and all...
Much potential and I look forward to seeing where it goes. I initially thought that was Jack Slash right away and then changed my mind only for the reveal with the snark. Sneaky. Character voices are good.
Do you have a schedule planned for updates since you currently have a buffer? Only curious, I will be patient if you don't.
Much potential and I look forward to seeing where it goes. I initially thought that was Jack Slash right away and then changed my mind only for the reveal with the snark. Sneaky. Character voices are good.
Do you have a schedule planned for updates since you currently have a buffer? Only curious, I will be patient if you don't.
Probably every couple of days until my buffer starts running too low. I already had to go back and fix the two most recent chapters for some inconsistency with what should be expected.
- Location
- The Void in Man's Heart
Not going to lie I first read the title as Mauling Sharks and was very interested. When reading I saw snarks and was intrigued instead.
- Location
- The general area. Possibly behind you.
Those poor sharks...
I admit I liked everything up until you had the Slaughterhouse still operating even after Jack's change of heart.
If you absolutely had to have them still 'operating' you could have mentioned that they have gone from a wandering murder squad to appearing to be horrible anti-hero's or simply assassin's seeking out villains to kill. That really should have become obvious if it's REALLY what they are doing. As presented here it's just feels kind of stupid and tacked on as excuses and justifications that really aren't needed as background to a much more interesting story focus, which is Jack Slash turning into a psychologist and Taylor following suit in some way.
At this point I pretty much just hope that the rest of the nine aren't involved again or any further because I find the rest of the story to be interesting.
If you absolutely had to have them still 'operating' you could have mentioned that they have gone from a wandering murder squad to appearing to be horrible anti-hero's or simply assassin's seeking out villains to kill. That really should have become obvious if it's REALLY what they are doing. As presented here it's just feels kind of stupid and tacked on as excuses and justifications that really aren't needed as background to a much more interesting story focus, which is Jack Slash turning into a psychologist and Taylor following suit in some way.
At this point I pretty much just hope that the rest of the nine aren't involved again or any further because I find the rest of the story to be interesting.
Chapter 2
Taylor woke up the next morning and made her way downstairs. Neither her father nor Uncle Jacob were up yet, but she was hungry and cereal was quick and easy. She took advantage of their not being up to finish up the rest of the dishes that hadn't been cleaned last night too, perhaps they would each assume the other had done them?
Just to be certain she had the information in them down she re-read the pamphlets that were still sitting on the table. Some of the unwritten rules were interesting and apparently a number of groups had compromised on the pamphlet as villain perspectives were included.
For example, killing was generally something nobody was supposed to do. This obviously went out the window entirely if a kill-order was issued on someone, but that was usually only done for those that were already running around killing. Beyond that, though, there was actually a small list of conditions for villains to reference wherein killing someone would not get the heroes on them for it. Things such as those who had repeated escapes from confinement where people had died during the escapes or certain kinds of human masters who were attempting to control or actively controlling the villain or those close to them.
More relevant to her were the specifics regarding identities and those with powers that could connect civilian and cape identities. The PRT and Protectorate apparently had internal rules that prohibited even asking such capes to identify other capes unless a kill order had been issued. Most larger villain groups apparently, at least publically, had similar policies. Human masters like Heartbreaker were one of the few overall exceptions, assuming they were still unknown, as they usually avoided having a cape identity until they were discovered. In that case, though, even the villain groups apparently recommended informing the PRT through channels dedicated for that kind of thing (one of the few sets of contact information actually listed) so that they could investigate, just in case.
Taylor supposed that even villains have standards. Though in this case it could also be pragmatic, nobody wants to fall under that kind of control themselves.
In addition, capes like her that could identify what powers other capes had were encouraged, even when working with the PRT or Protectorate, to keep most of those details between themselves and the cape in question, sticking to observed abilities only. At least for allies and neutrals. Everyone, probably rightfully, assumed that the enemy having such an ability meant that everything you could do was known to whatever group such a cape was a member of after you encountered them. But, and this was the important part, even the villains generally agreed that revealing information gained on someone else's powers only counted as acceptable if the cape being reported on had been in costume or actively using their powers. Getting a read on them while they were in civvies and, say, picking up groceries was considered a bad thing and should never be reported. Apparently whether or not you were in civvies didn't matter, though, only the status of the cape your power was informing you about mattered.
The final exception that stuck out to her, though, was identifying capes in civvies that were working with your group in a non-cape capacity. Sometimes that was merely identifying someone who did not know they had triggered, other times it was identifying someone who was infiltrating. At that point you reported them either to someone higher on the chain than you (ideally as high as you could reasonably get to given your own position in the organization) or, in the case of groups like the PRT and Protectorate, to dedicated contact points. The latter because you never knew when the cape was known to the higher-ups but not to the locals for some reason.
Huh, Uncle Jacob probably fell into that last group, now that she thought about it.
Taylor did wonder where you found the dedicated contact numbers, and a dozen others referred to elsewhere in the unwritten rules pamphlet. Presumably you got a list at some point if you joined up with the PRT or Protectorate, but given their likely rarity in being used where would you keep them safe? Having to go looking could very well tip someone off that you had noticed something they didn't want you to.
Taylor hopped up and grabbed some loose paper and a pencil to take some notes with. Questions like that would eventually bug her, better to write them down and ask. If she wasn't allowed to know Uncle Jacob would likely just tell her that.
After making note of her question she then thought about what they were likely going to need to discuss. She suspected that her father would want her to join the Wards for protection, but Uncle Jacob likely had a better overview of pros and cons there. She made a quick note about that, too. She was still fairly certain that she wouldn't be joining New Wave, though, if only to help protect her father. That and it would be even more of an issue if people made any connection between her powers and Uncle Jacob's.
It was about then that Uncle Jacob wandered downstairs. "Mornin Taylor."
"Good morning Uncle Jacob," Taylor responded. Huh, his snark appeared to still be sleeping. She didn't know they slept at all. "Did you hear if dad was moving yet?"
"I woke him up, actually." He looked at the lack of dishes to be washed. "And I guess I won't tell him that you dealt with the dishes." He then moved to make some tea.
Dang, caught. Oh well, nothing they could do about it. "Not like the dishes were difficult. Or strenuous. Or really any trouble."
"Yea yea, you're not disabled, just don't expect your father to agree." While waiting for water to heat up he checked the fridge. "Want any eggs? Oooh, bacon, that sounds good too."
"Yes please to both," Taylor answered. She might be pushing it after the cereal, but eggs and bacon? Hell yea. "Maybe you can make bacon omelets?"
"Hmm, good idea."
Taylor watched as breakfast, or second breakfast for her, was prepared. Her father wandered in, mumbled something about the dishes to Uncle Jacob, and sat down with the tea Uncle Jacob handed him. He might have preferred coffee, depending on his mood if asked, but the tea was already prepared.
After everyone had eaten their fill the dishes were put aside and Uncle Jacob went and fetched some stuff from the trunk of his rental car. Once again they collected around the table, probably to go over more cape-related things now that they had all had time to digest what they talked about the night before.
Oh, look, Uncle Jacob's snark woke up. Still wasn't being talkative, though. Uncle Jacob was probably trying to keep it from revealing too much by accident.
"So," Jacob started, looking at Taylor. "I can't help be curious, why 'snark'?"
"My snark told me that they metaphorically came from an island across a vast ocean," Taylor answered. "You can't find or capture them through anything resembling normal means and there isn't a true description of most of them."
Jacob and Danny looked at each other, then back at Taylor.
"What?" Taylor asked.
"Your power is a fan of Lewis Carroll?" Danny asked. "How is it a fan of Lewis Carroll?"
"Honestly I think it picked that to troll people," Taylor admitted. "Then used the metaphor as an excuse. But I am ok with that too, honestly."
"That makes a disturbing amount of sense," Jacob said. "Right, now that we have covered that I think we need to go over what options Taylor has going forward. Do either of you have any questions before we start on that?"
"I have one," Taylor said, poking her notes. "How do people in the PRT and Protectorate get and keep track of all the special reporting things the unwritten rules pamphlet mentions?"
"They are pre-programmed into the phones they are issued," Jacob answered. "And regularly updated with changes, actually."
"That should have occurred to me," Taylor said, crossing out the first entry on her notes. "I think the rest of what I have here will come up anyway."
"You have anything Danny?" Jacob asked, turning to Danny.
"Honestly the reporting contacts was bugging me too," Danny admitted. "Just hadn't thought to just ask you. Nothing else I don't think we are going to cover anyway."
"Alrighty then," Jacob said. "Options for Taylor going forward with parahuman abilities. Option one is to do nothing and attempt to go on as though you don't have parahuman abilities. Upsides include that you don't turn your life upside-down. Downsides include that you are almost guaranteed to snap at some point because you aren't getting any use of your powers in."
"That sounds like an undesirable downside," Danny admitted. "Though the dealing with trigger events pamphlet did basically say the same thing."
"Yea, it is a well-documented side effect of having powers," Jacob said. "Option two is to try and operate as an independent parahuman. Success at this will vary with powers, personality, and the local cape climate. Upsides include not being beholden to anyone else. Downsides include likely attempts at forced recruitment from gangs that find your abilities potentially useful and an increased chance of death if your powers drive you to actually fight, which most that have any form of offensive use do."
"That sounds just as unpleasant as the first one," Danny admitted. "Though that brings up a new question. Taylor, what do you know of your powers?"
"Huh," Jacob said. "I can't believe I forgot to ask about that. I guess I thought we already knew?"
"Well my snark says I have a couple of different abilities," Taylor said. "I can communicate with other snarks, obviously. That has side effects of being able to spot other parahumans and apparently while I have been doing things with line of sight I actually have about a four hundred meter range in which I can locate and communicate with snarks?"
"Your power measures in meters?" Danny interrupted. "Why meters?"
"Because it finds imperial units confusing," Taylor replied without any hesitation. Danny and Jacob just nodded, figuring that was as good as they were getting there. "Apparently I should be able to communicate with and somewhat coordinate between all snarks in my range at once without getting confused as well, provided my snark has enough bandwidth available for them all. Also assuming I am not in line of sight mode as well."
"I assume that the coordination would depend on the parahumans cooperating," Jacob said, giving it some thought. "Could still be quite useful if they are willing to act on prods from their powers. Could be useless if they aren't."
"True, that part would be situational, but I suspect a lot of things go that route," Taylor said. "I can also pull what amounts to your trick with blades and other edged weapons, just with blunt objects instead of edged. My snark also says that, like you, Hatchet Face would disable that bit but not my ability to communicate with other snarks. Apparently the communication bits are harder to turn off in general in snarks?"
"That is potentially a very useful piece of general information about powers," Jacob said, making note of it. "In fact, if it passes the PRT thinker checks it may be worth one of the cape information bounty payouts."
"The what?" Danny asked, beating Taylor by virtue of having just taken a breath.
"Oh, right," Jacob said. "That isn't well known, but the PRT pays out money for general information about the background behind how powers work and interact with each other. In this case it is information, likely not able to be acted upon, but probably useful for larger modeling of powers. Thus probably worth a few thousand dollars."
Taylor and Danny sat back for a moment. A seemingly innocent comment about the workings of powers worth a few thousand dollars?
"Right, so then," Jacob said after it was clear the other two were a bit stunned. "Taylor, anything else about your powers you haven't mentioned?"
"Er," Taylor said, blinking. "Not much? Apparently I can direct extra communication bandwidth at specific snarks if I want instead of just the single connection. Not sure what that means beyond having more bandwidth to communicate with, though. That's about it."
"Any specific needs for violence?" Jacob prodded. "Special requirements it wants you to fulfill? Other oddities that could cause problems?"
Taylor thought for a couple of minutes, or rather communicated with her own snark. Finally she spoke up. "I think I will have issues if I don't have snarks around often enough, but I don't have to hunt down new ones or anything. I need to occasionally hit things with the blunt object bit, but it doesn't need to be a living thing often and never needs to cause even minor injuries or damage. Beyond that my snark wants to troll other snarks, or maybe others with snarks? Though that is more of a hobby than a need. Or at least that is the impression I am getting."
"Er, right," Jacob said, blinking. "Usually that kind of thing would come out over a couple weeks of testing and you just asked. Can do you do that for others?"
"Only if their snarks are willing to tell me," Taylor answered.
"Right, right," Jacob said, making some quick notes. "Well, none of that would cause issues with joining the Wards, which I suppose is option 3. We did only bring up two options so far, right?"
"Wards is the third one," Danny agreed. "Upsides and downsides?"
"Upsides include a support structure, assistance with branding, and a decent trust fund," Jacob said. "Downsides include a command structure, assistance with branding, and in some cases annoying restrictions on use of your power."
"Er, why is assistance with branding in both lists?" Taylor asked. "I would think that would only be an upside, really?"
"They tend to have a very narrow view of acceptable," Jacob supplied. "The horror stories some capes have can be quite amusing from the outside."
"Right," Danny said, not quite believing him. Then again, Jacob should have more experience there and clashing opinions were a fact of life with him. "I assume there are more than three options for Taylor."
"Of course," Jacob continued. "She could petition to join The Guild, with most of the same upsides and downsides of joining the Wards. Though with the added downside of likely needing to move."
"Let's not go that route," Danny said. "If anything else, I would find it hard to hire people for the dockworkers here if I lived elsewhere."
"She could also petition to join New Wave," Jacob said. "Smaller support and command structures, more strict branding, no trust fund, and you have to go public with your identity."
"Not happening," Taylor said. "If only because that would paint a bigger potential target on dad's back."
"Moving on then," Jacob said as Danny gave Taylor a somewhat sad smile. "Taylor could also willingly join one of the more villainous organizations. Upsides would include a support structure, downsides include regularly assisting in illegal activities and being much more likely to be injured or killed."
"Not happening," Danny echoed Taylor's comment. "Especially as last I knew she wasn't a druggie, racist, or asian."
"I have been known to poke at video games though," Taylor said, causing Danny and Jacob to look at her. She stared back at the two of them. "What, I'm not allowed to joke now?"
"Yea, right, ok," Jacob said, shaking his head. "I think that covers the remotely realistic options, as Faultline generally only recruits minors that are both Case 53s and have no family, or so I have been led to believe. I am not going to let you decide on anything right now, though."
"Not that I am going to argue, but why not?" Danny asked, looking a little confused.
"Because I have other things that need doing," Jacob said. "Plus any option that ends up with power testing would be strenuous, and thus not implementable right away anyway. That and while I am out dealing with things the two of you should talk things through without me."
Uncle Jacob had, as he said, left to take care of who knows what. Snark detection in "area" mode apparently let Taylor know exactly where a snark-bearer was in relation to her, which would probably use useful, and let her monitor his progress for a couple of blocks as he drove away.
Still, unless she started going out in costume she should probably stay in line of sight mode. Maybe? If any capes were sent after her it would be a good idea to know in advance.
She made a quick note on her list to discuss that conundrum with others.
Her father had suggested they move into the living room and the more comfortable seating there, and she had agreed. She had grabbed a soda for herself from the fridge on her way by while her father called into work to check up on things. Apparently upon finding out that she had been hospitalized he had been told, in no uncertain terms, to take the rest of the week off. He still wanted to make sure everything was ok, though.
