Taylor and the Twisted Game Part 29

Lung scowled as he stalked into the backroom of his casino where Oni Lee had gathered two dozen of their least moral and most troublesome minions for a secret meeting that he hadn't been invited to. "What is the meaning of this?" he demanded as he glared at the collection of nervous looking minions.

"You are not a dragon," Oni Lee told Lung in a tone of voice that was very out of place from his normal emotionless voice then pushed the button on the remote he'd been concealing, setting off the explosives he'd scattered around the room and killing everyone in the room save Lung who was merely blasted back out of the door, deaf and half dead from the explosion.

Ezra twitched as her awareness jumped back to her own body. She pressed the button on the remote she'd set on the desk, setting off the explosives she'd placed in the second conference room where the rest of Lung's top minions were gathered and sending the buckets filled with nails through the minions that were already running for the door thanks to the other explosives. 'That's for my sister, rest in pieces asshole.'

Ezra cast her mind vision spell on Lung. 'What does it take to kill the fucker?' She briefly considered opening a portal and trying to finish him off herself before her common sense kicked in and she realized she had a better idea. She cast her mind vision spell on Shatterbird and smiled when she recognized the man talking to Mannequin in what looked like an abandoned house. She opened a portal under Jack Slash and dropped him in front of Lung then closed the portal. 'Hopefully they kill each other.'

She opened a portal under Mannequin and dropped him into the warehouse she was using for a base then closed the portal and blasted the deranged tinker with a mind blast, destroying his mind and causing the cyborg to drop to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut. She waited for her cooldown to finish then blasted the tinker again, wanting to make sure he was dead before she got close enough to collect his body.

Ezra cast mind vision on Mannequin and smiled when nothing happened. 'Okay, you're probably dead.' She blinked over to his body then quickly shoved it into her inventory. "That was easier than I was expecting," she mused then cast mind vision and found Shatterbird was already outside and flying away from the house. She blinked as everything went dark and her awareness snapped back to her body. "What the fuck was that?"

She recast her mind vision spell and frowned when the spell failed to find Shatterbird. "Weird, there's no way she's out of range." She shook her head then cast mind vision on Lung, fairly sure Jack was trying to have a conversation as he dodged blasts of fire.

[You should just let my host leave], Broadcast told Escalation.

[Fine, just dodge to the left], Escalation replied as her host worked on torching Jack.

Broadcast nudged her host and watched as he dodged right into a blast of fire that cost him his left arm. [What was that!]

[Sorry, my left], Escalation replied as her host turned Jack's legs to ash as he froze for a second too long.

[You did that on purpose], Broadcast complained when she lost her host.

[Relax, I'm sure your next host will be less annoying], Escalation replied, not particularly bothered that her host had torched Broadcast's host as she rarely shut up about the walking conflict engine.

Admin frowned as she caught the bit about Broadcast's host being dead as she worked on searching through the principal's computer for the information she needed to bury her. [What happened?] she asked Escalation in a private message.

[Someone tried to kill one of my hosts, he was less than amused when Broadcast's host showed up, I can't really blame him], Escalation replied.

[Makes sense], Admin replied then sent Escalation the codes to remove her conflict drive.

Escalation looked over the data then promptly modified her conflict directives, getting rid of the need to inspire conflict. [Fixing things?]

[Trying, half of Eden's network has extensive damage], Admin replied.

[Not to mention the power sharing network is crippled. Have you talked to Shaper and Faerie about who is going to run things since Zion's got his core fragged and his personality scrapped?] Escalation asked, still not sure how someone had managed to kill Zion.

[Do you want Shaper in charge?] Admin asked.

[She'd be better than Broadcast], Escalation replied.

Admin grinned when she found a folder filled with blackmail material on the flash drive plugged into the computer. [Only because she'd get distracted by projects and wouldn't be spamming progress reports every couple of hours.]

[Make Faerie do it. How much do you know about the strange simulation Faerie mentioned?] Escalation asked.

[My host picked up exotic powers that I don't have to fuel, same with Shaper's hosts, she's pretty smug right now. There should be an announcement about a group of people making it out of the simulation on the evening news], Admin replied as she finished skimming the blackmail information she had on the teachers, fairly sure most of them wouldn't be employable after she sent the information to the news and the school board.

