Archeo Lumiere
The Prince's Archivist
- Location
- Lumiose City, Kalos
- Pronouns
- He/Him/They/Them
Accurate, it grows on moderately tall, leafy plants that take quite a bit of effort to cultivate.
Troy Guffey
Irresponsible Parasite
- Location
- Western Missouri, USA
Many abandoned roadsides beg to differ. (on the effort)
Archeo Lumiere
The Prince's Archivist
- Location
- Lumiose City, Kalos
- Pronouns
- He/Him/They/Them
Correction, properly cultivate. If you don't tend your weed right, you don't maximize your THC output. Untended roadside weed is low to mids.
- Location
- Earth, Sol System, Virgo Supercluster, Earth-1218
Wow Amy, upping your game there, that's pretty close to an actual date!
Jordisk
<Unverified N00B>
- Location
- Blind Eternities
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Just wait, they might progress so far as...handholding. How lewd of them.
LostArchivist
Sane, unfortunately.
- Location
- The State of Confusion
I should have known better.
I wonder what the reaction will be when it's discovered that not only do they have an absurdly huge personal pocket space, but that they have several of them now!
That spiderbot trick is horrifying in its implications. I don't know how smart the thing is, but it's now capable of producing a small orbital railgun inside that room if it gets free access to it. Or it can use multiple access points like Maul and Panacea are already discussing to effectively teleport places.
I wonder if there'll be some offhand mention of the Simurgh getting occasionally pelted with arbitrary debris when she happens to pass over Brockton Bay now.
How large are these crystals again? I have to wonder how much organ space they are taking up now. She's got what, four in there?! Or what security might think when she tries to take a flight anywhere.
I wonder what the reaction will be when it's discovered that not only do they have an absurdly huge personal pocket space, but that they have several of them now!
That spiderbot trick is horrifying in its implications. I don't know how smart the thing is, but it's now capable of producing a small orbital railgun inside that room if it gets free access to it. Or it can use multiple access points like Maul and Panacea are already discussing to effectively teleport places.
I wonder if there'll be some offhand mention of the Simurgh getting occasionally pelted with arbitrary debris when she happens to pass over Brockton Bay now.
How large are these crystals again? I have to wonder how much organ space they are taking up now. She's got what, four in there?! Or what security might think when she tries to take a flight anywhere.
- Location
- Jackson, Alabama
I seriously doubt that Dragon will EVER let Mother fly commercial.
Chapter 210
Taylor had made it home to find that her father hadn't even bothered to get properly dressed all day, but he was working on figuring out what to do about dinner. She ended up showing him the new pocket dimension spaces, then installing the adapters for multiple key crystals in her closet and the garage. She dropped in crystals for the new shared space and Ackbar's space into both, since neither was going to be exposed to third parties installing things. The other two key crystals for each would be installed at a later point.
Joey's kits had included a full suite of opening devices. Taylor had taken her new personal set and Ackbar's home by dropping them both in her new personal pocket dimension, but left the 'shared' set for Amy. Or at least that was her intention, Amy's response to that had been to drop the entire set into the new shared pocket dimension as though to dare Taylor to object. The only reaction to that was an eyeroll, which had caused Amy's smirk to change to a pout.
Still, since Joey had handed over free additional opening devices and all, it only made sense to use some of them. Specifically, she was going to add one of the pistol-style devices to her Maul utility belt the next day. Whether or not it would ever be useful was an entirely different question. Then again, dropping most of her 'extra' equipment into one of the pocket dimensions instead of her closet in the Wards area would make it much more accessible.
The only other thing she ensured that she'd completed that evening before dinner was sending a message off asking if there were any already-prepared targeting beacons that she was permitted to know the codes for outside of Brockton Bay, with a note that any suitable for the Dallons would be appreciated as well. Something that had come about because she'd noted that she still couldn't leave the area with the pocket dimensions currently and her father had asked if the PRT had beacons elsewhere just in case.
After dinner Taylor had opted to watch the evening news with her father while reading through various things on her visor. The bulk of the focus for the local news had been the patrol where Ryan and Sandy were brought down the Boardwalk by Dennis and Missy. They hadn't run into any trouble, but Sandy had gotten quite a bit of attention by riding a stone animal. It wasn't defined well enough to properly identify, but based on the tail people were assuming it was based on a dog or wolf. She also didn't have exceptionally good control of it yet, but had noticeably improved by the time they left the Boardwalk.
The reporter covering things had commended Dennis and Missy for ensuring that the two younger Wards had plenty of space throughout their trip, not allowing the crowds to overwhelm the kids. At the same time, though, they brought up the general question of whether or not such young children should be out patrolling at all, no matter how safe the areas they were passing through were considered to be. On that front the PRT had given a statement reminding people that the three youngest Wards fell under rules that required that two older parahumans, Protectorate members or the older Wards, to be with the younger ones on all patrols. Further, on non-patrol activities they would also need an older parahuman present, at least one for each of the younger Wards participating.
After that segment her father had shaken his head. "I understand that you get to work with at least one of the new Wards tomorrow."
Taylor nodded. "Yep."
"They had no trouble today. Do you expect that to continue into tomorrow?"
"I can only hope for the best and plan for the worst. And since the Fallen seem to have finally left town?"
"Are you hoping that some forgotten bikers will come after you?"
She shrugged at that. "I might get to punch them in defense of the kids, so I'm not sure it would be a bad thing if some do show up."
Sunday morning Taylor made her way to the PRT building, meeting up with Amy, Vicky, and Missy in the gym. Amy had been fully expected, but Vicky and Missy were a bit of a surprise.
"So what brings you two in this morning?" Taylor asked as they all changed.
"I snuck out before my parents could wake up," Missy admitted. "They were drinking last night, and they aren't pleasant with hangovers."
The other three winced lightly at that, and Vicky quickly piped in with her answer. "I'm supposed to be joining in on something with the new Wards. Not sure what yet, but something."
That was news to Taylor, but then again she hadn't examined today's schedule all that much beyond knowing she and Dean were both supposed to be around. Though doing so at that point didn't show anything relating to Vicky participating in anything, so apparently she had no obvious warning either way.
Their workout went without much issue, with Dean joining them about halfway through. Apparently he hadn't bothered to get up quite as early as the rest of them. Of course, three of the four girls were artificial brutes and needed a much more intense workout if using their enhanced strength. And that might end up being all four in the next couple of months. Afterwards they all had breakfast, or a second breakfast in both Amy and Taylor's cases, before splitting up.