Finally he wandered in and collapsed into his preferred chair. "So Taylor, given that all of this will have the most direct effect on you, what do you think about the various options?"
"Obviously I don't intend on joining any of the gangs," Taylor said, finding it hard to imagine being a member of any of the big three in the bay. "Though if they were more about showing off and less into crime then joining up with Über and Leet could have been interesting."
"Not sure how well your powers would mesh with that kind of thing."
"True, still could have been fun to try. New Wave is out because I don't want to paint a target on you, as I said. Pretending to not have powers is probably out as well, if anything else I suspect that I will need more than incidental contact with other parahumans. Which generally leaves being an independent or joining the Wards."
"That sounds about right. What are your thoughts on those?"
"Well, if I go independent then I have no real parahuman support structure, would have to actively look for other parahumans to satisfy my snark, and as a consequence would likely end up in a lot of dangerous situations or, in effect, doing my best to hang out with the Wards. The Wards would give me the support structure and I would automatically be around them fairly often, likely beyond what I could accomplish on my own."
"Not to mention you could meet Armsmaster and Miss Militia, amongst others."
"Trying not to let my inner fangirl influence the decision."
"Right, right."
"You just want me to join the Wards, don't you?"
"Mostly because I think it is the safest option for you right now."
"Well, there we have it. I was leaning that way, you are leaning that way. Why are we discussing it again?"
"To make sure we are on the same page and understand each other?"
"Well, since that is out of the way, I might want to come up with a cape name. Any ideas?"
They would spend a couple of hours discussing possible names from the mundane to the ridiculous and a number in-between. They came up with nothing they were happy with, or thought that the PRT would be happy with, but it helped pass the time.
Uncle Jacob had called and said he would be bringing a slightly late lunch. True to that he showed up with a bag full of subs and chips, a six-pack of soda bottles, and a box he said was for after lunch.
Over lunch they discussed little things of no real consequence to cape dealings. Apparently the news, which Taylor and Danny had not been watching but that Jacob had listened to in the car, was reporting that Winslow may never reopen and that students likely needed to be moved to other schools in the meantime. Apparently the attempt to clean up the 'biohazard spill' had revealed exposed asbestos behind the lockers, which led to a revelation that the building's foundation was damaged due to a minor sinkhole under it.
After lunch the box was placed on the table, and Uncle Jacob paused before opening. "First up, did you two come to a decision regarding what to do going forward?"
"We think I should join the Wards," Taylor answered. "If nothing else that will ensure I don't have issues with having to go hunting for parahumans to be around."
"Good, good," Jacob said. He then opened the box and pulled out two smaller boxes, handing one to each of the other two. "After some discussion with Danny I took the liberty of purchasing a cell phone for each of you. These in particular are now paired and can be used to locate each other, as well as provide information on the last twenty-four hours of location data. Note that if either phone is used for that purpose an alert will come up on the other, offering the option of denying permission, and it will take half an hour for permission to be automatically granted. The PRT, Protectorate, and police all have codes that can be entered that will bypass that time period."
"These look a bit more expensive than I was thinking," Danny said, looking at the box with a 'D' on it. Taylor's had a 'T'. "I am not sure how long it will take me to pay you back."
"You won't be," Jacob said. "These are a gift, from me. The service on them has been pre-paid for the next five years." That was a lie, technically they were being paid monthly from his PRT account. He wasn't telling them that, though. "I ensured that they have a number of contacts entered ahead of time, including the landline here and the other cell phone, plus my cell phone. I also have an easily installed car kit ready to install in your car, Danny, and we can work on installing that in a bit."
"Jacob," Danny tried, only to get a glare. After a moment he sighed. "I guess I deserve that, given that I kept ignoring your calls and letters."
"Right. Now pull those out of their boxes and I will help you set up the security on them," Jacob said, pulling his own phone of the same model out so he could show them where things were.
Twenty minutes later both had set up passwords, screen locks, fingerprint checks, iris checks, and their voicemail. He trusted that neither of them had enough knowledge of smartphones to realize that some of that was because these had tinkertech included. He also had provided each with a nearly stealth earpiece that they paired to their phones, admitting that these were tinkertech and that Taylor would be able to pair hers to both this phone and the phone they would issue her in the Wards.
He also showed, but did not yet go to install, the car kit that would show who was calling, provide a couple of basic controls on the steering wheel, and could be used instead of the earpiece. The earpiece would, however, be more private if Danny had passengers he didn't want hearing both sides of the conversation. The installation would be a bit complicated as it would need to be attached to the radio and a couple other points, but Jacob insisted that he was up to the task.
"Next up we have the paperwork needed to join the Wards," Jacob said, pulling out a thick stack of paper and then removing the top third. Taylor was dismayed that she was handed the bottom two-thirds. "Yea, the stack I kept is for registering as an independent parahuman."
Taylor was then left to start looking through the forms while Jacob and Danny went to install the car kit. The first few were easy, basic information including her name, her father's name, their address, phone numbers (she had to double-check her new phone for its number and her father's new number), dates of birth, social security numbers, etc. A couple covered a basic description of her powers and any requirements she was aware of, though indicated that formal power testing would be required to establish official ratings.
She got to skip a dozen forms for "established" parahumans joining the Wards as she was not, according to the definition on the first of them, considered "established". She did have to fill out a form indicating that Panacea had informed her of her parahuman status and the approximate date of trigger event, though no description of the trigger event was asked for.
She set several forms aside that needed her father to fill in details or sign and moved into what was apparently the "branding" section of forms, required for those not already established with an existing cape identity. Oh, or for those that wanted or were being required to re-brand. The first couple asked about preferred names, another basic description of her power for purposes of branding (and stating that she could exclude anything she didn't want branding to know about). She filled out the correct forms based on their descriptions and, where available, included checklists. This included filling out that she had no specific costume or cape name preference. She set the pile of specific forms she didn't need aside.
She absently noticed Jacob moving away from the house with her snark sense, possibly leaving with her father to ensure that the car kit was working correctly.
Next up were a pile of combination waivers and permission forms, some required, others optional. She filled in and signed the required ones where she could, all of them going into the pile for her father to look at afterward as her signature either wasn't required or wasn't enough on all of them. She then flipped through the optional ones, which included participation in non-local Endbringer fights (local was a required one, even if only as part of crowd control in the shelters). That was actually split into "in region", "in country", and "international" categories. She didn't think that she wanted to be anywhere near the Endbringers unless they came to her, though, so put the entire stack in the "unneeded and/or used but not to be turned in" pile. No need to even show them to her father, really.
She then found the forms for "parahuman community service trips" where she could go on trips for varying lengths of time where her powers could be helpful elsewhere. She thought that might be neat, though she wasn't sure if it would happen. Like the Endbringer forms these had different categories, she filled them all out and put them in a new "to discuss" pile. The similar forms for "cross-region training trips" were filled out and added to the same pile.
She was just making it to the last group of forms when she was surprised by a beeping in her ear. It took her a minute to realize it was her new phone ringing, at which point she tapped the multipurpose button on the earpiece.
"Hello?" Taylor said, hoping she had this right.
"Hey kiddo," Danny's voice came through loud and clear. "We have the car kit working, tuned, and all that."
"That's good. This is going to take some getting used to, I think."
"That it will. Jacob noticed that we have no ice cream in the house and we are picking some up. Any flavor preference?"
"How about double chocolate chunk?"
"Alright. See you soon."
"Bye." The earpiece beeped, indicating the call had ended. Yep, that was going to be weird for a bit.
Taylor went back to the forms and found that the last bit was actually a single longer form. Reading through she found it was a non-disclosure agreement, covering all Wards and Protectorate identities that she may become or made aware of. It didn't name anyone by name, intended to be a blanket agreement. Which made sense, given the number of individual agreements that would otherwise be needed. She read through the entire thing and signed at the end, apparently with wonderful timing as Uncle Jacob's snark just appeared on the edge of her range.
She dropped the NDA into the pile for her father to look over and stood up, stretching from having sat there for so long going over the paperwork. She made an effort to pocket the phone that had been sitting on the table and wandered into the kitchen to get a glass of water.
A couple minutes later the front door opened and her father came in, followed by Uncle Jacob. They quickly put the shopping they had brought in away, and Taylor pointed her father at the pile of paperwork he had to look over. She figured she would let him decide which, if any, of the community service/cross training forms to sign.
"Before you get into that," Jacob said as Danny went to start working on the paperwork. "I have something I want to talk with the two of you about."
Taylor sat down with her glass and nodded to her uncle.
"The two of you are aware that Bonesaw is an associate of mine," Jacob continued. "If you are willing to trade civilian identities I can have her come and visit. Two of her major non-slaughterhouse activities are assisting those who have been severely injured and granting otherwise normal people enhancements. For example, she has given me a few extras." He demonstrated this by lifting their couch without any apparent effort, something that shocked both Taylor and Danny. "I think Taylor could benefit from something similar. And before you ask, these would likely be officially off the books. They need not be reported as they are not a result of Taylor's powers."
"This would increase her ability to stay safe, right?" Danny asked. It was obvious that was the metric he was using as a baseline for a lot of decisions lately.
"It would," Jacob admitted. "If only because nobody will expect her to have the boosts. Also, if her power is in fact like mine, being stronger means that she will be able to hit harder with it. Otherwise any hit with her power would be the same as if she, right now, struck someone."
"You said Bonesaw doesn't need to inflict pain for things she already knows, right?" Taylor asked.
"That is correct," Jacob answered. "In fact, when she last worked on me I came out feeling better than when I went in."
"I'm ok with it if you are," Taylor said, turning to her father. He sighed and just nodded.
"Alright, I'll give her a call," Jacob said, pulling his phone out and heading for the living room. "Hopefully she isn't too busy and can come before we want to submit the paperwork to the PRT."
"Why would it matter that we get it done before the paperwork is submitted?" Danny wondered, reaching to pick up the first form on the stack for him to review.
"Probably the form that says once you join the Wards you need to have things like that approved," Taylor said. "I think that is five or six forms down in your stack."
"That is disturbingly logical," Danny admitted after a moment of thought. Then he sighed and started reading through the form he was holding.
It turned out that Bonesaw would be able to visit in two days, but it would be the day after that the work was done. Further, this was being arranged by the PRT as a way of getting Panacea to look at some things that Bonesaw could do, so there would be no questions of why Bonesaw was here.
Which brought up that, amazingly enough, Panacea was the only cape other than Taylor that lived in Brockton Bay and was aware of the truth of the Slaughterhouse Nine. In fact, until Taylor and Danny were informed no other person of any description living in Brockton Bay was officially in the know. Technically, by the NDAs, Panacea was still the only one officially in the know, actually.
The fact that Taylor would be serving as a "parahuman volunteer already read into the true purpose of the Slaughterhouse Nine" and not actually named was Jacob's method of min-maxing loopholes. Jacob had been careful to ensure that no mention of the individual being officially informed and having a signed NDA on file was included because neither Taylor or Danny met those criteria. Due to the wording of Jacob's contracts that didn't matter for the purposes of the visit, though. As such, anyone who found the paperwork and went looking for who Bonesaw had "improved" would be looking in the wrong places. They hoped, anyway.
Jacob was annoyed that he had failed to get Danny listed as a "non-parahuman volunteer already read into the true purpose of the Slaughterhouse Nine" though. Apparently those authorizing the trip only cared about what Bonesaw could do to a parahuman this time around.
Starting the process of joining the Wards would happen a little over a week later, if you didn't count some of the "get it out of the way" stuff they were going to do in advance. Such as taking advantage of Panacea's presence to have her run Taylor through a PRT-approved physical.
Most of this was relayed over dinner, where Taylor was instructed to eat as much as she could until after the procedure at a minimum.
After dessert Jacob showed Taylor how she could use her cell phone as an internet connection for her aging desktop computer, something he said she probably shouldn't mention to her father. She took advantage of this almost immediately, checking the local news first to read up on what was going on with Winslow. Which turned out to be pretty much what Jacob had already told them. She then decided that, as a parahuman, she should be keeping up on the goings-on at PHO.
It had nothing to do with anything else, really. Probably. Yea, nobody is believing that excuse. She is still sticking with that story.
Some quick checks and she found that the only thing of interest in Brockton Bay since she had last visited the site was Winslow's closing. There were a lot of insane theories, including parahuman involvement in placing the asbestos (which was apparently known to be there, just not known to be exposed, throwing that theory out) and that a parahuman had been responsible for the sinkhole. Oddly nobody was blaming a parahuman for the supposed 'biohazard spill'.
No, wait, that apparently had a dedicated thread. Nevermind.
She spent another hour poking around online before deciding she should get ready for bed. She almost forgot to remove the earpiece, but seeing the little charging cradle for it next to the one for her new phone was enough of a reminder.
Just to be certain she had the information in them down she re-read the pamphlets that were still sitting on the table. Some of the unwritten rules were interesting and apparently a number of groups had compromised on the pamphlet as villain perspectives were included.
For example, killing was generally something nobody was supposed to do. This obviously went out the window entirely if a kill-order was issued on someone, but that was usually only done for those that were already running around killing. Beyond that, though, there was actually a small list of conditions for villains to reference wherein killing someone would not get the heroes on them for it. Things such as those who had repeated escapes from confinement where people had died during the escapes or certain kinds of human masters who were attempting to control or actively controlling the villain or those close to them.
More relevant to her were the specifics regarding identities and those with powers that could connect civilian and cape identities. The PRT and Protectorate apparently had internal rules that prohibited even asking such capes to identify other capes unless a kill order had been issued. Most larger villain groups apparently, at least publically, had similar policies. Human masters like Heartbreaker were one of the few overall exceptions, assuming they were still unknown, as they usually avoided having a cape identity until they were discovered. In that case, though, even the villain groups apparently recommended informing the PRT through channels dedicated for that kind of thing (one of the few sets of contact information actually listed) so that they could investigate, just in case.
Taylor supposed that even villains have standards. Though in this case it could also be pragmatic, nobody wants to fall under that kind of control themselves.
In addition, capes like her that could identify what powers other capes had were encouraged, even when working with the PRT or Protectorate, to keep most of those details between themselves and the cape in question, sticking to observed abilities only. At least for allies and neutrals. Everyone, probably rightfully, assumed that the enemy having such an ability meant that everything you could do was known to whatever group such a cape was a member of after you encountered them. But, and this was the important part, even the villains generally agreed that revealing information gained on someone else's powers only counted as acceptable if the cape being reported on had been in costume or actively using their powers. Getting a read on them while they were in civvies and, say, picking up groceries was considered a bad thing and should never be reported. Apparently whether or not you were in civvies didn't matter, though, only the status of the cape your power was informing you about mattered.
The final exception that stuck out to her, though, was identifying capes in civvies that were working with your group in a non-cape capacity. Sometimes that was merely identifying someone who did not know they had triggered, other times it was identifying someone who was infiltrating. At that point you reported them either to someone higher on the chain than you (ideally as high as you could reasonably get to given your own position in the organization) or, in the case of groups like the PRT and Protectorate, to dedicated contact points. The latter because you never knew when the cape was known to the higher-ups but not to the locals for some reason.
