Interestingly enough the Custodial Staff of the PRT Building start out at SL4. This is mainly because they have access to the entire building, and are responsible for destroying the Documents and other items that are found in the desk side waste bins.
Interestingly enough the Custodial Staff of the PRT Building start out at SL4. This is mainly because the have access to the entire building, and are responsible for destroying the Documents that are found in the desk side waste bins. Every thing goes through the industrial shredder, then the incinerator. Even Armsmaster has even lost a couple of prototypes that fell into his waste bin when he eventually crashes for the night. (It's a noodle incident when it happens.) But this has often been seen as "The Better Option," as you can imagine.
Thanks for the warning.
I did not know that. Teaches me to assume how this works instead of looking it up before writing a comment.
Should I remove/edit my comment in some way?
Thanks for the warning.
I did not know that. Teaches me to assume how this works instead of looking it up before writing a comment.
Should I remove/edit my comment in some way?
Including quotes of the relevant chapter bits (highlight the text and hit the quote to add to quote, then use the "Insert Quotes" button at the post box that will show up) means that people can then use the quote box link (or their memory) to know what you're referring to.
Possibly accumulate a few chapters worth of comments in the future before posting them?
Also, please do not quote the entire story post, especially if you are not planning on writing all that much. While the forums will semi-collapse large quotes into something more managable, doing so still ends up cluttering up the thread.
Taylor had been iffy on the 'Wards Hovertank' that Sherrel had built, even if the reaction from the other departments had been hilarious. Not only did the ENE Wards have a flying bus, but now they had a cloak-enabled flying tank. Painted to look like the bus at that. Dennis might've complained about that happening now that he wasn't a Ward had the Protectorate not gotten the first two after Sherrel made her personal one.
The other departments hadn't picked up on the fact that nobody wanted to be in the tanks. Well, Sherrel frequently used hers, but the only reason the others got any use at all was because Dragon had rigged them for remote piloting. Taylor frequently took the Wards' tank in that capacity, but preferred to be outside of it for actual combat. Of course, with most enemies you could get hilarious reactions by having a tank de-cloak behind them with the main gun pointed at the back of their head. Then you just had to draw their attention to it or see how long it took them to notice it.
Of course, the Wards having a tank was theoretically 'against regulations' because none of the Wards had built it and it wasn't usable as a normal vehicle for PR purposes. Except that the entire reason Sherrel had built it was to give the Wards a tank with an external ammo loading slot for power interaction reasons, which completely bypassed the regulations against them having a tank. Not that they'd used it for that outside of off-world testing, but it looked like today it was going to get some use.
"Giga Ryū," Taylor said as she looked at the large robot octopus that had crawled out of the water near the docks.
"Nani?" Takara replied, turning to look at Taylor.
Pointing at the octopus, Taylor frowned. "Serious mode."
"Hai!"
They'd discovered that Takara's literal disarming was a side effect of her powers having an unseen 'amusing injuries' versus 'serious combat' switch. In the former mode she caused minor injuries that rarely needed serious medical attention and frequently humiliated her opponents more than hurt them. It also prevented her from using most 'lethal' weapons properly. Guns backfired more often than they worked, knives and swords only inflicted scratches even if you ran someone through with them, blunt impacts at most dazed people, and the various 'breath weapon' effects she manifested were more amusing than useful.
But switching to 'serious combat' mode flipped things the entire other direction. Things that shouldn't cause serious injuries or damage did. Even the least inaccurate handgun practically became a sniper rifle in her hands, blunt object impacts crushed limbs, 'dull' blades would cut through almost anything while 'sharp' blades would do so seemingly at range, and her 'breath weapon' effects were devastatingly effective.
Taylor nodded as Takara turned back to look at the octopus, shifting to full cartoon dragon form as she did so. For her part, Taylor pulled out her hard light weapons projector and activated a mode that existed specifically for this situation. A giant fly swatter manifested from the handle, and she dropped from the sky as she swung it downward at Takara. The girl noticed the shadow, turned around to look up, and her eyes went wide just before impact flattened her.
