Brockton's Celestial Forge (Worm/Jumpchain)

[LordRoustabout]

So do to the current global circumstances I found myself with an excess of time on my hands and while confined to my home I decided to try to get back into writing. Initially I experimented with writing exercises using Jumpchain for structure. After a few abandoned attempts I hit one that I was able to run with. After a while I decided to clean up my drafts and post the story. Some of my readers requested I start crossposting on this site and I thought it would be a good idea. I've been lurking for a while so it seemed like a good time to start actually participating in the community.

The mechanics for the writing exercise behind this story is based on random selection of abilities with points earned through word count. The basic power creep is a function of how much is written. Every 2000 words is worth 100CP in Jumpchain abilities. A roll is made every time 100 points are earned and the power is purchased if there are enough free points, otherwise they are saved for the next roll. For the source of abilities I'm using the Celestial Forge, a compilation of Jumpchain crafting abilities from a few years ago that I always admired.

I'll be posting the chapters here regularly until I catch up with the updated for the rest of the story. I've managed weekly updates for the last few chapters and am hoping to be able to hold to that pace.

1 Introduction

It was hard enough being a college dropout in a city with a half dead economy. In Brockton most people were either ignoring the reality of the situation or had given up hope completely. Realistically the only growth industry was cape work, and if you weren't a cape that meant tourism, the PRT, or henchmaning for the truly desperate. Most of the city would have given their right arm for superpowers. Too bad they don't understand what you have to go through in order to trigger, or how the powers you get don't exactly match up with what you dreamed about.

If I thought the current level of what my power was capable of was all I would ever get I would probably be pretty frustrated. Back when I was in college everyone dreamed about being a tinker. When you were in an engineering program in the same city as Armsmaster it was really inevitable. When I finally got powers they didn't exactly match what you'd expect from a tinker. Then again, from what I'd learned most tinkers didn't exactly function on the level of what you'd expect from a tinker.

See, technically I had only made one thing so far. It was a doozy, but still not exactly the stuff heroes are made of. I might have been able to leverage it into some obscure application, especially the secondary effects, but it would have been a challenge. Still, it's not as bad as it could have been. Or would have been.

I'd had my mighty pseudo-tinker powers for all of a week and had not accomplished much in that time. Mostly I'd been focusing on sorting out the mess of my life that had resulted in my trigger event. I wouldn't exactly say bridges were burned, but there were some close relations that it would be awkward to deal with for a while. Triggers don't really fix anything. Well, they might if it's one of the ones that turns you super strong to deal with being crushed by a car, but for anything that has a longer buildup there's no amount of power that is actually going to fix the problems with either you or your life that led to that situation. Accepting that at least let me start to move on.

I was riding the bus home after a grueling week of work. They say there are no jobs in Brockton Bay. That's not exactly true. There are plenty of jobs as long as you're relatively young, clean, willing to put up with abuse from the general public, and don't need to support anyone else or have any serious obligations beyond basic survival. Which is how I was able to land a job as a part time retail worker in the rich side of the city. In a store where everyone other than the manager was part time, since that let you avoid all those pesky benefits that would have to be paid.

It was how I was able to afford a truly terrible apartment in not quite the worst area of the docks. I was currently living in the part of the city they had warned us against when I first moved out of dorms. It at least got me away from Captain's Hill and thanks to my power was just bearable. The apartment was about a five minute walk from the nearest bus stop, which it this neighborhood was a somewhat harrowing experience. The apartment was part of an oversized house that had been divided into five units, which placed mine as a long thin studio apartment. My theory was it had been assembled out of left over space. The fact that it had to be accessed from what must have been a converted fire escape only did more to convinced me. It was clearly a case of 'we have this extra space. Can we get someone to pay for it?'.

I know there were much worse places. I'd looked at what they offered in my price range Downtown and this was totally worth the half hour bus commute. Plus, thanks to my power, it had one advantage.

