10 - 'Naut Fun
Kryslin
[Has Delusions of Authorship]
- Location
- Mythic Iowa
Taylor was sitting with the others around the table in the Wards common area, attending her first official meeting with the rest of the team. It was after school, she'd already gotten her homework done, and she'd simply walked there after school, her stride allowing her to easily cover the distance walking as quickly as someone else jogging.
"It's been a while since we've had a brick on the roster," Carlos stated, "so it will take some getting used to. I might be rated as a brute, but that's because my powers allow me to keep going when others would be dead. So don't be surprised if the rest of us hide behind you on occasion."
"I've been told that's kind of a given for higher level brutes. I know things are bad, but are they really that bad?" Taylor asked.
Missy spoke up. "In the last four years, we've gone from every fourth encounter involving a gun, to almost every other one. Nearly everything outside of PR events involves a weapon of some kind, from chains and clubs to knives and once, a sword," she explained.
"And because of reasons," Dennis groused, "we're not allowed to have weapons unless they're part of our powers or are nerfed so badly as to be nearly useless. Not even things we're allowed to carry out of costume."
"Don't remind me," Chris added. "The number of adjustments and changes I had to make were insane. At least Armsmaster didn't tell me to remove my overrides, so I can do more than barely stun a normal person if I need to."
"I'll pretend I didn't hear that," Carlos said. "Just like I don't know that Dennis has taken and passed all the classes needed to use a wireless taser in the field."
"It wouldn't work on her," Dennis admitted. "And I have no desire to have my head twisted off like a bottle cap."
"Or being bent into a piece of modern art," Dean added. "And Vicky's arm is doing fine, Taylor."
"Good to know," Taylor answered. "So what's going on today?" she asked Carlos.
"You have several appointments with the power testing wonks, something about seeing if you sink or swim, and any requirements for dealing with water in general."
Taylor nodded. "Yeah, I want to see if I can still swim. Otherwise, if I don't need to breathe, I'll be walking along the bottom if I'm in the water."
"It might be a few days before you join us on patrols," Carlos continued. "Your CQC instructors still think you'd cause injuries to normal perps even when trying to be careful. So, your first official duties will be some parahuman assistance requests from the city for knocking down some derelict buildings before they fall on anyone trying to shelter in them. The first one's scheduled for later today. Vista will be along to help keep the debris on site."
"And answer any questions you might have," Dean added. "She's been a Ward longer than any three of us."
Taylor nodded. "Sounds good to me." Turning to Vista, she continued. "I do have a few questions, you're likely to have the answers I'm looking for, or at least know where to point me."
"Hello, Mr. Brown," Taylor greeted the man in charge of her tests today. "No Doc?"
"Hello, Taylor. He's busy helping evaluate a new tinker in Pittsburgh," he replied. "Your choice of swimwear is unusual for a young woman, but given your circumstances, it's to be expected."
Taylor hadn't been able to find any swimwear locally at all in her size, and Parian didn't have any of the specific fabrics she needed to make a good one piece swimsuit for her, so she was wearing a men's 3X dive skin, which actually fit her well, with the spandex allowing it to stretch as her muscles worked. "It is what it is," the towering young woman admitted. "So what are we doing today?"
"Basic swimming evaluation, to see if you can," Roger read off his clipboard, "along with seeing if you need to breathe while underwater. We've set an initial time limit of two minutes on that, which we'll extend if appropriate as we do our tests. Shall we begin?"
Taylor barely noticed the cooler water of the pool as she stepped in, not wanting to jump in or dive in, lest her impact with the bottom put a hole in it. Or worse, her abrupt passage through the water emptying the pool into the surrounding room. Standing in the shallow end, the water almost came up to her hips.
"Try floating," Roger instructed from the observation booth.
Taylor'd read about the problems more muscular people had while swimming, namely having to work harder to stay afloat because muscles were denser than water and had negative buoyancy. She was rather pleasantly surprised when she could just lay back and didn't have to do anything to stay floating on the surface.
"Interesting," Rogers stated from the booth. "OK, on to basic swimming strokes."
She took care not to kick off at all, and began a lazy front crawl to the other end of the pool.
"OK, it's safe to say that you've passed the PRT's basic swimming certification, making you eligible for working on watercraft and being the prerequisite for taking advanced swimming courses," Roger said. "Well done. Your certificate will be in your mailbox in a few days."
"So we're moving onto the 'see if I need to breathe' part of things?" she asked, noticing the two rescue divers that had joined them.
"Very observant," Roger noted drily. "If you'd care to climb into the deep end and tread water for a bit, we'll begin the next part."
It wasn't long before Taylor was walking around on the bottom of the deep end of the pool, grinning like an idiot.
