Chapter 9

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Story Day Eleven, April 16th 2011, Saturday - Dawn

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Taylor woke up with the dawn, as was becoming normal for her.

Sadly, her tent was empty of a certain boy, but she had hopes that would change one day. Perhaps soon, if her schemes with Lisa and Rachel bore fruit.

Sighing over the not-quite loss, the so-called sweet agony of longing, Taylor once more reminded herself that, while she had hopes that could make it better, this camping trip had still been the single best experience of her life. They had been hiking and climbing and rafting together for four beautiful days. Every day there had been new things, from discovering bird nests to look at the eggs inside, climbing over just about anything one could find in the mountain foothills, seeing fabulous views from the tops of cliffs they had just recerntly scaled, discovering they knew how to live off the land... it had been an adventure like none other she'd been on. Girls' camp had been nothing like this.

Jared had taken them through various parts of training. They'd shot every gun in their Terminator kits, not just once but several times for each gun, each day, enough to feel they were beginning to really be familiar with them. So they'd jogged, and shot, and climbed, and swam when they found springs and ponds large enough to. It was still bitterly cold, but as Jared had told them when they'd first set out on Tuesday morning, it was vital they learned how to use all of their new gear.

Use the right ones and the cold proved no problem at all.

Performing a trick Jared had taught them all, Taylor drew her legs under herself in a crouch, in a pose not unlike the Terminator had just having hopped backwards in time (and reminded of that, Taylor quickly switched her clothes back from her sleeping attire to camping gear more appropriate for the day ahead), and willed the change.

Like a living thing, or really good CGI, her little two-person tent flowed from around her to reform on her back, once more the rugged outdoor coat it had started out as.

Jared called this item a Travel Cloak, and explained that on his world, or the world where he'd trained as a wizard anyway, they were regarded as inexpensive but useful tools by the heroes there. Taylor knew from frequent use that the pockets produced more handy food like trail mix than she could ever keep up with, so she (and most of the others) had begun luring birds and squirrels out of hiding with offerings of treats soon into their first day. There was a flask that did likewise for water and fruit juices, and also once per day the coat could become a tent, then turn back again, like now.

Causing the transformation while she was still inside it kept her from having to stand outside in the morning drizzle and get wet before turning it back and donning it manually. She was grateful they had been shown that trick.

She appeared, crouched upon a sturdy branch thicker than her thigh, because it was safer that way. The tents Jared gave them could all be set up in trees or on cliff faces like that, then automatically blended in so, even knowing where they were, even with their Perception skills trained to Uber's superheroic standards, they were all but impossible to find. Luckily, they could collapse it and call it to their hand with a command word unique to each one. Taylor had been forced to do that twice already on this four day trip. As they really were that hard to spot once you were out of them.

Not like anyone would be spotting much of anything on a morning like this.

Reminded of the chill, Taylor reached for her coat's flask and drank deeply of some warm apple cider. Then, after lowering it and swallowing, drank again, this time of hot chocolate, before replacing the flask into one of her coat's many pockets.

It was April in New England. The fog was heavy and thick enough to soak through ordinary clothes, leaving one shivering within a minute or so and dew-dripping wet within four or five. It was also imposible to see any practical distance. Luckily for her, their coats had other powers, for one thing they they allowed those wearing them to see and move through mist and fog as though those obstructions simple were not there - very useful for New England, especially when the weather was like this. Also, Taylor reached under hers, picturing in her mind as she had been taught the weapon that she wanted, then grasping her SPAS 12 shotgun and pulling it out, giving the camp and its perimeter a quick visual check before putting her shotgun away again.

It was a nice shotgun. There were many like it, but this one was hers. She had been ready to switch it out for her Winchester 70 Safari Express rifle at the first sign of any bear, of course. She'd never forget that morning she'd woken up and found an actual bear had wandered into their camp and was eating their leftovers from dinner the previous day. After that, they'd never forgot safe storage again.

And they'd gotten a nice bearskin out of it, despite the scare. Those .458 win mag really put holes in things. Who knew?

Of course, she'd panicked, and used her SPAS-12 shotgun to shoot it instead of the safari rifle, which had not killed it, and she had been standing on the ground, not in a tree at the time, so the 300lb bear had been on her before she could blink, and there had been much roaring and yelling and shouting before Jared shot it with the round that had actually killed it, then levitated the bear's corpse off of her.

Taylor freely admitted she would be dead if not for another lovely bit of kit her boyfriend had provided.

Now, when she woke up, Taylor stayed in the tree tops until she'd had a chance to check over their campsite for any unwelcome wildlife, using both bugs and eyes, because in an early morning fog like this one, that was half mist and half drizzle, most of her flying insects did not want to fly, so it was possible to miss something if she'd just used bug senses. Ok, sure, it would take an unusually clean bear not to have any fleas, but she was not taking any chances, not after the first time.

Filthy animal had nearly killed her. It would have, too, except that Jared had outfitted them all with belts that made them as hard or harder to hurt than the bear was. So it had roared in her ears and batted her around very roughly, but as Jared explained his culture measured armor protection by how difficult it was to land an effectual hit, not just touch or tap you. So the bear had slammed paws into her repeatedly that could have ruptured dumpsters or stove in the sides of cars, and her armor took it, not even bruising her inside.

It had been one of the most frightening experiences of her life, until it got followed immediately by a Heart's Ease potion Jared had thoughfully brought along and generously administered while she'd still been a crying mess, but after the terror and trauma was gone, Taylor could now look back on the experience and admit that parts of it were funny.

Dinah still had all of the killer instincts of any twelve-year old girl, which is to say none at all, so had been filming the whole thing on her smartphone. So they'd gotten some nice shots, including one of a terrified Taylor looking out from having her head within the bear's jaws that, now that the danger was past, actually looked rather funny, like she was wearing the bear's head as a funky hat.

