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Maximally Effective [Worm/Schlock Mercenary, Tinker!Taylor]

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PhoenixFTW said:
Nah. Xinchub, as bad as he was, was mostly doing things for the right reasons. He just lost sight of the right means. Big time.
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Xinchub was a sadistic psychopath who literally leaked classified information to people so that he could legally kill them. He was a bit monstrous. Xinchub was on Petey's roster, but Xinchub was only barely doing it because he wanted to change who he was. He was also being rewarded quite richly for it. Xinchub falls into 'doing right things for the wrong reasons,' not 'doing wrong things for the right reasons.'
 
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We know that Taylor can replicate the gravity tech, but is she also capable of recreating Laz'R'Us? I don't remember seeing this asked, but I may have missed it.
 
challtdow said:
We know that Taylor can replicate the gravity tech, but is she also capable of recreating Laz'R'Us? I don't remember seeing this asked, but I may have missed it.
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I think that the general idea is that if it's in Schlock, and relatively known, then Taylor can build it. That means while she could theoretically build a Long-Gun the planet that makes dark matter entities is beyond her. As for the Laz'R'Us, *checks wiki* she could probably do it, but the necessary materials, data, and manufacturing techniques are beyond her right now.
 
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Interlude 1
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    • Begin Transmission: Interlude 1
    Coil​
    Wire Jack's room was black, and flat. A plain black cube with a plain black cot in the corner. On the cot was Jack, a shriveled man with limbs like cobwebs and the twisted smile of a mite nestled into the scalp of humanity. He was a prisoner of Cauldron, but also a lieutenant, self-isolated. Without flinching, Coil walked through the Door to a place sequestered realties away from the nearest heartbeat. There was an electric snap as the Door snapped shut behind him.

    "Jack."

    "Calvert, my…" Jack mimed counting on his fingers. "…Third least-favorite noisemaker. Congratulations on your success with our latest Tinker! Why didn't you kill her?"

    "The Tinker was never in any danger." Coil knew without a doubt that he was telling Jack something he already knew—Jack always took great care to look puzzled when he knew exactly what was going on.

    Jack feigned shock, then cackled. "That's true, but I wasn't talking about her. That Thinker of yours, I'd much rather you'd have kept her dead."

    "Tattletale is an invaluable asset." Coil measured his speech, but was direct. He knew that Jack appreciated directness. "I did not appreciate your meddling with her."

    "Quite the asset!" Jack sniffed, stretching himself across the cot. "She does nothing but make treacherous noise. Much too loud to parse. You shouldn't have to torture someone to death to get useful noises from them. Perhaps you should do it again… but just one more time. No repeats. No do-overs. It would be a tremendous relief for you."

    "You're dodging me, Jack."

    "Oh, please. I can't avoid anything." Jack's head lolled to the side as he grinned his spider's grin. "If only I could."

    "Why did you prevent me from taking the Tinker? Can you help me get her back?" Coil had experience with figures like Jack. Jack was like Accord, but different. It required a different type of manipulation, the manipulation of total honesty. When a Thinker had all the cards on their table, it was best to play them straight.

    "Why I would, but there's nothing to get back!" Jack chuckled mirthlessly. "It seems you've done your job quite admirably. Put her right on track to be on excellent terms with Protectorate. She will likely work well with them. Might join them. By extension, she works well with Cauldron. The job is done."

    "You know that wasn't my plan. She would have been more easy to control if I had hired her. We would've benefitted much more."

    "You would have benefitted," Jack corrected. "Cauldron would have been in more or less the same position. Cauldron wants a favorable say, and wants her to come as close as she can to fulfilling her considerable full potential. I want her dead—she's incredibly loud. We both lost. Honestly, I'm the one making the real sacrifice, here."

    "I would have been able to keep her safer if she was under my employ. You—Cauldron, rather, had no reason to spoil my acquisition of the Tinker. At least explain the reasoning."

    "Now that's easy. You can keep the little Tinker safe regardless of whether or not you choose to 'hire' her, it's just that you won't directly benefit if you don't control her. You see, though, you'd be a lot more likely to die trying to manipulate the Tinker than you'll be if you just stick to being her guardian angel. Cauldron doesn't want you to die, and I know that, and they know that I know that, so I'm stuck saving your sorry ass by helping your Thinker. You wouldn't have been willing to listen to me if I had simply told you. I doubt you're going to listen to me now. It merely would have been a consolation prize if you had decided to leave her dead in the process."

