- Location
- Earth, Sol System, Virgo Supercluster, Earth-1218
The quick change machine doubles as a mecha. She steps in and the whole thing just stands up ready to go.
M. H. Fuzzball
Aperture Science-certified Horrible Person
- Location
- Sector 2814
It has, on occaision, been up to five girls entering the gym (I'd say 'walking into the gym', but one of them does tend to float places).
- Location
- Here
Regarding an "efficient" dress, here's instructions for making a single dress, which can be worn in quite a few different shapes depending on whether you use a sash, how high you wear it, and how you fold the dress before tying it, made from four equally-sized squares of fabric with no off-cuts, with just six seams. If that's not efficient, I don't know what is.
(the fact that that style of dress is perhaps most of a century out of fashion is clearly beside the point)
(the fact that that style of dress is perhaps most of a century out of fashion is clearly beside the point)
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- Location
- Море песка, солнце огня и множество злых сарацин
Finally caught up (yet again) - and sadly don't have any on-topic comments...
I don't agree, but this is... not an untenable position.
Specifically: the difference between Biblical Hebrew and Modern Hebrew (as they're usually called) is on roughly the same level as that between Early Modern English (think Shakespeare or King James Bible) and, um, recent Modern English (what people talk in now).
It's not quite on the level of calling them different languages, but it's not that far from it, and there are actual different languages (Serbian and Croatian come to mind) that are closer to each other than this.
If such a position was taken, it would have been quite correct (though misleading) to say that Hebrew is a dead language, much like, e.g., Middle English is.
Of course, most people (even among those who even know that the two forms of Hebrew are different in the first place) don't consider it that way.
(JFoM, inspired by a certain Swede's complaints about "the vitssågen")
Some people believe that Hebrew (the language of the Tanakh) and Ivrit (what modern Israeli people speak) are different languages.
I don't agree, but this is... not an untenable position.
Specifically: the difference between Biblical Hebrew and Modern Hebrew (as they're usually called) is on roughly the same level as that between Early Modern English (think Shakespeare or King James Bible) and, um, recent Modern English (what people talk in now).
It's not quite on the level of calling them different languages, but it's not that far from it, and there are actual different languages (Serbian and Croatian come to mind) that are closer to each other than this.
If such a position was taken, it would have been quite correct (though misleading) to say that Hebrew is a dead language, much like, e.g., Middle English is.
Of course, most people (even among those who even know that the two forms of Hebrew are different in the first place) don't consider it that way.
Um, that can't possibly be correct? It's either "Alicorn" or "TheIcorn". "Al" already means "The".
(JFoM, inspired by a certain Swede's complaints about "the vitssågen")
Crazael
Rehydrated Demon King
- Location
- Lost to the vagaries of time.
IiRC, Alwxandria using a fake eye in her Chief Director identity is mentioned... so probably.
- Location
- Море песка, солнце огня и множество злых сарацин
Yes and yes - with the caveat that it happened before the therapy.
Chapter 257
Tuesday morning Taylor found several alerts waiting for her, including that Wards activities were canceled beyond the three kids still having their class. Missy was probably going to be annoyed by that, but it was hard to argue them wanting to go over the entirety of the secure areas to see if anything else undocumented had been installed. Annoyingly, the gym was part of the secure areas and was closed while they looked over things, expected to be open either tomorrow morning or the morning after. Which likely depended on how long it took them to clear that portion of things.
Amy and Vicky were both annoyed, but understanding, when they got similar alerts regarding the gym. Though Vicky was more annoyed because she'd gotten up early specifically so that she could make the trip before school, only to find out that by no fault of her own she couldn't go to the one gym in the area with brute-rated equipment and thus didn't need to be up early at all.
The three of them ended up going out for breakfast instead, meeting up to take the minivan to a diner. It ended up being cheaper than their usual routine due to a 'marketing' discount that was applied. When asked, the owner admitted that just by having the three eat in the diner she expected that there would be an upswing in business for a week or two. She followed that up by showing them pictures that someone had posted on PHO, taken as the three were walking in. There were at least four posts following stating that people were intending to check the diner out now.
Their arrival at school was met with people gathering in a way that made it unsafe to put the minivan away in the pocket dimension, so Taylor simply parked it in the student lot. Given the reactions to that she was thinking that some of them wanted to see what was in the pocket dimension and had been aiming to dart in when it opened to let the minivan through. That most of them had phones or cameras out just reinforced that thought.
"You should've pulled into the Shaper pocket," Amy said as they grabbed their bags. "Seeing the looks on their faces at finding basically nothing in the pocket dimension would've been hilarious."
Taylor snorted. "You noticed too?"
"It was hard not to."
At the end of the school day, to the annoyance of her classmates, Taylor just drove off in the minivan. She had a meeting in the PRT building, and then had the afternoon off. Because of that they'd changed plans. Amy was swinging by the hospital and then hopefully the two would meet up and throw a second coat of paint on in their roll-out bedrooms. That depended on Amy's hospital visit and Taylor's meeting both not taking too long.
A few blocks from school she opened up a pocket dimension opening and slipped in with the minivan, before exiting in the PRT building. The Wards doorway was offline, as was the Wards garage doorway, so she used the visitor doorway. It wasn't like she needed to get into costume for her meeting, after all, nor was she anticipating wanting to grab anything from her Wards room. Instead she headed straight for the conference room she'd been directed to by the request. Though she did flinch when Amy got to the first patient she was going to look at today.
Taylor: What the hell happened there?
Amy: I didn't ask, because I don't think I want to know how they got a glue-coated pillow crammed up their ass. Especially given that they're handcuffed to the bed.
Okay, yes, they were probably better off not knowing how that happened. Taylor opted to ignore it for the time being, focusing on the meeting that nobody had given her a reason for. Sadly, she was the first one to the conference room, so had to wait for others to show up.
Ten minutes after the meeting was supposed to start, and five before Taylor was going to send a 'sorry, nobody else showed up' message, Deputy Director Renick arrived. He looked very annoyed as he dropped into a chair, letting the bag he had with him fall to the floor next to him. "Good afternoon, for what's it worth. Or at least I hope your afternoon is going better than mine."
Taylor shrugged. "So far I've left school and sat here waiting for people. Are you it?"
He nodded. "Yes, though that wasn't the original plan. The other two that were going to join us are too busy to do so. Some maintenance was done improperly behind the gift shop and we accidentally discovered that while tracing wires heading out of the secure areas. Only one person was injured beyond bruising when the opening panel took most of the wall with it, but it created a significant mess and took out a number of data links for that area. We've had to close down the gift shop itself for the moment, which has been very annoying, and we aren't yet sure why the elevator isn't working."
"Oh. Did you want me to..."
