FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
At the time the chest piece was the only thing keeping him alive though. The rest were refinements of something needed to save his life (from the goombas with guns).
At the time the chest piece was the only thing keeping him alive though. The rest were refinements of something needed to save his life (from the goombas with guns).
Omega_Endbringer
I am a woodchuck. I chuck wood.
- Location
- England
Ha! I have a plan for him, though...granted it involves all of the cats in America being placed in trees- What! It could work!There is another planetary threat there, that isn't severely injured, and is out and about. I don't see you freaking about him?
FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
The problem is that not all cats get stuck in trees. Some are good enough at navigating to get down on their own. Plus the owners would do something about it long before Zion got around to most of the cats.
- Location
- Beyond the Unknowable Veil
On the other hand, new Vincent Price stuff would be extremely scary, since he IS dead.
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FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
Refer to my Lovecraft quote.
With strange aeons, even Death may die.
With strange aeons, even Death may die.
I doubt it's a navigation issue- I've seen one of my cats leap down a single storey, and IIRC they don't hit their chin on the ground unless they fall 3 storeys. Most trees cats are supposedly stuck in are what? 1 storey at most? I suspect said cats tend to more often be perfectly happy where they are.
- Location
- Spain
... It's a Ziz/Cauldron plot
Lycanthromancer
The Arcane Fuzz
- Location
- USA
It's always a Ziz/Cauldron plot.
Except when it isn't.
And then it especially is.
Omega_Endbringer
I am a woodchuck. I chuck wood.
- Location
- England
Glue, my friend! Glue every cat to every tree and watch him try to save them all! Google tells me there are 600 million cats on the planet, each one glued to a tree should be enough to distract him long enough to escape the Universe.
FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
Are you sure you'd have enough time to do that before either Scion or the horde of angry cat owners would be coming after you? Not to mention... Well... do you really want to try gluing a puma to a tree branch?
EDIT:
Then you see a cat that can normally jump (and stick the landing) off the top of the fridge to the floor with no problem, but they flub jumping up onto the couch... then land on their head when they fall due to the botched jump onto the couch.
No no no no no! It's a Cauldron POT! Or maybe a kettle. it's hard to tell the difference sometimes.
EDIT:
Then you see a cat that can normally jump (and stick the landing) off the top of the fridge to the floor with no problem, but they flub jumping up onto the couch... then land on their head when they fall due to the botched jump onto the couch.
No no no no no! It's a Cauldron POT! Or maybe a kettle. it's hard to tell the difference sometimes.
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Lycanthromancer
The Arcane Fuzz
- Location
- USA
There's
Problem is, the easiest way to get all the cats out of trees would be to produce a power to destroy all the trees. Or possibly all plants everywhere. Panacea could do it easily enough, after all.
FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
No, it'd be to take out the person gluing them to trees before they do so to more then a handful of cats. I'd imagine angry cat owners would probably beat Scion to the punch though.
Lycanthromancer
The Arcane Fuzz
- Location
- USA
Given that the average housecat can one-shot the average commoner, I'm fairly sure it wouldn't even get that far.
Troy Guffey
Irresponsible Parasite
- Location
- Western Missouri, USA
While the first would be not quite as bad as the Grain Blight, that would probably kill civilization.
nullptr
Mostly Harmless
- Location
- The 906
Botched? What are you talking about? The cat totally meant to do that!
Questioning a Tinker (Snow_Cat)
- Location
- Canada
Code:
Elsewhere: a very cheerful ward sits down in a meeting room to attend a conference call .Johansson: (joining table, carrying a bag atop a stack of papers) "We've just gotten the test results for the show-cane you lent us
ward: "Yes, ma'am?"
Johansson: "First of, the ward asked to identify it immediately identified its function." (moves bag off of stack while scanning document)
ward: "The non-injurious projection of variably intense tactile sensations, ranging from pain to pleasure."
Johansson: "And its intended use." (relaxed, leaning on the bag w/ elbow while moving through the scripted document.)
ward: "The domination all villains who come before me." >:O (ham)
Johansson: "She also stated imperially that it was intended to be used internally."
ward: "Wha? How. I never did that, and there was nothing about its construction that would explicitly--argh." (cringe)
Johansson: "internally!? Was this the intent when you made it?" (Lowers document, outside of bag sticks to arm.)
ward: "Yes. But it was put through a sonic-bath; so even if whomever has been getting into my workroom did something with that example; there shouldn't have been any indication of that."
Armsmaster: "My sensors suggested the tongs and
Johansson: "--" (horrified, slides away from object in question.)
ward: (sighs, unburies face from palms, before turning the object in its sanitary bag over.) "That would explain why she would pick up on that detail so clearly."
Johansson: "Sex?--" (blushing, nervous.)
Armsmaster: "Yes." (neutral.)
Glen: "Good thing we delayed making those generally available until after the testing--"
ward: (half way to crying) "And I felt so happy that secret was safe."
Armsmaster: "It still is, Dragon has a special website she can brand them anonymously under, while your-"
Glen: "This poses more than branding problems; but we can bend things to put you under anti-hero branding."
ward: (deeply unhappy, facedesks w/ a muffle sob.)
Johansson: "Underwire! Are you okay?"
Underwire: (tears flowing) "No. I need to be a hero."
Glen: "If this is the direction you want to go then anti-hero branding-"
Armsmaster: "Glen! Stop and think about Underwire's overall theme."
Glen: "
Underwire: (tears flowing) "It's not about the merch! I need to fly under the radar! I need--"
Code:
Meeting room disconnected from conference call.Armsmaster: "Shoot, I hoped to ask Johansson if they were related Jeffrey."
Code:
Glen disconnected from conference call.edit: undid edit. edit2: substitute someone else for Glen? edit 4, 4h later: grammar.
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Grounders10
Nine-Tailed Kitsune
- Location
- British Columbia, Canada, Mars
... Well that was... interesting...
- Location
- Here's a Hint, that was not Ceiling Cat...
Remember in this Universe it is the Behemoth/Gordon that is to blame for most everything, he just lets Simurgh/Elisabeth get all the credit.
Chapter 79
Sunday morning Taylor woke to a notice that patrols were on as New Wave would be handling crowd control at the hospital this morning. Patrol routes were 'to be determined', reasons mentioned were her having just come out of power testing and Carlos not having planned anything due to the radiation scare. After that was a message from Carlos asking that everyone come in as soon as they could for a meeting to figure out the patrols.
Moving on, she had also been sent a link to the secure access storage for the initial results of her power testing. She had to actually grab her phone for that, but once she had it open she starting skimming. Apparently she'd lifted 82 kg with one hand and 131 kg with two. That was a little higher than before, but she had been getting exercise, right? Most of the rest was just summaries of test results that she glossed over, many of them having no comparison for her.
Eventually she reached the actual power ratings, at which point she blinked a couple of times. What the hell?
Amy: You look at your testing results yet?
Taylor: I'm currently disbelieving them, actually.
