On Friday, Taylor was happy to wake up to a message letting her know that there wasn't any problem with them using the beach. She also had messages from Aisha and Miku, the latter on behalf of Takara, declining the invitation to join them. Chris and Missy said they would, and Amy let her know that Vicky had gotten up early on her own so that she could join them as well. Those going to the beach ended up meeting in the gym, but conversation was limited to what each of them were going to bring for the day. Though they did agree that bringing the three spider-bots available between them to the beach would just be adding to the things they had to worry about rather than allowing them to relax.
After they'd had breakfast they split up again. Taylor and Amy headed home to put on the flight suits under normal clothing, finishing up packing of swimsuits and such to change into after testing was completed. They were also getting a pass on gathering other things on the basis of being the group's 'ride'. Vicky was going to gather some drinks, Missy had a bunch of snacks available that she was going to grab, and Chris had a bunch of water toys that he'd dug out of a closet plus a couple of his own creations that he wanted to test. The plan was to stay until they decided that they needed to return for a proper meal instead of getting things together to make lunch on the beach.
"This is hilarious," Vicky said as they gathered in the pocket dimension, following Amy in to join the other three who had come in from the Wards area.
"What is?" Missy asked.
Vicky pointed at Amy. "She keeps not noticing that she's flying. I've been able to tell her that she needs to walk and not float four times already!"
Chris snorted. "When I pointed out that Taylor was flying she just looked down, shrugged, and flipped over so that her head was pointed down instead of her feet."
"We have a no flying in the house rule, and Amy is usually the one telling me to stop flying."
"Ah. I don't believe we have any such rules for the PRT building."
Taylor snorted. "There are at least thirty rules about flying in the PRT building." That had everyone else looking at Taylor. "Most of them apply to specific areas, the Wards area isn't included."
Missy snorted. "If the Wards area was included then a number of people would've been in trouble repeatedly."
Ignoring that, Taylor opened the portal to the beach and headed through. The weather was a little windy, but that appeared to just be making somewhat larger waves. Vicky followed her with the drinks, Chris and Missy following her and Amy bringing up the rear. It appeared that Amy had decided to flip upside-down just to spite people as well.
Chris dropped a towel onto the beach, shifted the box of normal inflatables off to the side, and then started assembling components into a couple of powered surfboards. Missy and Vicky set up a quick 'drinks and snacks' station before putting their own towels out. Taylor checked the beach hut, finding that the fresh water tank wasn't full like it generally had been on their previous visits. Perhaps those that normally kept it topped up hadn't gotten their powers back yet?
Taylor and Amy both dropped their bags into the beach hut, then took to the sky to give the flight suits a better test than the low speed and low altitude tricks they'd already done. Vicky joined them soon afterwards, though how much of that was to help them and how much of it was to mock them was unknown. Instead she found that she had trouble keeping up with them. More specifically, they discovered that Vicky could fly around the same speed as them in a straight line, but couldn't turn on a dime more than once every thirty seconds or so.
To add to the complications on Vicky's side of things, apparently when she went all-out flying her force field flickered significantly. Taylor and Amy had their own force field issues, admittedly, but at least their tinkertech systems weren't flickering. As such, Vicky took a bug to the face at high speed that slipped through her force field while Taylor and Amy were able to avoid that particular problem.
Of course, after that they severely cut back on the speed they were flying at, since rebuilding one eye was enough for the entire month. Instead they switched to various other ways of experimenting, such as dropping lower and darting through trees.
Zion examined his collection of personal shards, having realized that he needed to adjust a number of things before the interloper returned. He still had far too many utility shards and hadn't kept enough offensive and defensive shards. For that matter, he needed more options for maneuverability too. Some of that would be handled by pulling some of the shards he still had packed up for transit out and getting them set up properly. Other shards were going to be put back into storage and brought along, as they were best used when he was sitting on a planet. But a number of others just weren't worth bringing along without the need to set up or maintain a cycle.
He started by reconfiguring some of the construction shards he'd held back so that he could deploy them here. They'd join the cycle in a couple hundred years, though they might end up needing to take on dozens of hosts each to work properly. It was annoying, but these hosts just weren't built for individually constructing things on planetary scales. At the same time, they also weren't likely to jump right into that level of construction...hmmm. Perhaps allow the construction shards to gather others with the correct kinds of host profiles on a shorter term basis as a secondary connection set? That was something that the hosts had shown could work well already, though this would be a different application of the same idea.
