Chapter Eight: Picking a costume and a name.
Aurora Moon
Verfied Insomniac with too much time on her hands
- Location
- USA, Earth
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Author notes: somewhat unhappy with parts of this chapter, might do a rewrite down the road but for now I'm just throwing this out there so that I can move on and write the next parts.
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--January 12th--
Taylor always enjoyed going to school more than any other students did, due to being a total nerd. However, like any other students she also looked forward to leaving school and going back home at the end of the day so that she'd be able to relax and do her own thing.
but ever since she got her powers, she actually found herself deeply disappointed every time school was over. After all, school was a place that seemed designed to help her level up in various skills, and on top of it she had all those mentors (teachers) who helped her level up faster the more they instructed her on things.
For instance, English class and Science class helped her improve both writing skills and science skills to level two, so that wasn't too bad. Taylor got the feeling that her levels in both subjects would've been higher had she written and did science some more outside of school, but truthfully she just didn't have the time to do that yet.
And she had gotten to level one in Art class! Unfortunately, she wasn't quite skilled yet to be able to sell her pictures for a profitable number of simoleons yet. But it was a good start.
Unfortunately, not all of the school classes helped her level up in various skills.. As seeing that there were a lot of skills that seemed non-existent far as her simulation game powerset was concerned. So she couldn't gain a new skill in speaking spanish or any other languages, for instance… which Taylor found to be a real shame.
That seemed like it'd be a handy skill to have… imagine if she became a true bilingual person who could travel all over the world and understand everything everyone said no matter where she was! Too bad that her powers seemed picky over what constitutes a true skill or not. Pfft.
But of course, her powerset didn't stop her from learning in spanish class the old fashioned one. That's just… well, it was such a pain to learn it the old fashioned way. Oh well.
"I'm home!" Taylor called out as she stepped back into her home.
She found her mom grading papers in the kitchen-slash-dining room, and Annette was muttering angrily to herself.
"You'd think college kids would be smarter than their high school counterparts, but no…" Taylor could hear her mutter to herself, and she couldn't help but smile and shake her head at this.
It probably didn't help that English Literature classes weren't mandatory at Brockton University the same way science and mathematics were, and that many students selected Annette's class because they thought they'd be able to coast though it while focusing more on the core classes. It was uncommon, but not rare, for Annette to find students who were actually genuinely interested in her classes and weren't there because they thought they'd get easy A's there on virtue of being a english-speaking American who had done a lot of reading in school.
Annette was a great teacher though. There were times Annette had managed to get students to become more interested in the literature they were reading despite being there for less than stellar reasons. Still, it could be an uphill battle for her at times and Taylor couldn't help but feel sorry for her mom at times.
Especially when she noticed the large piles of papers yet to be graded next to her mom on the table. That was the thing about college-- larger classrooms meant that you had to teach up to 40 or more students instead of a more manageable 10 to 15 students that one typically found in high school classes. And that meant twice the workload for teachers and professors too...
Mom had her work laptop open too, which meant that she also had works submitted via email to grade too.
She looked around, and it seemed as if Dad was still at work.
Annette seemed to notice her daughter standing there at last.
"Oh, Taylor! I got a call for you a while ago. The PRT guys want you back there for another meeting with the PR division. Seems they came up with some costumes and names for you that they'd like you to approve? Also something about more power testing… It just never ends with those guys, does it?"
"Oh, okay." Taylor simply shrugged at this. "I guess I'll head over there, after I put away my school things."
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Miss Jane Adams was chatting with some obese, unattractive guy who had styled his hairstyle into a faux mohawk on a live video feed when Taylor was escorted into her office.
"Of course, Mr. Chambers. When have I ever steered you wrong?" Jane was saying, and she glanced back at me. "Oh, speak of the devil. I'll tell you how it went later on, darling. Mwah!"
The slender, heavily tanned woman blew the obese man on the video feed a kiss, before disconnecting.
She then spun around in her chair to face Taylor and flashed a bright grin at her. Today she was wearing an obnoxiously bright, neon green pantsuit. It was like she didn't seem to know that neutral colors existed in pantsuit form, and deliberately went for the brightest, eye-searing colors possible.
"I have to tell you, the conceptual artists had quite a ball redesigning that scifi costume you showed me that day. There are so many designs to choose from, and I had some difficulty deciding which one would be best!" She replied as she bent over to grab a large folder and opened it up to reveal some artistic sketches.
Taylor sat down once she received the sketches from Jane, and looked through them.
Taylor raised one eyebrow as she flipped through fifty pictures of a figure depicting her in various costume designs. Those weren't half bad, actually… some of them she liked a lot.
Some went a little darker in color scheme, pairing black with green, while others stuck with the main white and green sci fi theme. Some strayed far from the original look, only keeping the same color themes that the others had. However, there was one thing they all had in common besides the slight sci-fi theme… and that they all had clear visors and didn't seem to take her glasses into account.
Taylor pointed this out, and Jane smiled. "No worries… The clear visors are going to have your eyeglasses' prescription in them, so you'll be able to see clearly without your glasses."
"Okay. But that wasn't what I really wanted to know. Um, I know I don't have much of a secret identity but I thought we'd still have protective masks because that's more traditional?"
"That may be more traditional, but strictly speaking from a PR viewpoint… I've found that capes without masks tend to be more… approachable. More trustworthy and accountable for their own actions, if you will. That was the one thing that the New Wave family was right about, despite what happened to poor Fleur." Jane replied, "And now the Wards have a unique opportunity like this, now that an outed cape like yourself is joining the team."
Taylor raised one eyebrow at this, as she couldn't help but notice that there was a lack of "If" in there… She was supposed to be a temporary Ward on a trial basis because she and her parents were still feeling things out to see whenever being in the wards program would be a good fit for her or not. There was a lot to be said for going independent, after all.
Yet Jane treated it like a forgone conclusion that she'd join the Wards permanently without even thinking about going down the independent route. Interesting.
