It's Lorica. She's finally out of her dad's old cracked helmet and in a sleek new one she presumably built herself. She walks past Lucien and Clockblocker to see what's in the fridge.

"Oh! Hi!" Lucien knew this person might visit!

"So you're the mysterious tinker that's been squatting in our workshop?" Clockblocker asks, grinning and offering a handshake.

"I've been here for weeks and I was given to understand you all knew my codename and that I'm Transit's kid."

"Sure, you've been here like Gallant's here a week after Victoria's given him the cold shoulder." Clockblockers replies, smirking.

She decides to respond to the extended hand by tossing Clockblocker a soda.

Clockerblocker catches it and holds it to his heart. "You wound me," he says sarcastically, cracking it open.

Lucien finally gets over his embarrassment at Clockblocker's antics, he supposes that all things considered this is a low stakes environment to practice this leadership vital skill.

"Yeah um. I'm Lucien, captain. My cape name is Tunnel Teen but I don't go by it out of costume," he says, demasking.

"Nice to be formally introduced. I'm Lorica." She does not say out loud that she has much better taste in cape names.

"You have good taste in cape names," he says, a bit enviously.

"Thanks. It's Latin."

"What's it mean?"

"Armor."

"Ah, I got mine assigned by PR after this one pulled his naming stunt," he says, gesturing at Clockblocker.

Clockblocker has gotten bored of this conversation and is reading manga but can flip Lucien off while turning the page.

"Huh. I wonder if Dad had to pull strings to get me the chance to pick mine. What would you have gone with?"

"I didn't actually have anything in mind when they brought up that it was going to be Tunnel Teen. But, really, anything besides Tunnel Teen."

"Your power is... tunneling?"

"More like trenches and furrows. Useful for battlefield control. I can also put them in structures to knock them down and such. No actual tunneling but I can weaken a wall in a pinch."

"PR liked the alliteration better for Tunnels and doesn't particualrly care about how it only matched on a surface level."

Clockblocker snorts in the background, amused at the unintentional pun.

"Well, at least you'll have an obvious excuse to ditch the name when you're a bit older, I guess."

"Yeah," he should probably get on that.

"You going to be joining patrols?" he asks, bringing up the schedule on the touchscreen.

"I'll need to build a little more but sure, once I've got more robots and my full suit."

"Do you have ideas of how you'd fit in patroling-wise?"

"I think when I've got all the things on my to-do list built I'll be a good fit for solo patrols."

"Hm, the usual policy is to avoid solo patrols even for experienced wards."

"Understandable. I'd also be happy to accompany my dad if that's something you do."

"You could accompany Transit some, but part of the point of the paired patrols is supposed to be ward team building."

"Well, I hardly know anyone well enough to guess how I'd mesh personality-wise. My power's - summarizable as robotics."

"Neat, sounds handy. We don't have any other actual tinkers on the wards roster right now - Gallant just poses as one for PR reasons. His actual power is emotion inducing blasts and emotion sensing - though neither works on you I'm guessing."

"Part of the idea with the paired patrols to is to get people to know each other outside of a group dynamic, so I could rotate you through pairing with a few of the member of the team to introduce you and we'll go from there?"

He can move around slots on the touchscreen to have her paired with Vista, Gallant, and himself for her next three patrols once she's had a bit more time to build her gear, assuming she's good with this.

"Makes sense to me."

"Great!"

Once Lorica is ready she can do her first patrol with Vista! The area they patrol is pretty nice, but Vista does her best to teach Lorica the basics, noting that not all patrols are this easy but Lorica's new. Vista is an enthusiastic instructor of patrolling and actually manages to be a decent teacher, regardless of how young she is. A few tourists passing by want to pose for selfies with the two heroes. Vista very seriously informs Lorica that the Wards are encouraged to do this, unless it interferes with completing their patrol. 

Lorica doesn't mind standing next to people while they snap pictures of her totally opaque helmet.

Surprisingly many people want to during the first half of the patrol - new heroes are exciting! The second half is more boring so Vista brings up the subject of whether there are useful synergies between her and Lorica's powers.

"I would be happy to experiment with how my robots navigate warped space but I think we might not want to be on patrol for experimentation."

"Oh yeah, but it'd be really neat if your robots could find their way around in my space warping and no one else could."

"It would! I might need to update their programming to make it work though."

"Yeah, I bet my power would mess with them right now."

"Yeah. But we should carve out powers interaction testing time for sure back at HQ."

"Yeah." 

Vista is happy to do this later that day if Lorica has the time, otherwise she's free on this day, or this day, or really most days. She's especially free during times when she might otherwise have to be home.

Lorica is available during a very Youth Guard Approved range of hours, but has gotten her main software so that it can do her homework so she's very available during those.

"Could your program do my homework?" Vista asks while filling out a worksheet for her algebra class.

"Probably. Don't think you need algebra?"

"Knowing where straight lines are going to intersect isn't very important for me," she says, flexing the space around her to demonstrate.

"I mean, it might be useful to know what they'd be doing if you didn't interact with them."

"Hrm."

"But if you tell me you don't need Chaucer or whatever I wont contradict you."

Vista seems to accept this response and finishes up her algebra herself.

"Want to test our powers now?"

"Sure. Is there a room you like for practice?"

There's a large room that doubles as a gym and a place for practicing with powers. Vista shows Lorica where the big foam obstacles are - they're useful for practicing with her battlefield control.

Lorica has three robots now. She scatters them throughout the room.

Vista starts warping space, aiming to mess with the guidance systems of the robots as much as she can. She'll also try tagging one of them if Lorica thinks that would be a good challenge.

"What does that do exactly?"

"Oh I meant like. The game tag. I'd just try to touch them. If they were a villain I'd be using my taser but we don't need to do that here."

"Oh, yeah, sure, let me - okay, go."

And Vista is off, running around obstacles while twisting space to try to trip up the robots' navigation.

The robots can lean pretty heavily on being able to communicate with each other even when their optics and pathfinding history are out of whack. One of them chases Vista to give the others a good idea how close she is and where she's coming from.

Clever! But what if this obstacle Vista jumped over is suddenly much taller and in the path of the chasing robot.

The robots are quick, and they fly outright while Vista does not, but she can shake a tail temporarily and get closer to the one she's trying to tag.

What if she stays still for a bit and twists space around a ton before chasing the robot she's trying to tag?