Of course, it would have been anything but funny if that bear had been able to overcome the belt's magic armor and crush her head like it so obviously wanted to. But it hadn't.

Taylor had gotten some pretty spectacular bruises out of the experience, mostly out of having a dead bear drop on top of her, but the magic belt carried healing charges as well, and Jared had taken that as a golden opprtunity to teach everyone how to use them, the recent emergency really helping that lesson to sink in.

In hindsight, once the Heart's Ease had taken the terror and trauma away, the tenderness he'd showed her after made the whole event an experience she would treasure, going into the future.

The day of the bear was also the last day they'd slept with their tents on the ground. It had been up in the trees ever since, with Jared showing them how to invoke the magic so they'd slept as solidly as if on the ground.

And far more comfortably than any bed she'd ever slept in, too.

Taylor sighed fondly, knowing she was not alone in the opinion that the long hours they'd spent each day just talking, not even about cape things, just telling each other about their lives, dreams, and hopes for the future, made this trip an experience she would remember and treasure forever.

She also felt immeasurably closer to everyone who had been on it, like they were real friends.

Which, she supposed, they were. While none were yet as close as she and Emma had been, still, they were close, and each and every one of them had stepped up to help her when she'd needed it. So it counted.

She'd never had so many friends before.

Shotgun safely stowed back in her magic coat, where it vanished like a rabbit going into a magician's hat, disappearing so completely that even if frisked by a police officer they'd never find it, and its bulk and weight having completely vanished, Taylor stood up tall on the branch, then dove and rolled to her feet on the ground, just because she could.

She enjoyed it, too.

They each had Uber's Acrobatics and Climbing skill programs, so they stood a decent chance of chasing a squirrel through the trees and actually catching it. And they never had to worry over putting their foot wrong or getting twisted just the wrong way and injuring themselves doing it, either. That was another property of the belt, something Jared had called Ultimate Athleticism, where they could always put in at least an average performance for their skill level in anything athletic, so would never have to concern themselves over a slip, bad fall, or a turned ankle, or the injuries that followed such things.

And even if they did, the belt could heal them.

It was a pretty spectacular belt. Taylor was of the opinion that just having the belt, with its healing and magic armor, and ability to balance, climb, jump, swim and perform acrobatics in general with the greatest of confidence, made one a pretty decent hero all by itself.

The one time she'd raised the subject, Missy had been inclined to agree with her.

Since that was the only professional heroine Taylor personally knew, she took that as confirmation enough. Although Lisa had pretended hurt feelings that she hadn't asked the opinions of either of the former villains in their party.

They'd all had a good laugh over that one, too.

But Jared had explained that he considered all of those secondary functions to the belts' primary purpose, which was to hold things and serve as a utility belt. A wearer only had to touch something to the surface of the belt to store it away safely inside, and could reach into any one of the seemingly countless pockets and whatever they wanted to retrieve was always the first thing they touched.

It also held just short of three-quarters of a ton, never bulged, always appeared empty, and even frisking them would not reveal anything inside.

Taylor had first loaded in all of the contents of her purse, then her cosmetics (she had gotten that program that turned Rachel from dog-woman to elite fashionista right before their shopping trip on Monday - a shopping trip which she had then used as an opportunity to get well supplied), then, on hearing they were going camping, had gone to the mansion's supply closet and loaded in something like twenty rolls of toilet paper.

Lisa had caught her doing it, then soon after every one of the other girls had done the same.

But then Jared had taken them through routes where they'd had to use every one of the tools he'd built in. Taylor's favorite was the grapple gun and cable spool combination. They'd all gotten pretty comfortable with that one, but you use it right and it almost felt like you were flying as it reeled you up to whatever point you'd targeted.

Of course, use it wrong and you went splat into the rock face of some cliff or other. Then you had to use the belt's built-in first aid kit, that thankfully replenished itself every day.

Jared had them using that all their first day, until the next morning when the bear came. Then he'd showed them the actual healing function. But the 'use it to instantly get better' power only had three uses per day, so if you scraped yourself up on a cliff face, and it was just minor stuff, you treated that the old fashioned way to save up on charges.

Jared had stressed a couple of times that "You save actual healing for actual injuries", and insisted they save the good stuff for anything serious, because you never knew when an emergency might happen and you'd really need it to save a life.

But he did agree to let them pop a charge at the end of each day to clear up that day's accumulation of scrapes and bruises, which also let them remove that day's bandages and sleep easier.

That had almost removed the complaining they'd done about learning to fire the shotguns, and other heavier recoil weapons, with all of the shoulder bruising that had entailed.

Taylor reached into her belt and removed a full sized shovel.

Yeah, it had freaked her out the first time she'd see it, too.

Then she used that to redig the firepit they'd used last night. There was no ash or embers left of last night's logs. Those were magic, too, and disappeared after eight hours, or if they got extinguished, whichever came first. Jared had them douse the logs with water and bury the pit, concealing all traces out of an overabundance of caution before they went to sleep.

Having redug the small pit, Taylor reached into one of her belt's pockets, pulled out what felt like a tangled up handful of sticks, then tossed it down into the pit, where it became a full on campfire, already burning merrily.

This was only her second time doing that, so it still felt new and wondrous.

She then began removing milk and eggs and butter, along with some pots and pans, setting herself up to start on breakfast for everybody. It was different, cooking over a campfire like this, but she enjoyed it, and they were all of them good at it.

Rachel woke up next, yawned and collapsed her tent back into her coat too, went to the stream to wash her face, then went behind a tree where they'd dug a small latrine.

Something the Survival skill they'd all downloaded was adamant about, was "You are always downstream of someone, and upstream of someone else, so the rule everyone had to follow was: never put anything into fresh water that you don't want to drink." So they did not pretend streams were toilets. It was unsanitary, and caused diseases.