"No," he interrupted. "For policy and procedure reasons we don't want you to help figure any of it out yet, and the injuries aren't severe enough to require parahuman healing. We might ask for your help if the problem points aren't determined by the end of the week, but don't expect to need to. Fixing things falls under Reknit's capabilities at a minimum."
"Okay. Then why are we here?"
He sat up properly, sighing as he did so, then lifted his bag up to place it on the table. "Originally it was to thank you for some of your previous work, but this morning we also found a recording device in the ceiling of your Wards room. Audio only, and it wasn't connected to anything yet. We know it was recent because we checked the serial numbers and it was only manufactured two months ago, and purchased a couple weeks ago."
Taylor wasn't sure how to respond to that. "Someone wanted to listen to me in my private room?"
"We suspect that the same group installed the ones found near the secret entrances, but haven't finished identifying possible suspects yet. We think that there are at least five compromised maintenance employees, but from what we know it could be as high as twenty." He pulled two large envelopes out of his bag, one flat and one with bulges in it. "Still, that isn't your responsibility to work out." He passed over the flat envelope first. "To start with the original purpose of this meeting, this is an official thanks for spotting and going above and beyond on figuring out the attempted data tap. The head of maintenance wanted to give it to you, but he's occupied helping with cleanup."
She took the envelope and looked inside, finding that it had a certificate and two coupons for free dessert in the PRT cafeterias. "Huh. I didn't think I qualified for this kind of thing after taking the class that let me claim maintenance tasks."
"You aren't officially part of the maintenance staff, but they get these too. If you were part of the staff then there would only be one coupon in there." He then pushed the other envelope over. "This is the official paperwork and your copy of the keys for the Wards bus. We included official permission to repaint it, and a list of things that have to be present for legal reasons, but actually arranging for that will fall to you as Wards leader. I think there might be more in there as well, the officer put in charge of testing your documentation was very happy."
Taylor nodded at that, quickly looking through the envelope. One of the keys would be added to her keyring, which was getting quite large. The rest of the paperwork looked fairly straightforward, and she noted that they'd even included a budget for the repainting that had to be used by the end of the calendar year. Presumably repainting the bus ASAP was being encouraged. There was also a gift card for a donut shop floating in the bottom of the envelope. "Thank you. Where is the bus now?"
"It's out on the rig currently, but will be brought over here by midday tomorrow and left in the main secure garage. We need to get another vehicle moved over to the rig to compensate for the space needed, which is happening today along with the new reserved parking sign being put up."
"Okay. Is there anything else you need to tell me today?"
"Nope. I think we're good, and with any luck the Wards will be able to patrol tomorrow. The sweeps should be far enough by then, though stairwells may need to be used instead of the elevator. You should have a message by lunchtime either way."
"Good to know, thanks."
"Do you have anything for me?"
"Don't think so."
Renick nodded. "Okay then. Have a nice afternoon."
Taylor collected both envelopes as she got up. "I hope your afternoon gets better."
"I can only hope."
She made it halfway down the corridor before deciding that she should show the other Wards the bus as soon as possible in order to get supply ordering accomplished, so she put a tentative 'if they let us' all-Wards meeting on the calendar for the next day.
It didn't take much longer for Amy to finish up the critical cases at the hospital, and both girls changed into older clothing that they didn't mind getting paint all over. This time they attacked Taylor's room first, primarily because they'd left some of the stuff in there and it made sense to not need to move everything between the two rooms twice. They were able to move much faster, and did better keeping paint where they wanted it, than they had during the previous session.
Once they were done they did a more complete cleanup, since they didn't expect to be doing more than touch-up work from that point forward. That included deciding what storage area to keep some of the stuff in, though they did remember to keep out what they'd need for replacing all of the wall plates and covers, not to mention hanging curtains, once everything was dry. After that they went home, showered, and had dinner with their families. They then had to allow said families to inspect their work on pain of being severely pestered until said inspection was permitted to happen.
"I have to admit that you seem to have done a decent enough job," Danny said as they looked over things. "Not perfect, but if you wanted perfect then you would've hired professionals to do it all for you instead."
"That might happen for the next areas we deal with," Amy admitted. "Whatever those end up being. Painting what amounts to three entire houses sounds less than amusing after this experience, but we definitely aren't going to be in a rush to worry about it."
Vicky was flying around to look at the points closer to the ceiling. "I'm not sure if I should be concerned or not that my own pocket dimension could use some paint. I mean, yes, I could hire someone, or try it myself, but I don't think you two are going to be willing to paint it for me and I know I don't have the patience to figure out what I'm doing myself."
Taylor shrugged. "One of the benefits of doing this now is that it gives us a very private and safe place to sleep, should we feel we need it."
Nobody seemed to know what to say about that, but they finished examining both rooms and looking at the way that the extra paint had been stored for now.
"I suppose that once you put the rooms together that you'll need to do more shopping," Mark said as they were preparing to leave.
"We've ordered gun safes for the closets and were planning on looking at organization options there once we knew how they laid out," Taylor admitted.
Mark paused, then nodded. "Good on you, I'd forgotten about that. I was thinking that I wouldn't want to sleep in a room when the bathroom has no toilet paper, handsoap, or towels."
Taylor and Amy shared a look, and Taylor at least suppressed a groan as she added bathroom supplies to the shopping list. Which would include toilet paper, soaps, hair care products, rugs, towels, and probably toilet plungers as a just in case item. For that matter, they had a washing machine and dryer available, but they probably needed to pick up suitable detergent and dryer sheets. The latter would help as they cleaned the reusable tarps.
Wednesday morning the gym still wasn't available, though this time Vicky had apparently been ready for that and slept in. Taylor and Amy weren't as lucky, being too used to waking up coupled with both ending up needing to use the restroom shortly before they might've been up anyway. Instead they ended up making breakfast at home before checking out the state of things in the pocket dimension. Luckily it looked like there hadn't been any issues as the paint dried overnight, so they put the fans away and replaced all the wallplates. The curtains and setting up furniture could wait.
With that done they thought about how to best get to school today. Eventually they decided that it would be amusing to confuse people by getting near, but not actually in, the school with a portal. Getting the portal opening interface to cooperate as they moved away from the beacon was more annoying, and it took more time than expected to get to the alleyway that they'd chosen. They still had plenty of time to get to school despite that, and walked up to the surprise of several students that were outside.
Vicky was incredibly annoyed when she finally arrived, having not expected Amy to have been long gone, and when Taylor saw Missy it was obvious that the girl hadn't had an enjoyable afternoon the day before. Sadly, today aside, the next few days were likely to annoy her as well, and Taylor couldn't do a thing about it.
At lunchtime Taylor had found the 'all clear for Wards activities' message waiting, and at the end of the day she went straight to the PRT building. Missy would likely show up shortly, but Taylor went straight to the secure garage instead of getting changed. There she found the bus waiting, in a space that was marked off as being specifically for the Wards bus. Doing her best to ignore the paint job for now, she got in and carefully moved it into the Wards parking area. None of the others were likely to try and use the area today, since Taylor and Amy were the only ones with spaces and vehicles to put in them, and it was easier to get to than the main garage area.