"And now, a suggestion from one of our remote observers," Roger said. "They'd like you to walk to the other side of the pool where one of the rescue divers is standing without going around, and not getting wet. Okay, wetter."
Taylor arched an eyebrow at the request and did as instructed. Her second step took her out over the edge of the pool and into the water…
Which appeared to be as solid as a rock when she placed her foot on it. Grinning like a maniac, she continued walking to the other side, achieving her goals of making it to the other side without getting wet again.
Awesome!
How much could she lift and carry while doing this?
It hadn't taken long after the tests were done that Taylor donned her costume officially for the first time, and joined Vista at the waiting area for the motor pool.
"Our van should be ready in a few minutes," Vista said. "Something about making sure they've got one that you can actually sit in."
"Yeah," Juggernaut replied. "Apparently safety regs won't let me just sit on the floor. So a couple of vans have had the seating modified so they can swap in something appropriate, just in case I need a ride."
"Even though there's nothing around here that could really hurt you," Vista offered.
"I think it's more likely they're concerned that if I'm not properly strapped in, I might behave like a roll of steel and go through anything in my way if they brake or turn hard," Juggernaut added.
"Though if your goal was to stay in the van, could anything stop you from staying in the van?" Vista asked.
"I think my powers have a movement component," she answered after some thought. "Did you see the question some wag on PHO posted?"
"About if you had wanted some jelly beans, and some random villain had stolen all the local stock and destroyed the facility where they made them, what would your power do?" Missy answered. She knew who the wag was.
"I'm pretty sure my power would lock onto the closest bag of the jelly beans I wanted, and so long as I was moving towards that location, or wherever the bag got moved to, literally nothing could stop me or prevent me from my goal of grape and licorice jelly beans," Taylor said, and then saw the look on Missy's face.
"Yuck, how could you like licorice jelly beans?"
"How could you like sour apple?"
"How'd you know that?"
"Dean told me not to touch the jelly beans in the dish in the Wards kitchen area. He also told me what flavor they were, and whose they were."
Their grand debate over which was the best (and worst) jelly bean flavor would have to wait as their ride over to the Docks had arrived.
Taylor knew very well who was meeting them over at the site where they wanted the buildings demolished.
She never thought she'd be looking down at Zephron, one of the Union's foremen, a friend of her father, and one of the largest men she'd ever met, even a little. Not without being on some sort of elevated platform. Yet here the two of them were, standing on level ground and she could see the top of his head.
"Juggernaut, Vista? Thanks for coming out," the massive black man said. "We've got a number of condemned warehouses in this block that need to come down in a controlled fashion. We've marked them with a bright orange X." He pointed towards the closest building in question.
"We've made sure that no one's in there or has moved in here over the last couple of weeks, ever since the city actually condemned the things," Zephron continued. "The buildings haven't had anything in them for years, according to our records and as complete an inspection we can make. So they're free to come down."
"Controlled fashion, Hmm?" Juggernaut mused. "Got any heavy steel cable or equivalent chain?"
"I think we've got a couple of miles of some one inch wire rope," Zephron said after thinking a bit. "I can have it over here in twenty minutes."
"Can you see the warehouse where it's stored from here?" Vista asked.
Zephron grinned, and pointed. "Building seven. I'll warn them you're coming."
Thanks to some horribly abused space-time, Juggernaut had picked up one massive spool of wire rope and carried it back to the work site. She walked around the outside of the first building, and then looked inside. Nodding to herself, she began by tying the steel cable around any internal supports under the supervision and advice of one of the Dockworker engineers.
"I'm ready," she radioed back to Vista.
"Expanding the space around the warehouses now," Vista replied, and the area was surrounded by a visible distortion. "It's stable."
An air horn sounded three times, its blasts sounding muted as if at a great distance. With that, she gave the already taut wire rope a good hard yank. With a loud crunch, the interior support beams came out and she started collecting the now slack wire rope. The roof structure began creaking and groaning before succumbing to gravity, its rusted framing giving way and collapsing. She gave the closest wall to the side of the building she was on a good, hard shove, fully expecting her hands to punch through.
Instead the whole wall moved inwards off its foundation, scraped slightly across the ground, and fell over, the impact triggering the partial collapse of the sides of the building. Another good shove on the opposite end, and the building was down.
"Building number one down, moving onto the next one," she radioed. "Everything fell down pretty much into the building's footprint."
"Excellent. Move onto the next building."
And so Juggernaut and Vista proceeded to do the next building. There was a twang as the central supports were pulled out, and the roof collapsed nearly immediately since the shock wave from the first building coming down had weakened it considerably
Things got considerably more exciting when a beam penetrated the floor of the building – something it should not have been able to do, since the building was supposed to have had a solid floor – and a lot of something buried under the building's floor detonated.
