Built To Last

[Visual Pun]

Omake:

While I thought up an excuse why my robot double wasn't, actually, you know ME, and also not a smudge on the wall due to what just happened.

Armsmaster had a cocky smirk clearly visible with his lower helmet undeployed for PR purposes, "Unfortunately, you'll have to come up with another cape name. Ruggedizer is already taken by a PRT hero."

"Wait, really?"

"Yes. He's out of Utah. Not a Tinker, but goes everywhere on a flying carpet. RUG-gedizer."

"Oh..."

"Before you ask, no you can't fight him for it."

She hated that actually was her next question.

"Although we do have a suggested name. Just approved by the PR Department." Armsmaster handed her a folded up piece of paper.

She unfolded it and read it aloud, "DORD?!?"

"Yes, it stands for Department of Redundancy Department. Personally, I think it's rather fitting..."

The lack of weapons on her body double had never been so apparent until now.

__________

Danny said, "It's OK, we can brainstorm something."

"The guy does flying-freaking-carpets and the best he could come up with was RUG-gedizer? I oughta turn villain and fight him just on general principles."

"Now don't be too hasty..." Danny advised her, "Let's go back to basics... What was the first thing you built? Aside from the Tinker fugue."

"A Washer-Dryer that will keep working probably into the next millenium."

Danny grinned, "Well... there's your answer, right there!"

"What? You're saying that like it's obvious. I made an appliance that'll never break down. How is THAT an inspiration for a name?"

"You call yourself..."

Spoiler

...Maytag.

 

[John-Smith]

What did Kaiser expect?

Click to shrink...

There are a couple things that should be taken into consideration:
1. The law that Ruggedizer mentioned apply to everyone, but canonically very few actually use it. It would be easy to see this as a threat / intimidation tactic without any intention to actually follow through.
2. The Unwritten Rules play a factor as well, Emmy has had very little "cape" culture / life, she's only knowingly interacted with three capes for an extended period, and even that was just for an afternoon of work. And we know the 'rules' aren't super well known to civilians (given Taylor didn't know), so it's entirely possible she hasn't felt them much.
3. The Empire has had very few actual losses for over a decade. They've faced Tinkers with years more experience than Emmy has, with much more support than she has, including facing or at least managing a cape who took on an Endbringer 1-on-1 and solo'd the entire local Protectorate. They have a LOT of reason to believe that Emmy can't and won't be a significant threat.
4. Emmy has never shown significant attack prowess. Extreme defense? Yeah. But attack? No, even her takedown of Squealer was more a show of defense or utility - hanging on, not being damaged, sure strength but that's in power armor. Expecting her to come out with missiles that can nuke the entire Empire in one go? hard to believe.

All that adds up to making their actions a bit more believable. I'd say it wouldn't be as easy in the future, but Emmy is going to scale up, so facing stronger enemies will be nullified by that.

 

[We Just Write]

C: As a side note, someone posted a canon PHO omake over on SV

 

[We Just Write]

Defendants charged:

• Sophia Hess: 1st Degree Murder, Unlawful Imprisonment, Several Counts of Assault, Several Counts of Larceny, Several Counts of Destruction of Property, Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress, Conspiracy Charges for the above, Resisting Arrest. Tried As Adult!
  
  
• Emma Barnes: 1st Degree Murder, Unlawful Imprisonment, Several Counts of Assault, Several Counts of Larceny, Several Counts of Destruction of Property, Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress, Conspiracy Charges for the above. Tried As Adult?
  
  
• Madison Clements: Several Counts of Larceny, Several Counts of Destruction of Property, Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress, Conspiracy Charges for the above. Turns State's Evidence; Tried as Minor.
  
  
• Principal Blackwell: Criminal Negligence, Embezzlement, Fraud, Conspiracy to Commit Fraud, Tax Evasion
  
  
• The rest of Winslow's staff is a chaotic mess of finger-pointing, negligence charges, and plea bargains.
  
  
• Sophia's Handler (not publicized): Criminal Negligence, Fraud, Conspiracy to Commit Fraud.

Trial Setup:

• Sophia, her handler, and Blackwell are considered a flight risk, and receive no bail.

