"Why am I healing a villain again? One that has attacked us before?" I look over to Bitch again.
"Because the entire Undersiders team was being coerced into it. I refuse to kill her, she refuses to go away, so we may as well be stuck with her." Amy looks at me.
"I think that's incredibly stupid, but let's see the damage. Do I have your permission to heal you?" Bitch stares at Amy. Amy stares at Bitch.
"Why are you asking?"
"Because healing without permission constitutes assault with a parahuman power, and I'm not gonna go down like that. Now, do I have your permission to heal you?" Bitch lets out a noise that could be mistaken for a yes, and holds her hand out. When she takes hold she looks over to me.
"Wow, so much for not killing her, huh?"
"Uh, what?"
"Let's see, well to start her entire torso is basically one giant bruise, two cracked ribs, with four more bruised, and some internal bleeding in her liver. Need I go on?"
"What?"
"That was all me!" Uhg, Slave chirps out.
"Yeah, that's another thing, who the hell are you?"
"I'm Slave, nice to meetcha." As she holds out her hand. She looks at Slave suspiciously before taking the offered hand. Then her eyes go wide.
"Jesus Christ, how are you even alive?"
"I was born, silly. Along with five of my brothers and sisters." Amy looks over to me.
"It's all on PHO already. I don't wanna deal with this again." I turn my back to a tailwagging, ugh, Slave to deal with Bitch. "Why didn't you tell me you were so injured?" She looks to the side and mumbles. "Oh, I'm sorry, I couldn't quite hear you over the sound of you apparently almost dying stupidly. Care to repeat that?"
"Didn't wanna be taken advantage of." I blink slowly. So unbelievably stupid. What was even the plan here?
"Doesn't really seem worth it to me, but you do you I guess. Now let's get you your quarters." She stumbles as I tug her along. Sherrel planned out the quarters section of the base relatively well. There's enough single rooms for all our capes and Dad, but a few of us have been double bunking anyways for reasons. When I get her to an empty room and open the door for her she speaks up.
"Why are you being so nice to me when you're so mad at me?"
"Nice? I'm pressganging you after you got beat half to death. Medical attention, room, and board is kind of the minimum for you to be effective in my employ. And I'm not mad at you, not really. Its just this entire situation is fucked. I don't like it." As I drag her into the room. "That said, if you prove to be more trouble than you're worth I'm shipping you off to another city, and if you betray me you're a dead woman. Understand?"
"And my shelter?" I shake my head.
"Off the table since you attacked me." And I leave the room. If it comes down to it I might not have the heart, or motivation, to keep her dog shelter here if I punt her off to some other city. But I'll be damned if I let that turn into a motivation for her to act out on me.
The next morning as I'm making breakfast I hear a wolf whistle from Sherrel. Looking back I see a strutting, ugh, Slave, thankfully clothed, dragging a blushing Amy into the room by her hand. Yeah, not looking any further into that, thank you very much.
"So, who's the dog girl, and why does she get a serving of breakfast?" From Sherrel again.
"This is Slave. She named herself." I speak up. "So show of hands, who knows what's going on from PHO and the stupid video that got posted to the furry site?" Marquis, Canary, and Dad all raise their hands. Bitch is conspicuously missing.
"You fucking kidding me? Some crazy person made a video of it?" From Aisha. "This I gotta see." She takes out her phone and starts browsing.
"Slave, go get Bitch before she misses breakfast." She shoots straight up immediately, and goes running. Amy is kind of dazed.
"So for those who don't know, Slave was made from a power interaction. Bitch attacked me with her monster dogs, I captured them in cocoons, got Bitch in a hold, she tried feeding her power into her already captured dogs, and Slave popped out. She can transform herself at least partially with Bitch's power, and is apparently loyal to me. Any questions?"
"You recruited Bitch?" From Dad.
"If it works it works, if it doesn't she gets shipped off to another city." He nods and lets it go.
The rest of breakfast was a mundane affair. Canary spoke as little as possible, Marquis teased his daughter about her new girlfriend, Sherrel had a horrible potty mouth, Bitch came in all surly and demanded seconds, which I refused until everybody was served, and Aisha neglected her food in favor of giggling uncontrollably over her phone. Bitch also tried bullying Canary into giving up her food. This backfired hilariously when she got Told to give up her food in turn. After she stormed off I followed her to her room to give her some extra. She was aggressively sulking at me for the half a minute I tried to talk to her. Oh well.