Amy had opted to tinker today, apparently having a request for a prosthetic limb that she had enough information to work with. Taylor and Dean had to get ready to do Wards stuff while Vicky plopped down on the couch in the Wards area waiting to find out what she'd be helping with. And Missy stuck around with her schoolwork, apparently deciding to get ahead while away from her possibly-fighting but most likely unpleasant to be around parents for the morning.
Taylor ended up slipping into her personal tinker workshop to do minor maintenance on things while they waited for the kids to show up. She was probably going to want to bring her platform down at some point to do somewhat routine maintenance on it as well, for that matter, but she had enough to do for the moment with the Snitch, scout drone, and the weapon harness on one of her jackets to keep her busy enough for the moment.
She packed up as soon as she felt that Ryan and Sandy were approaching, apparently in a single vehicle from the way they were moving. Rosa wasn't scheduled to be joining them, but tinkers tended to need to build up before starting field work and all. Assuming she ever would end up doing patrols, anyway. It wasn't like Trevor patrolled, for example, so without a need or desire it might just end up that Rosa spent most of her time working on various tinker projects.
"So I called Dennis to find out what the hell the plan is for today," Dean said as Taylor came out into the common area. "He apparently assumed I'd figure things out with no hints beyond who showed up and the stack of papers on the desk in his room. That, you know, none of us would've noticed. Seems he already found non-combat stuff for Dryad and Soundstone and wanted us to give them a try."
Taylor nodded. "That makes some sense, except why would Vicky be needed for that?"
"Dryad would be out in the open on the edge of gang territory removing large stones from a lot prior to construction. Vicky would be added protection from idiots in that case, and as much as I'd like to be there I think I'd be better off with Soundstone since his task would be in a men's changing room, hunting down a whistling sound. Assuming the two kids agree to the non-patrol tasks, anyway."
"They'll be down shortly for us to ask them."
True to Taylor's statement, Ryan and Sandy arrived a couple minutes later. Except that they spent several minutes outside the door to the Wards area before finally opening it. Both of them had their phones out, and both phones appeared to have dead batteries. Dean apparently realized what the problem was, based on his sigh.
"Throw your phones on the charging station," Dean said, gesturing to the pile of charging cables. "Did either of you lock your room when you left yesterday?"
"I think I did?" Sandy admitted.
Taylor shook her head. "I'll get her in if she did."
It turned out that the younger girl had locked her room, but someone had the foresight to ensure that others had access. That meant that Taylor didn't even have to use administrative overrides, since the access list included her. Presumably as the oldest female Ward or something like that, either that or because she was officially trained for administrative things now. Of course, if that hadn't been the case then she'd have just flipped one of her phones to a guest login and let the girl log in long enough to unlock the door anyway.
As she came back to the common area she did have to wonder about a couple of things. "I assume they came through thanks to Sandy using the retinal scanners and such, but how would Ryan get down here alone with a dead phone?"
That had Dean and Missy looking at her, then at the personal rooms hallway. Neither of them had an answer. Not wanting to ask Ryan and embarrass him further, instead she submitted the question through the PRT app.
Taylor brought her platform down outside of the empty lot to allow Sandy to climb off of it. The girl had been torn between grabbing onto Taylor for support and not grabbing onto Taylor's clothing, which had enough plant material included to make her uncomfortable. At least at first. Once they got going she'd switched to being amazed at the flying. Vicky had snorted at that as she flew alongside them, but hadn't said anything more.
"That was cool," Sandy said as she grinned. She then looked around. "Is someone supposed to be here?"
Vicky landed next to the girl. "We're early, they've got ten minutes or so before the time they told Maul they'd be here."
"Oh."
Taylor set the scout drone to running a circuit around the area so that she and Vicky didn't have to leave Sandy alone to do a basic sweep, instead gesturing to the lot they'd landed outside of. "As I understand it, once the owner shows up to give permission, your task will be to get all the large stones out of the ground in this lot, down at least ten but not more than fifteen meters. Er, around thirty to fifty feet? Do you get distance numbers from stones?"
Sandy shook her head. "How long is a meter? Or a feet?"
"A foot is twelve inches." Thinking, Taylor grinned after a moment, grabbing two stones off of the ground. She then placed one down in front of Sandy before moving the other one a foot away. "This is about one foot." When the girl nodded Taylor moved the stone further away. "This is about one meter." Sandy was grinning now as she nodded, and Taylor moved further away. "This is about thirty feet." The ten and fifteen meter points followed, and she ended with the fifty foot mark.
Vicky had just shaken her head at the display, then started looking around. If you didn't know about the augmented patrol app then you might assume she was just looking around in a circle around them aimlessly, but she was actually generally following the path of the scout drone. It highlighted lots of knives in the area, but most of them appeared to be in kitchens and the like. Very few people were moving around the area, but eventually a car approached and parked on the street next to the lot.
"Good morning," the man who got out of the car called.
"Mister Dalton?" Taylor asked.
"That's me." He then turned to Sandy. "So, Dryad is it?" Sandy nodded, but shrank back when the man held out a bandage-covered hand. "Is something...oh, right. My bandages, cotton and all, they said something about that during your introduction. Sorry about that." He instead gestured to the empty lot. "How about we take a quick look at the lot instead?"
It wasn't long before Sandy was pulling up stones through the ground, which wasn't leaving the lot in all that good condition. Then again, a lot of digging was going to be done to put in a foundation, so Mister Dalton didn't care about that beyond needing to watch his step. Eventually Sandy was pulling up pebbles more than stones and Mister Dalton had her stop, feeling that she'd done enough there.
"Hmmm," he said as he looked at the pile of stones. "I don't suppose you have any idea how to make a wall?"
Sandy looked at him, then at the stones. "Pile them in a line?"
He chuckled at that. "Probably too much to expect of you, I'm sure you'll figure things like that out eventually."
That caused the younger girl to look disappointed, presumably because she didn't like not being able to do something with the stones. Taylor shook her head as she came over. "If you want, we can make a quick pass by a couple of walls like he was talking about on our way back, but you'll need to figure out how to build them on your own."
Sandy nodded, but while her frown lessened it didn't entirely go away. She felt a little better when Mister Dalton had her move all of the stones to the corner of the lot, and she was able to ignore her dislike of plant products enough to accept a coupon the man gave her for an ice cream, even if it wasn't clear if she'd use said coupon. After that Taylor kept her promise and showed the girl a couple of fieldstone walls, one of which had been partially knocked down recently in a park. That let Sandy see more of how they were put together, but Taylor and Vicky both agreed that she should play with figuring how to make them with her own collection of stones instead of with someone else's.