Keeping a couple of the construction shards packed up, one never knew when building a planetoid around oneself could be a useful disguise after all, he moved on to other shards that he should do something about. Analysis shards were definitely useful in general, but he had several that weren't going to be useful in their specifics. He wasn't likely to need to know if some specific compound was likely to accidentally kill a host species when he created it once he was gone, for example, so he could deploy that one and just query it while he was still here. Similarly, the shard cluster that he'd normally use as part of identifying a likely host species wasn't going to be needed in general. Perhaps Coordinator could get that cluster set up so that the current host species could use it to try and find species in other star systems?
Unpacking some of the more esoteric offensive shards was a must. They usually only deployed a couple of them per cycle, due to how hazardous they could be, but he wasn't concerned about that now. The more things he could throw at the interloper or others of its line the better. Despite that, he should really ensure that he had some options that were reasonably safe. For example, the shard that generated a multidimensional 'wave' of energy that converted electrons to positrons and vice-versa wasn't incredibly likely to induce unexpected collateral damage. It would make a good choice for when he had to be careful.
Of course, for every esoteric offensive shard he generally had an equivalent defensive shard to counter it. Or, more specifically, he had dozens of defensive shards that knew how to defend against all of the offensive shards because he couldn't know which direction an attack would come from. The defenses were generally less effective, but that was fine. Unless hit at point-blank range the attacks weren't likely to be fully powered either. Most of his defenses were essentially Sting-style defensive shields anyway. Though he might have to see if he could rig those to support the instant redirection trick, since he couldn't safely wrap himself entirely in them.
He was going through some of the other offensive and defensive shards he still had packed up when he ran into his storage shards. Always useful, but he probably needed to clean them out. The first one he checked was mostly raw materials, which was fine and could come in handy. That was followed by one with the gifts he'd gotten from the last host species before departing, most of which wouldn't come in handy while he was on the hunt. His species as a whole didn't get sentimental about things either. At the same time, a number of the gifts could create amusing data in the current host species.
On a lark, he decided to drop the submersible exploration vessel into a lake. The standalone orbital freight ships were dropped onto a couple of different iterations of the moon orbiting the primary planet. A library of entertainment and the equipment to play it all had him thinking before he decided to slip it all into a cavern under one of those 'pyramids' that existed in one of the deserts. The host species had already died out on that iteration of the planet, but it was on the list of ones to allow them access to soonish. He placed extremely long range communication equipment in another cavern under a similarly shaped if distinctly different structure on one of the other land masses.
The hundred or so statues, thousand or so paintings, and the library of book equivalents were placed into a small city he manufactured in the style of the previous host species on another uninhabited iteration of the planet. He put the entire thing under a dome for protection before moving on. There were a large number of toys in the collection of items as well, and he split them into 'human safe' and 'everything else' collections. The former were randomly dropped into 'donation bins' at locations across several iterations of the planet and the latter were used to fill up a gorge that no longer had water flowing through it. He covered them with a protective cover as well, just because Coordinator might appreciate the hosts finding and examining them.
He very specifically did not drop the temporal annihilator cannon anywhere that a host could get to it. The last host species had come up with the idea, but the only test had proven that it worked far too well on star systems but was practically useless when shards were in the affected area. Their naturally multidimensional nature shorted the energies out into the gaps between dimensions. It was the only gift he had that had been given to him for safekeeping, being the only one they'd built and nobody knowing how to best destroy it once the core of the weapon was energized.
If he got a chance, he'd probably stop by a black hole so that he could toss it in to see what happened.
Taylor and Amy hadn't actually gotten around to the swimming portion of the beach trip. Instead they spent pretty much the entire time figuring out the ins and outs of the flight suits, not to mention trying to get the initial 'I can fly!' impulses out of their systems. Vicky had wandered back to the beach to actually swim with Chris and Missy, including trying out the powered surfboards. To that end, none of the three had any luck with said surfboards, finding that they were more likely to just shoot out from under you than do anything of real use once you were standing on them. Chris had instead promised to make body boards for 'next time', those being something that you were more likely to hold onto instead of stand on.