Once I got home I dumped my jacket and headed for the closet. This would probably wear thin eventually, but for now, after just a week of having my power it was still a blast. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my key.

It was the first thing I built, if I could count as the person who built it. There were two kinds of things I could make with my powers. Things made out of normal material, and things like this. I couldn't recreate the key if my life depended on it, but that doesn't matter because it will always exist. I've essentially made it a universal constant that I will always have this key. Destroyed, lost, or just separated and it will turn up in a few minutes. That effect, and what it could accomplish was enough that if I didn't know the full scope of my powers I probably would have assumed the key and what it could do was everything. Then it would be off to the PRT to let them try to figure out how to brand me as a door based superhero.

I slid the key into the closet door and turned it. Rather than open into a small and musty collection of shirts and winter coats the door revealed a blank white cube of a room exactly five meters on each side. Safe and mobile access to an extradimensional space wasn't a terrible power and could probably have any number of applications. I mean, if I wanted to go villain it would have let me clean out entire stores without anything weighing me down. I was putting it to a much more mundane application.

Right now the cube contained a duffle bag, mattress, work desk, small bookcase, two storage trunks, and an old office chair. There was also a battery lantern on the desk since the lighting level in this area left something to be desired. At least it was dark enough that it was possible to sleep here, and the place had less temperature and odor issues than my own apartment.

I wasn't here just to get away from my living conditions. Aside from the entry way there was a single door on the left side of the cube. Before I headed that way I set up the crude door bar I had built earlier. One downside was I couldn't close the door while I was inside. That was probably a safety measure since I didn't know what would happen if the door I used was opened when I tried to get out, or worse destroyed. I had no intention of getting stuck in here forever, but I wasn't going to let anyone wander in behind me. Between my locked, bolted and chained apartment door and the chunk of steel wedging this door shut as far as I could get it I was reasonably secure. It wouldn't stop most of the capes in this city, but I was thankfully off their radar by virtue of not doing anything superhero related.

I walked through the inner door into my workshop. It wasn't exactly what you would expect when you heard the words 'tinker' and 'workshop'. The place wasn't bedecked with the blistering technology of a science hero. It wasn't even a top quality manufacturing facility. This was more of what you would get from a high school metal shop. There were tools and machinery, but it was fairly basic stuff. Not even a proper numeric control lathe. I was lucky I had a manufacturing component in my college courses otherwise I'd be completely lost here. My high school had phased out shop class long ago so it was only thanks to a single college class offered more as a formality that I knew what I was doing.

Fortunately the place was stocked with materials and safety equipment. Unless I wanted to work with exotic alloys or bring in high tech equipment the whole place was designed so I wouldn't have to go out for anything. That was a very good thing. I don't know if it was true, but there were rumors about people who triggered as tinkers started buying random stuff like loads of silly putty, old microwaves, or cleaning chemicals only to get exposed by various agencies or gangs on the lookout for behavior like that. I had my doubts, since that seemed like it would generate loads of false positives, but who knew how good the thinkers working for people like that were.

I didn't want to end up exposed, especially not with my powers at their current level. So the fact that I had a private, personal, and well stocked workshop was a blessing. It was just too bad I couldn't build anything worth a damn.

What I had produced in my after work hours over the last week was nothing more than curiosities. Honestly it had been more about trying to get used to working with this kind of equipment again. The closest thing I'd made to a useful tool was that door jam, and that was just a matter of measuring correctly and working the right tools. I had rough tinker facilities, but I didn't have any tinker knowledge.

That is, I didn't have any yet.

I closed my eyes and felt out the potential extent of my power. Over three hundred flares of lightning burned in my mind, all but one completely beyond my reach. The only mote I could touch was the single piece representing my workshop. The embers were arranged into twelve general constellations each along a different theme, but I could barely glean what it was at the moment. These were what I was working towards. These were the reason I hadn't given up and sulked off to the Protectorate. These were tinker powers.

