With Friends Like These, 5-3

“Before we continue further Miss Hebert, I just want to say that it is a pleasure to meet you.”

“Thank you.” Levi nuzzled her chin from her shoulder, reassuring her. But it didn’t help with the fact that Taylor felt like she was in over her head.

They had been brought to a vacant conference room to talk in private. Just Taylor, her father, her three cute friends and one of the greatest capes in the world. Narwhal, the leader of the Guild, was sitting across from her and talking to her. So far, her conversation with the Guild leader wasn’t quite as overwhelming as the one with Legend had been the day before, but it still was a bit overwhelming. Just a bit, she repeated to herself.

“Legend explained to me what happened to you. You have my sympathies,” Narwhal continued. “No one should ever have to experience what you went through.”

“I got better.” It wasn’t the truth, but it wasn’t exactly an outright lie either.

“I can see that,” she said, her focus settling on Taylor’s friends still sitting on her shoulders. “And after learning about the… nature of your powers, I landed somewhere between skeptical and genuinely shocked.”

“How do you think I felt?” Her dad said with a lighthearted chuckle. “Getting woken up by the Le- by Levi, almost gave me a heart attack.”

“I can imagine,” Narwhal replied. “A lot of people had assumed that the Endbringers had simply gone back to whatever place it was they came from, but to know that they were Mastered?” Narwhal chuckled. “A surprise to say the least, and I wasn’t expecting the Master in question to be a teenage girl either.”

“Yeah.” Simmie was perched precariously at the edge of her shoulder, tinnily humming some sort of tune. Benny sat on her other shoulder, his gaze transfixed on Narwhal’s iridescent horn. Meanwhile, Levi remained in his favorite place, protectively curled around her neck. “They’ve been better friends to me in the last few weeks than any friend I’ve had before that in my entire life.”

“They’re good at doing the chores too, I’ll add,” her dad interjected.

“That’s such a strange thing to hear, someone calling the Endbringers friends. Not even the Fallen outright say that.”

“They aren’t, well, them anymore,” Taylor explained. “Or at least that’s how it was described to me. But they still get into trouble, just a little bit.”

Narwhal raised an eyebrow. “A little bit?”

Taylor smiled. “Just a little, yeah.” Thinking back, her friends had gotten a lot better. Those first few days had been a little hectic and chaotic, trying to keep them out of sight from her dad and out of trouble in general. Benny had become fascinated with practically everything that he could wrap his mouth around, and by the end of the first week he had practically covered the edges of most of her wooden furniture from top to bottom in claw and bite marks. His siblings had barely been better in those early days, and several times she had come back home to find her room simply unmade, the three of them having pulled the sheets off of her bed or nudged furniture out of place. A couple of times her belongings had been nibbled on, resulting in her scolding them. Over time though they had gotten better, or at least more behaved after said scoldings.

“Well, speaking of trouble, I was briefed about the other night, regarding your fight with the local Capes. You really managed to capture Lung single handedly? Well, relatively speaking,” she finished with a gesture towards Taylor’s friends.

Taylor nodded, and caught herself from making an off the cuff joke that Levi wanted a rematch. It probably would have come off in poor taste to the older cape. “We worked together to beat him, and the other Villains too.” Her dad frowned next to her, and he was still uncomfortable with the idea that she had faced off against the likes of Lung and Oni Lee, not to mention the Empire Capes. She felt for him, mostly because she hadn’t been wanting to fight anyone in the first place that night.

“Well, that is good to know. Understanding cooperation is going to be important,” the Guild leader explained. “And with that said, I suppose we should talk about why I’m here, shouldn’t we?

“You’re… offering me a job, right?”

“Yes. But, it’s complicated.”

“What do you mean? Miss Narwhal, is it?”

“Just Narwhal, Mr. Hebert.”

“Narwhal,” her dad corrected himself, “I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that ‘complicated’ means it’s about Taylor’s age then?

The hero nodded. “It is. I was expecting your daughter here to be an adult or at least close enough to being an adult, as it would have made some things easier at least.”

“Well, didn’t Legend tell you how Taylor… got her powers to begin with?”

The woman grimaced. Taylor did too, thinking about the month before. “A version of it. I was hoping you two would be able to tell me in your own words.”