Amy: They gave me Striker 12/Trump 8/Blaster 5/Tinker 5 for primaries. Thinker 6/Brute 3/Mover 1 secondaries, before we get into guns and all that. Shouldn't yours be similar?
Taylor: Very similar. My differences are, uh, Trump 10, Tinker 4, Thinker 7.
Amy: Trump WHAT?
Taylor: Reading their explanations, apparently they felt that the energy drain I did to Eidolon was a big deal?
Amy: Big enough to warrant a 10?
Taylor: Er, apparently they feel that I could have kept going and killed his snark, and through that him? And 'permanently kill the source of a power by simple proximity' warrants a higher rating? Then add in that he claims to be stronger than before now, apparently. It would have been higher, but they think that it's conditional.
Taylor continued reading for a moment, before realizing that Amy had gone 'silent'.
Taylor: You still there?
Amy: Er, yeah. Sorry. I'm suddenly happy I can't do that, though.
Taylor: Did you see the note about our combined Barrage Blaster rating?
Amy: Holy crap. 13 plus? Really? Why?
Taylor: It says that the doubling of the damage of the original round is the reason for the uprate.
Taylor got out of bed, figuring she wasn't getting back to sleep either way anyway. Seeing the second body camera sitting on her desk reminded her of things she'd thought of the night before, and she grinned. It wasn't doing her any good sitting in her desk at home, after all.
Having her moped and being able to use it was great. The fact that it was now a hoverbike instead was great too, in part because it was now officially a 'tinkertech' vehicle and by law had fewer restrictions, or so the registration paperwork they'd left with it said. It should even be better on rainy days and such because it didn't need traction and wouldn't care about invisible potholes hidden by water. Maybe she should look into adding a rain shield?
Once at the PRT building she noted that Carlos wasn't even there yet. She considered heading to the gym, but decided she'd rather prepare things. So she went straight for the Wards area to get changed. For a lark she decided to prepare her 'alternate loadout', since she felt the hard-light projector would make a decent replacement for the entrenching tool, though she had to adjust one of the clamps a little to hold it well. Further, she found she could attach the 'knife' sheath at her lower back, which she might do regardless of loadout.
Now that she was in-costume she paused to consider things. The camera was one thing, but it would probably be best to show initiative in being prepared, right? So she made her way down to the requisition desk.
"Good morning Maul," the woman at the desk said. "How can I help you?"
"I'm hoping to pick up several items," Taylor said. "Two first aid kits with quarter-twenty mounting brackets, a toolkit with the same, and I'm hoping you have something that can connect a camera to the same?"
The woman looked at Taylor, and then turned to her computer. She appeared to run a few searches before turning back to Taylor. "It looks like we have all of that available, but I see you've already been issued first aid kits and a toolkit. I'll need justification for an additional toolkit, and a reason for the first aid kits isn't needed but would be appreciated for record-keeping reasons."
"I plan on mounting them to the attachment points on my new flight platform."
The woman raised an eyebrow, but appeared to be thinking things over. "Ok, I can see how that would be desirable. I'll record that I've approved the extras for that. Give me a minute to fetch what you need."
By the time Carlos arrived Taylor had gotten both first aid kits and the toolkit attached to mounting points on the edge of the opened surface of her flying platform and was working on getting the camera mount situated as she wanted it. It provided a simple slide-on point to snap the camera-side component onto, and as far as she could tell would leave an eighth of an inch clearance with the camera attached when the platform closed.
"What the hell is that?" Carlos asked.
"New flying platform," Taylor replied. "Courtesy of Leet as a thank you gift."
"And what are you doing to it?"
"Attaching a camera mount to the 'forward' mounting point on the edge here? Good morning, by the way."
Carlos sighed. "Good morning, yes. So, is that thing fast enough to patrol with?"
"Faster than I've ever seen Chris's go. Amy and I rode it back from the Rig yesterday, took less time than the short-hops usually do."
"Maybe we can run an aerial route, then. Anyone else around?"
"Not yet, no."
"Pity." He made his way to get changed while Taylor poked at the camera mount. Eventually she felt she was happy with it and had the platform fold up into 'storage' mode. Everything fit fine, and she had it move up by the ceiling between a couple of the lights for the time being so it wouldn't be in the way.
"Hey," Carlos said as he returned. Taylor looked over to see him holding a box. "Got a new visor for you. I was inspired by your various body-camera inclusions to reports and requested that we all get something similar, so now all of our helmets and visors have cameras and heads up displays for our phones. The latter courtesy of Armsmaster. This one's yours, I would have handed it over sooner but you've been off-duty."
"Oh, cool," Taylor said, taking the new visor. She opened the box and took a look, noting that it was pretty much identical to her current one. Visually the only difference was a small bump on the inside of the visor between where her eyes would be that housed the camera, though it was also lacking the 'integrated earpiece' components that her old one had and she'd never used. It was a matter of a couple of minutes to fully switch over and run tests, Carlos having taken the old one to be returned.
With that done she ran through some tests, including toggling the camera on and off from her phones, before deciding that she'd like to make some pancakes. They even had stuff available to make them with today when she checked. Oooh, strawberries too.
"Why didn't you tell me you were making pancakes?" Lisa whined as she sat on the couch next to Taylor.
"Because Carlos asked everyone to be here early anyway?" Taylor answered. The pancakes had been gone by the time Lisa arrived. Brian was on his way in and Missy had apparently eaten her fill at home. Chris and Dennis were washing and drying the dishes so that Carlos could plan patrol routes.
"They would have been so much better than the cereal I had."
"Your fault for being lazy," Carlos said. "Now then, perhaps you should get changed? Miss Militia's informed me that she's joining our meeting."
Lisa groaned, but got up and headed to get into costume. Dennis and Chris did so as soon as they were done with the dishes, and Brian likely would when he got there.
"Good morning," Miss Militia said once the Wards were assembled. "I don't plan on taking up much of your time, but I have a couple of recent developments to go over with you all. We were originally going to keep a tighter lid on things, but thinker support indicates that it would be detrimental to keep things from Maul's teammates."
Taylor groaned as the other Wards turned to look at her.
"Specifically," Miss Militia continued, pulling attention back to her. "The issues with Leet a couple weeks ago resulted in significant changes to Maul's power ratings. Her primary ratings are now Striker 12, Trump 10, Blaster 5, and Tinker 4. For various reasons we wish to keep a lid on several aspects of this, so we wish to do our best to continue to hide that she is anything other than a Blaster. Though given her new and existing equipment we're not going to hide her Tinker rating."
"What the fuck," Dennis muttered, though it was obvious to everyone what he'd said.
"What ratings don't you have now?" Chris asked.
"Breaker, Changer, Master, Shaker, and Stranger," Taylor replied.
"What the hell happened?" Lisa finally asked. "Because I'm very confused, what with what happened with Panacea talking to my powers a couple weeks ago."