Missy had arrived while Taylor was doing that, but was still changing when Taylor passed back through the common area to get changed into her own costume. Chris arrived not too long after that, dropped off by Dean who seemed to be passing through the PRT building today. Aisha arrived on her own, having apparently taken the bus, and was the only one of the older four to not bother changing into her costume.
"What's up with you?" Taylor asked after Missy went to get some meeting snacks, having determined that Aisha was going to stay in her civvies for whatever reason.
"I decided that it was obviously in everyone's best interest to have someone volunteer for console duty," Aisha answered. "Couple that with getting plenty of power usage on Monday, plus a bunch more yesterday while experimenting on my own, and I'm an ideal choice."
"Which sounds decidedly unlike you."
The girl looked around, just in case, "I happen to know that Missy is pissed off about yesterday, and I was able to see that the brats aren't cleared to actually patrol today. So we don't need numbers. If Chris joins you and Missy then you can take one of the more dangerous flying routes together and Missy can hopefully work out some aggression."
Taylor nodded, as that did sound reasonable. "I'd have expected you to want to be around to see it."
"I don't want to say the wrong thing and accidentally be her target. I'm the squishy one here."
Well, that was a valid way to look at things. "Okay. How did your testing go anyway?"
Aisha sighed at that. "Apparently I can only cause injury when sinking down into a surface and someone tries to walk on me as I'm doing so, and the injury is actually due to the force pushing them back out again. Worse, it needs them to be moving in just the right way and three out of four times they just bounce a bit and get confused as to what just happened. Doing the same thing with vertical surfaces fails outright, though they think that if someone is trying to tackle me at just the right moment that injuries could result."
"Ah. So it isn't nearly as weaponizable as you'd hoped."
"It's too unreliable. I'd be better off carrying a bat and hitting people with it. And no, they haven't accepted my request to be allowed to carry a bat."
Well, at least she'd made the request on her own?
Eventually Missy returned, they got the table set up and the snacks laid out on it, and it wasn't too long before the three younger Wards arrived. None of them got into costume as they weren't going to be patrolling. Apparently they'd had some issues with the acceptable force lessons and had another round of that today.
"So," Taylor said once everyone was there. "I have some good news and some horrible news."
"Shouldn't that be good news and bad news?" Chris asked.
"You'd think so, but no. But before I get to the good and horrible news, I'm curious if anyone has anything that they'd like to ask me while we're all gathered."
There was a moment of silence, before Sandy raised her hand. Taylor nodded at her to tell her to speak. "Mommy wasn't sure how to ask about warmer costumes."
That had Taylor blinking for a moment. She hadn't needed to worry about that, but that was supposed to be part of the design concerns. "I'll submit a request to get costumes reviewed for cold conditions." Sandy and Rosa both smiled at that. Ryan obviously didn't care. "Is there anything else?" After a moment of silence and shaking heads she continued. "Okay then. On to why I called this meeting in the first place. As I said, I have good news and horrible news. The good news is that we are the latest region to get an official Wards vehicle, the first to have said vehicle be under our control, and the first to have said vehicle be a tinkertech creation."
"And now I'm thinking that I'm going to need to take driving lessons," Chris said after a moment. "What kind of vehicle is it?"
"A bus."
"Okay, that isn't the coolest thing on the planet, but it makes sense."
Taylor snorted. "It's a tinkertech bus that can fly faster than your hoverboard can."
"Now that sounds cool," Missy said. "But I'm expecting a big 'but' here, what with the promised 'horrible news'."
Taylor nodded. "We'll get to that shortly. I've parked the bus in the Wards secure garage, shall we go take a look at it?"
The others all nodded, and Taylor led them down to the garage. The seven of them all came out of the stairwell, and the other six all stopped when they got a good look at the bus.
After a minute, Taylor sighed. "And if you haven't figured it out, the horrible news is the paint job on the bus."
Missy walked around the bus a couple of times, the only one that seemed to have heard Taylor. She was mumbling as she did so, and examined several parts of the paint job more closely, before shrugging. "I don't see the problem. Sure, it's repetitive, but whatever."
"What do you mean, it's repetitive?"
"It just says 'ENE Wards' over and over. Foreground, background, all of it, in horrible color choices."
Taylor looked at the bus, then back at Missy. "What?"
Missy spent the next ten minutes pointing out all the places that the bus said 'ENE Wards', most of which appeared to not be represented in two or three dimensions. Apparently the neon stripes weren't as random as they appeared to be, and Missy could pick out the pattern. At the same time, once looking at it more closely, she also picked up spelling errors in the neon stripes. None of the other Wards could see what Missy did, though, causing Taylor to wonder if her description was a prank.
If it was then she'd nailed the delivery.
"Regardless of all of that," Taylor finally said. "I have permission to repaint the bus. The 'ENE Wards' text has to be on the sides, and there's a few things that have to be there for regulatory reasons, but other than that we can paint it anyway we want to." Several of the Wards looked very interested at that. "But I'm not artistic, and likely to be doing a lot of the work myself, so I'm more interested in what colors to use for a much more plain paint job."
They retreated back to the Wards area, and after half an hour of discussion Taylor was convinced to try and do a fade from white on the bottom of the bus to sky blue from the window line up. She'd use a dark silver for the 'ENE Wards' on the sides, and didn't bother asking about the various regulatory markings that were all going to be in black on the otherwise light colored vehicle.
She submitted the request for costume suitability in cold weather, ordered what she thought she'd need for paints as well as matching window films, and sent off a message asking about how to arrange to use one of the PRT building's paint booths. The three kids went off for round two of acceptable force lessons, which from their grumbling was supposed to be a test of some kind, and Aisha volunteered to clean up the snacks while the other three prepared for their patrol.
Taylor fully expected that was an attempt to get more of the snacks for herself, given how little work cleaning them up should actually take.
Regardless of Aisha's motives, the other three looked over the patrol route list, and then at Missy's insistence asked for permission to run a Protectorate route instead of a Wards route. The PRT officer running the console from their end denied that pretty much immediately, so they grabbed the 'most dangerous' flying Wards route available. Taylor on her platform, Chris on his hoverboard, and Missy on her broom. Though Missy decided to put her rifle on her back instead of hidden inside of a pocket today.
"I think she's a bit angry," Chris said as he came up next to Taylor.
"I'm a bit surprised myself," Taylor admitted. "But she's being quite effective."
"She's hitting people in the head with stun bolts. From six to eight blocks away."
"Noses, actually. She's obviously been working on her aim."
Chris turned to Taylor. "What?"
