Jan 23, 2011
Armsmaster frowned beneath his visor in the dimming light. It was inefficient, not to mention unnecessarily risky to have such light patrols tonight of all nights. Colin was especially perturbed as he had received a message from Dragon warning him of the Simurgh's extra attention to this region. Was she perhaps watching the transfer of the sphere?
The models were fairly clear that shortly after it had appeared in orbit of the Earth, while it was within sight-line of the Simurgh, it had received a massive burst of delta-v as the NASA types called it. They were reasonably confident that it had been Ziz, the Simurgh, who had telekinetically swatted the thing out of the sky, even though it was outside her theorized telekinetic range.
Hero had spent countless hours trying to get into the sphere, which Colin had seen only in photographs, looking like an uncolored, shiny white soccer ball. Those hours both irked and intrigued Armsmaster. It was troublesome to think of the time he had wasted, the greatest Tinker ever spending fruitless hours when he could have been designing and improving his equipment. At the same time, he knew the delight of an intellectual challenge and he could well understand how Hero could have put so much time into it.
Anytime humanity encountered a phenomenon that was not well understood, understanding it opened new realms of abilities to mankind. It was unfortunate that study of parahuman abilities, even Tinker-tech, had so far not yielded the sort of gains that had come from so many other discoveries.
He knew even more about Dragon's efforts, when she had received the sphere from Hero, and had spent her own hours in studying it. It was she, and not Hero, for all he was accounted a better Tinker than her, who had discovered that the sphere was using material in its surroundings in rebuilding itself after undergoing attacks. That was really more a matter of her taking a more pedantic and measured approach, though, where Hero had spent more of his time subjecting it to attacks and strikes from as wide a variety of capes as he could get to try.
Now it was his turn to study the sphere, to see what could be learned, and while he was eager for the challenge, though it would take untold time away from vital projects, since Director Piggot had wrangled the Wards away from him, he had some additional time for such efforts.
Not, apparently, that this freed him of them. Miss Militia, his most capable and even tempered second-in-command at the Protectorate in Brockton Bay, had insisted that the children get the chance to meet their heroes. He thought it a bit silly; they were heroes themselves, and got to patrol with heroes all the time.
They were not all there, of course. Shadow Stalker had been more interested in patrolling than meeting heroes, even one of the original Protectorate, before it had been expanded and nationalized, and Gallant had volunteered to patrol with her. He suspected that this was more due to Gallant having met them already, possibly at one of the gala events he was sometimes called on to attend, and wanted to keep one of the others from being forced to accompany Shadow Stalker.
Vista had met Alexandria previously, but the youngest Ward was visibly excited to meet Hero. She was nothing next to Kid Win, though, who lacking her concerns over propriety and appearing adult, was practically vibrating with excitement. Considering he basically idolized Hero and had painted his suit in Hero's colors, that was not surprising even to Colin.
They were all collected around the helicopter landing pad on the Protectorate platform in the bay, waiting for the shipment to arrive, or to meet their heroes.
All the Wards straightened when Alexandria soared into view, cape and her long black hair streaming behind her. Colin nodded to her.
"I've given the town a quick fly-over. No sign of anyone preparing to intercept the shipment."
Colin nodded, turning slightly to look in the distance where the sphere should soon be visible. The tall woman who epitomized strength, flight and invulnerability to such a degree that the trio of powers had been named the Alexandria package in her honor took a moment to greet the assembled Wards. She was, he knew, better at the whole personal interaction thing. Somehow, she left the heroes she encountered simultaneously impressed with her poise and power and reaffirmed in their own determination to be heroes.
Meanwhile he had just enough empathy to realize that people tended to prefer not to spend time with him. That was generally fine with him, as spending time with people tended to get in the way of getting work done.
"Ah, here they come," he said, focusing on a distant object in the sky. In spite of his words, it was almost twenty minutes before the Sikorsky Skycrane was hovering overhead. It showed obvious signs of Tinkertech improvement. Kid Win suppressed a delighted sound next to him as Hero descended from where he had been escorting the flight, his characteristic red and gold armor gleaming, though Armsmaster noted that it was not the armor he had last seen him wearing. Hardly worth noting, really. No Tinker worthy of the name rested on their laurels. Constant tinkering and improving were, after all, the hallmark that had resulted in the label Tinker being used for those capes who seemed to gain access to technologies well in advance of current science and manufacturing capability.