    "And considering I want you dead, I really do lose quite a bit from this deal." Jack's grin widened and tightened. "Unless you'd like to kill that Tattletale for me, anyways? She's really going to wind up being a problem for you if we don't do something about her. I don't want to end up having to interfere for you again. In fact, I'd rather like it if you made this your last interaction with me for some time. You're a very noisy individual who I'd like to spend as little time with as possible."

    "I don't want to leave yet." Coil crossed his arms. "You know as well as I do that supplying a Tinker early on could be worth the risk. I've already set up a lab. It's been months of work, and I'm not sure—"

    "Those months of work were mine!" A furious snarl broke across Jack's face, but in an instant it subsided to a mere grimace. "Making godlings isn't something I do for fun. It's only my job."

    "I'm sorry." Coil wasn't sorry, but he did regret his phrasing. He waited a few moments before speaking again. "Do you have advice for me?"

    "It's your turn." Jack sighed, and rubbed at his forehead. "You try playing guardian angel for once, and see how it feels. Cauldron cares for the girl more than it cares about you or your little project, so don't let them have to choose. Don't make her feel trapped or hemmed in, let her choose what to do. If you value your sorry life, that is. Now just… let me sleep."

    Coil nodded, then cut the timeline. There was no reason to press past the progress he had made.


    In the other timeline, Coil had been going over various transcripts of the instances where he had interrogated Tattletale. Like always, Wire Jack's meddling had been subtle like a brick through a window. He predicted the possibility, but the possibility fell to the wayside. The discrepancies were obvious, but their sources were inexplicable. In particular, Tattletale had known how to frame her interactions within his power so that by the time she had meddled, it was too late for him to do anything. It wasn't outside of the scope of her ability to do so, but to do so several times in quick succession and no reasonable time to prepare was absurd.

    It was infuriating. Wire Jack's power was the elegance of the stolen cattle with brooms tied to their tails, such that they erased their own tracks. The effect was obvious, but the execution was perfect. What had Jack stolen from him? From Tattletale? To the same, what had he given? It was, by design, unknowable to all those who would benefit most from knowing it.

    Coil had enough pieces to know that Jack's interference had been limited to at most Tattletale and himself, and that the worst-case scenario was simply that Jack had given Tattletale an opening to wedge herself into some opening in his finances, or advanced some other plan of hers. For that, he could simply request a brief period of more thorough attention from the Number Man, compounded by more intense interrogations for the foreseeable future.

    The timeline was split. One half moved to return to his home as Thomas Calvert—there was no reason to be in one place when he could be in two—the other continued to revise plans. The plan had been broken, but Plan A was never the plan you ran with in the end.

    Taylor, the Tinker, had been put into a state of danger. The danger was twofold: psychological, from her old friend Emma, and physical, from the brute Sophia. These dangers were played against her over a long period of time by the movements of Wire Jack, ensuring that her trigger would be as favorable and as potent as possible. The Tinker would be desperate not only for materials to start her Tinkering, but also for safety.

    By providing those things, he would ensure a tense but firm loyalty, that could be enforced through less-than-pleasant means if necessary. Getting a shot at an early-stage Tinker was the amazing business for most villains, with little muss or fuss. Yet Wire Jack had stopped him because that, supposedly, would have gotten him killed. Now, the Tinker was still threatened by the two bullies, and still intimidated by him and his Undersiders, but was also in contact with the Protectorate and wary of further manipulation rather than amenable to his protection.

    But if he was willing to revert to the contingencies, nearly everything worked perfectly. All the reports he had extracted from Tattletale seemed to suggest that Grue was seen by the Tinker as a more neutral party. So Grue would break from the Undersiders, and the Undersiders would be made the new enemy. In doing so, he would have to remove the old enemy—they were more difficult to control. The plan fell together as if it had already been assembled. After he eliminated Taylor's old enemy, all he'd have to do was make certain that the PRT wouldn't be able to establish ideal relations with her for a period of time. After that, all he'd have to do was wait. Either he would become a desirable ally, or his appointment to Director of the PRT would create a connection between him and better relations with the PRT, further cementing his position.

    So Coil settled back into his chair, and waited. As long as he kept his head on his shoulders, and thought everything through well enough, then everything would go according to plan.
    Maxim 17: The longer everything goes according to plan, the bigger the impending disaster.
    End Transmission​
     
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    • Honestly, while a good xanatos 10 car pile up is always fun....I'm not quite sure how I feel about everything just being a pile of "just according to keikaku"s
     
    Nice to see it back again! Things definitely went a little bit different in this timeline, to say the least. I'm honestly quite curious as to how this is going to play out. Between Coil, Tattletale, and Jack + (Cauldron), things are going to get pretty wonky, pretty quickly.
     