The ensuing explosion was spectacular.
"It's been a while since we've had a brick on the roster," Carlos stated, "so it will take some getting used to. I might be rated as a brute, but that's because my powers allow me to keep going when others would be dead. So don't be surprised if the rest of us hide behind you on occasion."
"I've been told that's kind of a given for higher level brutes. I know things are bad, but are they really that bad?" Taylor asked.
Missy spoke up. "In the last four years, we've gone from every fourth encounter involving a gun, to almost every other one. Nearly everything outside of PR events involves a weapon of some kind, from chains and clubs to knives and once, a sword," she explained.
"And because of reasons," Dennis groused, "we're not allowed to have weapons unless they're part of our powers or are nerfed so badly as to be nearly useless. Not even things we're allowed to carry out of costume."
"Don't remind me," Chris added. "The number of adjustments and changes I had to make were insane. At least Armsmaster didn't tell me to remove my overrides, so I can do more than barely stun a normal person if I need to."
"I'll pretend I didn't hear that," Carlos said. "Just like I don't know that Dennis has taken and passed all the classes needed to use a wireless taser in the field."
"It wouldn't work on her," Dennis admitted. "And I have no desire to have my head twisted off like a bottle cap."
"Or being bent into a piece of modern art," Dean added. "And Vicky's arm is doing fine, Taylor."
"Good to know," Taylor answered. "So what's going on today?" she asked Carlos.
"You have several appointments with the power testing wonks, something about seeing if you sink or swim, and any requirements for dealing with water in general."
Taylor nodded. "Yeah, I want to see if I can still swim. Otherwise, if I don't need to breathe, I'll be walking along the bottom if I'm in the water."
"It might be a few days before you join us on patrols," Carlos continued. "Your CQC instructors still think you'd cause injuries to normal perps even when trying to be careful. So, your first official duties will be some parahuman assistance requests from the city for knocking down some derelict buildings before they fall on anyone trying to shelter in them. The first one's scheduled for later today. Vista will be along to help keep the debris on site."
"And answer any questions you might have," Dean added. "She's been a Ward longer than any three of us."
Taylor nodded. "Sounds good to me." Turning to Vista, she continued. "I do have a few questions, you're likely to have the answers I'm looking for, or at least know where to point me."
- - - - - - - - - - - -
"Hello, Mr. Brown," Taylor greeted the man in charge of her tests today. "No Doc?"
"Hello, Taylor. He's busy helping evaluate a new tinker in Pittsburgh," he replied. "Your choice of swimwear is unusual for a young woman, but given your circumstances, it's to be expected."
Taylor hadn't been able to find any swimwear locally at all in her size, and Parian didn't have any of the specific fabrics she needed to make a good one piece swimsuit for her, so she was wearing a men's 3X dive skin, which actually fit her well, with the spandex allowing it to stretch as her muscles worked. "It is what it is," the towering young woman admitted. "So what are we doing today?"
"Basic swimming evaluation, to see if you can," Roger read off his clipboard, "along with seeing if you need to breathe while underwater. We've set an initial time limit of two minutes on that, which we'll extend if appropriate as we do our tests. Shall we begin?"
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Taylor barely noticed the cooler water of the pool as she stepped in, not wanting to jump in or dive in, lest her impact with the bottom put a hole in it. Or worse, her abrupt passage through the water emptying the pool into the surrounding room. Standing in the shallow end, the water almost came up to her hips.
"Try floating," Roger instructed from the observation booth.
Taylor'd read about the problems more muscular people had while swimming, namely having to work harder to stay afloat because muscles were denser than water and had negative buoyancy. She was rather pleasantly surprised when she could just lay back and didn't have to do anything to stay floating on the surface.
"Interesting," Rogers stated from the booth. "OK, on to basic swimming strokes."
She took care not to kick off at all, and began a lazy front crawl to the other end of the pool.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
"OK, it's safe to say that you've passed the PRT's basic swimming certification, making you eligible for working on watercraft and being the prerequisite for taking advanced swimming courses," Roger said. "Well done. Your certificate will be in your mailbox in a few days."
"So we're moving onto the 'see if I need to breathe' part of things?" she asked, noticing the two rescue divers that had joined them.
"Very observant," Roger noted drily. "If you'd care to climb into the deep end and tread water for a bit, we'll begin the next part."
It wasn't long before Taylor was walking around on the bottom of the deep end of the pool, grinning like an idiot.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
"And now, a suggestion from one of our remote observers," Roger said. "They'd like you to walk to the other side of the pool where one of the rescue divers is standing without going around, and not getting wet. Okay, wetter."