Dysentery and cholera had killed more people than all of the wars ever fought, in all of history combined. And those diseases were caused almost exclusively by drinking water that had been contaminated by human wastes.

So they took a shovel and buried that stuff, instead.

City sewers had water treatment plants to handle that kind of stuff. Mountain streams could have another hiker just out of sight around the bend drinking what you just threw in. Some idiots might think that was funny, but being lazy like that killed people as surely as driving over them with your car would.

Either one, the dysentery or the car accident, could be survived with proper treatment. But odds were pretty bad otherwise.

You would think that people who freaked out over how dangerous the gun was, would show far more concern towards the deadly bacteria they were flinging about, that had claimed far more lives than the gun ever had, in its entire history since its invention.

Heck, nuclear weapons had nothing that even came close to the kill counts of dysentery and cholera. But people who had fits over radiation or pollution and demonstrated over climate change would then go use a stream like a toilet and think nothing of it.

The lazy bastards.

Thankfully, dirt naturally had bacteria that were very good about dealing with that stuff, so buried the wastes were not a problem.

Pretty soon Rachel came back and took over for Taylor, who took her own turn washing her face and taking care of necessary business. By the time she was done and came back, everyone was awake and the camp was alive with people packing up, all of them ready to get back to the Belmont estate with running water, sinks, actual toilets and hot showers.

They might have the Survival skills to make a genuine mountain man grunt in admiration, and gear not seen outside of myth, but that did not make the comforts of civilization any less comfortable.

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The hike back took them less than an hour, this despite deliberately not taking the straight route, but rather a meandering path specifically through places they had not seen before.

They did not even use Vista's power for cheating... much.

Everybody was aware that one of Jared's major priorities for this trip, besides bonding as a group and getting used to their new gear, had been to get them more familiar with the area immediately surrounding what was fast becoming their primary base of operations as a cape group.

He explained that if you didn't even know your own territory, you could expect to get beaten by groups that did.

Rachel had been all for it, of course. She understood on a deep and fundamental level that you don't own territory that you don't know anything about. So despite wearing a cute and fashionable hiker's outfit while doing it, Rachel had been by far the most eager of them all to explore this new territory before claiming it as their own, getting dirty wiggling into bits, and generally being as curious as a puppy while doing it.

It did not hurt the dog-cape's feelings at all that Jared's flesh golems had been taking turns while the Sirens were away to use Cranial's chair, teaching themselves skills, and that one which proved almost universal among them now was Handle Animal. This not only helped them to get along with Rachel, understanding her far better than most would, but the golems had also adopted nearly all of her dogs, and were caring for them.

To say that Rachel approved would be putting it a bit too mildly. Her dogs were adopted, useful and happy. She was happy. That several broad hints had been made that they could always use good dogs, so if she found any strays down in the city to bring them up, only rendered her all but ecstatic.

Rachel's dream had come true, that was surely the case, made even more so by the fact that somehow (Jared wasn't saying how yet, just adding that to the pile of explanations to come later, they guessed) his homunculi had managed to change each of Rachel's dogs from the scarred and wounded strays they had been, of every possible size and breed, into fresh, healthy new bodies, all of the same type.

Taylor did not know the breed. Their coats were cream colored, thick and soft, with black facial markings. They were incredible looking, affectionate herding dogs with a thick protective streak. As they had learned from exposure, the breed was sweet and lovely with their families (and especially children, so they had been told), completely calm in temperment; basically calm until roused, but also ferocious protectors of their flocks. They would be confrontational against anything they perceived to be outside of their family, their flock, and their garden. Should anything threaten that they came alive, darting off at great speed to confront it - and perfectly capable of dragging a lightweight handler across a field after them as they did it.

This protective streak had necessitated Jared and most of the girls getting introduced to every new set of dogs as they went from household to household.

Rachel, of course, needed no introductions, as she was the one performing them.

The dogs still knew and loved her, as was appropriate.

They were working dogs, large and very powerful, also fast and agile, and very alert. Inside of a town they'd probably always be barking at the neighbors, but out here with plenty of walled space to run in, animals to watch over, and only basically a village's worth of people to know, they were very calm.

But always sleeping with one eye open for danger.

They also needed, strong, well-trained owners. But that was alright, as the golems were, quite literally, Frankenstein's monsters who had more in common with the Terminator than they did with regular people, and were perfectly capable of extreme feats of strength, even more so than the dogs were. And with Cranial's training, you could not find better animal experts.

They were well matched, and Rachel strutted out of those encounters, as proud as any mother over the success of her children.

It was earned.

The golems had been designed by wizards, the dogs by nature, but both had been employed as guardians for thousands of years, and were well suited to the role. Jared had picked the breed for their reputation as wolf killers, and open willingness to fight to the death against large predators like bears and mountain lions - as they did have threats like that up there, and there were animals to watch over, as the golems had not taken the Handle Animal skill only to keep dogs. No, there were pigs appearing, and chickens, and other animals typical of the small country farm.

That was only a small part of the larger transformation going on, all over Fairhaven.

As they had travelled over the estates, they had seen a fair bit of that happening. Most of the volunteer trees had disappeared from the various lawns, and according to Jared many of those had become golem bodies. The hedges were at least straight in some places, though if anything they were thicker now and even more thorny. Most of the rest of the unwanted mess of unplanned trees had been rearranged into various fruit and nut orchards, and wasn't THAT a story to tell!

That Tuesday morning Jared had taken out a thin stick of wood, like a conductor's wand. In his hands it had transformed into a wooden replica of a ram's horn, of the type they used anciently, and he had blown upon it, sounding a long, low and loud note.

Then the very trees had come alive around them.

As a classic literature nut, and daughter of an English professor, Taylor was familiar with Tolkien (even though it seemed nobody else was - Jared had been overheard to make the nonsensical comment that 'it looks like those movies never got made here'). So she knew what an Ent was - the tree shepherds, the ancient forest guardians of Middle Earth.