Packing and cleaning up hadn't taken long, though chasing a few wrappers that tried to blow away had been mildly annoying. Then again, apparently that had been happening most of the day, with Taylor and Amy being the only ones that grabbed snacks and then pocketed the wrappers. Being the only two who'd still been wearing clothing that had pockets probably helped with that aspect of things. Missy and Chris had left through their own pocket dimensions, but Vicky had decided to join Taylor and Amy.
"Those suits are crazy," Vicky said as they left the beach. "I can't even tell that you're wearing them except for the fact that you're both flying."
"They aren't perfectly stealthy," Amy countered. "Wearing anything with straps instead of at least short sleeves would reveal the harness and there's no way to wear a keyhole shirt without revealing them either."
"Okay, yes, there is that. But seeing the looks on people's faces when you just take to the air with no warning?"
Taylor rolled her eyes. "They make it too easy to just take to the air in many ways. We aren't going to be able to wear them to school for that reason alone. I'm actually going to head to the PRT building to see how it works with the weapons harness in my jackets so that I can respond to the request for more information about the gift I got with information on if I plan on using it regularly on patrol."
Amy nodded. "That makes sense. Though I imagine that some villains would see you going from 'fly on a platform' to 'just fly on your own' as a ridiculous change when so many others are seeing reductions in their effectiveness."
"And that's my problem how?"
"It isn't, but it'll be amusing the first time you do it."
Helvetia frowned as she looked over the shard that she'd just reached. It was connected to a couple dozen lumps of metal, which would normally have her disconnecting it from all of them immediately. Except that it had been collecting significant amounts of host data from those lumps of metal, above and beyond anything that should be possible when connected to something non-living. She actually expected more data from plants than she expected from lumps of metal.
With a sigh, she pulled all of the lumps of metal to her instead of going out to look for them. Instead of simple lumps of metal she ended up with a couple dozen wooden masks, held together in part by a strip of metal down the front. Each was unique in its own way, and she blinked a couple of times as she looked at them. Digging into the configuration profiles a little more had things making more sense, and some additional data from Coordinator helped put everything together.
Somehow the shard had ended up connected to a single lump of metal, which a craftsman had split apart to make the couple dozen masks. The shard knew it was supposed to work with a host species that it wasn't connected to, and had used the masks as a temporary host connection to grant abilities. Each mask manifested differently from the others, and all but one of them remained a wooden mask while being used. It was an interesting workaround, and had only functioned because the shard preferred to grant abilities to those other than the host it was connected to.
A quick check with Coordinator had her sending the masks back to where she'd pulled them from. They'd allow the shard to keep doing this just because it was an interesting way to have multiple hosts use the same abilities in different ways, and there was enough of an overlap in functionality to make it not worthwhile to split the shard into pieces. The general idea wasn't entirely new, but having it happen in this manner was unusual at least. It was also currently happening in a somewhat isolated community, which made for a decent test bed.
Adding that shard to the deployment list took a moment, and then she moved on to the next one. Which turned out to be one of this originator's storage shards. Sadly, it'd been damaged during the crash landing and pretty much everything inside of the shard had been crushed into an unrecognizable mess when the containment fields failed. Hopefully this one had been full of raw materials and nothing of importance had been lost.
Sadly for her, she wasn't able to just deploy the shard. Storage shards had no sense of self and weren't capable of being deployed, their entire existence tied to maintaining the fields that allowed them to safely store things for very long periods of time. So she was going to have to empty it out and render it down into raw materials for repairing other shards instead. That would take her a few hours at a minimum, and that was assuming that it had been mostly empty.
Taylor smirked as she returned home. The flight suit had worked wonderfully with her jacket, and she'd ensured that it was sitting alongside her selection of weapons in her hyperspace arsenal. As a bonus, she'd discovered that she could store it while wearing it and retrieve it right back onto herself. That didn't work with normal clothing, but the flight suit and jump harness seemed to be perfectly happy with that being done. Of course, the jump harness needed charging between uses, assuming she used it going forward. It did have some other benefits, but testing showed that it didn't fit over or work with the flight suit.
A message had been sent off to Costa-Brown and Director Piggot about the flight suit and her likelihood of using it going forward, if only because she'd been asked. Besides, she wasn't likely to skimp too much on revealing things during power testing, if only because if they knew what she was actually capable of then they were less likely to hold back on what she was 'allowed' to do in the first place. Really, she wasn't even expecting her mover sub-rating to change at this point, since the flying platform and pocket dimension portals likely covered things already anyway.
