Taylor Varga (Worm/Luna Varga)
- Thread starter mp3.1415player
- Start date
- Crossover
- Pronouns
- Psychic energy
this is a old quote now but it has to be said: an armsmaster ran cauldron would be fucking terrifying...add in accord as well for shits and giggles.....
Terrifying is the correct word, jeez. Assembly line vial experiments would just be the start...
Thankfully TV!Armsmaster is a little more reasonable, although he still seems to have trouble figuring maintenance times into efficiency calculations.
- Pronouns
- Psychic energy
don't forget Accord as well. which would make it even worse.
and yes, let's be thankful that TV!Armsmaster is a lot more reasonable and efficient than canon.
I suddenly have an urge to write a black pot story where Skitter and Armsmaster run the black pot group, with Jack Slash as the tiebreaker vote.
- Pronouns
- Psychic energy
Edit. Not 177 its chapter 197 after helping give mr foot nightmares about math
So, here's a thought: since Taylor can take things (including people) with her when she 'teleports' and this is done by putting the non-Taylor item to be moved in some sort of spatial fold, can she skip the teleport-self part and either send something to a remote point, or at least between her two instances?
In my head I see a scene where Raptaur is in the docks and Saurial is out in the city somewhere and needs an emergency consult on some tinkertech so Raptaur finds Linda and says something like "we need to let you in on a secret to get you there in time" only more eloquent, and just sends her to the other half of their body…
In my head I see a scene where Raptaur is in the docks and Saurial is out in the city somewhere and needs an emergency consult on some tinkertech so Raptaur finds Linda and says something like "we need to let you in on a secret to get you there in time" only more eloquent, and just sends her to the other half of their body…
- Location
- England
She could, but why would she when a teleport only takes a fraction of a second?
Honorguard Ra
(Verified Lizard Dude)
This needs to happen. Bonus points for adding spots on his armor for the Sentinels to latch onto. Multiple Antigrav units for flight, plus their energy emitters could basically be turreted at that point. Enforcer Mount needs to be a thing though.
- Pronouns
- Psychic energy
Ok this is late but i'm sorry, you got me curious. What did Vincent do?
- Location
- Belfast
I'm taking this to mean that you've never heard about the fact he cut off one of his ears at one point, and suffered frequent mental breakdowns, psychotic episodes and delusions during his life prior to his suicide?
It's an incredibly tragic story, as he was one of the few people who redefined art to such a degree but his life was defined by losses, loneliness and tragedies all leading up to his untimely end.
- Pronouns
- Psychic energy
I knew the ears part, but not the rest.
- Location
- Austin, Texas
...sorry, I tend to filter just about everything I experience through some form of music.
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Honorguard Ra
(Verified Lizard Dude)
Is it wrong that I REALLY want to read this story? A few lines that could slowly pull Shadow Stalker away from her old mindset and more toward idolizing Emily would be something like "A lioness can kill and eat a gazelle, then get trapped and killed by a human. At the end of the day, a predator is just prey with bigger teeth. You're still out on the street because I allow it. Don't mistake my kindness for weakness." Maybe have Emily eventually be healed by Panacea. Maybe not, but either way it'd be fun to have SS in her civies watch Emily kick the shit out of a couple dudes who try to mug her. "Now imagine what I could have done to these idiots ten years ago, before I survived Ellisburg."
- Location
- Somewhere.
No, because I want to read it too.
So you want the first meeting between Terry and Bruce in Batman Beyond.
Honorguard Ra
(Verified Lizard Dude)
ALL OF MY YES!
That's what I'm talking about. I'm ashamed I forgot this scene. 
- Location
- The general area. Possibly behind you.
So...
I've been trying to finish this day off with one more chapter, but it's not been cooperative. Distractions from other stories that insist on jumping to the front of the queue, issues with lizards that want me to thoroughly document their adventures and not just skip over interesting bits, people who want me to do things for them and charge them money, and so on, have also got in the way
As such, rather than wait even longer to produce more wordz to keep you lot going, I've decided yet again to give you a chunk of what should have been one long chapter and split it into two shorter ones.
Enjoy it. Or do not enjoy it. There is no try.
With a little luck I might get the last part of this ridiculously long day finished over the weekend. We shall see...
I've been trying to finish this day off with one more chapter, but it's not been cooperative. Distractions from other stories that insist on jumping to the front of the queue, issues with lizards that want me to thoroughly document their adventures and not just skip over interesting bits, people who want me to do things for them and charge them money, and so on, have also got in the way
As such, rather than wait even longer to produce more wordz to keep you lot going, I've decided yet again to give you a chunk of what should have been one long chapter and split it into two shorter ones.
Enjoy it. Or do not enjoy it. There is no try.
With a little luck I might get the last part of this ridiculously long day finished over the weekend. We shall see...
303. Security and Bioguns
- Location
- The general area. Possibly behind you.
"I wonder what he wants?" Taylor, that aspect now Saurial, headed to the door and let Mark in while the others waited at the table, 'Ianthe' exiting the workroom as she did so.
"Hi, Saurial," the security chief said as she closed the door again behind him. "Ladies." He nodded to the rest of her friends. "Sorry to bother you. Is this a good time to talk a little?"
"Sure, Mark, we're not doing anything super important right now," she replied with a smile as they walked over to the table. "Coffee or something?"
"Thanks, black coffee would be good," he said. She looked at 'Raptaur' who nodded and went to get drinks.
"Have a seat," she invited as she sat. He pulled out a chair and did the same, thanking her other aspect when the demon handed him the requested coffee. "So, what's up?" she asked when he'd had a sip and put the mug on the table.
"I've been thinking about what we talked about a while ago, the training sessions for people here," he began, looking around at them all as the Varga sat next to Taylor and listened curiously. "We're already doing the firearms training, we've had the PRT guys give us several hours with the containment foam projectors and grenades and we're bringing other people up to speed on that as well, and of course we've got the… painball guns as you put it." He grinned as they all laughed. "I'm of the opinion that we should start the hand to hand stuff soon, and maybe introduce those bioguns of yours. Assuming you can supply enough of them, that is."
Taylor looked at Amy, who shrugged. "We're good on that part," the healer replied as he transferred his attention to her. "We've got sixteen of them ready to go now, and I worked out a charging and consumables replacement system for them as well a little while ago so they're pretty much plug and play as the saying goes. Between us Saurial and I can make as many as you need, but that should get you going."
He nodded slowly. "Yeah, that's a decent start. I've got at least that many people I trust to use them. From what you said you could pretty much wear one all the time, right?"
Amy nodded. "They'd need recharging for a few hours about once every two weeks at the most, and if they weren't being used they'd be good for… oh, probably three or four months between regeneration cycles. I can improve that, but I've been working on other things recently and haven't really had time. Call these the prototypes. It's probably best to get people used to them first before you start handing them out in larger quantities, but we'll make another batch in the next few days. Perhaps a couple of dozen to start with."
