The PRT officer on Wards console duty didn't say anything about the chosen route, so Taylor was on her platform flying along as Missy got used to using the broom outside instead of being constrained to a single room. She was doing a lot of darting back and forth, speeding ahead only to then retreat back to where they'd already been, and occasionally trying to match speed but spiraling around Taylor.
Of course, Missy would prefer that the six 'crash into buildings' incidents as they left the PRT building never be talked about, but Taylor had her visor and scout drone recording. Clips of those from a number of angles were going to be available, and likely shared with several others. They might even make it into the system, since the augmented patrol app was running and thus making a copy of things as well.
Taylor suppressed the urge to frown as two parahumans on a rooftop came into her range as they flew along. A quick check confirmed that they were in costume, so as they got closer Taylor highlighted them on the augmented patrol app before hitting her console button.
"Maul to console," she subvocalized. "I don't recognize these two, but they appear to be teenagers and they're parahumans in costume that may be waiting for us. Do we have any information on them?"
Missy swung around to fly next to Taylor as they waited, and it wasn't long before Aisha responded. "Console to Maul, those two are unknowns. Rumors indicate that the purple rope can be controlled somehow, and that the scissors may be a power creation or focus, but we have no confirmed details."
Well, that was at least better than nothing. They reached the closest point their patrol would come to the rooftop the two were on shortly after that, and Taylor wasn't really surprised when the purple rope was thrown in their general direction. What did surprise her was that it just fell, slapping against the building that the two parahumans were on when it did absolutely nothing special.
"Was that supposed to do something?" Taylor asked after a moment.
The girl that'd thrown the rope looked back up at Taylor, her knitted domino mask looking a bit too potentially itchy. "It was supposed to try and grab you."
"Huh. Didn't work. You feeling okay?"
"Yeah. I knew you would be able to get free, since I'm not a brute, but to have it fail to even try is annoying." She then wiggled the end of the rope, before whipping her hand at the girl with the scissors. The rope suddenly jumped up and moved to wrap around the other girl, who batted it away with the scissors while jumping to the side. "See? Works fine on her." Whipping it back towards the two Wards had it falling down again. "But not on you two. I don't usually run into people that outclass me to the point where my power won't work on them."
Taylor nodded, even as Missy moved down and between two other buildings, likely looking to get around the two without being seen. The sudden jump to behind the building they were on a moment later confirmed that. "Huh. Not much that I can do about that. Though I'm not sure why you targeted us to begin with."
"The stupid gangs are terrified of making you angry for some reason, so going after you shows that I'm not nearly as much of a scardy-cat as they are."
"Ahhh. At least you waited for me to be in costume?"
The two girls looked at each other, then back at Taylor. "Why the hell would we risk the wrath of who knows who by going after someone out of costume?"
Taylor might've answered, but Missy took that moment to fire off a stun blast into the purple rope girl while hitting her scissor-bearing partner with her taser. Though that did mean that they found out that the scissors were powers-created, since they vanished when the girl collapsed.
"How did they last long enough to do this if they're that horrible at watching their own backs?" Missy wondered.
"I'm going to assume that someone took pity on them," Taylor answered. "Either that or they underestimated us on the basis that we're good guys? I'm not really sure. But they attempted to attack us, technically, and declared that it was their intention to do so."
Aisha confirmed that a van was on the way to pick the two up, but Taylor decided to see if she could get any more information from their snarks.
Taylor: Hello there.
[Query]|Dismissal|
Well, scissor-girl's snark didn't want to chat, and Taylor saw little reason to force it to.
Taylor: I'm the one on the flying platform that your human just failed to grab.
[Acceptance]
Taylor: I don't suppose you're willing to tell me what you do for your human? Or perhaps why she couldn't grab me?
[...Data]
Well, one out of two wasn't horrible, and apparently the girl couldn't use the grab trick on flying targets specifically. There was a subtle implication of a lack of connection back to the girl, perhaps she connected through the ground somehow for that trick and the rope followed it?
Taylor ended up moving both girls down to the ground so that the PRT officers could secure them, at which point she and Missy continued on their way. It took a few minutes for Missy to return to the more energetic flying routine that she'd been doing before they ran into the two girls.
"A pair of parahumans, two robberies, and one outright attack against you," the police officer supervising loading of the latter group into vans said. "Busy afternoon for you."
"Apparently," Taylor said, looking around. Missy hadn't spotted anyone else, but that didn't mean that there weren't others nearby waiting for an opening.
"Too bad the first group got away already."
"What?"