Still, now she was hungry, and headed downstairs to dig out some leftovers. They were going through those fairly quickly, but that was part of the price they paid for the tinker fugue enhancements.
Rin frowned as she stepped through the transit portal. The host was there, but at the same time was obviously not responsive. Which was, of course, why she was there. Their partner had come online and then reported an issue with the host connection, but running tests hadn't revealed what the problem was. This wasn't the only host with this kind of problem, admittedly, but one of the others had been happening even before the network had temporarily shut down.
A quick look around showed that this was a hospital, and some subtle effects were deployed to keep them from being interrupted. With that done she stepped forward and examined the host. Not for the first time she wished that she had some abilities that were better suited to these tasks, but she did what she could anyway. It was quickly obvious to her that there weren't any obvious physical issues, so she gently tapped into the connection between the host and their partner.
Her frown deepened as she examined the host's mind. They'd shut down, likely because they'd been addicted to using their partner. Most shards didn't use positive reinforcement of this kind specifically because of problems like this, but they left some doing so just because it was useful data and occasionally it worked out quite well. In this case the temporary shutdown had deprived the host of the positive reinforcement and they'd retreated too far into themselves to even notice that their partner had turned back on.
Sadly, she couldn't do anything about this. Coordinator was going to have to get Elizabeth over here to have any hope of dealing with the host's problems. That this wasn't the first, and probably wasn't going to be the last, host with this problem was annoying as well. Though at least they knew what the problem was here. That one woman who'd been catatonic like this before things had shut down was much more of a mystery.
Saturday morning Taylor woke to a notice regarding the state of parahumans in the wake of powers shutting down. Some of it was obvious, that powers were returning gradually but seemingly randomly. She'd already known that Case 53s and a number of others with significant mutations were generally finding those changes turning into changer states. Not known to her was that a notable pattern had emerged in some of the death statistics. Anyone whose powers made changes to their bodies that didn't revert under the influence of a power nullifier had died, but not because of the changes. That was actually more that the immune system boosts had eventually attacked the altered biology and the resulting problems from that had been fatal.
Other details in the notice were obviously cover stories, though only one jumped out at her. Thinkers reporting that the Slaughterhouse Nine had likely been 'removed from play' while powerless was obviously a fabrication, for example. One that would possibly be backed up by the group being disbanded in the wake of Ciara being able to solve the majority of their power urge issues and thus never showing up to attack anyone again.
Most high-level threats around the globe had been taken out while powerless, but a few had survived long enough for their powers to return. Even then, in most of those cases their powers returned in a new form that made them much less of a threat. At the same time, there were a number of individuals and groups that had their own problems, individuals coming out stronger than they'd been before the shutdown for various reasons. The example there was one that had been tied to a larger threat, and when their powers returned they got all of the powers from their own original power set and those of the now-dead threat.
Following that was a more direct notice to her to inform her that she was at the top of the testing list in Brockton Bay, to be completed after school on Monday. After that she was requested to aid in power testing for others in the region that had regained their own powers in lieu of normal Wards activities. Breaks would be given as required and for her to deal with any other urges that she had to deal with, but they wanted to get as many people as they could power-tested as fast as possible and she was uniquely capable of helping on that front.
Of course, that was followed by a request that she swing by the Rig today to check on a couple of things for Vivian. Apparently they were concerned about the stability of some of her creations after one of them had started to smoke overnight.
Taylor had opted to go straight from the morning workout to the Rig to look over Vivian's stuff, in order to get that out of the way. They were concerned about letting her do so, someone having realized that sending a Ward to look at possibly-unstable explosives was potentially a very bad idea, but she'd taken a look anyway. Most of the explosives had actually become inert or more mundane in nature. The one that had started to smoke was one of several where 'more mundane' apparently meant that they now included various unstable fluoride compounds.
After that she'd headed home, only to then leave pretty much immediately after changing into non-workout clothing in order to head to the PRT building. Lacey had woken up while explosives were being examined, and by the time Taylor got there Kurt had woken up as well.
"Hello there," Taylor greeted as she entered their hospital room. Both of them looked much more normal than they had, and now they had individual snarks.
"Taylor!" Lacey exclaimed, then frowned when she realized that she couldn't jump up with things still attached to her. "Come over here so that I can try and crush you with a hug!"