At Vicky's suggestion they also looked at a couple of other examples of stone walls on their way back to the PRT building, to show what a more planned wall also looked like. By the time they got back to the PRT building itself Sandy wanted to do nothing more than go play with the stone supply they had for her, but Taylor insisted that they eat lunch first. That led to Taylor cooking lunch, but that was fine by her. Missy was long gone for the day, but Amy and Vicky joined them.
Riley carefully checked the various animal parts that she'd been working on. They weren't quite ready, but they would be soon. Adapting them for her plans was annoying, but would most certainly be worth it. Really, she wished that she'd had the idea years ago, but it'd only come to her the day before when she was trying to decide how to do something 'horrible' to the kids that the police had written off as dead.
Just healing them after their bus had been destroyed in the accident with a tanker truck went against their reputation, after all. Even if nobody realized that they had them and they could theoretically just dump them after the critical fixes had been made and move on. Someone would probably pick up on the fact that the accident hadn't been as universally fatal as reported and put things together with the Nine being seen in the area. Besides, this way would be far more fun.
Granted, one of the kids and both of the adults on the bus had died before Fred and Sarah had pulled them out of the wreckage, but the other six had survived long enough for Riley to stabilize them. But since nobody knew they had the kids due to the police being morons and all they couldn't 'reluctantly' leave them behind while the Protectorate made a rescue attempt. Of all the days for something like that to not have a pile of people with cameras watching, right?
As a result, Riley was going to be using the kids as test subjects for horrible abuses of the natural order, as well as for non-secure Bluetooth tests. Not that she thought the Bluetooth would be a problem, she had that down by now, but they might need to send the entire group to Brockton Bay to have Amy fix them up from the rest of what was being done to them. That dropping the kids in a park, healthy if in unusual states, would be part of their distraction for their departure was an added bonus.
Deciding that she needed to wait a couple more hours on the animal parts, she moved back to where she was working with the corpses she'd ended up with. The villain who'd actually caused the tanker accident had been stripped of their brain, but would provide some of the raw biological material needed for her other departure distraction. The woman had claimed that she never meant to hurt kids, but that happened to be beside the point. She'd successfully torn off Mimi's arm, after all, and that had been a pain to fix while keeping the kids stable.
Taylor had ended up sticking around for a bit, even though they were 'done' for the day, supervising Sandy as she worked with her stone supply. The girl really wanted to figure out how to make a wall with stones, and most of her attempts so far weren't all that stable. Even if having Taylor push on them wasn't necessarily a perfect indicator of 'suitable' in this case, especially as most of them were freestanding and had no supports to speak of available in the room. Sandy didn't want help yet, so Taylor hadn't pointed that detail out.
It was actually fascinating watching the girl start figuring out that her power let her take unsuitable stones and make them suitable. It would probably be a while before she reached a point where she was making things that others would consider usable, of course, but so far she was making good progress. Taylor had even sent a message off to Zelda recommending that she look into reading material involving building with stone going forward.
Of course, Taylor was also doing her own studying while Sandy worked. Amy and Vicky had headed home, but Ryan and Dean hadn't come back from whatever they were working on yet. Apparently it was taking longer to find whatever they were looking for than they'd originally thought it would. Either that or something else had come up from finding their original goal, it was hard to tell without calling them.
Amy: Looks like Carol bragged about the pocket dimensions to Sarah this morning, before heading out for the day.
Taylor: Really?
Amy: Yep. Apparently it was a betrayal of the New Wave principles or something like that to not do her best to extend it to the entire group.
Taylor: That doesn't exactly sound fair, since it wasn't someone in New Wave doing the work.
Amy: I might mention that to her when she stops screaming.
Taylor: Oh, so this is an ongoing argument?
Amy: Yep. Though with Sarah and Mark, since Carol isn't back from meeting with Joey.
Taylor: Sounds annoying.
She let Amy get back to things while moving over to Sandy's latest wall, looking over it. "You want to see if this one holds up to being pushed?"
Sandy nodded. "Please?"
Taylor braced herself, then pushed against the middle of the wall. Like every other attempt, after a moment the wall fell over. Unlike the other attempts, the entire wall fell over instead of the top coming off. Blinking, she knelt down and looked at the stones. "Did you connect the stones to each other?"
"Yep! Like Ryan's building toys. Kinda."
It wasn't hard to tell that there were now depressions in the bottoms of the stones and protrusions coming from the tops. Really, it wasn't a bad idea, and was essentially her making giant building blocks of her own. Kinda. "If you get good enough at making them this way then other people could build with them too."
Sandy seemed to like that idea as well, but then looked over the stones she'd already changed. "Can I try and build a castle?"
"I'm going to say no for now. Maybe your mother will let you try that at home?"
Luckily, Taylor had already developed high puppy-dog pout resistance.
Taylor ended up joining the entirety of New Wave for dinner that evening, her and Dean attending dinner at the Pelham household in an attempt to clear out the argument that had sprung up between the two families. Sarah didn't want to listen to reason from anyone with a pocket dimension space, Carol was apparently unwilling to think too much about it for the time being after her meeting with Joey, and neither Mark nor Neil knew how to clear things up.
Luckily, Danny had been trying to decide if he should accept an invitation from Kurt and Lacey, not wanting to abandon Taylor for the evening or make her feel obligated to tag along. The visit to the Pelhams removed any problems there, so he'd be out for the evening as well. Sadly, this being a visit to the home of the alcohol parahumans in town meant that he was likely to end up drunk, but he had Labor Day off so he could make his way home in the morning.
"I don't get the problem," Dean said after Sarah had ranted for fifteen minutes. Which had still been more comfortable than the tense, mostly-silent dinner had been. "Carol was able to get herself as well as Vicky and Mark cleared by the PRT to meet the parahuman. Surely you can't be angry with her over the PRT not clearing your family to meet with them?"
Sarah looked ready to start ranting again, but Eric interrupted before she could get started. "Wait, hold up. Shouldn't Aunt Carol have needed to get Amy cleared too?"
Amy was the first to roll her eyes, but Taylor wasn't far behind her. Still, it was Amy who answered that one. "I'm sorry, but did you forget that I had access to one of the pocket dimensions before the rest of my family did?"
"You're cleared for a lot more than most," Neil agreed. "It comes with your healing and connection to Taylor. I think that Sarah's concern stems from Carol not going through the hoops, or helping Sarah go through the hoops, for the rest of us."
"Because she had to start by pointing out some of what they're already cleared to know about thanks to living with Amy," Taylor snapped. "They've been read into several higher level than usual secrets due to the association and were put through the checks to get a higher base security clearance than the rest of New Wave has as a side effect of that. Besides, I suspect that half the reason she got things added to the list was specifically so that the parahuman could ask her for legal advice instead of a PRT lawyer."