Still, the reasoning for going maskless made sense. It's not like she had anything to hide, because the plumbob over her head didn't give her much choice. So she just simply nodded at this. "Alright."
She went back to inspecting all of the costume concepts. The few images in black and green looked decidedly edgy and cool, especially with the glowing green circuit pattern in the fabric itself. They even had notes on the side indicating which parts were supposed to glow and which ones didn't. She'd look like a heroine straight out of a cyberpunk story. On some level, the inner rebel within her always liked those kinds of stories, even if they were sometimes too dystopian for her tastes.
But, the black did make her seem like she was some kind of edgelord who was out to beat up baddies. And well, Taylor had to admit that her powerset didn't seem particularly geared towards combat. She liked the idea of striking fear into the hearts of criminals and all that, but she also didn't want to give anybody the wrong idea about her.
So she discarded those and focused more on the ones that had more of a white scifi knight theme going on. A few of those still had the awesome glowing circuits like the one that her alien costume had, but was done in a more subtle way. Still. Keeping the glowing elements from her alien costume might be a tad too much… plus what happened when she needed to be more… stealthy? Enemies would see her coming from miles away, or spot her right away when she was trying to hide in a dark room.
In other words, the aesthetic was super-cool, but not very practical. And Taylor always went for practicality over the cool factor.
She blinked when she moved onto the next images and recognized the art style. "Wait a second.. Did one of the artists seriously use a doll dress up program to design my costume?"
She hadn't realized that she had said this out loud, until she noticed Jane smirking at her.
"Ah, so you've used that Cape creator flash game in the past? It just so happens that one of our artists on site was the creator of that online game...probably why that art style looks so familiar to you, eh?" Jane replied.
Taylor flushed a bright red at being caught like this.
Okay, so as a cape geek she might have occasionally trolled the internet for cape-related stuff in the past. She had come across that cape design flash game, which had an entire site dedicated to it. It was more of a dress up doll game, but it was amazingly versatile in how you could create any existing capes out there or even design your own original character when creating a new cape for a fanfiction or whatever. And she wasn't about to tell anybody that she had spent endless hours designing different costumes on that site based on the kind of powers she dreamed that she'd get one day. Only her mom knew that she spent time on that site, but she always chalked it up to Taylor just being a kid playing "dress up doll" game on the internet, rather than daydreaming about the day she might be a cape herself.
Of course, she hadn't expected that she would get unconventional powers based on some kind of game instead of the more traditional fire-related powers, thinker powers, or whatever else she could've gotten. As a result, all the costume ideas she had come up with as a young kid pretty much went out the window. How do you design a costume theme around a simulation game? That wasn't done at all!
Seriously, she had no idea that creating and picking a costume was so hard for somebody with her powerset. No wonder why not even Jane could narrow down any of the designs down to a few ones….
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An hour later, Taylor finally managed to narrow it down to a single outfit that she liked… despite the fact that it looked nothing like the alien costume she had shown Jane before, save for the colors and the armor chest piece. It was basically a layered white bodysuit with green circuit patterns on it, and a green dress with a belt that had the plumbob design on it over it. AND over that dress were the white armor pieces decorated with bright green emerald stones cut in the shape of her plumbob. The picture also showed her wearing some futuristic-looking green boots. On her head, there was a green helmet with a clear visor.
There was a practical simplicity in that design,yet it had that bit of sparkle to it to spice things up which she liked.
She also had finally picked a name… Fortia. Apparently, it was a Latin word meaning to increase one's strength and defenses over time. It related to Fortresses typically but could also refer to soldiers and heroes improving their skills over time. That was an apt word that described her simulation powers pretty nicely, and It also meant "to be heroically steadfast", which Taylor liked.
She was pretty sure that Mom and dad would love the name too, as well. And to think that she had been worried that the PR department would stick her with something horribly embarrassing, but clearly they knew what they were doing after all.
She really felt that it was a productive meeting overall, as everyone got what they wanted out of it.
And now she was meeting with Armsmaster again for some more power testing, this time with her build mode...?
She did wonder how they were going to get around the ownership issue though, considering that her power basically told her that she could only build on lands that she or her household had ownership of. She had been pretty clear on that point when she explained that to the guys during power-testing before.
Her question was answered once she arrived at the site.
"Here is the paperwork stating that you have temporary ownership of this room for the day, and have legal permission to build anything you want here. Sign it, and we'll be able to get started here. If that doesn't work, then we'll start on paperwork stating that we're selling you ownership of this room. If that fails, then we have a plot of land offsite that we can sell you for a penny." Armsmaster bluntly said without greeting her first.
Taylor blinked. Well, that was very straightforward. She looked around the room as she signed the papers, and noticed that the PRT scientists had set up sensors and other devices all around the walls of the room, and that there was a mechanical grid on the floor. It was like the entire room was now one giant scanner, designed to study how Taylor did things in build mode.
She wasn't sure if just simply giving her temporary ownership and permission to build was going to work…. So she was pleasantly surprised when she activated build mode and didn't get an error message telling her that she didn't have the right permissions to do that.
She went back to live mode, and told Armsmaster in a slightly disbelieving tone of voice, "I can't believe that worked. Okay, seems that giving me legal permission to build here did the trick…"
Armsmaster seemed to relax slightly at this. "Good. then we can get started."
It seemed as if he had been worried about having to go all the way to some public plot of land just to test out Taylor's building skills, when it would've been more efficient to do it here.
"So… what do you want me to do here? Just decorate the empty room, build up some walls, or ...?" Taylor was admittedly a little bit lost on what to do with this space.
Her powers seemed to think it was like an apartment of sorts, where she could build and decorate within but couldn't touch the rest of the building itself. On top of it.. Because she technically didn't own this "apartment", her power also saw it as a "public lot" of sorts so she actually had an infinite budget here…
Seriously, her UI display was now displaying the infinity symbol in the place where they usually indicated how many simoleons she had at the moment. It made Taylor want to gash her teeth at the total unfairness of it all…
Just because her family owned the land they lived on, she was given a limited budget. But, if somebody else who owned the land gave her permission to build on their land despite not owning it she was given an infinite budget? How the hell did that make sense? Did this mean that her powers thought that the other person was paying for it out of their own pocket instead, paying her to be the contractor/builder/whatever?