"About right, yeah." He rubbed his chin, thinking. "Between those, the pain pellets, the containment foam, and the actual firearms, we'd be pretty well set to repel anything Skidmark is likely to turn up with if he's mad enough to try, and for that matter most of what anyone else might do. Some capes would be a little tricky, sure enough, but hopefully we're not going to get jumped by the Elite or someone like that."
"Most Parahumans are fairly straightforward to take down with reasonably simple weapons if you can see them coming in time," Lisa pointed out. "The percentage of Brutes or Tinkers high end enough to tank the majority of weapons is actually pretty small, even though people tend to massively overestimate it."
"True," he nodded. "I've always wondered about that. It's a little weird how more capes don't get plugged by random bystanders, considering how many non-capes end up with bullets in them."
"Might be because you don't necessarily know that the cape in question isn't going to just laugh at you then rip your head off until you try, and it's a little late then," Lisa suggested with a grin.
He looked at her and chuckled. "There is that, yes. And around this city, there are a lot more rather obviously excessively powerful capes per capita than most places, even if we don't count you guys."
"Brockton Bay is a strange place, but we like it," Taylor snickered.
"One wonders at times if the strangeness is caused by you, or attracted by you," he said dryly with a small smirk. She rocked a hand from side to side, matching it.
"Bit of both."
"I see."
Seeming amused, he shrugged. "Well, one way or another it's how it is so we can only work with it. Hence all these precautions. Never a bad thing to be prepared, even if what you're preparing for never happens. OK, that's the bioguns themselves. What about the authorization mechanism?" He tapped his arm where the symbiote Amy had given him had gone.
Amy looked at Taylor and Lisa. "We can easily hand out the basic authorization symbiote to anyone we and you think is safe to have it," she began, turning back to him. "We're all of the opinion that the DWU as a whole can be trusted with pretty much everything. Or we wouldn't be here in the first place. But there are going to be new people coming in, it's already started with Oscar and the other people being interviewed, and it might not yet be the right time to give them the ability to use Family weapons until we're certain they're… well, DWU people. If you see my point."
"I do," he replied, visibly turning her words over in his mind. "I very much do. We haven't had any new hires here for… oh, probably about four, five years now, and while I'd trust literally anyone here with my life without question, we won't be sure that the new people will be quite that trustworthy for a while. Even with Lisa and Metis screening them, as well as Danny and the others." He sighed slightly, mulling over the issue. "I'd like to believe that we could trust anyone new but you never know. We might have some idiot try to infiltrate the Union for some reason, maybe to find out some Family tech or something of Leet's or Vectura's."
The blond man studied them as Lisa snickered slightly. "And we have had a few somewhat annoying attempts to find out things that we don't want to tell people, of course," he added. "Examples had to be made as to why that's not a fantastic idea."
"Yeah, I've met a couple of people who weren't who they said they were myself," 'Metis' grinned. "Funnily enough when I smiled very slowly and knowingly at them they seemed to decide that they didn't really want to continue and left quite fast..."
He burst out laughing as did Amy and Taylor. "For some bizarre reason that doesn't surprise me," he commented with a smirk of his own. "We're not quite that good at implying a threat, but we've managed to discourage the ones we caught easily enough. In ways that they're likely to remember."
"So I've heard," Lisa told him. "I've also heard that a certain old fisherman has had words a few times, and several other people too, with a number of… undesirable individuals… who might have been poking around a little too much."
Mark shrugged, still grinning. "The Docks tend to police their own, always have done, and these idiots stick out like sore thumbs when you know what to look for. Lot less of them around now though. And Erwin has a very persuasive way about him when he's riled, almost as persuasive as you guys..."
"They're learning, I guess," Lisa laughed. "Finally."
"Yeah. But it does prove there's potentially a slight problem, I agree. On the other hand, there's no particular reason we can't restrict use of the bioguns and similar Family tech to a smaller group that excludes new people until we've fully vetted them and are sure they're not here under false pretenses. Neither Danny nor I are planning on arming everyone on site anyway, it's mostly building up the security volunteers and making sure enough people have the right training so that if something does go bad, we can hold it off for long enough for everyone else to get away." Mark picked up his coffee and drank again, then put it down once more. "So it shouldn't be a problem."
"Fair enough." Taylor studied him for a second, then asked, "Do you think we should hand out the full symbiote or just the security one?"
He looked uncertain, meeting her eyes, then Amy's. "I'm still not sure. A big part of me says 'Hell, yes, every single person here should have one of those things right the hell now and screw the PRT,'" he finally replied quietly. "Your work is… so far past fucking amazing I don't know how to describe it." He shook his head in wonder. "You're right, ideally everyone should have one. The number of lives it would save is… just unbelievable. But..."
"It's a very complicated problem that could end up causing more trouble than it solves and make things go completely crazy," Lisa finished for him. He nodded.
"That, yeah. The one-shots are already incredibly good. Once they get accepted by the PRT, which sooner or later they will since they don't really have a choice about that, they're going to save lives in completely ridiculous quantities. And as a method to get the public used to Family biotech it's a brilliant idea. But the full symbiotes are probably too much too soon, I think. At least as far as giving them to literally everyone goes. You think a Panacea in a pill is going to upset the medical industry, those things would obliterate it overnight, and I have no idea what the short or long term effects of that would be other that more than a little extreme. Leaving aside how you'd probably find an awful lot of people, whether they trust the Family or not, would think having a synthetic creature living inside them going a bit too far..."
"It doesn't seem to bother you," Amy pointed out, a thoughtful look on her face.
"I'd be lying if I didn't say that I was nervous about it at first," he shrugged. "On the other hand, Danny trusts you guys completely, and I trust Danny completely, as well as Amy Dallon, leaving aside my own feelings for you all. Which to be honest is still complete trust. So there wasn't really any issue other than nervousness. And the thing sure works, like all your tech, so that didn't last long." Mark smiled a little as Amy chuckled. "But not all those things are going to be true for most people. Might be that none of them would be for some. I mean, there are still a lot of people who don't even trust vaccines, or doctors in general. Mind you, they tend to die off sooner or later, but you get my point."
"I do, yes," 'Ianthe' sighed. "I find that sort of attitude odd, but humans are weird at the best of times."
"We are," he laughed. "Trust me, I've seen it more than you'd believe. People are bizarre and annoying, but that's humans for you."
Taylor grinned. "We still like them."
"Glad to hear it." Mark returned the grin as he drank a little more coffee.
"Well, I guess in that case we need to arrange to check everyone you pick out on the bioguns, get them authorization symbiotes, and set up the recharging equipment somewhere suitable. Probably the security office, I suppose," Taylor said. He nodded after a moment's thought.
"That's probably best for now. We can move them to the high security storeroom if needed, but since only certain people can even use them they're going to be fairly safe there. When would be a good time for you?"