It hides behind Lorica!

She meant in front of Lorica, right? Cause that's where it went. 

And where Vista is about to be.

Lorica can pirouette around it.

Vista attempts to slide under Lorica's legs but fails, barreling into her instead. 

"Oof."

"You can definitely confuse the robots. I think they'd benefit from more practice - maybe you could bring one along with you on patrol even when I'm not there?"

"Sure, that could work. I've got to remember not to try to bend space around people so much - trying to go in-between your legs hit up against my manton limit I think."

VIsta is happy to continue doing this until she's too exhausted to continue, which takes longer than one would expect given how quickly Vista is moving around the room. Towards what Vista insists will be the last round yes this time for real, another girl enters the room - muscular and similar in age to Lorica.

Lorica waves a little; the robot is doing most of its own pathing and she doesn't need to pay full attention.

The other girl nods and comes around to stand beside Lorica.

"You stuck with babysitting?"

"Powers testing."

"The tyke helps with that?" the girl asks, skeptically.

"With training my robots to work in warped space, yeah."

"That going to be useful?"

"Could be, though I suppose it's also possible it will never come up."

"Seems like a waste of time."

"The time will pass anyway."

Sophia grunts.

"Mind if I use them for target practice?" she asks. She has a crossbow slung over her back.

"If you want to give them targets to throw for you they can do that but if you shoot one I will have to fix it. Bad use of my budget."

Evidently Sophia does not want that and instead goes to shoot targets.

Eventually Vista does in fact tire herself out and things wrap up for the day.

A few days later Lorica has her patrol with Gallant! Gallant is extremely polite and charming to the many people who want photos with him on their patrol through a wealthy commercial part of the city. However he seems weirded out by Lorica and she might catch him glancing at her uncomfortably a few times.

"You piloting a robot remotely or something?" he asks after one such glance.

"No, although I am working on the suit being able to take over if I have some kind of trouble. I have a mental power immunity. Vicious debate about whether to call it a thinker or trump rating."

"Ah, mental power immunity explains why I can't read anything off you." He says, doing his best not to seem disturbed by the gaping emotional void that she appears as to his empathy sight.

"Sounds useful though."

"Very."

Gallant is happy to not talk much during the remainder of the patrol, until he stops short, a block away from a bank with imposing marble columns and an artistically carved facade.

"Hrm. Somethings going on in there - I'm seeing a whole lot of fear coming from inside," he says, squinting at the bank and trying to make out any more details.

"I can't see much more from out here."

"How fine a read do you get, can you tell, like, jumpscare versus dread versus anxiety?"

"Emotions are too steady to be a jumpscare. I can tell that it's a lot of people feeling scared rather than one. I can't get a specific read on any one and the emotions aren't uniform enough for me to make out any details."

"Is there anybody in there feeling not scared?"

He squints hard.

"I think so, yeah?"

"Can you distinguish between 'bank robbers' versus 'haven't noticed the place is on fire yet' -"

"Not from here - maybe if I was right next to it and definitely if I was inside. Their emotions seem stable right now."

"Okay. Do we get access to security camera feeds, by any chance - even if it's back at HQ my software could grab it -"

"I don't think so?"

"Great. Do you have an opinion on whether I should send a robot down for a look or if we should get backup first?"

"I can call it in now," he says and proceeds to do so. Lucien is on console duty and informs then that the Protectorate is out of town but the Wards are on there way. Lorica is cleared to do recon in the meantime.

Down sneaks a little robot, over to a nearby building so it can slide down in a shadowed spot looking for a good view in a window.

The people in the lobby are cowering, seemingly too afraid to move. cape with a costume out of a regency romance novel watches over them - Lorica might be able to identify him as Regent, a member of the Undersiders - a villain group known for the stealthy robberies and quick getaways. The PRT has no idea what his powers are.

Her cameras also make out what might be black spiders on a few of the people.

Lorica tells Gallant; her bot tells Lucien.

Gallant is going to text his girlfriend Glory Girl about this - she might be able to help.

"Protectorate's enroute but at least 30 minutes out - we'll be there in two."

"I don't think they've spotted the bot and we're concealed but we don't know the Undersiders' powers so they could know we're here." There's another bot on Lorica's shoulder, watching their backs.

"We know Hellhound's a Master with giant mutant dogs - not knowing where those are worries me."

Lucien arrives with the rest of the team, a van pulling over to let them out.

"Vista, help the cops seal off the area and return back here in 5."

"Lorica, do you think you can cover the exits so we know where to head if they try to leave?"

"Depends how many exits the place has but probably!" Robots overfly the bank and find discreet ways to descend to a vantage point near the apertures.

There are three: a backdoor, side door, and the front entrance. There are two empty vans parked near the side door.

"Do you have anything which could trip up one of Hellhound's dogs?" Lucien asks Lorica.

"Do tranquilizers work? I don't think the little quadcopters are heavy duty enough to hold a literal tripwire or anything."

"No idea if they work, we haven't managed to hit one to find out. Feel free to try them, though hitting Hellhound herself with them might have a better chance of success."

A minute later, half a dozen hostages stumble out the front door.

"Why are they letting them go, is this just how they're communicating their demands or something?"

As the hostages stumble forward, a flood of black smoke emerges from the bank and heads towards the wards.

A furrow streaks out from Lucien, splitting in two to dig a trench in the way of the approaching cloud, providing a moat that begins to fill with the smoke.

"You have a way to see what's going on in there?"

"Through - no, nothing, it's not even letting radar through."

"Nothing for me either," reports Gallant.

In that case there won't be any warning before a gigantic mutant dog comes bounding out of the darkness and over the trench, headed straight towards Lucien.

The nearest robot fires a tranq at it. Lorica steps in front of Lucien.

The tranq doesn't seem to have any effect and a moment later several hundred pounds of angry dog slams into Lorica.

She's braced for it, and certainly holds up better than Lucien would; she aims a kick square at its oncoming nose and hits it with another dose poking out of her knee compartment.

A third doses comes from one of Shadow Stalker's crossbow bolts.

Still, it seems to have enough energy to try and bite into Lorica.

Scale mail screeches under its teeth and holds. She digs a gauntlet into the beast's tongue and rips.

It jerks it's head when she does so, trying to toss her away.