Huh, Uncle Jacob probably fell into that last group, now that she thought about it.
Taylor did wonder where you found the dedicated contact numbers, and a dozen others referred to elsewhere in the unwritten rules pamphlet. Presumably you got a list at some point if you joined up with the PRT or Protectorate, but given their likely rarity in being used where would you keep them safe? Having to go looking could very well tip someone off that you had noticed something they didn't want you to.
Taylor hopped up and grabbed some loose paper and a pencil to take some notes with. Questions like that would eventually bug her, better to write them down and ask. If she wasn't allowed to know Uncle Jacob would likely just tell her that.
After making note of her question she then thought about what they were likely going to need to discuss. She suspected that her father would want her to join the Wards for protection, but Uncle Jacob likely had a better overview of pros and cons there. She made a quick note about that, too. She was still fairly certain that she wouldn't be joining New Wave, though, if only to help protect her father. That and it would be even more of an issue if people made any connection between her powers and Uncle Jacob's.
It was about then that Uncle Jacob wandered downstairs. "Mornin Taylor."
"Good morning Uncle Jacob," Taylor responded. Huh, his snark appeared to still be sleeping. She didn't know they slept at all. "Did you hear if dad was moving yet?"
"I woke him up, actually." He looked at the lack of dishes to be washed. "And I guess I won't tell him that you dealt with the dishes." He then moved to make some tea.
Dang, caught. Oh well, nothing they could do about it. "Not like the dishes were difficult. Or strenuous. Or really any trouble."
"Yea yea, you're not disabled, just don't expect your father to agree." While waiting for water to heat up he checked the fridge. "Want any eggs? Oooh, bacon, that sounds good too."
"Yes please to both," Taylor answered. She might be pushing it after the cereal, but eggs and bacon? Hell yea. "Maybe you can make bacon omelets?"
"Hmm, good idea."
Taylor watched as breakfast, or second breakfast for her, was prepared. Her father wandered in, mumbled something about the dishes to Uncle Jacob, and sat down with the tea Uncle Jacob handed him. He might have preferred coffee, depending on his mood if asked, but the tea was already prepared.
After everyone had eaten their fill the dishes were put aside and Uncle Jacob went and fetched some stuff from the trunk of his rental car. Once again they collected around the table, probably to go over more cape-related things now that they had all had time to digest what they talked about the night before.
Oh, look, Uncle Jacob's snark woke up. Still wasn't being talkative, though. Uncle Jacob was probably trying to keep it from revealing too much by accident.
"So," Jacob started, looking at Taylor. "I can't help be curious, why 'snark'?"
"My snark told me that they metaphorically came from an island across a vast ocean," Taylor answered. "You can't find or capture them through anything resembling normal means and there isn't a true description of most of them."
Jacob and Danny looked at each other, then back at Taylor.
"What?" Taylor asked.
"Your power is a fan of Lewis Carroll?" Danny asked. "How is it a fan of Lewis Carroll?"
"Honestly I think it picked that to troll people," Taylor admitted. "Then used the metaphor as an excuse. But I am ok with that too, honestly."
"That makes a disturbing amount of sense," Jacob said. "Right, now that we have covered that I think we need to go over what options Taylor has going forward. Do either of you have any questions before we start on that?"
"I have one," Taylor said, poking her notes. "How do people in the PRT and Protectorate get and keep track of all the special reporting things the unwritten rules pamphlet mentions?"
"They are pre-programmed into the phones they are issued," Jacob answered. "And regularly updated with changes, actually."
"That should have occurred to me," Taylor said, crossing out the first entry on her notes. "I think the rest of what I have here will come up anyway."
"You have anything Danny?" Jacob asked, turning to Danny.
"Honestly the reporting contacts was bugging me too," Danny admitted. "Just hadn't thought to just ask you. Nothing else I don't think we are going to cover anyway."
"Alrighty then," Jacob said. "Options for Taylor going forward with parahuman abilities. Option one is to do nothing and attempt to go on as though you don't have parahuman abilities. Upsides include that you don't turn your life upside-down. Downsides include that you are almost guaranteed to snap at some point because you aren't getting any use of your powers in."
"That sounds like an undesirable downside," Danny admitted. "Though the dealing with trigger events pamphlet did basically say the same thing."
"Yea, it is a well-documented side effect of having powers," Jacob said. "Option two is to try and operate as an independent parahuman. Success at this will vary with powers, personality, and the local cape climate. Upsides include not being beholden to anyone else. Downsides include likely attempts at forced recruitment from gangs that find your abilities potentially useful and an increased chance of death if your powers drive you to actually fight, which most that have any form of offensive use do."
"That sounds just as unpleasant as the first one," Danny admitted. "Though that brings up a new question. Taylor, what do you know of your powers?"
"Huh," Jacob said. "I can't believe I forgot to ask about that. I guess I thought we already knew?"
"Well my snark says I have a couple of different abilities," Taylor said. "I can communicate with other snarks, obviously. That has side effects of being able to spot other parahumans and apparently while I have been doing things with line of sight I actually have about a four hundred meter range in which I can locate and communicate with snarks?"
"Your power measures in meters?" Danny interrupted. "Why meters?"
"Because it finds imperial units confusing," Taylor replied without any hesitation. Danny and Jacob just nodded, figuring that was as good as they were getting there. "Apparently I should be able to communicate with and somewhat coordinate between all snarks in my range at once without getting confused as well, provided my snark has enough bandwidth available for them all. Also assuming I am not in line of sight mode as well."
"I assume that the coordination would depend on the parahumans cooperating," Jacob said, giving it some thought. "Could still be quite useful if they are willing to act on prods from their powers. Could be useless if they aren't."
"True, that part would be situational, but I suspect a lot of things go that route," Taylor said. "I can also pull what amounts to your trick with blades and other edged weapons, just with blunt objects instead of edged. My snark also says that, like you, Hatchet Face would disable that bit but not my ability to communicate with other snarks. Apparently the communication bits are harder to turn off in general in snarks?"
"That is potentially a very useful piece of general information about powers," Jacob said, making note of it. "In fact, if it passes the PRT thinker checks it may be worth one of the cape information bounty payouts."
"The what?" Danny asked, beating Taylor by virtue of having just taken a breath.
"Oh, right," Jacob said. "That isn't well known, but the PRT pays out money for general information about the background behind how powers work and interact with each other. In this case it is information, likely not able to be acted upon, but probably useful for larger modeling of powers. Thus probably worth a few thousand dollars."
Taylor and Danny sat back for a moment. A seemingly innocent comment about the workings of powers worth a few thousand dollars?
"Right, so then," Jacob said after it was clear the other two were a bit stunned. "Taylor, anything else about your powers you haven't mentioned?"
"Er," Taylor said, blinking. "Not much? Apparently I can direct extra communication bandwidth at specific snarks if I want instead of just the single connection. Not sure what that means beyond having more bandwidth to communicate with, though. That's about it."
"Any specific needs for violence?" Jacob prodded. "Special requirements it wants you to fulfill? Other oddities that could cause problems?"
Taylor thought for a couple of minutes, or rather communicated with her own snark. Finally she spoke up. "I think I will have issues if I don't have snarks around often enough, but I don't have to hunt down new ones or anything. I need to occasionally hit things with the blunt object bit, but it doesn't need to be a living thing often and never needs to cause even minor injuries or damage. Beyond that my snark wants to troll other snarks, or maybe others with snarks? Though that is more of a hobby than a need. Or at least that is the impression I am getting."
"Er, right," Jacob said, blinking. "Usually that kind of thing would come out over a couple weeks of testing and you just asked. Can do you do that for others?"
"Only if their snarks are willing to tell me," Taylor answered.
"Right, right," Jacob said, making some quick notes. "Well, none of that would cause issues with joining the Wards, which I suppose is option 3. We did only bring up two options so far, right?"
"Wards is the third one," Danny agreed. "Upsides and downsides?"
"Upsides include a support structure, assistance with branding, and a decent trust fund," Jacob said. "Downsides include a command structure, assistance with branding, and in some cases annoying restrictions on use of your power."
"Er, why is assistance with branding in both lists?" Taylor asked. "I would think that would only be an upside, really?"
"They tend to have a very narrow view of acceptable," Jacob supplied. "The horror stories some capes have can be quite amusing from the outside."
"Right," Danny said, not quite believing him. Then again, Jacob should have more experience there and clashing opinions were a fact of life with him. "I assume there are more than three options for Taylor."
"Of course," Jacob continued. "She could petition to join The Guild, with most of the same upsides and downsides of joining the Wards. Though with the added downside of likely needing to move."
"Let's not go that route," Danny said. "If anything else, I would find it hard to hire people for the dockworkers here if I lived elsewhere."
"She could also petition to join New Wave," Jacob said. "Smaller support and command structures, more strict branding, no trust fund, and you have to go public with your identity."
"Not happening," Taylor said. "If only because that would paint a bigger potential target on dad's back."
"Moving on then," Jacob said as Danny gave Taylor a somewhat sad smile. "Taylor could also willingly join one of the more villainous organizations. Upsides would include a support structure, downsides include regularly assisting in illegal activities and being much more likely to be injured or killed."
"Not happening," Danny echoed Taylor's comment. "Especially as last I knew she wasn't a druggie, racist, or asian."
"I have been known to poke at video games though," Taylor said, causing Danny and Jacob to look at her. She stared back at the two of them. "What, I'm not allowed to joke now?"
"Yea, right, ok," Jacob said, shaking his head. "I think that covers the remotely realistic options, as Faultline generally only recruits minors that are both Case 53s and have no family, or so I have been led to believe. I am not going to let you decide on anything right now, though."
"Not that I am going to argue, but why not?" Danny asked, looking a little confused.
"Because I have other things that need doing," Jacob said. "Plus any option that ends up with power testing would be strenuous, and thus not implementable right away anyway. That and while I am out dealing with things the two of you should talk things through without me."
Uncle Jacob had, as he said, left to take care of who knows what. Snark detection in "area" mode apparently let Taylor know exactly where a snark-bearer was in relation to her, which would probably use useful, and let her monitor his progress for a couple of blocks as he drove away.
Still, unless she started going out in costume she should probably stay in line of sight mode. Maybe? If any capes were sent after her it would be a good idea to know in advance.
She made a quick note on her list to discuss that conundrum with others.
Her father had suggested they move into the living room and the more comfortable seating there, and she had agreed. She had grabbed a soda for herself from the fridge on her way by while her father called into work to check up on things. Apparently upon finding out that she had been hospitalized he had been told, in no uncertain terms, to take the rest of the week off. He still wanted to make sure everything was ok, though.
Finally he wandered in and collapsed into his preferred chair. "So Taylor, given that all of this will have the most direct effect on you, what do you think about the various options?"
"Obviously I don't intend on joining any of the gangs," Taylor said, finding it hard to imagine being a member of any of the big three in the bay. "Though if they were more about showing off and less into crime then joining up with Über and Leet could have been interesting."
"Not sure how well your powers would mesh with that kind of thing."
"True, still could have been fun to try. New Wave is out because I don't want to paint a target on you, as I said. Pretending to not have powers is probably out as well, if anything else I suspect that I will need more than incidental contact with other parahumans. Which generally leaves being an independent or joining the Wards."
"That sounds about right. What are your thoughts on those?"
"Well, if I go independent then I have no real parahuman support structure, would have to actively look for other parahumans to satisfy my snark, and as a consequence would likely end up in a lot of dangerous situations or, in effect, doing my best to hang out with the Wards. The Wards would give me the support structure and I would automatically be around them fairly often, likely beyond what I could accomplish on my own."
"Not to mention you could meet Armsmaster and Miss Militia, amongst others."
"Trying not to let my inner fangirl influence the decision."
"Right, right."
"You just want me to join the Wards, don't you?"
"Mostly because I think it is the safest option for you right now."
"Well, there we have it. I was leaning that way, you are leaning that way. Why are we discussing it again?"
"To make sure we are on the same page and understand each other?"
"Well, since that is out of the way, I might want to come up with a cape name. Any ideas?"
They would spend a couple of hours discussing possible names from the mundane to the ridiculous and a number in-between. They came up with nothing they were happy with, or thought that the PRT would be happy with, but it helped pass the time.
Uncle Jacob had called and said he would be bringing a slightly late lunch. True to that he showed up with a bag full of subs and chips, a six-pack of soda bottles, and a box he said was for after lunch.
Over lunch they discussed little things of no real consequence to cape dealings. Apparently the news, which Taylor and Danny had not been watching but that Jacob had listened to in the car, was reporting that Winslow may never reopen and that students likely needed to be moved to other schools in the meantime. Apparently the attempt to clean up the 'biohazard spill' had revealed exposed asbestos behind the lockers, which led to a revelation that the building's foundation was damaged due to a minor sinkhole under it.
After lunch the box was placed on the table, and Uncle Jacob paused before opening. "First up, did you two come to a decision regarding what to do going forward?"
"We think I should join the Wards," Taylor answered. "If nothing else that will ensure I don't have issues with having to go hunting for parahumans to be around."
"Good, good," Jacob said. He then opened the box and pulled out two smaller boxes, handing one to each of the other two. "After some discussion with Danny I took the liberty of purchasing a cell phone for each of you. These in particular are now paired and can be used to locate each other, as well as provide information on the last twenty-four hours of location data. Note that if either phone is used for that purpose an alert will come up on the other, offering the option of denying permission, and it will take half an hour for permission to be automatically granted. The PRT, Protectorate, and police all have codes that can be entered that will bypass that time period."
"These look a bit more expensive than I was thinking," Danny said, looking at the box with a 'D' on it. Taylor's had a 'T'. "I am not sure how long it will take me to pay you back."
"You won't be," Jacob said. "These are a gift, from me. The service on them has been pre-paid for the next five years." That was a lie, technically they were being paid monthly from his PRT account. He wasn't telling them that, though. "I ensured that they have a number of contacts entered ahead of time, including the landline here and the other cell phone, plus my cell phone. I also have an easily installed car kit ready to install in your car, Danny, and we can work on installing that in a bit."
"Jacob," Danny tried, only to get a glare. After a moment he sighed. "I guess I deserve that, given that I kept ignoring your calls and letters."
"Right. Now pull those out of their boxes and I will help you set up the security on them," Jacob said, pulling his own phone of the same model out so he could show them where things were.
Twenty minutes later both had set up passwords, screen locks, fingerprint checks, iris checks, and their voicemail. He trusted that neither of them had enough knowledge of smartphones to realize that some of that was because these had tinkertech included. He also had provided each with a nearly stealth earpiece that they paired to their phones, admitting that these were tinkertech and that Taylor would be able to pair hers to both this phone and the phone they would issue her in the Wards.
He also showed, but did not yet go to install, the car kit that would show who was calling, provide a couple of basic controls on the steering wheel, and could be used instead of the earpiece. The earpiece would, however, be more private if Danny had passengers he didn't want hearing both sides of the conversation. The installation would be a bit complicated as it would need to be attached to the radio and a couple other points, but Jacob insisted that he was up to the task.