"Every shot I've seen her land has hit someone on or directly next to their nose. I'm not sure if she's letting them see the barrel of the gun before the shot hits them or not though."
"Huh."
"I'm going to go interrupt that group of six over there."
He nodded, and Taylor darted around the building they were floating near, dropping off of her platform and into the midst of the group fighting.
Today turned out to be a wonderful day to patrol and actually run into things, because the Elite and the Empire were duking it out for some reason. Missy was sniping anyone from either side that was shooting people from a distance, Taylor occasionally dropped in on a closer-up scuffle, and Chris seemed content to play overwatch most of the time. Though some of that might've been that his attempt at a larger gun to take out a car had resulted in broken components, which he was using the 'downtime' to field repair.
"Console to Wards patrol," came over the radio a few minutes later, from a male voice that was obviously the PRT officer and not Aisha. "The police have asked for you to adjust your route six blocks East to help with a hotspot. Do you have any objections?"
Taylor looked up at Chris, who obviously looked towards where Missy was. After a moment he turned to her and shook his head, so she hit the radio. "Maul to Console, no objections."
A minute later their maps reported an update, weaving to the East for a bit before meeting up with their original route further down. Not that they would be following that until someone showed up to pick up those they'd gathered.
"So," Missy said as she dropped the last stunned gunner next to the rest of those they'd taken down. "Where are all the parahumans? The gangs don't normally fight like this without at least some parahuman leadership."
"No clue," Taylor admitted. "Though I wouldn't be surprised if our detour is actually to shift us around where the parahumans are known to be duking it out."
That actually had both of the other two frowning. But there wasn't much they could do about it. Though Missy did fly up again and start looking around, focusing on the area that they were now avoiding. She came down as the police finished loading their van with the captured gang members.
"I think they were telling the truth," Missy said. "There's a lot more activity along where they're sending us."
Taylor nodded. "Okay then. Do you want to ignore the little stuff to get to the higher activity faster?" Both of the other two grinned at that, so she turned to Chris. "I'm thinking that we should have you ride with me for a couple of minutes."
Chris's grin turned to a frown as he looked at his hoverboard. "There's no way that I broke something."
"Nah. You're just slow, I'd talk to Wrench Wraith about collaborating on some human-safe boosters or something."
"Oh. Right."
A few adjustments and they were off, and it was quickly obvious that part of the 'hotspot' was actually a cape battle. One that looked wrong to Taylor. Alabaster was in with the grunts, but Stormtiger seemed to be locked down protecting a building. The threat there was from a brute throwing large stone blocks at said building.
"I'm confused," Missy admitted. "I mean, taking out Stormtiger would be easy, but he's only defending?"
Taylor frowned and flipped through augmented patrol modes. "I think the building is residential, with kids in it. Probably Empire-protected housing?"
"Oh. Wait, does that mean that he's currently the good guy in this battle?"
"Maybe. The question is whether or not we inform the guy throwing the blocks that the building is full of civilians." The other two stared at Taylor for that comment. "What? Pointing out that he's threatening noncombatants might be enough to get him to disengage. If it doesn't work then he'll most likely be distracted and more susceptible to a sneak attack."
"That sounds more reasonable," Chris agreed. "The question is, which of us informs him?"
"It's my plan and I have no reason to not do so myself."
The other two agreed with that, and Chris hopped onto his hoverboard so that Taylor could swing around and drop down next to the brute. Who was definitely paying attention to his surroundings, as he idly tried to backhand Taylor as she landed.
"That wasn't nice," Taylor said as she ducked under the backhand.
"Sneak attacks aren't nice either," he said as he lobbed another block. Though now that Taylor was closer she could see that he was pulling them out of a solid stone slab under a tarp in the back of the truck that he was standing next to, making him a possible stiker. "What do you want?"
"I'm curious as to why you insist on throwing stone blocks at a building with kids in it."
He paused at that. "What?"
"The building Stormtiger keeps preventing your blocks from hitting looks to be residential with kids in it."
"Oh. I'd wondered why he suddenly shifted tactics." He then shrugged, grabbed another block, and threw it anyway. "Whatever works."
Well, that solidified Stormtiger as the current lesser of two evils. Taylor grabbed her maul off of her back, but had to dodge a punch as the cape decided that made her a higher priority target. Missy then hit him with a burst of stun bolts, which appeared to do nothing to him. Nor did taking the maul to his face do much, projected or physical instances.
Taylor: Hello there.
[Confusion]
Taylor: I'm currently fighting your human. He's being a bit stupid. Is there anything you're willing to tell me about what you do for him so that I don't have to hurt either of you to stop him?
[Assertion]
Taylor: Sorry, I'm not going to let him win.
<BA: Establishing Additional Connections>
The man threw another block in Stormtiger's general direction before trying to hit Taylor again, but found that punching Taylor was less effective than he'd like due to the force field belt. Not that it didn't send Taylor back a little.
<BA: Error: Connection Refused. Target has insufficient resources>
And with that the block that he'd just pulled out of the stone slab disintegrated, the man stumbling in the process. Taylor got him with a projected hit in the stomach with her maul, and Missy had let loose with another barrage of stun bolts. The man was unconscious a moment later, and Taylor moved to secure him somewhat. Moving him away from the stone slab for starters while Missy switched to targeting Stormtiger.
Because the man was a brute, Taylor opted to further secure him with containment foam. But she wanted to do so in a way that wouldn't let him pull stone out of the ground, assuming he could do so. That required some thought, but she ended up grabbing the tarp from the truck and lightly wrapping him up in it, then tying that to her platform. Once he was lifted up off of the ground she tossed a containment foam grenade into the tarp with him. The tie-down rope from the tarp proved to be long enough for her platform to be untouched by the foam, but he was definitely encased.
With that done, she allowed the connections to his snark to close, unsure if that would cause him to wake up. Either he didn't wake up or he couldn't get out of the foam, which was fine by her as she turned to help with the rest of the fight. Only to find that those regular gang members that weren't already unconscious had fled, along with Alabaster and Stormtiger. Missy was working on securing a few of the regular members, so Taylor moved over to her.
"So what happened with Stormtiger?" Taylor asked.
"He refused to fight back, stating that he and Alabaster were acting in defense of civilians," Missy grumbled. "I had to admit that I had no proof otherwise, which meant no actual reason to detain him."
"Oh."
"Loopholes are a lot less fun when they're used against you."
Amy and Vicky were both annoyed, but understanding, when they got similar alerts regarding the gym. Though Vicky was more annoyed because she'd gotten up early specifically so that she could make the trip before school, only to find out that by no fault of her own she couldn't go to the one gym in the area with brute-rated equipment and thus didn't need to be up early at all.