"Am I allowed to pass on that?"
"Yes," the doctor in the room said. "As Miss Pender here isn't cleared to be trying to crush people with hugs yet."
Lacey pouted, but didn't argue.
"So," Taylor said. "Did you want me here just because they woke up?"
The doctor shook his head. "We're more interested in what, if anything, happened to their alternate forms. They still appear to be parahumans, but they're some of the very rare mutated ones that don't report having a changer form."
"Ah. Give me a moment then." She opened a shared connection to both snarks, figuring that it shouldn't be a significant problem.
Taylor: Hello there.
[Greetings]{Greetings}
Taylor: Any chance of an explanation as to how things have changed with you two, beyond being two different snarks now?
[Data]{Elaboration}[Agreement]{Data}[Elaboration]
Taylor nodded as the information came over. "Apparently they're no longer linked to a single snark for various reasons, which I'd already figured out. The physical changes they'd had weren't actually part of their power expressions and were deemed wasteful on the part of their snarks and got reverted. Also, Lacey's snark was taught what cooking for humans or pets is versus cooking as part of preparing alcohol."
"So I can't use my powers as an excuse to not cook anymore?" Lacey questioned.
"Don't worry," Kurt replied. "Your cooking wasn't that good previously." He had to dodge a thrown pillow a moment later.
"Actually," Taylor continued. "It's possible that you might find yourself better at cooking as your snark helps you with it. You'll need to give it a try."
"Oh," Lacey said, looking thoughtful. "I wonder if that would help me get a couple of recipes down that I'd never been able to before?"
"Though it might only help you if your recipe includes alcohol."
That had Kurt nodding. "That makes more sense than it just helping with her cooking in general."
"Crap," Lacey said a moment later. "All of the stuff I had in progress is probably ruined!"
"Maybe," Danny said as he finally came into the room. "But that's probably because we turned everything off before locking up the pub."
"Oh. I suppose that's better than the equipment being ruined due to being left on."
"So what are you two going to do going forward?" Taylor asked. "Since you no longer have your distinctive appearances and all?"
Kurt shrugged. "Probably still run the pub, since it's been doing quite well. We don't need to go out and fight people, well, that and there are enough minor squabbles to keep us busy on that front anyway."
"Though filling another order or two to get some more rings might help too," Lacey added.
"Ah," Taylor said. "That probably won't be happening anymore. That particular customer had a...radical shift in their powers and I'm not sure of their legal ability to purchase alcohol now." That had most of the room turning to stare at Taylor, but she'd already said more than she probably should've. "Nope. Not telling you any more than that."
"Awwww. You can't leave it there!"
"Of course I can. I just did, after all."
"That's mean," Kurt replied. "But at the same time I think I see where this is going. How many doctor/patient privilege rules would you invoke if we pushed?"
Taylor rolled her eyes at that. "All of them, because to invoke only some of them would reveal things that you don't need to know."
"Good point."
That evening Taylor and her father joined New Wave to ring in the new year with a glass of wine at midnight. It'd been one hell of a year, all things considered, and they were going into a very different world. Scion's one short appearance had blown expectations out of the water, powers had changed for a large number of people, and legal frameworks that had come into existence due to threats like the Endbringers were already being seen as obsolete.
Of course, none of that meant that things were going to be simple either. How things worked out was going to be interesting to experience, and that was without the more mundane issues that needed to be faced. For example, Taylor was going to have to actually pay attention to taxes for the first time in her life, and not exactly on a small scale. Just being significantly tied to two businesses that she didn't directly run in addition to having had a 'job' through the Wards program for most of the year was going to make that a learning experience that she was willing to do without.
Still, that was for the future. More immediate concerns included returning to school and going through a new round of power testing this week. Perhaps she should spend some time thinking on what in the world Scion had meant with a comment or two as well, but that wasn't happening that evening. No, for now she'd just head home with her father to sleep in her own room. In the morning she could face the new year and the problems that it would bring.
Well, there was one problem that she still had to deal with tonight. How in the world Ackbar had gotten himself stuck in the corner of the bathroom ceiling wasn't something she wasn't sure she wanted to know, but she had to get him down from there before she could get any sleep. If only because if she didn't then he might hurt himself when he finally managed it for himself, which would be even more annoying to deal with in the morning.