Sarah didn't seem to like that, but also didn't seem to have an immediate argument to counter it. Crystal and Eric had thoughtful looks on their faces, though this time it was the former that spoke up. "Can you tell us what caused Amy to be made aware of the parahuman in the first place?"
Amy snorted. "A walking cape detector steps into the same state as TinkerTechCon. How many PRT-affiliated tinkers are they likely going to need to be read in on in some fashion as a result?"
That was enough to get Sarah to blink a couple of times, though she continued to frown. "I suppose having a tinker involved would answer a number of questions."
Taylor nodded. "A tinker that was medically and psychologically evaluated at different points as well, and whose trick in creating the pocket dimensions is flagged as a high-level PRT secret for their own safety."
That seemed to have been enough to calm Sarah down, though they talked about it for another half hour before ice cream was brought out for dessert. They were in the middle of eating that when a text message came through on Taylor's phone. A group message, Amy not being unexpected. That Missy had included Joey was the unexpected element.
M: Where the hell are you two?
T: New Wave dinner, Pelham residence.
M: Damn. We should've tried there when we were at Amy's. You heading home anytime soon?
A: Did something happen?
J: We found out that Missy's powers don't play nice with my tech.
J: You could call the resulting discoveries explosive, even.
M: Long story short, we were hoping for one of you two to be available to heal us.
Taylor sighed, looking over at Amy. "I think I should pop home, if only to see how badly they screwed up."
Amy nodded. "That makes sense. Though would it be faster for them to come this way?"
"Nah. I left key crystals installed, so I'll use that as a shortcut."
"You...holy crap, why didn't I think of that before?"
T: I'll be home shortly to take a look at you two.
J: Thanks.
M: Yeah. I don't want to see how my parents would react to my injuries.
Taylor quickly finished her ice cream, then was followed outside by everyone. Even if why she had to head home hadn't been volunteered. She pulled a pistol opener from her utility belt and fired it at the side of the house, the dark green glow not sticking out too badly at this point in the evening. She then walked her moped into it, hitting the opener to close down the portal as she moved over to the 'open from the inside' device. It was far easier to use than the opener devices, after all. It didn't take long for a portal to the garage at home to open up, and she walked the moped through that portal and out into the driveway.
She found Missy and Joey sitting on the front steps, with a PRT van in the driveway. Shrugging, she closed the portal across the garage door, shut off the alarm, and turned her moped around. She then called out to them before triggering the garage door opener. "Come on in you two."
They were obviously startled by Taylor's call, presumably because she hadn't ridden up to the house like they'd expected her to. But they came around to the garage door a moment later anyway. Taylor waved to the PRT officer in the van, who appeared to be grinning, before closing the garage door. Joey had spotted the pocket dimension opening device installed alongside the garage door by then and was shaking his head, obviously having figured out how she'd arrived.
Once she'd brought them into the house proper she turned to look at them. "So what did you two do? And should you have come here, I don't think my father is cleared to know much about Joey?"
"The PRT doesn't actually control my cape identity either way," Joey noted, even as he was lifting his shirt to show blood-spotted bandages wrapped around his chest. "Though they do like to put people through high security clearance checks to find out about it for various reasons and protect info on some of what I can do more seriously. And, well, I now know to never try and shrink my opening devices by taking advantage of space Missy here has expanded."
Missy nodded. "His stuff and what I do are very incompatible on that level. Of course, we only realized how incompatible after I'd discovered that I can't anchor expansions to the insides of any pocket dimensions he makes, even the one he made for me."
Taylor looked at Joey, who shrugged. "Riley insisted that I check with her on things."
Sighing, she held her hand out, and he took it. Fixing the likely shrapnel wounds didn't take long. She then turned to Missy. "So, do you have a spare key for your pocket dimension?"
Missy just looked confused. "I've got a bag full. Why?"
Joey grinned. "Because she can put one inside of you so you never lose it."
Taylor was holding a crystal a moment later, but grabbed Missy before she could take her shirt off. "How about we go upstairs instead of having you undress in front of Joey here? Riley might take offense, after all."
Missy blinked, then blushed and nodded. Taylor brought her upstairs and slipped the crystal onto the backside of the girl's sternum, healing the other relatively minor wounds in the process. She then helped remove the last of the bandages before Missy put her bra and shirt back on. They then went back downstairs, only to find that Joey had apparently removed his own bandages while they were upstairs.
"So you two played with combining abilities today?" Taylor questioned.
Joey nodded. "She's got the first twenty meter cube I've seen, possibly because of how her power works. Doubled everything in a ten meter cube, perhaps? But she can't anchor things to the pocket dimensions, even if she can otherwise manipulate space in them. So she can't make them bigger directly."
Missy was bouncing lightly in excitement. "I should be able to make enclosed rooms in them bigger, though! So long as the pocket dimension walls aren't included in the anchoring, anyway."
"I just wish we knew why you can create portals in expanded areas, but expanding the inside of the opening devices to make them smaller fails. It makes all kinds of things that I was hoping to be able to do impossible."
Taylor shrugged. "I wouldn't know where to begin figuring that one out. But did you try putting the entire opening device in an expanded space and just running the controls to outside of it?"
Joey nodded. "That's the one that caught us with the surprisingly energetic explosion. It actually works fine if you're using the key crystal installed in the opener, which is why we walked up to it in the first place. But if I'm using my powers or, presumably, someone is using an embedded key from outside then the thing explodes."
"Well, good luck figuring that out, assuming you ever can. I imagine you two need to get going, though."
Five minutes later the PRT van was long gone and Taylor was in the kitchen preparing a late dinner for Ackbar. She didn't want to know what kind of explosion had been needed to cause both of them to need that much healing even after having time for their bodies to start patching them up.
Joey's kits had included a full suite of opening devices. Taylor had taken her new personal set and Ackbar's home by dropping them both in her new personal pocket dimension, but left the 'shared' set for Amy. Or at least that was her intention, Amy's response to that had been to drop the entire set into the new shared pocket dimension as though to dare Taylor to object. The only reaction to that was an eyeroll, which had caused Amy's smirk to change to a pout.
Still, since Joey had handed over free additional opening devices and all, it only made sense to use some of them. Specifically, she was going to add one of the pistol-style devices to her Maul utility belt the next day. Whether or not it would ever be useful was an entirely different question. Then again, dropping most of her 'extra' equipment into one of the pocket dimensions instead of her closet in the Wards area would make it much more accessible.