Every one of them represented some level of crafting ability, power, knowledge or resource. I could just barely feel them now, but I knew how strong they were. Even the weakest among them was significant and the highest tiers were world shaking. These were hero powers. More than that these were Hero powers, powers on the level of the first, legendary, and unlimited tinker. Powers that would let a person be the kind of technology superhero that used to appear in comic books, not the stripped down nonsense that was currently running around.

There but for the grace of god and all that.

My reach had been slowly building in the week since I got my powers. It was gradual at first, but had accelerated recently. Soon I would have a chance to link to another one of the points of light. The constellations shifted and changed so I had no idea what I would be able to reach, or even if what I had built up would be strong enough for whatever spark swung close at the time. This was the first time this had happened, but being able to feel it coming was incredible. I was lucky to have the level of understanding of my power that I'd been blessed with.

Like pretty much everyone in school I'd taken electives on parahuman studies. There were rumors that the cape population of the city took those courses in their secret identities, and the younger members of New Wave showed up occasionally. They were the cool courses that everyone was interested in. Get a chance to learn about the history of capes, cape impact on society, and theories on how powers worked. With the insight I'd gained since triggering I could say most of what they were teaching was pure crap. That may have been intentional since people trying to self-invoke a trigger event was a nightmare in terms of self-inflicted harm. Some of the other stuff was so far off the mark that I had to wonder if there was an intentional attempt to conceal it. Passenger theory had barely been touched on, and that was mostly to dismiss it. I kind of understood, it seemed ridiculous, and it was a lot more likely that anyone who thought their powers came from an outside intelligence was crazy rather than uniquely insightful.

I was definitely in the latter category. I could feel my passenger's excitement as my reach grew for the final grasp. A mote swung close from one of the mid-sized constellations. My power tried to grasp it, but the energy was too much. The flare of energy spun away and out of reach. There was mild disappointment from my passenger, but not despair. My reach was growing. Another mote would come, and I would be able to handle a stronger power by the time it arrived.

The emotional reassurance of my passenger was probably the most comforting thing in my life. My connection with him didn't go any further than what he was feeling, but that was still incredibly enlightening. I trusted that he had my best interest at heart, or at least my survival. The reason I trusted that was because of how badly he wanted this set of powers complete.

I didn't have much information from my passenger, but I did understand my power. Generally people have a roughly instinctive understanding of how their powers work. Mine were a little more in depth than that. I understood the nature of how powers were gained and what they meant. I knew the name of the power I had, Metalwork Workshop which was from the Toolkits constellation of powers. And I knew the name of the entire array of powers and how badly my passenger wanted it to be complete.

My power, or the array of my potential powers, was the Celestial Forge. From what I could tell it was the ultimate tinker power and my passenger's combined Holy Grail and Mount Everest. His emotions when considering the breath of the powers were complicated, but mostly centered on a longing to see them in action. He wanted this to be completed and was heavily invested in me being the one to finish it. All his guidance and support was for the purpose of turning me into the greatest tinker that had ever existed. I just hoped I could live up to those expectations.

I wasn't likely to see any new powers tonight. I'd completed a circuit of the various pieces of borderline scrap metal that represented my crafting projects from the previous week. A persistent infinitely restocking workshop really was incredible, but without the skills to make better use of it all I had was a hobby room. I checked my watch. It was getting on past six. I had kind of blocked out this evening for dealing with any new ability I got from my power, but that was a wash. That left me some time to prepare for the other aspects of being a superhero.

There's a common impression that tinkers make something of a soft target in cape fights. That might be true for anyone who doesn't show up with power armor or a personal force field, but the fact is most capes out there have no physical boosts at all. Brutes are common enough, but outside of that category everyone is as vulnerable as a normal human. The problem for tinkers is that they have time commitments that keep them from being able to train to the level expected from capes.

See, if you don't have some power that makes training unnecessary the amount of physical conditioning necessary to just survive a cape encounter is insane. Fortunately I had already been running regularly before getting my powers. That was great for endurance, but there was the whole issue of muscle growth and combat skills to think of. I was lucky enough that my neighborhood had a solution to both of those problems.