Taylor arched an eyebrow at the request and did as instructed. Her second step took her out over the edge of the pool and into the water…
Which appeared to be as solid as a rock when she placed her foot on it. Grinning like a maniac, she continued walking to the other side, achieving her goals of making it to the other side without getting wet again.
Awesome!
How much could she lift and carry while doing this?
- - - - - - - - - - - -
It hadn't taken long after the tests were done that Taylor donned her costume officially for the first time, and joined Vista at the waiting area for the motor pool.
"Our van should be ready in a few minutes," Vista said. "Something about making sure they've got one that you can actually sit in."
"Yeah," Juggernaut replied. "Apparently safety regs won't let me just sit on the floor. So a couple of vans have had the seating modified so they can swap in something appropriate, just in case I need a ride."
"Even though there's nothing around here that could really hurt you," Vista offered.
"I think it's more likely they're concerned that if I'm not properly strapped in, I might behave like a roll of steel and go through anything in my way if they brake or turn hard," Juggernaut added.
"Though if your goal was to stay in the van, could anything stop you from staying in the van?" Vista asked.
"I think my powers have a movement component," she answered after some thought. "Did you see the question some wag on PHO posted?"
"About if you had wanted some jelly beans, and some random villain had stolen all the local stock and destroyed the facility where they made them, what would your power do?" Missy answered. She knew who the wag was.
"I'm pretty sure my power would lock onto the closest bag of the jelly beans I wanted, and so long as I was moving towards that location, or wherever the bag got moved to, literally nothing could stop me or prevent me from my goal of grape and licorice jelly beans," Taylor said, and then saw the look on Missy's face.
"Yuck, how could you like licorice jelly beans?"
"How could you like sour apple?"
"How'd you know that?"
"Dean told me not to touch the jelly beans in the dish in the Wards kitchen area. He also told me what flavor they were, and whose they were."
Their grand debate over which was the best (and worst) jelly bean flavor would have to wait as their ride over to the Docks had arrived.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Taylor knew very well who was meeting them over at the site where they wanted the buildings demolished.
She never thought she'd be looking down at Zephron, one of the Union's foremen, a friend of her father, and one of the largest men she'd ever met, even a little. Not without being on some sort of elevated platform. Yet here the two of them were, standing on level ground and she could see the top of his head.
"Juggernaut, Vista? Thanks for coming out," the massive black man said. "We've got a number of condemned warehouses in this block that need to come down in a controlled fashion. We've marked them with a bright orange X." He pointed towards the closest building in question.
"We've made sure that no one's in there or has moved in here over the last couple of weeks, ever since the city actually condemned the things," Zephron continued. "The buildings haven't had anything in them for years, according to our records and as complete an inspection we can make. So they're free to come down."
"Controlled fashion, Hmm?" Juggernaut mused. "Got any heavy steel cable or equivalent chain?"
"I think we've got a couple of miles of some one inch wire rope," Zephron said after thinking a bit. "I can have it over here in twenty minutes."
"Can you see the warehouse where it's stored from here?" Vista asked.
Zephron grinned, and pointed. "Building seven. I'll warn them you're coming."
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Thanks to some horribly abused space-time, Juggernaut had picked up one massive spool of wire rope and carried it back to the work site. She walked around the outside of the first building, and then looked inside. Nodding to herself, she began by tying the steel cable around any internal supports under the supervision and advice of one of the Dockworker engineers.
"I'm ready," she radioed back to Vista.
"Expanding the space around the warehouses now," Vista replied, and the area was surrounded by a visible distortion. "It's stable."
An air horn sounded three times, its blasts sounding muted as if at a great distance. With that, she gave the already taut wire rope a good hard yank. With a loud crunch, the interior support beams came out and she started collecting the now slack wire rope. The roof structure began creaking and groaning before succumbing to gravity, its rusted framing giving way and collapsing. She gave the closest wall to the side of the building she was on a good, hard shove, fully expecting her hands to punch through.
Instead the whole wall moved inwards off its foundation, scraped slightly across the ground, and fell over, the impact triggering the partial collapse of the sides of the building. Another good shove on the opposite end, and the building was down.
"Building number one down, moving onto the next one," she radioed. "Everything fell down pretty much into the building's footprint."
"Excellent. Move onto the next building."
And so Juggernaut and Vista proceeded to do the next building. There was a twang as the central supports were pulled out, and the roof collapsed nearly immediately since the shock wave from the first building coming down had weakened it considerably
Things got considerably more exciting when a beam penetrated the floor of the building – something it should not have been able to do, since the building was supposed to have had a solid floor – and a lot of something buried under the building's floor detonated.
The ensuing explosion was spectacular.
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