And SIX OF THEM had woken up around them when Jared had blown his horn!

Then they had done what the Lord of the Rings trilogy said they could do, awoken the trees around them and commanded them to move - which they DID!

All of the Sirens, sans Jared of course, had been awestruck. Seeing the very forest around them get up and walk had been an eye-opening experience even by cape standards. But getting trees to march and stand in regular lines as orchards, getting the hedges to straighten and thicken up a bit, intertwining their branches to get thicker and taller, and thus form greater barriers, had been as nothing for the Ents, who also went around clearing roads and opening up pathways for foot traffic, not doing anything that hurt the trees or even the forest, but making it far more manageable for humans to live and work there.

The churning roots of those trees in motion, walking along, had also been used to plow several fields for planting, along with gardens, which the golems were even now sowing with various grains and vegetables. Contrary to normal expectations, they were even planting vinyards of grapes, and of course fields of berries of every type and variety.

Taylor had the same Farming skill program as any of them, and that part of her deeply approved of what she'd seen so far, telling her that those who were arranging those fields, what to plant and where, were at least as skilled as she was - which, of course, meant more of Cranial's chair getting used by the planters.

Each day Jared blew his horn he got another six Ents to serve him willingly, and each group of six lasted for twenty-four hours, at the end of their animation period choosing to pose themselves in a pleasing fashion, like paired together as the arch over the entrance to an estate, or something pleasant and useful like that.

The Ents also made for incredible construction machines, assisting the golems like living cranes and bulldozers for clearing roads or repairing the collapsed sections of several houses.

Jared had blown his horn that morning as well as they were leaving camp, so Taylor was assured there were six more Ents out there in the woods, transforming Fairhaven back into a place people could live in - even if it was far more wild still than the original wealthy owners would ever have planned for.

Taylor liked it. It reminded her of what she'd imagined Lothlorien to be, only far better than her own imagination had ever allowed for. But this really was shaping up into the sort of place one imagined Tolkien's elves would have chosen to dwell, even down to little details that most people overlooked, like little cottage farms the elves could get food from.

But they had branches forming sidewalks through the trees, and all sort of fun stuff! Like, there were trees that grew limbs of just the right size, spaced at just the right angles and distance from each other to form a spiral staircase! So adults or even children could literally run up the tree instead of climbing it! And those usually led to said branch sidewalks, but often enough also to entire treehouses big and detailed enough that people could actually live in them!

To say nothing of the scenic overlooks and such, of course.

Every stream, creek, or rivulet of water had been bridged by having one tree on each side grow their roots together, which had been shaped, smoothed off, and strengthened into little foot bridges where people could cross.

Fairhaven was, in every way, still a forest. But it was beginning to feel like an enchanted one, too. Disneyland had not managed, with all of their deliberate and expensive landscaping, to look half so much as a magic kingdom as this place now did.

And Taylor had loved every second of watching it happen.

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They got back to the Belmont estate not long after the morning had truly begun. Even that place had changed in their absence. The golems Jared had brought up had some innate teleporting ability of their own, and they had made return trips, bringing up more golems, and even some of the Dedicated Wrights.

The changes wrought by having that work force present were considerable.

Now constructs were something neglected by 98%+ of players, and even DMs often regarded them as nothing more than yet another brand of pop-up targets for the players to knock down. But if you actually looked into them, the potential for munchkinry was extreme. The number of options people had come up with in sourcebooks for them over the years meant that you could do things you could scarcely imagine with them.

For instance, you could build spellcasting ability into them. Things like, oh, say the ability to cast Mending at will.

The Belmont estate no longer needed any repairs.

Actually, Taylor reflected as they came up the now-cleared driveway into view of the place, this camping trip had been very much a working vacation, as they had hiked from estate to estate, visiting every building in Fairhaven. She had learned there were ninety-six manors, all of them as broken down or more as this one had been. They had been to them all, escorted by more golems, who would become the residents of each place.

And of course there had been more training.

Taylor had to admit that she'd been a little flustered when, on that Tuesday morning, Jared had called on her to find a camera. She'd sensed a test coming, but had not understood it, so had simply held up her brand new smartphone, purchased on their shopping trip the day before.

Then, smiling, he'd shaken his head, and told her 'No, that wouldn't do. They were going to do all of the photography for their claims for squatter's rights that day, and to do pictures they were going to pass off as nearly thirty years old on a camera model that did not exist three months ago would be an unforgiveable mistake.'

She'd blushed. She'd known that. Her Forgery skill considered that basic knowledge. But she had not been thinking.

So he had challenged her to use her bugs to search the house, as the Belmonts had certainly been rich enough to own camera equipment before they had abandoned the place, and whatever they found would almost certainly be exactly old enough to be suitable.

She had never considered using them that way. Cameras in use as surveillance devices she had searched out before, but those all had electricity flowing through them, which generated heat, which she had bugs that could detect. Even better, she had done some experimenting along the lines of Jared's suggestions with her bugs senses and discovered there were no few bug species that could feel electric fields in one way or another. A bumble bee, for example, could detect the electric fields of flowers via the deflections of many tiny hairs on its head and body.

If they could feel the electricity in a flower, they had no trouble feeling out security cameras, or hidden microphones, or a phone tucked into a ganger's pocket, or any number of things it was useful for her to know about.

But an old style camera using film? That was something she'd never thought to look for before that day. It had taken her a while to do it, too. After all, to her bugs it was just another blocky piece of plastic, with some metal and glass. Nothing that mattered to insects very much. And the countless different types of cameras sold over the years had many different shapes and sizes.

So what was she to look for?

After a couple of minutes Jared had taken pity on her and produced a roll of film for her bugs to sample and learn the taste of. In her eagerness, she had literally covered him with bugs, roaches marching up his limbs to get their taste after the flies, fruitflies, beetles and wasps and everything else she could grab had had their tastes.