I left my workshop and closed the door to the extradimensional space. The transition from pristine room to dingy apartment was stark, but at least my apartment got slightly more livable now that I didn't need to allocate space for sleeping or storage. I headed to the small kitchenette area and grabbed a high protein snack before gathering my workout gear and leaving the apartment.

Another load off my mind thanks to my powers, not storing anything of value in the apartment made me a lot less concerned about leaving it. I effectively had access to all my worldly possessions anywhere. As long as I could access any kind of door and I'd never have to worry about them being compromised. There were tinkers who would kill for that kind of security and my powers provided it as a near afterthought.

My destination was only a couple of blocks away and was in a fairly active part of the neighborhood. This was an area of the Docks where the people who still lived here were holding out hope for the city turning around. It was an endearing investment in the community that probably only persisted because there was minimal value to be found here for any of the local gangs. I was heading for an old building dating to the fifties that probably hadn't been meaningfully updated since then. Still, having a boxing gym within walking distance that only charged forty dollars a month for membership was worth the potential fire hazard. Actually, fire was unlikely considering this place was probably stuffed to the gills with asbestos.

I checked in and got changed. The place was practically a time capsule, but it worked for what I needed. I had no illusion about being 'fight ready' after less than a week, but I was getting into a decent routine that would generate meaningful improvement eventually. I grabbed one of the jump ropes for a warm-up along with a set of push-ups, squats and crunches. I spent about fifteen minutes practicing the basic combinations from my introductory lesson before switching to the heavy bag.

I pushed as far as I could but there were hard limits I was still struggling with. Endurance from running didn't translate perfectly to this kind of workout. Eventually I was catching my breath with a water bottle while half collapsed on one of the side benches. That was when I saw Doug wandering over from the main ring.

The best way I could describe Doug was if someone took Mickey from the Rocky movies and scaled him up to about six foot five. The guy was pushing sixty now but had apparently been an absolute terror in his youth. He had transitioned into coaching with all the grace of a rabid bull and would typically serenade the entire gym on deficiencies in your technique in a voice worthy of a drill sergeant.

He was in something of a good mood when he approached me, apparently having shouted himself out during his earlier training session. "Joe! Good to see you again. Too many young guys vanish after their first class."

"Well you know," I took a sip from my water bottle. "Don't want to embarrass myself the next time I see Mr. Laborn."

He nodded at that. "The man knows his boxing, though he's probably a good part of why guys vanish after their first class."

The gym gave a free training session with signup. Given how intense the coaches were I think that was a strategy to weed out anyone who wasn't serious about this kind of thing. Doug was a good example of that, but Mr. Laborn was on a whole other level. "He around tonight?"

"Na, doing something with his kids. You looking for a practice round?"

I emphatically shook my head. "Not even close to ready for that."

"Stick with it and you'll get there." He nodded contemplatively. "We don't get too many guys from the college down here. You're engineering, right?"

I suppressed a wince. I had danced around my enrollment status when I filled out my application. Dropping out of college hadn't been a smooth process and until recently I had still held out some hopes of finishing my degree.

That was gone now.

"Was engineering. College didn't work out for me."

"Sorry to hear that, kid. What happened?"

No one would ever accuse Doug of having an excess of tact. That said there was something about the guy that made him easy to talk to. There was a decent chance that no matter what I said he would tell me to suck it up and head back to school, but that was just his nature. There wasn't real malice behind it.

He also wasn't going to let this go without some kind of answer. "A bunch of stuff. College, well it looked better from the outside. Like, it's supposed to be this fresh start where everything's different, but you just run into the same problems as the rest of your life."

He snorted. "Problems never go away. They're part of life. You just get to pick the window dressing."

That brought a weak grin to my face. "I guess. Things just kind of fell apart for me. Can't really name a single thing that set it off."