“Shadow Stalker,” Taylor spoke up. “She was one of the Wards here in Brockton Bay. She bullied me since we started high school. And then at the start of the year, they did something that caused me to, well, gain powers.” Taylor omitted mentioning the locker to Narwhal in its entirety. She hated even thinking about it. “It was Simmie that saved me from… from what happened.”

Narwhal sighed. “Well, that would explain why Legend asked me to talk to you, as I suspect he felt you wouldn’t want to be in such an environment. For his sake, I hope he turns a keen eye on the local branch. But enough of that,” she said. “Tell me, Miss Hebert, Taylor, do you want to be a hero?”

“Yes, I do.” Taylor didn’t hesitate saying it. Ever since she was a kid, it had been something she wanted to do.

“Well, that is very good to know. Because as I said a moment ago, it’s going to be complicated for you.”

“And what exactly do you mean by that?”

“You might have realized that the Guild doesn’t have a Wards-equivalent,” Narwhal said. “As such, new recruits tend to be adults at the very least. There’ve been one or two exceptions over the years, but even then they were edge cases.”

“I see,” Taylor replied. “So it’s a matter of age then?”

“That, but more importantly, experience.” Narwhal paused for a moment, before continuing. “The point I am trying to make is that members of the Guild have to be autonomous and independent out of necessity. The Guild doesn’t fight gangs or petty criminals Taylor, it fights monsters. We have to be strong and capable enough to fight independently, and without the support of a team.”

Taylor nodded, and she understood that much. The Guild, while based in Canada, was an international force, in contrast to the Protectorate that was primarily focused on America. All of its members were functionally Independents, in the broad sense of the term, although there were a few members that were also members of the Protectorate. “Well, I kind of have a team all the time,” Taylor replied, reaching up and scratching Levi under his chin. “But you’re right about me being inexperienced, I haven’t really been a cape for very long. The other night was my first outing.”

Narwhal chuckled. “Well, your lack of experience is an issue obviously, but one that can be easily mitigated with time and mentoring. Thus, what we do from here is dependent on input from one of my teammates.” Narwhal paused for a moment, the silence in the room almost deafening. “Weird, I expected her to be here by now.”

“Who?”

Narwhal opened her mouth to answer, but was interrupted by a knock at the conference room door. “Ah, that’s probably her. Come in.”

The door opened, and yet again, Taylor was mentally floored by being in the company of yet another legendary hero. It was a feeling she was starting to get used to.

“I do hope I have the right room?” The newcomer spoke, and Taylor recognized her immediately. It would have been hard not to, what with her distinctive, dragon-themed power armor.

“Dragon, we were just talking about you,” Narwhal spoke to the power armored cape. “Glad you could join us.”

“The pleasure is mine, ma’am. And apologies for my slight lateness, I stopped for a moment to talk with Armsmaster.” Dragon cut an imposing figure with her suit of armor, and she had needed to duck to step through the threshold into the room. As the stories went, her armor and costume were constantly changing, and no two suits of armor that the legendary Tinker wore were ever identical. The armor she was wearing now was a little smaller than her typical suits, but nevertheless featured her iconic blending of medieval knight and orienatal, fire-breathing serpent. The draconic helmet looked around the room, before settling on Taylor. “And you are Tiamat, I presume?”

“I am.”

Dragon was about to say something else, but everyone in the room suddenly became aware of a high pitched keen, centered on Taylor’s left shoulder. Simmie was totally focused on Dragon, and was literally squeeing at the sight of the Tinker. In a blink of an eye she darted toward the hero, flitting this way and that and around her, before smashing headlong into Dragon’s chestplate, her tiny arms and wings spread out to hug her. Dragon seemed amused at least, as she carefully scooped up Simmie into one of her gauntlets. Simmie willingly let her, enthusiastically singing and chirping as Dragon brought Taylor’s tiny friend closer to her face.

“And this is…”

“Simmie,” Taylor introduced her. “She’s my friend.”

“I see.” Dragon seemed to scrutinize Simmie, who managed to fit neatly into the palm of her gauntlet. She floated out of Dragon’s hand, flying up to wave enthusiastically at her. Tinker! Hello! She chirped.

“She says hello,” Taylor translated.