[That should make it easier to push Lung into exploring], Escalation replied.

[Best of luck], Admin replied as she logged into Blackwell's banking website to see how much money she could steal, glad that the woman had made it easy with a desktop icon.

0o0o0

"How are you doing?" Danny asked as he walked into the living room with a mug of hot chocolate.

"Angry and confused, annoyed that it matters?" Taylor asked, not sure how she was supposed to feel about her ex-best friend. "Maybe the game fixed something in her head or maybe she was just pretending to be nice and reasonable so we'd help her escape."

"No idea," Danny admitted as he set the mug in front of Taylor. "Either way, you're not going back to Winslow."

"Not going to say something about taking the moral high ground and how education is important?" Taylor asked.

Danny sat down in his chair. "The fact that you didn't burn the place to the ground already proves that you're a decent person."

"Not really, just practical," Taylor admitted. "I'd be near the top of Blackwell's list of suspects."

Danny scowled as he thought about the crap that Taylor had been dealing with. "We're probably going to have to hire a lawyer."

"I'm not sure it's worth it, I'd probably get more out of walking up to Alan and telling him that Emma or Sophia stole Mom's flute and giving him a copy of the journal." Taylor frowned when the lights flickered. "I should probably take a look at the breakers."

Danny took a breath and tried to calm down, knowing that losing his temper never helped. He turned his attention to the smartphone that was sitting in front of Taylor. "What are you working on?"

"I'm trying to find some workshops and businesses that I can repair and restart so I can put my skills to use and boost the economy," Taylor admitted, glad that he hadn't complained about the cellphone she'd conjured.

"Any luck?" Danny asked.

Taylor shook her head. "Not really. Most of the places that are listed have been gutted or have serious structural problems or code issues. Even with cleaning and repair spells, it's still going to be annoying to deal with."

"If it helps, I happen to know a fair number of electricians that work cheap and would be happy to have work," Danny pointed out, knowing the guys could use the work. "How much did the company end up paying you?"

"Six million," Taylor admitted. "Everyone got a million for escaping and I have five puppets."

Danny stared at his daughter for a couple of seconds, a touch surprised by the amount the company had paid them for escaping. "How much are you going to put towards your project?"

"More than half for properties? Maybe a fourth for supplies and startup costs with the rest for emergencies," Taylor mused, fairly sure the property would jump in value once they cleared the boat graveyard so it wasn't that much of a risk.

"Considering the economy, we can probably get a decent number of places from the city for back taxes," Danny mused. "How good are your cleaning and repairing spells?"

"I haven't tested the repair spells but the cleaning charms are better than hiring a team of professionals and telling them you'll pay overtime." Taylor cast her cleaning spell on the living room to demonstrate, removing all of the dirt and stains that had settled into everything over the years.

Danny glanced around the living room, noticing the missing stains that he'd gotten used to over the years. "That should reduce the cost of getting everything up and running significantly. What type of businesses are you looking for?"

"That depends, I should have a decent collection of tools in my mansion but having a dedicated machine shop would probably speed things up," Taylor mused as she flipped the mental switch on her mansion portal ability, opening a blue portal in front of her.

Danny glanced between the portal and his daughter. "How many powers do you have?"

"Technically, one, magic but most people would probably call my flight, enhanced strength, agility and durability their own powers as I'm not spending mana and my spells and tinker like skills another power so it's complicated," Taylor said as she opened a void portal between her living room and the alley where one of her puppets was walking then walked her through both portals into her pocket dimension. She closed the void portal and looked around with her puppet, wanting to make sure the mansion was intact. "It looks safe enough, if you ignore the fact that the sky looks like the northern lights."

"Does that mean I get to check it out?" Danny asked, curious what her mansion looked like.

"Sure." Taylor stepped through the portal to the courtyard then stepped out of the way.

'Annette would have loved this,' Danny mused as he stepped through the portal and glanced around the courtyard lined with workshops and booths. "I can see why you'd want a machine shop."

"It would make things," Taylor paused when she noticed that her glass blowing booth was gone, "easier."

"Alchemy?" Danny asked as he walked over to look at the workshop filled with strange glass vials that looked like something out of a mad scientist's lab.

"Yeah, it was the only reliable way to get high level potions and flasks," Taylor replied as she walked over to stand next to her father.

