Isnt my realname
This isn't my real name.
- Location
- Not Here
Of course not. "Pranking for Fun And Profit", maybe. If pranking isn't fun, you shouldn't be doing it.
Ace Dreamer
Verified Reality User
- Location
- Between The Unknown & The Known
How about the book title "Troll Bridge"? 
Isnt my realname
This isn't my real name.
- Location
- Not Here
Well, that one is quite a nice short story by Terry Pratchett.How about the book title "Troll Bridge"?
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Chapter 229
Sunday morning Taylor started her day by dealing with paperwork. Both expected and unexpected, since they'd sent her a summary of findings from Jeanie, whose cape name was apparently Genie. Which seemed like it would be a recipe for horrible misunderstandings, but she'd made it work for her over the past few years. Most of the reason for her getting that information was confirmation that the woman couldn't see or hear anything while she was in a container, which Taylor had figured out before jamming a cork into the bottle in the first place. Forcing a cap onto it afterwards was just extra insurance. Because of that Jeanie had no clue who'd actually captured her.
With that done, she had a quick pre-workout breakfast, then headed for the gym. Amy and Vicky met her in the Shaper-linked pocket dimension.
"So I hear you got a solo capture yesterday," Vicky said as they headed down the hall from the Wards area.
Taylor shrugged. "It wasn't like there was a fight or anything."
"Still impressive that you caught someone who'd been eluding people for years."
"All I did was stick a cork in a bottle, cap it, and drop it in my pocket."
Vicky stopped walking for a moment, obviously stunned, before rushing to catch up. "You did what?"
Amy snickered. "She captured a parahuman with a breaker state that lets her put herself in containers like bottles. Presumably with the ability to bring people and items in with her if she was using it to smuggle."
"Oh."
For the second day in a row Taylor was sitting in a meeting room with the older Wards. Miss Militia and Deputy Director Renick were also present again, but it wasn't as early as the day before. Aisha had been the last to arrive and hadn't bothered to get into costume before coming to the meeting.
"Good morning," Deputy Director Renick said to start things off. "I wasn't planning on another meeting like this today, but then Maul made fools of Border Patrol in Texas."
Taylor snorted at that. "Not my fault they forgot that I existed. Or why I was even there, for that matter."
"And nobody is blaming you. Your 'Jeanie in a bottle' video has become an instant hit internally and will likely be shared as part of the 'cautionary tale' that will come of this in other agencies working with us. Namely, if you've asked for parahuman assistance, don't forget that you've got parahuman assistance. The superiors of those Border Patrol agents have already sent thanks for doing your job even though they decided to ignore you, and you can possibly expect a gift basket by the end of the week as well."
"Oh."
"Yes, well, thank you for that. It might make our work with a couple of agencies go a little more smoothly, if only in hopes of avoiding something that embarrassing being pulled by parahumans aiding them. Also prompting this meeting is an incident yesterday where the Youth Guard was called in on Rockstar. The decision was entirely correct and we can't find any fault with it, but it has caused some interdepartmental friction. They may attempt to find out who called the Youth Guard, but that's protected information. Do not believe any claims to the contrary, no matter who makes them. If anyone pushes the issue you should inform them that they need to make the inquiry through Director Piggot. Any questions?"
Nobody said anything, and Miss Militia took over. "Very well. Due to some of the mentioned interdepartmental friction we won't be hosting anyone from other regions today. At the same time, all requests for Maul to assist with psychology have been suspended. Though there is a request from Minnesota for assistance with a tinker who keeps building deadly traps. So far nobody trapped in them has died, but it's been close several times and is believed to be a matter of time."
Taylor blinked. "Are you asking if I want to intentionally go after someone building deadly traps?"
"As I said, none of them have killed anyone. Even without that, you've got your own skills to help with any that you run into, you'd have backup ready to pull you out of anything that did grab you, and none of the traps have been brute rated or captured parahumans in the first place."
"Oh. So it should be reasonably safe for me no matter what, compared to random people who stumble upon the things?"
Miss Militia nodded at her. "Exactly."
"Okay. That sounds reasonable enough."
"Good. Especially since the other request for you to go out involves devices that cause explosive tumors and we aren't happy with the safety precautions they proposed." That had everyone staring at Miss Militia for a moment, but she didn't elaborate. Instead, she continued on. "As for the rest of you, we'd like two volunteers to join the Protectorate today for a combat exercise, and ideally only one of them should be Clockblocker or Gallant."
"Combat?" Aisha said, beating the others to responding as she bounced a little in her seat. "Count me in!"
Chris shrugged. "Unless you want one of the other two, I'm game."
"What's the plan for the rest of us?" Missy asked.
Miss Militia shrugged. "If you want to patrol, do so. Otherwise take the day off."
Unlike the day before, today Taylor had to depart for Minnesota using the new teleporter system. She still had her platform in the pocket dimension for easy access, of course, but it would take far too long to get there using any other methods available to her short of invoking Scotty. And she didn't think that it was a good use of their abilities when other options were available. She watched as they powered up and targeted the departure pad, then waited for the PRT officer to make the initial trip.
"Arrival has been confirmed," the woman operating the controls said. "You're clear to follow."
Taylor nodded and stepped forward.
Taylor: I'm about to make the jump.
Amy: Thanks for the warning.
A moment later she spent a fraction of a second being in Brockton Bay and Minnesota at the same time, after which she stepped off of the arrival pad in Minnesota.
"Welcome to Minneapolis," a male parahuman Taylor didn't recognize greeted. "How was the trip?"
Taylor shook her head. "Bit disorienting being in two places at once for a moment, but okay otherwise."
The man blinked. "That was supposed to be a joke, but two places at once? And how did you even notice?"
"I have my ways."
"Right. Whatever. I'm Longjump and have been assigned to help get you over to South Dakota. Specifically Rapid City, it'll take us about an hour. I'll be useless for at least an hour after we get there, but we've got people waiting for us that'll take over with you."
"I suppose that would be faster than flying there myself from here."
"Most likely, unless you can fly five hundred miles per hour."
Taylor shook her head. "Nope. Nowhere near that fast."
He gestured to the door. "Then we should probably get going."
Their arrival in Rapid City had actually been near the airport to the East, where Taylor was handed off to a group of PRT officers. They had her get into a van for a trip through town to where the tinker had been building their traps most recently.