"I think Assault put it best," Miss Militia said. Taylor swore she was grinning behind her bandana. "He claims that Maul became the second coming of Panacea. The reverse isn't quite accurate, and they both picked up a little bit of Tinker from Leet in the process. Not enough to give Maul a dedicated space for tinkering, but Panacea now has access to the building to use the visiting tinker lab." She paused, and Taylor noted that the other Wards seemed to be in shock. "With that said, do try and keep most of it quiet. Have a nice day."
Taylor waved as Miss Militia left.
[Query]
Amy: Yes, Taylor and I share our original snarks.
"What the hell happened?" Lisa asked, shaking her head. "How did you two get connected to each other's powers?"
"We didn't keep a close enough eye on what our snarks were planning," Taylor replied, shrugging.
"What's your tinker specialty?" Chris asked. Taylor was fairly certain that several of the others were torn on whether or not they should roll their eyes at that, but it wasn't a bad question. He may not have been told before monitoring her, actually, so he was probably running on observations alone.
"Understanding, Maintenance, and Repair of technology."
The others stared at Taylor for a moment, before Carlos decided to get on with things and stood up. "Alright, as very little of this will change how we're doing things I think we should focus on patrols. I'm thinking one group on the new shoreline aerial route and the other running the Boardwalk for visibility. Any complaints?"
"I thought we needed three fliers before we could do aerial routes?" Chris noted.
"Taylor would be joining us."
Missy giggled as the rest of the Wards looked at Taylor. "What?"
"How would you pull an aerial route?" Dennis asked.
Taylor sighed and got up, flipping the flying platform and opening it up. She then adjusted the jump harness and jumped into the air. Everyone's eyes followed her as she flipped and landed on the upside-down platform.
"Can I go and ride with her?" Missy asked, causing Carlos to blink. Taylor thought that she'd be doing puppy-dog eyes if she wasn't wearing her visor. "Please?"
"I suppose if Taylor doesn't mind," Carlos said. "And Brian, Dean, and Dennis don't mind patrolling without you?"
"I'm game," Taylor said, dropping the platform down and flipping it over to land off to the side.
The three boys shared a look before Dennis spoke up. "Yeah, we're good. No need to hear her whining that we wouldn't let her go."
"Yay!" Missy said darting over to the platform, only for Taylor to grab her while getting off of it. "Hey!"
"It doesn't fit through the doors well," Taylor said as the platform folded up. "You'll have to get on when we reach the roof."
"I can make the doors bigger?"
"You can wait."
"You didn't have to expand all the doorways and hallways, not to mention the elevator, just to prove your point," Carlos said, shaking his head.
"Yes I did," Missy replied, bouncing up and down as Taylor opened up the platform. She did let Taylor get on first, if only barely.
"Watch out for the foot controls," Taylor said, nudging Missy a little off to the side. She did her best not to flinch at the same time given that Amy had apparently just poked someone. Was that a nail in their knee? Ouch.
"Oh, sorry." She then proceeded to bounce up and down again while Chris set up his hoverboard.
"Aegis to Console," Carlos said. "Requesting permission for Maul to do a speed test with passenger out towards the Rig." Taylor looked over at Carlos, who grinned. "Better to see now instead of later. We've done similar tests with Kid Win, though he doesn't work well with passengers."
"Console to Aegis," came back a moment later, apparently the PRT monitor as it wasn't Lisa's voice. "We have her on record as hitting around 90 miles per hour yesterday with Panacea on board. Does she feel she can go faster?"
"I think I was doing pretty much full speed then," Taylor admitted. "At least while being able to see where I'm going. I might be able to go faster feet-first, but then I can't see."
"Aegis to Console," Carlos said after Dennis finished reporting a potential hazard. They'd barely left, how did they find the likely only suspect fire escape in the area? "Maul reports that she was likely going at full speed. Test request withdrawn."
"So can we go now?" Missy asked.
Carlos sighed and looked over at Chris. Who was ready. So he took to the air, the others following him.
"What's going on out there?" Taylor asked as they moved along the shoreline. There was plenty of activity on the ground, but all of it was people watching out in the bay. Amy had apparently been kicked out of the hospital already, being told that almost everyone coming in was still in radiation panic mode but the scanner could deal with that.
"Not sure," Chris said. "Lots of things in the air by the container ship, though."
"Are some of them moving under it?" Carlos asked. "Because I think they are."
"What do you think those things are?" Missy asked, poking Taylor. "Are they close enough for you?"
Taylor looked down at Missy, shrugged, and looked over towards the container ship, focusing on her tinker snark. "Let's see...repurposed combat drones with enhanced lifting capabilities? Are they trying to move the container ship?"
The others stopped and stared at the activity out in the bay. The container ship had been sitting there long enough that it was hard to imagine it not being there, and yet today it might actually get moved.
"We should continue moving," Carlos finally said, gesturing for them to continue. "At least the activity is reducing the gawking at us with a new flier, right?"
"There are four speculation threads already running on PHO," Taylor countered. "Though one of them includes references to having seen something similar yesterday and none of them seem to have identified me properly."
"I said reducing, not eliminating."
They had reached their turnaround point when the real show in the bay began, quite a bit louder than anyone expected. The Wards stopped to stare, not that anyone likely cared as everyone else had also stopped and was staring just as much. The container ship was being lifted clear into the air, though not quickly.
"The fireworks are a nice touch," Missy finally said. "More of a backdrop than a distraction, even."
"Er, huh," Taylor said, turning around and looking towards the snark that had just entered her range. "We've got company."
"What?" Carlos said, spinning around to look where Taylor was. It was hard to miss the tall, pale, but muscled man in loose-fitting pants and a pale blue tiger mask slowly floating up towards them. More interestingly, he was lightly waving a white flag in front of him.
Taylor: Hello there.
[Greetings]
"Is that Stormtiger?" Chris asked.
"Yes," Missy replied. "I've run into him before. But why is he approaching us?"
"Aegis to Console," Carlos finally said. "Stormtiger is slowly approaching us, waving a white flag. No other potential hostiles visible."
There were several moments of complete radio silence, before the console responded. "Console to Aegis, please repeat."
"Stormtiger is slowly approaching us, in the air, waving a white flag, with no visible backup."
"Console to Aegis," came back, the operator sounding bewildered. "Recommendation is to meet him partway with part of your group, the others holding back just in case."
"Unless Vista objects we can go down," Taylor said. "Since he keeps looking our way, I think he might want to talk to one of us specifically."
"That makes sense," Chris said. Taylor heard his pistols change mode, perhaps to a higher setting.
"Be careful," Carlos said. "And be ready to bolt at the first sign of trouble."
"Will do," Taylor said, then tapped a foot to start dropping towards the approaching cape.
"Good morning Maul, Vista," Stormtiger called, having stopped when he noticed the two Wards floating down towards him. "I apologize for interrupting your patrol, but I was hoping to ask Maul a couple of questions, if you don't mind? I promise to not take long."
Taylor looked at Missy, who shrugged. She then turned back to Stormtiger. "Good morning, and I suppose that would be alright."
