Better not linger in her starting place too much longer. Yellow's faster than her and may have already come home to a wreck. Thorn might have a habit of checking up on the place, even, just in case. She's invisible, inaudible, unsmellable - that won't help if he sends someone thorough. Or comes in person.
She sets out.
She's been flying for about thirty minutes after her shopping trip when she falls through a tear and squeaks inaudibly and lands in the middle of -
I'm not sure I actually have anything like formal custody. She describes the circumstances under which she acquired the clone brigade, makes it clear that she is quite confident that without orders Plague and Pestilence will probably kill everybody on the planet (perhaps with two competing pathogens as a sort of race) and the Victorias will wreak some lesser mayhem, etc. Bonesaw might literally be the only person who doesn't think of them as evil, and Bonesaw is (as far as Promise knows) also a minor. Someone might come to think of them as not evil after they've been around longer, of course. She is not sure if they are of an age to have to be in school; she tells him who they are clones of so he can check. To the extent they can have healthy relationships they seem to be forming quite the little gang amongst the five of them theme naming and all.
I'd be surprised if you accidentally acquired legal custody before getting a chance to ask me. But it sounds like no one else is going to claim them, and the state isn't likely to step in.
By age, they are going to have to be in some kind of school until they're 18 or graduate high school. Type of school is up to Promise and them; some actual-parents homeschool and online courses are also available. Alternatively, there are equivalency tests available to make the requirement irrelevant; they could pass these easily if they wanted to.
Establishing their legal existence would be the hard part, but he could manage it with a lot of paperwork on his end and an excessively boring court appearance on theirs.
What will actually happen if I don't haul them in to the court appearance or literally force them to do some kind of schooling and they decline to agree to same? They are not cooperative by nature and I do not want to order them to do things that are safely outside the category of "refrain from extinguishing the human species".
The most likely outcome is nothing at all, especially since as far as the relevant agencies know there are no such minors. Of course, Quinn recommends getting them a legal existence and following the rules anyway, because he was successfully brainwashed Lawful Neutral in law school.
I suppose I'll consult them when they wake up and see just how uncooperative they're inclined to be.
It turns out they have their own reasons not to object to swamping Arcadia with Amies and Victorias Dallon.
Well, she'll take that. She emails Amy to warn her, adapts her musings on order set to accommodate high school attendance and prohibit evil, says they may as well continue to crash at her address, informs them that if she gets attention from social services over them she is not their mom and will not be best pleased, and leaves them to figure out things like "when is the school reopening post-citywide-disaster" and "how does the school administration get this explained" for themselves. She increases their allowance so they can make the house pleasant to live, requires only that they leave the living room with all the gates mostly open, and goes about her other business.
The original Amy replies with a request.
She has these rules for herself, and Bonesaw is inevitably going to try to force her to break them again. And she's still not trusting herself to break a rule exactly once, because that was what she told herself she'd do last time. So it's increasingly important and can she please have that order she asked for.
Promise sighs, and looks at her notes, and gives Amy a time when it would be convenient to call her, but adds that if she can bring herself to tell her parent-or-guardian that would really be preferable and that anyway if she doesn't it's reasonably likely that Pestilence or Plague eventually will find an opportunity.
Amy does call, and doesn't clear it with her remaining guardian first. It's not that Carol wouldn't believe a rumor about Amy being evil, it's just easier if she doesn't have to admit it.
"Hi. I've got something written up, but you should hear it and think about the phrasing first to make sure there aren't constraints or loopholes you don't want. It goes like so: When treating patients, do not harm them, and avoid performing any alterations they don't either consent to or that you can confidently and sincerely expect them to accept of their own uncommanded will; do not create organisms whose existence will plausibly have effects harmful to innocent persons; do not create sapient organisms; do not generate untargeted pathogens."
"Can you add something about brains? Bonesaw made me fix Assault's brain. I promised myself I'd never do brains, then that I'd never do brains again, and if I see her again I'd like to be able to say I can't."
"...I could, but you realize it is quite open to her to then come after me and try to make me undo the order, or to try to get you to ask for it to be revised, and I doubt she cares very much if it costs her a lot of brain-damaged bystanders to narrow down the source of the problem that finely."
"If she's in a position to make you give me orders, it doesn't really matter what they started out as."
"...If she's in a position to succeed, yes, but I don't want to assume she couldn't be very inconvenient in the process of failing."
"I guess, it's just...at least this way she'd hurt a lot of people and then stop, she wouldn't keep going after me to make me keep doing it... and maybe that isn't better. Maybe I'm just trying to make things easier for me. But she wouldn't want me to, and that has to count for something."
"There are all kinds of things Bonesaw wouldn't want me to order you to do. As the simplest possible example, I think she wants you alive. Would it simplify matters if you went back into my tree?"
"Yes. But I shouldn't, between Shatterbird and Leviathan there are a lot of people who need me here."
"Okay, would it simplify matters if you traveled to India and emptied a few clinics there?"
"One of the gatepairs goes there. Are there any non-Bonesaw related complications with the order set?"
"I don't think so. I haven't had any, um, problems about the brains one so far. Aside from her."
"...Unless you can make completely accidental mistakes on brains, that would be safe to relax under the orders. Just saying."
"Oh, the rule about brains isn't about that. Not just about that, anyway. I could change who a person is, and I really don't want to start that. Even in a way they'd thank me for afterward. Safer if everyone thinks I can't."
"...I'll snug up the order about alterations. Throw in a 'given their current disposition' and a 'conservative estimate'. Though I take your point about not making it generally known."