"Next up we have the paperwork needed to join the Wards," Jacob said, pulling out a thick stack of paper and then removing the top third. Taylor was dismayed that she was handed the bottom two-thirds. "Yea, the stack I kept is for registering as an independent parahuman."
Taylor was then left to start looking through the forms while Jacob and Danny went to install the car kit. The first few were easy, basic information including her name, her father's name, their address, phone numbers (she had to double-check her new phone for its number and her father's new number), dates of birth, social security numbers, etc. A couple covered a basic description of her powers and any requirements she was aware of, though indicated that formal power testing would be required to establish official ratings.
She got to skip a dozen forms for "established" parahumans joining the Wards as she was not, according to the definition on the first of them, considered "established". She did have to fill out a form indicating that Panacea had informed her of her parahuman status and the approximate date of trigger event, though no description of the trigger event was asked for.
She set several forms aside that needed her father to fill in details or sign and moved into what was apparently the "branding" section of forms, required for those not already established with an existing cape identity. Oh, or for those that wanted or were being required to re-brand. The first couple asked about preferred names, another basic description of her power for purposes of branding (and stating that she could exclude anything she didn't want branding to know about). She filled out the correct forms based on their descriptions and, where available, included checklists. This included filling out that she had no specific costume or cape name preference. She set the pile of specific forms she didn't need aside.
She absently noticed Jacob moving away from the house with her snark sense, possibly leaving with her father to ensure that the car kit was working correctly.
Next up were a pile of combination waivers and permission forms, some required, others optional. She filled in and signed the required ones where she could, all of them going into the pile for her father to look at afterward as her signature either wasn't required or wasn't enough on all of them. She then flipped through the optional ones, which included participation in non-local Endbringer fights (local was a required one, even if only as part of crowd control in the shelters). That was actually split into "in region", "in country", and "international" categories. She didn't think that she wanted to be anywhere near the Endbringers unless they came to her, though, so put the entire stack in the "unneeded and/or used but not to be turned in" pile. No need to even show them to her father, really.
She then found the forms for "parahuman community service trips" where she could go on trips for varying lengths of time where her powers could be helpful elsewhere. She thought that might be neat, though she wasn't sure if it would happen. Like the Endbringer forms these had different categories, she filled them all out and put them in a new "to discuss" pile. The similar forms for "cross-region training trips" were filled out and added to the same pile.
She was just making it to the last group of forms when she was surprised by a beeping in her ear. It took her a minute to realize it was her new phone ringing, at which point she tapped the multipurpose button on the earpiece.
"Hello?" Taylor said, hoping she had this right.
"Hey kiddo," Danny's voice came through loud and clear. "We have the car kit working, tuned, and all that."
"That's good. This is going to take some getting used to, I think."
"That it will. Jacob noticed that we have no ice cream in the house and we are picking some up. Any flavor preference?"
"How about double chocolate chunk?"
"Alright. See you soon."
"Bye." The earpiece beeped, indicating the call had ended. Yep, that was going to be weird for a bit.
Taylor went back to the forms and found that the last bit was actually a single longer form. Reading through she found it was a non-disclosure agreement, covering all Wards and Protectorate identities that she may become or made aware of. It didn't name anyone by name, intended to be a blanket agreement. Which made sense, given the number of individual agreements that would otherwise be needed. She read through the entire thing and signed at the end, apparently with wonderful timing as Uncle Jacob's snark just appeared on the edge of her range.
She dropped the NDA into the pile for her father to look over and stood up, stretching from having sat there for so long going over the paperwork. She made an effort to pocket the phone that had been sitting on the table and wandered into the kitchen to get a glass of water.
A couple minutes later the front door opened and her father came in, followed by Uncle Jacob. They quickly put the shopping they had brought in away, and Taylor pointed her father at the pile of paperwork he had to look over. She figured she would let him decide which, if any, of the community service/cross training forms to sign.
"Before you get into that," Jacob said as Danny went to start working on the paperwork. "I have something I want to talk with the two of you about."
Taylor sat down with her glass and nodded to her uncle.
"The two of you are aware that Bonesaw is an associate of mine," Jacob continued. "If you are willing to trade civilian identities I can have her come and visit. Two of her major non-slaughterhouse activities are assisting those who have been severely injured and granting otherwise normal people enhancements. For example, she has given me a few extras." He demonstrated this by lifting their couch without any apparent effort, something that shocked both Taylor and Danny. "I think Taylor could benefit from something similar. And before you ask, these would likely be officially off the books. They need not be reported as they are not a result of Taylor's powers."
"This would increase her ability to stay safe, right?" Danny asked. It was obvious that was the metric he was using as a baseline for a lot of decisions lately.
"It would," Jacob admitted. "If only because nobody will expect her to have the boosts. Also, if her power is in fact like mine, being stronger means that she will be able to hit harder with it. Otherwise any hit with her power would be the same as if she, right now, struck someone."
"You said Bonesaw doesn't need to inflict pain for things she already knows, right?" Taylor asked.
"That is correct," Jacob answered. "In fact, when she last worked on me I came out feeling better than when I went in."
"I'm ok with it if you are," Taylor said, turning to her father. He sighed and just nodded.
"Alright, I'll give her a call," Jacob said, pulling his phone out and heading for the living room. "Hopefully she isn't too busy and can come before we want to submit the paperwork to the PRT."
"Why would it matter that we get it done before the paperwork is submitted?" Danny wondered, reaching to pick up the first form on the stack for him to review.
"Probably the form that says once you join the Wards you need to have things like that approved," Taylor said. "I think that is five or six forms down in your stack."
"That is disturbingly logical," Danny admitted after a moment of thought. Then he sighed and started reading through the form he was holding.
It turned out that Bonesaw would be able to visit in two days, but it would be the day after that the work was done. Further, this was being arranged by the PRT as a way of getting Panacea to look at some things that Bonesaw could do, so there would be no questions of why Bonesaw was here.
Which brought up that, amazingly enough, Panacea was the only cape other than Taylor that lived in Brockton Bay and was aware of the truth of the Slaughterhouse Nine. In fact, until Taylor and Danny were informed no other person of any description living in Brockton Bay was officially in the know. Technically, by the NDAs, Panacea was still the only one officially in the know, actually.
The fact that Taylor would be serving as a "parahuman volunteer already read into the true purpose of the Slaughterhouse Nine" and not actually named was Jacob's method of min-maxing loopholes. Jacob had been careful to ensure that no mention of the individual being officially informed and having a signed NDA on file was included because neither Taylor or Danny met those criteria. Due to the wording of Jacob's contracts that didn't matter for the purposes of the visit, though. As such, anyone who found the paperwork and went looking for who Bonesaw had "improved" would be looking in the wrong places. They hoped, anyway.
Jacob was annoyed that he had failed to get Danny listed as a "non-parahuman volunteer already read into the true purpose of the Slaughterhouse Nine" though. Apparently those authorizing the trip only cared about what Bonesaw could do to a parahuman this time around.
Starting the process of joining the Wards would happen a little over a week later, if you didn't count some of the "get it out of the way" stuff they were going to do in advance. Such as taking advantage of Panacea's presence to have her run Taylor through a PRT-approved physical.
Most of this was relayed over dinner, where Taylor was instructed to eat as much as she could until after the procedure at a minimum.
After dessert Jacob showed Taylor how she could use her cell phone as an internet connection for her aging desktop computer, something he said she probably shouldn't mention to her father. She took advantage of this almost immediately, checking the local news first to read up on what was going on with Winslow. Which turned out to be pretty much what Jacob had already told them. She then decided that, as a parahuman, she should be keeping up on the goings-on at PHO.
It had nothing to do with anything else, really. Probably. Yea, nobody is believing that excuse. She is still sticking with that story.
Some quick checks and she found that the only thing of interest in Brockton Bay since she had last visited the site was Winslow's closing. There were a lot of insane theories, including parahuman involvement in placing the asbestos (which was apparently known to be there, just not known to be exposed, throwing that theory out) and that a parahuman had been responsible for the sinkhole. Oddly nobody was blaming a parahuman for the supposed 'biohazard spill'.
No, wait, that apparently had a dedicated thread. Nevermind.
She spent another hour poking around online before deciding she should get ready for bed. She almost forgot to remove the earpiece, but seeing the little charging cradle for it next to the one for her new phone was enough of a reminder.
globalwarmth
ruining the weather.
- Location
- Polar ice caps
aww the power was blunted, no fair! hope the bandwidth thing has some interesting stuff to it.
- Location
- England
Although she didn't go for it, Uber and Leet would have been a great go-to from the snark counselling point of view. If she could get Leet and his snark working together well that would be like a 100 x power up.
Ace Dreamer
Verified Reality User
- Location
- Between The Unknown & The Known
This looks like a fun story... I did wonder if Panacea's snark should say she wants... a shrubbery!
As always, when you introduce snarks, I might wonder if there is a boojum around...
(One version of snark, as a fantasy monster, I encountered was a shape-shifter, the boojum on the other hand acquired new shapes (and all their memories and abilities) by eating targets, whole, then sometimes living the life of the eatee...)
As always, when you introduce snarks, I might wonder if there is a boojum around...
(One version of snark, as a fantasy monster, I encountered was a shape-shifter, the boojum on the other hand acquired new shapes (and all their memories and abilities) by eating targets, whole, then sometimes living the life of the eatee...)
Chapter 3
Taylor woke up and, after a few minutes, realized that it was Thursday. Huh. She hadn't really been thinking in terms of days of the week. Then again, she hadn't actually made it to classes back on Monday, in fact barely remembered Monday. It was probably only the fact that the hospital didn't keep Panacea's patients for observation unless Panacea recommended it that had allowed her to sleep in her own bed Tuesday night.
Maybe she should try and get Panacea a gift? Then again, she normally doesn't accept money and stuff for healing. Hmmm. She'd have to think on it. Or maybe ask her on Saturday. Perhaps see if she had thought any more about the greenhouse.
Taylor took advantage of her new phone's data connection and checked the news and weather while still in bed. Looked like a nice, if somewhat chilly, day today. She avoided PHO, figuring it was probably a time-sink she didn't need before breakfast, and eventually got up and dressed. Then, to get into the habit of doing so, she popped the earpiece in, clipped the phone to her pants, and wandered downstairs.
She found her father making breakfast, apparently having gotten up before her today. Or maybe she had spent longer playing with her phone than she thought. His phone was noticeably absent, though. Then again, he hadn't gotten dressed for the day yet. She watched as he prepared pancakes and breakfast sausages, wishing they had some blueberries for the pancakes.
Taylor realized that Uncle Jacob wasn't in the house when he suddenly entered her range, startling her. She hadn't realized she was in area-mode, having assumed she was in line of sight mode when she hadn't sensed Uncle Jacob's snark upon waking. Hmm, she did need to talk about which mode she should normally be in. Today was probably as good a day as any to bring it up.
"Morning Taylor," Jacob said as he came in, before he looked over at Danny. "Huh, you already started cooking."
"Yep," Danny answered, finishing up a stack of pancakes. He popped a couple of sausages on the side and placed the plate in front of Taylor. "Where were you so early?"
"I found the lack of orange juice disturbing when I noticed it this morning," Jacob said. "So I sought to rectify it."
"Don't suppose you discovered that the nearest grocers doesn't sell orange juice," Danny asked, grinning as he poured out the next set of pancakes.
"The nearest doesn't sell it, the next nearest was sold out and won't have any until Tuesday, and the third nearest won't open for another twenty minutes," Jacob replied. "As you can probably tell by the fact I brought no orange juice back with me, I gave up for now. I will, however, find some later and it will make it into your fridge. Then, and only then, will I be happy!"
Taylor quietly snickered as she got up, grabbing a glass on her way to the fridge. She removed a greenish plastic pitcher from the door of the fridge, shook it a little, then twisted the lid to open the spout and poured herself a glass of orange juice from it. She then closed the spout, put the pitcher back into the fridge, and brought her glass of orange juice back to the table before taking a sip and returning to eating her pancakes.
"Or I can feel like a fool, apparently," Jacob finally said, having watched all of that. "Why is your orange juice in a pitcher?"
"Because I have a habit of opening the cartons wrong while half asleep," Danny replied. "I have no problem with the pitcher, but can never remember there is a spout on the cartons. Then they don't close properly, so we dump it in the pitcher."
"At this point I just fill the pitcher first chance I get after the carton is opened," Taylor added. "Less hassle that way. Unless we actually find it in a proper bottle, he has no problem then."
"Stupid pitcher, stupid grocer," Jacob mumbled just barely loud enough for the other two to hear and snicker about as he got himself a glass of orange juice. By the time he was done mumbling he also had a plate in front of him, so he began eating.
After everyone had eaten their fill, Danny had gotten ready for the day, and the extra pancakes were packed away in the freezer for another day, the three sat there in the kitchen with a drink each.
"I don't believe we have anything planned for today," Danny finally said. "I was instructed that if I called the office before showing up Monday morning that they would force me to take another week off, so I haven't even informed them of the new phone number."
"According to the news Winslow is still closed and they haven't even started figuring out what to do about moving everyone around," Taylor added. "Though that makes me wonder if I can try and get into Arcadia."
"You likely will get some help with that once you join the Wards," Jacob admitted. "Not that it will be hard for them to 'sneak' you in amongst whomever else ends up there. You will likely be annoyed with the placement tests, though."
"Possibly," Taylor said. "I kind of want to get out of the house, but need to discuss something first."
Jacob and Danny looked at each other, wondering what would need to be discussed before getting out of the house. Beyond maybe not hovering constantly?
Taylor waited for them to finish their attempt at non-verbal communication, then continued. "So, my snark sense has the two modes. I don't know if it would be better to normally be in line of sight mode, and thus only seeing snarks that are in front of me, or to normally be in area mode, and thus know the location of every parahuman in my range. And before either of you ask, I checked, no off switch."
"That is an interesting problem," Jacob admitted after a couple of minutes. "I don't have two modes to my sense, so it hasn't come up with me. Would I be correct in assuming that line of sight is going to be much more of a 'look, a parahuman!' reaction mentally as you spot them?"
"That seems to be the case, yea," Taylor said. "In area mode they just kinda appear on my senses. Then again, that could be just that I have gotten familiar with your snark."
"That could invalidate things, hmmm," Jacob said, thinking. "I suspect that, for now, being aware of parahumans nearby is the best bet. Line of sight might be less overwhelming if you are around enough parahumans, but I doubt that is going to come up often."
"With that somewhat decided for now," Danny said, looking at Taylor. "Do you have any preference for where you would like to go out of the house?"
"I don't suppose we can find me a nice blunt self defense weapon?" Taylor asked, hunching down a little. "I kinda have an urge to hit something, if you know what I mean."
"Right, powers want to be used," Jacob mumbled, then spoke up as he continued. "How have you lasted this long without using that part of your power?"
"Mainly a desire not to accidentally hurt either of you or cause damage in the house," Taylor admitted. "Getting a bit more difficult to push to the side as time goes on, though."