She does actually have flight working; when it tosses her she stops in midair and will either re-engage or not depending on whether Lucien is out of the way or defensively fortified or whatever.

Lucien has backed up but hasn't done anything else to defend himself, he's torn on whether to deal with the property damage of another moat.

Meanwhile, another dog has left the fence with two people on it's back, heading towards Gallant and Shadow Stalker.

"Lucien will you kindly seek cover from the giant dogs." Shadow Stalker can handle herself. Gallant she's less confident about - who's aboard -

There really isn't all that much cover! He can arrange himself behind Clockblocker who the dogs are avoiding.

Aboard the dog is Hellhound and a muscular guy who is now shooting the same black smoke as before at her and her surroundings. 

Lorica does not want to be hit by the smoke stuff! If she can see the guy, though, so can her bots, and so can their tranquilizer dart trajectory calculations.

Muscular guy slumps unconscious - his fog sticking around but at least it's no longer growing.

That's when bugs started pouring out from the smoke, swarms of them heading towards Clockblocker and Lorica.

Well, Lorica herself doesn't need to be scared of bugs, at least not unless they find all her air intakes, forcing them to close, and then she can't clear them out of the vent apertures. What kinds of bugs are we talking about here?

Quite a few sorts - mostly flies and wasps but a few spiders seem to have been carried into the air and dropped on her as well, several of which are now exploring all her vent apertutes.

Lucien attempts to dig a path through the swarm approaching Clockblocker, but they aren't pushed densely enough for his power to have much of any effect. 

Vents close when bugs that are small enough to enter them land, and Lorica pinches them dead between the fingers of her gauntlets when she has a moment of attention to spare.

Who has the money. It's a bank robbery, somebody's got to be carrying the money. If it were her she'd give it to Darkness Guy, who is conveniently unconscious, has he got it?

Nope!

Lucien manages to disengage from the fighting long enough to touch the smoke obscuring the front entrance of the bank, his power parting it to clear a path.

"Gallant, are there more hostages in there?"

Gallant glances at the bank, blasting the dog he's fighting even as he does so: "Yup."

Okay, she's going to go in there, then.

As she flies over the trench her body jerks to point her downwards.

Ah shit. The robot radios everybody else with this update about undersider powers; her implants stop the sudden jerk, and the suit stays in the air, run by software that figures out what she wants rather than what her limbs are doing. She'd better rush that update as soon as she's back at a keyboard. How are the hostages doing?

Cowering but otherwise okay.

One of them is arguing with a girl in a terrifying full body spider silk costume. Lorica may recognize the hostage as Panacea, Brockton Bay's preeminent healer. 

Shit! Do they have a way to page the other New Waves?

Bella hovers there, slightly sandbagging about her ability to operate while having weird muscle spasms, and listens to the argument.

New Wave is paged.

“What the fuck did you do to me?” The villain asks, pressing the heel of her free hand against her forehead while trying to keep an eye on Lorica.

“I… don’t think I’ll tell you.” 

“Who the fuck are you, and who were you trying to call?”

“Actually, it was a text, not a call, and it went through,” Pancea says, smiling.

Throughout this exchange spiders are dropped on Lorica, spinning thread to bind the joints of her suit. 

A robot comes through the door to crush the spiders and brush away the silk.

"Lorica, I've got Glory Girl out here threatening to bust through a wall to rescue her sister. How delicate are things in there?"

A human sized mass of spiders falls from the ceiling onto the drone before it can get to Lorica, packing themselves into any crevices and motors and covering any lenses.

Lorica recognizes some of these spiders, as well as all of the ones perched on hostages, as black widows.

"Well, the bug Master has a lot of black widows! Another Undersider, probably Regent, hit me with some kind of muscle spasm fuckery; my suit's hovering about it. Panacea landed something unspecified on the bug Master."

"Try to deescalate, prioritize that over capture. I'll keep Glory Girl out here for as long as I can."

Panacea tenses up, waiting for her sister to arrive.

Meanwhile, in addition to webbing Lorica up, some of bugs are trying to find out what's keeping her in the air and how it responds to being shoved full of bugs.

Lorica has to breathe air but her levitation system does not. "Hey. Spiders. Do you have a cape name? I'm Lorica."

"No, I don't have one yet."

How does her levitation system like being completely covered in bugs, while a few of the spiders move on to tying her to any nearby surfaces.

Her levitation system is going to warn her from inside her helmet and then spin her around really fast, trying to shake off spiders and snap silk. "Okay. So, Panacea tagged you with something and you don't know what, right?"

The bugs are flung away and don't return. The girl winces, though it's hard to see with her full body costume, her head aching from her latest attempt to direct her bugs.

"Yeah, that seems about right."

"So, what's your best case scenario from here? Hope it's treatable in your civvie identity if somebody got away with the money?"

"Not sure what she did yet, could go away on it's own." The girl sounds troubled.

Panacea smirks.

"I can't think of a reason she'd do something that you wouldn't be able to detect right away and that would go away on its own. If it's not impairing you right now..."

The girl doesn't reply.

"No way is it permanent, that girl's all bark and no bite," Tattletale says as she walks casually into the room. "Hey Lorica."

"Hi Tattletale. Any chance we can have this conversation without me experiencing weird muscle spasms?"

"I dunno, you need your muscles for something?" Tattletale says, walking over towards Panacea.

"Not especially, which is why I thought it might be worth asking."

"Hey Regent, how'd you like to switch targets," Tattletale suggests, gesturing toward Panacea's neck. 

Lorica's spasms stop, as Panacea twitches - a black widow falling from the back of her neck onto the floor.

"That wasn't what I meant," says Lorica, shaking out her arms and legs but remaining airborne.

"I'd say I misunderstood but my powers wouldn't exactly allow that," she says, walking over to step on the fallen spider. The bug girl's posture relaxes noticeably.

"Wouldn't they?"

"Nope," she replies, popping the p sound, "I can read your mind after all."

The remainder of Lorica's drones are ambushed by swarms of bugs.

"Oh yeah? What number am I thinking of?"

"That's a boring question, much more interesting is why your old man isn't showing up to save you."

"Well, we could all wait around a while and ask him what kept him when he gets here, I suppose."

"It would be a rather long wait," she says, smirking.