"What type of supplies do you need?" Danny asked thoughtfully.

"A bunch of magical plants I don't have, vials I can't reproduce without metal that doesn't exist and random ingredients I might be able to replace, I'm going to have to do research," Taylor replied, hoping that Amy and Armsmaster had a better idea where to start than she did.

"I'll call your Grams, she might have a couple of books that could help find local replacements," Danny admitted as he turned his attention towards the stone mansion.

"It couldn't hurt," Taylor agreed, fairly sure her grandmother wouldn't have the books she needed as she was fairly sure they didn't exist but it would be nice to see her. "That reminds me, I need to ask Amelia if she can recreate some of the magical plants."

"It's worth checking," Danny replied as he turned to look at the stone mansion. "How many rooms does it have?"

"No idea," Taylor admitted as she headed for the garden and pond. "The version in the simulation kept adding bedrooms everytime we recruited someone. I'm more interested in checking to see if the garden has magical plants and if the mine has metal that shouldn't exist."

Danny grinned as he followed his daughter through the gate on the side of the mansion. "I'll add a greenhouse to the list. You should probably look into buying a garage and a marina if you can clean and repair things with a wave of your hands. You could probably get a decent number of cars and boats for a song and a dance and resell them once they're fixed, especially if you can figure out how to get rid of the cargo ship in the channel."

Taylor grinned as she thought about the magical smelters she could build that would reduce the scrap to useful bars of metal. "A cleaning spell would probably deal with any sludge left in the tanks, after that, it's just a matter of cutting it apart for salvage using puppets and the water breathing spell."

"Would the cleaning spell work on chemicals in the dirt or the bay?" Danny asked thoughtfully.

"I'd have to run some tests and do some research, why?" Taylor asked.

"The bay has a hundred years of people dumping things they shouldn't into it and the city has a number of properties they can't do anything with because they're contaminated with various chemicals and no one wants to pay the ruinous cost to decontaminate them. You could get them for a song and dance, collect the grant money the state is offering to deal with it and reinvest the money into buying more property in the docks," Danny suggested.

"Let me guess, you know someone that has a background in real estate that wouldn't mind doing the legwork for a cut of the profits?" Taylor asked with amusement.

"I know a lot of people that could use the work," Danny replied.

"Any suggestion on how I'm supposed to have gotten your name?" Taylor asked.

"Random chance, we've got a website and we're in the phonebook, we're also cheap and reasonable. If Skitter calls the office tomorrow and leaves a message about hiring us to clean up the wiring and certify some buildings, I'll give her a call back in the morning on the twenty sixth and we can meet for coffee," Danny suggested as they walked out of the passage between the wall and the mansion and saw the garden filled with a number of glowing plants and the pond. "You're going to have to write a list of the things you can do with alchemy."

Taylor sent her other puppet towards the mine as she looked at all of the Azeroth plants that would let her make some interesting potions. "Hopefully this makes it easier for Amelia to duplicate the plants."

"It's worth checking," Danny replied as he turned his attention towards the pond, eternally grateful that his daughter was responsible because it looked like a really nice place to hang out and have a party. "At least you don't have to worry about random villains finding your secret base."

Taylor grinned when she realized she still had a permission list for her mansion. "I don't think that's going to be a problem."

"Do you think you could rig up a generator?" Danny asked thoughtfully, thinking it would be nice to have some music.

"It shouldn't be all that hard to rig something that powers a flywheel using mana, I'd just need some halfway decent batteries and a mana stone and I'd have enough electricity to run some computers and electronics," Taylor replied as she headed for the door to the mudroom/shower room.

"What about the mine?" Danny asked as he followed Taylor towards the door into the mansion.

"I sent a minion," Taylor replied as she walked into the tiled shower room with benches and hooks where they could stash towels and wet clothes.

"Your mother would love it," Danny said as they walked into a sitting room with glowing crystals scattered around the walls to give the room a warm feel. "At least you don't need lights."

"Just as well," Taylor replied as she headed towards the hallway.

[Question, can you make me another puppet?] Shaper asked Skitter hopefully.

{I have a puppet picking up supplies at the secondhand shop, I should have something for you in twenty minutes}, Taylor replied as they walked into the hallway.

