“See, right there,” Harv said, pointing out the exact timestamp where people began unconsciously filing out of The Mall. In a matter of minutes, the security footage was practically empty, save for a bunch of guys on motorcycles (in custody) quietly surrounding a trio of shopping teens.

“That is spooky as hell,” Harv’s boss, Ron, muttered, stirring sugar into his coffee. “Do we have a Minder situation?”

“I don’t know. My experts are stumped. They think it might be magic, and if so, we have no idea what they’re capable of. The good news is that if the riders were Minders I don’t think we would still have them in custody.”

“What about their boss?” Ron asked, pointing at the one the seemed to be giving orders and shooting beams of fire from his fingertips as he chased the trio around the Mall.

“He wasn’t there when we arrived. Not sure if he died or escaped. Neither would surprise me.”

“And these three?” Ron said, pointing to the trio of unregistered supers fighting when they should’ve called the police, also clearly out past High Tide curfew and purchasing illegal amounts of equipment.

“We got this kid’s fingerprints off the cans of insulation he left everywhere,” Harv said, tapping a freeze-frame of the kid’s face. “One Paradox Zab, Zau-ack, some foreign word. He’s one of the loaners from Franklin City, and we I.D.ed the rest of his team based on that.”

“Wraith and Hardcase,” he said, tapping the other two.

“Bury it,” Ron said, taking a sip of his coffee.

“Eh?” Harv asked, glancing up at his boss.

“We’re not interested in starting an inter-city incident smack dab in the middle of High Tide. Kid didn’t start the fight, and it’s not worth distracting him from his job on the wall to enforce property damage and misdemeanors.”

“I want you to go inform Paradox we saw the fight and would appreciate it if he and his team ran away and called the police next time instead of defaulting to vigilante super battles. Remind him he’s in our jurisdiction, and in Washington, he’s not law enforcement by right of having a fancy suit.”

“Yessir,” Harv said.

“And send our Minders sniffing after the boss of the motorcycle gang.”

Harv’s skin went cold. “Yessir.”

Minders came in two categories: Wildly empathetic and wildly unempathetic. It was a symptom of constantly feeling other people’s emotions. Either they became bhuddas or they shut themselves off from it entirely.

Unfortunately, the latter kind was more useful for law enforcement, as the first kind had a tendency to let everyone off the hook.

“Can I just…text him or…”

“I know Chase is…creepy as hell, but he’ll be on his best behavior.” Ron said.

Harv sighed. “Alright.”

The detective stood from his desk and began walking down the hall toward their minder’s office. After about half an hour, he noticed he’d walked past Morten Tyrell’s office again.

“Cut it out, Chase,” Harv said, trying to push down the thread of fear in the pit of his stomach.

The hallway evaporated, revealing Chase Currant, Washington PD’s resident Minder, leaning back in his office chair like a throne, kicking his heels as he studied Harv like a predator.

“Took you a while to notice that one. Trouble at home?” the blond man asked, giving him a sly smirk.

That was correct, actually. Marissa was at her wit’s end with Harv’s second marriage to his job, and Harv responded to the stress by working more.

“If you continue to escalate, I have the authority to recommend a sniper team put you down before you lose your sense of morality.” Being able to manipulate people with impunity was often a slippery slope.

“And I have the authority to recommend you take the rest of the day off and get some.” Chase said, clicking his pen and writing on his prescription pad. “You’re wide open to mental influence.”

The Minder tore off the pad and handed it to him, having his name and the date on it, along with ‘get laid’ under the prescription.

“I’ll forward that to your boss to make sure he knows you’re pent up.” Chase said.

“You’re intolerable.” Harv said.

“Thank you!”

Harv shook his head and got to the point. “We need you to track down a super who caused an incident at the mall today. He may be a minder.” Harv handed him the picture.

“Ooh, fun,” Chase said, leaning forward in his seat and eagerly plucking the pic out of his hand and inspecting it. “Nice hair.”

***Perry***

Namor’s Armor of Earth: (Intermediate Difficulty)

Ingredients: Earth Worm ichor, hair of saint Natanya, heavy thread, armor,

Weave the hair of Saint Natanya into a thread, suffuse it in Earth worm Ichor, then use the thread to stitch Natanya’s Oath onto the armor’s inner cloth.