Hmm, cellulose, and silver, and... chlorine? That's odd, and a kind of gelatin emulsion too.

She'd found three cases with cameras in them within seconds after that.

There had been a couple with autofocus, but those required batteries, which had died, getting all kinds of gunk over the insides of the battery compartment in one instance.

Taylor had been sure that he would go with the older one, with manual focus and advance. But Jared had simply stated that it would add considerable believability to use all three, and proceeded to gently clean all of the cameras with his Prestidigitation spell, and fix up a few minor dings with Mending cantrips.

Then he took out a penny and a bit of copper wire. Releasing the wire into the air he had watched it spin around very quickly into loops within loops, until he very quickly had a small electrical transformer which he attached to the penny, then insulated, and slid into the battery compartment.

Taylor could not even recall who'd asked, "What's that?"

But Jared had explained that his penny was related to the question of how he'd managed to get electricity into the house, and promised more of an explanation later, but that this would serve as a substitute battery for the camera.

Since then, they'd spent hours each day setting up the false evidence trail in order to claim squatter's rights on all of Fairhaven. Most every house had their own cameras, which they used as often as possible to add authenticity. Jared also had a spell he called Silent Image, which was able to create purely visual illusions that he used as backdrops for all of their photography, using old almanacs along with records of what the weather had been like way back when these photos had supposedly been taken, so the pictures would match up with the historical facts as much as possible.

He'd also taken a substantial haul of old newspapers and magazines out of the water each morning with that trick of his, restored them to like-new condition, then had the residents of each house they were claiming hold those up, showing the dates while posing for the photographs.

They did a half dozen sets of photos for each year, for each golem making a claim on a house or other property: New Years, Easter, the 4th of July, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, plus whichever day had been picked as that golem's pretend birthday. So a half dozen dated pictures per year, plus a bunch of others doing ordinary things so it was not just a parade of dated photos.

It was all quite involved and complex, as the golems had to appear to age gradually through the years these photos had supposedly been taken, they had to be wearing different clothes each time, the lighting had to be different in each to reflect that time of year, and a whole bunch of other things that, thanks to the skills he'd arranged, they'd all handled like pros.

Soon they'd fallen into a routine, and it had even become enjoyable.

Most of the prep work had been handled by Jared's homunculi flying on ahead. They had previously prepared three-ring binders showing what the weather, the lighting, etc. had been like in Fairhaven on each of those dates over every one of those years. They had gone through old catalogs showing what clothing styles were available for sale, so they knew what would have been worn, and the homunculi had put all of that together in storyboards they had drawn for each picture, at each site. Since the little constructs could cast the illusion spells needed, there had been little for Skysaber's Sirens to do on their camping trip except hike from place to place, shooting photgraphs.

Jared had produced a half dozen Hats of Disguise for the golems to wear while having their photographs taken, so they could, in an instant, change their appearance to reflect a different age, or hairstyle, and have the illusion alter what clothes they had been wearing appropriately, so they did not even have to wait for the actors to change their makeup or costumes, just show up, take the important photographs, and go.

It had been an intense four hour block each day to get everything done, but they had enjoyed it. Some days had run long, and others had gotten cut short by mutual agreement, but all in all they had gotten all of the important stuff done on enough houses they could lay claim to about half of Fairhaven already. The rest of the subdivision they planned to be finishing up the work on over the next few days at a much more sedate and relaxed pace.

The photographs had all been scanned, then loaded into albums, along with the other supporting documents they would be submitting like mail they'd had to forge, including bills and magazine subscriptions supposedly delivered to those names at those addresses.

The Brockton Bay Public Library did not get computerized records until fairly recently, so there was a plan afoot for the golems to all have library cards there pre-dating the computer records, along with a fairly minor mission to sneak in to the library basement where they kept the old records and insert the proper supporting information. Gym memberships were to be done likewise, and a whole bunch of other documents that would prove long-term residence, but be very hard to disprove or deny as most of those businesses had been chosen because they'd gone out of business in the intervening years, so the records no longer existed to disprove their claims.

Bureaucracy around the world had been forced to learn to deal with having huge chunks bitten out of it periodically, mostly by the Endbringers destroying cities, and all of those records vanishing with them. But also gang attacks and superhero battles would destroy the odd bit of property that nobody thought was at all important - until they discovered that it had been where some vital bit of government accounting had been located.

There are different words for each different kind of government. A Plutocracy is ruled by people of great wealth. An oligarchy is ruled over by a small group of supposed elites. A Matriarchy is ruled by women. The word 'Bureaucracy' literally means 'Ruled by desks', which while funny from one perspective, becomes less so once you consider that it had long been the rule in modern society that the higher up in whatever social strata you climbed, the bigger your desk had to be.

But while other forms of government required great wealth to rule, or be part of a small, exclusive group, or to be of a certain gender, a bureaucracy ran on paperwork. And it did NASTY things to the smooth functioning of that bureaucracy when tons, literal tons, of records suddenly went missing on an irregular basis.

The US had tried to have centralized deposits of records from time to time to act as a countermeasure for that. The largest and most successful of such attempts had been gathered in New York... right before Behemoth hit the city, destroying everything.

So the forensic bureaucracy, which spent incalculable sums of treasure and human effort in an attempt to track everything, kept having Endbringer-sized holes torn through its net, leaving billions of perfectly legimate transactions untracked, with no way to recover any of the paperwork that had once existed to cover them, and thus no way to disprove any false ones.

Unsurprisingly, this made it a LOT easier to slip some fabricated records into that mess.

The packages prepared by Skysaber's Sirens were meant and prepared to hit the suspicions of government like a wrecking ball, blowing through resistence, while being unassailably valid, to all appearances. And, if need be, they would hire a few lawyers to shepherd it along, to move it through from filing to completion.

