He looked at the empty IV bag and asked, "Am I good to go?"
Taylor nodded, "Yes, sir. I'll have supplies and directions made up for you to take pre and post-vial, but for now, I'd recommend no more than one a month. Your brain does get really active after you drink it, and I'd like to see more instances before we make it a regular occurrence."
He laughed, sounding genuinely happy, pulling out the IV's and not even bothering with a bandaid, "I don't think there is any way we'd need to use it more than that. Even if I assume the degradation continues, it would be over ninety-three years before I'd need to drink them weekly." Clearly, he had temporarily used a thinker power there, she felt.
Taylor hummed noncomittally and nodded. Suddenly, his costume was back on. Taylor didn't know if he used a power to construct a costume on the fly or if he had some sort of RPG-like inventory hammerspace power to keep it in, but he stood much straighter than before. He nodded once more at her and said, "Door, my office in Houston."
Taylor waited several seconds after the doorway closed before gathering all the consumable supplies she used and tossing them into the trash. Anything that might have Eidolon's blood or trace DNA samples, like the needles, swabs and IV tubing, though, she incinerated.
After leaving her private office, she found Dinah Alcott walking around aimlessly. She pretty much gave the young girl the run of the base, except for the Traveler's private area.
She had recovered fairly well from the detoxification, but it would still be months more work before Taylor considered her psychological addiction cured. There were treatments that lessened the impact of memories, and she was using them liberally on the girl, who had been inconsolable at the loss of her parents for a week after waking up. Still, she was very resilient.
However, the girl was dressed oddly. She was wearing a costume that kind of resembled an old-style nursing uniform, the kind with the pinafore skirt and nursing cap. She had a domino mask on, as well. Taylor stared at her and asked, "Why are you wearing that? And how?"
The girl grinned at her and said, "Miss Genesis helped me make it. Apparently, she used to be big into cosplay. I want to go out with you today! Where are you going?"
Taylor raised her eyebrows. She didn't bother asking why, as with this girl, it could be as simple as she was bored to as esoteric as she had to, or Taylor might get hit by a bus. Generally speaking, Taylor acquiesced to all of her requests if they were reasonable once she was sure the little girl wasn't working against her interests. She sighed, "I have the final calibration for Armmaster's prosthesis-"
"He's Defiant, now!" the girl complained. Taylor smirked. It would be hard to keep calling yourself Arm-master after the video of Leviathan ripping off your arms and beating you about the head and neck with them went viral. Some people would be totally destroyed psychologically by everything that happened, but it seemed to be a tempering that might make the heroic Tinker even more potent, from what she could guess. Privately, she thought he was fucking Dragon, too, although how either of them found the time, she didn't know.
"-after that, I have an OB consult with Miss Othala," Taylor finished. She didn't expect much out of that. There probably wasn't anything wrong, but she wasn't going to refuse business to do a checkup and tell the woman so.
With the Empire 88 gone, Othala and Victor fell into Purity's sway and were theoretically trying to portray themselves as a heroic team, now. Granted, they seemed to prioritise criminals of certain ethnic backgrounds highly, so Taylor wasn't sure how much they had actually changed. Still, Othala and Victor treated her well even when they were in the Empire, so she would continue to reciprocate, and assuring them both that their future child was likely healthy was a simple matter that could be concluded in an hour or less.
Dinah also had a carefully wrapped box in her hands that looked like a present, complete with red bow. Taylor switched her eyes into non-ionising penetrative scanner mode and frowned as she saw the contents. She asked, "Why do you have one of my sleep inducers in a gift box?"
"It's Defiant's birthday. It's important that he gets this present!" She said, holding her finger against her nose in the British way of signalling the two of them were in on a shared secret. That meant that it was important for either her or my safety, as that was the only thing that Dinah asked her power regularly.
Taylor didn't know how she could know how to give him this thing, but it basically amounted to a game of twenty questions, and the little girl was incredibly good at it. It was why Taylor didn't bother to really ask her that many questions herself.
Taylor sighed and started walking to what had once been Coil's motor pool, which was mostly empty now. The girl followed next to her, and Taylor asked, "Are you sure you don't want to go live with your relatives? He's still the mayor."
She winced and shook her head, "It would be best if I stayed with you for now."
"Fine," Taylor groused and then said, "But if someone recognises you, I'm not letting them think I kidnapped you."
"Don't worry, that won't happen!" the girl chirped, seemingly pleased as they both walked to the white-panelled van that she used when she made house calls.