“Interesting,” Dragon replied as she reached up to scritch Simmie on her feathery head with a single finger. “She is oddly cute and endearing.”

“And they’re also supposed to be on their best behavior.” Simmie almost sulked, before floating back to land on Taylor’s shoulder.

“Right.” Dragon turned to look at her dad. “And you are Daniel Hebert, her father, correct?”

“That I am.” Danny stood and held out his hand. “Danny is fine though.”

Dragon took her dad’s offered hand and shook it firmly. “I am here because I asked Narwhal if I could be allowed to join this meeting, as there is a mutual arrangement that I can come to with your daughter.” She released his hand, before turning to address Taylor. “Miss Hebert,” she said the name correctly this time, “Do you prefer your cape name, or actual name?”

“Taylor is fine. For now, at least.” having a proper cape name was something she was going to have to get used to. Although she had to admit, the more she heard it repeated and the more she said it to herself, the more her name was growing on her. Through her mom she was more than a little familiar with various mythological creatures and the mythology of the classical world in general, so the name’s meaning was hardly lost on Taylor. And if she was being honest, she had been a fair bit motherly to her trio of tiny and adorable monsters.

“Taylor it is then. A pleasure to meet you and your minions.”

Taylor just smiled as she curled an arm up to pat Simmie. “They’re not so much minions as they are friends.”

“Basically Taylor,” Narwhal continued, “If you are interested in joining the Guild, then it would be beneficial if you were properly mentored by another member. To that end, Dragon actually offered to volunteer to help in that regard.”

Taylor blinked. “Really?”

“It would be a start, yes,” Dragon said, walking around the table to stand by Narwhal. “As I understand it, you might not be willing to leave Brockton Bay. Well, some time ago, I offered the local ENE Branch assistance in the form of one of my suits stationed in the city, to help out on a case-by-case basis if needed.”

“And I take it that my daughter is such a case?” her dad asked.

“Not exactly,” Narwhal answered. “But it did provide an opportunity to grease the wheels so to speak, and in more ways than one.”

Taylor thought about that, the implications. Powerful people were concerned about her, and were reacting accordingly. Would they force her to leave her home if the worst came to it and she wanted to stay? She was pretty safe with her friends, but if someone got to her dad? Taylor didn’t want to think about that.

Along her neck, she felt Simmie brushing up against her, her soft and quiet coos working to reassure her. Maybe she could get Simmie to make something for dad, to help protect him? It was something to ask her friend about when Taylor had the time and privacy.

“I see.” Her dad sighed, before continuing. “How is this going to work? Legally and otherwise?”

Narwhal nodded. “Put simply, your daughter would become a trial member of the Guild, with full membership pending my approval,” the hero gestured toward Taylor. “Of course, I am for one confident in your daughter’s abilities. Given time and training, I believe Taylor is more than capable of standing on her own two feet when the time comes.”

Her dad chuckled. “Quite the sales pitch.”

“Oh? Is it working?” Narwhal smiled.

“That’s up to Taylor, I believe.”

“Yeah,” Taylor said. “I assume there’s going to be a lot of work, and paperwork too.”

“Well speaking of, I intend to go through that with your father today. Or at least the beginning of it.” Narwhal gestured to Dragon, who reached into a compartment within her armor and pulled out from within a surprisingly normal looking yellow manilla envelope. The Tinker handed it off to Narwhal, who proceeded to open it, producing from within a thick sheaf of paperwork. Taylor only glimpsed the front page, and the font was too small to make out any words from across the table.

“I’m not going to have to sign a whole lot, am I?” Taylor couldn’t help but ask with a grimace.

“Oh, probably not today,” Narwhal replied cheerfully. “This is merely an initial draft that I want to go over with your father. Mr. Hebert, I presume you are familiar with contract law?”

“I am,” he said. “This one’s a bit more high stakes though than the typical ones I deal with. I’ll also need a copy as well.”

“Of course.”

“Taylor,” Dragon spoke to her as Narwhal and her dad looked at paperwork, “How about we leave the two of them? Unless you wish to stay, that is.”

“Dad, are you going to be okay?”

“I’ll be fine kiddo. Besides, don’t you all have something you were wanting to do?”

“Yeah.”

“Speaking of, I believe that they are ready for us downstairs,” Dragon said to her.