But Jared had specifically had all of these things prepared in book form, so he could get Lisa to read them via that Scholar's Touch power of his, checking them over for any weak points or errors. And while mostly they had done alright, on occassion they had made a few. The errors were all pretty small, like falling too easily into patterns of always taking certain photos a certain way, so they all looked just a touch too alike. It was all stuff that would pass an ordinary inspection, but Jared wanted the packets able to pass a very close inspection by true experts, so even small errors like that had to get redone.

Then they could take care of filing all of the paperwork on their next trip into town.

Taylor had been surprised by how important the hairstyles for each photograph had been, because while Jared had chosen some of the freakiest looking homeless people imaginable for the male golems, for the female ones he had selected nothing but supermodels.

It was weird, especially in combination, the freaky looking men along with the exceptionally beautiful women. But then, Jared had a weird sense of humor, so that fit well.

Still, as important as that was, they had not allowed it consume their entire camping trip, just a few hours each day. The rest they had spent as they liked, hiking around and playing silly games, cooking over campfires, and then just hours spent talking.

The long hours just talking remained Taylor's favorite part, even as they rushed inside to get at the hot showers.

OoOoO

Jared walked into his room, calling out, "Optima Sigma, any messages?"

On the table by his bed, the smartphone set in its charger there leaped up and transformed into a little robot. "No, master. But several items of news you'd asked me to watch for."

"Let's have them," Jared called out, getting his clothes and things ready for his shower.

There were D20 rules for something very much like the popular cartoon franchise Transformers. They were off-brand, of course, as he imagined getting an official license could well have been hellish, considering the crossover possibilities. But they came close enough to the real thing, and one of the possible homunculus types for D20 Modern spellcasters was a mechanical one.

Well, magic items could be stacked, giving one the function of many, so he'd had no trouble combining the two. So now he had a mechanical homunculus that was also a Mechamorph, that was also his smartphone. That was good because a spellcaster is ALWAYS recognized by any constructs he has created, and it saved him the trouble of having to cast a Ghost Sound cantrip, or use the spell allowing his hand to serve as a cellular phone, whenever he wanted to call someone.

Machines controlled by levers or buttons, like a typewriter or a turn signal in a car, he could control because the machine did not have to sense *him*, it only had to sense its own buttons or levers moving, and he could push those around physically. So he could use an ordinary keyboard, mouse or a trackball to control a computer, no problem.

Touchscreens, on the other hand? Those were a problem. Those were not searching for the mechanical movement of a key or mouse ball, those were seeking out the electrical current fluctuation caused by the disturbances in their own field by his finger making contact. That was trying to detect him directly, instead of just letting him move a lever, or something, then letting the machine detect THAT.

So his own Machine Invisibility prevented him from owning or using a regular smartphone.

One of his constructs on the other hand, was magical, and more intelligent than most people, came outfitted with the full suite of human senses like taste, touch, sight and hearing, and most importantly, could sense him as its creator.

Besides, adding on the Sacred Guardian template made a construct a legitimate member of his religion, which made it possible for him to use Shield the Faithful metamagic to exclude any members of his religion from the effects of a spell, and thus be perfectly perceived by his own machine - and none others.

Optima Sigma bowed a little, and replied, "Of course, Master. The plot to convince the public that Coil has attempted to not only kidnap a Ward, but to sell her to the Fallen has proceeded as you had planned. The Fallen did respond to what they thought was Coil's offer, and a meeting did take place between the Fallen and Coil's mercenaries - genuine ones believing they were acting under his orders, escorting a tofu dummy of Vista you had supplied. As planned, news of the meet was leaked to the heroes, who did attack, attempting to rescue Vista. As predicted, Vista's tofu dummy was destroyed by the Fallen during the fighting, rather than let the heroes reclaim her. A state funeral is scheduled for Thursday this week. Legend will be speaking."

The little robot paused. "The event has drawn widespread international attention of a highly negative sort. Thanks to leaks to news agencies you had previously arranged for, depictions of Coil have largely been accurate."

Jared smirked. So Coil's name and reputation had been besmirched on the international stage now, as someone willing to stoop lower than even most villains were willing to go. While true, his character was that bad, having people know that about him gave some pretty hard limits to who would be willing to work with him.

Cutting off Coil's access to new allies was never a bad plan.

Optima Sigma continued, "The plot to intercept Armsmaster's shipment of Tinker supplies would have failed, and had to be scrubbed. However, Lisa had prepared her assistant, Prima Machina, with an alternate."

Jared nodded. So long as he had been creating little Mechamorph smartphones, there had been no reason to keep that strictly to himself, so everyone on the team had gotten one.

They had all of the capabilities of the original state-of-the-art smartphone, plus all sorts of extras. For one thing, if an authority figure were to get the idea to confiscate one, once unobserved the little robot could transform and effect its own escape, returning to its master.

Also, something had to be said for having a computer interface that loved you and earnestly desired to please you, anticipating your every whim.

They were insanely easy to use. The skill bonuses from using one were considerable.

His little assistant did not stop her report. "The alternate plan was considerably easier to carry out, and consisted of contacting the actual Dragonslayers in Coil's name and using his resources, and employ them for the mission. This we did, and they carried it out with complete success, taking the Dragon suit carrying out the delivery as part of their fee. They were paid out of Coil's accounts, and believe he was their employer. The intercepted shipment containing Armsmaster's order of Tinker supplies awaits your decision on how to proceed."

Jared nodded, transferring his gathered supplies to the bathroom while speaking. "I assume they're in a neutral location?"

"No sir, one of Coil's satellite bases. The same one Vista's body double had been incarcerated in prior to her pickup and shipment to the Fallen," the little droid returned.

He nodded again. "Ok. I really ought to pick that up right away, then. There's always the chance that Coil will figure out we are using his properties to blame things on him. If so, he'd discover those are stashed there, and I'd hate to have him actually own anything we've blamed him for stealing. Yeah, that's more important than my shower. I'll be right back."