"Uh-huh. Was it a girl?"

"What?"

"With guys your age it's usually a girl. Or there's a girl somewhere in the equation. That what happened?"

"No." Doug's expression said he didn't believe it. I let out a slow breath. "Ok, I had a pretty bad relationship that fell apart spectacularly, but I didn't drop out over that."

"It's never only a girl, but I've seen dozens of guys your age trying to get their lives together. There's always a girl in there somewhere." He paused. "Or a guy, but they're usually quieter about that."

I nodded. Colleges had a certain social mentality that didn't exactly mesh with having super powered neo-Nazi's running around. Brockton's solution seemed to be dressing up everything with just enough deniability to avoid attracting attention.

Doug was looking at me expectantly. I glanced around. No one was that close to us and his students were savoring the brief respite from his tutelage as a chance to catch their breath and desperately rehydrate.

I hated talking about this. It wasn't just that the entire relationship was cringeworthy in retrospect. What really got me was everyone looking at it and assuming that was where everything went wrong. They thought that the rest of my life was fine and I'd let it all fall apart over some girl. Still, Doug was legendarily bullheaded but not known for making snap judgements.

"So I was in the engineering program. It was pretty small, like twenty five people. Mostly guys as well. Just three girls in our year."

"So you went after one of them?"

"Not at first." He gave me a look. "Ok, there was this girl who had transferred from math to engineering in sophomore year."

"Really. What was her name?"

"Sabah." Doug raised an eyebrow. "She was Iraqi. Really good at math but her English wasn't perfect. That gave her some trouble with parts of the course work. I helped her out with that."

"And one thing led to another?"

"Not exactly. We spent a lot of time together but it never really went further. I suggested stuff but she was always really demure about it, like a whole bunch of non-answers and putting things off."

"That was probably a hint."

That stung. "Yeah, I got that in hindsight."

"So what happened?"

"It wasn't going well, but one of my friends convinced me to give it another try, just ask directly and put it behind me."

"Not bad advice."

I actually flinched at that. "Uh, so I tried and it went bad. She tore into me and we had words. It was public and messy and I figured that was it."

"I'm guessing there's more?"

I nodded. "I tried to avoid her after that, but six weeks later she comes to me, apologizes and says she had a bad day and wants to work together again."

"So what did you do?"

"I tried to go back to the way things were, but it was really awkward. And she ended up transferring to the fashion program pretty soon after."

"Seriously?"

I shrugged. "Everyone was surprised. She didn't talk to anyone about it, she just left. I found out later she had lost her dad to a heart attack. I guess that's the kind of thing that makes you reevaluate stuff."

Doug nodded grimly.

"Look, it was a mess, but that's not why I dropped out."

"Not saying it is, but that kind of thing usually contributes." He looked around the gym. "I'm not going to give you some bullshit speech about how boxing is like life and how what you learn here will carry you through. Boxing is boxing and life is life. The only thing they have in common is they're both hard, painful, and take a lot of work. College might not have worked for you, but you're a bright kid and are willing to put in the hours. You'll be fine."

"Thanks, I appreciate that."

"Don't let it go to your head. Now I've got to get back to those slackers before they think this is some kind of holiday."

While Doug stomped off to terrorize his students I wrapped up my workout with a marathon of pushups, squats, and crunches. I figured if I buried myself in exercise I might be able to drown out the horrible feelings the conversation had dug up. It was basically the same principle that had gotten me into running. By the time I showered and slunk back to my apartment my body was burning but I had managed to put my college years mostly out of my mind. I threw together a cheap but high protein dinner, mostly beans really, before opening my workshop and crashing for the night.

Jumpchain abilities this chapter:

Workshop (Personal Reality) 100:
Each purchase of this adds to your Personal Reality Workshop needed to perform specific type of craft, which is to be specified when purchase is made. It comes with a basic set of tools and supplies. Good for fixing or creating all sorts of things, although any complex parts or nonstandard supplies will have to be brought in from outside. Additional purchases can add different types of Workshops to your Personal Reality or expand existing ones. Anything built in one of those workshops is fiat backed to be restored to its original condition within 48 hours if damaged or destroyed.