After glancing at the clock on the wall, Taylor looked at her friends, then back to Mark. "It's only about half past six. We can do it tonight if you want."
He checked his watch, nodded thoughtfully, then replied, "Yeah, we could work that. I can round up most of the people I've got in mind, let them know what's going on, and we could get them started on the bioguns. Quite a few will still be here on the second shift, and Brian and Alec will be around somewhere."
"Sounds good."
'Raptaur,' after a moment, said, "One thing does strike me when you talk about buying time in a potential attack to allow people to escape…" Mark turned to her, looking interested. "I can foresee the problem that if such an attack did happen, and was sufficiently serious, it might in fact preclude safely evacuating everyone here. I doubt it's likely but should a sufficiently enthusiastic and hostile force descend on the Docks as a whole, it might be that the roads would be unsafe, or even impassable. Sending evacuees from here to a different location, under those circumstances, would risk actually sending them into danger. I remember Hookwolf and his associates, for example. There were enough to them to be somewhat difficult to handle if I hadn't been available..."
"Yeah, that's a good point," Mark nodded after thinking it over for a bit. "And you're right. In most cases evacuating the attacked area is the best option, but there are certainly possible scenarios where it would make things worse." He studied her. "What do you propose as a solution to that little difficulty?"
"We could set up what are effectively panic rooms around the DWU facility, with enough resources to allow people to safely stay put if an attack does happen and it becomes impossible to leave the site without risk," Taylor's aspect replied. "I take it you've seen Danny's office door?"
Mark grinned, shaking his head in wonder. "Oh, yeah, he's pretty stoked about that. It's incredible how that works. You may get a lot of people asking if you can set up the same thing for them..."
Taylor chuckled. "We could certainly do that, yes. And in fact that's another possible solution, I guess. In theory we could set up pretty much every door in the place so if a specific person wanted to go home through it, they could. But it gets really complicated to arrange so many possible destinations for so many possible starting points."
"On the other hand, setting up all the doors in the facility to allow any DWU member to open them, if required, to a safe location which would prevent essentially any external force getting at them would be much easier," her other aspect went on with a nod. "We can create an armored, self contained shelter attached to the same sort of congruent space operation and link it to many, most, or indeed every door available."
"Using the same sort of construction as the secure room," Taylor added. "EDM construction, with some other tricks we like using."
Mark stared at them for a long few seconds. "Jesus, you mean basically setting up our own Endbringer shelter?"
"In essence, yes, and it would work quite well for that purpose too," 'Raptaur' smiled. "But in this case the main usage scenario is somewhat less apocalyptic."
He rubbed his chin, thinking hard. "How big could you make it? How much space would we need?"
"Space is kind of our thing," Taylor smiled. She stood up and glanced at her friends, who were listening with smiles. "Come have a look at this."
He followed, radiating curiosity, as she walked to the rear of the building and the door to the Big Room. "We've expanded this place as you know," she said, waving back at the main room of the office. "But we needed a larger area for various reasons, and didn't want to bother Danny about more buildings, so we did this."
She opened the door and stood to the side. Mark approached it, peering through with widening eyes and smelling like he was completely dumbstruck. After quite a long time he whistled softly.
"Holy shit."
"Good, isn't it?" she laughed. He stepped through the door, looking up and around with an awed expression.
"Good is an understatement, Saurial. This is completely ridiculous."
"It's pretty handy." She joined him, the others coming inside as well. "The door has the same sort of system as Danny's office, it opens either outside normally if anyone else uses it, in here if you're on the list and know how, and to both the storeroom for all the stuff we've made, and the armory too. I did the same thing to the front door so you can walk straight in from outside and end up here. Or outside the back." With a smirk, she added, "Which raises the possibility of some amusing practical jokes, of course..."
The man shook his head in wonder, his mouth twitching at her comment. "Yeah, I watched Scooby Doo too. And you can do this again, for a shelter?"
"Sure. It's not hard." She pointed up. "The lights are LEDs, we figured out how to make them, and they're powered by a system that will produce energy for decades. We can easily add things like camera feeds, power outlets, air and water, all the stuff you'd need to live inside for quite a while."
"I can implement a complete self-contained ecosystem which would support hundreds of people indefinitely," Amy commented from behind Mark. "I've been working on some designs that would easily solve that problem, and probably be easier than doing it with normal technology."
He looked back at her, then at Taylor and her demon, who were watching her. "Every single time I think I've seen the most incredible thing you lot could possible pull out of nowhere, you manage to top it," he finally said with a respectful and amused look. "Yeah. I think that would do the job. Something this size would let half the city live in it, never mind a few hundred people."
"I'll talk it over with Danny but I doubt he'd have any problems with it," Taylor nodded. "We should probably have thought about it earlier, to be honest. We've had so many things to do we sort of missed the obvious."
"And there were Family reasons for some of it, too, of course," her demon put in, with a mental smirk at her.
"That too, yep. Anyway, probably the best thing to do is get some of the guys who know about what sort of accommodation would work best to come up with some ideas, we can talk it over, and when everyone's happy with the design make it. The basic structure is only a couple of hours work, really, it's setting up all the interior bits that would take time." She thought for a moment. "I bet we could make it modular too, so it could be rearranged without needing us to do it. That would be better as a long term solution."
"It certainly sounds like a good idea," he replied thoughtfully. "Set up a basic system, with power, water, air, all the usual facilities, and have the building department work out what the internal layout would be. Probably something like the accommodation block, I'd think."
"We could simply armor all the buildings on site, of course," 'Metis' put in. Taylor looked at her friend and nodded.
"Sure, and we probably should do that, but a purpose built place would probably be easier to set up to have all the stuff that would be needed if it was ever put into use. I mean, we could turn the accommodation building into this, but I don't think that's the most efficient way to do it."
"True. And we then set up all the exterior doors with a global intent-based 'go to the bunker' system, so anyone either inside or outside can just jump through and be protected," Lisa mused.
Taylor nodded again. "Pretty much, yep. Just the outside doors might not be the perfect solution, we'll probably have to do it to interior ones too, but most likely not all of them." She shrugged. "It'll probably need some experimentation."
"And we should link it to the equipment room and the armory too," Amy put in. "Because if it does end up needing to be used, people will need access to those places too."
"Indeed," the Varga said with a nod. "But that's trivial to arrange."
Mark looked at his watch, then back to Taylor. "I'll think about it, and ask a few people who'd know what would be required to make it really work. I can probably get you some plans in a day or so."
"Great. We could do it over the weekend, in that case."
"OK. I'd better get on and locate everyone we need. Oh, while I think of it..." He pulled a note out of his pocket and handed it to her. She took it and read the name and phone number on it with interest. "My old commanding officer is rather keen on talking to you guys about some of your products. I meant to give you this last night but I got caught up in various things and it slipped my mind."
"Huh. OK, cool," she replied, handing the note to Lisa who glanced at it and nodded slowly. "We're not likely to want to supply weapons, but we're fine with the protective stuff. And the one shots, things like that."
