A Little Eldritch Worm Part 3

"Some type of control room?" Taylor mused as she glanced between the strange crystal and metal throne in the middle of the room and the large flat screen that took up most of the left wall of the room. She glanced over at the right side of the room where there was a wardrobe, a shelf and a flat screen television that took up the rest of the wall. She glanced at the DVD player sitting on the top shelf next to a stack of DVDs. 'Or an entertainment room.'

She glanced up at the ceiling where several crystal light fixtures were glowing with a soft blue light then walked over to check on the magazines that were stacked on the bottom shelf. "Playboy, Dreamgirls? Naughty Girls? Christmas Girls?" she muttered as she glanced over the titles on the spine of the magazines. "Is this going to be a theme?" she complained as she picked up the magazine labeled Playwizard. She almost dropped the magazine when the half naked woman on the cover waved at her.

"What the hell?" she sputtered when she realized that she wasn't imagining things and that the image on the cover was moving. "Can you talk?" she asked, feeling a bit silly but figuring she might as well check.

The woman on the cover merely blew her a kiss then spun around on the page and playfully spanked herself. "Some type of Tinkertech? Magic?" Taylor mused as she flipped through the rest of the magazine, finding dozens of moving pictures of naked girls with witch hats and or girls in various states of dress holding ornate brooms or standing behind cauldrons.

She paused when she realized that one of the girls looked a bit like Emma. 'Don't go there,' she told herself as she carefully closed the magazine and placed it back on the shelf. She picked up another magazine and looked at the cover that showed an attractive shirtless man on the cover. 'Firehouse crew?'

Taylor quickly paged through the magazine, a bit disappointed that none of the firefighters were animated like the other magazine but figuring she'd get some use out of it all the same. She glanced at the DVDs on the shelf. 'Alien Girls, Sex in School, Revenge of the Naughty Nuns, Naked Cowboys? Twisted Girls on Girls?'

She shook her head and put the magazine back on the shelf, deciding to worry about sorting through the DVDs when her father wasn't home and likely to interrupt. She opened the wardrobe and stared at the contents, immediately noticing that the space inside the wardrobe was larger than it should be. 'Naughty Nurse? Flight Attendant, Catgirl, Twisted Pixie?' she mused as she read the tags on several outfit bags. She stopped and stared when she saw a shimmering red dress that she couldn't even imagine wearing. 'Lounge singer?'

'Naughty secretary, witch, maid or plumber.' Taylor shook her head and closed the wardrobe. "I'm not going there," she muttered as she walked over and sat down on the throne, a touch surprised at just how comfortable the cushions were. She nearly jumped out of the throne when the screen on the wall lit up, showing her father in the kitchen in one image and the rest of the house in the other images, with the exception of her hidden room.

"Neat, it's a security room," Taylor mused as she watched her father sort through the various drawers and cupboards. "This would have been nice to have at school…" she trailed off as most of the screens changed to show dozens of images of the inside of what looked like a rather posh private school.

"Seriously?" she sputtered when she saw one of the images was a picture of the upgraded school from the outside and realized that she'd upgraded the hell out of Winslow. She frowned when she realized that two of the 'windows' showed the locker rooms. "No way in hell am I going back there," she complained as she looked at the various 'camera' feeds until she found an image of a security room that currently had two PRT agents looking at a bunch of monitors in a security room. 'This would be easier if I could hear what they were saying.'

"I've seen worse security in prisons," Agent Smith mused as he studied the collection of monitors that showed nearly every part of the school, figuring this would make it a lot easier to catch some of the dealers.

"No shit," the other agent replied, his voice easily audible to Taylor despite the fact that he'd muttered under his breath. "The locker rooms and the bathroom stalls are about the only place in the school that isn't being recorded."

Agent Smith shrugged. "As long as their parents sign a waiver and they hire a female security guard to watch the cameras, the district should be able to get away with it."

"Beats trying to find the money to build a new school," the other agent agreed, knowing the city's budget was already tight. "I'm just glad that I don't have to defend the decision in court."

"They literally don't have the money to replace the school and the records aren't stored offsite so it should be fine," Agent Smith argued, glad that he didn't have to deal with that sort of crap.

Taylor pulled her attention off the agents when she noticed the window that hadn't changed was following her father and that he was heading up the stairs. 'Crap.' She jumped off the throne and ran back into her room. She relaxed a touch when she shut the bookshelf and the door to her room unlocked, hiding any evidence of her hidden room. She walked over and flopped down on her delightfully comfortable bed, doing her best to pretend that she couldn't sense her bed's remote controlled vibrator function with her technopathy, since her father was probably going to check on her.