    Spoit said:
    Honestly, while a good xanatos 10 car pile up is always fun....I'm not quite sure how I feel about everything just being a pile of "just according to keikaku"s
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    This is one of the problems with the Worm fiction in general, due to how many powerful Thinkers are running around (Or flying around, in the Simurgh's case).

    It's also kind of an amusing thing to say for this story in particular since the post ended with Maxim 17, which has some interesting implications.
     
    Kenshkrix said:
    This is one of the problems with the Worm fiction in general, due to how many powerful Thinkers are running around (Or flying around, in the Simurgh's case).

    It's also kind of an amusing thing to say for this story in particular since the post ended with Maxim 17, which has some interesting implications.
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    Yeah...Worm is pretty much an entire universe of Xanatos chessgames if you think about it. Some are larger than others, but when it comes to opposing thinkers, everybody is trying to outdo everybody else.
     
    Kenshkrix said:
    This is one of the problems with the Worm fiction in general, due to how many powerful Thinkers are running around (Or flying around, in the Simurgh's case).
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    On that note I travel a theory that the Simurgh caused the entire story of Worm, from Sophia becoming the way she is, to Emma being warped, to Taylor's Trigger, etc, since in her interlude she mentions her plans and although I don't remember well enough it sounded like Taylor was the person she was trying to manipulate into killing Scion. I swear I'm not a tinfoil hat. Aluminum is more practical.
     
    Philosoraptor31 said:
    On that note I travel a theory that the Simurgh caused the entire story of Worm, from Sophia becoming the way she is, to Emma being warped, to Taylor's Trigger, etc, since in her interlude she mentions her plans and although I don't remember well enough it sounded like Taylor was the person she was trying to manipulate into killing Scion. I swear I'm not a tinfoil hat. Aluminum is more practical.
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    Mind if I sig this?
     
    Well, this I can see becoming an interesting situation in a bit, when everyone's overly thought out plans finally meet Murphy (in this case, also each other's plans)
     
    Hey everybody!

    The next chapter's been coming along nicely, but I've been running into a stumbling block. Searching through the main work, I couldn't for the life of me find any indication that Kid Win is given a canon last name. Is it something I missed, or if it isn't something I missed, is there a consistent last name for him in the fanon that I'm expected to follow?

    Also: Have a lovely and simply brilliant Christmas! The part of the Christmas season is Blood Day, so keep your spirits up until the twenty-eight!
     
    Connections 2.1
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    • Maximally Effective
    Maxim 66: Necessity is the mother of deception.​
    Begin Transmission: Connections 2.1​

    "Hey, Taylor. You doing okay?" It was my dad, peeking around the corner of the basement stairwell.

    "Yeah." My voice rasped a bit. I glared at my water glass, still empty from last night. I'd have to refill it. That's something that in a fair world, should have been done for me. Irritating. Still, it was important to stay hydrated.

    "Okay, that's good. How's the setup treating you?"

    The 'setup' was the new computer that had arrived yesterday. Apparently, he'd been planning to get a computer for a matter of months. He'd ordered it the week before—the Monday before everything went mad. The arrival of the computer gave my dad an excuse to take a day off of work. He tried to make it seem like he wasn't doing it for me, but did a very poor job if it. We spent the whole morning setting it up, and afterwards, we watched some movie together. Something he rented, a cape movie. I used to like those, but it felt a little empty, this time. Still, it helped to see again how much my father cared for me.

    "It's really nice. Do you need it back, or something?" Even though I was clearly going to get more use out of it, it wasn't my computer.

    "I'm just checking in. I'll check my email at work, and I'll check it again after dinner."

    He didn't use it for much aside from his email. It's not that he wasn't tech-savvy—he was fairly competent, as far as I knew—it was just that he didn't have much interest.

    "…You're still sure that you don't want to go to the funeral?"

    I bit down a spark of irritation. He didn't know anything.

    "No, I'm sure." It wasn't difficult to fake emotion, because all I had to do was reorient it. I did feel sadness for Emma's death, but not for the Emma who died. I felt sadness for the Emma who died between junior high and Winslow, not whoever it was who took a bullet outside the Brockton Bay Public Library. Though that was probably the wrong way of thinking about it—the old Emma I knew still existed somewhere in there, right? So I gave my dad the half-truth I'd used a couple of times already. "I just want space from all of it."