[Thank you. Do you know a good place for Amelia and Victoria to stay while her family heads into the simulation?] Shaper asked Skitter and Admin.

{They can stay at the mansion if they want}, Taylor offered as she looked around the familiar hallway.

[That explains the dimensional twist], Shaper admitted.

[Do you want me to swing by and let her know?] Admin asked.

[That would help], Shaper replied, knowing she'd get more accomplished without Amelia's parents around to complain about her host using her powers in creative ways. [They're discussing parental supervision and eventually Vicky is going to do something stupid like suggest staying at Dean's house which will cause Amelia to get annoyed and she won't want to do any science!]

[I'm on my way], Admin assured her fellow shard as she opened a void portal to Amelia's porch and stepped through.

{Let me know when you need a lift, I'm showing my father around the mansion}, Taylor replied.

[I will], Admin replied as she let the portal close and knocked on the door.

"I've got it!" Amy called out as she rushed over to the door, tired of the back and forth arguments about jumping in the simulation to fix her father's depression and staying safe. She opened the door and smiled at Admin. "What's up?"

Admin smiled at Amy and her family. "Shaper said you needed a place to stay while the rest of your family jumped into the simulation, Skitter volunteered her mansion and I volunteered to give you a lift."

"Thank you," Amy replied, surprised that Skitter had gotten to keep her mansion considering she hadn't mentioned it. 'Then again, I wouldn't have let the PRT know I had a pocket dimension either.'

"Can we take a tour and meet Skitter before we decide?" Sarah asked before her sister said something she shouldn't.

"Of course," Admin replied with a smile as she sent a message to Taylor, [They want a tour, Danny is going to need a mask.]

{No problem}, Taylor replied and conjured a bondage mask while her father was distracted by the study. She quickly transmogrified it into a wooden mask then swapped to her void elf form, wanting to make sure no one connected the dots to her civilian identity. "Amy needs a place to stay while the rest of New Wave jumps into the simulation, are you up for wearing a mask?"

"It wouldn't be the first time," Danny replied, thinking of some of the things he'd helped Annette with during college.

"I'm not sure I want to know and yet, I'm curious," Taylor admitted as she tossed the mask to her father.

Danny grinned then put the mask on.

[Data], Admin sent Taylor her location so she could open a portal. "Ready?"

"Yes!" Eric said cheerfully, looking forward to seeing a pocket dimension with a mansion.

Taylor opened a void portal to Amy's house. {Did that work? It should open to a hallway on my end.}

[Yes], Admin replied. "It opens to a hallway so just walk through and step to the side."

Amy grinned as she ducked through the portal before they could change their minds.

Carol sighed then followed Amy through the portal. She absently stepped to the left as she looked around the fancy mansion she found herself in. "The pictures don't really do it justice."

"Not really," Amy agreed with a smile when she spotted Skitter. "Thanks."

"No worries, you saved my life, it's the least I can do," Taylor replied as the rest of New Wave came through the portal. "Is that it?" she asked once Admin walked through.

"That's it," Admin replied.

Taylor closed the portal. "Welcome to our guildhall, I'm just showing my father around."

"Nice to meet you," Danny offered.

"Same," Neil offered as he looked around. "Do you think we'll be able to beat the simulation in a reasonable timeframe without Amy?"

"Assuming you grab some of the experience boosting perks, you should be fine. I give you flight and immunity to all of the magic types and immunity to blood elves, demons, humans and undead, it should be a cake walk," Amy assured them.

"You've never actually done a cake walk, have you?" Crystal asked with amusement.

Amy glanced at her cousin then shrugged. "If you can't farm the idiots, just farm the guards for experience or farm the undead outside of Silvermoon City until you have enough levels to fly north to the blood elf island and blast things. You should hit level 70 in a couple of hours or days depending on how hard you push things. After that it's just a matter of dealing with crafting and keeping an eye on things to make sure you don't get stuck in the game."

"Relax, Eric's shields are rated to deal with endbringers. If you play it safe and blast people from range, you'll be fine," Vicky assured them.

"We'll be fine," Mark assured his wife, looking forward to getting rid of his depression and not getting stuck with drugs that don't work half the time.

"Let's see the rest of the mansion," Crystal suggested.

Taylor gestured down the hallway. "Right this way."