The three of them ended up going out for breakfast instead, meeting up to take the minivan to a diner. It ended up being cheaper than their usual routine due to a 'marketing' discount that was applied. When asked, the owner admitted that just by having the three eat in the diner she expected that there would be an upswing in business for a week or two. She followed that up by showing them pictures that someone had posted on PHO, taken as the three were walking in. There were at least four posts following stating that people were intending to check the diner out now.
Their arrival at school was met with people gathering in a way that made it unsafe to put the minivan away in the pocket dimension, so Taylor simply parked it in the student lot. Given the reactions to that she was thinking that some of them wanted to see what was in the pocket dimension and had been aiming to dart in when it opened to let the minivan through. That most of them had phones or cameras out just reinforced that thought.
"You should've pulled into the Shaper pocket," Amy said as they grabbed their bags. "Seeing the looks on their faces at finding basically nothing in the pocket dimension would've been hilarious."
Taylor snorted. "You noticed too?"
"It was hard not to."
At the end of the school day, to the annoyance of her classmates, Taylor just drove off in the minivan. She had a meeting in the PRT building, and then had the afternoon off. Because of that they'd changed plans. Amy was swinging by the hospital and then hopefully the two would meet up and throw a second coat of paint on in their roll-out bedrooms. That depended on Amy's hospital visit and Taylor's meeting both not taking too long.
A few blocks from school she opened up a pocket dimension opening and slipped in with the minivan, before exiting in the PRT building. The Wards doorway was offline, as was the Wards garage doorway, so she used the visitor doorway. It wasn't like she needed to get into costume for her meeting, after all, nor was she anticipating wanting to grab anything from her Wards room. Instead she headed straight for the conference room she'd been directed to by the request. Though she did flinch when Amy got to the first patient she was going to look at today.
Taylor: What the hell happened there?
Amy: I didn't ask, because I don't think I want to know how they got a glue-coated pillow crammed up their ass. Especially given that they're handcuffed to the bed.
Okay, yes, they were probably better off not knowing how that happened. Taylor opted to ignore it for the time being, focusing on the meeting that nobody had given her a reason for. Sadly, she was the first one to the conference room, so had to wait for others to show up.
Ten minutes after the meeting was supposed to start, and five before Taylor was going to send a 'sorry, nobody else showed up' message, Deputy Director Renick arrived. He looked very annoyed as he dropped into a chair, letting the bag he had with him fall to the floor next to him. "Good afternoon, for what's it worth. Or at least I hope your afternoon is going better than mine."
Taylor shrugged. "So far I've left school and sat here waiting for people. Are you it?"
He nodded. "Yes, though that wasn't the original plan. The other two that were going to join us are too busy to do so. Some maintenance was done improperly behind the gift shop and we accidentally discovered that while tracing wires heading out of the secure areas. Only one person was injured beyond bruising when the opening panel took most of the wall with it, but it created a significant mess and took out a number of data links for that area. We've had to close down the gift shop itself for the moment, which has been very annoying, and we aren't yet sure why the elevator isn't working."
"Oh. Did you want me to..."
"No," he interrupted. "For policy and procedure reasons we don't want you to help figure any of it out yet, and the injuries aren't severe enough to require parahuman healing. We might ask for your help if the problem points aren't determined by the end of the week, but don't expect to need to. Fixing things falls under Reknit's capabilities at a minimum."
"Okay. Then why are we here?"
He sat up properly, sighing as he did so, then lifted his bag up to place it on the table. "Originally it was to thank you for some of your previous work, but this morning we also found a recording device in the ceiling of your Wards room. Audio only, and it wasn't connected to anything yet. We know it was recent because we checked the serial numbers and it was only manufactured two months ago, and purchased a couple weeks ago."
Taylor wasn't sure how to respond to that. "Someone wanted to listen to me in my private room?"
"We suspect that the same group installed the ones found near the secret entrances, but haven't finished identifying possible suspects yet. We think that there are at least five compromised maintenance employees, but from what we know it could be as high as twenty." He pulled two large envelopes out of his bag, one flat and one with bulges in it. "Still, that isn't your responsibility to work out." He passed over the flat envelope first. "To start with the original purpose of this meeting, this is an official thanks for spotting and going above and beyond on figuring out the attempted data tap. The head of maintenance wanted to give it to you, but he's occupied helping with cleanup."
She took the envelope and looked inside, finding that it had a certificate and two coupons for free dessert in the PRT cafeterias. "Huh. I didn't think I qualified for this kind of thing after taking the class that let me claim maintenance tasks."
"You aren't officially part of the maintenance staff, but they get these too. If you were part of the staff then there would only be one coupon in there." He then pushed the other envelope over. "This is the official paperwork and your copy of the keys for the Wards bus. We included official permission to repaint it, and a list of things that have to be present for legal reasons, but actually arranging for that will fall to you as Wards leader. I think there might be more in there as well, the officer put in charge of testing your documentation was very happy."
Taylor nodded at that, quickly looking through the envelope. One of the keys would be added to her keyring, which was getting quite large. The rest of the paperwork looked fairly straightforward, and she noted that they'd even included a budget for the repainting that had to be used by the end of the calendar year. Presumably repainting the bus ASAP was being encouraged. There was also a gift card for a donut shop floating in the bottom of the envelope. "Thank you. Where is the bus now?"
"It's out on the rig currently, but will be brought over here by midday tomorrow and left in the main secure garage. We need to get another vehicle moved over to the rig to compensate for the space needed, which is happening today along with the new reserved parking sign being put up."
"Okay. Is there anything else you need to tell me today?"
"Nope. I think we're good, and with any luck the Wards will be able to patrol tomorrow. The sweeps should be far enough by then, though stairwells may need to be used instead of the elevator. You should have a message by lunchtime either way."
"Good to know, thanks."
"Do you have anything for me?"
"Don't think so."
Renick nodded. "Okay then. Have a nice afternoon."
Taylor collected both envelopes as she got up. "I hope your afternoon gets better."
"I can only hope."
She made it halfway down the corridor before deciding that she should show the other Wards the bus as soon as possible in order to get supply ordering accomplished, so she put a tentative 'if they let us' all-Wards meeting on the calendar for the next day.
It didn't take much longer for Amy to finish up the critical cases at the hospital, and both girls changed into older clothing that they didn't mind getting paint all over. This time they attacked Taylor's room first, primarily because they'd left some of the stuff in there and it made sense to not need to move everything between the two rooms twice. They were able to move much faster, and did better keeping paint where they wanted it, than they had during the previous session.
Once they were done they did a more complete cleanup, since they didn't expect to be doing more than touch-up work from that point forward. That included deciding what storage area to keep some of the stuff in, though they did remember to keep out what they'd need for replacing all of the wall plates and covers, not to mention hanging curtains, once everything was dry. After that they went home, showered, and had dinner with their families. They then had to allow said families to inspect their work on pain of being severely pestered until said inspection was permitted to happen.