"Thank you for your time." Stormtiger bowed as he said that, then straightened back up. "The first thing we, that is the Empire, are wondering is whether or not your new platform is intended as a statement aimed in our direction?"
"Er, I don't believe so. I'm not even sure why it would be considered as such, actually."
"We somewhat recently lost our teenage member with a similar trick, and weren't sure if this was, in some way, intended to mock us."
"Oh, right. Sorry, I hadn't considered that, but as far as I know it isn't. But as it was a gift I can't be entirely certain."
"May I enquire as to whom it was a gift from?"
Taylor paused to consider that, and decided it probably didn't matter. "Leet. Thankfully I can maintain it without his assistance."
Stormtiger visibly dropped, apparently losing concentration on flight for a moment. He quickly recovered, though, and moved back up, if a little further away. "I see. Thank you for the information. Beyond that, well, you likely know that the Empire would attempt to have eyes in the PRT, right?"
"Moles, you mean?" Vista said. "Spies by any other name and all?"
"Er, yes. One of them overheard something that we were hoping you might be willing to comment on. They seemed to be under the impression that Eidolon had visited recently and was, er, rude to you?"
Taylor blinked. Huh. Well, she'd have to report this, but how to put an answer. "I wouldn't say he was rude." Because that would be an understatement. "He was a bit impatient, but we worked things out."
"I see. Again, thank you for your time. Do you have any questions for me?"
"I don't believe so."
"Then I shall stop taking up your time. Have a nice day."
"You too."
Stormtiger dropped back down towards the ground, significantly faster than he had approached. Not that she could judge how much of that was his snark compared to gravity, though. Taylor had the platform lift back up to the others.
"Maul to Console," she finally said. "Stormtiger asked me three questions. If my platform was intended to mock the Empire for their loss of Rune, who made it after I indicated it was a gift, and if the rumors from their moles of Eidolon being rude to me recently were true. I answered that I did not believe so, that Leet made the platform, and that Eidolon was impatient but we worked things out. He has now departed peacefully."
The Wards floated there for a minute waiting for a response, watching the container ship lift in progress in the meantime. It was probably going to take several hours at the rate things were going, and then once it was fully out of the water it had to go somewhere, right?
"Console to Maul," came back, startling them out of their watching. "Your responses have been noted."
"I guess that's our cue to get moving again," Carlos said as Taylor acknowledged the console. "Let's go."
Debrief after their patrol had been interesting. Apparently they knew that at least one Empire mole had 'overheard' details about David having interacted with Taylor, but they were surprised that any mention of him being 'rude' had been made. Which probably meant they had more moles to find and mark.
The PRT officer being unable to focus until Taylor sent the flying platform into the hall, on the other hand, was annoying. It wasn't going to randomly explode, after all. If she thought it was dangerous she wouldn't use it.
Shortly after debrief they found out that the afternoon 'patrol' was going to be everyone other than Taylor, Lisa, and Missy doing crowd control at the hospital. Taylor and Missy were instead being drafted into helping with New Wave's PRT-run firearms class, being cleared to use guns of their own already, and Lisa was being given the afternoon off.
Before that, however, was lunch. The Wards, including Lisa, had invaded the upper cafeteria to get access to the steaks being served there. Taylor had ended up eating three, resulting in some jealous and/or surprised stares.
Amy: Are you eating steak?
Taylor: Yep.
Amy: Damn. I bet that's tastier than this pizza.
And some jealousy from across town, too. Not that anyone at the table with her could figure out why she grinned at that point.
New Wave arrived shortly after lunch, to find Taylor and Missy waiting for them.
"Good afternoon," Taylor said. "I hope you're prepared to pay attention through your boredom."
"Why would learning how to fire guns be boring?" Eric asked. He got matching grins from the two Wards in response.
Amy: Oh god, are we likely to be getting safety lectures?
Taylor: Yep.
Amy: Can you shoot me instead?
Taylor: Nope, because that wouldn't be safe.
Taylor didn't even have the decency to show a reaction when Amy punched her for that comment.
"Please tell me the lecturing is over?" Eric pleaded. "Pretty please?"
"It's over," Missy said, causing the boy to beam. "For today." And his mood plummeted. Taylor should probably try not to be so amused by that, honestly.
"I'm just hoping that we don't have to attend all of your sessions," Taylor said, causing New Wave to look at her. "Miss Militia didn't attend all of ours, after all. Though she did help with several demonstrations."
"I think Miss Militia is supposed to handle several of our sessions," Sarah said. "But the radiation scare has thrown off schedules quite a bit."
"At least none of you needed safety demonstrations to pay attention," Missy offered.
"With the Barrage Blaster in the room with us?" Crystal said, sounding incredulous. "We'd have to be insane, I think."
"What's the schedule for these?" Taylor asked, curious.
"We're scheduled to do them nightly," Carol said. "With any luck we'll be done by Thursday, and we can do a significant patrol then or Friday. We'd pushed Amy's weekend back due to the issues that came up a couple weeks back, so we have the weekend pretty much free."
"Did you have to jinx it?" Vicky whined. "Now something is going to come up and screw over our weekend."
"I highly doubt that," Mark replied. "Especially as the Teeth seem to be heading for the West Coast."
"What?" Taylor said. "I must have missed that."
"It was on the news," Crystal said. "Something about the Butcher's new phone being bricked due to some crap app trying to steal her personal information, so they were going to hunt down the person responsible for writing it."
Taylor thought about that. "I never really thought about that as being a hazard of being a programmer of any kind."
"Accord apparently had someone hunted down for infecting some digital displays in Boston," Eric said. "That was last year. Then there's the villain in Arkansas that put out a hit on the script kiddie that put malicious code into an ad network and crashed his network somehow. Some days I'm amazed that spammers still exist, but I guess exploiting poorly secured servers helps hide them."
"I wonder what some of the bullshit thinkers do?"
'Codebreaker' smirked as he found the command and control node for the botnet. Now he just had to trace things back to the person running it, at which point he could take it down. He was hoping he could make it look like the guy who'd tried to hack his website a few days ago had been responsible, but it was always possible they were the same person. Or maybe actually trusted partners.
Once he was done with this idiot he could get back to hunting down one of the other idiots who'd tried to hack his site. But this took priority, as this idiot had tried to scam his little sister, and nearly got his grandmother too. He'd had to skip school to get some of the timing down, granted, but he'd 'fix' his records there later.
Lisa pondered whether or not the spoofed scam message she'd sent a few days ago had worked. She'd made it look like it came from that annoying botnet she'd been having trouble with, and targeted the family of that thinker that the PRT occasionally 'pointed' at troublesome online nuisances. He actually thought that nobody knew he'd triggered, the fool.
Oh well, if the plan worked she'd be happy. If it didn't she'd have to try something else. Dinah had only given it a 52ish percent chance of success, so she shouldn't hold out too much hope. Oh, there's a message from Dennis that someone had decided to try and jump the line. Again. So he'd frozen the door as they'd been trying to force their way through it. Well, that was a good way to keep them from opening it all the way, at least?