"Most of the traps are multiple-use," officer Anselmi explained. "But we dismantle them as soon as we find them, which is pretty much only after at least one person has been trapped. A group of locals has stopped reporting them when they find them, treating them more like thrill rides than the life-threatening hazards they are. We've been lucky so far in that nobody has used some of the extra lockdown features that would prevent escapes, though that could be because we're the only ones looking for the control boxes. Which we find to be odd, since they're in prime 'observation' points."
A couple of videos showed a person escaping a previous trap, and what happened when they'd tested it with a human-analog a few days later. The latter results weren't pretty, though apparently it'd taken half an hour from 'trapped' to 'torn apart'.
"These are just left out where people could stumble into them?" Taylor asked after watching the videos.
Anselmi nodded. "Yep. We're hoping you can provide additional insight into things, or that we show up while the tinker is assembling things and you can help us capture them. We think we've spotted them a couple of times previously, but aren't actually certain that it was them."
It didn't take much longer for them to reach the area, though they admitted that they didn't actually know where any current instance of the tinker's work was. So instead they spread out a little, ensuring frequent radio check-ins, and started searching. Taylor pulled the Snitch out of a pouch and sent it out, firing up the augmented patrol app. It ended up bouncing around a little before logging into the support software back in Brockton Bay to do rendering for her, and she fired off a quick question about that before continuing her search.
Taylor spotted the first signs of something, but had been beaten to it by a local. Who'd been snatched up by mechanical tentacles and lashed to a cross with a laser powering up to cut them in half. They rushed to help them, only for Taylor to stop when she got a good look at the contraption.
Taylor: Please tell me that you're joking.
Amy: What?
Taylor: Not you. Understanding, Maintenance, Repair.
Amy: Oh.
<UMR: Offense>
Taylor: Look, you have to admit that it's ridiculous.
<UMR: ...Agreement>
The PRT officers rushed to help the boy that'd been grabbed, but he seemed to be doing fine on his own. He'd freed his left foot, his shoe falling off in the process, and used his toes to pull a cable out of one of the tentacles. That released his right arm as the tentacle lost power, and he was able to pull more cables out to free himself. He did so with no more than three seconds to spare, grabbing his shoe and rolling behind the cross before the laser struck it. The officers hadn't been able to do much before that point, but quickly got the boy out of the area.
Anselmi arrived a couple minutes later, panting from running over. "Was anyone harmed?"
"There are one hundred and seventy eight ways to escape that thing," Taylor answered.
"What? You mean you've found that many?"
"I'm sure I could find more if I wanted. Those are the ones built in. Also, it masters anyone living who gets caught and leads them through a suitable escape method and refuses to capture living things that it isn't positive that it can lead through the escape measures, mostly by only capturing those it can master into falling for the traps to begin with."
"You're kidding."
Taylor shook her head. "Nope. There are also exceptions. Triggering it from the control panel, non-living human analogs, and members of the Slaughterhouse Nine are more static ones. Dynamic exceptions seem to be aiming for 'very obvious criminal' with a number of factors. Three or more of: a fake ID, multiple illegal drugs on their person, someone else's blood on their clothing, guns with filed-off serial numbers, or more than two thousand dollars in cash. Er, or if you have an ID with the name Wyona Jacques on it, in which case it's more likely to capture you and explode."
Anselmi sounded desperate. "Please tell me you're kidding?"
"The paperwork is going to be a bit annoying. Luckily only a small amount of it will need to be on actual paper."
Taylor returned to the Wards area in Brockton Bay on her own. She'd lucked out in that only three forms fell under her responsibility, leaving her plenty of time to wander the city a little and pick up lunch. Unexpectedly, she found Dennis and Missy sitting on the couch with popcorn, watching a feed on the monitor.
"What's up?" Taylor asked.
Missy half waved while Dennis answered. "Got a feed of the 'combat exercises' and are enjoying watching Aisha fail repeatedly. At least Chris is holding up well. I was assured that a complete video would be available by Tuesday if you want to watch from the beginning."
"Ah. That sounds less likely to have me wondering what I missed."
It wasn't much longer before she'd gotten out of costume, opting to just open the pocket dimension from inside of her room to get home. That trip took no time at all, and she wandered downstairs once she had. She found her father going through the stuff she'd purchased at the hardware store.
"Hi dad," she greeted. "Looking to get started on that?"
He jumped a little, but nodded. "Yeah. I was thinking I might start running wires without you, but if you're done for the day we could probably accomplish things a lot more quickly working together."
"In that case I should pull things out of storage and I recommend that we start with the beacon itself."
"If you say so."
Pulling the equipment that Dragon had provided out of her pocket dimension was easy enough, and the changes to the beacon itself were trivial. Replace a single circuit board, swap out one plate on the outside for one with connectors available, and install new firmware. Adding in the security keys so that it wouldn't be a 'wide-open' system took longer, but that was primarily because she went through the process of creating a new security group. With that done, she gave it a test and found that it was working, but she didn't mount it back where it'd been installed just yet. The connectors would be easier to get to if she held off on that step.
That done, they figured out how to run a wire from the garage unit, into the basement, and over to the beacon. It was easier than anticipated since they were able to use a wire that used to be for a phone to pull the new wire into the basement. From there a connection was made to the beacon and to a key crystal slot on the opening device. Taylor popped out the Shaper-linked crystal and checked to ensure that it was working. Finding that it was she disconnected the multiple-key adapter and attached the beacon directly to the opener. She had it set to allow opening into the driveway or into the garage, though the latter would require opening the garage door first.
Getting a wire down from the second floor took more effort. There wasn't a straight drop from where she'd installed things. They actually ended up running a fish line from the attic down to the basement, pulling a wire up and over, then dropping it down to where the unit was in her closet. She'd been able to grab the wire with a small hook from her toolkit to pull it through one of the holes she'd already made in order to hook it up. Testing that had worked wonderfully, though she'd added a 'only for her own personal access code' rule for it. She might add Amy's access code later, but it probably wouldn't be needed.
The opener to be installed downstairs was the last hurdle, and they spent half an hour trying to determine the best approach. Some checks had shown that the studs were offset from what they'd been expecting, and they were also wondering how 'visible' the opening equipment should be in the first place. Eventually they figured out that the trim on the doorframe had no real support on one side and carefully removed it. That gave them sufficient access to install the gang box with an outlet as well as a smaller opening device right inside of the wall. Running the wires down to the basement was also trivial from that point, though configuring the opener had to be done before they closed things up again. When they did so you'd only be able to tell that there was anything special there if you noticed the finger pad on top of the door frame.