He teleported away.

There was a strong feeling of scorn among fans of the Worm serial over Coil going all 'Bond villain' in having a repurposed Endbringer shelter as his home base. It was something that Jared had never understood. What? Did they feel having your superhero base in your mom's basement was somehow better? They seemed to think so. Were they not aware that their own government had, used, and maintained scores of secret bunkers, bomb shelters and underground bases for their leadership?

Ah well. Jared just put it down to one of those things he'd probably never understand.

But Coil was a meticulous planner, and cautious. Such people do not habitually put all of their eggs in one basket. So of course once they'd gone looking using Taylor power, they had discovered rather a lot of sattelite and backup bases prepared by Coil for 'just in case' scenarios, most of them loaded with supplies and awaiting need, while some stood ready to use immediately. It was one of these last sorts they had dumped Vista's tofu dummy in, so where Jared teleported to.

He could tell immediately from the noise that something was wrong. These sattelite bases were normally empty of people and silent as tombs, but he could hear mercenaries moving through the place.

At a guess, something had tipped Coil off that he had supposedly been doing business with the Dragonslayers, and they had made a delivery for him. A delivery he had sent some of his men to confirm or collect.

Well, that wouldn't do.

Jared was standing on an underground loading dock where they had left the bound and drugged Vista dummy for pickup. Now, however, she was gone and what stood in her place was a large, armored box about the size of a 10ft shipping container. Those weighed more than a ton empty, and as he recalled, could hold nearly ten tons of cargo. So even with his ridiculously pumped up caster level, there was no way that he was teleporting that out of this place under the 50 lbs per caster level limit of a normal teleport. Special measures would be called for.

At least he could see several scorch marks on the box where the Dragonslayers had burned or blasted away the security and tracking devices Dragon had embedded into the thing. The lack of a lock, and the loose open doors strongly suggested they had opened the package to get the ones inside as well.

He opened the doors to check. It was packed inside, nearly full, and there were indeed very precise, very surgical blast marks on each of the boxes. Many had even been opened to dispose of additional hidden trackers inside, but otherwise the contents were undisturbed. But it was so close to full they must have unpacked it, then repacked it, to remove all of the devices.

The way they had been removed suggested the Dragonslayers had known exactly what they were looking for and where they were removing it from, and he found himself grudgingly appreciating their professionalism.

It did pay to be thorough when you were directly opposing Dragon, of all people. And the Dragonslayers would not want to burn a wealthy client like Coil by leading Dragon directly to his door, via failing to remove all of her tracking devices from a delivery, as that kind of bad service put mercenaries like them out of business.

Reputations for doing things like that get around, you know.

A quick Sense Elements cantrip revealed no active electrical currents inside, followed by an Augury, assured Jared that this box and its contents were safe to transport...

... Aaaaand that was when Coil's mercenaries chose to come back this way. Jared had been assuming they had made their way in one of the other entrances and were working their way steadily through, clearing the building systematically, which made their distant bootsteps of small concern.

However, apparently they had entered by this same loading dock, and their command group had been hanging out in one of the attached rooms, watching the sweep on the screens.

Quietly watching screens inside of a soundproofed security center made for enough penalties that he had not heard them there until they opened the door and started coming this way.

Jared quickly cast Invisibility.

He quickly learned from careful listening to the orders being given that Coil was overseeing this from a distant location. He had apparently been tipped off when the Dragonslayers checked in on him to see if he was pleased with their delivery, so he had his men here checking on it, and doing a routine check of this sattelite base at the same time.

Now, they were getting ready to move it.

The loading dock had a flatbed parked near it. They used that, backed it up, loaded on the armored box that three of Coil's men had just used paint sprayers and stencils to paint over and remark so it looked totally different to before, complete with stuffing putty into the blast marks and painting over them, so it was just one more anonymous box getting shipped somewhere.

They got it on the flatbed, then put a tarp over, covering it, which they then very professionally tied down.

Amused, Jared invisibly got under the tarp and rode with them. He'd still like to steal this shipment, but would not mind visiting Coil's real base, as having been there would make it much easier to teleport there in the future. In this desire, he got frustrated, however, as soon after leaving the sattelite base the truck got pulled over.

Would the police ever DARE in this town?

He peeked an invisible head out and saw it was heavily armed Federal agents manning a roadblock. Only two of Coil's mercs were in the truck. They had changed uniforms to be just simple truckers, although they did have concealed pistols on them, and it looked like they were going to try to bluff their way through the checkpoint.

Well, well, well.

Suddenly getting an idea, Jared shrunk himself small enough to pass for a seven or an eight year old boy, and made himself look very Japanese. Then changed the appearance of his outfit to a fair approximation of the deceased Oni Lee's costume.

It was time for some fun.

After all, Coil did not have *nearly* enough enemies yet!

Surreptiously, Jared cast Weightless Cube so its area covered the box holding Armsmaster's Tinker shipment just as the Feds pulled the cover off, so the tarp flew away dramatically.

Then he dropped the invisibility, so he, as an elementary school version of Oni Lee appeared, as if teleporting on top of the crate, and immediately said something in rapid-fire Japanese, that roughly translated as, "Behold! I carry on honorable father's mission! This tribute now belongs to the mighty dragon Lung!"

Then a gunshot rang out.

'Mini-Lee' staggered as if he'd been shot in the heart, and vanished, the box and Armsmaster's shipment going with him. It was possible, as the several tons of Tinker supplies in their armored box had no weight while inside of the Weightless Cube spell, so it was perfectly possible to teleport them out, carrying them to a place of safety in that situation.

It was also dang funny, because before making his appearance Jared had led off with a Suggestion to one of Coil's mercenaries that he should draw his pistol and point it at any teleporting threats that should appear.