The sphere was there in full view now, lit by the landing lights of the Skycrane under which it hung, and by the far more powerful lights of the platform itself. It gleamed like the finest china, a ball of seemingly delicate porcelain that had resisted the best...
"Wow! Did the Simurgh lay an egg?" Clockblocker's ridiculous comment made his frown deepen. Granted, Ziz's alabaster skin was a similar stony white, but the resemblance was not that close. The vulgar Ward had never actually seen the Simurgh up close, or even from a distance in anything but poor photographs, as Wards were not permitted to attend Endbringer attacks in most circumstances. It was a poor excuse for a tasteless comment, though. The Ward in the skin-tight white armor enlivened with spinning clocks was rather known for his poor taste, of course, and Colin resisted commenting.
Discipline was taken care of anyway, as both Aegis and Target Practice thumped him, in an odd synchrony with the touch-down of the sphere. Armsmaster, Hero, and Alexandria moved forward together to steady it and detach the chains that cupped the sphere, even as one of Dragon's remote suits came in for a landing nearby.
---
Jan 23, 2011
She exited the residential area as quickly as she could manage on foot, knowing that to linger over long could see the police called when someone decided she was a burglar. As soon as she was in a commercial area, she headed for a quiet back alley. It took a few tries to find an unoccupied one, but thankfully the occupants of the first stops were busy with their own concerns and paid her no mind. After she was sure she was along, she tried to make a ceramic plate appear, to no result. Having confirmed her expectation that she had not suddenly become a paranormal, or was at least probably not responsible for the appearance of the shield that saved her, she had now to decide where to go from here.
She had no legal identity. Her social security number, her driver's license, her bank account, all these things would have been retired, closed, or passed on after her death was officially recorded. Dying in a car accident left a body, a confirmed death, so it was not as if she had disappeared and been declared dead after being missing for seven years, and could return and claim that she had been kidnapped or something. They had her dead body in the ground, and could dig it up and prove it. She was no longer Annette Rose Hebert. No longer Danny's wife... til death do us part, after all, though from what she had seen she did not think he had managed to move on yet.
Nor was she Taylor's guardian any longer. She was still her birth mother, her biological mother, of course, and if she managed to wrangle a really solid new legal identity she might be able to sue for custody with a DNA-based maternity test. Not that she had any intentions of making things harder for Danny. That was just not in the cards.
It was also making a big assumption. She still did not really know what she was. Had the universe hiccoughed and thrown her through time? Was she from a different parallel world like Aleph and Bet? Her memories said she was from Bet, and that this was Bet, but either or both could be wrong, and would need verification. Maybe she was really a Tinker's creation, an android so sophisticated it thought it was human? She could possibly test that with a knife later, if she was willing to take a risk, and deal with a possible infection. Maybe she was a clone, or a manifestation of some other parahuman's power, like Glaistig Uaine's ghosts.
She would need to find a phone and call Diana, her friend from college and fellow follower of the super villainess Lustrum, and to her knowledge, the only one of that set who was in Brockton Bay. Assuming that she was still here, given how out of date her information was, Diana would give her a place to stay while she arranged an identity and found work.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a nearby gunshot, and she whirled to face the direction of the sound, anticipating a heavy impact from what had sounded like a subsonic .45 round. There was no shooter in sight, but there was a trio of touching dark grey plates hanging in the air in the direction from which she imagined the shot might have come. Another shot sounded, followed by a brief burst of sub-machine gun chatter, and she localized the sound to an open window. A television. She had been spooked by a television. As her adrenaline faded, the plates vanished.
Had they responded to her fear, then, or to her knowledge or expectation of where an attacker would be? If it was dependent on her awareness of an attack, then she was vulnerable to a surprise attack, a sniper, or a concealed explosive. She took several rapid breaths, amping herself up to a fight or flight state, imagining the woman in the black suit was behind her about to fire. She spun around, and grinned viciously when she saw a plate hanging in the air.