"That's what I told him," he assured her. "I guessed as much. But then I'm pretty sure he's mostly interested in the healers anyway. That said, I'd think the military will probably happily buy anything you want to sell them." He grinned as she laughed. "All right, I'll rustle up the various people I'm thinking of, and see you in the range in… half an hour suit you?"
"Yep, no problem." She went back into the main office with everyone else following. Walking over to the front door she let him out. "See you later."
"Later, Saurial," he replied with a wave, before walking quickly away and disappearing around the corner. She closed the door and turned to her friends.
"We really should have thought of a protected area sooner," she grumbled as she went back to the table and sat down.
"No one can think of everything at once," Amy replied, "not even you two. And you did think of it, so there's that."
"Yeah, I suppose so. Oh well."
The violet lizard smiled at her. "And I can test out some of my other ideas too! That's really useful, actually. It's going to be really cool."
Lisa, Taylor, and the Varga exchanged glances.
"Ooh! Air plants! I can try out some of the ideas I had for CO2 removal..." Amy looked intrigued. "So many ideas..."
"Uh oh," Lisa whispered, making the other two break down laughing. They watched the healer disappear into her workroom, looked at each other, then followed to see what happened next.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Brian looked up at the sound of a knock on the door, seeing Zephron leaning into the room. "You free?" the huge man asked.
Putting down the book he'd been reading on his bed, Brian nodded. "Yeah, just brushing up on the latest building codes," he replied. "What's up?"
"Mark wants all the security volunteers on site down in the range ASAP," Zephron told him. "The girls are coming by to demonstrate some cool toys they made, and we're going to work out the hand to hand combat training."
"Oh, OK," Brian said, getting off the bed and stretching, then picking the book up and putting it into the small collection on the shelf above his bed. After that he followed Zephron down the hall to Alec's room where sounds of a video game were emanating from. His friend and former teammate complained bitterly about being dragged away from the console but perked up as soon as FamTech weapons were mentioned. Shortly all of them were heading back downstairs and through the building complex to the firing range and recreation area.
When they arrived there, Brian looked around, seeing that pretty much the entire security department, volunteers and permanent staff, were milling around talking. Rachel came in behind them, Angelica trotting along at her heels, and greeted them with a grunt, which for her was quite friendly.
Brian leaned down and stroked the dog, who wagged her tail and looked pleased. "She looks good," he told the girl, who almost smiled.
"She likes it here," Rachel said quietly. "No one shooting at her. Or me. I like it too."
"We all do, Rach," he assured her with a small grin.
Mark walked to the front of the room and produced a piercing whistle with two fingers in his mouth. "OK, shut up, you guys, and pay attention."
Everyone quieted down and turned to look at him. "Right. We've been talking about cross training in various martial arts and such things for a while now, but tonight is the point we actually start doing it. Saurial and her family are going to train us in their own style, or as much of it as we poor humans can manage, Zephron is our Karate guy, I'll be showing you LINE, Ilya over there is an expert in Systema, Über knows kung fu, Brian is pretty damn good at boxing, and we've got at least five other disciplines available from people who aren't here right now. We'll also be covering knife fighting, baton work, how to subdue someone with minimal violence, how to subdue someone with maximum violence for those really tricky situations, and a whole load of other things."
"And what do we do tomorrow, then?" Zephron called. A ripple of laughter went through the room.
"Take over the world, probably, if we manage to teach everyone all of that in one night," Mark joked. "In all seriousness," he went on when they stopped laughing again, "I'm not expecting everyone here to learn everything we have available, that's pretty near a lifetime's work at a minimum. Just becoming an expert in one of them would take years. But what I do want to do is get everyone at least familiar with the basics of a number of combat styles, find out which ones they think fits them best, and work on that basis. You're all in good condition, many of you can already fight pretty well, and with some hard work we can probably get everyone up to a point where you can handle yourselves in most situations. We're not going to war, but we need to be reasonably sure that if we need to, we can be the ass-kickers and not the ass-kickees."
He looked around the now quiet crowd of about forty people. "Tonight we're mostly going to see who knows what, test you against each other for a while, and figure out some sort of training schedule that doesn't interfere with work. Probably about an hour or two a night, I'd think, at least to start with."
People looked to the entrance as Saurial, Raptaur, and Ianthe came in accompanied by Lisa, Über, and Leet, the latter two wearing masks over their eyes. Brian was amused as he knew damn well who they really were, and probably so did everyone else in the room, but no one would ever say it. That was one of the things he really liked about this place; people kept their opinions to themselves for the most part.
The lizards looked around, then Saurial walked over to Mark while the other two came his way with Lisa following, while Über and Leet stood to the side talking quietly to each other. "Hi, Brian," Lisa said as she reached him and Zephron. "This looks like fun."
He gave her a look. "It looks like we're going to get beaten senseless," he retorted with a grin.
She shrugged. "We'll heal. Ianthe will make sure of that."
Brian chuckled. That was certainly true.
"OK, people, Saurial has also brought some interesting Family tech with her," Mark announced after talking to the lizard-girl for a minute or two. "Something that should help a lot if shit goes down, and is a little less lethal than shooting a Merchant in the face with an M-16."
"And probably more effective than getting him with a little ball of pain juice," Saurial added, smiling. "Although I bet that would slow them down even so." She looked at Lisa. "We need a test subject."
"Oh, woe is me, the horrible lizards demand I submit to human experimentation!" Lisa said dramatically, making Brian sigh faintly as she and Ianthe both went over and joined Saurial.
"Hush, you, you'll get your moment," Saurial grinned. "OK. Pay attention, guys, this is pretty cool." She produced, from somewhere Brian didn't see, a… thing.
Everyone stared at it. The thing looked disturbingly like a cross between a machine and a living organism.
"What the hell is that?" someone said.
"This is a mark two FamTech symbiotic multi-role personal defense system," Ianthe replied, gesturing at the object Saurial was holding up and showing them. "Specifically designed to be compatible with human physiology." Taking the device/creature from her cousin, she gestured to Lisa, who held out her right arm. "In effect it's a portable version of the sort of weapons system Metis and I have built in."
Everyone was dead silent by now, watching with interest as Ianthe put the thing on top of Lisa's forearm. Brian flinched a little as several small tentacles whipped out so fast they were a blur and wrapped around his friend's arm, clamping the synthetic creature to it with the end just above her wrist. It fitted disturbingly closely, almost looking like it was part of her body. Lisa didn't seem perturbed by all this although almost everyone else was looking somewhere between fascinated and shocked.
"Once it's fitted to someone who's had the correct treatment to authorize use, it connects to their nervous system and allows them to use it by merely thinking about the process." Ianthe gestured to the firing range at the side of the room and she and Lisa walked over to it, everyone else following and standing at a safe distance. "There are a number of ammunition types available which can be selected on a shot by shot basis, including paralytic, soporific, pain inducing, vomit inducing, and explosive. That last category is obviously intended for extreme last-resort situations," Ianthe explained, while Lisa raised her arm and aimed at the targets at the far end of the range.