Taylor was still trying to figure out what she was supposed to do with her powers when her father's knock several minutes later pulled her out of her thoughts. "It's open."

Danny opened the door and walked inside, rather impressed by the changes to his daughter's room. "I think we might have doubled the floor space in the house."

"Powers are weird," Taylor replied as she sat up. "Do you have any regrets?"

"No," Danny assured her. "Security through obscurity never really helped anyone in the long run, especially since we're in the phonebook. I'd rather make finding the place a touch easier and have solid stone walls than hope that someone in the gangs can't read a map."

"They can read?" Taylor asked in 'mock' surprise.

"Well enough," Danny warned her, knowing she was joking but feeling like he had to make the point anyway. "Just because they're crazy enough to run around causing trouble, doesn't mean they're stupid, just crazy."

"I'll keep that in mind," Taylor assured him.

"How long do you think it will take before you can upgrade the grounds?" Danny asked, wanting another layer of protection on the house.

Taylor shrugged. "My reserves only took about two hours to fill after Winslow so I should be fine in a couple of hours."

"There's a massive flat screen television in the living room and a DVD player, do you want to check out the movie collection?" Danny asked, wanting to spend some time with his daughter since he'd obviously missed a lot lately.

"Sure," Taylor replied as she hopped off her bed and headed for the door, hoping the movies in the living room were more appropriate than the ones in her safe room.

0o0o0

"How did the test flight go?" Piggot asked as Aegis walked into her office with Franklin.

"Better than I was expecting," Aegis replied with a smile. "There's a bit of a learning curve because of the flight controls but most of that seems to be a software issue."

"Software issue?" Piggot asked as she focused on Franklin.

"It's sort of like using an old television without a remote, you can but you're generally limited to swapping the channels and controlling the volume," Franklin offered. "Without a remote you're limited to twenty miles an hour and you have to use voice controls to control your speed and elevation."

"How fast can the boards go?" Piggot asked, curious if they were worth using.

"Without taking the case apart and removing a physical limiter, you can get up to 100 mph but you're going to want goggles and safety gear. If you remove the physical limiters, you could probably tripple that but you'd probably kill yourself if you weren't careful," Franklin warned her.

"How much power does it take to use the boards and are the belts going to explode?" Piggot asked, figuring there had to be something that would prevent them from being useful.

"About as much as a microwave and I doubt it," Franklin assured her. "The batteries are remarkably stable and we weren't able to overcharge them or damage them short of physically damaging the case. We tested one of the belts to destruction after Dragon and Armsmaster scanned it, it took a lot of effort and abuse to destroy the components and they merely failed, unlike most tinkertech or even commercially available batteries."

"That sounds too good to be true, what's the catch?" Piggot asked warily.

"The catch is we don't own the dispenser," Franklin reminded her. "We just have a limited ability to test anything created so that we can prove that it's safe before handing it back to the parahuman that created it."

"Would using the dispenser to purchase a service entitle us to the product?" Piggot asked thoughtfully.

"We could make a case but I doubt we'll need to. We can probably trade her the schematics of the prototype control device that we're working on for the belts that we've already purchased," Franklin suggested.

"How many belts have you purchased?" Piggot asked.

"Albright grabbed a couple of rolls of quarters from the bank, the machine doesn't seem to have a limit on the number of belts that it can make but we're being careful not to kill the golden goose," Franklin explained.

"Good," Piggot told him. "How long will it take to design a control system that you'd be comfortable using?"

"Dragon is working with Kid Win to adapt his control system, they should have something decently functional and reasonably cheap in a couple of days."

"Define reasonably cheap," Piggot ordered.

Franklin shrugged. "Considering the plastic, the chips, the gloves and the time on the 3D printer, maybe twenty dollars a unit?"

"That's it?" Piggot asked in surprise.

"We'll probably have to run a cable if we can't encrypt the wireless to the safety board's standards but that shouldn't add more than five dollars, maybe eight depending on local prices," Franklin assured her.

"Do you think it would help with patrols?" Piggot asked Aegis.

"Absolutely," Aegis agreed. "Having the ability to fly would let us skip some of the more dangerous sections of the city without adding miles to our routes and they're less than five pounds."

"Which would make your routes less predictable," Piggot mused, trying to balance the risk of one of the wards falling against the risk of not having the belt and getting stuck in a situation it would have let them avoid. "Have you finished running Clockblocker through testing?"

Franklin smiled. "He managed to lift a touch over two and a half tons and his durability is on par with the girls. His appearance also changes enough that he should have less problems keeping a secret identity."

