infiltrating the court

[msmortal]

The plan is refined and strengthened, contingencies are set to deal with various ways Thorn could've strengthened his defences, Mortal receives a very interesting email concerning one of their mother's contingency plans - namely that her assets have all been either frozen or transferred to Mortal themself, so Thorn doesn't have access to them -, and when Mortal and Promise judge there's nothing more to be gained from further planning they (eat dinner, sleep again, have breakfast, go over the plan once more when it's not completely fresh in their minds so they see if they come up with anything new, purchase Promise a mobile phone and a power generator to charge its battery in fairyland, eat lunch while Mortal teaches Promise how to use that, and) part ways.

On this side of the veil, Mortal gets to work. The first step: getting at least two safe houses, one for their HQ and the other for contact with the place near Thorn's court. They end up getting five, for redundancy's sake. The main HQ is near Seattle, the other four safe houses are in Greece, Russia, Japan, and Argentina. That, and getting the necessary existing equipment, is the easy part - you end up with contacts of the relevant sort when the bulk of your wealth comes from the kind of thing you can get with sorcery. The hard part is getting the various specific bits of technology that don't exist yet, including the the many types of trap and ammunition they'll need. Processing fairy voices with software turns out to be a dead end - apparently they're weird magical superpositions of sounds that make software go ?!?!?!?!? - but everything else, as agreed upon, can be made to spec nicely enough.

It'll take a couple of weeks beyond the one month for everything to be ready. Mortal hires someone who talks very fast.

And after the ball's going, there's not actually much for them to do with their time. They fret about details of the plan, order more redundant pieces of stuff (especially the to-spec stuff, not being mass-produced means they'd better have a lot of it to start with in case anything goes wrong), and have various antsy and anxious and calm and relaxed and terrified and panicked moods. A month is a long time...

At one point it occurs to Mortal that Promise might've decided to run away and not help, and then they'd never see her again and that would be terrible, and why would it be terrible anyway? It's just some fairy, fairies are evil, one must remember that. Even though she wasn't, of course, she was smart and resourceful and moral and ridiculously hot, and if they never see her again she'll never order them again and the tingly feelings won't ever happen again. Except what the heck, what are they even thinking? The answer, of course, is that they want to see Promise again. Why? To save their mother, of course. The only reason being ordered like that felt good was because Science. Of course. Of course.

The month passes-

Comments

[imeanforever]

"Ooh, gifts."

[mrmortal]

"I have a camera, an infrared camera, a motion detector, an X-ray scanner, a radar, a sonar, and a lidar, and want to see which of these pick you out when you're invisible."

[imeanforever]

"...What even are these things, you haven't mentioned them all?"

[mrmortal]

"Camera just records things. Infrared is a light wavelength humans can't see with the naked eye and maybe fairies can't either so it's not implausible that invisibility doesn't cover that. Especially because heat - I also have a heat detector, forgot to mention - is more or less the same thing as light and I think invisibility doesn't turn heat off by default? X-ray is another light wavelenth people can't see, radar detects yet another, sonar works with sound, and lidar light too but in a different way."

[imeanforever]

"Some fairies can see heat but not most. I think the ones that can can see invisible people."

And she turns invisible.

[mrmortal]

So, first apparatus: infrared camera.

[imeanforever]

Promise: is warm.

[mrmortal]

"Okay, can see you in infrared, you are in fact warm, so I guess the heat detector's extraneous. Now the motion detector, I actually got three of them, one that uses light, one microwaves, and one sound."

Out with those!

[imeanforever]

"Should I turn inaudible for the sound one?"

[mrmortal]

"Yeah. It's technically supposed to detect changes in the acoustic field, so I think even the air you displace when you move should be enough?"

[imeanforever]

She doesn't answer because she is inaudible.

[mrmortal]

So he positions the three motion detectors one beside the other, light, sound, and microwave.

"Okay, so, er, they're supposed to beep when you move."

[imeanforever]

She flaps her wings, lifts off a bit.

[mrmortal]

The first one doesn't beep, the other two do.

"Perfect, these are almost toy models compared to the beauties I have in HQ. The others feel almost redundant now," he says, but reaches for the X-ray thing. It's bigger than the other devices, and makes a humming noise when he points it at her.

[imeanforever]

Is that everything?

[mrmortal]

Nope! Radar and sonar and lidar next: the first two work, the last one doesn't.

"Okay, we shouldn't have trouble detecting any fairies that might want to hide."

[imeanforever]

She turns visible again. "Good."

[mrmortal]

"...actually, I wonder how the devices themselves behave if you turn them invisible and inaudible. Presumably you can still see and hear things when you turn yourself so I don't expect them not to, but..."

[imeanforever]

"I can still see and hear things," she confirms. "I don't know if the devices will be able to. Let me have a look at them and we can try it."

[mrmortal]

So he lays them all out for her to have a look at them.

[imeanforever]

And she looks at them and then turns them invisible and inaudible, one at a time.

[mrmortal]

Mortal sets them to record things or activate where appropriate, and walks in front of the motion detectors.

[imeanforever]

They can still "see and hear".

[mrmortal]

"Okay! This is great, I love technology."

[imeanforever]

"It seems neat."