"Come on kiddo," Danny said, getting up. "Let's go see about buying you something to hit things with. We will have to think about where to go so you can actually do so, though."
The three of them ended up visiting the boardwalk, Taylor finally seeing the car kit for Danny's phone in the process. They noticed an unusually large number of teenagers about for a weekday morning, but with an entire high school closed that wasn't really a surprise. Danny led them down a side street to a slightly out of the way used equipment shop that he claimed the dock workers frequented.
Inside Taylor and Jacob looked around and the various items. They found that there was a mixture of survival gear, training and self defense equipment, and used books. Jacob drifted towards some of the knives while Taylor wandered over towards a collection of clubs and batons, coupled with the occasional baseball bat. She found a decent-looking collapsible baton that felt nice in her hand after she figured out how to get it open and closed. She couldn't find a brand, but it was labeled "Tac-Smack".
Danny had gone to find the owner, given that nobody appeared to be manning the counter. He wandered back, the owner trailing behind him, apparently catching up from who knows when. Danny gave Taylor a look, seeing her holding a single item, and gestured that she should grab another or two. So Taylor looked over some of the other items, finding a decent wooden baseball bat that she liked the feel of. As she carried both over towards the counter a display of folding shovels got her attention as well. No, wait, they were labeled as being 'entrenching tools'. She supposed her power wouldn't work on them if swung edge-on, but grabbed one anyway.
Jacob wandered over with a single small hunting knife, saw the entrenching tool Taylor had grabbed, and after some thought decided to grab one of his own. He would have the opposite issue, needing to swing edge-on, but the basic tool should work for both of their powers. Though now that the thought about it, she wasn't sure how they would explain their selections if asked.
"Decent choice on the shovels," the owner said, looking over their selections. "Many find them good for camping, and that is the sturdier model. Not my preference on the knife, but everyone's different there. Though why does the little lady need a bat and baton?"
"Bat's easier to have ready to grab in a pinch at home," Danny answered before Taylor had thought of anything. "But the baton is easier to keep in a bag. She had some trouble recently, you see. Thank goodness Panacea was able to help her, but having something to at hand, if only for the confidence boost, is the main reason we swung by today."
That was a nicely prepared reason. Taylor wondered if a visit like this was considered even before the revelation about her triggering?
"Well, those should serve you well," the owner said, ringing everything up. Jacob had his card handed over before Danny even had his wallet out, and got a glare for it, but no argument. Taylor was given a quick lesson on properly using the collapsible baton, then they took their purchases and left.
The three of them ended up visiting a park in the docks area. It was run-down, in part because there were no residences in use or businesses open in the area anymore. Some careful checking indicated that they should be unobserved, and Taylor gleefully went at hitting the broken beyond repair swingset with her power channeled through first the bat, then the collapsible baton, and finally the shovel. She wasn't strong enough to cause much damage to the thing, though she was getting a good rattling thunk with each swing.
Jacob was a bit more discreet testing the hunting knife with his power, finding it acceptable as he cut some weeds. The shovel surprised him, though. He thought he might have to sharpen it up a bit, but the thing seemed useful and fairly easy to carry. Without sharpening it might even serve as a less lethal "edged" weapon that still had some mass behind it.
Danny sat there, half watching and half trying to figure out some of the features on his phone. Better to know how to use things and never need them than the other way around, right?
Eventually Taylor had worked out her need to hit things and they packed up and left, returning to the boardwalk for lunch. Which Jacob paid for again before Danny even thought about doing so, by virtue of collecting everyone's orders and then leaving them at a table while he played fetch. Taylor was finding it interesting that she had not noticed any snarks other than her Uncle's, a trend that continued as wandered through various shops after lunch.
"Oooh, look," Taylor said as they poked around a toy store. "Nerf bats."
"Do you actually want Nerf bats?" Danny asked, looking at Taylor. "Why?"
"They are blunt and generally safe to whack things with," Taylor returned, dropping all the hints needed. "And look, they come in several sizes!"
They ended up leaving with four different foam bats, and Danny finally got to pay for something. The smallest was a foot long and all foam except for a plastic handle, allowing it to be compressed down quite a bit. The other three all had a solid plastic core that was wrapped in foam, meaning that they could hit harder than they looked at first glance, and topped out at three feet long. All of them were advertised as using a tinker-derived foam that was guaranteed to last years even if you subjected it to insane abuse for a foam toy.
Which meant that you were still out of luck if you, say, swung one at Lung.
By the time they made it back to the car Taylor had whacked both adults multiple times with the smallest foam bat, directly and indirectly. Just because she could. Neither complained, because they were enjoying her good mood too much.
Once they got home Taylor had dug around and found a sling bag in the attic that she could stick the cell phone, collapsible baton, and compressed foam bat into individual pockets of with room left over for a water bottle and a couple other miscellaneous items. It even had a couple of loops that she could, if desired, re-purpose with minimal effort to hold her "entrenching tool" to the outside of it. That was, admittedly, probably going a bit far for carrying around all the time. Perhaps she would see about carrying that in-costume? Once she had a costume, anyway.
By the time she had finished it was time for dinner. Uncle Jacob had thrown a frozen lasagna in the oven, which while not as good as homemade still ended up fully devoured. Then, because they had little better to do they actually sat down and watched the news together.
"Tonight's top story is the supposed biohazard spill at Winslow High School," the anchorman started at the top of the hour. "Most of our information on this horrible situation had been through observation of actions being taken, official sources being oddly silent on what was actually going on. That silence ended earlier today when it was announced that three individuals responsible for the 'spill' had been taken into custody and had already entered into plea agreements."
Taylor had frozen, her uncle carefully wrapping her in a one-armed hug from his seat next to her on the couch. They might have turned off the television or changed the channel, if Taylor didn't have a death grip on the remote.
"While no names were provided the press release states that all three were involved in a multi-year bullying and academic sabotage campaign against another student, also unnamed. This campaign led to the incident at Winslow on Monday night. While there are no other details in the press release our own investigations show that emergency services dispatched to Winslow removed an unnamed minor from the premises. No arrests were made at that time, but a single leaked picture of the 'biohazard spill' shows a school locker with a bloody handprint visible on the inside and an obviously cut-off padlock set to the side."
It was at this point that Danny was able to get over his own shock and anger and turn off the television by pushing the power button on the front.
It took another couple of hours, but eventually they all made it to bed.
Maybe she should try and get Panacea a gift? Then again, she normally doesn't accept money and stuff for healing. Hmmm. She'd have to think on it. Or maybe ask her on Saturday. Perhaps see if she had thought any more about the greenhouse.
Taylor took advantage of her new phone's data connection and checked the news and weather while still in bed. Looked like a nice, if somewhat chilly, day today. She avoided PHO, figuring it was probably a time-sink she didn't need before breakfast, and eventually got up and dressed. Then, to get into the habit of doing so, she popped the earpiece in, clipped the phone to her pants, and wandered downstairs.
She found her father making breakfast, apparently having gotten up before her today. Or maybe she had spent longer playing with her phone than she thought. His phone was noticeably absent, though. Then again, he hadn't gotten dressed for the day yet. She watched as he prepared pancakes and breakfast sausages, wishing they had some blueberries for the pancakes.
Taylor realized that Uncle Jacob wasn't in the house when he suddenly entered her range, startling her. She hadn't realized she was in area-mode, having assumed she was in line of sight mode when she hadn't sensed Uncle Jacob's snark upon waking. Hmm, she did need to talk about which mode she should normally be in. Today was probably as good a day as any to bring it up.
"Morning Taylor," Jacob said as he came in, before he looked over at Danny. "Huh, you already started cooking."
"Yep," Danny answered, finishing up a stack of pancakes. He popped a couple of sausages on the side and placed the plate in front of Taylor. "Where were you so early?"
"I found the lack of orange juice disturbing when I noticed it this morning," Jacob said. "So I sought to rectify it."
"Don't suppose you discovered that the nearest grocers doesn't sell orange juice," Danny asked, grinning as he poured out the next set of pancakes.
"The nearest doesn't sell it, the next nearest was sold out and won't have any until Tuesday, and the third nearest won't open for another twenty minutes," Jacob replied. "As you can probably tell by the fact I brought no orange juice back with me, I gave up for now. I will, however, find some later and it will make it into your fridge. Then, and only then, will I be happy!"
Taylor quietly snickered as she got up, grabbing a glass on her way to the fridge. She removed a greenish plastic pitcher from the door of the fridge, shook it a little, then twisted the lid to open the spout and poured herself a glass of orange juice from it. She then closed the spout, put the pitcher back into the fridge, and brought her glass of orange juice back to the table before taking a sip and returning to eating her pancakes.
"Or I can feel like a fool, apparently," Jacob finally said, having watched all of that. "Why is your orange juice in a pitcher?"
"Because I have a habit of opening the cartons wrong while half asleep," Danny replied. "I have no problem with the pitcher, but can never remember there is a spout on the cartons. Then they don't close properly, so we dump it in the pitcher."
"At this point I just fill the pitcher first chance I get after the carton is opened," Taylor added. "Less hassle that way. Unless we actually find it in a proper bottle, he has no problem then."
"Stupid pitcher, stupid grocer," Jacob mumbled just barely loud enough for the other two to hear and snicker about as he got himself a glass of orange juice. By the time he was done mumbling he also had a plate in front of him, so he began eating.
After everyone had eaten their fill, Danny had gotten ready for the day, and the extra pancakes were packed away in the freezer for another day, the three sat there in the kitchen with a drink each.
"I don't believe we have anything planned for today," Danny finally said. "I was instructed that if I called the office before showing up Monday morning that they would force me to take another week off, so I haven't even informed them of the new phone number."
"According to the news Winslow is still closed and they haven't even started figuring out what to do about moving everyone around," Taylor added. "Though that makes me wonder if I can try and get into Arcadia."
"You likely will get some help with that once you join the Wards," Jacob admitted. "Not that it will be hard for them to 'sneak' you in amongst whomever else ends up there. You will likely be annoyed with the placement tests, though."
"Possibly," Taylor said. "I kind of want to get out of the house, but need to discuss something first."
Jacob and Danny looked at each other, wondering what would need to be discussed before getting out of the house. Beyond maybe not hovering constantly?
Taylor waited for them to finish their attempt at non-verbal communication, then continued. "So, my snark sense has the two modes. I don't know if it would be better to normally be in line of sight mode, and thus only seeing snarks that are in front of me, or to normally be in area mode, and thus know the location of every parahuman in my range. And before either of you ask, I checked, no off switch."
"That is an interesting problem," Jacob admitted after a couple of minutes. "I don't have two modes to my sense, so it hasn't come up with me. Would I be correct in assuming that line of sight is going to be much more of a 'look, a parahuman!' reaction mentally as you spot them?"
"That seems to be the case, yea," Taylor said. "In area mode they just kinda appear on my senses. Then again, that could be just that I have gotten familiar with your snark."
"That could invalidate things, hmmm," Jacob said, thinking. "I suspect that, for now, being aware of parahumans nearby is the best bet. Line of sight might be less overwhelming if you are around enough parahumans, but I doubt that is going to come up often."
"With that somewhat decided for now," Danny said, looking at Taylor. "Do you have any preference for where you would like to go out of the house?"
"I don't suppose we can find me a nice blunt self defense weapon?" Taylor asked, hunching down a little. "I kinda have an urge to hit something, if you know what I mean."
"Right, powers want to be used," Jacob mumbled, then spoke up as he continued. "How have you lasted this long without using that part of your power?"
"Mainly a desire not to accidentally hurt either of you or cause damage in the house," Taylor admitted. "Getting a bit more difficult to push to the side as time goes on, though."
"Come on kiddo," Danny said, getting up. "Let's go see about buying you something to hit things with. We will have to think about where to go so you can actually do so, though."
The three of them ended up visiting the boardwalk, Taylor finally seeing the car kit for Danny's phone in the process. They noticed an unusually large number of teenagers about for a weekday morning, but with an entire high school closed that wasn't really a surprise. Danny led them down a side street to a slightly out of the way used equipment shop that he claimed the dock workers frequented.
Inside Taylor and Jacob looked around and the various items. They found that there was a mixture of survival gear, training and self defense equipment, and used books. Jacob drifted towards some of the knives while Taylor wandered over towards a collection of clubs and batons, coupled with the occasional baseball bat. She found a decent-looking collapsible baton that felt nice in her hand after she figured out how to get it open and closed. She couldn't find a brand, but it was labeled "Tac-Smack".
Danny had gone to find the owner, given that nobody appeared to be manning the counter. He wandered back, the owner trailing behind him, apparently catching up from who knows when. Danny gave Taylor a look, seeing her holding a single item, and gestured that she should grab another or two. So Taylor looked over some of the other items, finding a decent wooden baseball bat that she liked the feel of. As she carried both over towards the counter a display of folding shovels got her attention as well. No, wait, they were labeled as being 'entrenching tools'. She supposed her power wouldn't work on them if swung edge-on, but grabbed one anyway.
Jacob wandered over with a single small hunting knife, saw the entrenching tool Taylor had grabbed, and after some thought decided to grab one of his own. He would have the opposite issue, needing to swing edge-on, but the basic tool should work for both of their powers. Though now that the thought about it, she wasn't sure how they would explain their selections if asked.
"Decent choice on the shovels," the owner said, looking over their selections. "Many find them good for camping, and that is the sturdier model. Not my preference on the knife, but everyone's different there. Though why does the little lady need a bat and baton?"
"Bat's easier to have ready to grab in a pinch at home," Danny answered before Taylor had thought of anything. "But the baton is easier to keep in a bag. She had some trouble recently, you see. Thank goodness Panacea was able to help her, but having something to at hand, if only for the confidence boost, is the main reason we swung by today."
That was a nicely prepared reason. Taylor wondered if a visit like this was considered even before the revelation about her triggering?
"Well, those should serve you well," the owner said, ringing everything up. Jacob had his card handed over before Danny even had his wallet out, and got a glare for it, but no argument. Taylor was given a quick lesson on properly using the collapsible baton, then they took their purchases and left.
The three of them ended up visiting a park in the docks area. It was run-down, in part because there were no residences in use or businesses open in the area anymore. Some careful checking indicated that they should be unobserved, and Taylor gleefully went at hitting the broken beyond repair swingset with her power channeled through first the bat, then the collapsible baton, and finally the shovel. She wasn't strong enough to cause much damage to the thing, though she was getting a good rattling thunk with each swing.
Jacob was a bit more discreet testing the hunting knife with his power, finding it acceptable as he cut some weeds. The shovel surprised him, though. He thought he might have to sharpen it up a bit, but the thing seemed useful and fairly easy to carry. Without sharpening it might even serve as a less lethal "edged" weapon that still had some mass behind it.
Danny sat there, half watching and half trying to figure out some of the features on his phone. Better to know how to use things and never need them than the other way around, right?
Eventually Taylor had worked out her need to hit things and they packed up and left, returning to the boardwalk for lunch. Which Jacob paid for again before Danny even thought about doing so, by virtue of collecting everyone's orders and then leaving them at a table while he played fetch. Taylor was finding it interesting that she had not noticed any snarks other than her Uncle's, a trend that continued as wandered through various shops after lunch.
