As Dragon's remote left my range of influence, I gripped the USB storage block with all the saves in it that Dragon had given me, and felt. Willing myself to link with the dwarves on the saves inside. Nothing. Damn, I thought to myself, I need to do some !science! to figure this out. I put the USB storage block in my pocket. The Wiki and the DFFD saves would probably still be useful for ideas, even if I was limited to fortresses I personally created, or whatever.

I quickly looked over the area for other intruders that I might have missed. I didn't see any, and relaxed a bit. I little voice in the back of my head poked at my consciousness. That doesn't mean they aren't there. There are capes that could sneak or be just as invisible as a goblin snatcher, like that creepy bug girl from Brockton Bay. She can teleport herself from place to place with her bugs, I heard. I wasn't sure if any of the S9 could teleport or be invisible, so, after a moment's thought I sent a command to my dwarves. A grid of animal-powered watchtowers were scheduled for creation. Masons rushed for workshops. Glassmakers rushed for... Wait. Glassmakers. S9. Wasn't there a... Crap. Shatterbird.

I blew out a long breath of air as I marked everything in the fort made of glass as trash and set up a special glass trash depot. The animal-powered watchtowers were expendable and no dwarves would be around them. Only chickens would be at risk to Shatterbird.

I set the door in the glass-trash depot to open only with a lever, and that lever was in my lever-room, off my bedroom. I felt a gaggle of my dwarves, inactive, near the human tech storage depot, and sighed. The human tech depot was filled with stuff partly made of clear glass and silicon wafers, and my dwarves were confused. I settled for having a stone enclosure built around it, with another door and another lever controlling that other door. Once again, in my lever room. Most human tech would be off limits until the S9 were dealt with.

Two dwarves rushed up and started reaching towards my generator and laptop, and I stopped them. "No, these are mine." I explained.

The two haulers nodded, and ran off to join the work crews moving windows and stone block from underground to outdoor temporary depots for the masons, to improve their building speed on the towers. It would take about thirty minutes to get all thirty towers made and filled with chickens. We had enough glass in stock to finish the watchtowers, and I... Crap. I had set all the glass to trash. I reversed that on enough glass to make the windows for the watchtowers, and my glassmakers started running in different directions, collecting raw green glass.

I could feel the irritation of my hauler dwarves as they carried things back and forth. Sorry guys. I tried to project the thought across the network, and felt a little begrudging acceptance, and a hint of amusement from the gestalt.

I picked up the laptop bag and put it over my shoulder, then picked up the generator by its handle. I was sure it had silicon control boards, and maybe glass panels. The laptop would be the same. Silicon and Shatterbird were not a good mix. She had destroyed Dubai, an entire city, with sand.

Sand. Sand isn't glass. I checked storage, and found hundreds of bags of sand. I designated all the stored sand as trash and directed the haulers to move it to the glass trash storage area. I set up plans for a little computer closet, and monitored the progress of my dwarves as they Shatterbird-proofed the fortress. I hoped.

Urist walked behind me until we passed the artifact floodgate set up as the main complex entrance. When the floodgate closed behind us with a solid thump, we both relaxed and walked a few feet before passing through a drizzle of water falling from the ceiling into a chest-deep pool of water. The dwarves had finished the mist generator and dwarven bathtub. No more tracking blood all over the fortress.

As I finished wading through the chest-deep dwarven bathtub, which was neck-deep on Urist, I suddenly realized I'd messed up. Badly. I panicked briefly until I realized the laptop was in a waterproof container. The generator, however, was not. I am a TARD, I screamed to myself as I looked down at my right hand. The generator dripped water, mockingly, agreeing with my self-assessment as it hung there, suspended in my grasp.

Urist said nothing as he nodded to me, curtly, and ran off towards where he was teaching haulers how to dodge and bite, or something.

Hopefully, it will work after I let it dry off. I stared at the generator, then at the laptop bag. I could only hope Dragon was kind enough to leave me a full charge on the battery.

Shaking my head, I made my way to my quarters, meeting several craftsdwarves as they left, having finished setting up levers and mechanisms for the two new doors I controlled. I walked to the newly-carved computer room and put the computer on the table. After a few seconds staring down at the generator, silently dripping at me, I shook it a little and set the generator down next to the chair.

I may have just doomed my fortress by walking through a dwarven bathtub. I thought to myself with macabre humor. That would have been hilarious on the Bay12 forums, but it was crushing here. I almost collapsed then and there, but sniffled and convinced myself that the laptop might be enough, and the generator might dry out and still run.

I carefully opened the laptop bag, extracted the laptop, and booted it up. I found a real keyboard in the bag, and a real mouse, with a cord. Thank you, Dragon, I muttered to myself. Laptop keyboards and touchpads might be optimal for the size machines they were attached to, but they were still terrible.

The battery was fully charged, and the machine was optimized for most efficient power utilization. Six hours charge. I started looking through files on the S9, with classification ratings, known tactics, psychological profiles. I summoned Urist. It would be far easier to show him and let him read it all. I felt his irritation at being summoned away from training recruits, but I knew that when he saw the information I had here, he would immediately be very happy, or at least less irritated.

As I was waiting for Urist to arrive, kneading my forehead with my fingers, I felt something rough and wet brush my ankle. I jerked my foot away in surprise as I looked down.

A snow-white kitten was looking up at me. "Mew?" After a moment looking at me, it directed its attention at my foot again. I watched with a grin as it wriggled its butt a little in preparation, then leaped and tackled my foot, biting and pawing at my shoelaces. I smiled, then leaned over and scratched its head.

"You're a cutie, yes you are," I cooed.

A powerful feeling came over me, and I felt reality shift slightly. A name inserted itself in my head, and a connection to a tiny mind. Stunned, I looked down. I'd been adopted. "Well, hello, Stalker Ratbane." I said with a grin as I picked up the cutest little kitten in the world.