"Can I ask what's going to happen to Shadow Stalker?" Aegis asked.

"Politics," Piggot complained, unhappy that Sophia wasn't rotting in a cell or a ditch after the shit she'd pulled. "Against my recommendation, she's being transferred to L.A. The Chief Director thinks that Alexandria can scare her straight."

"Lovely," Aegis muttered. "If she returns, she's going to try to kill Redcap for standing up to her."

"You're not cleared for the details but I've been assured that contingencies have been put in place and that we'll have enough warning if she slips her leash to prepare a suitably warm welcome," Piggot explained.

"Understood," Aegis assured her.

"The Chief Director is sending a changer to pretend to be Shadow Stalker for a couple of weeks to make sure no one connects the dots between Sophia and Shadow Stalker. In two weeks we'll do a press conference announcing that Shadow Stalker is going to the west coast because her father got a better job. She'll finish a couple of patrols and then vanish and with any luck, we won't have our name dragged through the mud," Piggot explained.

"What do I tell the team?" Aegis asked.

"The truth, everyone involved is getting punished. Her case worker took a plea deal, she's been reassigned to a containment zone and she'll get shot in the back if she tries to leave before her five years is up. In exchange for avoiding a trial and prison, she agreed to donate her pension and retirement to the girl that Sophia attacked. That's more than Hebert would get if she was sent to prison and there's a good chance that Ms. Jenkins will be dead before her time is up."

"And the staff?" Aegis asked, fairly sure that Sophia wouldn't enjoy her time with Alexandria.

"Even if Blackwell manages to avoid prison, which I find highly unlikely considering the charges levied against her, she'll never work in education again. At least half the teachers and office staff at Winslow will be offered the chance to quit to avoid being prosecuted for various crimes, including accessory to attempted murder as they were part of a conspiracy to suppress Sophia's crimes and Ms Hebert could have died."

"Offered the chance to quit?" Aegis asked.

"As much as I'd love to nail everyone to a wall, actually taking the cases to court would be problematic as the more they stand to lose, the less reason they have to keep quiet about Sophia and the more chance that we take a PR hit that we can't afford. I'm willing to roll the dice if they force my hand but I'm willing to accept a deal that keeps them out of Winslow."

"Understood," Aegis replied, glad that he didn't have to deal with politics.

"Is there anything else?" Franklin asked, glad that he didn't have to deal with the politics. "I want to get back to the testing center before someone does something stupid."

"Dismissed," Piggot told them.

0o0o0

Taylor glanced away from the credits playing on the screen when someone rang the doorbell, producing a rather loud chime. "Huh, that's neat."

"Were you expecting someone?" Danny asked as he turned to look at the door.

"No," Taylor replied as she stood up and summoned her cane to her hand.

"We come in peace," Vicky offered.

Taylor relaxed a touch when she recognized Vicky's voice. "Just a minute!" she called out as she walked over and checked the spyhole built into the door, confirming that it was actually Vicky and Amy. She opened the door and looked at the two girls standing on the porch wearing genie outfits and jackets. "We come in peace, seriously?"

"Saying we're here to storm the castle seems rude," Vicky replied with a shrug.

"Ignore her," Amy told her. "We're just killing time and checking out the neighborhood in case we have to find your house. Being an open cape isn't particularly safe and we're sort of trying to avoid going home and listening to our mother rant about accepting untested powers from an unknown Trump."

"You should probably invite the girls in," Danny suggested, trying not to laugh at the fact that they were being responsible while trying to avoid it at the same time.

"Come in," Taylor offered as she stepped out of the way.

"Thanks," Vicky replied as she floated inside.

Amy walked inside and glanced around at the wood panelling that covered some of the stone walls. "Nice."

"Thanks," Taylor replied as she closed the door. "I was thinking about having somewhere safe to stay and my power turned the house into a stone keep."

Vicky pulled her attention away from the giant flatscreen and focused on Taylor. "Do you think you could upgrade our house?"

"You'd have to get your parents to sign off on it," Danny cut in, wanting to avoid getting on New Wave's bad side and getting sued for warping their house without permission.

"And we should probably do it before the city files an injunction or something," Taylor warned them, knowing her father had a point about the government being filled with anal retentive bean counters.

"I'll ask," Vicky replied as she pulled her cellphone out of her jacket and started typing a text to her mother.

"Speaking of powers, did you have any luck with your project?" Taylor asked Amy, figuring that was a safe question.

"It technically works, I just have a couple of bugs to work out," Amy admitted.

"What type of bugs?" Taylor asked.