The only other thing she ensured that she'd completed that evening before dinner was sending a message off asking if there were any already-prepared targeting beacons that she was permitted to know the codes for outside of Brockton Bay, with a note that any suitable for the Dallons would be appreciated as well. Something that had come about because she'd noted that she still couldn't leave the area with the pocket dimensions currently and her father had asked if the PRT had beacons elsewhere just in case.
After dinner Taylor had opted to watch the evening news with her father while reading through various things on her visor. The bulk of the focus for the local news had been the patrol where Ryan and Sandy were brought down the Boardwalk by Dennis and Missy. They hadn't run into any trouble, but Sandy had gotten quite a bit of attention by riding a stone animal. It wasn't defined well enough to properly identify, but based on the tail people were assuming it was based on a dog or wolf. She also didn't have exceptionally good control of it yet, but had noticeably improved by the time they left the Boardwalk.
The reporter covering things had commended Dennis and Missy for ensuring that the two younger Wards had plenty of space throughout their trip, not allowing the crowds to overwhelm the kids. At the same time, though, they brought up the general question of whether or not such young children should be out patrolling at all, no matter how safe the areas they were passing through were considered to be. On that front the PRT had given a statement reminding people that the three youngest Wards fell under rules that required that two older parahumans, Protectorate members or the older Wards, to be with the younger ones on all patrols. Further, on non-patrol activities they would also need an older parahuman present, at least one for each of the younger Wards participating.
After that segment her father had shaken his head. "I understand that you get to work with at least one of the new Wards tomorrow."
Taylor nodded. "Yep."
"They had no trouble today. Do you expect that to continue into tomorrow?"
"I can only hope for the best and plan for the worst. And since the Fallen seem to have finally left town?"
"Are you hoping that some forgotten bikers will come after you?"
She shrugged at that. "I might get to punch them in defense of the kids, so I'm not sure it would be a bad thing if some do show up."
Sunday morning Taylor made her way to the PRT building, meeting up with Amy, Vicky, and Missy in the gym. Amy had been fully expected, but Vicky and Missy were a bit of a surprise.
"So what brings you two in this morning?" Taylor asked as they all changed.
"I snuck out before my parents could wake up," Missy admitted. "They were drinking last night, and they aren't pleasant with hangovers."
The other three winced lightly at that, and Vicky quickly piped in with her answer. "I'm supposed to be joining in on something with the new Wards. Not sure what yet, but something."
That was news to Taylor, but then again she hadn't examined today's schedule all that much beyond knowing she and Dean were both supposed to be around. Though doing so at that point didn't show anything relating to Vicky participating in anything, so apparently she had no obvious warning either way.
Their workout went without much issue, with Dean joining them about halfway through. Apparently he hadn't bothered to get up quite as early as the rest of them. Of course, three of the four girls were artificial brutes and needed a much more intense workout if using their enhanced strength. And that might end up being all four in the next couple of months. Afterwards they all had breakfast, or a second breakfast in both Amy and Taylor's cases, before splitting up.
Amy had opted to tinker today, apparently having a request for a prosthetic limb that she had enough information to work with. Taylor and Dean had to get ready to do Wards stuff while Vicky plopped down on the couch in the Wards area waiting to find out what she'd be helping with. And Missy stuck around with her schoolwork, apparently deciding to get ahead while away from her possibly-fighting but most likely unpleasant to be around parents for the morning.
Taylor ended up slipping into her personal tinker workshop to do minor maintenance on things while they waited for the kids to show up. She was probably going to want to bring her platform down at some point to do somewhat routine maintenance on it as well, for that matter, but she had enough to do for the moment with the Snitch, scout drone, and the weapon harness on one of her jackets to keep her busy enough for the moment.
She packed up as soon as she felt that Ryan and Sandy were approaching, apparently in a single vehicle from the way they were moving. Rosa wasn't scheduled to be joining them, but tinkers tended to need to build up before starting field work and all. Assuming she ever would end up doing patrols, anyway. It wasn't like Trevor patrolled, for example, so without a need or desire it might just end up that Rosa spent most of her time working on various tinker projects.
"So I called Dennis to find out what the hell the plan is for today," Dean said as Taylor came out into the common area. "He apparently assumed I'd figure things out with no hints beyond who showed up and the stack of papers on the desk in his room. That, you know, none of us would've noticed. Seems he already found non-combat stuff for Dryad and Soundstone and wanted us to give them a try."
Taylor nodded. "That makes some sense, except why would Vicky be needed for that?"
"Dryad would be out in the open on the edge of gang territory removing large stones from a lot prior to construction. Vicky would be added protection from idiots in that case, and as much as I'd like to be there I think I'd be better off with Soundstone since his task would be in a men's changing room, hunting down a whistling sound. Assuming the two kids agree to the non-patrol tasks, anyway."
"They'll be down shortly for us to ask them."
True to Taylor's statement, Ryan and Sandy arrived a couple minutes later. Except that they spent several minutes outside the door to the Wards area before finally opening it. Both of them had their phones out, and both phones appeared to have dead batteries. Dean apparently realized what the problem was, based on his sigh.
"Throw your phones on the charging station," Dean said, gesturing to the pile of charging cables. "Did either of you lock your room when you left yesterday?"
"I think I did?" Sandy admitted.
Taylor shook her head. "I'll get her in if she did."
It turned out that the younger girl had locked her room, but someone had the foresight to ensure that others had access. That meant that Taylor didn't even have to use administrative overrides, since the access list included her. Presumably as the oldest female Ward or something like that, either that or because she was officially trained for administrative things now. Of course, if that hadn't been the case then she'd have just flipped one of her phones to a guest login and let the girl log in long enough to unlock the door anyway.
As she came back to the common area she did have to wonder about a couple of things. "I assume they came through thanks to Sandy using the retinal scanners and such, but how would Ryan get down here alone with a dead phone?"
That had Dean and Missy looking at her, then at the personal rooms hallway. Neither of them had an answer. Not wanting to ask Ryan and embarrass him further, instead she submitted the question through the PRT app.
Taylor brought her platform down outside of the empty lot to allow Sandy to climb off of it. The girl had been torn between grabbing onto Taylor for support and not grabbing onto Taylor's clothing, which had enough plant material included to make her uncomfortable. At least at first. Once they got going she'd switched to being amazed at the flying. Vicky had snorted at that as she flew alongside them, but hadn't said anything more.
"That was cool," Sandy said as she grinned. She then looked around. "Is someone supposed to be here?"
Vicky landed next to the girl. "We're early, they've got ten minutes or so before the time they told Maul they'd be here."
"Oh."