The weapons projector was turned off as the Wards' tank de-cloaked next to them, and Taylor quickly folded and rolled Takara up into a little cylinder. That was unceremoniously dropped into the external ammo loading slot before the tank lifted back up into the air and took aim at the robot octopus under Taylor's direction. She fired it as soon as she had a target lock, and the round in the chamber fired despite having a complete lack of propellant.
Why this all worked 'best' if you didn't tell Takara that part of the plan was beyond them all, but that was fine. Takara loved it so long as you did something 'interesting' with her after flattening her, and firing her from the main gun of a tank was always interesting. Mainly because they generally fired her at something that needed a beatdown, though this would be the first real use of it for that purpose instead of test targets. Not that Takara had objected to obliterating the drug-filled test dummies.
Taylor re-cloaked the tank and followed along behind Takara, who had made it two thirds of the way to the octopus before 'popping' back into her full dragon shape and pulling a giant mallet 'out of nowhere'. The basic AI in the robot hadn't been prepared for that and took time to calculate what to do about it, giving the girl plenty of time to obliterate the primary laser on the robot's head with a single strike of the mallet. A moment after that there were a handful of little dragons that all pulled out knives and started cutting the octopus up into pieces.
And eating some of the pieces that came off looking like bits of seafood instead of machine, but that was almost expected at this point. Even in 'serious combat' mode you got plenty of gags. They were just far less likely to result in 'amusing injuries' or 'minimal damage'. Biting off hands holding guns instead of just removing the gun from the hand, for example.
Writing that robot off as no longer a threat, Taylor took back to the air and moved to intercept the smaller robot to the left of it, noting that Colin and Sherrel appeared to be approaching the one to the right. Unlike the large one, the smaller ones were piloted by people and thus needed a little more care to ensure that they could ask questions. Her platform came up next to her as she did so, Missy having been riding on it to get a higher vantage point for sniping.
"They've got armored windows," Missy said as she stored her sniper rifle in a pocket that should never have held it. "Well armored windows, I couldn't punch through."
"Force fields came online as soon as your spatial warp settled into place," Taylor corrected. "Though I don't think that was automatic, more of a 'they saw the wavering air and panicked' thing."
"Dang."
"Just means that we get to go in and tear the doors off in person."
Taylor didn't need to look over to know that Missy was grinning about that. Instead she focused on remotely controlling a gun on the PRT's roof, having it fire its payload to land a block in front of their target robot. It didn't take long for the round to land, successfully hitting the target point she'd chosen. A moment later it unfolded, a sign deploying and a traffic barrier arm extending upward. The latter then dropped down and a 'STOP' light came on.
The person driving their target robot scrambled to stop in time, then brought the cockpit down closer to the sign to read it more carefully. It was obvious even from a distance that they weren't happy with what they saw, and they started to scramble inside for a moment. That lasted long enough for Taylor and Missy to arrive, with perfect timing as the side door of the robot opened so that the man inside could throw coins into the collection bowl.
Except that Taylor grabbed him and yanked him out of the robot entirely, handing him over to Missy before getting into the robot to power it down.
"What the hell?" the man yelled as Missy started to tie him up.
"I can't believe that worked," Missy commented after throwing a gag on the man.
Taylor shrugged and looked over at the toll booth's sign. It claimed a dollar fifty for the state, a dollar fifty for the county, and ninety-four cents for the city. Exact change only, with no bills accepted. "I'm more surprised that he apparently had exactly three dollars and ninety-four cents in change on him to feed to the toll booth."
Amy grinned as she kicked a cannonball out of the air. Someone had picked the wrong coastal city to attack, but she wasn't complaining. New Wave was taking the lead on the zeppelins due to having multiple flight-capable members available while the Protectorate and Wards took on the land and sea components of the three-pronged attack, and nobody had told Amy to stay back and play healer today.
She personally thought that some of it was because Colin had handed her a nanothorn halberd with a hammer surface instead of a spike and told her to give it a good workout. Nobody had been willing to tell her to not go into combat with it after that, and she'd first tested the hammer surface by smashing the control surfaces off of the first zeppelin at range. It worked reasonably well for that, but after seeing the aftermath of cutting open the next one she'd decided to focus on disabling. A couple dozen of the things had come out of nowhere and stranding them in the air hindered the others a lot more than taking them out of the air did.