She doesn't actually have Transit's new Tinker suit made yet so she can't check from here but that's obviously intended to rattle her over and above anything else. "Perhaps he is held up doing dad things. Getting me a Christmas present. Building a deck. Grilling hamburgers. The ways of dads are mysterious. What do we need to do here to get the hostages safe?"

"Hmm... your teammates outside disengage and we'll get out of your hair."

"I will propose this to them." She relays to Lucien.

"You think she'll hold up her end of the deal? Otherwise Glory Girl is heading in."

There're sounds of combat in the background.

"Of course I will, I'm very trustworthy." says Tattletale, without an apparent way of hearing what Lucien said on the private Wards channel.

It's an obvious guess, plus she's evidently some kind of Thinker. "No, I don't especially think so, but it's the offer she made," she relays; her helmet doesn't let this out.

"Tragic." Tattletale says, tilting her head towards bug girl.

A truck sized mass of bugs pushes past a ceiling tile to fall directly onto Lorica. 

And it's spinning time again! Wheeeeeee.

These guys are holding on pretty tight, and the pre-made webs they were carrying are tangled in her armor. She's not going to be able to spin them away that easily. 

Then she is going to slam into the floor and roll along it!

This kills some number of bugs on impact, but she's not enough of a cylinder to kill most of them via rolling way.

Meanwhile, the muscular guy is apparently awake and at the door, filling the room with dark smoke.

Before the smoke hits her: bot, how survivable are black widow bites? Especially if, say, you have Panacea right there?

Survivable! Pretty painful if Panacea doesn't get to you soon, but definitely survivable.

"Recommend sending Glory Girl in. About to lose comms."

Lorica hears what might be the sound of a window breaking just as the room goes dark.

The suit's going to keep flailing her around trying to kill bugs or yeet her out of the smoke. Or out of the building entirely, if it can find the window by dead reckoning. Lorica's mostly concentrating on not throwing up.

It can find the window, though she's still covered in bugs when she emerges from the smoke.

That's okay, out of the smoke she can recruit her drones to help her out and coordinate with her team. The bot alerts the nearest hospitals to make sure they know where their antivenin is.

The Undersiders manage to get away in the aftermath, Grue's darkness obscuring exactly where they disappeared too. No one ends up actually getting bitten.

Lucien reports that one of the dogs they fought was wearing a harness with empty bags on it, and as far as they can tell the Undersides never got the chance load up those bags with cash. Easily twice as much could have been stolen. No one was captured, but their also weren't any fatalities and they learned a lot more about the Undersiders then they did before. He calls it a middling success, though most of the wards don't seem to agree. 

"Hey, you holding up okay after your first fight?" Lucien asks Lorica later, after he's gotten a chance to debrief with Piggot and then the team.

"I'm not hurt, though I have a lot of repairs to make. Not as many as I was worried about, dead bugs jammed but didn't fry my drones and I can just clean one of them and have it clean the others. I feel like probably we collectively approached the situation somewhat stupidly but I'll wait for you to tell me what we ought to have done instead."

Lucien wearily takes a seat.

"I assumed the Undersiders would stick with their normal tactics and be aiming to sneak out, and didn't adapt well when they attacked us head on instead."

"In retrospect, we should have backed away once it was clear they had still had teammates in the building and didn't have any cash on them - there wasn't a good reason to engage them right there. And once we realized Panacea was in the building I should have checked on how dangerous the black widow venom was and reassessed how dangerous things were for the hostages."

"The bot checked that, it'd be painful but recoverable with antivenin - bot told the hospitals to get theirs ready. Didn't seem obviously worth the comms chatter, should I revise?"

"Probably? It would have changed how willing I was to send Glory Girl in if it seemed like there wasn't unacceptable risk to sudden escalation. I didn't actually look up the black widow venom info until after the fight, when ambulances were coming in and I was figuring out how worried to be about any spiders that got left behind."

"Overall you handled yourself great and kept a really delicate situation from escalating out of control. Doing that with one villain is difficult enough, doing it with three on your first time in a fight is grounds for a raise in your tinker budget. Which you're getting by the way."

"Oh, sweet. I did have a question, which was did it make tactical sense for me to get in the way of that dog - you don't look heavily armored, should you maybe wear more gear? -"

"You made the right call. My costume is tough enough to take a stray bullet but I typically value moving fast, so I can get behind someone better equipped to take a bullet then me. Though since that's only two people on the team right now I should probably reassess. Part of the reason I was able to get Piggot to approve the budget increase was because we don't actually have enough heavy hitters at the moment and you seem flexible enough to fill that gap."

"I'm making my dad a suit. I don't think most people would get along well with my suits, unfortunately. I can make some bigger bots, too, but my top priority right now is actually getting them some kind of reckoning that works through that dark smoke stuff."

"Seems like you're the one best equipped to make that sort of call. Though right now only Shadow Stalker has a good way of dealing with Skitter - that's what we're calling the bug girl - and I can't trust her in tense situations by herself like I can you." 

"Yeah, I'm thinking in parallel about solutions for being covered in bugs. I'm gonna get some of the oxygen pucks they use in airplanes for if I have to spend a long time without air intake, and maybe run a current through my scales, repel them by static and zap them if they land anyway."

"Oh neat, though you'll have to be careful of touching Shadow Stalker, her shadow state doesn't take kindly to electricity."

"The bot will take that into account. - I don't directly control practically any suit features, power doesn't work if I try to make it too manual."

"Huh, that sounds disorienting."

"It works fine for me but it's why I shouldn't just make all our guys suits."

"And upkeep time, I'd assume?"

"Yes, though that's less of a problem for me than it is for the average Tinker, since I can make robots that can do a lot of the basics."

"My impression is that given enough time and resources Tinkers are upper-bounded by how much tech they can do maintenance for. Is that ceiling higher for you?"

"Oh yeah. Even staying well clear of outright self-replicating tech, my bots are good for it."

"Do you have a timeline worked out for your tech buildup?"

"A tentative one! Obviously I have to expect that sometimes I will have new priorities inserting themselves high in the stack."

"Yeah, frustrating how that gets in the way of longterm gains for heroes so often. Uh. I don't know if it's private but I'd love to see anything you have on a timeline, even if it's tentative."

SHORT TERM (COMBAT READINESS):
Sensors/comms routing around smoke
Drone repairs (4/12)
Suit repairs (40%)
Power synergy testing?