"I have to admit that you seem to have done a decent enough job," Danny said as they looked over things. "Not perfect, but if you wanted perfect then you would've hired professionals to do it all for you instead."
"That might happen for the next areas we deal with," Amy admitted. "Whatever those end up being. Painting what amounts to three entire houses sounds less than amusing after this experience, but we definitely aren't going to be in a rush to worry about it."
Vicky was flying around to look at the points closer to the ceiling. "I'm not sure if I should be concerned or not that my own pocket dimension could use some paint. I mean, yes, I could hire someone, or try it myself, but I don't think you two are going to be willing to paint it for me and I know I don't have the patience to figure out what I'm doing myself."
Taylor shrugged. "One of the benefits of doing this now is that it gives us a very private and safe place to sleep, should we feel we need it."
Nobody seemed to know what to say about that, but they finished examining both rooms and looking at the way that the extra paint had been stored for now.
"I suppose that once you put the rooms together that you'll need to do more shopping," Mark said as they were preparing to leave.
"We've ordered gun safes for the closets and were planning on looking at organization options there once we knew how they laid out," Taylor admitted.
Mark paused, then nodded. "Good on you, I'd forgotten about that. I was thinking that I wouldn't want to sleep in a room when the bathroom has no toilet paper, handsoap, or towels."
Taylor and Amy shared a look, and Taylor at least suppressed a groan as she added bathroom supplies to the shopping list. Which would include toilet paper, soaps, hair care products, rugs, towels, and probably toilet plungers as a just in case item. For that matter, they had a washing machine and dryer available, but they probably needed to pick up suitable detergent and dryer sheets. The latter would help as they cleaned the reusable tarps.
Wednesday morning the gym still wasn't available, though this time Vicky had apparently been ready for that and slept in. Taylor and Amy weren't as lucky, being too used to waking up coupled with both ending up needing to use the restroom shortly before they might've been up anyway. Instead they ended up making breakfast at home before checking out the state of things in the pocket dimension. Luckily it looked like there hadn't been any issues as the paint dried overnight, so they put the fans away and replaced all the wallplates. The curtains and setting up furniture could wait.
With that done they thought about how to best get to school today. Eventually they decided that it would be amusing to confuse people by getting near, but not actually in, the school with a portal. Getting the portal opening interface to cooperate as they moved away from the beacon was more annoying, and it took more time than expected to get to the alleyway that they'd chosen. They still had plenty of time to get to school despite that, and walked up to the surprise of several students that were outside.
Vicky was incredibly annoyed when she finally arrived, having not expected Amy to have been long gone, and when Taylor saw Missy it was obvious that the girl hadn't had an enjoyable afternoon the day before. Sadly, today aside, the next few days were likely to annoy her as well, and Taylor couldn't do a thing about it.
At lunchtime Taylor had found the 'all clear for Wards activities' message waiting, and at the end of the day she went straight to the PRT building. Missy would likely show up shortly, but Taylor went straight to the secure garage instead of getting changed. There she found the bus waiting, in a space that was marked off as being specifically for the Wards bus. Doing her best to ignore the paint job for now, she got in and carefully moved it into the Wards parking area. None of the others were likely to try and use the area today, since Taylor and Amy were the only ones with spaces and vehicles to put in them, and it was easier to get to than the main garage area.
Missy had arrived while Taylor was doing that, but was still changing when Taylor passed back through the common area to get changed into her own costume. Chris arrived not too long after that, dropped off by Dean who seemed to be passing through the PRT building today. Aisha arrived on her own, having apparently taken the bus, and was the only one of the older four to not bother changing into her costume.
"What's up with you?" Taylor asked after Missy went to get some meeting snacks, having determined that Aisha was going to stay in her civvies for whatever reason.
"I decided that it was obviously in everyone's best interest to have someone volunteer for console duty," Aisha answered. "Couple that with getting plenty of power usage on Monday, plus a bunch more yesterday while experimenting on my own, and I'm an ideal choice."
"Which sounds decidedly unlike you."
The girl looked around, just in case, "I happen to know that Missy is pissed off about yesterday, and I was able to see that the brats aren't cleared to actually patrol today. So we don't need numbers. If Chris joins you and Missy then you can take one of the more dangerous flying routes together and Missy can hopefully work out some aggression."
Taylor nodded, as that did sound reasonable. "I'd have expected you to want to be around to see it."
"I don't want to say the wrong thing and accidentally be her target. I'm the squishy one here."
Well, that was a valid way to look at things. "Okay. How did your testing go anyway?"
Aisha sighed at that. "Apparently I can only cause injury when sinking down into a surface and someone tries to walk on me as I'm doing so, and the injury is actually due to the force pushing them back out again. Worse, it needs them to be moving in just the right way and three out of four times they just bounce a bit and get confused as to what just happened. Doing the same thing with vertical surfaces fails outright, though they think that if someone is trying to tackle me at just the right moment that injuries could result."
"Ah. So it isn't nearly as weaponizable as you'd hoped."
"It's too unreliable. I'd be better off carrying a bat and hitting people with it. And no, they haven't accepted my request to be allowed to carry a bat."
Well, at least she'd made the request on her own?
Eventually Missy returned, they got the table set up and the snacks laid out on it, and it wasn't too long before the three younger Wards arrived. None of them got into costume as they weren't going to be patrolling. Apparently they'd had some issues with the acceptable force lessons and had another round of that today.
"So," Taylor said once everyone was there. "I have some good news and some horrible news."
"Shouldn't that be good news and bad news?" Chris asked.
"You'd think so, but no. But before I get to the good and horrible news, I'm curious if anyone has anything that they'd like to ask me while we're all gathered."
There was a moment of silence, before Sandy raised her hand. Taylor nodded at her to tell her to speak. "Mommy wasn't sure how to ask about warmer costumes."
That had Taylor blinking for a moment. She hadn't needed to worry about that, but that was supposed to be part of the design concerns. "I'll submit a request to get costumes reviewed for cold conditions." Sandy and Rosa both smiled at that. Ryan obviously didn't care. "Is there anything else?" After a moment of silence and shaking heads she continued. "Okay then. On to why I called this meeting in the first place. As I said, I have good news and horrible news. The good news is that we are the latest region to get an official Wards vehicle, the first to have said vehicle be under our control, and the first to have said vehicle be a tinkertech creation."
"And now I'm thinking that I'm going to need to take driving lessons," Chris said after a moment. "What kind of vehicle is it?"
"A bus."
"Okay, that isn't the coolest thing on the planet, but it makes sense."
Taylor snorted. "It's a tinkertech bus that can fly faster than your hoverboard can."
"Now that sounds cool," Missy said. "But I'm expecting a big 'but' here, what with the promised 'horrible news'."
Taylor nodded. "We'll get to that shortly. I've parked the bus in the Wards secure garage, shall we go take a look at it?"