She wished that her powers would make more sense… and that there was some kind of FAQ menu on her UI screen that she could find that would explain things like this in more detail.
Annoyingly enough, her power's inner tutorial voice remained silent as she prodded it to give her some kind of information on this. So there was no help from her powers at all on this front.
"Well first off, we'd like to see how your powers can build a house, and whenever such a house would be safe for a human to live in. otherwise, you can build anything you want." Armsmaster replied.
But at least on the bright side… unlimited budget also meant that she could have the chance to buy some of the most outrageously expensive things in build mode just to see what they were like. Things that she hadn't dared to buy before, because of the ridiculous prices. Why not go all out for this test?
She smiled at that thought.
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30 minutes later, Taylor was already bored out of her skull. She just knew there had to be a catch with power testing, and this was it.
Armsmaster kept on asking her to build and demolish the same wall and floors over and over again, until the scanners could figure out how she did that. Finally, they figured out that it was some kind of molecular assembly ability that she had. Which was kinda a given, Considering that she was building things out of nothing? So glad they figured it out. And yes she was feeling somewhat sarcastic here.
But at least they were able to glean some of the "science" behind how it was done, so there was that. And in the future, they might be able to do the same thing she did but with the aid of a machine that helped them build things out of the air's atoms or whatever.
Finally, she was allowed to build and decorate an ridiculously high end apartment on the premises with the most expensive items available to her, and just for fun decided to buy two of the most expensive vehicles to place outside of the "apartment" that she had seen in her build mode before but hadn't dared to get before because of the price.
A helicopter, which was 20,000 simoleons, and what the buy mode called a Empire Eidolon but resembled a Lamborghini. That one was 110,000 simoleons. Might as well get those to see what they were like on an infinite budget, right?
Taylor couldn't help but smirk at everyone's reactions when she had seemingly summoned a helicopter and an expensive car out of seemingly nowhere.
The PRT testers and Armsmaster took a tour around the "apartment", and kept on asking her questions that she honestly hadn't thought about. Like, how did the lights Taylor put in work if they weren't hooked up to a power source? Did they have their own power source inside them, like a battery? The walls she built were too thin to have proper wiring inside them, and she couldn't make the walls any thicker no matter how hard she tried. Taylor honestly had no idea how it all worked. It just did?
Unfortunately, the scientist guys seemed to find her answers unsatisfactory, and decided that the best way would be to completely dismantle everything in the apartment to see how it all worked and then try to destroy everything else.
Taylor would've been annoyed at this if she had brought this with her actual simoleons that her family earned, but since this was on an infinite budget due to the PRT "funding" things, she didn't care much anymore. It was all theirs, she was just building things for them.
So she simply shrugged and told them to go nuts.
It was then that Armsmaster noticed the robot crafting station that she had stashed away in one of the rooms that she created, and he practically perked right up when Taylor told him what it was.
"You can make robots?" he asked, and Taylor just shrugged.
"I'd have to try to raise my mechanical and robotics skills first, but yeah it seems so? There's a whole lot of different crafting stations and the like in my build mode categories that implies that I can do a whole lot besides make robots too." She said, and Armsmaster seemed to brighten slightly at this.
Seemed that he wanted more tinkers in the wards than he let on? That, or he really wanted robots and other cool stuff to play around with… Taylor knew she wanted that herself as well. She couldn't help but feel slightly excited at the idea of creating her own robot… maybe her family would love to have a robot butler around? That would be so cool!
The two of them went back to the main rooms, where they saw the scientists and testers surround themselves around a trash can with highly fanasticated looks on their faces.
"Hey, what's going on?" Taylor wondered.
"Oh, we're just seeing how much we can shove into this tinker-tech trashcan of yours… there seems to be no limit to how much it can eat." one of the guys said.
That was when Taylor remembered that she had outfitted the apartment with the most expensive and high-tech trash cans ever, the same ones she used back home. The one that could zap trash into nothing but atoms and give you simelomons.
Although, she did have to wonder if it would count as tinker-tech when she didn't tinker to bring about the trashcan and instead summoned it into existence.
At Armsmaster's questioning look, she then said, "That's The NanoCan Touchless Trash Can. It converts everything you throw away into energy and atoms. It also gives me simoleons… a type of credit that I use to build items. If I run out of simoleons, then I can't build anything anymore until I earn more."
One of the guys then perked up at this. "Oh, so it's like energy credits from Star Trek? Units of energy that you require to be able to build things from an atomic level?"
Taylor wasn't sure if that was correct at all… but if it helped them understand her powers a little better? "Um, yeah. Let's go with that."
Another guy started to get excited at the implications that the trashcan held within it. "Imagine if we found a way to make this work with mundane technology. We could turn landfills into power plants, if we converted all the trash into energy! It would not only cut down on pollution and litter, but also give us another source of energy that we so sorely need."
Taylor blinked. She kinda wanted to tell him to calm down, because it was only a trash can. But at the same time, she could see where he was going with this. Still, she couldn't bring herself to be excited over it like the other guys…
She lost interest in the conversation as they kept on going on and on about the possibilities of the technology behind the nanocan touchless trash can, and wandered around to see if the apartments needed anything else.
She realized that she had forgotten to add a bathroom, so she promptly created a bathroom add-on with all of the most expensive items possible. And naturally because of this everything was practically covered in gold leaf and white porcelain. It was like some poor person living in the 80's idea of what a rich person's bathroom looked like… it was just so…. Tacky and old fashioned. At least, according to her personal tastes anyway.
Thankfully, she could easily just switch out the "textures" on all of the expensive items, and made it so that the bathroom was a little more natural-looking, with all of the gold leaf stuff removed and replaced with sliver. This way it fit with the rest of the high luxurious apartment thematically.