Re-mounting the beacon had been easy enough at that point, as was tying the wires up to neaten things. But at that point neither of them was in the mood to cook. Taylor volunteered to go fetch dinner while her father took a shower, which he readily accepted, and she ate her portion of the chinese food she'd picked up before showering herself. It was only after that point that she realized that Ackbar was now avoiding the doorway that they'd installed an opener into, apparently unwilling to risk possibly entering a pocket dimension on his own again.
Monday morning Taylor had everything she needed ready ahead of time and left for the gym from downstairs, taking advantage of having a doorway down there with an opener already prepared. The lack of installed key crystals would make it harder for people to gain access to her pocket dimensions as well, especially if they thought they knew how things worked. Though she suspected that if anyone got to that point that they'd trace things back to the beacon, which would be an inconvenience. But it was supposed to generate an alert now if moved more than fifty meters from where it sat, so it shouldn't be a significant problem.
"So you've gotten your beacon upgrades completed?" Amy asked as Taylor opened the portal to the Wards area.
Taylor nodded. "Yep."
"Too bad we can't get everything taken care of at home yet."
"I found out that we could. The system seems to default to a 'wide open' state if you don't install access key based restrictions, and we could just leave things disconnected at the openers until everything is ready. But it probably makes more sense to go through it all when Dragon has finished updating their equipment."
Amy blinked as they made their way to the gym itself. "Huh. That makes sense."
"So where's Vicky?"
"She plans on working out this afternoon with Dean."
"Ahh."
The gym was oddly crowded when they made it there, a lot of PRT officers having come in to work out this morning. There was grumbling about a canceled meeting that might explain it, but neither of the two girls cared enough to ask outright. They just went through their workouts, ate their post-workout breakfast, and ended up taking their mopeds to school.
At lunchtime they discovered that Louise had a black eye and significant bruising on her arms. Since they hadn't heard of any fights that morning it was likely from the weekend, but she didn't seem to be bothered by the injuries.
"What happened to you?" Dean asked after he sat down next to Vicky.
"Got beaten up by an old lady after I got cocky," Louise responded. "Object lesson that I needed. But she already thinks I'm getting better, so there's that." The girl then flicked her tail up in front of her. "Oh, and she learned not to underestimate the tail of awesome, though that's how I got the black eye."
Taylor nodded. "Underestimating the tail is a bad thing. Would you like us to heal you?"
"Nah, I think I'm good."
Amy rolled her eyes. "Can I at least make sure that your eye isn't damaged?"
Louise looked like she was about to decline, before she obviously realized what Amy had actually said. "Er, yes, that does sound like a good idea." She held her hand out to Amy, who flipped her striker switch as she took it.
"I've fixed a couple of minor problems from your eye being hit. Sure you want to keep the bruises?"
"Yep. They're a reminder to not be so cocky next time."
Amy shrugged as she let go of Louise and flipped her striker switch back. "Whatever."
Karen grabbed the seat next to Missy before anyone else could, filling the table. "So Missy. I hear you were riding a house elsewhere in the country on Saturday, yet nobody saw transports leave the area. Is there a scoop there, or are you going to blame shooting at a wall in the correct way?"
Missy snorted. "The PRT got me there and back, but I have no clue if I'm allowed to tell anyone how. The other Wards people saw patrolling here traveled the same way, though. Not sure about all of Taylor's trips, though."
That had Karen, and several others, looking at Taylor. Who sighed. "I used pre-prepared doorways on Saturday, but needed PRT and Protectorate assistance to get to where I was yesterday. Never been there before and they didn't have anything prepared and all. Getting home was easy enough, though."
Several discussions sprang up about what that might mean, nobody bothering to try and ask Taylor to go into details. Presumably because they rightfully believed that they'd not get any from her.
As the repeaters came online that afternoon messages came in, one of which informed Taylor that she wasn't going to be doing much patrolling today. She wasn't included in Ryan or Sandy's patrol groups, plus Aisha had console duty as punishment for how horribly she'd done the day before. Sure, she could probably tag along with the kids, but that was likely to be boring or make things more dangerous for the kids because she was there and idiots were idiots.
"Ugh," Amy groaned as she met up with Taylor on their way outside. "The hospital has asked me to come in to help with things after a police chase ended with a vehicle in the side of a bus."
Taylor winced. That sounded unpleasant. "Want some help? My afternoon is unexpectedly free."
The other girl blinked, then turned to Taylor and attempted a puppy-dog pout. "Please?"
"Why are you trying to convince me to do what I was offering to do?"
Amy didn't seem to have an answer for that, and a minute later they'd reached the two mopeds. They made straight for a rooftop and a couple blocks down popped into the pocket dimension. From there they split up to put on costumes, Taylor heading for the PRT building and Amy heading home. Neither took long before meeting back up in the pocket dimension and heading to the hospital, and either Amy had called ahead or the hospital was hoping that they'd come right over because a nurse was waiting for them when they arrived.
"Both of you?" the nurse said in surprise as they stepped out. "That's great. We could use both of you in the emergency room."
They made their way straight there and were split up immediately. Taylor ended up starting with a couple of elderly patients who'd also been suffering under the immune system replacement process. She actually dropped one hand on each and worked on both at the same time, startling Amy. It wasn't long before they had four people going at a time, though they focused on particularly tough cases one at a time every so often as they moved along. It took fairly little time to make it through all but five of the injured.
"So what's with the last five?" Taylor asked, noting that they weren't being directed into that area.
"They've got orders on file, no parahuman healing," one of the nurses replied. "We ensured that someone let Injury Magnet's parents know that you two are here and that by the time he could get here the only likely problem patients would have said orders on file."
Amy grinned at that. "And I suppose his aunt is picking him up from school today, and thus won't have gotten the memo?"
"Quite possibly."
As apparently expected, Jason showed up with his aunt not long after, while Taylor and Amy were working through less seriously injured patients. Amy had Taylor continue with that while she headed downstairs to heal Jason. She also ended up taking care of some scrapes that his sister had picked up while she was at it.
Amy: Huh. Jason has even more protection than normal if anyone complains that he came.
Taylor: Really?
Amy: Yep. I missed that his grandmother was one of the ones I healed.
Taylor: Ah. That would kill most possible complaints, wouldn't it? Came to check in on her, ooops, too close to seriously injured people.