The ride home had been through a longer than usual route, hitting the bay for a quick test to prove that her hover bike would, in fact, go over water without issue. Not that she expected any differently, but the proof was nice. After that she'd made her way home, carefully avoiding Skidmark when she'd gotten close enough to spot him. She didn't know what he was doing, but he was easy enough to go around, after which getting home hadn't taken long.
"Taylor!" Danny yelled as Taylor entered the house. She made her way into the living room, where the news was on showing the container ship being flown off. "Come grab a beer to celebrate! Kurt and Lacey will be by with takeout shortly."
Taylor shook her head, but grabbed a beer anyway. "I take it you're happy."
"I know you said some of your extra earnings might go towards this, but having it happen? Of course I'm happy!"
"We're here with Dragon," the reporter on the screen said. "Who orchestrated today's monumental event. So, Dragon, what brought this about?"
"The PRT contacted me, acting as an intermediary for an undisclosed third party," Dragon said. "Admittedly, they expected it to take much longer, but I decided to put a higher priority on the request. You could consider it a Mother's Day gift of sorts."
Taylor blinked, and ran that through her head. After some parsing she still wasn't sure if she'd just heard what she thought she'd heard. "What?"
"Max?" Brad said as he entered. Max looked up at the other man, wondering why he looked so worried.
"What's wrong?" Max asked. He didn't like it when his second in command was worried, given that he was usually overconfident. He had enough to deal with given all the trouble the PRT was giving Medhall these days, on top of the Empire not having recovered from losing several capes. The only saving grace there was that Lung had been oddly mellow as of late.
"We're fairly certain that Maul's new toy isn't intended to mock us. Scare the crap out of us given that Leet made it maybe, but not mock us. Still, er, well..."
"What else?" Not that trusting her life to something that dangerous probably wasn't enough, granted. Was the girl insane?
"She all but told us that the rumors about what happened with Eidolon are true."
"What rumors?" He hadn't heard any rumors, but he also hadn't looked over all the reports from the moles yet.
"The ones that say that Eidolon was impatient and rude with her, so she took him down for a couple hours and forced him into a therapy session."
Max blinked, and ran that through his head. It didn't make sense, so he tried again. "What?"
Moving on, she had also been sent a link to the secure access storage for the initial results of her power testing. She had to actually grab her phone for that, but once she had it open she starting skimming. Apparently she'd lifted 82 kg with one hand and 131 kg with two. That was a little higher than before, but she had been getting exercise, right? Most of the rest was just summaries of test results that she glossed over, many of them having no comparison for her.
Eventually she reached the actual power ratings, at which point she blinked a couple of times. What the hell?
Amy: You look at your testing results yet?
Taylor: I'm currently disbelieving them, actually.
Amy: They gave me Striker 12/Trump 8/Blaster 5/Tinker 5 for primaries. Thinker 6/Brute 3/Mover 1 secondaries, before we get into guns and all that. Shouldn't yours be similar?
Taylor: Very similar. My differences are, uh, Trump 10, Tinker 4, Thinker 7.
Amy: Trump WHAT?
Taylor: Reading their explanations, apparently they felt that the energy drain I did to Eidolon was a big deal?
Amy: Big enough to warrant a 10?
Taylor: Er, apparently they feel that I could have kept going and killed his snark, and through that him? And 'permanently kill the source of a power by simple proximity' warrants a higher rating? Then add in that he claims to be stronger than before now, apparently. It would have been higher, but they think that it's conditional.
Taylor continued reading for a moment, before realizing that Amy had gone 'silent'.
Taylor: You still there?
Amy: Er, yeah. Sorry. I'm suddenly happy I can't do that, though.
Taylor: Did you see the note about our combined Barrage Blaster rating?
Amy: Holy crap. 13 plus? Really? Why?
Taylor: It says that the doubling of the damage of the original round is the reason for the uprate.
Taylor got out of bed, figuring she wasn't getting back to sleep either way anyway. Seeing the second body camera sitting on her desk reminded her of things she'd thought of the night before, and she grinned. It wasn't doing her any good sitting in her desk at home, after all.
Having her moped and being able to use it was great. The fact that it was now a hoverbike instead was great too, in part because it was now officially a 'tinkertech' vehicle and by law had fewer restrictions, or so the registration paperwork they'd left with it said. It should even be better on rainy days and such because it didn't need traction and wouldn't care about invisible potholes hidden by water. Maybe she should look into adding a rain shield?
Once at the PRT building she noted that Carlos wasn't even there yet. She considered heading to the gym, but decided she'd rather prepare things. So she went straight for the Wards area to get changed. For a lark she decided to prepare her 'alternate loadout', since she felt the hard-light projector would make a decent replacement for the entrenching tool, though she had to adjust one of the clamps a little to hold it well. Further, she found she could attach the 'knife' sheath at her lower back, which she might do regardless of loadout.
Now that she was in-costume she paused to consider things. The camera was one thing, but it would probably be best to show initiative in being prepared, right? So she made her way down to the requisition desk.
"Good morning Maul," the woman at the desk said. "How can I help you?"
"I'm hoping to pick up several items," Taylor said. "Two first aid kits with quarter-twenty mounting brackets, a toolkit with the same, and I'm hoping you have something that can connect a camera to the same?"
The woman looked at Taylor, and then turned to her computer. She appeared to run a few searches before turning back to Taylor. "It looks like we have all of that available, but I see you've already been issued first aid kits and a toolkit. I'll need justification for an additional toolkit, and a reason for the first aid kits isn't needed but would be appreciated for record-keeping reasons."
"I plan on mounting them to the attachment points on my new flight platform."
The woman raised an eyebrow, but appeared to be thinking things over. "Ok, I can see how that would be desirable. I'll record that I've approved the extras for that. Give me a minute to fetch what you need."
By the time Carlos arrived Taylor had gotten both first aid kits and the toolkit attached to mounting points on the edge of the opened surface of her flying platform and was working on getting the camera mount situated as she wanted it. It provided a simple slide-on point to snap the camera-side component onto, and as far as she could tell would leave an eighth of an inch clearance with the camera attached when the platform closed.
"What the hell is that?" Carlos asked.
"New flying platform," Taylor replied. "Courtesy of Leet as a thank you gift."
"And what are you doing to it?"
"Attaching a camera mount to the 'forward' mounting point on the edge here? Good morning, by the way."
Carlos sighed. "Good morning, yes. So, is that thing fast enough to patrol with?"
"Faster than I've ever seen Chris's go. Amy and I rode it back from the Rig yesterday, took less time than the short-hops usually do."
"Maybe we can run an aerial route, then. Anyone else around?"
"Not yet, no."
"Pity." He made his way to get changed while Taylor poked at the camera mount. Eventually she felt she was happy with it and had the platform fold up into 'storage' mode. Everything fit fine, and she had it move up by the ceiling between a couple of the lights for the time being so it wouldn't be in the way.