Taylor set the scout drone to running a circuit around the area so that she and Vicky didn't have to leave Sandy alone to do a basic sweep, instead gesturing to the lot they'd landed outside of. "As I understand it, once the owner shows up to give permission, your task will be to get all the large stones out of the ground in this lot, down at least ten but not more than fifteen meters. Er, around thirty to fifty feet? Do you get distance numbers from stones?"
Sandy shook her head. "How long is a meter? Or a feet?"
"A foot is twelve inches." Thinking, Taylor grinned after a moment, grabbing two stones off of the ground. She then placed one down in front of Sandy before moving the other one a foot away. "This is about one foot." When the girl nodded Taylor moved the stone further away. "This is about one meter." Sandy was grinning now as she nodded, and Taylor moved further away. "This is about thirty feet." The ten and fifteen meter points followed, and she ended with the fifty foot mark.
Vicky had just shaken her head at the display, then started looking around. If you didn't know about the augmented patrol app then you might assume she was just looking around in a circle around them aimlessly, but she was actually generally following the path of the scout drone. It highlighted lots of knives in the area, but most of them appeared to be in kitchens and the like. Very few people were moving around the area, but eventually a car approached and parked on the street next to the lot.
"Good morning," the man who got out of the car called.
"Mister Dalton?" Taylor asked.
"That's me." He then turned to Sandy. "So, Dryad is it?" Sandy nodded, but shrank back when the man held out a bandage-covered hand. "Is something...oh, right. My bandages, cotton and all, they said something about that during your introduction. Sorry about that." He instead gestured to the empty lot. "How about we take a quick look at the lot instead?"
It wasn't long before Sandy was pulling up stones through the ground, which wasn't leaving the lot in all that good condition. Then again, a lot of digging was going to be done to put in a foundation, so Mister Dalton didn't care about that beyond needing to watch his step. Eventually Sandy was pulling up pebbles more than stones and Mister Dalton had her stop, feeling that she'd done enough there.
"Hmmm," he said as he looked at the pile of stones. "I don't suppose you have any idea how to make a wall?"
Sandy looked at him, then at the stones. "Pile them in a line?"
He chuckled at that. "Probably too much to expect of you, I'm sure you'll figure things like that out eventually."
That caused the younger girl to look disappointed, presumably because she didn't like not being able to do something with the stones. Taylor shook her head as she came over. "If you want, we can make a quick pass by a couple of walls like he was talking about on our way back, but you'll need to figure out how to build them on your own."
Sandy nodded, but while her frown lessened it didn't entirely go away. She felt a little better when Mister Dalton had her move all of the stones to the corner of the lot, and she was able to ignore her dislike of plant products enough to accept a coupon the man gave her for an ice cream, even if it wasn't clear if she'd use said coupon. After that Taylor kept her promise and showed the girl a couple of fieldstone walls, one of which had been partially knocked down recently in a park. That let Sandy see more of how they were put together, but Taylor and Vicky both agreed that she should play with figuring how to make them with her own collection of stones instead of with someone else's.
At Vicky's suggestion they also looked at a couple of other examples of stone walls on their way back to the PRT building, to show what a more planned wall also looked like. By the time they got back to the PRT building itself Sandy wanted to do nothing more than go play with the stone supply they had for her, but Taylor insisted that they eat lunch first. That led to Taylor cooking lunch, but that was fine by her. Missy was long gone for the day, but Amy and Vicky joined them.
Riley carefully checked the various animal parts that she'd been working on. They weren't quite ready, but they would be soon. Adapting them for her plans was annoying, but would most certainly be worth it. Really, she wished that she'd had the idea years ago, but it'd only come to her the day before when she was trying to decide how to do something 'horrible' to the kids that the police had written off as dead.
Just healing them after their bus had been destroyed in the accident with a tanker truck went against their reputation, after all. Even if nobody realized that they had them and they could theoretically just dump them after the critical fixes had been made and move on. Someone would probably pick up on the fact that the accident hadn't been as universally fatal as reported and put things together with the Nine being seen in the area. Besides, this way would be far more fun.
Granted, one of the kids and both of the adults on the bus had died before Fred and Sarah had pulled them out of the wreckage, but the other six had survived long enough for Riley to stabilize them. But since nobody knew they had the kids due to the police being morons and all they couldn't 'reluctantly' leave them behind while the Protectorate made a rescue attempt. Of all the days for something like that to not have a pile of people with cameras watching, right?
As a result, Riley was going to be using the kids as test subjects for horrible abuses of the natural order, as well as for non-secure Bluetooth tests. Not that she thought the Bluetooth would be a problem, she had that down by now, but they might need to send the entire group to Brockton Bay to have Amy fix them up from the rest of what was being done to them. That dropping the kids in a park, healthy if in unusual states, would be part of their distraction for their departure was an added bonus.
Deciding that she needed to wait a couple more hours on the animal parts, she moved back to where she was working with the corpses she'd ended up with. The villain who'd actually caused the tanker accident had been stripped of their brain, but would provide some of the raw biological material needed for her other departure distraction. The woman had claimed that she never meant to hurt kids, but that happened to be beside the point. She'd successfully torn off Mimi's arm, after all, and that had been a pain to fix while keeping the kids stable.
Taylor had ended up sticking around for a bit, even though they were 'done' for the day, supervising Sandy as she worked with her stone supply. The girl really wanted to figure out how to make a wall with stones, and most of her attempts so far weren't all that stable. Even if having Taylor push on them wasn't necessarily a perfect indicator of 'suitable' in this case, especially as most of them were freestanding and had no supports to speak of available in the room. Sandy didn't want help yet, so Taylor hadn't pointed that detail out.
It was actually fascinating watching the girl start figuring out that her power let her take unsuitable stones and make them suitable. It would probably be a while before she reached a point where she was making things that others would consider usable, of course, but so far she was making good progress. Taylor had even sent a message off to Zelda recommending that she look into reading material involving building with stone going forward.
Of course, Taylor was also doing her own studying while Sandy worked. Amy and Vicky had headed home, but Ryan and Dean hadn't come back from whatever they were working on yet. Apparently it was taking longer to find whatever they were looking for than they'd originally thought it would. Either that or something else had come up from finding their original goal, it was hard to tell without calling them.
Amy: Looks like Carol bragged about the pocket dimensions to Sarah this morning, before heading out for the day.
Taylor: Really?
Amy: Yep. Apparently it was a betrayal of the New Wave principles or something like that to not do her best to extend it to the entire group.
Taylor: That doesn't exactly sound fair, since it wasn't someone in New Wave doing the work.
Amy: I might mention that to her when she stops screaming.
Taylor: Oh, so this is an ongoing argument?