Once she was done, she walked back to the kitchen area where some of the dudes were still going on and on about the trash can. Well…. Time froze while she was in build mode, so it was no wonder why it'd feel like they were still going on and on about it when they were still in the middle of a conversation about it.
Thankfully they didn't go on too long about it, as Armsmaster wisely steered them away from the topic by asking them if there were any other appliances that Taylor installed and built here that also had any unusual abilities like the tinker-tech trashcan had.
That led the guys to double-check everything else again, which led them to taking a tour of the entire apartment again, which led them to discover the bathroom.
As the others looked at her, Taylor shrugged and said, "I realized I forgot to add a bathroom.. I mean, if this was a real apartment you'd need one too right?"
It was then that they discovered that all of the plumbing worked, although like with the lights she couldn't exactly explain where the water sources were coming from, as the water fixtures weren't hooked up to any actual plumbing that this building had.
The guys theorized that it was Taylor's power source that was providing the power and the water somehow, although it was unknown if those things would stop working should Taylor go out of range or something. One oven commented that it probably worked on the same principle that the Nano trash can did-- constantly using up energy to generate power and water, but also collecting all unused water and waste back into energy again into some kind of power reserve so that it could be recycled again and again. It was probably how Taylor could even build houses too…
Taylor got that feeling again, like they were somewhat off with their theories there but at the same time she also didn't know enough to tell them they were wrong. So again she held her tongue and said nothing as they walked around the apartment again to ensure they didn't miss anything unusual.
Once they were certain they hadn't missed anything else that could be seen as unusual, Armsmaster declared that it was finally time for phase 3 of the power testing… destroying everything in sight through any means though explosions, fire, and everything else to see how well Taylor's stuff would react to being destroyed.
But of course, this meant that everyone would have to watch from behind safety bulletproof glass while tinker tech bots did all the work destroying everything in sight.
Truthfully, after being bored for half of this time, that honestly sounded like fun now to Taylor so she briefly switched over to buy mode to get herself a popcorn maker and a few comfy seats for everyone.
Once they were sure that everyone was accounted for, Armsmaster sent out some bots which looked like various small machines on treadmills coming into the large, warehouse-sized testing room where Taylor had built the small yet upscale apartment. They ignored the vehicles that Taylor had created outside of her building, and got to work demolishing the building…. Or at least they tried to.
The machine that looked like an high-tech version of a battering ram tried to tear the walls apart, but instead tore itself apart trying to knock down the walls. It fell over and simply stopped working. Armsmaster blinked, looking very put out.
"That machine was designed to deliver 8,000 Newtons of force…. Which should have easily torn any wall apart." He mumbled.
Next up was the flamethrower on wheels, which moved up to the wall and let out a roaring torrent of fire…. Which barely left a mark on the walls.
Four other machines tried their hand at destroying the walls outside her building, and tried the same thing with the roofing… however the walls and roofs held steadfast, and seemed to have no reaction to the machines of destruction at all.
"Hmm. interesting… the exterior walls and roofs seem to be virtually indestructible… we'll have to test that more some other time. Now to test the interior…" Armsmaster mumbled into one of his recording devices, and sent the machines inside the building itself.
Turns out that while the outside of the building was indestructible, the same couldn't be said for the poor furniture and other machines that Taylor had decorated the mini-apartment with.
It was a bit of a mixed bag though. When another battering ram-like machine Armsmaster had brought in tried to pound everything into mush, the chairs and other furniture stubbornly stayed where they were, as if they had been glued and nailed to the floor. They had no reaction at all to something that could easily tear buildings apart on a regular basis.
When the flamethrowers came in however… it was as if everything was absurdly flammable… even objects that shouldn't be flammable to start with, like the ceramic bathtub. The fire spread pretty quickly all over the place.
The weirdest part was, when Taylor saw the fire spreading inside over the monitors, she suddenly had this irrational urge to rush into the apartment while it was on fire. And scream at the fire while panicking like a total idiot. However, she fought that irrational urge down and just watched everything play out on the monitors as she munched on her popcorn.
The guys finally brought in a fire exhauster bot to suppress the fires once they were satisfied they had destroyed almost everything.
Armsmaster and the other guys looked thoughtful at this. "So… the building itself is both flameproof and indestructible, but the same cannot be said for the furniture that Taylor created. It seems to be indestructible but only to a certain point. The furniture seems to be highly weak to fire, as we saw here."
"And did you see the way the kitchen table with the chairs refused to budge when that wrecking machine was trying to knock them over? Yet earlier on when I was inside there, I was able to pull out the chairs at the kitchen table and sit there normally…" one of the testers said, as he munched on some popcorn that he had helped himself to.
Another guy nodded at this. "Got some weird physics going on in that apartment, that's for sure. What's with the power source and water source coming in from an unknown source? We might have to test the water too, to see if it's safe."
After everything was done with, they had Taylor reset everything in the mini-apartment back to their pristine condition so that they could test them in more normal ways.
And now that they knew that Taylor could effectively "build" things like cars and whatnot, they also asked her to create every vehicle type that she had in her vehicles category so that they'd be able to test them as well.
Turns out that she had a lot of them… she had roughly around 47 of them, varying from scooters, motorcycles, junk cars to fancy expensive cars and helicopters. She also had up to eight different bicycle types, varying from plain-looking ones to futuristic-looking ones. It was probably a good thing that they were on the ground floor and that this was a modular room that could open up to the outside, otherwise Taylor didn't know how they were going to get all those vehicles out of here. Especially the helicopter.
It seemed like they didn't need her for anything else anymore, so she was allowed to go home even though they were still in the process of testing everything that she had made here so far.
So she simply shrugged and left.
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note:
Ehh, ended up being a somewhat boring chapter. I'm sorry, guys.