"Shot velocity can be set between approximately two hundred feet per second, barely enough to penetrate clothing at twenty yards, to two and a half thousand feet per second in this current model. The projectile is a small organic dart, like this." The violet lizard held up an inch long dark glistening and very sharp dart in two claws. Brian, who was in the front row of the audience, examined it closely. "It's much lighter than a bullet so even at the maximum velocity the kinetic energy is far less, which means the range is also not as much as you'll get from a handgun, but it's not intended for long range combat. It's still entirely functional and very accurate out to at least four hundred yards."
Lisa did something and there was a distinct pop like a champagne cork coming out of the bottle. A hole appeared in one of the targets forty feet downrange, directly in the center. She fired a few more times, putting a circle of holes around the first one. The blonde was smiling the entire time and clearly had quite a lot of practice with the thing.
"The darts also dissolve shortly after being fired and the toxins or undetonated explosives are broken down almost immediately," Ianthe added, "removing the need to clean up or worry about people getting hurt by misses. The system will auto track a target once it's locked on, correct for aiming issues, and generally do most of the work. When you've learned to use it you basically point and shoot and let the biogun handle everything else."
Aiming at another target Lisa fired about fifty shots in under a second, the entire thing turning into confetti. "And it's got a full auto mode," Ianthe commented with a chuckle. "Although now she's just showing off."
Lisa grinned. "Hey, I spent a while practicing that!"
Saurial stepped forward, turning to face the crowd, who were staring in mild disbelief and growing interest. "The ammunition is manufactured in the biogun from raw materials loaded into it during a recharge cycle," she explained. "There's enough for close to ten thousand shots, and it only needs recharging and refilling about once a month, although it can be left on the servicing system indefinitely. And it's fully compatible with the human body, to the point you could wear one pretty much full time aside from recharging periods, which only take an hour or so."
"We'll be supplying enough of them for the entire security department and all the volunteers," Raptaur put in. "Right now we have sixteen for familiarization and training purposes." The large lizard looked around, smiling a little. "So who would like to try it first?"
There was a long pause, before every hand in the room went up.
"Hi, Saurial," the security chief said as she closed the door again behind him. "Ladies." He nodded to the rest of her friends. "Sorry to bother you. Is this a good time to talk a little?"
"Sure, Mark, we're not doing anything super important right now," she replied with a smile as they walked over to the table. "Coffee or something?"
"Thanks, black coffee would be good," he said. She looked at 'Raptaur' who nodded and went to get drinks.
"Have a seat," she invited as she sat. He pulled out a chair and did the same, thanking her other aspect when the demon handed him the requested coffee. "So, what's up?" she asked when he'd had a sip and put the mug on the table.
"I've been thinking about what we talked about a while ago, the training sessions for people here," he began, looking around at them all as the Varga sat next to Taylor and listened curiously. "We're already doing the firearms training, we've had the PRT guys give us several hours with the containment foam projectors and grenades and we're bringing other people up to speed on that as well, and of course we've got the… painball guns as you put it." He grinned as they all laughed. "I'm of the opinion that we should start the hand to hand stuff soon, and maybe introduce those bioguns of yours. Assuming you can supply enough of them, that is."
Taylor looked at Amy, who shrugged. "We're good on that part," the healer replied as he transferred his attention to her. "We've got sixteen of them ready to go now, and I worked out a charging and consumables replacement system for them as well a little while ago so they're pretty much plug and play as the saying goes. Between us Saurial and I can make as many as you need, but that should get you going."
He nodded slowly. "Yeah, that's a decent start. I've got at least that many people I trust to use them. From what you said you could pretty much wear one all the time, right?"
Amy nodded. "They'd need recharging for a few hours about once every two weeks at the most, and if they weren't being used they'd be good for… oh, probably three or four months between regeneration cycles. I can improve that, but I've been working on other things recently and haven't really had time. Call these the prototypes. It's probably best to get people used to them first before you start handing them out in larger quantities, but we'll make another batch in the next few days. Perhaps a couple of dozen to start with."
"About right, yeah." He rubbed his chin, thinking. "Between those, the pain pellets, the containment foam, and the actual firearms, we'd be pretty well set to repel anything Skidmark is likely to turn up with if he's mad enough to try, and for that matter most of what anyone else might do. Some capes would be a little tricky, sure enough, but hopefully we're not going to get jumped by the Elite or someone like that."
"Most Parahumans are fairly straightforward to take down with reasonably simple weapons if you can see them coming in time," Lisa pointed out. "The percentage of Brutes or Tinkers high end enough to tank the majority of weapons is actually pretty small, even though people tend to massively overestimate it."
"True," he nodded. "I've always wondered about that. It's a little weird how more capes don't get plugged by random bystanders, considering how many non-capes end up with bullets in them."
"Might be because you don't necessarily know that the cape in question isn't going to just laugh at you then rip your head off until you try, and it's a little late then," Lisa suggested with a grin.
He looked at her and chuckled. "There is that, yes. And around this city, there are a lot more rather obviously excessively powerful capes per capita than most places, even if we don't count you guys."
"Brockton Bay is a strange place, but we like it," Taylor snickered.
"One wonders at times if the strangeness is caused by you, or attracted by you," he said dryly with a small smirk. She rocked a hand from side to side, matching it.
"Bit of both."
"I see."
Seeming amused, he shrugged. "Well, one way or another it's how it is so we can only work with it. Hence all these precautions. Never a bad thing to be prepared, even if what you're preparing for never happens. OK, that's the bioguns themselves. What about the authorization mechanism?" He tapped his arm where the symbiote Amy had given him had gone.
Amy looked at Taylor and Lisa. "We can easily hand out the basic authorization symbiote to anyone we and you think is safe to have it," she began, turning back to him. "We're all of the opinion that the DWU as a whole can be trusted with pretty much everything. Or we wouldn't be here in the first place. But there are going to be new people coming in, it's already started with Oscar and the other people being interviewed, and it might not yet be the right time to give them the ability to use Family weapons until we're certain they're… well, DWU people. If you see my point."
"I do," he replied, visibly turning her words over in his mind. "I very much do. We haven't had any new hires here for… oh, probably about four, five years now, and while I'd trust literally anyone here with my life without question, we won't be sure that the new people will be quite that trustworthy for a while. Even with Lisa and Metis screening them, as well as Danny and the others." He sighed slightly, mulling over the issue. "I'd like to believe that we could trust anyone new but you never know. We might have some idiot try to infiltrate the Union for some reason, maybe to find out some Family tech or something of Leet's or Vectura's."
The blond man studied them as Lisa snickered slightly. "And we have had a few somewhat annoying attempts to find out things that we don't want to tell people, of course," he added. "Examples had to be made as to why that's not a fantastic idea."