Amy: Yep. Though with Sarah and Mark, since Carol isn't back from meeting with Joey.
Taylor: Sounds annoying.
She let Amy get back to things while moving over to Sandy's latest wall, looking over it. "You want to see if this one holds up to being pushed?"
Sandy nodded. "Please?"
Taylor braced herself, then pushed against the middle of the wall. Like every other attempt, after a moment the wall fell over. Unlike the other attempts, the entire wall fell over instead of the top coming off. Blinking, she knelt down and looked at the stones. "Did you connect the stones to each other?"
"Yep! Like Ryan's building toys. Kinda."
It wasn't hard to tell that there were now depressions in the bottoms of the stones and protrusions coming from the tops. Really, it wasn't a bad idea, and was essentially her making giant building blocks of her own. Kinda. "If you get good enough at making them this way then other people could build with them too."
Sandy seemed to like that idea as well, but then looked over the stones she'd already changed. "Can I try and build a castle?"
"I'm going to say no for now. Maybe your mother will let you try that at home?"
Luckily, Taylor had already developed high puppy-dog pout resistance.
Taylor ended up joining the entirety of New Wave for dinner that evening, her and Dean attending dinner at the Pelham household in an attempt to clear out the argument that had sprung up between the two families. Sarah didn't want to listen to reason from anyone with a pocket dimension space, Carol was apparently unwilling to think too much about it for the time being after her meeting with Joey, and neither Mark nor Neil knew how to clear things up.
Luckily, Danny had been trying to decide if he should accept an invitation from Kurt and Lacey, not wanting to abandon Taylor for the evening or make her feel obligated to tag along. The visit to the Pelhams removed any problems there, so he'd be out for the evening as well. Sadly, this being a visit to the home of the alcohol parahumans in town meant that he was likely to end up drunk, but he had Labor Day off so he could make his way home in the morning.
"I don't get the problem," Dean said after Sarah had ranted for fifteen minutes. Which had still been more comfortable than the tense, mostly-silent dinner had been. "Carol was able to get herself as well as Vicky and Mark cleared by the PRT to meet the parahuman. Surely you can't be angry with her over the PRT not clearing your family to meet with them?"
Sarah looked ready to start ranting again, but Eric interrupted before she could get started. "Wait, hold up. Shouldn't Aunt Carol have needed to get Amy cleared too?"
Amy was the first to roll her eyes, but Taylor wasn't far behind her. Still, it was Amy who answered that one. "I'm sorry, but did you forget that I had access to one of the pocket dimensions before the rest of my family did?"
"You're cleared for a lot more than most," Neil agreed. "It comes with your healing and connection to Taylor. I think that Sarah's concern stems from Carol not going through the hoops, or helping Sarah go through the hoops, for the rest of us."
"Because she had to start by pointing out some of what they're already cleared to know about thanks to living with Amy," Taylor snapped. "They've been read into several higher level than usual secrets due to the association and were put through the checks to get a higher base security clearance than the rest of New Wave has as a side effect of that. Besides, I suspect that half the reason she got things added to the list was specifically so that the parahuman could ask her for legal advice instead of a PRT lawyer."
Sarah didn't seem to like that, but also didn't seem to have an immediate argument to counter it. Crystal and Eric had thoughtful looks on their faces, though this time it was the former that spoke up. "Can you tell us what caused Amy to be made aware of the parahuman in the first place?"
Amy snorted. "A walking cape detector steps into the same state as TinkerTechCon. How many PRT-affiliated tinkers are they likely going to need to be read in on in some fashion as a result?"
That was enough to get Sarah to blink a couple of times, though she continued to frown. "I suppose having a tinker involved would answer a number of questions."
Taylor nodded. "A tinker that was medically and psychologically evaluated at different points as well, and whose trick in creating the pocket dimensions is flagged as a high-level PRT secret for their own safety."
That seemed to have been enough to calm Sarah down, though they talked about it for another half hour before ice cream was brought out for dessert. They were in the middle of eating that when a text message came through on Taylor's phone. A group message, Amy not being unexpected. That Missy had included Joey was the unexpected element.
M: Where the hell are you two?
T: New Wave dinner, Pelham residence.
M: Damn. We should've tried there when we were at Amy's. You heading home anytime soon?
A: Did something happen?
J: We found out that Missy's powers don't play nice with my tech.
J: You could call the resulting discoveries explosive, even.
M: Long story short, we were hoping for one of you two to be available to heal us.
Taylor sighed, looking over at Amy. "I think I should pop home, if only to see how badly they screwed up."
Amy nodded. "That makes sense. Though would it be faster for them to come this way?"
"Nah. I left key crystals installed, so I'll use that as a shortcut."
"You...holy crap, why didn't I think of that before?"
T: I'll be home shortly to take a look at you two.
J: Thanks.
M: Yeah. I don't want to see how my parents would react to my injuries.
Taylor quickly finished her ice cream, then was followed outside by everyone. Even if why she had to head home hadn't been volunteered. She pulled a pistol opener from her utility belt and fired it at the side of the house, the dark green glow not sticking out too badly at this point in the evening. She then walked her moped into it, hitting the opener to close down the portal as she moved over to the 'open from the inside' device. It was far easier to use than the opener devices, after all. It didn't take long for a portal to the garage at home to open up, and she walked the moped through that portal and out into the driveway.
She found Missy and Joey sitting on the front steps, with a PRT van in the driveway. Shrugging, she closed the portal across the garage door, shut off the alarm, and turned her moped around. She then called out to them before triggering the garage door opener. "Come on in you two."
They were obviously startled by Taylor's call, presumably because she hadn't ridden up to the house like they'd expected her to. But they came around to the garage door a moment later anyway. Taylor waved to the PRT officer in the van, who appeared to be grinning, before closing the garage door. Joey had spotted the pocket dimension opening device installed alongside the garage door by then and was shaking his head, obviously having figured out how she'd arrived.
Once she'd brought them into the house proper she turned to look at them. "So what did you two do? And should you have come here, I don't think my father is cleared to know much about Joey?"
"The PRT doesn't actually control my cape identity either way," Joey noted, even as he was lifting his shirt to show blood-spotted bandages wrapped around his chest. "Though they do like to put people through high security clearance checks to find out about it for various reasons and protect info on some of what I can do more seriously. And, well, I now know to never try and shrink my opening devices by taking advantage of space Missy here has expanded."
Missy nodded. "His stuff and what I do are very incompatible on that level. Of course, we only realized how incompatible after I'd discovered that I can't anchor expansions to the insides of any pocket dimensions he makes, even the one he made for me."