She continued her tachypneic exercise as she tried to approach the plate to examine it. She could not see the white porcelain the assumed would be present on the other side, and what was facing her looked dark and metallic, but as she walked towards it, it moved in sync with her, staying the same distance away. She focused on it, as she slowed her breathing to stave off dizziness from tachypnea, and willed it to turn.
It spun slowly towards her, revealing a gleaming white porcelain surface. "So, it was me," she panted. She let her breathing ease off, trying to find a mental state that would allow the plate remain, but it vanished as soon as her heart settled. Unwilling to give up, she stubbornly began trying to convince her mind she was about to be attacked without the artificial boost from her breathing exercise.
Several minutes passed in silence before a plate appeared directly above her head. Imagining a light-speed attack from a satellite-borne laser was apparently simultaneously a real and logical enough threat, and one that her own senses could not convince her was not present, that it worked with no fear or anxiety in her system.
Once she had the first hexagon in place without fading, she found it took only a tiny effort of will to produce more. They moved with her as she moved, at first, though she could push them around slowly with her mind.
She painfully slowly brought one down within reach of her hand, and grabbed at it, trying to halt its movement. Her hand stopped it easily, though she could feel it pressing against her gently, and when she moved her hand down, it continued downward with her. She pressed upwards, but it refused to budge. Pushing up mentally had no effect at first, then at last it began to rise. Pushing up with her hand did not speed it up, but putting her hand above it, she was able to halt its upward momentum.
She mentally pushed it upward, and felt as the force against her fingers slowly built, until it pushed past her, rising now at a much more respectable clip. She tried, and succeeded in causing it to vanish before it got above the alleyway. Trying again, she managed to get one moving only very slowly near her hand, then she tried to get it to switch to moving with her hand instead of with her whole self. After a minute of trying, something finally clicked in the feel of it, and suddenly it moved freely in her hand. She let it go, and it hung in the air before her, still following her hand around.
She looked around and found a hubcap, and with a bit more effort, figured out how to push her concept of the hub cap into the same mental spot on the plate, at which point it abruptly stopped following her hand around.
---
Jan 23, 2011
Annette set the plate under a dumpster, flipping its link between her hand and the hubcap, like picking up a mouse and moving it when working a computer, to let her adjust its position, then move her hand without affecting it, then adjust its position again. Cycling one more time with it nearly centered under the nearly full dumpster, she slowly lifted her hand. The dumpster moved up smoothly as though weightless. Flipping the link back to the hubcap, the dumpster remained in the air, resting on the levitating plate. She mentally pushed up on the plate, and nothing happened for a long time, before it finally started moving grudgingly upward.
She shifted directions, letting it settle back to the ground before letting it fade out of existence. It was hard to get the plates to every stop once she had mentally pushed them into motion. She was sort of picturing her hand pressing them in one direction or the other, and they started moving, but they did not slow down. They appeared to be ignoring friction, air resistance, and the like - once set in motion, they wanted to stay that way. Probably if she could provide an exact opposite press, she could stop them, but somehow it was always off balance, or misaligned, or something.
Moving on to other things, she tried to make a bigger plate, which was as simple as creating a regular one had been, then a small one, then a tiny coin sized one. All easy. She tried to make one without the porcelain cover, which worked, but surprised her. Instead of the dark grey metallic substance being under the porcelain, it shone like gold, like the gold leaf on the NASA moon lander from the sixties. She did not think it was, though, as it was perfectly smooth, and did not wrinkle or dent or become marred in anyway when she rubbed it, tried to scratch it with her keys, or ran its surface along the brick wall.
Trying to create it with neither the gold nor the porcelain layers did get the metal alone, but trying to create only the gold or porcelain layers accomplished nothing at all. They had all been gently curved, as if to fit together into the surface of a sphere, but with an effort she found she could create a flat one.
She could not resist creating a flat one large enough to climb onto, and she settled herself into a kneeling position on it, then linked it to her hand, feeling a little silly. After all, this was like something from Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, lifting with skyhooks, or the proverbial pulling oneself up by the bootstraps. She lifted her hand slightly, and then panicked when she began rising, and speeding up. She flipped it back to herself but that did not stop the rise. Pushing the remembered and well-practiced hubcap into it brought the plate to a sudden stop, but to her horror, it did not stop her from rising above it.