    "Right." A nod. He was worried for me. "Right. Give me a holler if you need anything."

    "Okay."

    A wan smile, and he went back up the stairs. I gave a sigh with my best stretch—highly necessary, given the stiffness of the chair I had purloined from the dining table—and reviewed my situation. There was a lot that I could stand to do with a computer. Despite the fact that binary was disgustingly ineffective compared to ternary, access to the internet from my own home was, on its own, a significant extension of my reach.

    Of course, the internet was not safe. The only way to account for unknown parahuman powers was to assume that there was a means for every motive, and there was certainly a motive to monitor the internet (or, anything, for that matter). So, I was left with a dilemma: there was no way that I could ever have any certainty of my security or privacy, no matter how much effort I put into keeping my computer secure. If I was to assume I was always in danger, I would be totally paralyzed by a fear I could never be sure of. Yet still, action would leave me vulnerable to a reaction I could not prevent.

    It was clear that I could not let fear barricade my progress, but I certainly let it guide me. I took significant measures to protect myself, but moderated my efforts. While the speed I put together my security with might have seemed abnormal, the changes I made both to the software and hardware were all common-sense and obvious steps that even someone without the mind of a Tinker could jump to, given sufficient paranoia. If they kept my internet activity secure and anonymous, then all was well, but if they failed, the nature of my changes wouldn't stand out as Tinker-made. Or at least, so I hoped.

    Which brought me to now: twelve past nine, Tuesday morning, a device as secure as I could achieve, and three projects to consider and commit to encoded notes.

    The first project was research and resource oriented—I needed an income stream. It obviously took the greatest priority, but it was unhealthy to spiral in on a single project. Maintaining multiple goals would allow me to take a break from a project and find fresh perspective.

    Project two was to find, make, and/or secure a space to begin my Tinkering in. I couldn't Tinker anything real in the open. Leaving the house was a worrying prospect, so it seemed likely I'd have to settle with somewhere in the house.

    Project three was my preliminary work in using the relative chisel-and-stone that was binary processing to self-improve. Machine learning was available to me, and though I wouldn't be able to make anything with a semblance of true intelligence I could at least make… something. What would I do first? I could design a learning program that would teach itself to code better, which was the obvious long-term plan. A machine could do the broad strokes of whatever I needed both faster and better than I could, and I could put in the fine touches later if extra finesse was required. I'd have to completely hack it together, though—ternary was obvious and easy for me to code in. Translating the concept to binary, it might take days to get anything useful set up.

    The third project was more to satisfy my itch, the urge to Tinker, than anything else. Much more satisfying than assembling and disassembling that dumb clock, though I'm sure it didn't mind. Probably added several years to the stupid thing's lifespan.

    I head the stairs down to the basement creak slightly. I checked the time—nine twenty-two. It was probably my dad coming down to say goodbye before heading away for work. Perhaps I'd go refill my water, and meet him halfway. I reached for my glass, and turned towards the stairs to stand.


    Sophia was peering around the corner of the stairwell. She grimaced and vanished silently around the corner.


    The footsteps continued down the stairs, reached the basement landing, and turned. They continued at a measured pace until my dad peered out from the stairwell.

    "Hey—" He cut himself off. "Are you okay?"

    "Huh?" My heart was racing. "Oh, uh, yeah. Yeah, I think I'm okay."

    "…You sure? You're pale as a sheet."

    "It's nothing." It wasn't nothing, I saw her! Where did she go? Was I seeing things? I'd gone to bed late and gotten up early, but six hours of sleep should have been plenty. Was I crazy? No, no, no. I needed to stay calm. I could work it out. I needed to trust my senses. Sophia had been there, or else something or someone sufficiently similar.

    My dad was still standing in front of me. There was no reason to worry him. I cleared my throat.

    "Just startled me a bit, that's all. Not your fault, I wasn't paying attention."

    "Mm. I know how that is." My dad replied. "Just the other day, I was walking into work and Bill turned the corner right before I did. Scared me half to death."

    "That where you're headed now? Off to work?"

    "Well, I will be, in just a little." He jerked his head to the side and up. Towards the front door? "Someone's up at the door looking for you, though. Kid about your age, name's Chris. Said he had a winter project to do with you or something, you know him from school? Short guy, brown hair?"