The others all nodded, and Taylor led them down to the garage. The seven of them all came out of the stairwell, and the other six all stopped when they got a good look at the bus.
After a minute, Taylor sighed. "And if you haven't figured it out, the horrible news is the paint job on the bus."
Missy walked around the bus a couple of times, the only one that seemed to have heard Taylor. She was mumbling as she did so, and examined several parts of the paint job more closely, before shrugging. "I don't see the problem. Sure, it's repetitive, but whatever."
"What do you mean, it's repetitive?"
"It just says 'ENE Wards' over and over. Foreground, background, all of it, in horrible color choices."
Taylor looked at the bus, then back at Missy. "What?"
Missy spent the next ten minutes pointing out all the places that the bus said 'ENE Wards', most of which appeared to not be represented in two or three dimensions. Apparently the neon stripes weren't as random as they appeared to be, and Missy could pick out the pattern. At the same time, once looking at it more closely, she also picked up spelling errors in the neon stripes. None of the other Wards could see what Missy did, though, causing Taylor to wonder if her description was a prank.
If it was then she'd nailed the delivery.
"Regardless of all of that," Taylor finally said. "I have permission to repaint the bus. The 'ENE Wards' text has to be on the sides, and there's a few things that have to be there for regulatory reasons, but other than that we can paint it anyway we want to." Several of the Wards looked very interested at that. "But I'm not artistic, and likely to be doing a lot of the work myself, so I'm more interested in what colors to use for a much more plain paint job."
They retreated back to the Wards area, and after half an hour of discussion Taylor was convinced to try and do a fade from white on the bottom of the bus to sky blue from the window line up. She'd use a dark silver for the 'ENE Wards' on the sides, and didn't bother asking about the various regulatory markings that were all going to be in black on the otherwise light colored vehicle.
She submitted the request for costume suitability in cold weather, ordered what she thought she'd need for paints as well as matching window films, and sent off a message asking about how to arrange to use one of the PRT building's paint booths. The three kids went off for round two of acceptable force lessons, which from their grumbling was supposed to be a test of some kind, and Aisha volunteered to clean up the snacks while the other three prepared for their patrol.
Taylor fully expected that was an attempt to get more of the snacks for herself, given how little work cleaning them up should actually take.
Regardless of Aisha's motives, the other three looked over the patrol route list, and then at Missy's insistence asked for permission to run a Protectorate route instead of a Wards route. The PRT officer running the console from their end denied that pretty much immediately, so they grabbed the 'most dangerous' flying Wards route available. Taylor on her platform, Chris on his hoverboard, and Missy on her broom. Though Missy decided to put her rifle on her back instead of hidden inside of a pocket today.
"I think she's a bit angry," Chris said as he came up next to Taylor.
"I'm a bit surprised myself," Taylor admitted. "But she's being quite effective."
"She's hitting people in the head with stun bolts. From six to eight blocks away."
"Noses, actually. She's obviously been working on her aim."
Chris turned to Taylor. "What?"
"Every shot I've seen her land has hit someone on or directly next to their nose. I'm not sure if she's letting them see the barrel of the gun before the shot hits them or not though."
"Huh."
"I'm going to go interrupt that group of six over there."
He nodded, and Taylor darted around the building they were floating near, dropping off of her platform and into the midst of the group fighting.
Today turned out to be a wonderful day to patrol and actually run into things, because the Elite and the Empire were duking it out for some reason. Missy was sniping anyone from either side that was shooting people from a distance, Taylor occasionally dropped in on a closer-up scuffle, and Chris seemed content to play overwatch most of the time. Though some of that might've been that his attempt at a larger gun to take out a car had resulted in broken components, which he was using the 'downtime' to field repair.
"Console to Wards patrol," came over the radio a few minutes later, from a male voice that was obviously the PRT officer and not Aisha. "The police have asked for you to adjust your route six blocks East to help with a hotspot. Do you have any objections?"
Taylor looked up at Chris, who obviously looked towards where Missy was. After a moment he turned to her and shook his head, so she hit the radio. "Maul to Console, no objections."
A minute later their maps reported an update, weaving to the East for a bit before meeting up with their original route further down. Not that they would be following that until someone showed up to pick up those they'd gathered.
"So," Missy said as she dropped the last stunned gunner next to the rest of those they'd taken down. "Where are all the parahumans? The gangs don't normally fight like this without at least some parahuman leadership."
"No clue," Taylor admitted. "Though I wouldn't be surprised if our detour is actually to shift us around where the parahumans are known to be duking it out."
That actually had both of the other two frowning. But there wasn't much they could do about it. Though Missy did fly up again and start looking around, focusing on the area that they were now avoiding. She came down as the police finished loading their van with the captured gang members.
"I think they were telling the truth," Missy said. "There's a lot more activity along where they're sending us."
Taylor nodded. "Okay then. Do you want to ignore the little stuff to get to the higher activity faster?" Both of the other two grinned at that, so she turned to Chris. "I'm thinking that we should have you ride with me for a couple of minutes."
Chris's grin turned to a frown as he looked at his hoverboard. "There's no way that I broke something."
"Nah. You're just slow, I'd talk to Wrench Wraith about collaborating on some human-safe boosters or something."
"Oh. Right."
A few adjustments and they were off, and it was quickly obvious that part of the 'hotspot' was actually a cape battle. One that looked wrong to Taylor. Alabaster was in with the grunts, but Stormtiger seemed to be locked down protecting a building. The threat there was from a brute throwing large stone blocks at said building.
"I'm confused," Missy admitted. "I mean, taking out Stormtiger would be easy, but he's only defending?"
Taylor frowned and flipped through augmented patrol modes. "I think the building is residential, with kids in it. Probably Empire-protected housing?"
"Oh. Wait, does that mean that he's currently the good guy in this battle?"
"Maybe. The question is whether or not we inform the guy throwing the blocks that the building is full of civilians." The other two stared at Taylor for that comment. "What? Pointing out that he's threatening noncombatants might be enough to get him to disengage. If it doesn't work then he'll most likely be distracted and more susceptible to a sneak attack."
"That sounds more reasonable," Chris agreed. "The question is, which of us informs him?"
"It's my plan and I have no reason to not do so myself."
The other two agreed with that, and Chris hopped onto his hoverboard so that Taylor could swing around and drop down next to the brute. Who was definitely paying attention to his surroundings, as he idly tried to backhand Taylor as she landed.
"That wasn't nice," Taylor said as she ducked under the backhand.
"Sneak attacks aren't nice either," he said as he lobbed another block. Though now that Taylor was closer she could see that he was pulling them out of a solid stone slab under a tarp in the back of the truck that he was standing next to, making him a possible stiker. "What do you want?"
"I'm curious as to why you insist on throwing stone blocks at a building with kids in it."
He paused at that. "What?"
"The building Stormtiger keeps preventing your blocks from hitting looks to be residential with kids in it."