"Yeah, they woke up on the way to the PRT building and broke out of the van. I figure it was difficult to restrain them properly when they're unknowns and am just glad that you girls didn't call us for those two."
Well, that was unexpected. Somewhat, the officer had a point about keeping unknowns secured in transit, and Taylor hadn't been able to learn that much from their snarks with a gentle approach. Coupled with them showing basically zero useful abilities at the time made it pure luck for actually holding both of them once they woke up.
The officer was called over to one of the vans a moment later, and Taylor called her platform over to jump back on it. They didn't have to stick around at this point anyway, so she and Missy could get moving again.
"I wonder if we'll run into anything else," Missy said. "Beyond lots of people having started setting up along the route with cameras, anyway."
Taylor shrugged. "No clue, but they're up to page fourteen on PHO."
"Really? Huh. Think we should make a quick video to put up ourselves?"
"Up to you, I think."
They ended up recording a few minutes of Missy flying from various angles, and Taylor let Missy upload it. That made the thread explode with new discussion, amusing both of them and Aisha.
Anne grumbled a bit as they entered their temporary base, the key she'd made to unlock the door vanishing now that she didn't need it. "Why the hell did we go along with Nana's plan?"
Irma rolled her eyes as she continued to go over her rope. Luckily it hadn't been damaged while they were out. "You know that we agreed that looking like lucky idiots would be more likely to get us ignored for recruitment by anyone while we try and figure out where Michael and Natalie are hiding. I'm more annoyed that Vista actually got the drop on us."
"Yeah, yeah. We should've had another few seconds or so before she made it into position, but we forgot to take into account her ability to crunch space."
"We know better for next time. I'm just happy that the PRT didn't restrain us properly to keep us from using our powers. It would've been much harder to escape from their holding cells." Nodding to herself as she found no damage to the rope, Irma flexed her power to coil it up before sending it over to the empty hook in the set that she'd put up to keep it and the others like it on when not out in her chosen costume for their stay in Brockton Bay. Her mask and belt followed a moment later, though she didn't have extras of those yet. "As an added bonus, we now have an extra 'escape' plan ready that we can use and not be seen to be repeating ourselves."
Anne waved her hand dismissively. "Whatever. Do you have any plans for dealing with the Wards next time? That they've got multiple that are too strong for you to grab could be problematic for our current bag of tricks."
"My current thought is that we avoid them. Not like they're likely to get in our way, and we did expect that a lot of the locals would be trouble to deal with anyway. The whole 'lucky idiot' thing is entirely because of that."
"I suppose."
"But we should check with Nana anyway. She might have other thoughts, and I'm less sure of things with Vista. I half expected to be unable to do anything to Maul."
Anne nodded. "Yeah. Given that, I think I should make another attempt to get Nana to agree to let me put a gun back into one of my slots. Perhaps she'll agree if I swap out the short sword, since I'm starting to think that we need a long-range holdout around here."
"Not sure if that'll convince her, but feel free to try anyway."
Taylor checked in on Rosa when they finished their patrol, and found that she'd carefully piled some equipment up along one wall, and haphazardly thrown other equipment into a pile in the corner. The latter looked to be the worst off, and was probably seen as scrap or spare parts to the girl's snark now. Especially since Taylor's tinker snark was making her think that some of it would be better treated that way as well, unless she really wanted to get all of it working again. The girl was, at the time that Taylor checked, working on part of her backpack that seemed to need several components replaced or repaired.
Shaking her head, she went and got changed, then ensured that Rosa was ready for when she was picked up to head home. That left Taylor as the last of the Wards to leave, but it didn't take her long to get home. Her father had dinner ready when she got there, and she described the patrol to him as they ate. This included showing some of Missy's initial trouble with buildings, which amused him.
After dinner, she looked over PHO and found that Missy and Dennis had both been posting in the thread about the broom. Missy was answering questions, mostly, while Dennis was asking stupid questions. Like if Missy could cast spells now, and if she had a black cat that just couldn't make it today.
Oddly enough, he'd dropped the latter line of questioning like a rock when Missy had posted a picture of Midnight, with an apology stating that the broom wasn't spider-friendly.
She was still looking over the thread when she finally got a response to an earlier question that she'd asked, causing her to grin. That led to her switching over to her tablet for some actual design work, since she felt that things should be presented correctly. It took a bit of trial and error, but she ended up happy with the end result and printed off a copy.
Amy: Why are you grinning?
Taylor: Plans coming together.
Amy: Ah. Did you know that there's a store just outside of town that sells brute-rated backpacks? They're only rated for lower levels, granted, but they're stronger than they look.
Taylor: Really? Do they sell brute-rated anything else?