Still, I guess it had to be done so you'd know how the PRT guys would eventually react to her build mode down the road?
also... soon as Taylor left? The PRT guys were definitely eyeing all the sports cars and going: "I call dibs on test-driving that one!"
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--January 12th--
Taylor always enjoyed going to school more than any other students did, due to being a total nerd. However, like any other students she also looked forward to leaving school and going back home at the end of the day so that she'd be able to relax and do her own thing.
but ever since she got her powers, she actually found herself deeply disappointed every time school was over. After all, school was a place that seemed designed to help her level up in various skills, and on top of it she had all those mentors (teachers) who helped her level up faster the more they instructed her on things.
For instance, English class and Science class helped her improve both writing skills and science skills to level two, so that wasn't too bad. Taylor got the feeling that her levels in both subjects would've been higher had she written and did science some more outside of school, but truthfully she just didn't have the time to do that yet.
And she had gotten to level one in Art class! Unfortunately, she wasn't quite skilled yet to be able to sell her pictures for a profitable number of simoleons yet. But it was a good start.
Unfortunately, not all of the school classes helped her level up in various skills.. As seeing that there were a lot of skills that seemed non-existent far as her simulation game powerset was concerned. So she couldn't gain a new skill in speaking spanish or any other languages, for instance… which Taylor found to be a real shame.
That seemed like it'd be a handy skill to have… imagine if she became a true bilingual person who could travel all over the world and understand everything everyone said no matter where she was! Too bad that her powers seemed picky over what constitutes a true skill or not. Pfft.
But of course, her powerset didn't stop her from learning in spanish class the old fashioned one. That's just… well, it was such a pain to learn it the old fashioned way. Oh well.
"I'm home!" Taylor called out as she stepped back into her home.
She found her mom grading papers in the kitchen-slash-dining room, and Annette was muttering angrily to herself.
"You'd think college kids would be smarter than their high school counterparts, but no…" Taylor could hear her mutter to herself, and she couldn't help but smile and shake her head at this.
It probably didn't help that English Literature classes weren't mandatory at Brockton University the same way science and mathematics were, and that many students selected Annette's class because they thought they'd be able to coast though it while focusing more on the core classes. It was uncommon, but not rare, for Annette to find students who were actually genuinely interested in her classes and weren't there because they thought they'd get easy A's there on virtue of being a english-speaking American who had done a lot of reading in school.
Annette was a great teacher though. There were times Annette had managed to get students to become more interested in the literature they were reading despite being there for less than stellar reasons. Still, it could be an uphill battle for her at times and Taylor couldn't help but feel sorry for her mom at times.
Especially when she noticed the large piles of papers yet to be graded next to her mom on the table. That was the thing about college-- larger classrooms meant that you had to teach up to 40 or more students instead of a more manageable 10 to 15 students that one typically found in high school classes. And that meant twice the workload for teachers and professors too...
Mom had her work laptop open too, which meant that she also had works submitted via email to grade too.
She looked around, and it seemed as if Dad was still at work.
Annette seemed to notice her daughter standing there at last.
"Oh, Taylor! I got a call for you a while ago. The PRT guys want you back there for another meeting with the PR division. Seems they came up with some costumes and names for you that they'd like you to approve? Also something about more power testing… It just never ends with those guys, does it?"
"Oh, okay." Taylor simply shrugged at this. "I guess I'll head over there, after I put away my school things."
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Miss Jane Adams was chatting with some obese, unattractive guy who had styled his hairstyle into a faux mohawk on a live video feed when Taylor was escorted into her office.
"Of course, Mr. Chambers. When have I ever steered you wrong?" Jane was saying, and she glanced back at me. "Oh, speak of the devil. I'll tell you how it went later on, darling. Mwah!"
The slender, heavily tanned woman blew the obese man on the video feed a kiss, before disconnecting.
She then spun around in her chair to face Taylor and flashed a bright grin at her. Today she was wearing an obnoxiously bright, neon green pantsuit. It was like she didn't seem to know that neutral colors existed in pantsuit form, and deliberately went for the brightest, eye-searing colors possible.
"I have to tell you, the conceptual artists had quite a ball redesigning that scifi costume you showed me that day. There are so many designs to choose from, and I had some difficulty deciding which one would be best!" She replied as she bent over to grab a large folder and opened it up to reveal some artistic sketches.
Taylor sat down once she received the sketches from Jane, and looked through them.
Taylor raised one eyebrow as she flipped through fifty pictures of a figure depicting her in various costume designs. Those weren't half bad, actually… some of them she liked a lot.
Some went a little darker in color scheme, pairing black with green, while others stuck with the main white and green sci fi theme. Some strayed far from the original look, only keeping the same color themes that the others had. However, there was one thing they all had in common besides the slight sci-fi theme… and that they all had clear visors and didn't seem to take her glasses into account.
Taylor pointed this out, and Jane smiled. "No worries… The clear visors are going to have your eyeglasses' prescription in them, so you'll be able to see clearly without your glasses."
"Okay. But that wasn't what I really wanted to know. Um, I know I don't have much of a secret identity but I thought we'd still have protective masks because that's more traditional?"
"That may be more traditional, but strictly speaking from a PR viewpoint… I've found that capes without masks tend to be more… approachable. More trustworthy and accountable for their own actions, if you will. That was the one thing that the New Wave family was right about, despite what happened to poor Fleur." Jane replied, "And now the Wards have a unique opportunity like this, now that an outed cape like yourself is joining the team."
Taylor raised one eyebrow at this, as she couldn't help but notice that there was a lack of "If" in there… She was supposed to be a temporary Ward on a trial basis because she and her parents were still feeling things out to see whenever being in the wards program would be a good fit for her or not. There was a lot to be said for going independent, after all.
Yet Jane treated it like a forgone conclusion that she'd join the Wards permanently without even thinking about going down the independent route. Interesting.
Still, the reasoning for going maskless made sense. It's not like she had anything to hide, because the plumbob over her head didn't give her much choice. So she just simply nodded at this. "Alright."