----

Power testing. Taylor still wasn’t sure what to think about actually going through with it.

“So, what is it exactly that I- we will have to do?”

“Not a lot initially,” Dragon explained. “Two members of the research team here have set up an area in the training room to conduct the initial rounds of tests. While you’ll be participating, it’s your friends that are of the primary interest today.”

“Oh, okay.” Taylor understood that much, and it would make sense that the PRT would want to know exactly what her friends could do, as well as their limits. “I haven’t had many chances to really do much,” Taylor explained. “With them, I mean.”

“Suffice it to say, that is going to be changing after today.” Dragon led her through the PRT, down a few floors on the elevator and then through a double door and into what was obviously a training room. The walls and most of the floor were lined with thick rubber mats, and the far wall was dedicated to a wide variety of training and exercise equipment. To Taylor, it was difficult to imagine that they were in fact inside of an office building with how large the room was. It likely took up most if not all of the given floor.

“Doctors, is everything still set?” Dragon addressed a pair of lab coat-clad PRT personnel, one of whom nodded back with a confirmation. “Excellent.” Dragon gestured toward a large table, covered with a large variety of what was the equipment needed for her and her friends’ tests. On closer inspection, the various apparatuses seemed eclectic and random. Taylor noted one device that resembled some sort of press, and another that resembled a miniature treadmill. Taylor realized that besides the Director, a few armored agents and the heroes she had met so far, the two PRT researchers were the only others she’d seen so far.

“Dragon?”

“Taylor?”

“Where… is everyone?”

“Oh? Right, you probably haven’t been told yet,” Dragon spoke. “The Director apparently ordered all non-essential personnel away.”

“Over me?”

Dragon nodded, her head tilting as if she were reading something in her helmet. “There were security concerns, obviously. There’s only going to be a few dozen essential personnel on site until lunch, when the rest are now cleared to return.”

“Oh.” That made a lot of sense. Despite her repeated assurances that her friends were harmless --- well, mostly harmless --- the Director and Armsmaster would have probably wanted to play it safe like that, just in case. And there would have probably been a panic, if people found out that her friends would be coming to their workplace, despite her assurances they were on their best behavior.

“So, what exactly are we going to be doing first here?”

“Just the basics for today,” Dragon answered. “The idea here for today is to test their physical attributes, strength, toughness, speed, agility and the like while in their, ah, compact states.”

“I see.”

“While there’s standard equipment for testing each of these and more, your friends do fall outside of the standards in regards to dimensions, specialized instruments had to be procured. So, we’re going to start with their strength and endurance first,” Dragon pointed toward one of the devices, the device that to Taylor looked a lot like a small pneumatic press. It looked a lot like examples she’d seen at the machine shops run by the Dockworker’s Union. The contraption was little more than a pair of heavy steel plates, one of which was affixed to a pneumatic jack. “Taylor, which one do you think would like to go first?”

“Benny?”

“Rawr!” Crush! Benny hopped off of her shoulder and face planted onto the table with a cheery roar, before hopping up and waddling over to the press. He stepped up onto the lower of the two plates, looking up at the upper plate above him as he did.

“Surprisingly obedient,” Dragon observed. “How much do they understand in terms of speech?”

“I haven’t had any issues with communicating with them, if that’s what you mean. They understand me for sure, and a friend could kind of glean what Benny and Simmie are saying. Then there’s my dad, but I think it was less communicating and more, well, Dad being Dad.”

“What about, what was her name? Tattletale?”

“Oh. Well, she explained to me that her powers were helping her understand them.”

She thought back to her conversation the day before with the other girl, while she tried to understand how her Friends ticked. “A friend seems to think that they might not quite understand spoken English, but more the intent of what is being told to them. Her words, not mine, if they make any sense in the first place.”

“Interesting. That’s something to investigate in depth in the future.” Dragon pressed a button, and the press powered up. Nearby, the two PRT researchers had clipboards, and were both quietly observing the ongoings, both clearly content with letting Dragon take the lead here.

The upper plate of the press began to descend toward Benny, who looked up at the approaching slab of metal with curiosity, and Taylor was also aware of Simmie and Levi watching as well. The plate touched Benny's head, and the motor whined as the plate was briefly halted for a moment. But just a moment before it resumed its downward motion as it tried to squish her friend.

