Celestial Worm Part 5

“Wormhole Extreme, really?” Amy asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Can you really think of a better design?” Leet asked. “I mean my power all but dumped it into my head this way and it’s more robust than most of my designs.”

“You’ve got a point there,” Amy conceded.

"You might have overpaid us," Uber reluctantly admitted as he watched Leet run his scanner over the power armor that Warlock had conjured out of thin air to pay for them using the gate.

"Probably," Taylor agreed absently as she pulled her attention away from the strange scanner that looked a bit like a metal detector without the long pole and glanced at the large circular metal rings that Leet claimed was some type of portal device that could get them to Earth Aleph. "It's not the best that I can make, but I wanted to make sure Leet could reverse engineer it."

Leet looked up from the awesome suit of power armor that he could probably use to dance rings around Armsmaster once he got a bit of practice using the suit's combat systems. "I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that the armor isn't black boxed. Just the batteries alone would make a fortune if you sold the design."

"I'm sort of worried about someone turning the batteries into a bomb," Taylor admitted, knowing there were a lot of crazy villains around, not all of them parahumans.

"I wouldn't worry about the batteries exploding, they're remarkably stable," Leet assured her. "If you wanted a quick couple of million, you could probably sell a suit to Dragon or the military. Of course, most of the heavy weapons manufacturers would try to kill you as you'd quickly put them out of business and you'd have to tack on a couple of zeroes to the price tag if you sold it to the military."

"No thanks," Taylor complained, not interested in dealing with a bunch of corrupt companies that wouldn't hesitate to destroy the Bay if they thought it would protect their market share. "It would be one thing if I thought the armor would be useful against the endbringers, but they'd basically just force governments to pull parahumans into the military to counter them, which would result in a lot of dead soldiers and parahumans."

"Some of them already do that, just look at the CUI," Uber pointed out.

"That reminds me, I should probably grab their missing teammate," Taylor mused as she used her Clairvoyance to look for the missing member of the Travelers that Accord had sold to the Yangban. She frowned when she saw a Chinese cape shouting and gesturing at Cody aggressively despite the fact that he clearly had no idea what was being said.

"Missing teammate?" Uber asked.

"Accord flipped out and sold him to the Yangban because he caused trouble in Boston and Accord has mental issues," Taylor explained as she used her Telepathy to poke around in the Chinese cape's head, trying to get a better idea what the Chinese cape was like. 'Lovely, you actually know English well enough to have a conversation, you just don't care. Screw it, you haven't managed to kill an endbringer and you won't help the rest of the world so I have no use for you.'

"This is one of the reasons that we avoid Boston," Leet offered as he set the scanner on his work bench.

"Change of plans, I'm grabbing the Yangban idiot that is screaming at Cody for not understanding Mandarin after they kidnapped him," Taylor warned everyone and teleported the Chinese cape to the warehouse. She lifted the startled Tinker off the ground with her Telekinesis to keep him from grabbing any weapons he might have stashed in his costume. "Is there a reason you're screaming at people in a language they don't understand?"

Uber snorted as the cape started ranting at them in Mandarin. "You should wash your mouth out with bleach for that one."

"What did he say?" Amy asked as the cape said something with a smug look on his face, only catching the occasional swear word. 'Something about fucking a duck? Or being a fucking duck?'

"Something about your mother," Uber lied as he walked over to the bench and picked up a heavy pipe wrench, having understood the asshole well enough to know that he was basically telling them to go fuck a duck. "Twenty bucks says he knows English."

"I'm not taking that bet," Amy replied as Uber walked back over with the wrench.

Uber shifted his stance and prepared to bash the man's knee in, just trying to scare him into admitting that he knew English. He scowled when the asshole had said something about raping the girls once he 'realized' that no one understood him. "That's crossing a line, if the heroic people could look at the door for a minute, I believe I can fix the translation issue."

"Sure," Amy replied as she turned to look at the door, having reached her limit for being insulted for the month after dealing with Skidmark.

"Last chance," Uber told the Chinese cape then expertly swung the pipe wrench into his knee when he offered yet another insult in Mandarin, causing the man to scream in agony.

"Don't say I didn't warn you," Uber replied cheerfully as he prepared to break his other knee, having spent more than a couple of sleepless nights worrying about the Yangban, because of the fact that Leet was a tinker and knowing Panacea could heal any damage he did if she felt it was warranted.

"Fucking bastard!" Jiǎ screamed, not used to getting hurt since he wasn't a frontline fighter.