She went back to inspecting all of the costume concepts. The few images in black and green looked decidedly edgy and cool, especially with the glowing green circuit pattern in the fabric itself. They even had notes on the side indicating which parts were supposed to glow and which ones didn't. She'd look like a heroine straight out of a cyberpunk story. On some level, the inner rebel within her always liked those kinds of stories, even if they were sometimes too dystopian for her tastes.
But, the black did make her seem like she was some kind of edgelord who was out to beat up baddies. And well, Taylor had to admit that her powerset didn't seem particularly geared towards combat. She liked the idea of striking fear into the hearts of criminals and all that, but she also didn't want to give anybody the wrong idea about her.
So she discarded those and focused more on the ones that had more of a white scifi knight theme going on. A few of those still had the awesome glowing circuits like the one that her alien costume had, but was done in a more subtle way. Still. Keeping the glowing elements from her alien costume might be a tad too much… plus what happened when she needed to be more… stealthy? Enemies would see her coming from miles away, or spot her right away when she was trying to hide in a dark room.
In other words, the aesthetic was super-cool, but not very practical. And Taylor always went for practicality over the cool factor.
She blinked when she moved onto the next images and recognized the art style. "Wait a second.. Did one of the artists seriously use a doll dress up program to design my costume?"
She hadn't realized that she had said this out loud, until she noticed Jane smirking at her.
"Ah, so you've used that Cape creator flash game in the past? It just so happens that one of our artists on site was the creator of that online game...probably why that art style looks so familiar to you, eh?" Jane replied.
Taylor flushed a bright red at being caught like this.
Okay, so as a cape geek she might have occasionally trolled the internet for cape-related stuff in the past. She had come across that cape design flash game, which had an entire site dedicated to it. It was more of a dress up doll game, but it was amazingly versatile in how you could create any existing capes out there or even design your own original character when creating a new cape for a fanfiction or whatever. And she wasn't about to tell anybody that she had spent endless hours designing different costumes on that site based on the kind of powers she dreamed that she'd get one day. Only her mom knew that she spent time on that site, but she always chalked it up to Taylor just being a kid playing "dress up doll" game on the internet, rather than daydreaming about the day she might be a cape herself.
Of course, she hadn't expected that she would get unconventional powers based on some kind of game instead of the more traditional fire-related powers, thinker powers, or whatever else she could've gotten. As a result, all the costume ideas she had come up with as a young kid pretty much went out the window. How do you design a costume theme around a simulation game? That wasn't done at all!
Seriously, she had no idea that creating and picking a costume was so hard for somebody with her powerset. No wonder why not even Jane could narrow down any of the designs down to a few ones….
~~~~~~~~~~~
An hour later, Taylor finally managed to narrow it down to a single outfit that she liked… despite the fact that it looked nothing like the alien costume she had shown Jane before, save for the colors and the armor chest piece. It was basically a layered white bodysuit with green circuit patterns on it, and a green dress with a belt that had the plumbob design on it over it. AND over that dress were the white armor pieces decorated with bright green emerald stones cut in the shape of her plumbob. The picture also showed her wearing some futuristic-looking green boots. On her head, there was a green helmet with a clear visor.
There was a practical simplicity in that design,yet it had that bit of sparkle to it to spice things up which she liked.
She also had finally picked a name… Fortia. Apparently, it was a Latin word meaning to increase one's strength and defenses over time. It related to Fortresses typically but could also refer to soldiers and heroes improving their skills over time. That was an apt word that described her simulation powers pretty nicely, and It also meant "to be heroically steadfast", which Taylor liked.
She was pretty sure that Mom and dad would love the name too, as well. And to think that she had been worried that the PR department would stick her with something horribly embarrassing, but clearly they knew what they were doing after all.
She really felt that it was a productive meeting overall, as everyone got what they wanted out of it.
And now she was meeting with Armsmaster again for some more power testing, this time with her build mode...?
She did wonder how they were going to get around the ownership issue though, considering that her power basically told her that she could only build on lands that she or her household had ownership of. She had been pretty clear on that point when she explained that to the guys during power-testing before.
Her question was answered once she arrived at the site.
"Here is the paperwork stating that you have temporary ownership of this room for the day, and have legal permission to build anything you want here. Sign it, and we'll be able to get started here. If that doesn't work, then we'll start on paperwork stating that we're selling you ownership of this room. If that fails, then we have a plot of land offsite that we can sell you for a penny." Armsmaster bluntly said without greeting her first.
Taylor blinked. Well, that was very straightforward. She looked around the room as she signed the papers, and noticed that the PRT scientists had set up sensors and other devices all around the walls of the room, and that there was a mechanical grid on the floor. It was like the entire room was now one giant scanner, designed to study how Taylor did things in build mode.
She wasn't sure if just simply giving her temporary ownership and permission to build was going to work…. So she was pleasantly surprised when she activated build mode and didn't get an error message telling her that she didn't have the right permissions to do that.
She went back to live mode, and told Armsmaster in a slightly disbelieving tone of voice, "I can't believe that worked. Okay, seems that giving me legal permission to build here did the trick…"
Armsmaster seemed to relax slightly at this. "Good. then we can get started."
It seemed as if he had been worried about having to go all the way to some public plot of land just to test out Taylor's building skills, when it would've been more efficient to do it here.
"So… what do you want me to do here? Just decorate the empty room, build up some walls, or ...?" Taylor was admittedly a little bit lost on what to do with this space.
Her powers seemed to think it was like an apartment of sorts, where she could build and decorate within but couldn't touch the rest of the building itself. On top of it.. Because she technically didn't own this "apartment", her power also saw it as a "public lot" of sorts so she actually had an infinite budget here…
Seriously, her UI display was now displaying the infinity symbol in the place where they usually indicated how many simoleons she had at the moment. It made Taylor want to gash her teeth at the total unfairness of it all…
Just because her family owned the land they lived on, she was given a limited budget. But, if somebody else who owned the land gave her permission to build on their land despite not owning it she was given an infinite budget? How the hell did that make sense? Did this mean that her powers thought that the other person was paying for it out of their own pocket instead, paying her to be the contractor/builder/whatever?