"There's a software glitch that causes the device to occasionally cause scar tissue to form in a fractal pattern on the person you're trying to heal that I need to track down and the user interface that I cobbled together needs work," Amy admitted.

"What's wrong with the interface?" Taylor asked.

"It's not particularly user friendly and the menu keeps turning pink, it's annoying," Amy complained.

"Can you upgrade DVDs?" Vicky asked as she put her phone back in her jacket pocket.

"Not really, just locations, why?" Taylor asked.

"I have a lot of old B movies and the special effects aren't that great," Vicky replied with a shrug.

"Does it have to be an entire building?" Amy asked thoughtfully.

"What are you thinking?" Vicky asked.

"If she won't let us upgrade the entire house, what about our bathroom?" Amy asked, tired of sharing a bathroom with Vicky.

"Or our rooms," Vicky suggested.

Taylor smiled when she got the sense that rooms counted as locations. "I could probably upgrade a bathroom, the one upstairs more than doubled in size."

"Can we see?" Vicky asked excitedly, wondering what type of upgrades they could get.

Amy shook her head. "Ignore her."

Taylor glanced at her father. "Do you care if I try to upgrade the bathroom again?" she asked, figuring she might as well check to see if she could upgrade things multiple times.

"Go for it," Danny replied, figuring they were already going to get in trouble with the city for remodeling the house without a permit. "We're already going to have trouble with the city for remodeling without a permit, we might as well earn it."

"Let's go," Taylor replied as she headed for the stairs, curious how far she could push things now that her mana had refilled.

'I can't even blame this one on her aura,' Amy mused as she followed Taylor and her sister up the stairs, not sure how Vicky managed to talk people into doing crazy things with a smile.

Danny followed the girls up the stairs, curious what they'd end up and figuring someone should at least try to keep them from going overboard.

Taylor walked into the bathroom and gestured. "It used to be a normal sized bathroom, now it's like a locker room."

"This would be perfect," Vicky said as she glanced between the multiple shower stalls with slightly frosted glass and the large mirror over the second sink.

"Looks good," Amy agreed. "Now we just have to figure out how to convince her to let us upgrade it."

"Seeing is believing, can I take a couple of pictures so we can do a before and after?" Vicky asked.

"Go for it, just don't post them. I don't need people seeing them and causing trouble," Taylor told her, not wanting the building inspector to have evidence that the house had changed on the off chance that she could upgrade the yard to hide the house's location from people that meant to cause them trouble.

"No worries," Vicky replied as she pulled her phone back out and started taking pictures so she could do a before and after to try to convince her mother to upgrade the house or at least let them upgrade their bathroom and rooms.

"Sorry about this," Amy told Taylor.

"It's fine," Taylor assured her. "It's a good excuse to test my powers since the PRT wouldn't let me upgrade anything in testing."

Vicky finished taking pictures then turned on the camera so she could capture the change. "Okay, hit it with your power."

Taylor focused on improving things and unleashed her Upgrade power, causing the room to expand by 50% and a large jacuzzi filled with steaming water to appear in one corner of the bathroom along with a massage table and a couple of wooden benches like you'd see in a locker room. "Huh."

"Nice," Vicky replied as she slowly spun the camera around to catch the rest of the minor changes then turned the camera off and put her phone in her jacket pocket.

"That's crazy," Amy said as she glanced around

"Can we test that?" Vicky asked hopefully as she looked at the jacuzzi filled with steaming water.

"Sleep well and it was nice meeting you, if I have to use the bathroom, I'll use the one in my room," Danny said then turned and left, figuring it was a good time to get some sleep and glad that Taylor was making new friends.

"You can't just borrow someone's jacuzzi," Amy argued halfheartedly as her sister took her jacket off and set it on the bench in front of her.

"Why not?" Vicky asked. "I have a lot of questions about her powers and I'm sure she has a lot of questions about being a cape, it's a good excuse to network."

"Fine…" Taylor trailed off as Vicky quickly pulled her top off, revealing her perky and generous breasts. "Ah…"

"What? I don't have a suit," Vicky replied as she slipped out of her genie pants.

"Vicky!" Amy sputtered in exasperation.

"Sorry?" Vicky offered.

"I might have an extra suit," Taylor offered.

"Live a little," Vicky teased.

"Do you mind?" Amy asked Taylor, trying to ignore the fact that her ears were starting to get red.

"It's fine," Taylor replied as she started getting undressed, figuring it wasn't any worse than gym class.

Amy sighed then stripped out of her genie outfit and joined her sister in the jacuzzi, fairly sure she'd lost her mind since she barely knew Taylor. 'At least this will give us a chance to get to know her.'

0o0o0o0