• Emma gets out on bail. She is immediately sent for a psychological evaluation at her defense attorney's recommendation. The summary of said evaluation basically amounts to: this girl is fucked in the head and needs serious help.
  
  
• Madison's bail is really cheap on account of turning State's Evidence.

• The defense waives their right to a speedy trial, the prosecution doesn't. The trial date is set for February 1st.
  
  
• Difficulties finding jurors who've been living under a sufficiently soundproof rock delays things until the 9th.

Opening Statements

• The Prosecution summarizes their case quite clearly: Sophia, Emma, and Madison engaged in a vicious campaign to ruin Taylor Hebert's life, culminating in her vicious murder in the locker, which was only survived due to Parahuman intervention. Blackwell and the Winslow administration were criminally negligent in allowing this to take place. Also Blackwell did a bunch of financial crimes.
  
  
• The defense for Emma and Sophia claims that the evidence is insufficient to prove that Taylor was murdered or tormented by the accused beyond a reasonable doubt. They also claim that Emma is not culpable for her actions, as she was legally insane (incapable of telling right from wrong) for most of her time at Winslow.
  .
• Blackwell pleads guilty in exchange for a lighter sentence. Quietly, she also throws Sophia's handler under the bus.

The Prosecution Presents the Following Evidence:

• The recordings of Taylor getting shoved in the locker, clearly showing Emma and Sophia doing it, along with Madison's tangential involvement. The defense challenges these recordings as being illegally obtained, but the legality and admissibility of the recordings is quickly proven. The jurors are provided with barf bags for viewing the recordings; a few of them need it.

• The Medical Examiner's autopsy report of Taylor's corpse. Even aside from the flute impalement, Taylor's injuries would have been life-threatening, even with immediate medical attention. Several extremely nasty strains of bacteria and fungus were also found in the wounds.
  
  
• The undeniable fact that Taylor's locker was turned into something absolutely horrific. A couple of the unfortunate public sanitation workers who had to clean up that mess are called in to testify, along with a microbiologist detailing all the horrible pathogens that were growing there. A few more barf bags are filled.
  
  
• The testimony of Madison Clements, who corroborates the protracted bullying campaign, the willful ignorance of the school administration, etc. Though she also notes that the flute becoming a pair of impaling spikes wasn't in the original plan, at least not as she was told it. Madison's story holds up on cross-examination.
  
  
• Taylor's bullying journals, which largely corroborate Madison's testimony. Some of the journal evidence is ruled inadmissible in court, while other parts are kept.

• The dismal results of Winslow's building inspections, which largely agree that it would be cheaper and more efficient to tear Winslow down and build a new school on the lot than to fix everything wrong with the current building. Asbestos, black mold, problems with the boiler, the list just goes on and on.

• Winslow's financial records; both the "cooked" books that were shown to the school board, and the accurate records that Blackwell kept for her own reference.
  
  
• Testimony from assorted Winslow students and staff about all the low-level shit that kept piling up in the course of the school's operations.

The Defense Presents the Following Evidence:

• Taylor is alive, and therefore cannot have been murdered. This throws a wrench into proceedings that takes a good four days to sort out, with the only other legal precedents of similar situations not quite being applicable. Eventually it is ruled that as Taylor left a corpse behind she was murdered, but she isn't legally dead on account of, you know, not being dead. A bunch of extremely precise wording is used to avoid implicating Ruggedizer as a defendant, since everyone agrees that would be incredibly wrong morally, not to mention flatly incorrect.
  
  
• Emma's psychological evaluation indicates that she may be unfit to stand trial, and was quite plausibly legally insane for most of her time at Winslow. This is found to be logically coherent, and the prosecution can't manage to poke any major holes in it.

Closing Arguments

• The prosecution rips most of the defense's avenues to shreds, thoroughly proving the validity of over 90% of their very damning evidence.
  
  
• The defense manages a very compelling argument that Emma is not culpable due to insanity, but is forced to concede most other points.

Jury Deliberations and Verdict

• The Jury deliberates for a solid five days, before eventually delivering unanimous verdicts on the various defendants (not counting those who plead guilty):
  
  
• Sophia Hess: Guilty on all counts.
  