Amy: Only because it's automatic, of course. Only targeting life-threatening injuries just makes it harder to go after him.
It wasn't long before Jason left with his family, and Taylor focused on what healing she was doing. Including the man with a transplanted kidney that, for reasons beyond her, wasn't in the emergency room. He had two functioning kidneys with his own genetics when she was done, and she wrote an admittedly rude note for those who'd put him in a normal room while his immune system was destroying the kidney. It'd probably been worse before Jason had shown up as well, for that matter, given how much work Amy had done on his kidney.
Eventually they finished the rounds, were thanked by the hospital staff, and departed. Back to the PRT building for Taylor and home for Amy. Costumes were trivial to change out of, but then Amy joined Taylor in the PRT building for a trip down to the junkyard.
They'd end up needing to shower before eating dinner after the mess they made, but they felt it was worth it.
Later that evening Taylor was surprised when she got a message from Doormaker, asking if she had time to swing by. Well, a group message to her and to Amy, but the latter had replied that she was in the middle of things right then. Taylor looked over her pajamas, decided they were decent enough for a quick trip, and stood up.
"Okay Scotty," she said, and a tear in space appeared before her. She stepped through and found herself in a hallway. White, with no defining marks whatsoever on the doors. Four parahumans were nearby, though she only recognized Doctor Mother and Number Man. The latter was the only parahuman on this floor. "Where the hell am I and why am I here?"
The only response was 'right door', which was where Number Man was. Grumbling about lack of information, she opened the door to her right, hoping that Number Man would be willing to tell her more. Instead she found that it was a hospital-like room, with Number Man as the patient. Sighing, she walked over to him and checked on him, finding that he was suffering from the immune system plague. Specifically, complications due to a bone marrow transplant at some point. That was trivial to deal with, but she didn't wake him up.
"Is that it?" Taylor asked when she was done, only for another tear in space to open in front of her. She could see that this time it led to the conference room she normally met with Cauldron members in, so she stepped through. Brünhild had apparently ensured that a pitcher of ice water and a glass were available, and a small cart with cookies came in a moment later.
Taylor: Thank you.
[You're welcome. He suddenly took a turn for the worse an hour ago and we didn't know what to do.]
It wasn't long before Doctor Mother joined her. "Thank you for coming on short notice. We still don't know what happened to him."
Taylor shrugged. "He'd previously had a bone marrow transplant."
"Ah. And that immune system thing made to counter young Riley's efforts didn't appreciate it?"
"There were complications, yes."
"Hopefully he was the only one, then. Legend wasn't happy when he realized that he'd accidentally infected us and caused problems, I'm not sure how he'd have reacted if Number Man had actually died because of that. I certainly wasn't looking forward to passing that information on."
Taylor nodded, easily able to see how that might be taken poorly. "Well, it won't be a problem for him, though I obviously can't say the same for anyone else that Amy and I haven't looked at."
"Of course. I'll tell you now that we're working on getting a collection of patients to you two this coming weekend. A couple of our staff and a number of others who have transplanted organs. Good PR all around as the PRT gets them in for healing so that you and Miss Dallon can heal them."
"Ah. It's nice to have a warning about that, and I'll make sure that Amy knows it's coming as well. Any other plans that you think I need to know about?"
She shrugged at that. "Not really. We've been helping to round up the Fallen as a side project, but that doesn't impact you directly. Contessa claims that there isn't a biotinker working to combat the Slaughterhouse Nine, which makes the whole plague more curious in the first place, which also isn't exactly your problem. We might arrange for you to help capture the one responsible at some point, but we need a better lead on them before that's going to happen."
Taylor did her best to not roll her eyes. "Okay then. Anything else?"
"Er I don't think...wait. Right, we've installed a pocket dimension beacon here and would like to know if it actually works. Let me get the code for you."
It took a few minutes, but Taylor was able to confirm that the beacon worked and that the pocket dimensions weren't actually locked to Earth Bet as a result. Doctor Mother's grin as three more beacon codes were handed over was interesting, but Taylor accepted them and the comment that she and Amy should check them out at their leisure without complaint. She then headed home via the pocket dimension, so as to not bother Doormaker, and left the codes sitting on the opening device in the process.
Taylor: Well, we've got a busy weekend and the ability to get very far away if we want to.
Amy: Busy weekend?
Taylor: Cauldron is arranging for a bunch of people with transplanted organs to visit us this weekend.
Amy: Ah. Yeah. That sounds annoying.
Taylor: No clue where the other beacon codes they gave me lead to, but I'll wait on exploring until we have a decent amount of free time.
Amy: I'm curious, but having more than an hour to explore sounds like a wonderful idea.
With that done, she had a quick pre-workout breakfast, then headed for the gym. Amy and Vicky met her in the Shaper-linked pocket dimension.
"So I hear you got a solo capture yesterday," Vicky said as they headed down the hall from the Wards area.
Taylor shrugged. "It wasn't like there was a fight or anything."
"Still impressive that you caught someone who'd been eluding people for years."
"All I did was stick a cork in a bottle, cap it, and drop it in my pocket."
Vicky stopped walking for a moment, obviously stunned, before rushing to catch up. "You did what?"
Amy snickered. "She captured a parahuman with a breaker state that lets her put herself in containers like bottles. Presumably with the ability to bring people and items in with her if she was using it to smuggle."
"Oh."
For the second day in a row Taylor was sitting in a meeting room with the older Wards. Miss Militia and Deputy Director Renick were also present again, but it wasn't as early as the day before. Aisha had been the last to arrive and hadn't bothered to get into costume before coming to the meeting.
"Good morning," Deputy Director Renick said to start things off. "I wasn't planning on another meeting like this today, but then Maul made fools of Border Patrol in Texas."
Taylor snorted at that. "Not my fault they forgot that I existed. Or why I was even there, for that matter."
"And nobody is blaming you. Your 'Jeanie in a bottle' video has become an instant hit internally and will likely be shared as part of the 'cautionary tale' that will come of this in other agencies working with us. Namely, if you've asked for parahuman assistance, don't forget that you've got parahuman assistance. The superiors of those Border Patrol agents have already sent thanks for doing your job even though they decided to ignore you, and you can possibly expect a gift basket by the end of the week as well."
"Oh."