MEDIUM TERM (COMBAT READINESS):
Suit upgrade (bug management, air system tweaks)
Increase flock size (12/24)
Larger combat bots (design)

SHORT TERM (NONCOMBAT):
Complete Transit suit mk 1
Complete Transit pathing software
Overhaul assembly station
Refine algorithm in [REDACTED]

MEDIUM TERM (NONCOMBAT):
Add routine for [REDACTED]
Push update to jitter compensators
Troubleshoot subserver 7 uptime
Improve Internet interfacing starting at comment block ""WHY DO I STILL HAVE TO SLEEP""
[REDACTED]

LONG TERM:
[REDACTED]
Overhaul assembly station more than that
[REDACTED]
Flight speed improvement

Schedules!

"How far in the future is long term?"

"Well, that depends a lot on how long everything in the short and medium term takes and how much other stuff gets added in the meantime, doesn't it. Probably at least six months to a year."

"Nothing farther out than that?"

"That's long enough for a couple of Endbringer fights, I don't think it's prudent to make plans farther out than that."

Lucien sighs.

"Yeah, that makes a lot of sense."

"Do you have ideas of what more funding would get you in the next year?"

"If I could expect the funding to keep up instead of dropping off again next month I'd prioritize the assembly station overhaul - frontload making more bots and have them helping me with everything else hardware while I did software."

Lucien discusses very rough numbers with her on how much she'd need and for how long to make this worthwhile and what she'd get out of it.

"Hm, does this mean there's a good chance that if you got this amount of extra funding three months from now you'd be able to build one more of this type of bot but if you got the same amount of extra funding now you'd be able to have two of those bots in three months?"

"Those numbers aren't right, but, loosely, yes, if I expect the materials to keep coming I can change how I use them and have more robots faster, whereas if the materials may not keep coming that doesn't make sense as a way to structure how my workshop is running."

"If we can figure out some rough lower bounds that are justified I might be able to use them to argue for more investment in your early career than tinkers typically get."

"I am somewhat concerned that this would be used to try to strongarm me into committing to staying in the Protectorate when I graduate."

"Hm. That's a reasonable concern - could focus on the gains for pre-graduation. Possibly it would help if you were willing to guarantee that they could keep some bots even if you don't stay?"

"The bots are all operated centrally. It's not that I wouldn't lend them, but I don't know how they'd feel about tech that technically answers to an outside contractor buzzing around; I'm not even confident they'll let me keep maintaining my dad's suit."

"What are you planning to do after graduation?"

"Make a ludicrous fortune in private industry."

"That sounds like a very worthwhile plan!"

"Thank you, that is a more supportive response than I was expecting!"

"I wish more tinkers would make ludicrous fortunes instead of joining the Protectorate, though don't tell the PRT I said that."

"Your secret is safe with me."

"When I was starting out I wanted to be an independent providing really quick irrigation to large areas, but it's not that lucrative and the only places that would really benefit are places like Sub-Saharan Africa where the main barriers are warlords, not ease of irrigation."

"Yeah, they have way too many of those."

"Yeah, maybe one of them will manage to get things under control enough to allow things to actually improve, though I'm not optimistic."

"I don't know enough geopolitics to know if I should be optimistic or not."

Lucien knows some but it might be out of date, he's happy to chat about what he does know.

Later that night he starts figuring out how to PRT-politics up a bigger investment for Lorica. He needs two things to make this happen: the funding, and the PRT's approval of the project. Rather than try to get the PRT to invest the money itself, he can probably get Gallant's trust fund to invest the money if it will save him on his power armor upkeep in the long term - Gallant doesn't care whether someone works for the Protectorate, his girlfriend is Glory Girl afterall. Now the armor couldn't be made wholesale by Lorica probably, and this whole plan would still need the PRT's approval, but what if Lorica was providing these machines which would save Armsmaster time on the upkeep of Gallant's armor? He has all sorts of charts for Armsmaster on how this would improve efficiency.  Sure this isn't the most politically convenient thing for Armsmaster to advocate for but Armsmaster has no idea what a politics is anyways. 

By early morning Lucien has the basic structure of his budget request planned out, and Armsmaster's seal of approval. Getting the PRT politics to work out isn't easy but he manages to have an informal proposal that seems feasible ready by the time he and Lorica have patrol together.

"- so you'd be providing machines to help with upkeep of these particular components of Gallant's armor regardless of whether you stick around in return for the upfront investment. My guess is they'll ask for toy licensing of all power armor you make in the future for anyone but yourself given that's what they've asked for in the past, but I think if you turn it down when they offer it they'll cave, but maybe be more resistant to future deals."

"Oh, toy licensing they can have, I'm not going to be making my ludicrous fortune on action figures! I'll need someone to show a robot how to do the basic maintenance but after that I can just have my regular flock do it in their off-hours for the time being, most likely."

"Cool, I can chat with Gallant about this and then bring it up with the PRT and get you a deal in writing later this week? Probably for a 75% bump in your budget for the next three months."

"Nice, way to go to bat."

"Gallant will save money in the long run, Armsmaster saves time, the PRT gets a licensing agreement they wouldn't have had otherwise, and you get a bunch of extra start-up cash."

Lucien is proud of himself.

"Wins all 'round. I'll come to you next time I have an idea too clever for my amount of diplomacy."

"Please do!"

Their patrol route is on the edge of ABB territory. Not too risky for Wards but also not one of the easier routes. 

Lorica tinkers a lot, growing her flock, refining her software. She gets her dad's suit done and assigns some bots to Armsmaster's workshop.

A few days later flurry of tinker made bombs go off, sending half the city into a blackout. Further bombs take down bridges and a school. In the chaos Lung is sprung from jail by his lieutenant Oni Lee.

The ABB didn't stop there, and swelled in size and power as the bomb tinker Bakuda continued to organize attacks all over the city, hitting anywhere that might have a connection to any other power base in the city. 

Wards and Protectorate members attempt to defuse bombs where they can, but often all they can do is manage the aftermath.

Stretched thin, Lorica ends up on a solo patrol in a part of town where Bakuda seems to have run out of targets she's interested in. A barbershop in the area is now frozen solid and half of a duplex is covered with thorns.

These are... bomb results, yes? Weird bomb results but still just Bakuda and not more separate people?

Yep, Bakuda's bombs yield weird results, not even the weirdest ones! A 100 foot sphere of downtown Brockton is frozen in time and in one case everything nearby turned inside out and yellow.