Access Key (Personal Reality) Free:
This is a special key which lets you access your Personal Reality and its contents.
When inserted into any lock on any door, the door opens to reveal a gateway into your Reality at a predetermined location within it. You are the only person who can take the key from the lock, the gateway remains open as long as the key is in the lock, and if key is ever lost or stolen you will find it in your pocket a few minutes later. You cannot close the door as long as you are inside the Personal Reality.

Entrance Hall (Personal Reality) Free:
This is the room your Access Key opens a door to. It starts off as a 5 meter cube with blank white walls, floor, and ceiling, as some doors, one leading to the current Host Reality, the other into your Cosmic Warehouse, with additional doors leading to other extensions as these get added to your Personal Reality. Feel free to customize this Entrance Hall as you see fit. Additional Halls can, at your discretion, be linked only to certain keys or only to certain extensions. This allows you to have an entry hall just for skiing if you want.

 

[LordRoustabout]

2 Preparation

My watch alarm woke me up early the next morning, demonstrating my absolute commitment to becoming a hero. For a chance at a cape career I was willing to endure two six o'clocks in the same day.

I am not a morning person. I have never been a morning person. Before I got my powers I would run in the evening. It was nice, peaceful, and I had all the time in the world. Now that I have to do more than just cardio I needed to find another time to run. That turned out to be the ungodly hour of the day where no sane person would be active.

After downing a piece of toast and enough coffee to silence the voices telling me this was a terrible idea when I had a warm bed in a pocket universe waiting for me, I left my apartment and headed for the Boardwalk where the other mad people were exercising. I hated them all. Some had the ill manner to smile at me when they ran past. I know it's a Saturday, but there is no place for smiles at this hour of the morning. This is an hour of grimness that only the desperate would use for exercise.

Oh God, that person had one of those jogging strollers with them. You can subject yourself to the madness of early morning workouts but please spare the next generation. Break the cycle of abuse. Save your children from this hell.

My morning run was a straight shot to the coast then a loop up and down the boardwalk before swinging back to my apartment. It was roughly the same route I had taken when I ran during sane hours, but now I got to enjoy the piercing rays of the rising sun stabbing at me as they reflected off the bay.

I took a short break when I reached the road access to the Protectorate HQ. It was a glittering strip of the same force field that protected the Rig extending over the water to shore. The amount of traffic it saw was always light and at this time of day it was completely empty. It was an impressive piece of tinkertech, both in scale and in how long it had been maintained. That was true for most of the Protectorate headquarters as it hovered above the waves sending shockwaves out across the surface of the water from each of the emitters at its base.

If I was a typical tinker I would probably be reacting to all kinds of aspects of this technology. I wonder if that's another way tinkers expose themselves. Does the Protectorate have some kind of monitoring program that watches for people drooling glassy eyed over their installations? Maybe, but for me it was just some pretty looking sci-fi themed architecture.

The sound of a motorcycle rumbled from the city and I turned to see a man in blue and silver armor peel off the main road onto the force field. As Armsmaster vanished across the way various people cheered or fished out smartphones. It was early for tourists but even locals didn't see the heroes every day. I took another minute to watch as he reached the Rig and disappeared into one of the garages.

That could be me someday.

Well, not exactly. Judging by my passenger's emotional reactions he was not in favor of the Protectorate. I had initially worried it was some kind of aversion to heroics, but there was no reaction on that level for other teams. In fact the Guild got a significantly positive response. The thought of any of the city's gangs got various negative reactions with the most intense being connected with Coil. I don't know what it was about him that caused a mix of fear, hatred, and rage that overshadowed even the local Nazis, but it was enough to make me warry. Given the situation I was in I had decided to trust my passenger's judgment. It hadn't steered me wrong so far and considering it was where my powers were coming from it seemed like a good idea to listen to it.