She waited in fearful anticipation until her stomach told her she was at the peak of her rise and beginning to fall before duplicating the creation of the plate. This left her balancing safely on a plate with only a very light impact on her shoes, but perilously high and exposed. In the distance, out over the bay, she saw lights and... was that a helicopter? Indeed, it looked like a helicopter and a giant ball over the Protectorate platform.
She looked down, and cursed herself instantly as her stomach rebelled. She dropped into a sitting position, and nervously pushed down on the plate. It began descending tortuously slowly, and she pushed until it was moving a bit more quickly, then tried to reach out for the other plate below her, which they were probably going to impact shortly, and let it vanish, then focused back on the plate holding her up, adjusting its velocity as the ground approached. She breathed a deep sigh of relief when she dropped back below the roofline, but knew that she had very likely been seen, and someone might be on the way that very moment.
She vanished all the plates except the one above her head, then quickly worked on it until she what looked to be a yellow yarmulke on, and hurried out of the alley.
She ducked into another alley three buildings on when she heard footsteps echoing above the rooftops. She could not afford to be seen. Panicked and grimly determined that this first day of her second life would not by any means be her last, she inadvertently and quite fortuitously foresaw her daughter's power without realizing it. She needed to be concealed but still mobile, she knew the plates could form very small when they needed to though it took visualizing a very small attack to manage.
Just before two people dropped into the alley, she finished her visualization and breathing exercise, as she pictured being utterly surrounded, on all sides, by a swarm of bees and wasps all inches from her skin, about to sting.
What Shadow Stalker and Gallant dropped in on was clearly female. She was not statuesque, but she was well-shaped, fit, and outlined in a nearly skin-tight suit of tiny interconnected golden plates. Shadow Stalker looked around curiously, then a bit disgusted. "No fight," she complained a little bitterly, having been hoping that what she had seen was someone getting away from a fight for a moment before diving back in to finish someone off.
"Good evening, Miss. I've not seen you about before, are you new on the scene? Or just new in town?"
"In town," Annette responded in clipped tones, her heart beat slowing. She did not recognize either of the two heroes, but as they had not immediately moved to the attack. "Just passing through. Don't want any trouble."
"Ah, screw this," Shadow Stalker spat. "Coddle the newbs on your own time, Gallant! I want to find some action."
"Sorry," he said to the oddly stiff woman in gold as his partner for the night turned and ran out of the alleyway, "but I do need to keep up with her. I hope you have a good stay in Brockton Bay." He turned and followed behind Shadow Stalker, a bit disturbed at the darkness in her as always, but also very curious over the strange mix of fear and determination in the unknown heroine. Whoever she was, she had not matched any of the critical bulletins he had read, so he would report it, and that would be it. She had not, as best he could determine in the short time Shadow Stalker had given him, been committing any crimes.
---
Jan 23, 2011
Annette had been almost totally motionless while the two heroes were present, not by her choice, but because almost any motion was restricted by the tiny plates that surrounded her. It had only been by luck that her mental image of the insects had left enough room between the plates and her skin for her to breathe and speak, though it was a narrow margin. As soon as she was sure they were gone, a little amused they had been so amateurish as to miss getting her cape name, not that she had one to offer yet, she dissolved the plates everywhere except over her face, and took a deep relieved breath.
She practiced with the face plates she had left in place, trying to link more than one at a time to move with her head. Eventually she worked out that imagining two specific points as the corners of a box let her hit all the plates within the box at once. It still did not work as a mask though, even once she had all of them tied to her head's movements. They followed her head back and forth and side to side well enough, but they ignored rotations, which left her face uncovered as soon as she turned, and left the plates in her curly hair trying to get tangled and caught.
A larger, less fitted partial sphere would work for facial concealment and let her move around without caring that it was not following her turns, since it would be all around her. She was not very enthusiastic about going about looking like a bobble headed mascot for a fast food chain. Maybe it was because she was feeding it a single object, and it was seeing it as just a point. Could she do something different in the visualization to pass a direction at the same time?