Amy: Well, they've got supposedly brute-rated folding chairs, but I watched a non-parahuman toddler break the display model. Granted, it could be that the display model isn't one of the brute-rated ones, but I'm not about to trust them. Luckily that's a different brand from the backpacks, which seem to be built well.
Taylor: Good to know, I guess, but have you handed one of the backpacks to said toddler?
Amy: No, but now I want to. I wonder if she's still here or if her mother would object?
Taylor resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Instead she finished up what she was doing, then double-checked her plans for the next day. Which were...sparse. Possibly patrol, but she'd likely grab the console so that she could be around since her calendar said that Colin was going to be going over things with Rosa. Missy was probably going to want another stint on her broom, so having her patrol with Ryan might not be a horrible idea. Aisha had only an hour ago indicated that she didn't want to take any of the non-patrol items on her potentials list as well, and instead wanted to go out on patrol, so that essentially created a full patrol group there. Though Chris also wanted to do something, so perhaps Missy would be bumped in favor of Chris who had taken the day off today?
Some weeks were far easier to schedule than others.
Thursday morning started a little noisier than expected due to a truck down the street deciding that it no longer wanted to function as a truck. It might've been a little quieter, if as part of things one of the wheels hadn't ended up rolling across the street into a different car, setting off its alarm.
Taylor had taken a quick look and was fairly certain that her tinker snark had wanted to flinch at the mess. The truck was almost certainly a write-off at this point, but it looked like the final failure would've looked spectacular.
When she made it to the gym she found that Vicky had joined Amy for a morning workout, and Missy arrived a few minutes later.
"So what brings you here this morning?" Missy asked Vicky.
Vicky shrugged. "I'm scheduled to run a quick patrol with the Protectorate today, to get it out of the way. First evaluation of me as an adult instead of as a minor and all that annoying stuff. So I'm going straight home to change after school, then flying over to the Rig."
Taylor thought about that for a moment, then submitted a quick question on Vicky's behalf. It couldn't hurt, at least, and was probably going to be better received coming from inside the system than from Vicky herself.
"So what else is happening this afternoon?" Missy asked. "Since Taylor apparently gave me the option of tagging along on a patrol or tagging along while more granite is repaired around town."
Amy looked over at Taylor for a moment, then shrugged. "I assume she has good reasons for that. I'm going to be working on a few things in the greenhouse today. Someone actually wants to buy some of my bamboo, so I need to prep some of that for them, and I should whip up some more rose bush bulbs."
"I'm planning on running the console for the patrol," Taylor added. "In case I'm needed for tinker support while Rosa's damaged stuff is looked over."
"And there's the expected good reason for me only being able to tag along on things," Missy grumbled. "Why can't you have unreasonable plans that I can argue against?"
"You aren't whining about me not making one of the others play tag-along instead?"
"I just patrolled, they didn't. That part was obvious. The non-obvious part was why you weren't available to make it two patrols."
"Ah. You can always take the day off instead you know."
"Fat chance of that happening today. I'm using 'Wards stuff' as an excuse to not go shopping with my father."
Vicky snorted at that. "Figures. Though how bad could shopping with him be?"
"I have zero interest in coffee or the various things that are used to make it, but I'm willing to bet that he could give lectures on the subject. We need a new whatever he decides to get for the weekend and I lost interest about five minutes into his first lecture on the subject. That was three days ago. Being stuck unable to escape while shopping with him should legally be considered torture."
"Oh."
They talked about other things for a bit after that, including Vicky teasing Missy about going around as a witch like she was a little girl playing dress-up. Missy's counter-argument was that now she could snipe people from high altitude and that she had other tricks that she could use now.
Vicky had laughed at that until Missy demonstrated one of those tricks by carefully piling up a dozen cinder blocks that she'd been carrying in one of her pouches, having been practicing using her powers to keep them compressed down to a smaller and lighter size for transport. The idea of those being dropped from heights on particularly troublesome targets was actually an amusing image for them. Then again, Missy was the only one in the room without a force field available.
By lunchtime Taylor had forgotten about her morning request, but as they were sitting there eating Vicky paused, then beamed and turned to Taylor. "Thank you!"
Taylor looked at her and raised an eyebrow. "For what?"
"I can't think of anyone else who would've asked for me to be given access to visitor arrival points."
Blinking, Taylor recalled her morning message. She then nodded. "Yeah, that made sense to me, but I wasn't sure if there was something else involved in their decisions for who got access to those."
"What are you two talking about?" Amy asked, obviously confused.