The sighting of Armsmaster was the most interesting thing to happen on my run. Beyond that it was just a tour of the visitor friendly parts of the Bay at a time of day nobody should have to endure.

Did I mention I don't like mornings?

As I left the Boardwalk and was heading back through the docks to my apartment I considered how to spend the day. I didn't have enough of a handle on where my power was going to try to plan out anything meaningful about my hero activity. Until it settled enough for me to have a vague theme to work with anything I planned would be total speculation. I wasn't dumb enough to try cape work with my current powerset, so that left training and conditioning, since that was likely to pay off regardless of what I got from my next power.

I had just arrived home when I felt the excitement build from my passenger. I quickly focused on the Celestial Forge and felt a constellation swinging. This time my reach was twice what it had been last night.

I felt myself latch on to a mote of power. It was from one of the smaller constellations and a little less powerful than the mote that I had missed on my previous attempt. As my connection solidified I felt my knowledge of the power and its constellation expand.

This was not a tinker power. This was something better. This was a brute power that required tinker support.

That constellation was called 'Clothing'. I didn't have a good sense of the other powers within it, but this power was called 'Fashion'. Despite its name it had nothing to do with clothing design, other than the fact that it would allow me to wear anything as my cape costume. That was because what it did was extend the defensive properties of the toughest protective item I was wearing to both my clothing and body. I could wear a kneepad and have my entire body and every piece of clothing be as tough as the material it was made out of.

It was absolutely incredible in terms of mobility, not to mention cost. I could put resources into a single piece of armor, just enough to cover a tiny fraction of my frame, and I would get that level of durability for my entire body.

I needed to test this out. Not because I doubted it. That was one thing I was sure of. Every power I would get was as reliable as my key had proven to be. I had complete faith it would work precisely as described. The only limitation was that the item needed to be designed for protection and had a lower size limit of the aforementioned knee pad. Outside of that caveat it could be anything.

All my plans for the day were done. I needed to work on this. I could head to a thrift store and see what I could find, but I had a full magic metal shop to work with and just enough technical knowledge to get started.

I am not a master smith, not by any measure. As such the product of my morning's labor in the workshop would not be winning any design, beauty, or craftsmanship contests. It consisted of a steel wrist bracer that hinged and clasped around my left forearm. The whole affair had involved some less than perfect shaping and welding, meaning the seams were raised and lumpy and the fit was uncomfortable.

That was not important in the face of its effects. I had made the bracer out of the thickest, toughest steel I had in stock. Despite only covering half of my forearm it was noticeably heavy. I would have to replace it with something more ergonomic once I had a chance to refine things. The point was that now my entire body and everything I was wearing had the same level of reliance as the half-inch steel plate that made up the bracer.

I did not test that in the workshop. For one thing everything there was designed to work the same material I was using as a durability standard. Instead I hit the kitchenette and tried to see if I could prick my finger with one of my knives.

The end result of that experiment was that knife not having a point anymore.

A pair of scissors also completely failed to cut the fabric of my shirt and I found myself unable to tear even a single loose thread. A bit of cautious experimentation with the element of my hotplate confirmed the same level of resistance that steel would have to heat was applied to my body and clothing.

This was incredible. The big thing was it showed these weren't just crafting abilities. There could be all kinds of powers waiting in the Celestial Forge. The second thing was I now had a power significant enough to allow me to actually function as a cape. I wasn't completely sure I was bullet proof, but I was probably bullet proof. Maybe high powered rifles would give me some trouble, but I don't think most handguns would be a problem.

I still needed to figure out the limitations. I got the defensive properties of the strongest piece of equipment I was wearing. Theoretically that could apply to things like chemical and biological protection as well, but that was starting to approach fairly exotic levels. I'd need specialized equipment for that. Still, being able to carry around a selection of wrist guards that were each tailored to a specific type of danger had a certain appeal.