"Yes, well, thank you for that. It might make our work with a couple of agencies go a little more smoothly, if only in hopes of avoiding something that embarrassing being pulled by parahumans aiding them. Also prompting this meeting is an incident yesterday where the Youth Guard was called in on Rockstar. The decision was entirely correct and we can't find any fault with it, but it has caused some interdepartmental friction. They may attempt to find out who called the Youth Guard, but that's protected information. Do not believe any claims to the contrary, no matter who makes them. If anyone pushes the issue you should inform them that they need to make the inquiry through Director Piggot. Any questions?"
Nobody said anything, and Miss Militia took over. "Very well. Due to some of the mentioned interdepartmental friction we won't be hosting anyone from other regions today. At the same time, all requests for Maul to assist with psychology have been suspended. Though there is a request from Minnesota for assistance with a tinker who keeps building deadly traps. So far nobody trapped in them has died, but it's been close several times and is believed to be a matter of time."
Taylor blinked. "Are you asking if I want to intentionally go after someone building deadly traps?"
"As I said, none of them have killed anyone. Even without that, you've got your own skills to help with any that you run into, you'd have backup ready to pull you out of anything that did grab you, and none of the traps have been brute rated or captured parahumans in the first place."
"Oh. So it should be reasonably safe for me no matter what, compared to random people who stumble upon the things?"
Miss Militia nodded at her. "Exactly."
"Okay. That sounds reasonable enough."
"Good. Especially since the other request for you to go out involves devices that cause explosive tumors and we aren't happy with the safety precautions they proposed." That had everyone staring at Miss Militia for a moment, but she didn't elaborate. Instead, she continued on. "As for the rest of you, we'd like two volunteers to join the Protectorate today for a combat exercise, and ideally only one of them should be Clockblocker or Gallant."
"Combat?" Aisha said, beating the others to responding as she bounced a little in her seat. "Count me in!"
Chris shrugged. "Unless you want one of the other two, I'm game."
"What's the plan for the rest of us?" Missy asked.
Miss Militia shrugged. "If you want to patrol, do so. Otherwise take the day off."
Unlike the day before, today Taylor had to depart for Minnesota using the new teleporter system. She still had her platform in the pocket dimension for easy access, of course, but it would take far too long to get there using any other methods available to her short of invoking Scotty. And she didn't think that it was a good use of their abilities when other options were available. She watched as they powered up and targeted the departure pad, then waited for the PRT officer to make the initial trip.
"Arrival has been confirmed," the woman operating the controls said. "You're clear to follow."
Taylor nodded and stepped forward.
Taylor: I'm about to make the jump.
Amy: Thanks for the warning.
A moment later she spent a fraction of a second being in Brockton Bay and Minnesota at the same time, after which she stepped off of the arrival pad in Minnesota.
"Welcome to Minneapolis," a male parahuman Taylor didn't recognize greeted. "How was the trip?"
Taylor shook her head. "Bit disorienting being in two places at once for a moment, but okay otherwise."
The man blinked. "That was supposed to be a joke, but two places at once? And how did you even notice?"
"I have my ways."
"Right. Whatever. I'm Longjump and have been assigned to help get you over to South Dakota. Specifically Rapid City, it'll take us about an hour. I'll be useless for at least an hour after we get there, but we've got people waiting for us that'll take over with you."
"I suppose that would be faster than flying there myself from here."
"Most likely, unless you can fly five hundred miles per hour."
Taylor shook her head. "Nope. Nowhere near that fast."
He gestured to the door. "Then we should probably get going."
Their arrival in Rapid City had actually been near the airport to the East, where Taylor was handed off to a group of PRT officers. They had her get into a van for a trip through town to where the tinker had been building their traps most recently.
"Most of the traps are multiple-use," officer Anselmi explained. "But we dismantle them as soon as we find them, which is pretty much only after at least one person has been trapped. A group of locals has stopped reporting them when they find them, treating them more like thrill rides than the life-threatening hazards they are. We've been lucky so far in that nobody has used some of the extra lockdown features that would prevent escapes, though that could be because we're the only ones looking for the control boxes. Which we find to be odd, since they're in prime 'observation' points."
A couple of videos showed a person escaping a previous trap, and what happened when they'd tested it with a human-analog a few days later. The latter results weren't pretty, though apparently it'd taken half an hour from 'trapped' to 'torn apart'.
"These are just left out where people could stumble into them?" Taylor asked after watching the videos.
Anselmi nodded. "Yep. We're hoping you can provide additional insight into things, or that we show up while the tinker is assembling things and you can help us capture them. We think we've spotted them a couple of times previously, but aren't actually certain that it was them."
It didn't take much longer for them to reach the area, though they admitted that they didn't actually know where any current instance of the tinker's work was. So instead they spread out a little, ensuring frequent radio check-ins, and started searching. Taylor pulled the Snitch out of a pouch and sent it out, firing up the augmented patrol app. It ended up bouncing around a little before logging into the support software back in Brockton Bay to do rendering for her, and she fired off a quick question about that before continuing her search.
Taylor spotted the first signs of something, but had been beaten to it by a local. Who'd been snatched up by mechanical tentacles and lashed to a cross with a laser powering up to cut them in half. They rushed to help them, only for Taylor to stop when she got a good look at the contraption.
Taylor: Please tell me that you're joking.
Amy: What?
Taylor: Not you. Understanding, Maintenance, Repair.
Amy: Oh.
<UMR: Offense>
Taylor: Look, you have to admit that it's ridiculous.
<UMR: ...Agreement>
The PRT officers rushed to help the boy that'd been grabbed, but he seemed to be doing fine on his own. He'd freed his left foot, his shoe falling off in the process, and used his toes to pull a cable out of one of the tentacles. That released his right arm as the tentacle lost power, and he was able to pull more cables out to free himself. He did so with no more than three seconds to spare, grabbing his shoe and rolling behind the cross before the laser struck it. The officers hadn't been able to do much before that point, but quickly got the boy out of the area.
Anselmi arrived a couple minutes later, panting from running over. "Was anyone harmed?"
"There are one hundred and seventy eight ways to escape that thing," Taylor answered.
"What? You mean you've found that many?"
"I'm sure I could find more if I wanted. Those are the ones built in. Also, it masters anyone living who gets caught and leads them through a suitable escape method and refuses to capture living things that it isn't positive that it can lead through the escape measures, mostly by only capturing those it can master into falling for the traps to begin with."
"You're kidding."