"Hey," Carlos said as he returned. Taylor looked over to see him holding a box. "Got a new visor for you. I was inspired by your various body-camera inclusions to reports and requested that we all get something similar, so now all of our helmets and visors have cameras and heads up displays for our phones. The latter courtesy of Armsmaster. This one's yours, I would have handed it over sooner but you've been off-duty."
"Oh, cool," Taylor said, taking the new visor. She opened the box and took a look, noting that it was pretty much identical to her current one. Visually the only difference was a small bump on the inside of the visor between where her eyes would be that housed the camera, though it was also lacking the 'integrated earpiece' components that her old one had and she'd never used. It was a matter of a couple of minutes to fully switch over and run tests, Carlos having taken the old one to be returned.
With that done she ran through some tests, including toggling the camera on and off from her phones, before deciding that she'd like to make some pancakes. They even had stuff available to make them with today when she checked. Oooh, strawberries too.
"Why didn't you tell me you were making pancakes?" Lisa whined as she sat on the couch next to Taylor.
"Because Carlos asked everyone to be here early anyway?" Taylor answered. The pancakes had been gone by the time Lisa arrived. Brian was on his way in and Missy had apparently eaten her fill at home. Chris and Dennis were washing and drying the dishes so that Carlos could plan patrol routes.
"They would have been so much better than the cereal I had."
"Your fault for being lazy," Carlos said. "Now then, perhaps you should get changed? Miss Militia's informed me that she's joining our meeting."
Lisa groaned, but got up and headed to get into costume. Dennis and Chris did so as soon as they were done with the dishes, and Brian likely would when he got there.
"Good morning," Miss Militia said once the Wards were assembled. "I don't plan on taking up much of your time, but I have a couple of recent developments to go over with you all. We were originally going to keep a tighter lid on things, but thinker support indicates that it would be detrimental to keep things from Maul's teammates."
Taylor groaned as the other Wards turned to look at her.
"Specifically," Miss Militia continued, pulling attention back to her. "The issues with Leet a couple weeks ago resulted in significant changes to Maul's power ratings. Her primary ratings are now Striker 12, Trump 10, Blaster 5, and Tinker 4. For various reasons we wish to keep a lid on several aspects of this, so we wish to do our best to continue to hide that she is anything other than a Blaster. Though given her new and existing equipment we're not going to hide her Tinker rating."
"What the fuck," Dennis muttered, though it was obvious to everyone what he'd said.
"What ratings don't you have now?" Chris asked.
"Breaker, Changer, Master, Shaker, and Stranger," Taylor replied.
"What the hell happened?" Lisa finally asked. "Because I'm very confused, what with what happened with Panacea talking to my powers a couple weeks ago."
"I think Assault put it best," Miss Militia said. Taylor swore she was grinning behind her bandana. "He claims that Maul became the second coming of Panacea. The reverse isn't quite accurate, and they both picked up a little bit of Tinker from Leet in the process. Not enough to give Maul a dedicated space for tinkering, but Panacea now has access to the building to use the visiting tinker lab." She paused, and Taylor noted that the other Wards seemed to be in shock. "With that said, do try and keep most of it quiet. Have a nice day."
Taylor waved as Miss Militia left.
[Query]
Amy: Yes, Taylor and I share our original snarks.
"What the hell happened?" Lisa asked, shaking her head. "How did you two get connected to each other's powers?"
"We didn't keep a close enough eye on what our snarks were planning," Taylor replied, shrugging.
"What's your tinker specialty?" Chris asked. Taylor was fairly certain that several of the others were torn on whether or not they should roll their eyes at that, but it wasn't a bad question. He may not have been told before monitoring her, actually, so he was probably running on observations alone.
"Understanding, Maintenance, and Repair of technology."
The others stared at Taylor for a moment, before Carlos decided to get on with things and stood up. "Alright, as very little of this will change how we're doing things I think we should focus on patrols. I'm thinking one group on the new shoreline aerial route and the other running the Boardwalk for visibility. Any complaints?"
"I thought we needed three fliers before we could do aerial routes?" Chris noted.
"Taylor would be joining us."
Missy giggled as the rest of the Wards looked at Taylor. "What?"
"How would you pull an aerial route?" Dennis asked.
Taylor sighed and got up, flipping the flying platform and opening it up. She then adjusted the jump harness and jumped into the air. Everyone's eyes followed her as she flipped and landed on the upside-down platform.
"Can I go and ride with her?" Missy asked, causing Carlos to blink. Taylor thought that she'd be doing puppy-dog eyes if she wasn't wearing her visor. "Please?"
"I suppose if Taylor doesn't mind," Carlos said. "And Brian, Dean, and Dennis don't mind patrolling without you?"
"I'm game," Taylor said, dropping the platform down and flipping it over to land off to the side.
The three boys shared a look before Dennis spoke up. "Yeah, we're good. No need to hear her whining that we wouldn't let her go."
"Yay!" Missy said darting over to the platform, only for Taylor to grab her while getting off of it. "Hey!"
"It doesn't fit through the doors well," Taylor said as the platform folded up. "You'll have to get on when we reach the roof."
"I can make the doors bigger?"
"You can wait."
"You didn't have to expand all the doorways and hallways, not to mention the elevator, just to prove your point," Carlos said, shaking his head.
"Yes I did," Missy replied, bouncing up and down as Taylor opened up the platform. She did let Taylor get on first, if only barely.
"Watch out for the foot controls," Taylor said, nudging Missy a little off to the side. She did her best not to flinch at the same time given that Amy had apparently just poked someone. Was that a nail in their knee? Ouch.
"Oh, sorry." She then proceeded to bounce up and down again while Chris set up his hoverboard.
"Aegis to Console," Carlos said. "Requesting permission for Maul to do a speed test with passenger out towards the Rig." Taylor looked over at Carlos, who grinned. "Better to see now instead of later. We've done similar tests with Kid Win, though he doesn't work well with passengers."
"Console to Aegis," came back a moment later, apparently the PRT monitor as it wasn't Lisa's voice. "We have her on record as hitting around 90 miles per hour yesterday with Panacea on board. Does she feel she can go faster?"
"I think I was doing pretty much full speed then," Taylor admitted. "At least while being able to see where I'm going. I might be able to go faster feet-first, but then I can't see."
"Aegis to Console," Carlos said after Dennis finished reporting a potential hazard. They'd barely left, how did they find the likely only suspect fire escape in the area? "Maul reports that she was likely going at full speed. Test request withdrawn."
"So can we go now?" Missy asked.
Carlos sighed and looked over at Chris. Who was ready. So he took to the air, the others following him.
"What's going on out there?" Taylor asked as they moved along the shoreline. There was plenty of activity on the ground, but all of it was people watching out in the bay. Amy had apparently been kicked out of the hospital already, being told that almost everyone coming in was still in radiation panic mode but the scanner could deal with that.
"Not sure," Chris said. "Lots of things in the air by the container ship, though."
"Are some of them moving under it?" Carlos asked. "Because I think they are."
"What do you think those things are?" Missy asked, poking Taylor. "Are they close enough for you?"