"We’ve found a common language, excellent," Uber replied with a grin.

"Why were you bothering to ask him questions when you have to know that he's American?" Taylor asked, trying to get things back on track before Uber broke his other knee, even if he did deserve it.

"It's part of breaking the recruits," Jiǎ admitted reluctantly when Uber motioned like he was going to break his other knee if he didn't say anything.

"If you were going to disable the Yangban, who would you kill and why?" Taylor asked, trying to get him to think about the answer as it made things a lot easier. She smiled when his mind jumped to the most important capes in the Yangban despite keeping his mouth shut. 'Gotcha!'

"The Yangban are going to kill you when they get here unless you let me go, then they might only break you," Jia taunted, knowing they'd pick up his beacon's location.

Taylor studied the idiot that she was holding up with her Telekinesis and located the tracking unit he had hidden in his ponytail. She simply teleported it into orbit above them and let it go flying off. "You're lucky that I'm a hero and not a villain, it would be remarkably easy to twist your head off like a bottle cap. Speaking of your emperor, how much control does he actually have?"

"Fuck you!" Jia replied, not seeing a reason to answer her question, as she was just a weak American girl.

Taylor sighed when she skimmed his thoughts about the Emperor and realized that it would be better for the world if the Emperor and his family vanished without any witnesses, since he had plans to expand his influence and generally make life worse for everyone. She used her Clairvoyance to find Null and teleported the middle aged Trump to the warehouse, sending his tracker, hidden in his shoe, into orbit as well.

Null froze when he realized that he was in a warehouse with three parahumans that he didn't recognize and Jia. "What's going on?" he asked, feeling the glaring lack of the parahumans he was normally connecting together.

"Accord sold a young man into slavery and the Yangban cheerfully bought him, despite various laws and agreements," Taylor explained as she reached out and used her Residual Absorption to grab a temporary copy of his power to link parahumans so their powers were shared. "Jia hasn't been particularly helpful."

Jia blurted out something in Mandarin.

"I'm not responsible for recruiting, but I can certainly look into things if you can give me the name of the person that we recruited," Null offered.

"Perdition," Taylor replied, not surprised that he recognized Cody's capename. 'This is so much easier when no one realizes that Telepathy is possible.'

"I've never heard of him but if you'll send me back, I'll ask around," Null lied, hoping he could talk them into releasing him so that he could send a team to capture them, as having long range teleporting added to their current power set would make them all but unstoppable!

"Sorry, you're one of the capes that allows the Yangban to function, you're never going back to China," Taylor told him as she lifted him off the ground with her Telekinesis so he couldn't bolt.

"Are you going to let her kill me in cold blood?" Null asked Amy, recognizing the cape from their list of high value targets and knowing she was a hero.

"In a heartbeat," Amy honestly replied, having spent more than one sleepless night worried about the Yangban kidnapping her and making her vanish. "The Yangbang should have been hunted down and killed as soon as they got started."

"I'm not going to kill you," Taylor assured him then reached out and used her copy of Amy's power to put him to sleep.

"What the fuck did you do?!" Jia demanded, still not quite understanding how screwed he was since he'd gotten used to being untouchable.

"This," Taylor replied as she stepped closer to the floating Tinker, touched his wrist and knocked him unconscious, tired of ignoring his thoughts about getting revenge.

"That went better than I was expecting," Amy admitted as she reached over and made sure the asshole wouldn't bleed out from his shattered kneecap doing some quick repair work.

"What were you expecting?" Leet asked.

"I was sort of expecting them to have a group of teleporting ninjas," Amy replied, only half joking.

"That's fair," Uber agreed as he put the pipe wrench back on the bench. "They probably have a couple of capes that can teleport, but there's a difference from being able to teleport a couple of hundred feet and someone that can teleport to the other side of the planet."

"Or summon people from the other side of the planet," Leet offered, hoping that the girls weren’t planning on teleporting them into a cell.

"That's why we're not telling the PRT, I don't need them blaming me for every villain that vanishes without a trace," Taylor replied, doing her best not to laugh at the guys simultaneously deciding that they needed to clean up their act. She used her Absorption ability to copy Jia's power. 'Tinker: Simulation specialty: Provides insight and help creating advanced simulation technology. Duration: 4.6 minutes?'

"No problem, we don't want to end up in the Bay with cement shoes," Uber assured her.