If done correctly, the spell will create plates of compressed earth between the wearer and any attack that would have dealt them damage.

The quality and size of the craftsmanship directly affects the quality of the finished product, therefore the precision must be impeccable, or the armor will be ineffective, giving this an Intermediate Difficulty. It is also difficult to find a hair of the appropriate length, as they’re not being made any more.

Perry was comfortable breaking apart one of his healing spells for this, as extra protection was pretty much the same as extra healing. Maybe even better.

After a half hour of twisting Natanya’s hair longer and longer using his Tinker Twitch while zoning out on TV, he eventually had it where he wanted.

Perry added the hair to a thread and wound the entire spool up before stealing one of Heather’s feathers and plucking a single barb off of it.

Perry’s tongue poked out a bit as he concentrated on the tiny strand of iridescent feather. Up close, it looked unreal, almost pixelated, like a game from the eighties, as individual pieces of the single tiny strand of mox feather caught the light and reflected it back into Perry’s eyes in warm oranges and blues.

Perry held his breath to keep the downy barb still. Perry had to look up the parts of a feather in order to use the right word.

He laid the barb up against the thread and began to carefully spin the two together.

The barb began to meld into the thread, adding it’s glittering iridescence to that of the thread. If this worked out properly, the armor would adjust ambient lighting to maximize visual impact.

If Perry was going to make some Earth Armor, he was going to make sure that whoever wore it was going to look good.

Paradox’s Fabulous Earth Armor

My second original spell, Perry thought, humming to himself as the barb stretched under the reality-warping effect of the tinker-twitch, blending into the spool of thread.

What if it combines with the light aspect to create glowing hot magma up against the wearer’s skin, killing Natalie the first time something would harm her. Perry thought to himself, his humming stopped for a moment. Saint Natanya wouldn’t do it if it would harm the wearer, would she?

I’d better test this thing first.

…I wonder what would happen if I added one of Sophie’s hairs and the Elysian Credo? Perry thought as he resumed his work. Elysian attendants are like less-famous spirits of a similar quality as Saint Natanya.

Perhaps I could drop the earth worm ichor and it would defend via misdirection with a subtle freedom of movement side-effect.

Interesting thought.

Perry leaned over and texted Sophie.

I want to play with your hair.

This is work-related.

Then he resumed his work, getting on google and pulling up an image example of Saint Natanya’s Oath on his phone.

Perry then loaded up the script into a word document with a crisp manitian font and set his phone up in the projector stand above the bolt of fabric he was planning on working on.

His projector took the words on his screen and laid them out neatly on the fabric.

Perry painstakingly measured the individual letters to make sure the lens on the projector didn’t cause any warping at the edges. When he was finally satisfied, he pulled out the wash-away marker and began tracing Saint Natanya’s oath.

Once that was done, Perry loaded the glimmering thread into the modified sewing machine and settled the fabric where he wanted it to be.

Hold on a second, I feel like I’m missing something.

“AH.”

Perry grabbed his tape measure and walked over to where Natalie and Heather were chatting while they cooked dinner.

“Arms up,” Perry said, nudging Natalie’s arms outstretched, where he took the tape measure and measured her arms, neck, bust, waist, shoulders, and inseam.

“Cup size?” Perry asked.

“Umm…” Natalie said, her face beet red.

“It’s fine, I’ll get it off your bra,” Perry said, glancing at the tag under Natalie’s shirt.

Perry looked over at Heather, who was watching him warily. He shrugged. “Might as well make one for everyone. Arms up.”

Perry got Heather’s measurements and went back to the living room to work on the shirts.

Current Attunement: 30

Perry spent the next several hours working feverishly, only pausing to drink water and eat toast to keep his brain supplied with glucose.

Once the clothes were done, Perry stood back from the three sets of garments with a satisfied sigh.

Now, that is awesome. What had been bolts of fabric only a short while ago were now nice leggings and a couple top designs that Heather and Nat had pointed out as being particularly great.

Perry, not being confident at all in his skill at designing clothes had merely sought to replicate things the girls already liked. Besides if I made it just something I liked, then tried to get them to wear it, it probably wouldn’t work.