Taylor looked down at Missy, shrugged, and looked over towards the container ship, focusing on her tinker snark. "Let's see...repurposed combat drones with enhanced lifting capabilities? Are they trying to move the container ship?"
The others stopped and stared at the activity out in the bay. The container ship had been sitting there long enough that it was hard to imagine it not being there, and yet today it might actually get moved.
"We should continue moving," Carlos finally said, gesturing for them to continue. "At least the activity is reducing the gawking at us with a new flier, right?"
"There are four speculation threads already running on PHO," Taylor countered. "Though one of them includes references to having seen something similar yesterday and none of them seem to have identified me properly."
"I said reducing, not eliminating."
They had reached their turnaround point when the real show in the bay began, quite a bit louder than anyone expected. The Wards stopped to stare, not that anyone likely cared as everyone else had also stopped and was staring just as much. The container ship was being lifted clear into the air, though not quickly.
"The fireworks are a nice touch," Missy finally said. "More of a backdrop than a distraction, even."
"Er, huh," Taylor said, turning around and looking towards the snark that had just entered her range. "We've got company."
"What?" Carlos said, spinning around to look where Taylor was. It was hard to miss the tall, pale, but muscled man in loose-fitting pants and a pale blue tiger mask slowly floating up towards them. More interestingly, he was lightly waving a white flag in front of him.
Taylor: Hello there.
[Greetings]
"Is that Stormtiger?" Chris asked.
"Yes," Missy replied. "I've run into him before. But why is he approaching us?"
"Aegis to Console," Carlos finally said. "Stormtiger is slowly approaching us, waving a white flag. No other potential hostiles visible."
There were several moments of complete radio silence, before the console responded. "Console to Aegis, please repeat."
"Stormtiger is slowly approaching us, in the air, waving a white flag, with no visible backup."
"Console to Aegis," came back, the operator sounding bewildered. "Recommendation is to meet him partway with part of your group, the others holding back just in case."
"Unless Vista objects we can go down," Taylor said. "Since he keeps looking our way, I think he might want to talk to one of us specifically."
"That makes sense," Chris said. Taylor heard his pistols change mode, perhaps to a higher setting.
"Be careful," Carlos said. "And be ready to bolt at the first sign of trouble."
"Will do," Taylor said, then tapped a foot to start dropping towards the approaching cape.
"Good morning Maul, Vista," Stormtiger called, having stopped when he noticed the two Wards floating down towards him. "I apologize for interrupting your patrol, but I was hoping to ask Maul a couple of questions, if you don't mind? I promise to not take long."
Taylor looked at Missy, who shrugged. She then turned back to Stormtiger. "Good morning, and I suppose that would be alright."
"Thank you for your time." Stormtiger bowed as he said that, then straightened back up. "The first thing we, that is the Empire, are wondering is whether or not your new platform is intended as a statement aimed in our direction?"
"Er, I don't believe so. I'm not even sure why it would be considered as such, actually."
"We somewhat recently lost our teenage member with a similar trick, and weren't sure if this was, in some way, intended to mock us."
"Oh, right. Sorry, I hadn't considered that, but as far as I know it isn't. But as it was a gift I can't be entirely certain."
"May I enquire as to whom it was a gift from?"
Taylor paused to consider that, and decided it probably didn't matter. "Leet. Thankfully I can maintain it without his assistance."
Stormtiger visibly dropped, apparently losing concentration on flight for a moment. He quickly recovered, though, and moved back up, if a little further away. "I see. Thank you for the information. Beyond that, well, you likely know that the Empire would attempt to have eyes in the PRT, right?"
"Moles, you mean?" Vista said. "Spies by any other name and all?"
"Er, yes. One of them overheard something that we were hoping you might be willing to comment on. They seemed to be under the impression that Eidolon had visited recently and was, er, rude to you?"
Taylor blinked. Huh. Well, she'd have to report this, but how to put an answer. "I wouldn't say he was rude." Because that would be an understatement. "He was a bit impatient, but we worked things out."
"I see. Again, thank you for your time. Do you have any questions for me?"
"I don't believe so."
"Then I shall stop taking up your time. Have a nice day."
"You too."
Stormtiger dropped back down towards the ground, significantly faster than he had approached. Not that she could judge how much of that was his snark compared to gravity, though. Taylor had the platform lift back up to the others.
"Maul to Console," she finally said. "Stormtiger asked me three questions. If my platform was intended to mock the Empire for their loss of Rune, who made it after I indicated it was a gift, and if the rumors from their moles of Eidolon being rude to me recently were true. I answered that I did not believe so, that Leet made the platform, and that Eidolon was impatient but we worked things out. He has now departed peacefully."
The Wards floated there for a minute waiting for a response, watching the container ship lift in progress in the meantime. It was probably going to take several hours at the rate things were going, and then once it was fully out of the water it had to go somewhere, right?
"Console to Maul," came back, startling them out of their watching. "Your responses have been noted."
"I guess that's our cue to get moving again," Carlos said as Taylor acknowledged the console. "Let's go."
Debrief after their patrol had been interesting. Apparently they knew that at least one Empire mole had 'overheard' details about David having interacted with Taylor, but they were surprised that any mention of him being 'rude' had been made. Which probably meant they had more moles to find and mark.
The PRT officer being unable to focus until Taylor sent the flying platform into the hall, on the other hand, was annoying. It wasn't going to randomly explode, after all. If she thought it was dangerous she wouldn't use it.
Shortly after debrief they found out that the afternoon 'patrol' was going to be everyone other than Taylor, Lisa, and Missy doing crowd control at the hospital. Taylor and Missy were instead being drafted into helping with New Wave's PRT-run firearms class, being cleared to use guns of their own already, and Lisa was being given the afternoon off.
Before that, however, was lunch. The Wards, including Lisa, had invaded the upper cafeteria to get access to the steaks being served there. Taylor had ended up eating three, resulting in some jealous and/or surprised stares.
Amy: Are you eating steak?
Taylor: Yep.
Amy: Damn. I bet that's tastier than this pizza.
And some jealousy from across town, too. Not that anyone at the table with her could figure out why she grinned at that point.
New Wave arrived shortly after lunch, to find Taylor and Missy waiting for them.
"Good afternoon," Taylor said. "I hope you're prepared to pay attention through your boredom."
"Why would learning how to fire guns be boring?" Eric asked. He got matching grins from the two Wards in response.
Amy: Oh god, are we likely to be getting safety lectures?
Taylor: Yep.
Amy: Can you shoot me instead?
Taylor: Nope, because that wouldn't be safe.
Taylor didn't even have the decency to show a reaction when Amy punched her for that comment.
"Please tell me the lecturing is over?" Eric pleaded. "Pretty please?"
"It's over," Missy said, causing the boy to beam. "For today." And his mood plummeted. Taylor should probably try not to be so amused by that, honestly.
"I'm just hoping that we don't have to attend all of your sessions," Taylor said, causing New Wave to look at her. "Miss Militia didn't attend all of ours, after all. Though she did help with several demonstrations."