"Don't worry, I'd never do that, chicken wire and cement blocks works better," Taylor replied, thinking about some of the more interesting ways she'd heard of to get rid of bodies over the years from spending time at the Union with her father. She mentally poked at the schematics that appeared in her head when she thought about using her new and extremely temporary power and sighed when she realized the ability would annoy her because it was distracting as it kept tossing blueprints into her mind, as Tinker powers seemed wont to do.

"Save us?" Leet asked Amy hopefully.

"You'll be fine as long as you clean up your act," Amy warned them, hoping she could talk them into going legit or at least quasi legit.

"We’ve been considering that anyway," Uber assured her, not mentioning that he’d only been considering it since a few minutes ago.

Taylor used her modification ability to give the Tinker power a mental switch then used her Power Creation ability to give Amy a temporary copy of the power that would last more than a year, so that she'd be able to pick up a permanent copy of the power later that had a mental off switch already installed.

Amy blinked then gave Taylor a look when she realized that she had an extra mental switch in her mind. "What power did the asshole have?"

"He's a Tinker," Taylor replied as she used her Clairvoyance to find Cody. "Try not to shoot the next one, he's the missing teammate."

"Fuck off!" Cody told the cape that was glaring at him. "I don't know what the fuck happened to your fuck buddy but if you strike me down I'll become more powerful than you can imagine."

Taylor teleported Cody to the warehouse and immediately used her Magnification/Reduction ability to drop Cody's power to nothing, so he couldn't use it on anyone then used her Biokinesis: Regeneration to heal his brain damage.

Cody blinked a couple of times when he realized that the people around him looked European rather than Asian and that he wasn't dead or at least he didn't think that Hell looked like a warehouse with a bunch of strange tech scattered around. He froze when he spotted the familiar capes floating in the air. "What's going on?"

Taylor gestured at the giant ring. "Sundancer asked me to rescue you and we have a portal that can take you back to Earth Aleph."

"Seriously?" Cody asked, surprised that Marissa cared since his 'friends' had stabbed him in the back by letting Accord take him. "She didn't exactly care when Accord's minions knocked me out."

"To be fair, you thought making evil clones in the middle of Boston was a great idea and Accord would probably have tried to kill everyone if they hadn't let him take you," Taylor explained, having heard the story from Sundancer.

"Yeah, not my best idea," Cody admitted with a wince, not sure what the hell he'd been thinking now that he'd had a bit of distance.

"Evil clones?" Leet asked excitedly.

"Bad Tinker," Amy replied as she used her illusion power to create a spray bottle and sprayed Leet in the face.

Leet sputtered, causing Uber to laugh.

"You deserved that," Uber told him.

"Fair," Leet admitted and wiped his face, finding it curiously dry.

"Look, they'll probably never want to be friends after the shit you pulled, but that doesn't mean they want you left with the Yangban or dead," Taylor told Cody.

"Fine, they cared enough to ask someone to spring me, I can let bygones be bygones," Cody replied, deciding that getting a clean start after kicking Francis in the nuts was a good idea, especially if it meant that he could go home.

'Close enough,' Taylor thought, deciding to ignore Cody's idea of kicking Trickster in the nuts as it wasn't really her problem after they walked through the gate and she had to admit she’d been tempted to do the same thing herself when she’d met him. "How long does it take to power up the gate?"

"Five minutes," Leet replied. "Are you ready?"

"Let me grab everyone then they can take the idiots through and turn them over to the government over there. Unless you can drop them on a random island?" Taylor asked.

"We have a door for that," Leet said smugly.

"Seriously?" Amy asked.

"It takes you to a deserted island on a random world," Leet replied.

"What's the catch?" Amy asked.

"It’s random so every time you open the door it leads someplace different and the portal closes if the door shuts," Leet explained.

"Perfect," Taylor replied, not all that concerned where the leaders of the Yangban ended up as long as they didn't stay on hers. Deciding to be nice and since Leet was planning on going straight, or as straight as Brockton Bay would allow, she gave him a copy of the Simulation Tinker ability not remotely surprised that it became permanent on the first try.

“What?” Leet asked with a frown as he felt a switch form in his head.

“You’ve both gained a Tinker ability that will help with your show and not try to kill you,” Taylor said as she used her power a second time on Uber to make sure it stuck.

“And that’s another thing I can scratch off my worry list,” Amy said, having been slightly concerned that one of Leet’s inventions would end the world, or at least the city, one day.

"Is this permanent?" Uber asked hopefully. “Even for a Trump you are massively overpowered,” he added, knowing what a big deal this was, as the girls’ smirks said the powers were anything but temporary.