She wished that her powers would make more sense… and that there was some kind of FAQ menu on her UI screen that she could find that would explain things like this in more detail.
Annoyingly enough, her power's inner tutorial voice remained silent as she prodded it to give her some kind of information on this. So there was no help from her powers at all on this front.
"Well first off, we'd like to see how your powers can build a house, and whenever such a house would be safe for a human to live in. otherwise, you can build anything you want." Armsmaster replied.
But at least on the bright side… unlimited budget also meant that she could have the chance to buy some of the most outrageously expensive things in build mode just to see what they were like. Things that she hadn't dared to buy before, because of the ridiculous prices. Why not go all out for this test?
She smiled at that thought.
-------------------------
30 minutes later, Taylor was already bored out of her skull. She just knew there had to be a catch with power testing, and this was it.
Armsmaster kept on asking her to build and demolish the same wall and floors over and over again, until the scanners could figure out how she did that. Finally, they figured out that it was some kind of molecular assembly ability that she had. Which was kinda a given, Considering that she was building things out of nothing? So glad they figured it out. And yes she was feeling somewhat sarcastic here.
But at least they were able to glean some of the "science" behind how it was done, so there was that. And in the future, they might be able to do the same thing she did but with the aid of a machine that helped them build things out of the air's atoms or whatever.
Finally, she was allowed to build and decorate an ridiculously high end apartment on the premises with the most expensive items available to her, and just for fun decided to buy two of the most expensive vehicles to place outside of the "apartment" that she had seen in her build mode before but hadn't dared to get before because of the price.
A helicopter, which was 20,000 simoleons, and what the buy mode called a Empire Eidolon but resembled a Lamborghini. That one was 110,000 simoleons. Might as well get those to see what they were like on an infinite budget, right?
Taylor couldn't help but smirk at everyone's reactions when she had seemingly summoned a helicopter and an expensive car out of seemingly nowhere.
The PRT testers and Armsmaster took a tour around the "apartment", and kept on asking her questions that she honestly hadn't thought about. Like, how did the lights Taylor put in work if they weren't hooked up to a power source? Did they have their own power source inside them, like a battery? The walls she built were too thin to have proper wiring inside them, and she couldn't make the walls any thicker no matter how hard she tried. Taylor honestly had no idea how it all worked. It just did?
Unfortunately, the scientist guys seemed to find her answers unsatisfactory, and decided that the best way would be to completely dismantle everything in the apartment to see how it all worked and then try to destroy everything else.
Taylor would've been annoyed at this if she had brought this with her actual simoleons that her family earned, but since this was on an infinite budget due to the PRT "funding" things, she didn't care much anymore. It was all theirs, she was just building things for them.
So she simply shrugged and told them to go nuts.
It was then that Armsmaster noticed the robot crafting station that she had stashed away in one of the rooms that she created, and he practically perked right up when Taylor told him what it was.
"You can make robots?" he asked, and Taylor just shrugged.
"I'd have to try to raise my mechanical and robotics skills first, but yeah it seems so? There's a whole lot of different crafting stations and the like in my build mode categories that implies that I can do a whole lot besides make robots too." She said, and Armsmaster seemed to brighten slightly at this.
Seemed that he wanted more tinkers in the wards than he let on? That, or he really wanted robots and other cool stuff to play around with… Taylor knew she wanted that herself as well. She couldn't help but feel slightly excited at the idea of creating her own robot… maybe her family would love to have a robot butler around? That would be so cool!
The two of them went back to the main rooms, where they saw the scientists and testers surround themselves around a trash can with highly fanasticated looks on their faces.
"Hey, what's going on?" Taylor wondered.
"Oh, we're just seeing how much we can shove into this tinker-tech trashcan of yours… there seems to be no limit to how much it can eat." one of the guys said.
That was when Taylor remembered that she had outfitted the apartment with the most expensive and high-tech trash cans ever, the same ones she used back home. The one that could zap trash into nothing but atoms and give you simelomons.
Although, she did have to wonder if it would count as tinker-tech when she didn't tinker to bring about the trashcan and instead summoned it into existence.
At Armsmaster's questioning look, she then said, "That's The NanoCan Touchless Trash Can. It converts everything you throw away into energy and atoms. It also gives me simoleons… a type of credit that I use to build items. If I run out of simoleons, then I can't build anything anymore until I earn more."
One of the guys then perked up at this. "Oh, so it's like energy credits from Star Trek? Units of energy that you require to be able to build things from an atomic level?"
Taylor wasn't sure if that was correct at all… but if it helped them understand her powers a little better? "Um, yeah. Let's go with that."
Another guy started to get excited at the implications that the trashcan held within it. "Imagine if we found a way to make this work with mundane technology. We could turn landfills into power plants, if we converted all the trash into energy! It would not only cut down on pollution and litter, but also give us another source of energy that we so sorely need."
Taylor blinked. She kinda wanted to tell him to calm down, because it was only a trash can. But at the same time, she could see where he was going with this. Still, she couldn't bring herself to be excited over it like the other guys…
She lost interest in the conversation as they kept on going on and on about the possibilities of the technology behind the nanocan touchless trash can, and wandered around to see if the apartments needed anything else.
She realized that she had forgotten to add a bathroom, so she promptly created a bathroom add-on with all of the most expensive items possible. And naturally because of this everything was practically covered in gold leaf and white porcelain. It was like some poor person living in the 80's idea of what a rich person's bathroom looked like… it was just so…. Tacky and old fashioned. At least, according to her personal tastes anyway.
Thankfully, she could easily just switch out the "textures" on all of the expensive items, and made it so that the bathroom was a little more natural-looking, with all of the gold leaf stuff removed and replaced with sliver. This way it fit with the rest of the high luxurious apartment thematically.