In a moment of rational humility, Perry had decided to take Heather’s advice about the color scheme and gone with a darker fabric for the clothes.

The lighting on Natalie’s maroon shirt didn’t match the ambient lighting, making the fabric look photo-perfect with tasteful shadows pooling in its frills and folds, giving the lifeless piece of cloth a sense of depth that it shouldn’t have had with the glaring overhead light trying to drown everything out.

Okay, I think the Mox feather is working.

Now Perry had to test it.

He grabbed his T-shirt and threw it on before looking at himself in the mirror.

Perry’s body looked like it’d been photoshopped, with someone artfully enhancing the shadows under his pecs and around his stomach in a manner suggesting he might actually have a six pack (he didn’t). Somehow the shadow gradient on the sides of his body made his waist appear thinner. The shirt brightened his shoulders, making them more prominent and seemingly bulkier.

Wow. Mox feather is unfair. Now to test the actual defensive effects.

Perry walked back into the living room wearing the t-shirt. Nat and Heather were watching a glassblowing reality TV show featuring a glass-based tinker who could make living glass desk toys.

Nat glanced over and her jaw dropped.

She elbowed Heather, who had a similar reaction.

The awkward silence stretched out for an uncomfortable length of time as Silica shouted at his glass horses to obey him.

Finally Perry broke the silence.

“Can I get one of you guys to stab me? Once in the kidneys and once in the neck, if you don’t mind. I need to test its defensive ability on non-covered areas.”

Heather swallowed her spit and found her speech.

“I want one.”

“Yours is in the bedroom,” Perry said, pointing over his shoulder. “But I gotta-“

But Heather was already gone.

“…Make sure it’s safe to wear,” Perry said, sighing. He turned back to Natalie. “So about that stabbing?”

Natalie closed her mouth and cleared her throat. “Are you feeling okay?” she asked.

“Fine.” Perry said with a shrug.

“You’re kinda acting a bit…weird. Your gramma asked me to help keep your head on straight however I could.”

“Oh,” Perry slapped his forehead. “I left my Attunement up. One second.”

Sliding stats.

Attunement 30->22

Stability 5->9

“So, about that stab…bing,” Perry’s words died in his mouth as his brain caught up with what he’d done.

“Sorry about the…looking down your shirt thing.” Perry said, heart slamming in his chest. He could feel his face heating up.

“It’s okay,” Nat squeaked, fidgeting in her seat.

“If it’ll make you feel better, you can stab me.”

Natalie shook her head vigorously. “I don’t really wanna…”

“I’ll stab ya!” Heather said, re-entering the room and doing a twirl. “It’s the least I can do for making me look this good.

“God-damn!” Natalie blurted.

Perry wasn’t far behind. It took a moment for his brain to reboot and figure out what it was doing before the red-haired goddess had appeared. Heather always looked amazing, but with professionally touched up lighting…she looked otherworldly.

“Okay… once in the stomach, once in the neck.”

“How about the outer leg?” Heather said, retrieving a huge kitchen knife. “Seems like it would be much safer to get stabbed there than the neck, and your only criteria was a place not covered by the cloth.”

Perry nodded. “I guess that’s fine. Gotta take off my pants, though, I’ve modified them, so they’re probably bulletproof at this point and might corrupt the data.”

Perry stripped down to his boxers and held still while Heather struck at his abdomen with the kitchen knife.

A wall of earth coalesced and caught the blade a fraction of an inch away from Perry’s skin.

“Wow!” Nat said, watching with wide eyes as the dust faded away into nothing.

“Give it a moment.” Perry said, “I don’t know if there’s a recharge time or not. Best give it the benefit of the doubt when we’re testing the baseline effectiveness. We can do more punishing stress-testing later.”

“Gotcha. Let me know when,” Heather said, kneeling in front of his legs and holding the kitchen knife aloft, Hitchcock style.

Natalie leaned in to get a better view.

Click.

The three of them glanced up as a trenchcoat-wearing fellow with a Washington PD badge on his waist walked through the front door like he owned the place.

The man paused, taking in Heather kneeling in front of Perry with her knife poised to slice through his underwear as Natalie looked on in fascination.

“Do you mind?” Heather asked.

“Oh, ah…Sorry for interrupting,” the detective muttered, backing out and closing the door.