Moving in and backhanding another cannonball, she sliced the halberd through the control systems.
Taylor: Did you just use our snark to identify a critical component to destroy it?
Amy: Maaaaaybe.
Taylor: You know it doesn't like that if you're using something else to cause the damage.
Amy: The cannon control systems are armored and I don't want to risk using a handgun.
Amy: ...and you're only bringing this up in retaliation for some of my telling you to stop abusing your snark when they were all distinct, aren't you?
Taylor: Maaaaaybe.
Amy rolled her eyes and swung under the zeppelin to cut the control systems on the cannon mounted to the opposite side, then took out the engines for good measure before moving to the next one. She'd started working her way towards the only parahuman she'd detected in the group as soon as she'd spotted them and now she was at the zeppelin holding them. Unlike the other zeppelins, this one had a tinkertech laser instead of cannons, though it was only rigged to be able to shoot at the ground.
That was an incredibly poor design choice on their part. As was having an external control panel on the laser that was accessible to anyone who flew up to it, though that was probably a side effect of mounting a ground installation laser upside-down on the bottom of a zeppelin. It only took a moment to unplug and tear out the remote control interface wires, followed by triggering the shutdown and store sequence on the laser itself. She followed that with taking out the control surfaces and engine of the zeppelin, leaving the parahuman trapped with nowhere to go.
She'd checked as soon as they were in range and they didn't seem to have any skills that would allow them to escape or fix things in the air. Instead they appeared to be a thinker and brute, with the brute side of things being entirely enhanced strength. The thinker side was almost entirely target selection assistance, which was useless without a weapon.
"Why didn't you destroy the laser?" Vicky asked as she flew up next to Amy.
"It was easier to just turn it off," Amy answered. "And less work to stick on something else later if we don't have to rebuild it."
"Stick on something else?"
"I think it would be trivial to rig it up to be able to be stuck on a tank base, or maybe even the turret ring on the Wards bus."
Vicky snorted at that. "Like they'd let you do the latter."
Amy just gestured at the zeppelins. "If this kind of thing happens more often?"
"Okay, yes, that would probably make it more likely to get approved."
Chris leaned on a tree, watching Aisha work. Robots from the sea, zeppelins from the air, and a small army of normals from the ground. Normals that had no clue what to do as Aisha kept throwing cat-bots, monkey-bots, and snake-bots at them as she dropped into and out of her pocket space.
Introducing her to Riley had probably been a mistake. Or perhaps allowing them to 'work together' had been? That said, Aisha did successfully take care of all of the robotic critters that Riley gave her to fill her pocket space with, and in situations like this it was hilarious. Especially with details he'd not known about before today, such as the monkey-bots being able to 'poop' containment foam grenades to fling at the enemy. They seemed to have quite good aim as well.
"I didn't think that we'd be sitting here letting the sneak do all the work," Dennis commented.
"Neither did I," Chris admitted. "But it's hilarious to watch."
"Oh, definitely. But she hasn't really left any safe way for us to participate at all."
"So you're annoyed that you haven't had any opportunity to show off how awesome you are?"
"Bah."
"Did that snake-bot just spray containment foam into that guy's face?"
Dennis paused and looked. "Huh. I just saw another one do that. Spitting snakes with containment foam. I wonder when they got that approved."
"No clue. I didn't know that the monkeys were allowed the grenades either. I just wish that I'd brought popcorn."
"And if you had you'd eat it in front of me, knowing that I couldn't ask for any?"
"You have a mask that you can detach the bottom of for eating."
"It's in the repair queue after I froze my costume a moment too late last week."
"Oh. Then I guess it's a good thing that I didn't know to bring popcorn."
Taylor and Missy had collected Takara before moving down the line of robots still coming out of the sea. Someone had spent far too much time preparing for this attack, though Dragon had managed to find multiple portals that they were using to arrive and had sent things through for later tracking. In fact, they were thinking that this might be an invasion of some kind from another dimension now, as there was no way all of their equipment alone had been hidden away before now otherwise.
Actual details hadn't made it through to the field yet, but there was murmuring about a counter-attack to the origin point. And if it was another dimension then it probably had a United States in it, because the man they'd got with the toll booth had been carrying United States currency of some kind.