Taylor shook her head. "Nope. There are also exceptions. Triggering it from the control panel, non-living human analogs, and members of the Slaughterhouse Nine are more static ones. Dynamic exceptions seem to be aiming for 'very obvious criminal' with a number of factors. Three or more of: a fake ID, multiple illegal drugs on their person, someone else's blood on their clothing, guns with filed-off serial numbers, or more than two thousand dollars in cash. Er, or if you have an ID with the name Wyona Jacques on it, in which case it's more likely to capture you and explode."
Anselmi sounded desperate. "Please tell me you're kidding?"
"The paperwork is going to be a bit annoying. Luckily only a small amount of it will need to be on actual paper."
Taylor returned to the Wards area in Brockton Bay on her own. She'd lucked out in that only three forms fell under her responsibility, leaving her plenty of time to wander the city a little and pick up lunch. Unexpectedly, she found Dennis and Missy sitting on the couch with popcorn, watching a feed on the monitor.
"What's up?" Taylor asked.
Missy half waved while Dennis answered. "Got a feed of the 'combat exercises' and are enjoying watching Aisha fail repeatedly. At least Chris is holding up well. I was assured that a complete video would be available by Tuesday if you want to watch from the beginning."
"Ah. That sounds less likely to have me wondering what I missed."
It wasn't much longer before she'd gotten out of costume, opting to just open the pocket dimension from inside of her room to get home. That trip took no time at all, and she wandered downstairs once she had. She found her father going through the stuff she'd purchased at the hardware store.
"Hi dad," she greeted. "Looking to get started on that?"
He jumped a little, but nodded. "Yeah. I was thinking I might start running wires without you, but if you're done for the day we could probably accomplish things a lot more quickly working together."
"In that case I should pull things out of storage and I recommend that we start with the beacon itself."
"If you say so."
Pulling the equipment that Dragon had provided out of her pocket dimension was easy enough, and the changes to the beacon itself were trivial. Replace a single circuit board, swap out one plate on the outside for one with connectors available, and install new firmware. Adding in the security keys so that it wouldn't be a 'wide-open' system took longer, but that was primarily because she went through the process of creating a new security group. With that done, she gave it a test and found that it was working, but she didn't mount it back where it'd been installed just yet. The connectors would be easier to get to if she held off on that step.
That done, they figured out how to run a wire from the garage unit, into the basement, and over to the beacon. It was easier than anticipated since they were able to use a wire that used to be for a phone to pull the new wire into the basement. From there a connection was made to the beacon and to a key crystal slot on the opening device. Taylor popped out the Shaper-linked crystal and checked to ensure that it was working. Finding that it was she disconnected the multiple-key adapter and attached the beacon directly to the opener. She had it set to allow opening into the driveway or into the garage, though the latter would require opening the garage door first.
Getting a wire down from the second floor took more effort. There wasn't a straight drop from where she'd installed things. They actually ended up running a fish line from the attic down to the basement, pulling a wire up and over, then dropping it down to where the unit was in her closet. She'd been able to grab the wire with a small hook from her toolkit to pull it through one of the holes she'd already made in order to hook it up. Testing that had worked wonderfully, though she'd added a 'only for her own personal access code' rule for it. She might add Amy's access code later, but it probably wouldn't be needed.
The opener to be installed downstairs was the last hurdle, and they spent half an hour trying to determine the best approach. Some checks had shown that the studs were offset from what they'd been expecting, and they were also wondering how 'visible' the opening equipment should be in the first place. Eventually they figured out that the trim on the doorframe had no real support on one side and carefully removed it. That gave them sufficient access to install the gang box with an outlet as well as a smaller opening device right inside of the wall. Running the wires down to the basement was also trivial from that point, though configuring the opener had to be done before they closed things up again. When they did so you'd only be able to tell that there was anything special there if you noticed the finger pad on top of the door frame.
Re-mounting the beacon had been easy enough at that point, as was tying the wires up to neaten things. But at that point neither of them was in the mood to cook. Taylor volunteered to go fetch dinner while her father took a shower, which he readily accepted, and she ate her portion of the chinese food she'd picked up before showering herself. It was only after that point that she realized that Ackbar was now avoiding the doorway that they'd installed an opener into, apparently unwilling to risk possibly entering a pocket dimension on his own again.
Monday morning Taylor had everything she needed ready ahead of time and left for the gym from downstairs, taking advantage of having a doorway down there with an opener already prepared. The lack of installed key crystals would make it harder for people to gain access to her pocket dimensions as well, especially if they thought they knew how things worked. Though she suspected that if anyone got to that point that they'd trace things back to the beacon, which would be an inconvenience. But it was supposed to generate an alert now if moved more than fifty meters from where it sat, so it shouldn't be a significant problem.
"So you've gotten your beacon upgrades completed?" Amy asked as Taylor opened the portal to the Wards area.
Taylor nodded. "Yep."
"Too bad we can't get everything taken care of at home yet."
"I found out that we could. The system seems to default to a 'wide open' state if you don't install access key based restrictions, and we could just leave things disconnected at the openers until everything is ready. But it probably makes more sense to go through it all when Dragon has finished updating their equipment."
Amy blinked as they made their way to the gym itself. "Huh. That makes sense."
"So where's Vicky?"
"She plans on working out this afternoon with Dean."
"Ahh."
The gym was oddly crowded when they made it there, a lot of PRT officers having come in to work out this morning. There was grumbling about a canceled meeting that might explain it, but neither of the two girls cared enough to ask outright. They just went through their workouts, ate their post-workout breakfast, and ended up taking their mopeds to school.
At lunchtime they discovered that Louise had a black eye and significant bruising on her arms. Since they hadn't heard of any fights that morning it was likely from the weekend, but she didn't seem to be bothered by the injuries.
"What happened to you?" Dean asked after he sat down next to Vicky.
"Got beaten up by an old lady after I got cocky," Louise responded. "Object lesson that I needed. But she already thinks I'm getting better, so there's that." The girl then flicked her tail up in front of her. "Oh, and she learned not to underestimate the tail of awesome, though that's how I got the black eye."
Taylor nodded. "Underestimating the tail is a bad thing. Would you like us to heal you?"
"Nah, I think I'm good."
Amy rolled her eyes. "Can I at least make sure that your eye isn't damaged?"
Louise looked like she was about to decline, before she obviously realized what Amy had actually said. "Er, yes, that does sound like a good idea." She held her hand out to Amy, who flipped her striker switch as she took it.
"I've fixed a couple of minor problems from your eye being hit. Sure you want to keep the bruises?"
"Yep. They're a reminder to not be so cocky next time."