"Oooh, look," Taylor said as they poked around a toy store. "Nerf bats."
"Do you actually want Nerf bats?" Danny asked, looking at Taylor. "Why?"
"They are blunt and generally safe to whack things with," Taylor returned, dropping all the hints needed. "And look, they come in several sizes!"
They ended up leaving with four different foam bats, and Danny finally got to pay for something. The smallest was a foot long and all foam except for a plastic handle, allowing it to be compressed down quite a bit. The other three all had a solid plastic core that was wrapped in foam, meaning that they could hit harder than they looked at first glance, and topped out at three feet long. All of them were advertised as using a tinker-derived foam that was guaranteed to last years even if you subjected it to insane abuse for a foam toy.
Which meant that you were still out of luck if you, say, swung one at Lung.
By the time they made it back to the car Taylor had whacked both adults multiple times with the smallest foam bat, directly and indirectly. Just because she could. Neither complained, because they were enjoying her good mood too much.
Once they got home Taylor had dug around and found a sling bag in the attic that she could stick the cell phone, collapsible baton, and compressed foam bat into individual pockets of with room left over for a water bottle and a couple other miscellaneous items. It even had a couple of loops that she could, if desired, re-purpose with minimal effort to hold her "entrenching tool" to the outside of it. That was, admittedly, probably going a bit far for carrying around all the time. Perhaps she would see about carrying that in-costume? Once she had a costume, anyway.
By the time she had finished it was time for dinner. Uncle Jacob had thrown a frozen lasagna in the oven, which while not as good as homemade still ended up fully devoured. Then, because they had little better to do they actually sat down and watched the news together.
"Tonight's top story is the supposed biohazard spill at Winslow High School," the anchorman started at the top of the hour. "Most of our information on this horrible situation had been through observation of actions being taken, official sources being oddly silent on what was actually going on. That silence ended earlier today when it was announced that three individuals responsible for the 'spill' had been taken into custody and had already entered into plea agreements."
Taylor had frozen, her uncle carefully wrapping her in a one-armed hug from his seat next to her on the couch. They might have turned off the television or changed the channel, if Taylor didn't have a death grip on the remote.
"While no names were provided the press release states that all three were involved in a multi-year bullying and academic sabotage campaign against another student, also unnamed. This campaign led to the incident at Winslow on Monday night. While there are no other details in the press release our own investigations show that emergency services dispatched to Winslow removed an unnamed minor from the premises. No arrests were made at that time, but a single leaked picture of the 'biohazard spill' shows a school locker with a bloody handprint visible on the inside and an obviously cut-off padlock set to the side."
It was at this point that Danny was able to get over his own shock and anger and turn off the television by pushing the power button on the front.
It took another couple of hours, but eventually they all made it to bed.
Last edited:
Chapter 4
The next morning Jacob was the first one up and he quickly decided that cooking was not in the cards this morning. Luckily he had already scoped out the nearest donut shop. He returned with a pile of donuts, muffins, and other assorted pastries. He spent a few minutes laying them all out so that it was easier to see what he had grabbed, and to deal with the fact he ripped a couple of the boxes because he wasn't paying attention.
He then spent a few minutes tidying up some of what they hadn't gotten around to taking care of the night before. Then, hearing nothing from upstairs, he pulled his phone out, established a secure connection back to the PRT, and checked to see if he could find more details on what had gone done with Winslow. Mainly because it seemed to have happened way too fast and he felt there was a story there.
It didn't take him long to find what he was looking for. Mainly because Emily had flagged the relevant files for him, and it looked like ensured he had access to a couple he wouldn't normally be allowed access to. He quickly bumped Brockton Bay up a couple of slots on his "to visit professionally as Jacob" list while the file packet was downloading. After a moment's thought he also bumped it down in his "to visit as Jack" list.
Leaning back as the download completed he listened carefully. Still no signs of movement from upstairs, so it was unlikely anyone was about to come down. He tapped on the first file, which turned out to be an overview of everything they found from the locker itself. He skimmed it, not really wanting to lose his breakfast before he had a chance to eat it. Nothing jumped out at him as surprising, really, beyond that they had found fingerprints on the added lock, but as anyone could have grabbed it for a moment after the locker was closed they were not likely to be usable as evidence.
Moving onto the next file in the stack he found it was their review of Taylor's bully records. A summary at the top indicated that they were able to corroborate just over ninety percent of them with the three main tormentors. How had they pulled that off? He got his answer when it turned out the next two files were similar records, two of her three main bullies had kept logs of their own about what they were doing to Taylor. The last entries in one of the two being the planning and preparation for the locker. Who the hell keeps that kind of records of their misdeeds?
In Boston an impeccably dressed man sneezed suddenly, triggering an emergency check of the cleanliness of the room, the vents, that his laundry detergent had not been messed with, and a dozen other things.
Closer to home, a man covered in dragon tattoos wearing a metal mask also sneezed. He thought nothing of it, returning to his true enemy, the one he would never defeat, that could only ever be held at bay for another day. But the paperwork needed to keep his gang running had to be dealt with, and he trusted no other to complete it.
If only his power gave him an ability that could help him here, but no. He had to get an ability that only really worked well in combat with less annoying foes.
The fifth file was the first he needed his higher clearance for, and once unlocked made him want to hurt someone. Or several someones. One of Taylor's tormentors, specifically the one that had apparently done most of the physical bullying and had arranged most of the dirty work in preparing the locker, had been a Ward. He read through the latest additions to the file, finding that her (unnamed) PRT liaison and monitor was being brought up on charges of criminal negligence. They had known, and kept records of, most of the probation-violating activities Sophia was engaging in, but had not reported any of them up the chain. He wasn't cleared for the linked document that apparently detailed all the covered up actions, though.
Moving on to avoid taking his anger out on something that didn't deserve it, like his brother-in-law's entire house, he found a summary of the legal actions taken against the three girls and a basic description of why for each.
First up was Madison Clements. She had gotten off lightly with mandatory therapy sessions, a restraining order, and a threat that the next time she stepped out of line they would revisit this case as well. Luckily for her it was because she had apparently turned herself in Tuesday morning, before anyone even knew to look for her, and voluntarily handed over her log of what she had done to Taylor since the two started at Winslow. That and other evidence showed that she was mostly kept in the dark about the locker and had been told that Taylor had been released before lunchtime. Her parents had agreed to the plea deal to keep her out of juvie, and had done so quickly to hopefully keep their names out of the press.
Emma Barnes was next. Apparently when a search warrant was executed on Tuesday evening they found that she had also kept a log of things done to Taylor, hers including details on the locker that she would have otherwise had no way of knowing. She also had kept records of running around with Hess on unofficial patrols. They found the makeshift costume, spare crossbow bolts, and two illegal handguns in her closet as well. In her case she was going to juvie, as part of a plea to get out of being tried as an adult due to her activities with Hess and the two handguns. Jacob also thought that the PRT had likely also pointed out that if it went to court Emma's name would probably become known to the gangs that she and Sophia had been targeting.
Which led him to Sophia Hess, who had not, in fact, gotten a plea deal like the news had reported. Apparently her probation being violated in the ways it had, coupled with the evidence collected from both her own bedroom and the Barnes household, meant that she was headed straight for prison for previous crimes. She would get additional days in court, closed sessions, to likely add to her list of charges later. Huh, apparently the trust fund that had been set up for her as a Ward had been stripped from her and transferred to Taylor. Jacob wondered how they would be explaining that one.
The last file was a basic description of how they were going to handle Shadow Stalker 'leaving' the Wards. A couple of impersonations by someone else as she supposedly left the city, having 'discovered a new aspect to her power' that was causing her to re-brand. Supposedly. Jacob snorted at that, he knew of four previous times a similar ruse had been used. PHO had yet to believe any of them.
Jacob absently wondered if Hess's time in prison, unable to use her power, would drive her legally insane due to the mental issues with parahumans needing to use their powers. Or maybe they had a nice cell picked out that she could use her powers inside of, but not escape from? Oh well, not his problem unless she escaped. At that point she was probably fair game. Maybe he should invest in a taser, just in case?
To be safe he wiped the local copies of the files from his phone. He didn't expect Taylor or Danny to be poking around on it, but information security was still a good thing.
About ten minutes later Danny wandered down, saw the pile of food on the table, and decided to be lazy. He walked over to the landline (his cell still being upstairs) and called Taylor's cell phone, telling her that breakfast was ready. Jacob snickered, then wandered into the kitchen to eat as he heard Taylor moving.
Taylor had gotten up, noted that her uncle was not in the house, and gotten dressed. She then laid back down on her bed and starting playing with her phone. She did spare some thought to whether or not it was a good thing that she hadn't even had the thing a week and she was already getting into the habit of checking sites like PHO every morning. Then again, she wasn't yet in the habit of staring at it even as she walked down the street, so it couldn't be too bad.
She felt her uncle return, but didn't bother heading downstairs yet. She was busy reading up on what PHO thought of the revelations from the day before. Apparently this was a Ziz plot, a PRT cover up, a Protectorate cover up, an attempt to frame the PRT, an attempt to frame the Protectorate, and an attempt to discredit the entire Brockton Bay school system. All at the same time.
Then again, the people saying that they were specifically covering up a trigger event were, kinda, right, assuming that those that would be covering it up knew that she had triggered. Which she didn't believe they did.
She moved onto other local cape news and found that nobody had seen Shadow Stalker for most of the week. Then again, that happened every couple of months. Vista had been absent from sightings for longer at this point, actually, approaching two weeks now.
Lung had apparently been spotted late last night in a bar down by the docks. That wasn't uncommon either, though the lack of barfight was a tad out of the ordinary. Some people were convinced Lung started the fights intentionally so he could ramp up enough to flush his system, preventing hangovers. Taylor just assumed he was usually an angry drunk, but felt the other theory had merit too.
Taylor then found a thread linking to where someone had uploaded a clip of Glory Girl flying into a brick wall while staring at her cell phone. Taylor watched it and read the comments, on and off of PHO, mentally noting that she needed to never get in the habit of staring at hers while walking even as she snickered.
Having run out of local happenings she wandered into some of the more wild sections of PHO, finding a thread where a few people were complaining about the general lack of lizard-themed capes. Or lizard Case 53s. Or cape lizards. Really, any and all combinations of "cape" and "lizard". Taylor didn't get the appeal, personally. But she recalled a few months ago there was a similar thread relating to insects, which she didn't get the appeal of either. Stupid little things were creepy.
She was interrupted from further browsing by the phone ringing. She tapped the button on the screen to answer and it did nothing. Right, she had to swipe the circle on the screen, because it wasn't a button. She did that and the call connected. "Hello?"
"Hey kiddo," her father's voice came through the earpiece she had in. She was liking that bit more and more, no need to hold the phone up to her head. "Your uncle picked up breakfast, come on down to eat."
"Will do, thanks," Taylor responded. The call had disconnected before she had finished, though. She closed down PHO and headed downstairs.
Breakfast was, after some "are you ok?" style pleasantries related to the day before, a quiet affair. There was, however, a lot left over as Jacob had gone a bit overboard. True to having been told to stuff herself regularly Taylor had consumed a small apple fritter, a chocolate chip muffin, and a jelly donut. Danny and Jacob had thought that the donut was pushing it, even with her temporarily increased appetite, but it just looked too tasty when she noticed it.
Taylor occupied herself with packing up the leftovers in various ways while Danny headed upstairs to get ready for the day and Jacob exchanged text messages with someone. Looking over the pile she was working with Taylor wondered if they should consider bringing some to the neighbors or something, otherwise a lot of this was going to go to waste.
"Uncle Jacob?" Taylor called, knowing that he was in the hallway. "Think we should share some of your breakfast purchase with the neighbors or something?"
"No need," Jacob replied. "I doubt it will last the day."
What?
"Our visitors today will likely finish off the rest," Jacob continued.
"What visitors?" Danny asked as he came down the stairs, fiddling with the way his belt clip for the cell phone was positioned. "I wasn't aware we were expecting any?"
"Bonesaw will be by in the next couple of hours to meet Taylor and talk to her about what can be done in the way of upgrades," Jacob said, smirking. "And Bonesaw never visits new capes alone."
Well, so much for any plans of this being a relaxing day where they did nothing.
An hour later Taylor was poking around on PHO, this time reading through a thread discussing Über and Leet's shenanigans. Apparently around five out of nine of their stunts were not, in fact, doing anything seriously illegal, or in some cases illegal at all, even when it looked like they were breaking the law. They apparently hired henchmen of sorts to participate when they couldn't use robots and holograms.
Their last Sonic the Hedgehog show with stealing emeralds and gold rings from a jewelry store was even legit, having arranged it with the owner as a publicity stunt and even gotten appropriate permits and stuff. Who knew? Must be why law enforcement didn't always go after them. Though they likely had to pay fines a lot.
Taylor's browsing was interrupted by her snark sense going off. Three parahumans had just entered her range and were coming towards the house. As a precaution she put her phone away and grabbed her new bat, which Jacob noticed.
"If you just picked up some parahumans then that that is probably our expected guests," Jacob said. "As such they are likely friendly."
"Would you be willing to trust that?" Taylor returned with a look.
"Well, no, not really," Jacob admitted. "Then again, I was told they were only a couple blocks away a moment ago."
Taylor put the bat back down, but kept it handy. Jacob nodded in approval, because they did not exactly live in a 'safe' world, as he got up to go check on who was arriving. Taylor did not hear the greetings, but shortly Jacob returned with a group of people. Taylor intentionally avoided starting conversations with their snarks for now.
"Taylor, I would like you to meet some of my associates," Jacob said, gesturing to the group. "First up is Riley, who you better know as Bonesaw." A young-looking blond girl wearing a backpack curtseyed. "With her mother, Amanda." An older woman with blond hair nodded. "Ned, who you would know better as Crawler." A skinny man with brown hair that looked like a breeze would blow him over waved. "William, who you may be familiar with from the Manton Effect named after him." An older man with unkempt hair nodded in her direction. Hmm, he had a snark? "And his daughter Sarah, who you would know as The Siberian." The last individual, a female that looked to be in her twenties with long, dark hair and a fair complexion, also waved at her. She did not have a snark.
She was a snark. William's snark, in fact.
Hello? Taylor projected at 'Sarah'. Who visibly flinched. As did William a moment later.
"How did you do that?" Sarah asked, startled. "Saying hello in my head?"
"You are an interesting snark," Taylor said, tilting her head as though to look at Sarah from a different angle. "I am under the impression very few are good with English."
"Right," Jacob said, gesturing to Taylor. "This is my niece, Taylor. She has no cape name at this point."
"Well aren't you interesting," Riley said, bouncing over to Taylor. "What's a snark?"
[Query]
Yes, I can see you there. How are you?
"Snarks are what I call the things that grant powers," Taylor answered Riley. "Or perhaps what the snark that grants me my power decided to call the things that grant powers?"
[Content]
So Riley here gives you plenty to play with? Good for you. But I heard you like making her cause pain. Why?
"So you can see them?" Riley asked, poking Taylor in the forehead. "What do they look like?"