"I asked the PRT about affiliates in general and Vicky specifically getting access to more visitor arrival points. You've already got access for other reasons, of course. I'm assuming that they agreed with my logic. Either that or Armsmaster got word of the request and decided that it would be inefficient to not approve it, I suppose."
Amy nodded, but a small number of students were obviously confused about what they were talking about. Not that anyone who had a clue was going to enlighten them beyond what they'd already stated. Taylor heard a couple of people mention 'secret entrances' and figured that was probably accurate enough. That the entrances were for use from pocket dimensions was just an extra detail.
More people would've taken note of the conversation if the majority of students weren't crowding Missy, wanting information on the broom and her 'witch costume'. As if adding a hat counted as an entirely new costume. Dennis being over there acting clueless and wanting details could be a clever ruse on his part, or he could've been kept entirely out of the loop and was actually clueless. Taylor wasn't sure if she wanted to check on that, let alone how to without asking him directly.
It was shortly before the repeaters shut down that Taylor got a message of her own, stating that Colin and Director Piggot had approved a schedule change for her. A priority request for her time to start with, and if she had time today a lower-priority documentation task afterwards. Which was annoying, but at least she hadn't scheduled herself for patrolling. She had no chance to look for details before the repeaters shut down, which left her mildly frustrated as she made her way to her afternoon classes.
Jacob looked over Mary and Tori. They'd mostly figured out how to dress like normal teenagers, which was a plus. The only thing detracting from that in his eyes were that their shoes had velcro instead of laces, but the fact that said shoes existed in the first place probably meant that he was over-thinking things there. Further, they'd figured out that they could keep their preferred comfort toys with them without the toys being noticed by hiding them inside of their purses.
All in all, they actually looked normal enough to wander around in public in a city like Brockton Bay. Not that he'd want them doing so unescorted, of course, but it was enough for him to be willing to consider bringing them to visit Taylor.
"You look like you've done your research," he said out loud, and both girls beamed at him. "Next up is me taking you out to eat to see if you can act as normal as you look when in public." And that had Mary looking mildly panicked and Tori pouting. "If you can pass as at least as normal as Riley then I'll arrange to meet up with Taylor and possibly Amy." With that both girls looked at each other, then nodded. They were determined to pass this, apparently.
Of course, he'd still have to figure out when to bring them, and where they'd end up going for that matter. He might end up wanting to go somewhere other than Brockton Bay, but that would be trickier to arrange right now. Yes, he had a teleporter in his house, bought under the excuse that it would make moving around easier and still let him sleep in his own bed more often. But bringing Mary and Tori through it could result in questions that he didn't want to be answering. Perhaps dropping them into his own pocket dimension long enough for him to use the teleporter would work? It was an idea, at least.
He pulled out his phone and made a quick note to get proper locks for the containers he had in his pocket dimension. If he did use that plan then he'd need to ensure that neither girl could get at the toys he was storing. Meeting up with Taylor and/or Amy only to start with emergency healing was something that he'd like to avoid.
After school Taylor made her way to the PRT building, grumbling about the lack of information available on either task she was being given for the afternoon. Though she did amend Missy's potential activities list to include running the console, since now that would be open. One of the only good things about the two activities for the day was that she apparently didn't need to be in costume for either of them.
A quick check of things in the Wards area, including finding a stack of mail waiting for her, was followed by heading up to Director Piggot's office. She'd go straight to the 'high priority' task, but nobody had bothered to put down where it was or with whom. Which left checking with Director Piggot or Colin, and only one of them was in the building. Or at least the system said that Director Piggot was around, which was as good as Taylor was going to get with the woman.
"Good afternoon Miss Hebert," the director's secretary greeted. "What brings you by?"
"Afternoon," Taylor replied. "And a 'high priority' task was approved for me, but nobody seems to have seen fit to tell me anything more than that it exists. Armsmaster isn't in the building yet to ask, so I figured that checking with Director Piggot was my next best bet."
"She's currently in a conference call, but luckily I can help you there. Mister Chambers pulled a favor or two in order to get your assistance with something, but I'm not sure what. He should be in his office now, but if you want I can call down to confirm?"
Taylor shook her head. "No, that's okay. I'll head down there, see if I can get whatever it is he wants help with out of the way."
It only took a couple of minutes to get to Glenn's office, and he called for her to enter as soon as she knocked. She found him going through a box full of books. "Afternoon. I hear you wanted my help?"
"Ahh!" Glenn said, a look of relief on his face. "Yes, yes. I'm at a complete loss and was hoping that you'd have additional insight into young Takara's branding."
Taylor blinked at that. "What?"