“Benny, try to hold it up?” Taylor asked.

“Rawr!” Not Crush! Benny planted his stubby hands into the upper plate, and again the motor changed pitch as it worked harder. Benny held the plate there for another minute, until the press shut down with a whine.

“Impressive,” Dragon said. “Off the scale. Well, of this apparatus anyway.”

Taylor blinked. “Is that good?”

“This press can exert five metric tons of pressure per square inch, so yes, yes it is.”

“That’s a lot.”

Dragon chuckled. “Indeed.”

Levi and Simmie were next. Like Benny, Levi had little issue halting the press at first, although he was quickly overwhelmed at just a few hundred kilograms. As the plate retracted, Taylor noted ten little holes in each of the plates, where his claws had dug in.

Dissatisfied, Levi said. Water?

“Can Levi go again? He wants to use water to help.”

Dragon hummed. "I was wanting to test their powers later, but I’ve already obtained a baseline as it were. I will allow it.”

Taylor nodded, and once more Levi returned to between the plates. Only now, a number of drops of water were circling him, seemingly condensed from thin air. As the plate descended and Levi’s claws rose up to meet it, so did the droplets. This time he lasted longer, although he was overwhelmed at about a ton.

Satisfied, Levi stated as he stepped out of the press.

“Your turn Simmie,” Taylor said to her littlest friend.

Simmie nodded, floating down and into the press. She spread her wings out between the plates, holding them fast as they tried to crush her. Taylor could somehow sense her using her telekinesis. Even with it though, she was quickly overwhelmed, and flitted out from between the plates before they could come close to crushing her.

“That’s not a lot,” Dragon observed. “Just a few dozen kilograms. Was she using telekinesis by chance?”

From the way Simmie was pouting, the answer was yes. “Well, the bigger they get, the stronger too.” Taylor didn’t know how that would apply to Simmie, but she was of course there to find out.

Dragon nodded at that. “Something else to take note of for the future. Overall, it would seem that Benny is the strongest one among the three. Well, at the moment at least. Would you agree with that assessment, Taylor?”

“Yeah, he seems like that to me. Although they all have their individual strengths.” Levi and Simmie’s strengths lay more in their other powers after all, and the strength test at least confirmed what was obvious.

“Well, their speed was what I wanted to test next.” The next apparatus was the treadmill. The contraption was far too small for an ordinary human, but it was more than adequate for Taylor’s friends. “I believe that this device is self-explanatory.”

Taylor nodded. “Levi, how about you go first this time?”

Yes. He easily hopped up onto the rubber track. Again, Dragon tapped a button on the device and the track began to move, albeit at a snail’s pace at first.

“Levi,” Dragon addressed her friend, “Please stay on the treadmill for as long as you can.”

Levi turned his head to look up at the Tinker, nodding in reply. At first he simply meandered along, walking in the middle of the treadmill. Over the next couple of minutes the speed slowly increased, and Levi transitioned from a walk, to a trot, then to an outright gallop as the treadmill beneath his legs became a blur. Taylor became enamored with his movements, his focus dead ahead and the feelings of Determination through their shared tether. After a moment more, the treadmill slowed and eventually stopped, and Levi seemed no worse for wear.

“The treadmill tops out at forty,” Dragon stated. “Impressive.”

“Kilometers?”

“Indeed. Twenty-five miles per hour. Within the realm of an Olympic sprinter, Levi here was easily sustaining that.”

“Well like I said, they get stronger and faster when they get bigger. Maybe Levi can swim faster too?” Levy climbed up her costume to once more curl around her neck, all the while radiating feelings of Accomplishment.

“I am ever more looking forward to larger scale tests. From a safe distance, of course.”

Taylor nodded. “Benny?”

Benny clambered up onto the treadmill, his eye casting about on the rubber surface as it began to move beneath him. He fairly quickly got the idea, and like Levi, he too was soon walking along. Soon the treadmill picked up speed, and his waddle turned into an almost comical trot. At just a few miles per hour he began to lag behind, before reaching the end of the treadmill and falling off and into Taylor’s waiting hands.

“Barely four,” Dragon noted. “Strong, but physically slow, perhaps?”