She tried again, this time pushing the concept and image of her head with an arrow pointing through her head from the back straight out through her nose, with a dot on the back of her head, and a dot on the her nose, and a ray extending out, the way she recalled vectors being drawn in her college math courses, along with a crosshair on the line about a quarter inch from the tip of her nose, and picturing the plates bound to this point. She turned her head, and this time the collection of tightly fitted plates turned with her head, just as if the mask was fixed on a rod through her head.
"Perfect," she crooned, pleased that she now had a workable mask in case she ran into any more heroes. Time to hunt down Diana, and get a place to sleep. Now, where to find a phone?
---
Good-self turned slowly, looking around her lair, thinking about what she wanted to do next. She had a couple of sheets of spider-satin now, and the spiders and ants were busily working on the third, which would be finished by morning. She was thinking she would switch them to twill then, to see how that felt, and how it compared in strength.
Shelob's clutch would probably not hatch before three more days at the earliest, and possibly take a fair bit longer, and she would not be very willing to move before then. Several of the other black widows had responded to the extra warmth in the room from her laser-eyed flies by laying clutches of their own.
She was considering moving, though. This was a small space, and Scary-self had surely not anticipated their rapid growth in numbers and capability, or the advantage of Lockheed, which might allow them to find a better lair without much concern over how far it was from Scary-self's home.
Scary-self was back home already, of course. She had left in the late afternoon, and Good-self had continued her work since, albeit a little disappointed that her wasp still lacked a name. She had not even had a chance to introduce it to Scary-self, and show off her work. She had made another anyway, after Scary-self left, so that the unnamed wasp could have some company. She planned on four of them, for Scary-self's fingers when she was heroing. She was not worried about them being crunched into bits by punching, as they could just fly away when she went to punch someone, and fly back afterwards. They would be fine.
She did not want to make the last two yet, though, as she desired Scary-self's opinion. No, that was not strong enough. She desired her approval.
Still, they would likely be in this lair for a time yet, and it could stand some improvements. The first thing she noted was that the laser flies had to work continually and in shifts because the shed lost heat quickly if they stopped. She had stopped up the holes, but this was clearly not enough.
She had a large supply of spiders that were not black widows, and plenty of food for them, as her roaches and beetles were breeding not only here, but in the abandoned warehouse as well, and had plenty on which to feed themselves. Her enticements for rats and mice had worked as well, providing them with additional carcasses on which to fatten her spiders.
She set these spiders, unworthy to make Scary-self's hero costume, to the task of filling the gaps between the wooden uprights with loose mats of webbing to hold the warmth.
When she felt Scary-self's dreams going to scary places again, she did as before, pushing Scary-self's dream center into Lockheed and sending him flying, then took another dragonfly in hand. A great blue skimmer, Scary-self's memories named it, and it was indeed a pretty blue color, which she was careful to preserve as she grew it to a size to match Lockheed. It was female, but she once more turned off its ability to reproduce, at least for the time, then set to working on its lifespan. She would need to do this to Lockheed when he returned as well, she realized, and put the other enhanciles on the list as well.
Ordinary insects might last only a few days or months, or a couple of years, but Scary-self could live for a hundred years if nothing ate her, and Good-self too shared that attribute. Now she was passing it on, to make sure that the bugs most important to Scary-self would be around for at least a fair chunk of that time. Alright, so it was at least partially so she did not have to constantly redo her work.
She went ahead and gave the bug laser-eyes as well. To her surprise, the new dragonfly, unlike the flies, was clever enough to find the toggle and turn on her laser eyes herself. She clamped down on it quickly, and gave a brief lesson, making it clear which of the controls were safe, and which could set things on fire. She gave it the power to make holes last, paying more attention this time to what she was doing, so that she could follow up by making that same tweak to herself.
It was curious, she noted, that she could not give herself laser eyes, though she had tried, just to see, when she could so easily give them to flies and dragonflies. She went to Shelob and caressing her now foot-long body gently, pushed in the changes to enhance her lifespan. She tried to push the laser-eyes into Shelob, wondering that she had not attempted this before when it was Scary-self's image of Shelob that had first given her the idea, but this too failed.