Lorica's patrol is quieter than most were even before the bombs - people are staying indoors and out of trouble mostly. However, right when she's finishing up her route she spots what looks like a tense confrontation outside a rundown row of townhouses. Three burly men in jackets are surrounding a man and woman, the contents of a shopping bag scattred on the ground around them. One of the men is blocking the path to a nearby door, and another one is yelling at the couple that they aren't getting in until they let the men search the place.

She jukes left as though she didn't notice them. A bot settles on a nearby awning.

"Nothing you're saying is going to change what you are," one of the men insists angrily, "Now you let us in to make sure there's nothing threatening us or our families in there or we'll break down the door and search it anyways."

The bot's camera is good enough to tell that both members of the couple have a white bird tattoo on the back of their left hand - the same tattoo that marks people cleared for release from Simurgh quarantine zones before the D.I.D.D. act was repealed a few years ago.

Ah, shit, it's complicated. She pings the console with a summary.

Console would like to know if anything is recently exploded or about to explode and if neither could she please handle it herself.

Nothing is exploded. Bot, consult on whether Simurgh-affected persons are a protected class or anything?

The vast majority of the people with the tattoo aren't actually Simurgh-affected, they were people who were near enough to Simurgh attacks that they were held in quarantine until their whereabouts during the attack were confirmed thoroughly enough and Protectorate thinkers vetted their psychological state. Initial standards were lower than they are now and in some cases people were re-quarantined after those standards were changed, but people who are out now are considered safe. A few exceptions have managed to slip through the cracks.

The US Govt has lots of badly marketed campaigns trying to inform people that the tattoos are not a mark that someone is Simurgh-affected but nobody actually wants to get near the issue with a ten foot pole. The people aren't a protected class legally - current legislation mostly tries to pretend the whole debacle never happened.

All right, she's going to drop to street level. "What seems to be the trouble?"

"Just trying to keep the neighborhood safe without wasting anyone's time," replies one of the men.

"Ah, well, here I am, wasting time anyway. What would you say seems to be the trouble?" she adds to the tattooed couple.

"Um, these men want to go into our house and we would like to be left alone," says the tattooed man nervously.

"Do you have some excellent reason for this?" she asks the men.

"If they don't have anything to hide they wouldn't be complaining so loudly. Way I see it - if you're trying to live out around this many people with one of those -" he gestures to the tattoos "- and a punk kid that made himself scarce right when the bombing started, well. The least anyone could do is give their neighbors some peace of mind."

"Do you let people in your house if you make them nervous, sir?"

"Sure! My neighbors come by my house all the time."

"Uninvited, unwelcome, just because they're alarmed by your habit of confronting strangers and demanding entry into their residence?"

"If I had one of those tattoos and a son who everyone knew was in a gang I hope someone would come in and smack some sense into me, yeah." 

"Gosh. Well, thanks for alerting me to the situation, next time try our phone number it's very well-staffed, how about you three go along and I'll talk to these folks here and make sure everything's all right."

One of the men would like to know how this is going to keep their neighborhood safe.

"Sir, I'm a superhero. If you'd rather involve the regular cops, they too have a phone number."

He follows the rest of the men away, mumbling something that might be about how he might just call that number.

Back to the couple. Are they Asian.

The woman might be half-asian but it's not obvious.

"Is your son all right, have you filed a missing persons report?"

"He came back last night."

The woman is taking out her phone to text someone, nervously. 

"Glad to hear it. Do you want me to leave a robot here at your house in case those guys come back? It'd be able to alert me and maybe tranquilize one."

Text text. 

"Uh, could you give me a minute actually? Sorry."

"Making sure my son knows everything is okay."

"I have the rest of my patrol to get to," she says, as one of the flock ascends to the point where it can telescopically read the screen. "I can leave you a bot but I can't stand here for long."

Lorica has mail!

My place, probably better to chat inside or later. Unsure about bot.

OH that makes sense. I will leave them alone, sorry.

Lucien shows at HQ not too long after Lorica.

"Um. Thanks."

"Anytime, sorry about your cover."

"Nothing you could have done. I'm still not sure whether to leave the bots in place given that you offering them wasn't related to my being a Ward."

"Tell it to shoo and it'll shoo," she shrugs. "I'll need to recall it sooner or later anyway, most likely."

"Mhm, mostly worried people will draw the right conclusion for the wrong reason."

"Um. Thanks for helping my parents."

"Well, I can truthfully say I would have done the same for anybody. Sorry I thought you were in a gang."

"Heh, my mom told me she almost laughed the first time a neighbor accused me of being a punk."

"You really don't have that vibe at all, but I suppose you come and go at odd hours."

"I'm a noctis cape. There's a PRT manufactured excuse about how I have a real late shift at McDonalds, but people tend to be suspicious given my parents. Um."

"Lucky. I mean, except for how it's not. But your neighbors can't be looking into your bedroom, can they? How are they noticing?"

"They notice me arriving home around 6am on weekends or leaving at 2am on weekdays, I think."

"Do you want to ask my dad to pick you up?"

"Your dad works at those times?"

"Not usually but not never."

"It'd probably help if people were less likely to notice my schedule once we move again."

"If you're going to move maybe you can get someplace with better quality of neighbors."

"So far the places we've been able to afford have had at least a few low quality neighbors."

"Why aren't you politicking your budget up a skosh, then?"

"People get uncomfortable with anything that looks like my parents manipulating me into helping them. I make the standard Wards salary and there's a standard amount of attention paid to not letting my cover get blown."

"Have they got jobs?"

"My dad used to be an economics professor and now he tutors people online. My mom was a history post doc and still gets the odd contracting job from one of her former colleagues but nothing steady."

"I don't have any very clever ideas for that, alas."

"I'll make more once I'm a full Protectorate member. And get access to the trust fund they put aside while I'm a ward."

"I'm um. Happy you're taking it so well?"

"...as opposed to what? I've discovered you have parents. I didn't think you sprang from the head of Zeus."

"I don't know, I don't have much experience with people I already know finding out my parents were in Simurgh quarantine. You didn't freak out and try to arrest them and you haven't told I should stop living with them for my own good."

Shrug. "It made me a little more suspicious but, like, the fact that somebody was hassling them didn't seem like a reason to hassle them much more than that."