[Declaration. Determination.]
So you use the pain as a way of monitoring the nerves while you work? But so many things are washed away by the pain. How do you monitor the nerves that make someone feel pleasure, for example?
"They don't really look like anything specific?" Taylor said. "Or perhaps I should say, each one is different? William's looks like Sarah right now, for example. Yours looks like a spider, but not really?"
[Confusion. Contemplation.]
"I like spiders," Riley said, grinning. She swung the backpack she was wearing around to her front and opened it, showing a largely mechanical spider. "They're fun!"
"Neat," Taylor admitted. She was kinda happy that Riley was providing all the prompts here. She had no idea what to talk about. She glanced over at Ned.
Hello?
{Boredom}
No, I don't think any of us want to fight you.
"No, I don't look much like Crawler right now," Ned admitted. "I have a mental switch in my head, takes about an hour to transition either way."
{Annoyance}
Well aren't you rude. No, I will not fight you just because you want a fight.
"At least you can do your own grocery shopping?" Taylor offered. How do you respond to something like that?
"There is that, I suppose," Ned said, shrugging. "Just the way things work."
"So you can not only tell that I am a parahuman," William said, gesturing towards Sarah. "But that she is a result of my power?"
"Yep," Taylor said, poking again, but directing at William and not Sarah.
Hello
|Annoyance|
"Well that's interesting," Taylor mumbled, looking over at Sarah. Who hadn't reacted this time.
Why shouldn't you be here?
|Confusion. Hunger.|
"What is interesting?" Riley asked, looking at Taylor.
You aren't supposed to be joined? You weren't fed properly? I don't understand.
|Annoyance|
"Fine, be that way," Taylor grumbled.
"Er, hello?" Riley said, poking Taylor again. "Earth to Taylor?"
"William's snark is just plain mean when I don't talk to Sarah," Taylor grumbled. "Ned's is a bit rude, but more in a single-minded way? Then again, William's may just be hungry."
"You are a fascinating cape," Amanda finally said, shaking her head. "What are your actual powers, anyway? I am getting conflicting ideas here, what with the spacing out just now and Sarah's odd reactions and all."
"The spacing out is probably because she is having issues focusing on us," Jacob admitted. "She can communicate with parahuman powers, which includes being able to locate them. She can also do my blade trick, but with blunt weapons instead."
"Objects," Taylor corrected, causing everyone to look at her. "What? Weapons is too specific, it is blunt objects."
"I find myself wondering why the distinction," Danny said, coming in from the kitchen. "I'm Danny, by the way, Taylor's father. I heard the rest of the introductions, but was curious how Taylor was going to respond to new parahumans."
Taylor decided to demonstrate a little, pulling out the smallest foam bat from the bag she had nearby. "If anyone can honestly think this would be classified as a blunt weapon they probably need to re-evaluate their view of the world." She then bopped Riley on the head with it normally, followed by William with her power.
Bopping Ned was a bad idea, she figured. Probably just as bad as bopping Lung would be.
"I can see that it works," William admitted. "But not why is it not a weapon? Powers can be weird about their definitions."
"Yes, well," Taylor continued, lightly kicking William. From across the room. He stumbled, then stared at Taylor.
"Did you just kick me?" William finally asked.
"Yep," Taylor grinned.
"How?" William asked. "That doesn't match anything you told us."
"My shoe is a blunt object," Taylor stated, crossing her arms like she had just made her point. Which, to be honest, she basically had, because until then he had not realized that clothes were usually 'blunt'.
"My power works with scissors, bolt cutters, utility knives," Jacob said, counting things off with his fingers. "Sheets of paper, business cards, oh, and apparently shovels if I swing them the right way. So I can see where the distinction comes from. I need an edge, she needs a blunt surface."
"You need to do paper cuts on the next Slaughterhouse run," Riley said, grinning. "That would be hilarious."
"But then I might have to stop giving annoying people papercuts when I hand over business cards," Jacob retorted. "Or annoying clerks when I hand over piles of annoying paperwork. Just to keep them from making the connection between Jacob and Jack. Might pull the shovel, though. Maybe I can find the right kind of rake?"
"I stand corrected," Riley said, snickering. "You keep your little secret. Much more fun thinking about the random people you give papercuts to for being annoying. That and using garden tools on gang members."
"You are not supposed to extract enjoyment from the suffering of others," Amanda scolded. "No matter who it is that is suffering."
"Yes mom," Riley said, rolling her eyes. "Can I drag Taylor off to discuss the violations of the natural order I can grant her now?"
"Go ahead dear," Amanda said, obviously knowing that Riley, due to her powers, was unlikely to ever get the "suffering of others should not be enjoyed" bit down.
Riley's spider crawled back into her bag as Riley dragged Taylor off of the couch, allowing Taylor to collect her bag and the bat she had leaning against the couch while Riley pulled her backpack back on, then dragged her out of the room. Only to stop a moment later.
"Er," Riley said. "Where is your room? Or a good place to talk? Whichever?"
This time Taylor rolled her eyes, and led Riley upstairs. "Come on, squirt."
"I don't know if she is antisocial, broken, or both," Amanda finally said after the two had made it up the stairs.
"Both, I think," Danny said, collapsing onto the couch. "Probably made worse by her power pushing her to be more social when she doesn't want to be, really."
"Or at least that is what I think is happening in some ways," Jacob added. "Our powers interact with one another, preventing me from getting a proper read on her."
"So yea," Ned said, sounding annoyed. "As fun as all of this is, someone told us there would be food?"
"There's a pile of pastries in the kitchen," Jacob said, pointing. "I picked up plenty."
Danny feared what it was going to take to clean the kitchen when Ned was done in there.
"So you can pull the projected weapon trick," Riley said. "And yes I know it is blunt object. But if it works like Jack's you can't put more force behind it than you could if you hit them directly, right?"
"Correct," Taylor said. "I also assume I can only take a hit like a normal teenage girl."
"Most likely," Riley said. "So some strength and toughness upgrades may be a good thing."
[Observation]
Huh, neat.
"So you would enhance my muscles with nanofibers and improved ligaments," Taylor said, tapping her chin. "Add a protective layer under the skin, and wrappings on my skeletal structure? Maybe some adjustments to my joints to make them stronger and more flexible?"
"Er, yes," Riley said, a bit shocked. "How did you know that?"
"Your snark showed me some of what you have done," Taylor said, waving it off. "But the under-skin protection and the skeletal wrappings won't grow with me; is that why you look younger than you should?"
"That is creepy," Riley whispered, then shook her head and spoke up. "Yea, I kinda upgraded myself without thinking about the fact it would keep me short. I like being short for now, but I may regret it when I am older."
"What if you made things segmented?" Taylor asked.
Could the wrappings and protections be made to interlock so they can extend and adjust?
[Curiosity]
"Extending wrappings?" Riley mumbled. "Individual protective and enhancement zones that connect, but aren't permanently joined? It would add weak points as you grew, but would require less mandatory tweaking over time if done right."
[Excitement]
Riley pulled a notebook out of her bag, the spider-bot passing her a sharpened pencil. Once she found a blank page she started sketching and making notes.
Huh, guess you just needed the basic idea?
Taylor leaned over to look at Riley's work, only for her glasses to slip off one ear and flip off to the side.
"Oooh, we should fix your eyes too," Riley said, looking over at the glasses. "Maybe upgrade them? Need to think on it; eyes can be difficult."
Over the next couple of hours they would brainstorm a number of ideas and workarounds, many of which weren't slated for Taylor at all but came about from Taylor looking at previous things Riley had done to others.
"About time you two came down," Amanda said, seeing Taylor and Riley wandering down the stairs. William and Sarah were sitting on the couch. Taylor was aware that Ned and Jacob had left not that long ago.
"Danny, Jacob, and Ned left to pick up a late lunch," William said as Taylor and Riley both had their stomachs growl. "Or perhaps an early dinner? You two were at it for a while."
"I think I need to buy Taylor a new notebook," Riley admitted. "I ran out of room in mine and grabbed one of hers. So many ideas..." Riley trailed off with a grin on her face.
"I get the feeling that if you haven't already traded phone numbers it will have to happen before the day is out," Amanda said, shaking her head. "Then again, Riley doesn't have enough friends of any age."
It wasn't long before the three returned with piles of pizza. Fourteen large pizzas, two for each of them minus Sarah who didn't actually eat. While the distribution wasn't quite even they still finished them all off before the visiting group departed, Riley and Taylor having exchanged contact information.
Taylor would visit the hospital in the morning for a "checkup" with Panacea as a cover for Riley implementing many of their ideas.
He then spent a few minutes tidying up some of what they hadn't gotten around to taking care of the night before. Then, hearing nothing from upstairs, he pulled his phone out, established a secure connection back to the PRT, and checked to see if he could find more details on what had gone done with Winslow. Mainly because it seemed to have happened way too fast and he felt there was a story there.
It didn't take him long to find what he was looking for. Mainly because Emily had flagged the relevant files for him, and it looked like ensured he had access to a couple he wouldn't normally be allowed access to. He quickly bumped Brockton Bay up a couple of slots on his "to visit professionally as Jacob" list while the file packet was downloading. After a moment's thought he also bumped it down in his "to visit as Jack" list.
Leaning back as the download completed he listened carefully. Still no signs of movement from upstairs, so it was unlikely anyone was about to come down. He tapped on the first file, which turned out to be an overview of everything they found from the locker itself. He skimmed it, not really wanting to lose his breakfast before he had a chance to eat it. Nothing jumped out at him as surprising, really, beyond that they had found fingerprints on the added lock, but as anyone could have grabbed it for a moment after the locker was closed they were not likely to be usable as evidence.
Moving onto the next file in the stack he found it was their review of Taylor's bully records. A summary at the top indicated that they were able to corroborate just over ninety percent of them with the three main tormentors. How had they pulled that off? He got his answer when it turned out the next two files were similar records, two of her three main bullies had kept logs of their own about what they were doing to Taylor. The last entries in one of the two being the planning and preparation for the locker. Who the hell keeps that kind of records of their misdeeds?
In Boston an impeccably dressed man sneezed suddenly, triggering an emergency check of the cleanliness of the room, the vents, that his laundry detergent had not been messed with, and a dozen other things.
Closer to home, a man covered in dragon tattoos wearing a metal mask also sneezed. He thought nothing of it, returning to his true enemy, the one he would never defeat, that could only ever be held at bay for another day. But the paperwork needed to keep his gang running had to be dealt with, and he trusted no other to complete it.
If only his power gave him an ability that could help him here, but no. He had to get an ability that only really worked well in combat with less annoying foes.
The fifth file was the first he needed his higher clearance for, and once unlocked made him want to hurt someone. Or several someones. One of Taylor's tormentors, specifically the one that had apparently done most of the physical bullying and had arranged most of the dirty work in preparing the locker, had been a Ward. He read through the latest additions to the file, finding that her (unnamed) PRT liaison and monitor was being brought up on charges of criminal negligence. They had known, and kept records of, most of the probation-violating activities Sophia was engaging in, but had not reported any of them up the chain. He wasn't cleared for the linked document that apparently detailed all the covered up actions, though.
Moving on to avoid taking his anger out on something that didn't deserve it, like his brother-in-law's entire house, he found a summary of the legal actions taken against the three girls and a basic description of why for each.
First up was Madison Clements. She had gotten off lightly with mandatory therapy sessions, a restraining order, and a threat that the next time she stepped out of line they would revisit this case as well. Luckily for her it was because she had apparently turned herself in Tuesday morning, before anyone even knew to look for her, and voluntarily handed over her log of what she had done to Taylor since the two started at Winslow. That and other evidence showed that she was mostly kept in the dark about the locker and had been told that Taylor had been released before lunchtime. Her parents had agreed to the plea deal to keep her out of juvie, and had done so quickly to hopefully keep their names out of the press.
Emma Barnes was next. Apparently when a search warrant was executed on Tuesday evening they found that she had also kept a log of things done to Taylor, hers including details on the locker that she would have otherwise had no way of knowing. She also had kept records of running around with Hess on unofficial patrols. They found the makeshift costume, spare crossbow bolts, and two illegal handguns in her closet as well. In her case she was going to juvie, as part of a plea to get out of being tried as an adult due to her activities with Hess and the two handguns. Jacob also thought that the PRT had likely also pointed out that if it went to court Emma's name would probably become known to the gangs that she and Sophia had been targeting.
Which led him to Sophia Hess, who had not, in fact, gotten a plea deal like the news had reported. Apparently her probation being violated in the ways it had, coupled with the evidence collected from both her own bedroom and the Barnes household, meant that she was headed straight for prison for previous crimes. She would get additional days in court, closed sessions, to likely add to her list of charges later. Huh, apparently the trust fund that had been set up for her as a Ward had been stripped from her and transferred to Taylor. Jacob wondered how they would be explaining that one.
The last file was a basic description of how they were going to handle Shadow Stalker 'leaving' the Wards. A couple of impersonations by someone else as she supposedly left the city, having 'discovered a new aspect to her power' that was causing her to re-brand. Supposedly. Jacob snorted at that, he knew of four previous times a similar ruse had been used. PHO had yet to believe any of them.
Jacob absently wondered if Hess's time in prison, unable to use her power, would drive her legally insane due to the mental issues with parahumans needing to use their powers. Or maybe they had a nice cell picked out that she could use her powers inside of, but not escape from? Oh well, not his problem unless she escaped. At that point she was probably fair game. Maybe he should invest in a taser, just in case?
To be safe he wiped the local copies of the files from his phone. He didn't expect Taylor or Danny to be poking around on it, but information security was still a good thing.
About ten minutes later Danny wandered down, saw the pile of food on the table, and decided to be lazy. He walked over to the landline (his cell still being upstairs) and called Taylor's cell phone, telling her that breakfast was ready. Jacob snickered, then wandered into the kitchen to eat as he heard Taylor moving.
Taylor had gotten up, noted that her uncle was not in the house, and gotten dressed. She then laid back down on her bed and starting playing with her phone. She did spare some thought to whether or not it was a good thing that she hadn't even had the thing a week and she was already getting into the habit of checking sites like PHO every morning. Then again, she wasn't yet in the habit of staring at it even as she walked down the street, so it couldn't be too bad.
She felt her uncle return, but didn't bother heading downstairs yet. She was busy reading up on what PHO thought of the revelations from the day before. Apparently this was a Ziz plot, a PRT cover up, a Protectorate cover up, an attempt to frame the PRT, an attempt to frame the Protectorate, and an attempt to discredit the entire Brockton Bay school system. All at the same time.
Then again, the people saying that they were specifically covering up a trigger event were, kinda, right, assuming that those that would be covering it up knew that she had triggered. Which she didn't believe they did.
She moved onto other local cape news and found that nobody had seen Shadow Stalker for most of the week. Then again, that happened every couple of months. Vista had been absent from sightings for longer at this point, actually, approaching two weeks now.
Lung had apparently been spotted late last night in a bar down by the docks. That wasn't uncommon either, though the lack of barfight was a tad out of the ordinary. Some people were convinced Lung started the fights intentionally so he could ramp up enough to flush his system, preventing hangovers. Taylor just assumed he was usually an angry drunk, but felt the other theory had merit too.