  
• Sophia's Handler: Guilty on all counts
  
  
• Emma Barnes: Insane.
  
  
• Assorted Winslow Teachers: Mostly guilty; Mrs. Knott was found innocent. Took the longest, just due to the sheer number of defendants.

Sentencing

• Sophia: A 251 year prison sentence. Quietly the PRT takes over at this point and shuffles her off to a high-security prison for Parahumans, though notably not the Birdcage.
  
  
• Emma: Go directly to the mental hospital. Theoretical possibility of release someday.
  
  
• Madison: Juvie until 18, followed by a lengthy term of community service.
  
  
• Sophia's Handler: 6 years in prison, permanently blacklisted from government jobs.
  
  
• Blackwell: 2 years in prison, and an obligation to pay back all that lost tax revenue.
  
  
• Assorted Winslow Staff: Mrs. Knott keeps her teacher's license.

 

[We Just Write]

L: There's a lot of arguments in the worm fanfic space about the nature of Tinkertech. Is it real technology that works all on its own, or basically a set of props that the Shard makes seem to work? It's our view that it varies heavily depending on the individual Tinker, with quite a few different possibilities for how much of the work the Shard is doing. For simplicity, we've listed four "brackets" along the scale of things.

Bracket 1: Trust me, I'm an engineer! (with epic skill and epic gear!)
At the near end, the technology these Tinkers make is just that: technology. It works on its own, and if properly explained could be reproduced without many issues, since the Tinker in question fully understands not only the operating principles, but the manufacturing process as well. At this level, all the Shard is providing is the needed information. Tinkers generally don't start here due to lack of the infrastructure needed to build their tech properly, but some can build up to this point. Dragon and Ruggedizer have both managed to reach this point on account of having heavily built-up bases jammed full of highly advanced manufacturing equipment; Ruggedizer actually jumped the gap to Bracket 1 damn near immediately on account of her starting fugue resulting in a stuff-making machine.

These two also have specialties that are particularly applicable to reproducibility; Dragon already works with reverse-engineered tech by default so has a pretty good idea how to explain her stuff to people, meanwhile Ruggedizer's tech is jammed so full of diverse redundancies that the damn thing will probably still work even after you blowtorch all the incomprehensible bits.

Bracket 2: Shard-Assisted Fabrication
The stereotypical Tinker also produces fully self-contained real technology, but with a catch: they can't make it properly due to lack of infrastructure, and their power fills in the gaps here and there to do part of the production work. The Shard actively conceals this fact from the Tinker, leaving them with a distinctly incorrect view of how their technology actually works. This in turn makes it damn near impossible for the Tinker to properly explain how to reproduce or maintain their technology to anyone.

In theory these Tinkers' technology could be reverse-engineered, and these Tinkers could in theory eventually build up the infrastructure to make their tech properly. In practice this almost never happens, largely due to the Tinkers and those around them not knowing it's possible and giving up after a while. Kid Win is an excellent example of a Bracket 2 Tinker, though in this story he's starting to move towards Bracket 1 with the aid of some Reliabuilt lab equipment that lets him make his tech properly. Armsmaster can also be considered a Bracket 2 Tinker, though he's really close to hitting Bracket 3 in some cases.

Most bio-Tinkers fall firmly within this bracket.

Bracket 3: Shard-Assisted Function
Certain Tinkers are kept under a bit more scrutiny by the Entities; either due to their specialty presenting an above-average security risk, or for some other reason. In either case, this marks the point where Tinkertech is actively dependent on Shard intervention to function, and cannot work without it. A good chunk of any given device is real technology, but the critical functionality of the device is offloaded to the Shard, with the relevant spaces inside the device being filled with a mishmash of components intended solely to obfuscate. These facts are hidden from the Tinker in question.

Since the Tinker themselves has no idea how the fuck their tech actually works, they can't explain it for the life of them. And since the tinkertech is all full of gaps, reverse-engineering any given device is a massive pain. Though you can sometimes cobble together bits and pieces of various projects for interesting results, as the Ruggedizer crew has done with the Leet-derived illusion projector. As you might have guessed, Leet fits squarely in this category; in his case the gaps in his devices are to expedite prototyping of novel technologies by not needing to fabricate the whole thing.