Taylor looked at Joey, who shrugged. "Riley insisted that I check with her on things."
Sighing, she held her hand out, and he took it. Fixing the likely shrapnel wounds didn't take long. She then turned to Missy. "So, do you have a spare key for your pocket dimension?"
Missy just looked confused. "I've got a bag full. Why?"
Joey grinned. "Because she can put one inside of you so you never lose it."
Taylor was holding a crystal a moment later, but grabbed Missy before she could take her shirt off. "How about we go upstairs instead of having you undress in front of Joey here? Riley might take offense, after all."
Missy blinked, then blushed and nodded. Taylor brought her upstairs and slipped the crystal onto the backside of the girl's sternum, healing the other relatively minor wounds in the process. She then helped remove the last of the bandages before Missy put her bra and shirt back on. They then went back downstairs, only to find that Joey had apparently removed his own bandages while they were upstairs.
"So you two played with combining abilities today?" Taylor questioned.
Joey nodded. "She's got the first twenty meter cube I've seen, possibly because of how her power works. Doubled everything in a ten meter cube, perhaps? But she can't anchor things to the pocket dimensions, even if she can otherwise manipulate space in them. So she can't make them bigger directly."
Missy was bouncing lightly in excitement. "I should be able to make enclosed rooms in them bigger, though! So long as the pocket dimension walls aren't included in the anchoring, anyway."
"I just wish we knew why you can create portals in expanded areas, but expanding the inside of the opening devices to make them smaller fails. It makes all kinds of things that I was hoping to be able to do impossible."
Taylor shrugged. "I wouldn't know where to begin figuring that one out. But did you try putting the entire opening device in an expanded space and just running the controls to outside of it?"
Joey nodded. "That's the one that caught us with the surprisingly energetic explosion. It actually works fine if you're using the key crystal installed in the opener, which is why we walked up to it in the first place. But if I'm using my powers or, presumably, someone is using an embedded key from outside then the thing explodes."
"Well, good luck figuring that out, assuming you ever can. I imagine you two need to get going, though."
Five minutes later the PRT van was long gone and Taylor was in the kitchen preparing a late dinner for Ackbar. She didn't want to know what kind of explosion had been needed to cause both of them to need that much healing even after having time for their bodies to start patching them up.
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Misleading Explanations (CmptrWz)
"You're cleared for a lot more than most," Neil agreed. "It comes with your healing and connection to Taylor. I think that Sarah's concern stems from Carol not going through the hoops, or helping Sarah go through the hoops, for the rest of us."
"Because she had to start by pointing out some of what they're already cleared to know about thanks to living with Amy," Taylor snapped. "They've been read into several higher level than usual secrets due to the association, mostly because of some of the things Amy was being exposed to through me. My family alone is full of secrets you aren't cleared for."
Eric snorted. "Yeah, your uncle probably knows far too much, as do you in different ways. I'm not sure either of those matters."
"You aren't even cleared to know everyone the system sees as in my family these days."
Sarah glared at Taylor. "Unless the parahuman in question is another aunt or uncle the world doesn't know about I don't see how that's relevant."
"Nah, no relation there. Though that kind of revelation would've been less weird than my father finding out that I have an eight year old kid..." She trailed off there, only realizing what she was saying out loud when it was too late to take it back. Though the looks of absolute horror on the Pelhams were actually somewhat amusing to the rest of them, given the misconception that they were likely operating under.
Getting out of this conversation without spilling who knows how many secrets was going to be problematic, though.
"Because she had to start by pointing out some of what they're already cleared to know about thanks to living with Amy," Taylor snapped. "They've been read into several higher level than usual secrets due to the association, mostly because of some of the things Amy was being exposed to through me. My family alone is full of secrets you aren't cleared for."
Eric snorted. "Yeah, your uncle probably knows far too much, as do you in different ways. I'm not sure either of those matters."
"You aren't even cleared to know everyone the system sees as in my family these days."
Sarah glared at Taylor. "Unless the parahuman in question is another aunt or uncle the world doesn't know about I don't see how that's relevant."
"Nah, no relation there. Though that kind of revelation would've been less weird than my father finding out that I have an eight year old kid..." She trailed off there, only realizing what she was saying out loud when it was too late to take it back. Though the looks of absolute horror on the Pelhams were actually somewhat amusing to the rest of them, given the misconception that they were likely operating under.
Getting out of this conversation without spilling who knows how many secrets was going to be problematic, though.
- Location
- Море песка, солнце огня и множество злых сарацин
Nice new chapter! [EDIT: and nice new omake! Is it supposed to be canon?]
Some minor corrections...
(...Or, come to think of it, is she impersonating a Case 53?)
Some minor corrections...
...I know she's like a Case 53, but I thought she didn't get the memory wipe? Or is it because of something else?
(...Or, come to think of it, is she impersonating a Case 53?)
Is that supposed to be "the unexpected element"? Because it doesn't seem to make much sense otherwise.
- Pronouns
- She/Her/They
actually knowing the distance of a meter in more than an abstract way is kind of hard when you're young, even now i personally have problems trying to estimate distance for things over a yard.
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presumably given it's been changed now.
As an aside, bets that the villain Riley de-brained will turn out to be Maya?
No, a space-expansion can be in there just fine, it's that it can't touch the walls. In other words, the Snark itself. What she can't do is expand the opening devices themselves without it going boom.
It's fairly obvious- she can't expand the opening devices since two Snarks rarely play well together in that way. Similarly, Snarks don't like other Snarks trying to screw about with them, which is why she can't expand the pocket space itself, but can expand a completely-enclosed part of it.
- Location
- Finland
Which reminded me, could Taylor ask BA to increase the allotted space for the pocket dimension?
Doubtful- it's controlled by Dodge's snark.
- Location
- USA
Nah, the new group was comprised of young kids. Most of which had chronic illnesses. Probably just hadn't been shown practical units of measure ouside the home.
No, it's not. It is controlled by the "type" (greater, lesser, etc.) of destination snark it is built in, in combination of how many are in that given snark as explained in an earlier chapter.
I wasn't sure about that bit but could remember Dodge's snark had reduced the size of spaces he could create in his own snark. My point was that it's not BA's choice.
Personally, I have to multiply every weight estimate I make by 5, but it is reasonably accurate after that.
I think it is because I am calibrated to the weights I remember from grade 9.
Itsune
Eldritch horror, Ship's Cat, Emergency Gunner.
- Location
- Somewhere in King County Washington
As an adult.
Hold your arm out in front of you with the thumb extended upwards. A yard is about the distance of your nose to your thumb. A meter extends past that to the end of your index finger.
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