Taylor nodded. It certainly seemed that way.

“Well, as for Simmie, I have a slightly different test in mind in terms of speed.” Dragon gestured first to one corner of the room, and then to the opposite. At each point part way up the wall were rubber mats facing their distant counterparts. “Simmie, could you float over to one of those mats and then dash toward the other as fast as you can? You may start when you like.”

Yes! She chirped, darting off toward the farther mat. Taylor had to squint to see Simmie a little white speck on the distant blue mat. And then she was gone, a silvery white streak across the room that was too fast for Taylor to track. A whoomph sound as she bodily crashed into the opposite corner mat as a speeding bullet would, said mat caving in from the raw force of the impact.

“Oh,” Dragon said. “Just shy of the speed of sound, by my measurement.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I suspect she can go much faster. Well I say that since the sonic boom in a confined space here could be injurious.”

“Ah.” Simmie in question was currently trying to extricate herself from the hole she had punched into the mat. The mats were in fact not made of solid rubber but filled with stuffing, stuffing that her tiniest friend was now entangled in. A brief moment later and she had freed herself, darting back over to Taylor with a wide smile on her face. As with her other friends, Taylor patted her on her head.

“So, Simmie’s the fastest, in the air at least. What’s next?”

“That’s a good question,” Dragon replied with a nod. “I suppose we could leave it up to you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I initially wanted to focus more on the scopes of their powers and abilities when they are, well, small, but now I am rather keen on examining one of them in a larger state. But before we go any farther down that route, I want to ask. Do they have a, how can I say it, growth ceiling?”

Oh. That was a good question, Taylor thought. If she was honest to herself about it, Taylor had actually never really considered that until now. Probably the largest any of them had grown had been the other night when the four of them had fought Lung. Both Benny and Levi had gotten pretty large, as Taylor had them matched with Lung foot for foot.

The simplest explanation was that she’d avoided using that part of her power for the obvious reason of not wanting to draw attention to herself. Taylor looked up at the ceiling, wondering if any of them would cause damage if she tried to cut loose like that.

“I don’t think it would be safe for me to make them gigantically sized here,” she said. “But I could try to make them just a little bigger.”

“I see. How fine is your control over that aspect of them?”

“It’s hard to explain,” Taylor answered. “There’s these, how can I say it? Notches that they fit into. Right now they’re in the small notch, and I really don’t think I can make them get any smaller than what they are.” Taylor thought about her tethers to each of them, how they seemed to be taut at the moment. She could pull on them, but she’d get nothing back. She could only push. “But I can sort of push them into other notches, into a size that sort of seems, I don’t know, comfortable?”

Dragon was quiet for a moment. SHe turned her head to look at other training and testing equipment in the room. “It’s almost like you’re describing something that can be adjusted, like notches on a piece of exercise equipment.”

“Yeah.” That analogy… sort of made sense. “Or settings on a dial, maybe?” Taylor thought about Simmie, that night when she had experimented a little with her power and transformed her into a child. “Simmie initially had a, well, an adult size? Not as big as her old self, but about your height.”

Taylor scratched the back of her head, thinking about Simmie’s… assets, back when they visited the Boat Graveyard. They had been soft like her wings are, a small, traitorous part of her mind thought.

And now she was probably blushing. “But I kind of made a new notch, if that makes sense? Not tiny like now, but more like a five or six year old.”

Dragon nodded along. “Could you change her size right now? I would like to observe the process.”

Taylor nodded and focused on Simmie. She remembered that the night before, Simmie had made something out of some of her old clothing. It was a matching bodysuit to Taylor’s that more modestly hid her, ah, distinguishing features. No one had even noticed it yet, since it was just a few shades darker than her skin. But now and in the presence of others, it would come in handy.

She reached out, taking a hold of the tether and giving it a gentle push, and she felt that almost intangible energy flowed to her littlest friend. Which very quickly became the biggest as she expanded in size to that of a child, made seemingly even bigger by her dozen wings. Now embiggened, Simme floated over to Dragon, chirping a Bigger! At the armored Tinker.

“Fascinating,” Dragon said. “Is that a costume of some sort that she is wearing? I was going to ask about it earlier.”

Taylor nodded and smiled. “I’m wearing one too.”