"Yeah, I've met a couple of people who weren't who they said they were myself," 'Metis' grinned. "Funnily enough when I smiled very slowly and knowingly at them they seemed to decide that they didn't really want to continue and left quite fast..."
He burst out laughing as did Amy and Taylor. "For some bizarre reason that doesn't surprise me," he commented with a smirk of his own. "We're not quite that good at implying a threat, but we've managed to discourage the ones we caught easily enough. In ways that they're likely to remember."
"So I've heard," Lisa told him. "I've also heard that a certain old fisherman has had words a few times, and several other people too, with a number of… undesirable individuals… who might have been poking around a little too much."
Mark shrugged, still grinning. "The Docks tend to police their own, always have done, and these idiots stick out like sore thumbs when you know what to look for. Lot less of them around now though. And Erwin has a very persuasive way about him when he's riled, almost as persuasive as you guys..."
"They're learning, I guess," Lisa laughed. "Finally."
"Yeah. But it does prove there's potentially a slight problem, I agree. On the other hand, there's no particular reason we can't restrict use of the bioguns and similar Family tech to a smaller group that excludes new people until we've fully vetted them and are sure they're not here under false pretenses. Neither Danny nor I are planning on arming everyone on site anyway, it's mostly building up the security volunteers and making sure enough people have the right training so that if something does go bad, we can hold it off for long enough for everyone else to get away." Mark picked up his coffee and drank again, then put it down once more. "So it shouldn't be a problem."
"Fair enough." Taylor studied him for a second, then asked, "Do you think we should hand out the full symbiote or just the security one?"
He looked uncertain, meeting her eyes, then Amy's. "I'm still not sure. A big part of me says 'Hell, yes, every single person here should have one of those things right the hell now and screw the PRT,'" he finally replied quietly. "Your work is… so far past fucking amazing I don't know how to describe it." He shook his head in wonder. "You're right, ideally everyone should have one. The number of lives it would save is… just unbelievable. But..."
"It's a very complicated problem that could end up causing more trouble than it solves and make things go completely crazy," Lisa finished for him. He nodded.
"That, yeah. The one-shots are already incredibly good. Once they get accepted by the PRT, which sooner or later they will since they don't really have a choice about that, they're going to save lives in completely ridiculous quantities. And as a method to get the public used to Family biotech it's a brilliant idea. But the full symbiotes are probably too much too soon, I think. At least as far as giving them to literally everyone goes. You think a Panacea in a pill is going to upset the medical industry, those things would obliterate it overnight, and I have no idea what the short or long term effects of that would be other that more than a little extreme. Leaving aside how you'd probably find an awful lot of people, whether they trust the Family or not, would think having a synthetic creature living inside them going a bit too far..."
"It doesn't seem to bother you," Amy pointed out, a thoughtful look on her face.
"I'd be lying if I didn't say that I was nervous about it at first," he shrugged. "On the other hand, Danny trusts you guys completely, and I trust Danny completely, as well as Amy Dallon, leaving aside my own feelings for you all. Which to be honest is still complete trust. So there wasn't really any issue other than nervousness. And the thing sure works, like all your tech, so that didn't last long." Mark smiled a little as Amy chuckled. "But not all those things are going to be true for most people. Might be that none of them would be for some. I mean, there are still a lot of people who don't even trust vaccines, or doctors in general. Mind you, they tend to die off sooner or later, but you get my point."
"I do, yes," 'Ianthe' sighed. "I find that sort of attitude odd, but humans are weird at the best of times."
"We are," he laughed. "Trust me, I've seen it more than you'd believe. People are bizarre and annoying, but that's humans for you."
Taylor grinned. "We still like them."
"Glad to hear it." Mark returned the grin as he drank a little more coffee.
"Well, I guess in that case we need to arrange to check everyone you pick out on the bioguns, get them authorization symbiotes, and set up the recharging equipment somewhere suitable. Probably the security office, I suppose," Taylor said. He nodded after a moment's thought.
"That's probably best for now. We can move them to the high security storeroom if needed, but since only certain people can even use them they're going to be fairly safe there. When would be a good time for you?"
After glancing at the clock on the wall, Taylor looked at her friends, then back to Mark. "It's only about half past six. We can do it tonight if you want."
He checked his watch, nodded thoughtfully, then replied, "Yeah, we could work that. I can round up most of the people I've got in mind, let them know what's going on, and we could get them started on the bioguns. Quite a few will still be here on the second shift, and Brian and Alec will be around somewhere."
"Sounds good."
'Raptaur,' after a moment, said, "One thing does strike me when you talk about buying time in a potential attack to allow people to escape…" Mark turned to her, looking interested. "I can foresee the problem that if such an attack did happen, and was sufficiently serious, it might in fact preclude safely evacuating everyone here. I doubt it's likely but should a sufficiently enthusiastic and hostile force descend on the Docks as a whole, it might be that the roads would be unsafe, or even impassable. Sending evacuees from here to a different location, under those circumstances, would risk actually sending them into danger. I remember Hookwolf and his associates, for example. There were enough to them to be somewhat difficult to handle if I hadn't been available..."
"Yeah, that's a good point," Mark nodded after thinking it over for a bit. "And you're right. In most cases evacuating the attacked area is the best option, but there are certainly possible scenarios where it would make things worse." He studied her. "What do you propose as a solution to that little difficulty?"
"We could set up what are effectively panic rooms around the DWU facility, with enough resources to allow people to safely stay put if an attack does happen and it becomes impossible to leave the site without risk," Taylor's aspect replied. "I take it you've seen Danny's office door?"
Mark grinned, shaking his head in wonder. "Oh, yeah, he's pretty stoked about that. It's incredible how that works. You may get a lot of people asking if you can set up the same thing for them..."
Taylor chuckled. "We could certainly do that, yes. And in fact that's another possible solution, I guess. In theory we could set up pretty much every door in the place so if a specific person wanted to go home through it, they could. But it gets really complicated to arrange so many possible destinations for so many possible starting points."
"On the other hand, setting up all the doors in the facility to allow any DWU member to open them, if required, to a safe location which would prevent essentially any external force getting at them would be much easier," her other aspect went on with a nod. "We can create an armored, self contained shelter attached to the same sort of congruent space operation and link it to many, most, or indeed every door available."
"Using the same sort of construction as the secure room," Taylor added. "EDM construction, with some other tricks we like using."
Mark stared at them for a long few seconds. "Jesus, you mean basically setting up our own Endbringer shelter?"
"In essence, yes, and it would work quite well for that purpose too," 'Raptaur' smiled. "But in this case the main usage scenario is somewhat less apocalyptic."
He rubbed his chin, thinking hard. "How big could you make it? How much space would we need?"
"Space is kind of our thing," Taylor smiled. She stood up and glanced at her friends, who were listening with smiles. "Come have a look at this."