"I think Miss Militia is supposed to handle several of our sessions," Sarah said. "But the radiation scare has thrown off schedules quite a bit."
"At least none of you needed safety demonstrations to pay attention," Missy offered.
"With the Barrage Blaster in the room with us?" Crystal said, sounding incredulous. "We'd have to be insane, I think."
"What's the schedule for these?" Taylor asked, curious.
"We're scheduled to do them nightly," Carol said. "With any luck we'll be done by Thursday, and we can do a significant patrol then or Friday. We'd pushed Amy's weekend back due to the issues that came up a couple weeks back, so we have the weekend pretty much free."
"Did you have to jinx it?" Vicky whined. "Now something is going to come up and screw over our weekend."
"I highly doubt that," Mark replied. "Especially as the Teeth seem to be heading for the West Coast."
"What?" Taylor said. "I must have missed that."
"It was on the news," Crystal said. "Something about the Butcher's new phone being bricked due to some crap app trying to steal her personal information, so they were going to hunt down the person responsible for writing it."
Taylor thought about that. "I never really thought about that as being a hazard of being a programmer of any kind."
"Accord apparently had someone hunted down for infecting some digital displays in Boston," Eric said. "That was last year. Then there's the villain in Arkansas that put out a hit on the script kiddie that put malicious code into an ad network and crashed his network somehow. Some days I'm amazed that spammers still exist, but I guess exploiting poorly secured servers helps hide them."
"I wonder what some of the bullshit thinkers do?"
'Codebreaker' smirked as he found the command and control node for the botnet. Now he just had to trace things back to the person running it, at which point he could take it down. He was hoping he could make it look like the guy who'd tried to hack his website a few days ago had been responsible, but it was always possible they were the same person. Or maybe actually trusted partners.
Once he was done with this idiot he could get back to hunting down one of the other idiots who'd tried to hack his site. But this took priority, as this idiot had tried to scam his little sister, and nearly got his grandmother too. He'd had to skip school to get some of the timing down, granted, but he'd 'fix' his records there later.
Lisa pondered whether or not the spoofed scam message she'd sent a few days ago had worked. She'd made it look like it came from that annoying botnet she'd been having trouble with, and targeted the family of that thinker that the PRT occasionally 'pointed' at troublesome online nuisances. He actually thought that nobody knew he'd triggered, the fool.
Oh well, if the plan worked she'd be happy. If it didn't she'd have to try something else. Dinah had only given it a 52ish percent chance of success, so she shouldn't hold out too much hope. Oh, there's a message from Dennis that someone had decided to try and jump the line. Again. So he'd frozen the door as they'd been trying to force their way through it. Well, that was a good way to keep them from opening it all the way, at least?
The ride home had been through a longer than usual route, hitting the bay for a quick test to prove that her hover bike would, in fact, go over water without issue. Not that she expected any differently, but the proof was nice. After that she'd made her way home, carefully avoiding Skidmark when she'd gotten close enough to spot him. She didn't know what he was doing, but he was easy enough to go around, after which getting home hadn't taken long.
"Taylor!" Danny yelled as Taylor entered the house. She made her way into the living room, where the news was on showing the container ship being flown off. "Come grab a beer to celebrate! Kurt and Lacey will be by with takeout shortly."
Taylor shook her head, but grabbed a beer anyway. "I take it you're happy."
"I know you said some of your extra earnings might go towards this, but having it happen? Of course I'm happy!"
"We're here with Dragon," the reporter on the screen said. "Who orchestrated today's monumental event. So, Dragon, what brought this about?"
"The PRT contacted me, acting as an intermediary for an undisclosed third party," Dragon said. "Admittedly, they expected it to take much longer, but I decided to put a higher priority on the request. You could consider it a Mother's Day gift of sorts."
Taylor blinked, and ran that through her head. After some parsing she still wasn't sure if she'd just heard what she thought she'd heard. "What?"
"Max?" Brad said as he entered. Max looked up at the other man, wondering why he looked so worried.
"What's wrong?" Max asked. He didn't like it when his second in command was worried, given that he was usually overconfident. He had enough to deal with given all the trouble the PRT was giving Medhall these days, on top of the Empire not having recovered from losing several capes. The only saving grace there was that Lung had been oddly mellow as of late.
"We're fairly certain that Maul's new toy isn't intended to mock us. Scare the crap out of us given that Leet made it maybe, but not mock us. Still, er, well..."
"What else?" Not that trusting her life to something that dangerous probably wasn't enough, granted. Was the girl insane?
"She all but told us that the rumors about what happened with Eidolon are true."
"What rumors?" He hadn't heard any rumors, but he also hadn't looked over all the reports from the moles yet.
"The ones that say that Eidolon was impatient and rude with her, so she took him down for a couple hours and forced him into a therapy session."
Max blinked, and ran that through his head. It didn't make sense, so he tried again. "What?"
- Location
- North America
PHO PHO PHO PHO PHO!
- Location
- SoCal, USA
And now I'm hungry. Thanks.
Also I second that, I really want to see people's reactions to Chinese whispers of "So that Ward Maul? Apparently she no-sold Eidolon."
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Hookwolf's Gift (CmptrWz)
Taylor looked down at the Empire thug waving a white flag. What was with the Empire and waving white flags at her lately? She looked over at Missy, who shrugged, and then Dennis, who also shrugged. Sighing, she called it in, and got the go-ahead to approach him.
A couple of hops down, since she wasn't using her platform today, and she'd reached ground level. The thug had backed off slightly when she'd done so, making her wonder what was going on.
"My apologies for interrupting your patrol," the thug said, bowing. "But I was tasked with giving you a gift. Hookwolf understands that you don't really need them, but he felt the sentiment behind them needed to be expressed."
A second thug carefully approached with a box, stopping a few feet away from Taylor. They placed the box on the ground and backed off, then both thugs left the area quickly. Taylor's tinker snark said there wasn't anything it would call 'technology' inside the box, but that didn't mean it was safe. So she backed up and lightly hit it with her projected fist, causing the cardboard to tear and the contents to spill out onto the ground.
"Are those brass balls?" Dennis asked. "Why would Hookwolf give you two large brass balls?"
A couple of hops down, since she wasn't using her platform today, and she'd reached ground level. The thug had backed off slightly when she'd done so, making her wonder what was going on.
"My apologies for interrupting your patrol," the thug said, bowing. "But I was tasked with giving you a gift. Hookwolf understands that you don't really need them, but he felt the sentiment behind them needed to be expressed."
A second thug carefully approached with a box, stopping a few feet away from Taylor. They placed the box on the ground and backed off, then both thugs left the area quickly. Taylor's tinker snark said there wasn't anything it would call 'technology' inside the box, but that didn't mean it was safe. So she backed up and lightly hit it with her projected fist, causing the cardboard to tear and the contents to spill out onto the ground.
"Are those brass balls?" Dennis asked. "Why would Hookwolf give you two large brass balls?"