Next notable thing to happen was getting a call from my lawyer about the Medhall case. Apparently my case got pushed through super quick, and I do own Medhall now. Nice. Finished catching up on my paperwork after that, and outlined my next purchases from the city. Gotta get an honest to God pentagram going to collect moonlight to make more any more Moonsilver. Interestingly enough, looking at a map I have a viable central location, and two of the satellites for it already.
After that I started on putting a goddamn safety on my fucked up library vault. First thing is get some striped red, and striped yellow caution tape. I put the lines down as accurately as I can based on my footage, and give it all a few more inches for safety's sake. The red tape being the point where the lightning is triggered, and the yellow where it reaches out to. Then I brought in a structural engineer to help me get the everything correct while I condense a metal wall just past the red tape. He didn't find anything self defeating about a solid metal wall from floor to ceiling, and triangular supports on the inside about every foot. Took me about a half hour to give up on directly making a door from the air without oil for the hinges though. The final product blocked the T-section the vault door was situated, but that's the price I pay for safety. I painted a skull on top of the door, and a written warning in neon paint on the floor leading up to the door. From now on I'll have to warn everybody liable to go through here about the death awaiting them if they step past this doorframe. Still not totally OSHA compliant, but honestly if this isn't enough to save them they were probably headed for a Darwin award sooner or later anyways.
The rest of the day is dedicated to making another reversible camo cloak for both water and urban environments, and working on my water walking. I'm also wearing a life jacket for safety reasons. I refuse to drown like a dumbass. That is not the end for me. This continued uninterrupted until about four in the afternoon. That's when Armsmaster called me.
"Hello?"
"Taylor, what the hell are you doing out in the bay?" I fall into the water in shock. After pulling myself up I look around frantically, and double check that my camo is on. It is.
"What?"
"I recently upgraded the local Protectorate and PRT face recognition software. I see you right now flailing around. What are you doing?"
"Uh, practicing? These shoes are difficult to use in the water." Please buy that.
"I see. Try to remain more than five hundred meters away from the Protectorate Headquarters at all times. The automated defenses would probably kill you if they triggered."
"Aren't those supposed to be nonlethal?"
"Unknown Strangers automatically trigger the most destructive countermeasures a given base has available. Nonlethal for you, and nonlethal for Lung are extremely different things." I shudder.
"Duly noted. Hey, is there any way you could get Bitch's records for me, or will I have to get a court order for that?"
"No. All PRT records are classified."
"I'm not after those. I'm after her records as a foster child, and the records of every family that fostered her."
"...That is not my jurisdiction, but I'll see if I can find somebody for you."
"Was that all?"
"Yes." And he hangs up.
Right after he does so The Forge gives me another substantial addition. About on the level of my first magic or the summonable forge. This gives me a sizable space to work with. And then keeps giving me space. And just gives me more and more and more space. Did I just hit the jackpot? Then my phone rings. Its Sherrel.
"Taylor!? Taylor your workshop just got really fucking weird on me!! Care to explain what the fuck's going on!?"
"Yeah, I'll be right there Welder-" And the phone slips from my boneless grip into the sand.
The sky just turned into the ocean. The sky just turned into an absolutely nauseatingly shifting ocean, and there's some sort of grand palace in front of me. Its capped with a golden dome, elaborately decorated, and has some Arabic script over the entrance.
The fuck?
AN: So I did some research on the physical location, and all I could find on the locale was a submarine anime that looked like a cross between journey to the center of the earth and star trek voyager, but with magic. Hopefully it's even the same setting there.
Temple of Solomon (Fate/Legends - Oasis of Fantasy) (400CP)
A place that has long been abandoned or, at least, a replica of the one currently in use. The Temple of Solomon is perhaps the grandest magical workshop ever to be created, one so great that it does not even exist in the mundane world. Sealed away in imaginary number space, it is only accessible to others through highly complex and difficult magical workings, though you can enter your hidden base with nothing but a thought provided you are not blocked by some means. The temple itself is quite large, with the small dimension covering several city blocks of area and the building being the size of a large mansion. Within is almost every one of Solomon's personal notes and research on magecraft and magic, along with a great deal of lore from other famous magicians of his time and from later on as well. The small dimension has been connected to a replica of Solomon's created magical circuits which empower the framework the workshop sits on, serving to provide a immense magical fuel source for any project you might wish to run within this space as you can freely draw on the amount of energy the King of Magic had while alive when you are in here. Finally, death in this realm is not permanent and it is far easier to bring back those who die when it is within this place. For your purposes, this means that dying in this temple will not count as an end to your chain. You may import an existing structure into this role.
* Solomon made the entire modern magic framework that allows for magecraft in fate