“Oh?”

She grinned and focused. Simmie wasn’t the only one that had dressed up for today, so to speak. In a blink of an eye her costume materialized, or perhaps more accurately, simply dropped the illusion of her being out of costume. Once more, she was resplendent in the gray and silver outfit she had first gone out in the other night.

“… Wow. I couldn’t tell you were wearing that at all.”

“Yeah. The three of them made it for me, or maybe Simmie was helped by them?” She wanted to say Administrated for some reason, as that word came to mind as being the most appropriate somehow. But the word was too mealy to use in most cases, even if on some level it might’ve somehow been the correct one to use.

“Fascinating,” Dragon said. “It is almost as if Simmie was…” Dragon trailed off.

“Dragon?”

Dragon shook her head. “I’m just trying to parse what I saw. I wanted to say that Simmie looked like she was… crystallizing, but I don’t think words could properly describe what I was observing across different spectra.”

“Okay.” Taylor thought about it. To Taylor, it almost seemed like things were flowing onto and off of them when they got bigger or smaller, but then again Dragon probably knew a lot more about powers than she did. “So, it’s basically just ‘powers are weird’ then?”

The tinker chuckled. “Yes, they are.” She turned to Simmie, still floating nearby. “Simmie, how about another go at the strength machine?”

Simmie cocked her head with a chirp.

“Well, not with this thing,” she patted the press, “You’re a bit too big for it now.” She gestured over to another device in the room, along the back wall and nestled between others like it. The machine in question looked like some sort of exercise machine, a series of cables and weights connected to a series of hand grips on all sides. “That machine is used for Brute strength testing, and maxes out at ten metric tons. Simmie, do you think you could lift that with your telekinesis?”

Simmie cocked her head. Yep! She chirped eagerly. She floated over to the device, flitting around and inspecting all the different parts of it. Picking one of the hand grips, she reached out with her wings and, with a mere gesture, moved the grip. She let it retract, and a flick of a wing saw pins being relocated from some slots to other slots in the nearby panel.

“Right to the maximum then?” Dragon asked. “No warm-up?”

Nope! She chirped, and with a gesture of her wings moved the grips. The machine audibly groaned as tons of weight were shifted around. The hand grips floated up and down several times, before Simmie slowly eased the weights back to their cradle.

“All ten tons, amazing,” Dragon said. “And I don’t doubt for a moment you weren’t exerting yourself either.”

Nope! Easy! With a chirp, Simmie floated back over to the group. Strong! She declared with a chirp.

“Well, that is some fascinating data. Speaking of, how are you two holding up over there?”

The two PRT researchers continued to take notes, and for the most part had remained in the background. “Oh? We’re fine,” the first said.

“Par for the course, really,” the second finished.

“Good then. And as I understand it, your hazard pay is ten times for today?”

The first chuckled, and resumed note taking.

“So,” Dragon turned back to Taylor, “What about the other two?”

“Oh, right.” Taylor decided that, probably, nothing would go wrong if she sized up Levi and Benny. Probably. They hopped off of her shoulders, landing gracefully and with a thud respectively, as if they were anticipating this. Once more, she reached out to the intangible threads connecting herself to them and pushed, and like with Simmie, they swelled in size. In a moment, they were towering over the others in the room.

“Rawr!” Tiny, Benny rumbled, looking down and pointing at Simmie.

Simmie pouted back, glaring back at her older brother. She squawked in surprise as Benny scooped her up, placing her neatly on his shoulder, much like Taylor did with them when they were pocket-sized. Levi meanwhile remained close to Taylor, rearing back to rest his weight on his hind legs as he watched the others in the room. To their credit, the two men remained calm and collected in their presence. The two really well paid men, Taylor recalled.

“Wow,” Dragon said. “I do find one thing interesting though.”

“Dragon?”

“Some of their features are different,” she explained. “Case in point, Simmie. Her wings used to be random in their positions and size. But now there’s an even number and they are perfectly symmetrical.”

“Yeah, I noticed that too. That’s how she was when I met her.”

“Curious. Are the numbers and placement dynamic in any way?”

Taylor thought for a moment. “I never thought to find out-”

Taylor was cut off as the building shuddered, and the room they were in was plunged into darkness.