The gunshot was a Ghost Sound cantrip, but by the time anyone figured that out, Coil's men would already both be arrested. Coil would be mad at Lung about the stolen delivery. Lung would hear about it, and likely conclude that his former lieutenant had a son no one had told him about, who probably triggered on hearing of his father's death, and on discovering he had powers had been trying to carry on the original's business - only to get killed during his first attempt.

The loss of a replacement for Oni Lee would do a lot to make Lung really, really upset at whoever was responsible.

And if Lung did not figure out the man holding the gun was employed by Coil, they could leak it to him.

Thus, Coil and the ABB would now have a serious grudge against one another, making the Merchants the only gang in town that did not have a simmering feud going on with Coil.

Hmm, might have to look into getting them involved with this, too.

OoOoO

Jared had done some teleporting around town, again under invisibility, and had determined that the Feds were out in force. They had agents all over the place, in some cases supported by the National Guard.

But, more importantly, the Feds were camped in force around the city government buildings, which they had apparently caused to open despite this being a weekend.

This was a golden opportunity.

Having double checked again that nothing had been done by Coil's men to let them track the Tinker supply shipment, Jared confidently teleported back to the Belmont estate with it, aiming to put it in one of the big rooms they were currently using as storage, then just a bare second later ran back out, holding his nose to stop the bleeding, and asking the girls milling around on the ground floor, still unpacking from their camping trip, "Were you trying to make Hugh Hefner blush? Why don't they have any clothes on? I distinctly recall making you dress each decoy in clothes!"

Lisa waved. "Sorry, my bad. We put all of the decoys in there after we could not get any of them moving, or activated at all; so I thought we'd strip them all down so Taylor at least could use them as dressmakers dummies to weave clothes on. But we'd only just removed the latest sets a few minutes ago. I guess you did not see the threads the spiders were weaving over them for the new outfits?"

"No, I saw them. That little material, though, and it looked like lingerie more than anything," he complained.

"And the spiders?" Lisa lofted a disbelieving eyebrow. Surely that had to be turn-off, seeing spiders over everything.

"Drow do that in all of their porn, and they plaster that over everything, their equipment, their buildings, everything. You can't help but see it all over the walls of their cities. Invade one and you'll see," he answered mildly, still holding his bloody nose. "Drow are experts at being erotic and making you want to puke at the same time. The spiders were a strong reminder."

"So why the nosebleed?" Now she was genuinely curious.

Jared continued to put pressure on his nose, and reached for a tissue Missy was handing him from over twenty feet away. "You'll forgive me for being a little ill-prepared to catch an eyeful of a couple hundred of you girls naked."

"Is that a request?" Lisa answered back evilly.

"I have no problem getting you ready for that," Rachel reached for the hem of her shirt, about to lift it off.

"NO!" Jared shouted, waving his hands defensively. "No time for that now, anyway. I was just checking messages on my phone and found out Coil had his hands on the supplies from Armsmaster's shipment. So I went to fetch them, and nearly arrived too late. Then, while I was collecting them, I discovered the Feds are all over town. They've set up roadblocks and checkpoints, even got the National Guard turned out. But they've also got the city offices open, and busy. Now, what's the best time to pull a scam you don't want someone to notice?"

"Do it when he is distracted," all of the girls answered simultaneously. This was a common question in their training with him.

"Right." He replied. "And right now, the city government is as busy as it's ever going to be, taking care of whatever business the Feds have them open on a weekend dealing with. So, now is the perfect time to slip something through and have it go unnoticed by the general bureaucracy. So, if we should get our squatter's rights claims in now..."

"It'll be decades before anyone checks those files... if ever," Missy answered seriously.

"Letting us own all of Fairhaven, and better still do it unnoticed." Jared replied. "Lisa? How soon can we have those faulty file packages repaired?"

The blonde Thinker gave it a moment of thought. "Give it another half an hour and we could have about three-quarters ready. Most only need a photo or two redone. For the rest?" She glanced around at their group. "Four hours, if we rushed it. Maybe half an hour less, if we get lucky."

Jared nodded, then declared. "Let's put a rush on it. We'll probably never get another opportunity like this one. Let's make the most of it."

The girls looked at each other, then began to get ready to go out again.

OoOoO

Story Day Eleven, April 16th 2011, Saturday - Eleven AM

OoOoO

In the end they spent several hours repairing and cleaning up packages they'd meant to do at a more relaxed pace, but it really was the prefect time, as while the bureaucrats were distracted by 'more important' business was always the perfect time to file something unnoticed.

And it only got better when those bureaucrats were distracted for more than one reason, like being about to go to lunch.

Jared popped back in to town to slip into the appropriate government buildings and cast Charm Person on several government employees. Getting one employee to believe you are their best friend tells you all sorts of information, like who the real movers and shakers are, the people who can actually get stuff done. Then once those people become your friends everything flows so smoothly and easily. Documents get stamped with approvals after barely crossing over the appropriate desks, and they can be moved between exactly the right desks, going in the perfect order, as fast as a light jog.

Jared was able to ram those document packages all of the way through the approval and filing process. Several people left late for lunch, but they were already so swamped with work their offices were open on a weekend so that wasn't too unusual. Jared then erased himself from their memories, and there was nothing to indicate he'd ever been there except for some exceptionally efficiently filed paperwork, on a day when people were already handling loads of that on several rush jobs for the Feds anyway.

The rustle of a thick stack of property deeds in his possession as he walked out of that place was very satisfying indeed.

Minutes after he got home, and was once more headed for his shower, Optima Sigma popped up, announcing a call - which he ignored, getting out of the shower fifteen minutes later to hear her announce he had a message from Lex, saying that Tammi & her escort were coming up for a day of shooting and would be there in half an hour - which put them only fifteen minutes out.

Jared found himself staring at the phone, wondering where they even got his number.

OoOoO