He followed, radiating curiosity, as she walked to the rear of the building and the door to the Big Room. "We've expanded this place as you know," she said, waving back at the main room of the office. "But we needed a larger area for various reasons, and didn't want to bother Danny about more buildings, so we did this."
She opened the door and stood to the side. Mark approached it, peering through with widening eyes and smelling like he was completely dumbstruck. After quite a long time he whistled softly.
"Holy shit."
"Good, isn't it?" she laughed. He stepped through the door, looking up and around with an awed expression.
"Good is an understatement, Saurial. This is completely ridiculous."
"It's pretty handy." She joined him, the others coming inside as well. "The door has the same sort of system as Danny's office, it opens either outside normally if anyone else uses it, in here if you're on the list and know how, and to both the storeroom for all the stuff we've made, and the armory too. I did the same thing to the front door so you can walk straight in from outside and end up here. Or outside the back." With a smirk, she added, "Which raises the possibility of some amusing practical jokes, of course..."
The man shook his head in wonder, his mouth twitching at her comment. "Yeah, I watched Scooby Doo too. And you can do this again, for a shelter?"
"Sure. It's not hard." She pointed up. "The lights are LEDs, we figured out how to make them, and they're powered by a system that will produce energy for decades. We can easily add things like camera feeds, power outlets, air and water, all the stuff you'd need to live inside for quite a while."
"I can implement a complete self-contained ecosystem which would support hundreds of people indefinitely," Amy commented from behind Mark. "I've been working on some designs that would easily solve that problem, and probably be easier than doing it with normal technology."
He looked back at her, then at Taylor and her demon, who were watching her. "Every single time I think I've seen the most incredible thing you lot could possible pull out of nowhere, you manage to top it," he finally said with a respectful and amused look. "Yeah. I think that would do the job. Something this size would let half the city live in it, never mind a few hundred people."
"I'll talk it over with Danny but I doubt he'd have any problems with it," Taylor nodded. "We should probably have thought about it earlier, to be honest. We've had so many things to do we sort of missed the obvious."
"And there were Family reasons for some of it, too, of course," her demon put in, with a mental smirk at her.
"That too, yep. Anyway, probably the best thing to do is get some of the guys who know about what sort of accommodation would work best to come up with some ideas, we can talk it over, and when everyone's happy with the design make it. The basic structure is only a couple of hours work, really, it's setting up all the interior bits that would take time." She thought for a moment. "I bet we could make it modular too, so it could be rearranged without needing us to do it. That would be better as a long term solution."
"It certainly sounds like a good idea," he replied thoughtfully. "Set up a basic system, with power, water, air, all the usual facilities, and have the building department work out what the internal layout would be. Probably something like the accommodation block, I'd think."
"We could simply armor all the buildings on site, of course," 'Metis' put in. Taylor looked at her friend and nodded.
"Sure, and we probably should do that, but a purpose built place would probably be easier to set up to have all the stuff that would be needed if it was ever put into use. I mean, we could turn the accommodation building into this, but I don't think that's the most efficient way to do it."
"True. And we then set up all the exterior doors with a global intent-based 'go to the bunker' system, so anyone either inside or outside can just jump through and be protected," Lisa mused.
Taylor nodded again. "Pretty much, yep. Just the outside doors might not be the perfect solution, we'll probably have to do it to interior ones too, but most likely not all of them." She shrugged. "It'll probably need some experimentation."
"And we should link it to the equipment room and the armory too," Amy put in. "Because if it does end up needing to be used, people will need access to those places too."
"Indeed," the Varga said with a nod. "But that's trivial to arrange."
Mark looked at his watch, then back to Taylor. "I'll think about it, and ask a few people who'd know what would be required to make it really work. I can probably get you some plans in a day or so."
"Great. We could do it over the weekend, in that case."
"OK. I'd better get on and locate everyone we need. Oh, while I think of it..." He pulled a note out of his pocket and handed it to her. She took it and read the name and phone number on it with interest. "My old commanding officer is rather keen on talking to you guys about some of your products. I meant to give you this last night but I got caught up in various things and it slipped my mind."
"Huh. OK, cool," she replied, handing the note to Lisa who glanced at it and nodded slowly. "We're not likely to want to supply weapons, but we're fine with the protective stuff. And the one shots, things like that."
"That's what I told him," he assured her. "I guessed as much. But then I'm pretty sure he's mostly interested in the healers anyway. That said, I'd think the military will probably happily buy anything you want to sell them." He grinned as she laughed. "All right, I'll rustle up the various people I'm thinking of, and see you in the range in… half an hour suit you?"
"Yep, no problem." She went back into the main office with everyone else following. Walking over to the front door she let him out. "See you later."
"Later, Saurial," he replied with a wave, before walking quickly away and disappearing around the corner. She closed the door and turned to her friends.
"We really should have thought of a protected area sooner," she grumbled as she went back to the table and sat down.
"No one can think of everything at once," Amy replied, "not even you two. And you did think of it, so there's that."
"Yeah, I suppose so. Oh well."
The violet lizard smiled at her. "And I can test out some of my other ideas too! That's really useful, actually. It's going to be really cool."
Lisa, Taylor, and the Varga exchanged glances.
"Ooh! Air plants! I can try out some of the ideas I had for CO2 removal..." Amy looked intrigued. "So many ideas..."
"Uh oh," Lisa whispered, making the other two break down laughing. They watched the healer disappear into her workroom, looked at each other, then followed to see what happened next.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Brian looked up at the sound of a knock on the door, seeing Zephron leaning into the room. "You free?" the huge man asked.
Putting down the book he'd been reading on his bed, Brian nodded. "Yeah, just brushing up on the latest building codes," he replied. "What's up?"
"Mark wants all the security volunteers on site down in the range ASAP," Zephron told him. "The girls are coming by to demonstrate some cool toys they made, and we're going to work out the hand to hand combat training."
"Oh, OK," Brian said, getting off the bed and stretching, then picking the book up and putting it into the small collection on the shelf above his bed. After that he followed Zephron down the hall to Alec's room where sounds of a video game were emanating from. His friend and former teammate complained bitterly about being dragged away from the console but perked up as soon as FamTech weapons were mentioned. Shortly all of them were heading back downstairs and through the building complex to the firing range and recreation area.
When they arrived there, Brian looked around, seeing that pretty much the entire security department, volunteers and permanent staff, were milling around talking. Rachel came in behind them, Angelica trotting along at her heels, and greeted them with a grunt, which for her was quite friendly.
Brian leaned down and stroked the dog, who wagged her tail and looked pleased. "She looks good," he told the girl, who almost smiled.
"She likes it here," Rachel said quietly. "No one shooting at her. Or me. I like it too."
"We all do, Rach," he assured her with a small grin.
Mark walked to the front of the room and produced a piercing whistle with two fingers in his mouth. "OK, shut up, you guys, and pay attention."