    I didn't know anyone named Chris with brown hair. I definitely didn't have any group projects from school for winter break. I itched at my temple to help center my thoughts. If he was someone I didn't know who was pretending to know me, it was involved with cape business. Did I know a cape with brown hair who was short, and about my age? Armsmaster had said the PRT wanted to use Kid Win's civilian identity to contact me—such a stupid idea—but I did know that Kid Win had brown hair.

    If I were Kid Win, or someone managing him, what would I tell him to say in order to drop hints? "Did he say anything about the library?"

    "Uh, yeah. Something about him wanting to see if you could go to the library yesterday, but finding out it was closed. You want me to tell him you need some space?" He gave a conciliatory smile.

    Right. So Kid Win was at the door looking for me, or at least, someone who wanted it to be glaringly obvious that they knew I had met with Armsmaster on Sunday.

    "I'll come up to see him. I need to refill my water anyway."

    "Gotcha. I have to be headed off to work, so can I trust you to keep everything together if I leave you here?"

    "Yeah, I'll be fine."

    I followed my dad up the stairs, and as I did, I checked above me. No Sophia hanging from the ceiling like a spy movie. No trace, in fact, that Sophia had ever been on the stairs. A part of my brain wanted more than ever for me to write off the event. It said to me that I had gotten only ninety minutes of sleep Sunday night. It said that my senses weren't in a position to be trusted.

    But if I could not trust in my senses, then I might as well resign myself to nihilism. I resolved to get more sleep tonight, so that I wouldn't have cause to doubt my senses in the future, but also to take precautions to carry something to defend myself at all times. The pepper spray my father gave me would do wonders for my ease-of-being, and was something I could have at hand at all times.

    I stepped out of the stairwell on the ground floor, and walked the few steps forward to the sink. My father had walked further ahead, turning right, towards the front door. I took the time to take out my flip phone and start my recording program, then put it in my pocket.

    "Sorry to keep you waiting in the rain, Taylor's up and will be with you shortly." The words drifted around the corner. "Would you like to come in?"

    "It's barely a drizzle. We'd love to come in, though." A husky woman's voice. I didn't remember my dad mentioning any woman at the door. I supposed a kid showing up without an adult would be suspicious, though.

    "Thank you, Mr. Hebert!" A chipper boy's voice. It was chipper to the point of sounding fake, but only barely.

    "Oh, no, don't thank me for common courtesy. And call me Danny, everybody does."

    "I'm Mathilde," said the woman. "It's good to meet you."

    I shut off the tap, and took a small sip before walking around to the front room. Each of the guests were vaguely recognizable, but for different reasons.

    The boy was about the height of Kid Win, with brown hair about the shade of Kid Win. In every other way, he was perfectly nondescript and unlike Kid Win. His hair was well-maintained, but not especially striking, and he wore a white button-up shirt and jeans. On his back was an absolutely gargantuan bag that loomed up over his shoulders—it was on the upper end of what one could consider a school backpack rather than a hiking backpack.

    In other words, he looked exactly like you'd expect a young superhero's secret identity to look. Refuge in audacity, I suppose.

    "You're his mother?" My dad directed this at Mathilde.

    "Just a friend of the family."

    I had seen her outside the library as I left Sunday afternoon. Mathilde was a short and stocky woman dressed all in blue and black, head topped with a short and fiery blaze of red hair and a dark blue cap. There was a friendly swagger to her movement, a military relaxation and confidence to it. Her eyes shone out of her rough face like they'd been polished, and a smile crinkled into existence as I made eye contact.

    My dad glanced at the clock nervously. "I really have to be getting off to work. Would it be okay if I left you here to figure out getting to the library? To work on your project, I suppose?" He was asking me more than them.

    "That'd probably be fine. We can probably work here, now that we have a computer." I ran with the lie. I wasn't going to turn down free networking: if the Protectorate wanted to get in touch with me, I was going to hear them out.

    "Right. Okay, I'm going to be off." He glanced at Mathilde. "Just ask Taylor if you need anything, okay? She's fine on her own, but I'll be back for lunch at around two." He didn't normally come home for lunch.

    "Don't worry about it." Mathilde came to stand near Chris, who'd navigated his way into the house and into a chair. I waved him goodbye as my dad pulled on his coat, and he waved back to me as he shut the door.

    Several seconds passed. As I my father's engine started outside, I turned to the sound of boots stepping towards me. A badge was presented.

    "Mathilde Libretti. I'll be your primary PRT liaison."