"Oh. I'd wondered why he suddenly shifted tactics." He then shrugged, grabbed another block, and threw it anyway. "Whatever works."
Well, that solidified Stormtiger as the current lesser of two evils. Taylor grabbed her maul off of her back, but had to dodge a punch as the cape decided that made her a higher priority target. Missy then hit him with a burst of stun bolts, which appeared to do nothing to him. Nor did taking the maul to his face do much, projected or physical instances.
Taylor: Hello there.
[Confusion]
Taylor: I'm currently fighting your human. He's being a bit stupid. Is there anything you're willing to tell me about what you do for him so that I don't have to hurt either of you to stop him?
[Assertion]
Taylor: Sorry, I'm not going to let him win.
<BA: Establishing Additional Connections>
The man threw another block in Stormtiger's general direction before trying to hit Taylor again, but found that punching Taylor was less effective than he'd like due to the force field belt. Not that it didn't send Taylor back a little.
<BA: Error: Connection Refused. Target has insufficient resources>
And with that the block that he'd just pulled out of the stone slab disintegrated, the man stumbling in the process. Taylor got him with a projected hit in the stomach with her maul, and Missy had let loose with another barrage of stun bolts. The man was unconscious a moment later, and Taylor moved to secure him somewhat. Moving him away from the stone slab for starters while Missy switched to targeting Stormtiger.
Because the man was a brute, Taylor opted to further secure him with containment foam. But she wanted to do so in a way that wouldn't let him pull stone out of the ground, assuming he could do so. That required some thought, but she ended up grabbing the tarp from the truck and lightly wrapping him up in it, then tying that to her platform. Once he was lifted up off of the ground she tossed a containment foam grenade into the tarp with him. The tie-down rope from the tarp proved to be long enough for her platform to be untouched by the foam, but he was definitely encased.
With that done, she allowed the connections to his snark to close, unsure if that would cause him to wake up. Either he didn't wake up or he couldn't get out of the foam, which was fine by her as she turned to help with the rest of the fight. Only to find that those regular gang members that weren't already unconscious had fled, along with Alabaster and Stormtiger. Missy was working on securing a few of the regular members, so Taylor moved over to her.
"So what happened with Stormtiger?" Taylor asked.
"He refused to fight back, stating that he and Alabaster were acting in defense of civilians," Missy grumbled. "I had to admit that I had no proof otherwise, which meant no actual reason to detain him."
"Oh."
"Loopholes are a lot less fun when they're used against you."
- Location
- Earth
The paint job being multi-dimensional is interesting and says something about Overdrive Wrench Wraith's (I think that's Sherrel's new cape name, it's hard for me to keep up with diffrent-from-canon names...) Snark. Not sure exactly what it says about the snark but it says something.
Tis the nature of most things Missy; fun when you use then, annoying when the other side uses them.
I do like how Stormtiger just outright refused to fight her so there wouldn't be any excuse to try and detain him.
Also, I keep waiting for someone to actually understand just who they are talking to when Maul drops in on them and actually surrender or the like. Without the need for any sort of display like she did when that one grunt wanted to challenge her to a gun fight.
Thanks for the chapter CmptrWz.
Tis the nature of most things Missy; fun when you use then, annoying when the other side uses them.
I do like how Stormtiger just outright refused to fight her so there wouldn't be any excuse to try and detain him.
Also, I keep waiting for someone to actually understand just who they are talking to when Maul drops in on them and actually surrender or the like. Without the need for any sort of display like she did when that one grunt wanted to challenge her to a gun fight.
Thanks for the chapter CmptrWz.
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Jordisk
<Unverified N00B>
- Location
- Blind Eternities
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Sherrel is Wrench Wraith. As to what it says about her snark? That it, and possibly Sherrel as well, was playing a prank.
- Location
- Earth
Yeah, I was just reading the TV Tropes page again and the name got brought up so I popped over to edit my post and here your reply was. Imp'ed I guess.
Overdrive is another fic, Dakka I think. I get the alternate-from-canon names all mixed up at times if they haven't been mentioned in a fic in the past few chapters.
From Sherrel's reaction to Taylor's comment about the paint job I don't think she's pulling a prank. She seemed to not really understand what people were talking about so intended the paint job to be the way it is and, like Missy, likely could tell what it really was from the start.
Sort of like how most people just assume everyone can see the same as they do until they see someone with corrective lenses on.
So it's a "Sherrel can see what she's done with the paint, why can't you?" sort of deal in my mind.
- Location
- Maine, USA
So, more (public) shopping trips for Amy and Taylor, purchasing yet more household goods and necessities for setting up a home for occupancy. Of course the Cape watchers on PHO are going to take this as yet more "Proof" that Maul and Panacea are a couple and not just good friends.
- Location
- Deep in the Badlands of Equestria
Maybe she was on LSD when she Triggered, and her Snark set up her vision to accomodate what it thought was standard human perception patterns so it would be easier for her to see how to assemble energized motive devices? 🤷♂️
- Location
- Earth
Depending on when she Triggered it might be easier to list what Sherrel wasn't on when it happened. Before "joining" The Merchants it could have been nothing but after "joining" it could have been anything or everything.
"What drugs did you take?"
"All of them, all the drugs."
Next time we see Max and Brad have a tete-a-tete we really need to see them shift focus about the normal issues and remind themselves that Vista is a vicious and blood-thirsty Shaker 9 who loves to shoot people with a sniper rifle from blocks away/right in front of their faces and they now know exactly when she is legal an adult and no longer subject to Wards over-site.
Crazael
Rehydrated Demon King
- Location
- Lost to the vagaries of time.
Well, they have sensors that can see basically perfectly through walls, and they arent looking through the whole building. They're looking in the higher security areas.
Nianque
Verified Dragon
Oh yeah with tinker-tech, it wouldn't be nearly as horrible of a job. Without tinker-tech though it would take months. Just thought I would chime in about that because that is a horrible job to do conventionally especially in occupied buildings.
Jordisk
<Unverified N00B>
- Location
- Blind Eternities
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Would not the easiest way to do be literally tearing the drywall, or whatever wall covering there is, out and tracing wires that way? It would be hell for the building, and would still be annoying and tedious, but probably easier than any other method.
Nianque
Verified Dragon
Yes. The only other reasonably fast method is hoping the building has a tiled ceiling and that you can see down the walls. Very easy to miss things by doing that though. Also hope to god it's not an older building because I've heard horror stories of what the wiring looks like in things like old hospitals. For those you want to just tear down the building completely and rebuild it before it burns down.
Um, they're known gang members who were engaged in a street fight in full view of federal agents. They might not be able to hold them, but an effort should have been made to bring them in for questioning. Granted, Console might have ordered Missy not to attempt to detain them given her Ward status, but saying they weren't doing anything wrong sounds...wrong.