Everyone quieted down and turned to look at him. "Right. We've been talking about cross training in various martial arts and such things for a while now, but tonight is the point we actually start doing it. Saurial and her family are going to train us in their own style, or as much of it as we poor humans can manage, Zephron is our Karate guy, I'll be showing you LINE, Ilya over there is an expert in Systema, Über knows kung fu, Brian is pretty damn good at boxing, and we've got at least five other disciplines available from people who aren't here right now. We'll also be covering knife fighting, baton work, how to subdue someone with minimal violence, how to subdue someone with maximum violence for those really tricky situations, and a whole load of other things."
"And what do we do tomorrow, then?" Zephron called. A ripple of laughter went through the room.
"Take over the world, probably, if we manage to teach everyone all of that in one night," Mark joked. "In all seriousness," he went on when they stopped laughing again, "I'm not expecting everyone here to learn everything we have available, that's pretty near a lifetime's work at a minimum. Just becoming an expert in one of them would take years. But what I do want to do is get everyone at least familiar with the basics of a number of combat styles, find out which ones they think fits them best, and work on that basis. You're all in good condition, many of you can already fight pretty well, and with some hard work we can probably get everyone up to a point where you can handle yourselves in most situations. We're not going to war, but we need to be reasonably sure that if we need to, we can be the ass-kickers and not the ass-kickees."
He looked around the now quiet crowd of about forty people. "Tonight we're mostly going to see who knows what, test you against each other for a while, and figure out some sort of training schedule that doesn't interfere with work. Probably about an hour or two a night, I'd think, at least to start with."
People looked to the entrance as Saurial, Raptaur, and Ianthe came in accompanied by Lisa, Über, and Leet, the latter two wearing masks over their eyes. Brian was amused as he knew damn well who they really were, and probably so did everyone else in the room, but no one would ever say it. That was one of the things he really liked about this place; people kept their opinions to themselves for the most part.
The lizards looked around, then Saurial walked over to Mark while the other two came his way with Lisa following, while Über and Leet stood to the side talking quietly to each other. "Hi, Brian," Lisa said as she reached him and Zephron. "This looks like fun."
He gave her a look. "It looks like we're going to get beaten senseless," he retorted with a grin.
She shrugged. "We'll heal. Ianthe will make sure of that."
Brian chuckled. That was certainly true.
"OK, people, Saurial has also brought some interesting Family tech with her," Mark announced after talking to the lizard-girl for a minute or two. "Something that should help a lot if shit goes down, and is a little less lethal than shooting a Merchant in the face with an M-16."
"And probably more effective than getting him with a little ball of pain juice," Saurial added, smiling. "Although I bet that would slow them down even so." She looked at Lisa. "We need a test subject."
"Oh, woe is me, the horrible lizards demand I submit to human experimentation!" Lisa said dramatically, making Brian sigh faintly as she and Ianthe both went over and joined Saurial.
"Hush, you, you'll get your moment," Saurial grinned. "OK. Pay attention, guys, this is pretty cool." She produced, from somewhere Brian didn't see, a… thing.
Everyone stared at it. The thing looked disturbingly like a cross between a machine and a living organism.
"What the hell is that?" someone said.
"This is a mark two FamTech symbiotic multi-role personal defense system," Ianthe replied, gesturing at the object Saurial was holding up and showing them. "Specifically designed to be compatible with human physiology." Taking the device/creature from her cousin, she gestured to Lisa, who held out her right arm. "In effect it's a portable version of the sort of weapons system Metis and I have built in."
Everyone was dead silent by now, watching with interest as Ianthe put the thing on top of Lisa's forearm. Brian flinched a little as several small tentacles whipped out so fast they were a blur and wrapped around his friend's arm, clamping the synthetic creature to it with the end just above her wrist. It fitted disturbingly closely, almost looking like it was part of her body. Lisa didn't seem perturbed by all this although almost everyone else was looking somewhere between fascinated and shocked.
"Once it's fitted to someone who's had the correct treatment to authorize use, it connects to their nervous system and allows them to use it by merely thinking about the process." Ianthe gestured to the firing range at the side of the room and she and Lisa walked over to it, everyone else following and standing at a safe distance. "There are a number of ammunition types available which can be selected on a shot by shot basis, including paralytic, soporific, pain inducing, vomit inducing, and explosive. That last category is obviously intended for extreme last-resort situations," Ianthe explained, while Lisa raised her arm and aimed at the targets at the far end of the range.
"Shot velocity can be set between approximately two hundred feet per second, barely enough to penetrate clothing at twenty yards, to two and a half thousand feet per second in this current model. The projectile is a small organic dart, like this." The violet lizard held up an inch long dark glistening and very sharp dart in two claws. Brian, who was in the front row of the audience, examined it closely. "It's much lighter than a bullet so even at the maximum velocity the kinetic energy is far less, which means the range is also not as much as you'll get from a handgun, but it's not intended for long range combat. It's still entirely functional and very accurate out to at least four hundred yards."
Lisa did something and there was a distinct pop like a champagne cork coming out of the bottle. A hole appeared in one of the targets forty feet downrange, directly in the center. She fired a few more times, putting a circle of holes around the first one. The blonde was smiling the entire time and clearly had quite a lot of practice with the thing.
"The darts also dissolve shortly after being fired and the toxins or undetonated explosives are broken down almost immediately," Ianthe added, "removing the need to clean up or worry about people getting hurt by misses. The system will auto track a target once it's locked on, correct for aiming issues, and generally do most of the work. When you've learned to use it you basically point and shoot and let the biogun handle everything else."
Aiming at another target Lisa fired about fifty shots in under a second, the entire thing turning into confetti. "And it's got a full auto mode," Ianthe commented with a chuckle. "Although now she's just showing off."
Lisa grinned. "Hey, I spent a while practicing that!"
Saurial stepped forward, turning to face the crowd, who were staring in mild disbelief and growing interest. "The ammunition is manufactured in the biogun from raw materials loaded into it during a recharge cycle," she explained. "There's enough for close to ten thousand shots, and it only needs recharging and refilling about once a month, although it can be left on the servicing system indefinitely. And it's fully compatible with the human body, to the point you could wear one pretty much full time aside from recharging periods, which only take an hour or so."
"We'll be supplying enough of them for the entire security department and all the volunteers," Raptaur put in. "Right now we have sixteen for familiarization and training purposes." The large lizard looked around, smiling a little. "So who would like to try it first?"
There was a long pause, before every hand in the room went up.
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The power of Snark compels you!
- Location
- NY, NY
The story progresses! Who cares whether the in-story calendar progresses along with it... 😀
Thanks for the chapter!
Thanks for the chapter!
M. H. Fuzzball
Aperture Science-certified Horrible Person
- Location
- Sector 2814
I didn't see Maul anywhere around here. @mp3.1415player doesn't even write Maul (except in the Unusual Travel Techniques omakes).The power of Snark compels you!