Once she was done, she walked back to the kitchen area where some of the dudes were still going on and on about the trash can. Well…. Time froze while she was in build mode, so it was no wonder why it'd feel like they were still going on and on about it when they were still in the middle of a conversation about it.
Thankfully they didn't go on too long about it, as Armsmaster wisely steered them away from the topic by asking them if there were any other appliances that Taylor installed and built here that also had any unusual abilities like the tinker-tech trashcan had.
That led the guys to double-check everything else again, which led them to taking a tour of the entire apartment again, which led them to discover the bathroom.
As the others looked at her, Taylor shrugged and said, "I realized I forgot to add a bathroom.. I mean, if this was a real apartment you'd need one too right?"
It was then that they discovered that all of the plumbing worked, although like with the lights she couldn't exactly explain where the water sources were coming from, as the water fixtures weren't hooked up to any actual plumbing that this building had.
The guys theorized that it was Taylor's power source that was providing the power and the water somehow, although it was unknown if those things would stop working should Taylor go out of range or something. One oven commented that it probably worked on the same principle that the Nano trash can did-- constantly using up energy to generate power and water, but also collecting all unused water and waste back into energy again into some kind of power reserve so that it could be recycled again and again. It was probably how Taylor could even build houses too…
Taylor got that feeling again, like they were somewhat off with their theories there but at the same time she also didn't know enough to tell them they were wrong. So again she held her tongue and said nothing as they walked around the apartment again to ensure they didn't miss anything unusual.
Once they were certain they hadn't missed anything else that could be seen as unusual, Armsmaster declared that it was finally time for phase 3 of the power testing… destroying everything in sight through any means though explosions, fire, and everything else to see how well Taylor's stuff would react to being destroyed.
But of course, this meant that everyone would have to watch from behind safety bulletproof glass while tinker tech bots did all the work destroying everything in sight.
Truthfully, after being bored for half of this time, that honestly sounded like fun now to Taylor so she briefly switched over to buy mode to get herself a popcorn maker and a few comfy seats for everyone.
Once they were sure that everyone was accounted for, Armsmaster sent out some bots which looked like various small machines on treadmills coming into the large, warehouse-sized testing room where Taylor had built the small yet upscale apartment. They ignored the vehicles that Taylor had created outside of her building, and got to work demolishing the building…. Or at least they tried to.
The machine that looked like an high-tech version of a battering ram tried to tear the walls apart, but instead tore itself apart trying to knock down the walls. It fell over and simply stopped working. Armsmaster blinked, looking very put out.
"That machine was designed to deliver 8,000 Newtons of force…. Which should have easily torn any wall apart." He mumbled.
Next up was the flamethrower on wheels, which moved up to the wall and let out a roaring torrent of fire…. Which barely left a mark on the walls.
Four other machines tried their hand at destroying the walls outside her building, and tried the same thing with the roofing… however the walls and roofs held steadfast, and seemed to have no reaction to the machines of destruction at all.
"Hmm. interesting… the exterior walls and roofs seem to be virtually indestructible… we'll have to test that more some other time. Now to test the interior…" Armsmaster mumbled into one of his recording devices, and sent the machines inside the building itself.
Turns out that while the outside of the building was indestructible, the same couldn't be said for the poor furniture and other machines that Taylor had decorated the mini-apartment with.
It was a bit of a mixed bag though. When another battering ram-like machine Armsmaster had brought in tried to pound everything into mush, the chairs and other furniture stubbornly stayed where they were, as if they had been glued and nailed to the floor. They had no reaction at all to something that could easily tear buildings apart on a regular basis.
When the flamethrowers came in however… it was as if everything was absurdly flammable… even objects that shouldn't be flammable to start with, like the ceramic bathtub. The fire spread pretty quickly all over the place.
The weirdest part was, when Taylor saw the fire spreading inside over the monitors, she suddenly had this irrational urge to rush into the apartment while it was on fire. And scream at the fire while panicking like a total idiot. However, she fought that irrational urge down and just watched everything play out on the monitors as she munched on her popcorn.
The guys finally brought in a fire exhauster bot to suppress the fires once they were satisfied they had destroyed almost everything.
Armsmaster and the other guys looked thoughtful at this. "So… the building itself is both flameproof and indestructible, but the same cannot be said for the furniture that Taylor created. It seems to be indestructible but only to a certain point. The furniture seems to be highly weak to fire, as we saw here."
"And did you see the way the kitchen table with the chairs refused to budge when that wrecking machine was trying to knock them over? Yet earlier on when I was inside there, I was able to pull out the chairs at the kitchen table and sit there normally…" one of the testers said, as he munched on some popcorn that he had helped himself to.
Another guy nodded at this. "Got some weird physics going on in that apartment, that's for sure. What's with the power source and water source coming in from an unknown source? We might have to test the water too, to see if it's safe."
After everything was done with, they had Taylor reset everything in the mini-apartment back to their pristine condition so that they could test them in more normal ways.
And now that they knew that Taylor could effectively "build" things like cars and whatnot, they also asked her to create every vehicle type that she had in her vehicles category so that they'd be able to test them as well.
Turns out that she had a lot of them… she had roughly around 47 of them, varying from scooters, motorcycles, junk cars to fancy expensive cars and helicopters. She also had up to eight different bicycle types, varying from plain-looking ones to futuristic-looking ones. It was probably a good thing that they were on the ground floor and that this was a modular room that could open up to the outside, otherwise Taylor didn't know how they were going to get all those vehicles out of here. Especially the helicopter.
It seemed like they didn't need her for anything else anymore, so she was allowed to go home even though they were still in the process of testing everything that she had made here so far.
So she simply shrugged and left.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
note:
Ehh, ended up being a somewhat boring chapter. I'm sorry, guys.
Still, I guess it had to be done so you'd know how the PRT guys would eventually react to her build mode down the road?
also... soon as Taylor left? The PRT guys were definitely eyeing all the sports cars and going: "I call dibs on test-driving that one!"