Amy shrugged as she let go of Louise and flipped her striker switch back. "Whatever."
Karen grabbed the seat next to Missy before anyone else could, filling the table. "So Missy. I hear you were riding a house elsewhere in the country on Saturday, yet nobody saw transports leave the area. Is there a scoop there, or are you going to blame shooting at a wall in the correct way?"
Missy snorted. "The PRT got me there and back, but I have no clue if I'm allowed to tell anyone how. The other Wards people saw patrolling here traveled the same way, though. Not sure about all of Taylor's trips, though."
That had Karen, and several others, looking at Taylor. Who sighed. "I used pre-prepared doorways on Saturday, but needed PRT and Protectorate assistance to get to where I was yesterday. Never been there before and they didn't have anything prepared and all. Getting home was easy enough, though."
Several discussions sprang up about what that might mean, nobody bothering to try and ask Taylor to go into details. Presumably because they rightfully believed that they'd not get any from her.
As the repeaters came online that afternoon messages came in, one of which informed Taylor that she wasn't going to be doing much patrolling today. She wasn't included in Ryan or Sandy's patrol groups, plus Aisha had console duty as punishment for how horribly she'd done the day before. Sure, she could probably tag along with the kids, but that was likely to be boring or make things more dangerous for the kids because she was there and idiots were idiots.
"Ugh," Amy groaned as she met up with Taylor on their way outside. "The hospital has asked me to come in to help with things after a police chase ended with a vehicle in the side of a bus."
Taylor winced. That sounded unpleasant. "Want some help? My afternoon is unexpectedly free."
The other girl blinked, then turned to Taylor and attempted a puppy-dog pout. "Please?"
"Why are you trying to convince me to do what I was offering to do?"
Amy didn't seem to have an answer for that, and a minute later they'd reached the two mopeds. They made straight for a rooftop and a couple blocks down popped into the pocket dimension. From there they split up to put on costumes, Taylor heading for the PRT building and Amy heading home. Neither took long before meeting back up in the pocket dimension and heading to the hospital, and either Amy had called ahead or the hospital was hoping that they'd come right over because a nurse was waiting for them when they arrived.
"Both of you?" the nurse said in surprise as they stepped out. "That's great. We could use both of you in the emergency room."
They made their way straight there and were split up immediately. Taylor ended up starting with a couple of elderly patients who'd also been suffering under the immune system replacement process. She actually dropped one hand on each and worked on both at the same time, startling Amy. It wasn't long before they had four people going at a time, though they focused on particularly tough cases one at a time every so often as they moved along. It took fairly little time to make it through all but five of the injured.
"So what's with the last five?" Taylor asked, noting that they weren't being directed into that area.
"They've got orders on file, no parahuman healing," one of the nurses replied. "We ensured that someone let Injury Magnet's parents know that you two are here and that by the time he could get here the only likely problem patients would have said orders on file."
Amy grinned at that. "And I suppose his aunt is picking him up from school today, and thus won't have gotten the memo?"
"Quite possibly."
As apparently expected, Jason showed up with his aunt not long after, while Taylor and Amy were working through less seriously injured patients. Amy had Taylor continue with that while she headed downstairs to heal Jason. She also ended up taking care of some scrapes that his sister had picked up while she was at it.
Amy: Huh. Jason has even more protection than normal if anyone complains that he came.
Taylor: Really?
Amy: Yep. I missed that his grandmother was one of the ones I healed.
Taylor: Ah. That would kill most possible complaints, wouldn't it? Came to check in on her, ooops, too close to seriously injured people.
Amy: Only because it's automatic, of course. Only targeting life-threatening injuries just makes it harder to go after him.
It wasn't long before Jason left with his family, and Taylor focused on what healing she was doing. Including the man with a transplanted kidney that, for reasons beyond her, wasn't in the emergency room. He had two functioning kidneys with his own genetics when she was done, and she wrote an admittedly rude note for those who'd put him in a normal room while his immune system was destroying the kidney. It'd probably been worse before Jason had shown up as well, for that matter, given how much work Amy had done on his kidney.
Eventually they finished the rounds, were thanked by the hospital staff, and departed. Back to the PRT building for Taylor and home for Amy. Costumes were trivial to change out of, but then Amy joined Taylor in the PRT building for a trip down to the junkyard.
They'd end up needing to shower before eating dinner after the mess they made, but they felt it was worth it.
Later that evening Taylor was surprised when she got a message from Doormaker, asking if she had time to swing by. Well, a group message to her and to Amy, but the latter had replied that she was in the middle of things right then. Taylor looked over her pajamas, decided they were decent enough for a quick trip, and stood up.
"Okay Scotty," she said, and a tear in space appeared before her. She stepped through and found herself in a hallway. White, with no defining marks whatsoever on the doors. Four parahumans were nearby, though she only recognized Doctor Mother and Number Man. The latter was the only parahuman on this floor. "Where the hell am I and why am I here?"
The only response was 'right door', which was where Number Man was. Grumbling about lack of information, she opened the door to her right, hoping that Number Man would be willing to tell her more. Instead she found that it was a hospital-like room, with Number Man as the patient. Sighing, she walked over to him and checked on him, finding that he was suffering from the immune system plague. Specifically, complications due to a bone marrow transplant at some point. That was trivial to deal with, but she didn't wake him up.
"Is that it?" Taylor asked when she was done, only for another tear in space to open in front of her. She could see that this time it led to the conference room she normally met with Cauldron members in, so she stepped through. Brünhild had apparently ensured that a pitcher of ice water and a glass were available, and a small cart with cookies came in a moment later.
Taylor: Thank you.
[You're welcome. He suddenly took a turn for the worse an hour ago and we didn't know what to do.]
It wasn't long before Doctor Mother joined her. "Thank you for coming on short notice. We still don't know what happened to him."
Taylor shrugged. "He'd previously had a bone marrow transplant."
"Ah. And that immune system thing made to counter young Riley's efforts didn't appreciate it?"
"There were complications, yes."
"Hopefully he was the only one, then. Legend wasn't happy when he realized that he'd accidentally infected us and caused problems, I'm not sure how he'd have reacted if Number Man had actually died because of that. I certainly wasn't looking forward to passing that information on."
Taylor nodded, easily able to see how that might be taken poorly. "Well, it won't be a problem for him, though I obviously can't say the same for anyone else that Amy and I haven't looked at."