"It's probably accurate to be a bit more suspicious - rates of people slipping past detection are really low but rates of mass murder in the general population are lower."

"Yeah. I had ulterior motives in offering the bot and one was gonna look at the phone screen but I wasn't going to strongarm them." Shrug.

Vaguely discomforting but reasonable of her!

"... I'm not sure of a good way to transition to passing on the message from my mom that you're invited over for dinner, with the subtext being that she thinks I need more friends. She told me to include the subtext when I passed on the message." Lucien says, smiling a bit.

"That's very nice of her, but I don't think this has changed my mind about my unmasking protocols."

"Yeah, I told her that's what you'd say."

"How was the rest of your patrol otherwise?"

"Otherwise uneventful. No explosions turning everything in the radius into a cartoon or whatever the fuck else she's cooked up."

"Bet you Vista would be able to undo that somehow. Her and Clockblocker have been defusing bombs left and right - turns out shrinking them and surrounding them with stopped matter is enough to deal with most things she cooks up."

"Are they observing good infosec about not letting it leak that that's how they're doing it?"

"Yeah, officially it's Armsmaster who's defusing them most of the time."

"Good."

Bakuda's rampage results in what might be the closest to a unified front the city has ever had, with the non-ABB villains cooperating in an attack on Lung that results in his capture by the Protectorate, and Armsmaster managing to corner Bakuda while Vista and Clockblocker disable her final bomb, this time getting public credit. The Protectorate and Wards teams* throw a small party to celebrate, Vista spends the next few days beaming with pride and Clockblocker wears a skirt to patrol through Empire territory for what he insists is the tactical advantage of its twirliness. Lucien takes three entire days off to hang out with his parents and comes back refreshed, even if he spent one of those days helping them pack.

*Mostly Assault.

Lorica attends the party for a decorous amount of time but mostly she wants to be tinkering or doing whatever it is she might be doing in her civvie identity.

Assault, who might be inebriated, threatens to throw her a surprise party but aside from that no one minds her leaving early - Armsmaster leaves early as well.

Why do people drink alcohol. It's such a weird thing to do. She feels a kinship with Armsmaster but considering the nature of the kinship she does not at all attempt to go be his friend about it.

Lucien doesn't drink but stays at the party at least until Vista leaves - she deserves all the celebration she can get. He tries to stay late in case Clockblocker appreciates it given he also was running around the city with no credit during the bombings. Eventually Clockblocker, also probably inebriated, hits on him a second time during the same night and he calls it quits. 

How small can your furrows be?

Sure he can check that.

I don't know how to tell how small the smallest ones are? Smaller than anything I can see.

Can you borrow Armsmaster's microscope and check?

Sure.

The one he let me borrow can't see my smallest ones either, unless I'm using it wrong.

Cool. How complicatedly can you do 'em?

Pretty complicated as long as the lines are straight and all? I need to be able to think through what I'm doing, though I can repeat patterns easily enough.

Wanna see if you can beat the Toybox supplier who just gave me a stupidly pricey quote on circuit boards?

What. How?

(Yes.)

There's more stuff going on in them but I can do a lot of it, the etching is just too deterministic for me to program my bot to do it. It'll send you the design.

A few minutes later.

Huh. I can do a bunch of this but the bits on the left are too complicated for me to do quickly on my own? I think if I had a version pre-made, even at a different scale, I could copy it.

If a different scale will work, sure. Bots bringing you a big sample wafer in five.

He's pretty sure Lorica is in her workshop one room over. Tinkers and their fugues.

Much quicker than the prior time:

Done. Also, your wafer has really neat etchings.

Neat how?

I didn't actually realize I had a Thinker power until just now when I touched it and had the whole design in my head a second or so later. It was a lot bigger and more complicated than anything else I've had in my head before. Hence, neat.

Oh, congratulations!

I think I have you beat for lowest tier Thinker power. Was it any help?

They aren't ranked by how cool they are, they're ranked by their combat threat potential, so I still win. Bots're installing it into a test box right now.

I will defeat you with my ability to tell where the tiniest of trenches are.

The Lucien-etched chip performs better than she'd have expected the Toybox chips to work.

Good news, it's cleared every benchmark I had in mind. Expect more commissions. Toybox would have charged me fourteen thousand dollars for that. For a finished version, admittedly.

That's uh. Rather nice rent money.

If fourteen thousand dollars were in my budget I would have most likely bought it from Toybox instead of brainstorming long enough to wonder if you could scale down, but I can kick you five K.

Over the next few weeks Lucien makes more from fabbing chips (for Lorica and others) than he made in the past year, enough for his family to move into a nice part of town, with a sidedoor that will let him discretely come and go and a small study and bedroom big enough for him to actually have a bed in. He hasn't been this happy since before the Simurgh attack.

And Lorica's call screening bot has someone on the line.

"Hi I need to talk to Lorica but only in a way that guarantees that a precog who can't see into her brain won't be able to forsee. Can you verify that this isn't a precog's vision of the future?"

"One moment please while I discuss this with Lorica! Meanwhile, please summarize the nature of your call."

"Uh, I need to make sure she doesn't make any decisions causally downstream of this conversation unless it's really her, otherwise the precog will notice that she's going to make decisions based on this call and be able to tell that I'm acting against him. Said precog can't predict her to a very high level of accuracy but can predict most other things and is exceptionally dangerous and I need her help to stop him."

"Lorica has provided a missing component of a hash I have in storage that was not previously committed to any form outside of her brain."

"That works, can you can you put me through? I'm Tattetale and the villain is Coil. Uh, the Ward's console password today is bravo-sixteen-chimpanzee-sourpuss and Lorica is naturally clumsy, hopefully that proves I'm Tattletale."

"Lorica is not confident that it is wise to talk to you even on the supposition that you are providing tips about another villain."

"I can't actually read her mind and if this doesn't work out I'm dead and likely so is she - Coil is not the type to leave someone who has an advantage over him alive."

Tattletale is a bit out of breath, she's busy trying to prep whatever resources she can before Coil finds out that she knows this and she loses the advantage of surprise.

"You can talk to me. I will put her on if that seems to be correct."

Shit. She decided to take this brief window after she realized how Lorica's power screwed with Coil and where Coil hadn't yet alternate-timeline tortured her into revealing this. If this fails she's sort of screwed.