    Libretti was a name I recognized. "You were at the library."

    "I was the commanding officer of the PRT team there, yes." She gestured at Chris. He looked much less chipper, now. Not unhappy, but certainly not beaming like he was. It was a mutual understanding, then: this was, to some degree, business. "This is Chris Bauer, but you'll have heard more about him operating as Kid Win. He'll be your Protectorate liaison."

    "I was under the understanding that the Protectorate and the PRT shared the same infrastructure. Why a separate liaison for each?"

    "We do. But there are a great deal of differences both in command chain and in day-to-day life. One representative from each means that you can get both the civilian and cape perspectives. Also, we're here for different reasons: Chris is here to talk to you about the Wards, about being a Tinker, and the like." In my peripheral vision, I noted Chris opening up his backpack, and checking through it. "I'm here to be his escort, and to bring you a gift from the PRT." She fished a cell phone out of one of her pockets, and held it out for me. I took it it cautiously—it was a fairly new model.

    "You had concerns about being bugged, so we figured we'd get you something more secure. I was supposed to get it to you Sunday, but that didn't quite work out. It's got four days of prepaid minutes on it, so that should be plenty until you have something of your own, but if you ever need more minutes on it you can refill it at any store that does that sort of thing. That about sums it up, I think. I'll take a seat, so just let me know if you have any questions."

    I stopped her before she could find somewhere to sit. "Are there any capes in Brockton Bay who can turn invisible, or teleport? Anything like that?"

    "Not that I know of." She paused, and looked at me cautiously. "Why?"

    I paused for a moment. Should I tell her about my seeing Sophia? It was fairly important that the PRT were willing to trust my judgement. If I was seen as unreliable, they'd be less willing to continue helping me, and less likely to trust my advice if I gained some sort of pertinent information. The real question was, then, if telling them I'd seen someone who to all appearances wasn't actually there would lead them to think I was unhinged or paranoid.

    In most circles, I'd lean towards 'yes.' Cape circles were not most circles, though. I had no idea.

    The complications didn't stop there, though. For instance, what if Sophia—or who, or whatever I had seen—killed me in my sleep?

    What if 'Sophia' was invisible, and she was watching me consider this question?

    What if my telling them about Sophia would lead to her killing me in my sleep? What if my telling them about Sophia would directly prevent her from doing so?

    I needed to choose my words carefully. I needed to communicate that I may have seen something, so that the PRT would be better informed if I died or disappeared, and that the potential observing threat would be more wary of doing such things to me, but I also needed to maintain enough uncertainty in my statement that it wouldn't force any hands.

    "I'm… it's probably nothing, actually. I thought I might have seen someone downstairs, but when I looked again there was nobody there. I haven't been sleeping well, so it might just be my eyes playing tricks on me." It was the least risky answer, and also had the benefit of being potentially true.

    "I see." Libretti found the best recliner in the family room, then sat down heavily in it. "Well, I think the most important thing that you don't get too caught up with it. As you said, it could be your eyes playing tricks on you. No reason to let it cloud over your thoughts." She chuckled, then gave me a knowing glance from under the brim of her hat. "You never know, though. Let me know if you see anything else."

    I was caught off guard by the effectiveness of her response. If the whole PRT was as savvy as she was, then I'd be a lot less inhibited by joining than I thought. I shouldn't assume that to be the case, though—in their shoes, I'd lead with my best foot forward.

    "Shadow Stalker could kind of go invisible."

    Chris caught me off guard with the comment. He was done sifting through his backpack, now, and was staring out the window with his hand on his chin. He paused for a bit, and the rain against the window filled the silence while I waited.

    "Like, not actually invisible. But basically invisible. Basically impossible to see unless it was real sunny out, and even then you'd have to know what you were looking for. Looked like, you know, shadows. Weird lighting. If you hadn't seen or heard of it before, you could easily miss it. And she didn't operate during the day, usually, so she was generally pretty invisible."

    "Wasn't she killed, though?" At least, that's what I'd read.

    Chris shrugged. "Probably. We never found a body, but that fits the stories around. Can't think of anyone else who could go invisible, though."

    I glanced to Libretti—she had settled down, head tilted as if she was perhaps working towards a nap. She had a hand resting inside her jacket, near a bulk which could have easily been a sidearm. I turned back to Chris.

    He gestured at the nearest chair, and smiled.

    "You should uh, sit down. We've probably got a lot to talk about."
    End Transmission​
     
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