"These are not the droids you are looking for," Amy said as she waved her hand in front of Uber's face.

"Got it," Uber replied, taking that as ‘don't ask questions that would get people in trouble.'

“Good, now let me take care of the problem you have with being poor squishy Tinkers so I don’t have to worry about healing you later,” Taylor said with a grin.

0o0o0

Danny looked up from watching the news about the recent attack on the Merchants as Taylor walked into the living room. "How was the library?"

"Educational," Taylor replied with a smile as she flopped down on the couch.

"Are you going to tell me what type of powers you ended up with?" Danny asked as he muted the TV, figuring he might as well be direct since he was worried about her getting hurt.

"What makes you think…" Taylor trailed off as she read his mind and realized that he'd noticed her physical changes and connected the dots. "Never mind, stupid question." She reached out with her Telepathy and checked the surrounding area, making sure no one was lurking in the area that shouldn't be there. "I'm basically a Trump."

"That covers a lot, can you be more specific?" Danny asked.

"Yes." Taylor used her Power Creation ability to give him a copy of her Mental Invisibility so that Thinkers would have a hard time noticing him or getting information about him. 'Forty six days, that should give me plenty of time to convince him to get a permanent version.' She glanced at the television that had already swapped to a commercial then focused on her father. "I have a decent collection of powers but my main power is the ability to copy and give people copies of my powers and powers from a list."

"How long do the powers last?" Danny asked, hoping it had a decent duration so that she could stay out of the line of fire.

"Assuming the power actually works, 46 or 460 days. There's also a ten percent chance that the powers are permanent," Taylor explained.

Danny studied his daughter's face and sighed in frustration when he realized that she wasn't joking. "What type of powers are we talking about?" he asked warily, sort of hoping that they were on the level of parlor tricks so that people could ignore her but also hoping her power was powerful enough to keep her safe.

"I started with Empathy, Hyper Invention, Linguistics, Telekinesis, Resist Mental, Enhanced Stealth, Teleport Self, Sensory Link, Resist Power Manipulation, Molecular Conversion, Focus and Power Detection and it just sort of spiraled from there."

"So you're basically a Psychic and Telekinetic Ninja Tinker and alchemist?" Danny teased, trying to keep a sense of humor despite his legitimate concerns about the gangs and the government trying to capture his daughter.

"Basically," Taylor replied with a grin. "Joking aside, Molecular Conversion doesn't actually require alchemy though it does require a decent understanding of chemistry. Hyper invention is more of an intelligence boost when it comes to inventing than an actual Tinker power."

"Does your power have a Master component like Teacher?" Danny asked warily, wondering when the other shoe would drop.

Taylor shook her head. "No, the closest my power comes to a Master rating is my ability to give people the ability to create mental illusions. I also had Panacea check my power to make sure it wasn't causing people physical or mental stress, it's safe."

"Have you managed to copy a Brute yet?" Danny asked hopefully.

"Body Resistance was one of the first powers I copied permanently," Taylor replied with a grin. "It doesn't come with a strength boost but you'd be able to walk off getting hit by a tank, do you want a copy?"

"Is there any reason not to?" Danny asked.

"Not that I can think of and I'd feel a lot better if I didn't have to worry about a couple of idiots holding you hostage," Taylor told him as she used her Biophysical Regeneration ability to make sure her father was in perfect health.

"What do I need to do?" Danny asked as he shifted his shoulders, feeling some of the tension vanish.

"Really?" Taylor asked in surprise.

"I trust you and the Bay isn't exactly the safest place around for squishy humans," Danny replied. “Having powers doesn’t mean I have to put on tights and run around punching people in the face, I can have them and not use them after all.”

"Cool," Taylor replied as she used her modified Focus ability to boost her Power Creation ability as much as she could then used her boosted power to give her father the Body Resistance power. 'Body Resistance: 999. Duration 460 days?' She repeated the process a couple more times until the power clicked, letting her know that it was permanent. "And we're good."

"That's it?" Danny asked, a bit surprised that he didn't really feel any different.

"Unless you want additional powers," Taylor asked with a grin as she held her hand out and used her illusion power to conjure a ball of purple fire, hoping that her father would take her up on the chance to get additional powers.

"What are you offering?" Danny asked, deciding that he might as well grab some powers since she was offering.

"I'll make a list," Taylor replied as she used her Telekinesis to grab the notepad and pen they kept by the phone, relieved that she'd actually told him rather than trying to keep it a secret.

0o0o0