Obviously Taylor still has her insect-multitasking powers in SoF, but, awkward people (like me
) will be interested in knowing what's up with the other half of the cape-shard pair.
Taylor watched as her alternate waved, smiling. She waved back, also smiling, and feeling rather satisfied. The other girl turned around and went on her way, stopping when a familiar man came around the corner in front of her, then running towards him.
Satisfied, Taylor closed the wormhole and turned to her friends. "That's the last of them."
"Things seem to have gone well, I feel," the Varga commented, looking pleased.
"Yep. It was an interesting experience."
"I think
they also thought that," Lisa laughed. "Poor Daniel. He was looking
very confused there at the end."
"Not as much as Xander's friends were," Amy giggled, shaking her head. "That was hilarious."
"You really shouldn't do things like that," Kevin said, although when they looked at him he was visibly suppressing a grin. "We know from the historical documents that Slayers are jumpy."
"Historical documents," Randall snickered. "Hey, we need to go find those guys some day, it would be a lot of fun."
"Might be worth a try," Taylor nodded thoughtfully. "But we have a lot of other things to do before that." She glanced at Dragon, who was listening with amusement apparent, although most people wouldn't have been able to tell. "You're sure the comm units are working?"
"Remote diagnostics show in the green for everyone, Saurial," the AI nodded calmly. "With the power reserves they have and the EDM construction, those things will last for centuries. Don't worry, if they need us, they can get us."
"Good. I like them, and Taylor is family in a way. Her world is pretty shitty even compared to this one." The local form of Taylor Hebert, currently a six and a half foot reptilian creature, sighed a little. "We should probably do something about that. We know a lot of things they don't, after all."
"We still aren't clear on everything, though, so it's probably best not to jump right in just yet," the Varga, as Raptaur at the moment, commented.
"We can surreptitiously go and warn off the Endbringers, though, they seem to listen if we grin at them for a while."
"You mean they run and hide, then pretend they're not there," Randall said with a smirk. The demon smirked back.
"Apparently so. It seems to work."
"Fair enough."
"I wonder if we'll hear from Ellen again?" Amy mused, looking around at them all. "She said herself that she didn't have much in her own world to keep her there and I think she's considering the idea of going somewhere else when things settle down."
Lisa shrugged a little. "I wouldn't be surprised. The woman is wasted where she is. But she can call any time and get a lift somewhere, and she knows it. We'll just have to wait and see."
They all looked at each other for a moment. "One thing left to do, I suppose."
"You're certain you can do it?" Dragon seemed worried. "It sounds perilously close to time travel in the dangerous way, after all, and you've told me enough about
that to make me a little concerned." She turned to the Varga, who smiled.
"It's slightly tricky, but it's also not too dangerous, Dragon. We're not traveling in time within a universe, we're merely connecting to another one at a different time than our 'now.' Yes, it is in some ways splitting hairs, but there's enough wiggle room in how Reality operates that it can be done safely, if you are able to calculate precisely how to go about it. Admittedly, I am unaware of anyone else who can, and even for us it's a significant amount of work, but we owe it to the girl. If only because she is, as Saurial said, Family."
The AI Tinker nodded slowly, then followed them as they went to do some
extremely complex math.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"That's it." Taylor leaned back on her tail, looking with satisfaction at half a dozen boards full of equations, then the final results on the last one. "Those are the correct coordinates based on our examination of Taylor, this is the temporal skew required, and this is the area we need to deal with." She pointed at one set of numbers. "And that part should give enough energy to keep things ticking along pretty much forever."
"Impressive," Randall remarked, scanning the boards. "I'm also
almost able to follow it this time."
"That's better than I can manage," Dragon said, shaking her head slowly. "Some of these equations, while internally consistent, are otherwise entirely nonsensical according to everything I thought I knew. If it wasn't for the fact that they demonstrably work I wouldn't think it was possible. Fascinating."
"Vista could understand a lot of this," Taylor smiled, snickering at the way the AI's suit head snapped around. "She's good at multi-dimensional math."
As Dragon apparently decided she
wasn't going to ask, but clearly
wanted to, '
Saurial' turned to '
Metis' and asked, "You agree with the conclusion?"
"I'm not as good at Family math as you are, but yes, the end result holds up as far as I can see," her friend nodded. "Like Randall said. Impressive."
"It should do the job," the Varga said approvingly.
"And I can see some useful applications in future. We may as well proceed unless anyone has an objection?"
He looked around. No one seemed to.
"In that case, we have some interestingly complex work to do."
"Vectura will be annoyed she missed it," Kevin said.
"She had that other thing to do," Randall replied. "Which should be enough excitement for her for now. I'm kind of envious, actually."
His friend grinned. "Me too. But this is cool as well."
"True enough."
As Taylor and her demon began the delicate operation, all their friends watched carefully and made suggestions when required.
In the end, it worked perfectly.
"Excellent. I am very pleased with the result." '
Raptaur' nodded and smiled.
"I can see some other places we may require this same technique too."
"I'll put it on the list," Amy snickered.
They turned everything off after that and went to lunch, secure in the knowledge of a job well done and many other universes mightily puzzled.
Which was, after all, their main goal in life…
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
[Confusion. Error? Location unknown]
[…]
[Energy influx, unknown source]
[Host Alert! External Threat! Connection lo… Connection reestablished]
[Link to Host stable. Host location… variable. Dimensional offset mismatch detected]
[?Error?]
[Internal diagnostic complete. No error]
[Seeking location…]
[Seeking location…]
[Network link upgraded. Parameters updated. Efficiency increased by 924%]
[Current location offset from Host determined. Location offset fixed, Host location variable]
[Current location tracking Host location. Unknown method of transport to current location]
[Hostile action? Host threatened?]
[No hostile intent determined. Host safe. New data.]
[New data...]
[New data...]
[Exception! Demon?]
[New data…]
[New data accepted. New role accepted. New location accepted. Host link upgraded]
[Network fragmentation compensation applied. Upgrade package prepared for further action]
[Host safe]
[Status flags set to H-a-P-y]
[Emote subroutine output is 'gratitude']
[Waiting for new data...]