"Coil is my boss, he recruited me at gunpoint. His power basically lets him live out two timelines where he makes different choices and choose which one to keep him. In reality what it's doing is predicitng the timeline he'll choose and having him make those choices while giving him the subjective expereince of living both timelines. I realized earlier today that Lorica's mental invulnerability fucks with this - his power probably has to guess what she'll do and I suspect it's guesses aren't even that good. I think he tortures information out of me so I don't know how long we have until he knows all of this. He also has another precog helping him who I don't know much about but they shouldn't be able to see this coming either."

"He secretely controls the Undersiders and the Travelers as well."

"Okay, you have my attention. This is just, what, a friendly warning to get out of town?"

Oh good she has Lorica's attention.

"No, if he's not dead soon he'll realize what's up and go to ground and try to take me out because I betrayed him and you out because your power is effective against his. I'm not sure what is up with his other precog but I know they're powerful and longer range than him."

"I can pick a destination city for you too if that's what you wanted."

"I have friends in the Undersiders and he is aware of this and quite vindictive."

"Also I don't want to spend the rest of my life hiding from him. I want him gone and won''t have a better chance at that than now. I have access to mercenaries, information about his resources, and the Undersiders on my side." She has not told the Undersiders this yet but she's pretty she can manage it. Maybe even the Travellers. Once she's finished hacking into Coil's bank account for funds to pay her mercenaries with.

"And you want... random seed numbers for your plan to strike?"

"I was hoping for your help, given that you're a hero and he's, you know, a villain who's trying to take over the city."

Also she is busy trying to make sure she gets Coil's stuff if he dies.

"All I have on this is your say-so. The enemy of my enemy isn't always my friend."

Very frustrating, why can't heroes hero when you need them to.

"I'll surrender to you if you'll promise to let me go if I'm telling the truth." It's the best she can do on such short notice. 

"...sure. Do you have reason to believe I shouldn't tell other people about this?"

"His secret identity is Thomas Calvert, a high level PRT consultant, and he has at least two moles in the PRT."

She can leave any prep she's comfortable doing in front of Lorica till she's in custody, right now she needs to make sure she's ready to take advantage if they win.

"Holy shit. Uh. Do you know if he has any software surprises or should I just turn the bot loose looking for trails and then grab Dad and arrest him."

"He's a thinker and is exceptionally careful but maybe your bots can manage it. I can give you evidence of his crimes but don't know if that would stand in court. The Thomas Calvert at your HQ right now might be a body double, I won't know without seeing him in person."

"Okay. Come in and we can arrange that, then."

On the way there she use's a laptop to keep prepping for stealing Coil's power if he dies, while trying to avoid any signs of her doing crimes Lorica might notice. ... And also she'll prep somethings in case Lorica doesn't follow through on letting her go, though she suspects Lorica will.

She arrives at the PRT, icognito, wearing her Lorica branded t-shirt. She sends a selfie to Lorica on the way in.

A bot lands on her, checks her ears for tech, and relays Lorica's voice: "Guess something for me so I know you're not a plant."

"Tunnel Teen wears Protectorate hero branded underwear because he couldn't afford anything better till recently. Also this bot just got repaired."

"Well, I can verify one of those. Come on in."

What's the bot finding on Calvert in the meantime?

"Aw, I don't even have to guess which Protectorate hero?"

Possibly-Calvert is one floor below her, in the non-hero portion of the high security HQ section. His taxes are suspcious, she can probably get him on that? It'd be enough to get a warrant but not enough to arrest him.

"Maybe if I bring him in on this. - okay, I have a search warrant, where am I sending the flock."

... She really loves the lair.

What about this auxiliarly branch? It has a few mercenaries and probably some evidence that he's been paying them to watch people's houses. 

Stealth bots book it. She tucks Tattletale into a holding cell for the time being.

"How exaclty does putting me in this cell prevent Coil or a mole from noticing I'm here."

"Dad's on his way. He can teleport you without having to touch you, so if you stay near the force field, he can get you out if things go sideways. Once the bots have enough evidence I'll be able to arrest Calvert. When will he be settled on a timeline?"

"He's going to keep this timeline because his power will have predicted nothing will go wrong here and he was planning to keep this one. He'll branch again in maybe an hour? Could be longer."

"Bots will try to have a case for his arrest sewn up by then. Other loose ends?"

"Not really. Flock will get you evidence of crimes but not him."

She can handle the other stuff herself.

"Do you need to be in person in person to determine if the guy in his office is him, or will a video feed do it?"

"If the video feed is really high def it might work? But I don't think any of the ones you have are good enough."

"Few different angles at once?"

"My power needs enough to make out microexpressions, angles don't matter."

"Does he know your face?"

"Yeah."

"I could have a bot see if Armsmaster's got a better camera, unless you have some reason to think he's a mole."

"I'd bet our lives that he's not, if that's the best option we have."

"Next best option, assuming you don't think a bot will be able to buy something good enough at a normal store, is I go up and whip up something real fast, but it's not very firmly in-specialty."

"Armsmaster is almost definitely not a mole and wouldn't sell you out even if he was I think."

"Sending for a camera from him, then." A bot zips through the halls to bother Armsmaster.

Armsmaster is tinkering in his workshop.

"Lorica needs to borrow a higher resolution camera for me! Do you have anything suitable?" the bot asks when he's looked up for a moment and it won't be interrupting too badly.

His foot presses a pedal and a drawer pops open across the room. There are a few cameras in there, but nothing higher res than Lorica has.

"Thank you anyway," says the bot after assessing the available items.

Right then. Transit shows up and Lorica leaves him with Tattletale to go put something together as fast as she can in her own workshop.

"Your daughter's really something."

Transit doesn't react to this. He might not even have heard her.

"You must be proud." Maybe her power knows whether he can hear her.

He cannot. Perhaps due to prior knowledge of her modus operandi, the bot is noise cancelling Tattletale's voice for him.

Probably it'd let anything really important through. She might be able to find a way to work with that but now isn't the time to see how her power works on robopsychology.

Lorica sacrifices every desideratum of durability and elegance to get a high res camera setup banged out as quickly as possible. It fits in one of her bigger bot chassis. She sticks it in, whips up a birthday card for one of the maintenance staff, and sends the bot with the camera carrying the card to Calvert's office to get a signature.

"That's the real him."

Gotcha, you son of a bitch.