"You're probably the most knowledgeable person about her powers we have available, and even noted things that the testers didn't regarding how her transformation integrates her clothing coloring. I was hoping that you might be able to provide more insights that could help with her branding."
"Oh. I'm not sure what I could contribute, to be honest."
He gestured at the box of books, and then at a stack of papers. "I've been going over various 'dragon' related sources and am tempted to start trying to tear out more of my hair. But finding something that works for a young girl and isn't likely to create issues with the local gangs is a horribly complicated task."
Taylor nodded there. "Yeah, I can see how that would complicate matters." She then took a moment to pull up a couple of things, and found that Glenn had been informed of Kenta's identity as part of things. "At least you don't have to worry about all of the gangs, right? I can't see her father allowing anyone to object if she uses Asian influences."
"Why would that..." Glenn started, then blinked a couple of times. He then groaned. "I'm so used to what I can't use in this blasted town that I limited myself without thinking. Of course her father won't let his people object to Asian influences. He'll probably be expecting them, even. Of course, out of habit I don't have any of those materials here, but at least I have time to get them."
"Glad I could help. Was there anything else?"
He looked at her, obviously thinking for a moment, then nodded. "Yes, actually. Three things. First, good call with the hat for Miss Biron. I've got people working on a line of merchandise using that and the broom for her, and we're thinking that it will be a success. Makes me wish that Parian was willing to make more of those plush toys, but she declined on the grounds that it would devalue those already made. Second, for today and the whole witch hat idea you're owed a favor from my department in general, I'm sure you can find the documentation on how those work."
"It shouldn't be hard to find, no, but if I have trouble then I'll let you know."
"Please do. Lastly, I'd like to apologize for not keeping a close enough eye on things in order to stop the horrible paint job."
Taylor blinked at that. "What paint job?"
"You'll see."
That didn't make her feel all that confident.
Taylor ended up waiting for Colin to show up so that she could ask him about the documentation project, only for him to direct her to head over to the Rig where Sherrel was waiting. Worryingly, he also apologized for the paint job, without providing any other details. She didn't know what to make of that, but she used her pocket dimension to get over to the Rig anyway. Vicky was there already, though she was higher up in the Rig with Terry while Taylor was heading down to meet Sherrel.
It didn't take long to get down to the garage that Sherrel worked out of, and she found the woman working on something under a PRT van. "Good afternoon."
"Hi," Sherrel replied, half waving before there was a ping sound. "Goddammit, this blasted transfer case refuses to cooperate."
Curious, Taylor walked over and looked under the van. "Do I want to know what bent the drive shaft?"
"No clue, because nobody told me. But I can't get both universal joints disconnected properly because of the bend and the transfer case doesn't want to come off of the transmission. I don't suppose you can spot anything that I missed?"
Sherrel moved out of the way so that Taylor could look over things. That didn't take long. "I think there's still a bolt above where the drive shaft connects."
"FUCK. I forgot about that one. Maybe I'll just cut the stupid shaft off to get at it."
"Whatever works. I was told that there's something for me to document?"
The woman blinked, then beamed. "Oh yeah! Forgot why you were even coming for a moment. Give me a moment and we can go take a look."
Five minutes later Taylor had been brought to the parking area of the Rig, where a tarp sat over what looked to be either a long truck or a bus. Sherrel grinned as she pulled the tarp off, revealing that it was indeed a bus of some kind. One painted with neon stripes as a background for the 'ENE WARDS' in a vibrant but not quite neon green over it. Which nicely solved the mystery of why people were apologizing for the paint job today. Perhaps they could treat repainting the thing as a Wards group activity?
"There you go," Sherrel said, ignoring that Taylor was still shocked at the paint job. "One bus for the Wards. Problem is, nobody can fully understand my documentation, so we asked and got permission to just have you write it. Mainly because everyone's already expecting you to do so anyway, so you might as well get proper credit for doing so." She paused, and then apparently took Taylor's silence as 'questioning'. "In particular, nobody's been able to get the flight system down without me actively helping them. After the fourth near-crash we figured that it was a lost cause."
Taylor finally snapped out of staring at the paint job, though that might've been due to her tinker snark starting to feed her information on the bus. Which could probably double as an armored personnel carrier if needed. "Why does it have a pop-up weapon mount integrated into the roof at the back?"
"You'll find that a t-shirt cannon is in the storage area in the back right now, and we're sure that Water Monkey can make a water gun compatible with it."
"Oh."
Yeah, I'd want to change that paint scheme ASAP myself. Although, I wonder if she'll discover the paint is integral to something else the vehicle does? That does seem to be a common theme with Tinker designs, after all.