Bracket 4: Props Department
At the far end are Tinkers that look a lot more like fantasy enchanters and artificers than engineers. The key difference here is that while the insides of Bracket 3 tinkertech are recognizably a machine (albeit with bits that might as well be black boxes labeled with question marks), Bracket 4 Tinkertech might as well be a cardboard box with "TIME MACHINE" scrawled on the side. Needless to say, this makes it effectively impossible to reproduce without effectively building a Shard from scratch.

Dauntless and Chevalier could be considered Bracket 4 tinkers; they make gear that does whatever the fuck, but it's very clearly not technology in the the conventional sense.

Bakuda is a bit of a special case, ping-ponging all over the scale depending on the precise details of the bombs in question. The more mundane explosives are very often Bracket 1 or 2, but shit like the glass bombs or time-stop bombs are Bracket 3 or 4.

 

[We Just Write]

P: We are now accepting Cape submissions for Manchester NH. I repeat, we are now accepting Cape submissions for Manchester NH.

 

[We Just Write]

(Tanya)

I abruptly snapped to awareness in a parlor. My flight harness was missing, I was completely unarmed, there was a tea set on the table in front of me, and - quickly looking around the room revealed there were no doors here. The woman sitting across the table seemed to be scrutinizing me.

"Tanya von Degurechaff? I am Maria Sykes. I have some questions for you."

I blinked. I had been captured? And I was being interrogated? But this didn't match the known interrogation practices of any of the Empire's adversaries - especially not the communists I had just been fighting.

"How did I get here? There aren't any doors."

The enigmatic Maria took a sip of tea, then answered my question.

"That is classified information. Now, what's the last thing you remember before arriving here?"

That. Under what circumstances was that a sensible question to ask?

"You're hesitating. Please do not make me compel an answer."

"I last remember going to sleep in a foxhole, during combat operations against the Russy Federation."

Maria nodded, apparently thinking for a moment.

"I see you didn't lie. I'm glad you're cooperating."

That was blatant manipulation. But also brought to mind something rather important.

"What will you do to me after the interrogation?"

"That is classified information. I'm aware that answer is distressing, but protocol must be followed. Next question, do you remember how you got here?"

I blinked.

"What. No, I don't know how I got here, aren't you the one who brought me here?"

Actually, there was one tiny suspicion starting to develop, but there were too many other factors that didn't fit.

"That is classified information."

I just kept ruminating on my first death for a whole minute, when Maria spoke up again.

"This concludes the interrogation."

---

(Tanya)
The sudden shift in location was jarring, the uncanny interrogation room being abruptly replaced with what seemed to be an entirely normal classroom. Maria was still here though, and that smile was not encouraging.

"Good news, Tanya. We've determined your existence does not inherently present a security risk. Now to explain some things you found confusing during the interrogation. The interrogation room was a simulated space, as is this classroom. You were there because you suddenly appeared in our citizen manufacture pipeline, tripping the extradimensional interference alarms."

Before I could fully process the implications of 'citizen manufacture pipeline', Maria bowled ahead.

"Considering the dire implications of Neohadea's existence being uncovered by the Warrior Entity, we take absolutely no chances with unauthorized interdimensional access."

That wasn't helpful!

"What do you mean by 'citizen manufacture pipeline'!? This doesn't make any sense!"

Maria blinked.

"It seems I got ahead of myself. Neohadea is a civilization of robots founded to combat a multiversal threat, referred to as the Warrior Entity. One of the new synthetic brains coming off the assembly line abruptly activated before it was supposed to, tripping the alarms. That's you, by the way."

So I'd been reincarnated again. And in a way that immediately destroyed any chance of keeping my status a secret.

"Oh."

Maria nodded,

"Having dug through your mind - including the bits we had to prod you into retrieving with that interrogation - we've determined that you pose no more security risk than any other Neohadean citizen. Which also means said citizenship is available if you want it, along with the rights it entails."

I blinked.

"I really hope that you don't practice conscription."

"We don't."