"Of course. I'll tell you now that we're working on getting a collection of patients to you two this coming weekend. A couple of our staff and a number of others who have transplanted organs. Good PR all around as the PRT gets them in for healing so that you and Miss Dallon can heal them."
"Ah. It's nice to have a warning about that, and I'll make sure that Amy knows it's coming as well. Any other plans that you think I need to know about?"
She shrugged at that. "Not really. We've been helping to round up the Fallen as a side project, but that doesn't impact you directly. Contessa claims that there isn't a biotinker working to combat the Slaughterhouse Nine, which makes the whole plague more curious in the first place, which also isn't exactly your problem. We might arrange for you to help capture the one responsible at some point, but we need a better lead on them before that's going to happen."
Taylor did her best to not roll her eyes. "Okay then. Anything else?"
"Er I don't think...wait. Right, we've installed a pocket dimension beacon here and would like to know if it actually works. Let me get the code for you."
It took a few minutes, but Taylor was able to confirm that the beacon worked and that the pocket dimensions weren't actually locked to Earth Bet as a result. Doctor Mother's grin as three more beacon codes were handed over was interesting, but Taylor accepted them and the comment that she and Amy should check them out at their leisure without complaint. She then headed home via the pocket dimension, so as to not bother Doormaker, and left the codes sitting on the opening device in the process.
Taylor: Well, we've got a busy weekend and the ability to get very far away if we want to.
Amy: Busy weekend?
Taylor: Cauldron is arranging for a bunch of people with transplanted organs to visit us this weekend.
Amy: Ah. Yeah. That sounds annoying.
Taylor: No clue where the other beacon codes they gave me lead to, but I'll wait on exploring until we have a decent amount of free time.
Amy: I'm curious, but having more than an hour to explore sounds like a wonderful idea.
- Location
- California
Just because you get a report, doesn't mean you might brain fart on the personal implications of what's in the report...till it cuts you to the bone
- Location
- Asian
why do i get the feeling, those beacon will lead to other earth?
I don't know...It'd be amusing if one of them turns out to be the dimension where Zion's real body is and Taylor Therapy's him into abandoning the cycle, ending the threat Cauldron is intended to fight.
Jadesteele
Out of my Mind - Back in 5 Minutes
- Location
- half-way between 'Crazy' And 'Eccentric'
Or other worlds with their own taylors, for that matter - although in that case it will probably be due to a calibration issue...
edit: Alternately, how about one which goes to beacon - as in RWBY? (as long as Ruby and Missy never meet - the shear awesome/cute overload might kill someone.)
My own vote is for Maul to meet her kanmasu self - the one from the little ship who could (i think they'd get alone - after all, they both have badass awesome down to an art)
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Mirriam Grave
The Bemused. The Amused. The Unstable.
- Location
- The edge of a point.
Further proof that Cauldron REALLY REALLY sucks at ASKING THE RIGHT FUCKING QUESTIONS!
Seriously, EVERYONE AND ANYONE in ANY RESEARCH FIELD (Which I would think that they definitely qualify.) knows that THE QUESTION IS, MANY TIMES, EVEN MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE ANSWER!!!
VINDICATION!!!!!
Earth Aleph has to be one of them, only for Maul and Panacea to be caught on Film and show up in Earth Bet's web... OMG! Taylor and Amy ACTUALLY being part of a LEGIT FILM! HAH!
"Did you see the latest Live Action Disney Movie?"
"Yeah! Can you believe that they got Maul and Panacea's counterparts over there as side-characters!?"
"...Taylor, Amy, where did you get those Autographed Group Pictures from..."
Although it wouldn't happen since they would have noticed that while installing said beacon, I have to say it would be even funnier (In the not-so-funny Dark Humor Way.) if she solved it and they didn't realize it because she doesn't tell anyone.
Finagle007
[Verified Great Old One]
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
She's right. Her platform's top speed is nowhere near as fast as 500 mph.
Or rather, the other way round. 500 mph is a hell of a lot slower than c, iirc.
- Location
- Somewhere, Maybe
The problem is aiming it, and also the problem of there being an atmosphere in the way. Unfortunately, that last won't be a problem for long.....
I see people noticed the icon I made.
Feel free to try and do better.
Without passenger (and without the cloaking system) it can go a lot faster, of course...
Feel free to try and do better.
As this says:
Though more like "they were told to release things without reports, because bringing thinkers in on the Nine wasn't an option for who knows what reasons".
She was asked about how fast she could fly. With passenger, her platform isn't that fast.
Without passenger (and without the cloaking system) it can go a lot faster, of course...
Was that a pun based on "Bonesaw" "Cut Bone"?
Was it that thread actually named "The Little Ship That Could"? If not, please give link.
- Location
- California
That and the fact it was affecting Numbers Man because of his bone marrow transplant...multilevel humor attempt
Rajvik_wolfboy
Wolf amongst the stars.
- Location
- Florida
- Location
- Tatum, Tx
"Scion is between me and my platform. He has gone insane."
*Thundering crack*
"What was that?"
Maul grinned. "That was my platform. It's gone plaid."
*Thundering crack*
"What was that?"
Maul grinned. "That was my platform. It's gone plaid."
As can be seen here by the light speed baseball comic from What If XKCD.
- Location
- USA
Talk of Leet making a lightspeed transport, and using it as a projectile to hit Scion, made me suddenly wonder...... was Legend's power (I believe I read somewhere its intended for interplanatary travel?) the one Eden was using to move around with when she faceplanted into the Planet originally?
That is.....was Legend's power already arguably an Entity-Killer, and here hes been working for Cauldron to desperately find a new-Cape solution to Zion for decades now?
Wonder what his Snark would say if interviewed on this.....
That is.....was Legend's power already arguably an Entity-Killer, and here hes been working for Cauldron to desperately find a new-Cape solution to Zion for decades now?
Wonder what his Snark would say if interviewed on this.....
- Location
- Seattle, Washington, USA
Sucks to be a surgeon, a first responder or have just delivered a baby.
Also sucks to be a retail worker dropping the day's cash at the bank, a bank courier, an armored truck driver or someone who is in a legal business that banks refuse to deal with.
IIRC she's not a Parahuman in canon. When did she get powers in the story?
- Location
- france
She nearly get blow when Noelle Shard go boom and trigger with a Thinker power that allow her to see things about the shards
- Location
- Omniverse #1345
Fortunately it was "Three or more" of the list. Still too likely for false positives, though.