Whatever the truth of the situation, taking out the lead three robots had put the following robots into disarray. Three had surrendered when the tank had appeared in their faces, five had been dismantled by Takara, but most of them had just been blasted apart by Taylor. Sadly, Missy hadn't been all that much help in doing anything other than speedily dragging the robot operators back to waiting PRT or BBPD vans. The robots had a heavily-modified 'plant' in them that messed with her ability to manipulate space in and around them.
She was very obviously annoyed about that.
"I think we're down to the last six or seven," Taylor noted. "At least at this end."
"Finally," Missy grumbled.
"Ooooh," Takara called from nearby, getting both of their attention.
"What did you find?" Taylor asked the girl.
"Biiiiig rock."
They went over and saw that she'd found a boulder. It obviously hadn't been there all that long, maybe a couple weeks at most. "Okay. You found a boulder."
Takara turned and looked at Missy. "Big rock become little rock?"
That had Missy blinking, then looking down at the flying platform she was borrowing. "I think I can make that work."
Ten minutes later the last robot in the line was taken out by virtue of a cartoon boulder hitting it from above, somehow obliterating the robot while leaving the operator unharmed.
Amy shook her head as she watched Vicky gathering all of the tow cables that they'd attached to the zeppelins. It looked like she was gathering an incredibly large bunch of balloons.
"You do know that it isn't safe to drag them all out like that at once, right?" Amy asked.
"I checked and the thinkers claim that it will work fine," Vicky answered. "Well, so long as I don't go too fast and don't pull them down too low." She held up her phone, which had an altimeter showing on it, with lines marked on it. "I marked things out and will be monitoring it with my visor."
Well, that was more thought that Amy had expected. "Okay."
A few minutes later Vicky was pulling the zeppelins along like a giant bunch of balloons, even 'skipping' in the air for show while doing so.
"Who's a good monkey-bot," Aisha cooed as she checked over the next bot in her collection. She was ensuring that all of them were uninjured, while also checking their supply levels. Containment foam mixture for the snakes, grenades for the monkeys, and whatever it was that the cat-bots were using. He'd not asked, nor spotted anything while they were fighting. Well, perhaps she was checking their claws?
"That's just wrong," Dennis grumbled as he watched her.
"She regularly visits to take care of the new ones that aren't even going to be hers," Chris noted.
"Really?"
"Yep."
"Shouldn't their creator be taking care of them?"
Chris shrugged. "Volunteers take care of a lot of animals. Why not cyborg ones?"
"Whatever. At least they're not spiders."
"Yeah, she decided that spiders were overdone around here and wanted more variety. I'm honestly amazed at how many she's gotten her hands on since she asked about non-spider ones though."
"Since she..." Dennis started, before paling. "Oh hell."
"Are you telling me that you hadn't figured that out yet?"
"I might've been repressing it. Scary capes don't stop being scary just because other scary capes messed with their minds."
Kenta shook his head as he looked over the film that Taylor had sent home with Takara. Eating robot octopus? No wonder she'd been burping up screws and hadn't wanted to eat much at dinner. They were probably going to need to have her use the porta-potty out back as well or they'd need the expensive plumbers to come out and re-pipe the toilet. Again.
The timing on all of this happening could've been better as well. Not a single 'gang' parahuman had shown up to fight, because they'd all been out of town. But the news was spinning it as them all being too scared or lazy to show up. Nevermind that there was footage from the beatdown they'd joined up to give an idiot in Maine available online. No, they hadn't shown up to help defend the town so they were to blame for their lack of attendance.
He'd only found out that anything had happened at all when Miko had called him to tell him that Takara was fine after the fighting.
You were expecting an April Fool's joke on an active story
I have no idea what exactly just happened, but it was a good ending to the story. Nice to see that the antics continue despite Scion wandering off to play stellar billiards.
This... this is the sort of thing I wish more people did for April Fool's Day, unlike, well, the sort of thing that tends to make me avoid the entire web for the day.
I can honestly say that robo-octopi made me think of Dr. Robotnik aka Eggman (Sonic franchise) while zeppelins have a perfectly explainable associations with Millenium from Hellsing Ultimate. Even if it wasn't any of those.
)