Taylor then found a thread linking to where someone had uploaded a clip of Glory Girl flying into a brick wall while staring at her cell phone. Taylor watched it and read the comments, on and off of PHO, mentally noting that she needed to never get in the habit of staring at hers while walking even as she snickered.
Having run out of local happenings she wandered into some of the more wild sections of PHO, finding a thread where a few people were complaining about the general lack of lizard-themed capes. Or lizard Case 53s. Or cape lizards. Really, any and all combinations of "cape" and "lizard". Taylor didn't get the appeal, personally. But she recalled a few months ago there was a similar thread relating to insects, which she didn't get the appeal of either. Stupid little things were creepy.
She was interrupted from further browsing by the phone ringing. She tapped the button on the screen to answer and it did nothing. Right, she had to swipe the circle on the screen, because it wasn't a button. She did that and the call connected. "Hello?"
"Hey kiddo," her father's voice came through the earpiece she had in. She was liking that bit more and more, no need to hold the phone up to her head. "Your uncle picked up breakfast, come on down to eat."
"Will do, thanks," Taylor responded. The call had disconnected before she had finished, though. She closed down PHO and headed downstairs.
Breakfast was, after some "are you ok?" style pleasantries related to the day before, a quiet affair. There was, however, a lot left over as Jacob had gone a bit overboard. True to having been told to stuff herself regularly Taylor had consumed a small apple fritter, a chocolate chip muffin, and a jelly donut. Danny and Jacob had thought that the donut was pushing it, even with her temporarily increased appetite, but it just looked too tasty when she noticed it.
Taylor occupied herself with packing up the leftovers in various ways while Danny headed upstairs to get ready for the day and Jacob exchanged text messages with someone. Looking over the pile she was working with Taylor wondered if they should consider bringing some to the neighbors or something, otherwise a lot of this was going to go to waste.
"Uncle Jacob?" Taylor called, knowing that he was in the hallway. "Think we should share some of your breakfast purchase with the neighbors or something?"
"No need," Jacob replied. "I doubt it will last the day."
What?
"Our visitors today will likely finish off the rest," Jacob continued.
"What visitors?" Danny asked as he came down the stairs, fiddling with the way his belt clip for the cell phone was positioned. "I wasn't aware we were expecting any?"
"Bonesaw will be by in the next couple of hours to meet Taylor and talk to her about what can be done in the way of upgrades," Jacob said, smirking. "And Bonesaw never visits new capes alone."
Well, so much for any plans of this being a relaxing day where they did nothing.
An hour later Taylor was poking around on PHO, this time reading through a thread discussing Über and Leet's shenanigans. Apparently around five out of nine of their stunts were not, in fact, doing anything seriously illegal, or in some cases illegal at all, even when it looked like they were breaking the law. They apparently hired henchmen of sorts to participate when they couldn't use robots and holograms.
Their last Sonic the Hedgehog show with stealing emeralds and gold rings from a jewelry store was even legit, having arranged it with the owner as a publicity stunt and even gotten appropriate permits and stuff. Who knew? Must be why law enforcement didn't always go after them. Though they likely had to pay fines a lot.
Taylor's browsing was interrupted by her snark sense going off. Three parahumans had just entered her range and were coming towards the house. As a precaution she put her phone away and grabbed her new bat, which Jacob noticed.
"If you just picked up some parahumans then that that is probably our expected guests," Jacob said. "As such they are likely friendly."
"Would you be willing to trust that?" Taylor returned with a look.
"Well, no, not really," Jacob admitted. "Then again, I was told they were only a couple blocks away a moment ago."
Taylor put the bat back down, but kept it handy. Jacob nodded in approval, because they did not exactly live in a 'safe' world, as he got up to go check on who was arriving. Taylor did not hear the greetings, but shortly Jacob returned with a group of people. Taylor intentionally avoided starting conversations with their snarks for now.
"Taylor, I would like you to meet some of my associates," Jacob said, gesturing to the group. "First up is Riley, who you better know as Bonesaw." A young-looking blond girl wearing a backpack curtseyed. "With her mother, Amanda." An older woman with blond hair nodded. "Ned, who you would know better as Crawler." A skinny man with brown hair that looked like a breeze would blow him over waved. "William, who you may be familiar with from the Manton Effect named after him." An older man with unkempt hair nodded in her direction. Hmm, he had a snark? "And his daughter Sarah, who you would know as The Siberian." The last individual, a female that looked to be in her twenties with long, dark hair and a fair complexion, also waved at her. She did not have a snark.
She was a snark. William's snark, in fact.
Hello? Taylor projected at 'Sarah'. Who visibly flinched. As did William a moment later.
"How did you do that?" Sarah asked, startled. "Saying hello in my head?"
"You are an interesting snark," Taylor said, tilting her head as though to look at Sarah from a different angle. "I am under the impression very few are good with English."
"Right," Jacob said, gesturing to Taylor. "This is my niece, Taylor. She has no cape name at this point."
"Well aren't you interesting," Riley said, bouncing over to Taylor. "What's a snark?"
[Query]
Yes, I can see you there. How are you?
"Snarks are what I call the things that grant powers," Taylor answered Riley. "Or perhaps what the snark that grants me my power decided to call the things that grant powers?"
[Content]
So Riley here gives you plenty to play with? Good for you. But I heard you like making her cause pain. Why?
"So you can see them?" Riley asked, poking Taylor in the forehead. "What do they look like?"
[Declaration. Determination.]
So you use the pain as a way of monitoring the nerves while you work? But so many things are washed away by the pain. How do you monitor the nerves that make someone feel pleasure, for example?
"They don't really look like anything specific?" Taylor said. "Or perhaps I should say, each one is different? William's looks like Sarah right now, for example. Yours looks like a spider, but not really?"
[Confusion. Contemplation.]
"I like spiders," Riley said, grinning. She swung the backpack she was wearing around to her front and opened it, showing a largely mechanical spider. "They're fun!"
"Neat," Taylor admitted. She was kinda happy that Riley was providing all the prompts here. She had no idea what to talk about. She glanced over at Ned.
Hello?
{Boredom}
No, I don't think any of us want to fight you.
"No, I don't look much like Crawler right now," Ned admitted. "I have a mental switch in my head, takes about an hour to transition either way."
{Annoyance}
Well aren't you rude. No, I will not fight you just because you want a fight.
"At least you can do your own grocery shopping?" Taylor offered. How do you respond to something like that?
"There is that, I suppose," Ned said, shrugging. "Just the way things work."
"So you can not only tell that I am a parahuman," William said, gesturing towards Sarah. "But that she is a result of my power?"
"Yep," Taylor said, poking again, but directing at William and not Sarah.
Hello
|Annoyance|
"Well that's interesting," Taylor mumbled, looking over at Sarah. Who hadn't reacted this time.
Why shouldn't you be here?
|Confusion. Hunger.|
"What is interesting?" Riley asked, looking at Taylor.
You aren't supposed to be joined? You weren't fed properly? I don't understand.
|Annoyance|
"Fine, be that way," Taylor grumbled.
"Er, hello?" Riley said, poking Taylor again. "Earth to Taylor?"
"William's snark is just plain mean when I don't talk to Sarah," Taylor grumbled. "Ned's is a bit rude, but more in a single-minded way? Then again, William's may just be hungry."
"You are a fascinating cape," Amanda finally said, shaking her head. "What are your actual powers, anyway? I am getting conflicting ideas here, what with the spacing out just now and Sarah's odd reactions and all."
"The spacing out is probably because she is having issues focusing on us," Jacob admitted. "She can communicate with parahuman powers, which includes being able to locate them. She can also do my blade trick, but with blunt weapons instead."
"Objects," Taylor corrected, causing everyone to look at her. "What? Weapons is too specific, it is blunt objects."
"I find myself wondering why the distinction," Danny said, coming in from the kitchen. "I'm Danny, by the way, Taylor's father. I heard the rest of the introductions, but was curious how Taylor was going to respond to new parahumans."
Taylor decided to demonstrate a little, pulling out the smallest foam bat from the bag she had nearby. "If anyone can honestly think this would be classified as a blunt weapon they probably need to re-evaluate their view of the world." She then bopped Riley on the head with it normally, followed by William with her power.
Bopping Ned was a bad idea, she figured. Probably just as bad as bopping Lung would be.
"I can see that it works," William admitted. "But not why is it not a weapon? Powers can be weird about their definitions."
"Yes, well," Taylor continued, lightly kicking William. From across the room. He stumbled, then stared at Taylor.
"Did you just kick me?" William finally asked.
"Yep," Taylor grinned.
"How?" William asked. "That doesn't match anything you told us."
"My shoe is a blunt object," Taylor stated, crossing her arms like she had just made her point. Which, to be honest, she basically had, because until then he had not realized that clothes were usually 'blunt'.
"My power works with scissors, bolt cutters, utility knives," Jacob said, counting things off with his fingers. "Sheets of paper, business cards, oh, and apparently shovels if I swing them the right way. So I can see where the distinction comes from. I need an edge, she needs a blunt surface."
"You need to do paper cuts on the next Slaughterhouse run," Riley said, grinning. "That would be hilarious."
"But then I might have to stop giving annoying people papercuts when I hand over business cards," Jacob retorted. "Or annoying clerks when I hand over piles of annoying paperwork. Just to keep them from making the connection between Jacob and Jack. Might pull the shovel, though. Maybe I can find the right kind of rake?"
"I stand corrected," Riley said, snickering. "You keep your little secret. Much more fun thinking about the random people you give papercuts to for being annoying. That and using garden tools on gang members."
"You are not supposed to extract enjoyment from the suffering of others," Amanda scolded. "No matter who it is that is suffering."
"Yes mom," Riley said, rolling her eyes. "Can I drag Taylor off to discuss the violations of the natural order I can grant her now?"
"Go ahead dear," Amanda said, obviously knowing that Riley, due to her powers, was unlikely to ever get the "suffering of others should not be enjoyed" bit down.
Riley's spider crawled back into her bag as Riley dragged Taylor off of the couch, allowing Taylor to collect her bag and the bat she had leaning against the couch while Riley pulled her backpack back on, then dragged her out of the room. Only to stop a moment later.
"Er," Riley said. "Where is your room? Or a good place to talk? Whichever?"
This time Taylor rolled her eyes, and led Riley upstairs. "Come on, squirt."
"I don't know if she is antisocial, broken, or both," Amanda finally said after the two had made it up the stairs.
"Both, I think," Danny said, collapsing onto the couch. "Probably made worse by her power pushing her to be more social when she doesn't want to be, really."
"Or at least that is what I think is happening in some ways," Jacob added. "Our powers interact with one another, preventing me from getting a proper read on her."
"So yea," Ned said, sounding annoyed. "As fun as all of this is, someone told us there would be food?"
"There's a pile of pastries in the kitchen," Jacob said, pointing. "I picked up plenty."
Danny feared what it was going to take to clean the kitchen when Ned was done in there.
"So you can pull the projected weapon trick," Riley said. "And yes I know it is blunt object. But if it works like Jack's you can't put more force behind it than you could if you hit them directly, right?"
"Correct," Taylor said. "I also assume I can only take a hit like a normal teenage girl."
"Most likely," Riley said. "So some strength and toughness upgrades may be a good thing."
[Observation]
Huh, neat.
"So you would enhance my muscles with nanofibers and improved ligaments," Taylor said, tapping her chin. "Add a protective layer under the skin, and wrappings on my skeletal structure? Maybe some adjustments to my joints to make them stronger and more flexible?"
"Er, yes," Riley said, a bit shocked. "How did you know that?"
"Your snark showed me some of what you have done," Taylor said, waving it off. "But the under-skin protection and the skeletal wrappings won't grow with me; is that why you look younger than you should?"
"That is creepy," Riley whispered, then shook her head and spoke up. "Yea, I kinda upgraded myself without thinking about the fact it would keep me short. I like being short for now, but I may regret it when I am older."
"What if you made things segmented?" Taylor asked.
Could the wrappings and protections be made to interlock so they can extend and adjust?
[Curiosity]
"Extending wrappings?" Riley mumbled. "Individual protective and enhancement zones that connect, but aren't permanently joined? It would add weak points as you grew, but would require less mandatory tweaking over time if done right."
[Excitement]
Riley pulled a notebook out of her bag, the spider-bot passing her a sharpened pencil. Once she found a blank page she started sketching and making notes.
Huh, guess you just needed the basic idea?
Taylor leaned over to look at Riley's work, only for her glasses to slip off one ear and flip off to the side.
"Oooh, we should fix your eyes too," Riley said, looking over at the glasses. "Maybe upgrade them? Need to think on it; eyes can be difficult."
Over the next couple of hours they would brainstorm a number of ideas and workarounds, many of which weren't slated for Taylor at all but came about from Taylor looking at previous things Riley had done to others.
"About time you two came down," Amanda said, seeing Taylor and Riley wandering down the stairs. William and Sarah were sitting on the couch. Taylor was aware that Ned and Jacob had left not that long ago.
"Danny, Jacob, and Ned left to pick up a late lunch," William said as Taylor and Riley both had their stomachs growl. "Or perhaps an early dinner? You two were at it for a while."
"I think I need to buy Taylor a new notebook," Riley admitted. "I ran out of room in mine and grabbed one of hers. So many ideas..." Riley trailed off with a grin on her face.
"I get the feeling that if you haven't already traded phone numbers it will have to happen before the day is out," Amanda said, shaking her head. "Then again, Riley doesn't have enough friends of any age."
It wasn't long before the three returned with piles of pizza. Fourteen large pizzas, two for each of them minus Sarah who didn't actually eat. While the distribution wasn't quite even they still finished them all off before the visiting group departed, Riley and Taylor having exchanged contact information.
Taylor would visit the hospital in the morning for a "checkup" with Panacea as a cover for Riley implementing many of their ideas.
- Location
- St Joe MO
I'm guessing having Taylor's Munchkinry giving power ideas in the same room as Riley who will now be able to do pleasure instead of pain for her testing and Amy who has been holding her power back from doing anything interesting and will now be seeing what Riley can do will cause an exponential growth of learning for all three powers as they share info between the powers and the users while Taylor looks at things from so far outside the box that she can't even see that there is a box to begin with.
- Location
- Canada
Given that Panacea has a full database of biology, can Taylor convince Panacea's snark to share details with her, which she can then pass on to Bonesaw's snark? Even if Panacea refuses to use her powers to their full extent, I would assume the snark would rather be useful and have be able to see upgrades being done with it's knowledge even if it's host can't be convinced to do the work herself. Things like crystalline bones, paralytic toxins, hidden gills, etc... Bonesaw might have a tinker-database but she might not have the bio-data for all sorts of stuff Panacea has.
While normally I doubt the snark would share it's data for someone else's use, with Panacea literally there to monitor the work and Taylor being able to act as a middleman between snarks I'd think it'd be quite happy, or at least less annoyed.
Edit: ignore the dice. accidentally clicked on it.
Last edited:
Finagle007
[Verified Great Old One]
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Oh, this is just beautiful.