There were other limitations to consider. Obviously the defensive bonus was based on the item that was providing protection. If the details of this power got out it would be relatively simple to target or otherwise focus on removing that item. Also it was defensive properties only. It would probably protect my knuckles when fighting but it wasn't going to provide any increased offensive capacity beyond my willingness to fight recklessly by weathering more attacks. No increase to strength either, so if I got grappled, pinned, or otherwise swarmed I would be screwed.

So it was a powerful ability but not a perfect one. It did mean I could get better defense than a tinker in full armor without the bulk of an extensive suit or the time and resource requirements needed to make it. One downside was it only extended durability to my body and clothing, so any equipment that didn't fit the definition of clothing was still vulnerable.

I wonder if it would be possible to track down a piece of tinkertech armor. I've heard most of the sites selling tinkertech are scams, but there has to be some kind of secondhand curio or collectable market for old hero armor. All I'd need is a piece of some kind of advanced alloy and I'd get the full effect of its durability. But if something like that did exist I could safely assume it would be well beyond my budget.

My first tinker power had arrived and it worked out to effective invincibility as long as I played things smart. I would still need to worry about suffocation and probably chemical and biological attacks. Good thing there wasn't any cape in Brockton who specialized in the use of poisons.

Why was my passenger feeling nervous all of a sudden?

Maybe it would be good to go over some matchups. I got out my now seriously long in the tooth laptop and logged on to the PHO wiki. I'd gotten this thing in my first year and time had not been kind to it. It was a budget purchase back then and despite my attempts to look after it the screen had a tendency to flicker and the internal speakers were totally shot. I'm pretty sure I would end up laughed out of any serious cape organization if I showed up with this thing and claimed to be a tinker.

Still, it served the purpose for basic internet use. I was obsessively cautious about doing anything cape related online from my own computer and especially from my own apartment but a little wiki walk wouldn't raise any flags.

I had the added advantage of my passenger's insight while browsing cape profiles. I didn't know exactly how accurate it was, but things like the seriously negative reaction to the newest member of the local Wards team yielded some interesting results. She seemed to be a dependable if slightly edgy hero, but a little digging into cape forums produced some fairly convincing evidence that she had a history of excessive violence and a rumor that she joined the wards as part of a probation deal to avoid being charged with attempted murder. None of that had been on my map beforehand, so it lent some credence towards trusting the passenger's judgement.

Some of the insights were still completely mystifying. I had no idea what the weird feeling of offense that was shared between Battery, Triumph, and Gallant meant. It was similar to what he seemed to be feeling when I reviewed Faultline's crew and looked at the listings for Newter and Gregor the Snail, though it was much more sympathetic for the Case 53s. Any browsing of reports on New Wave triggered a mess of emotions, mostly concern, fear, and compassion that spiked when I focused on Panacea. Also my passenger did not like Armsmaster, but it was more a level of distrust than actual hostility.

I started with the page for the Archer's Bridge Merchants. No surprise there, general disgust, though the feelings connected to Skidmark were more wary then I had initially expected. That confused me enough that I had dug into cape theories and found someone who had done the math on the effect of Skidmark stacking his propulsion fields. Calculations based on various video clips and the movement rate of different sized objects suggested that there were no diminishing returns with his power. If the man layered a field enough times he would be able to launch something into orbit or create a mass driver that could wipe out anything in the city. Brocton was only kept safe by the restraint and limited ambition of a drug addict that kept him at a shaker 2 rating.

So, defense against the Merchants. Assuming that durability worked as advertised and wasn't just skin deep I could probably survive anything short of a massive layered field launch from Skidmark or one of Squealer's larger vehicle mounted weapons. Nothing else should be able to seriously injure me, but I could end up trapped by Skidmark or Mush fairly easily. In short, I should be alright if I ran into them and needed to escape, but taking the fight to them was out of the question at this point.

I looked into the ABB next. Lung would be able to scale to a point where he could literally rip me apart, but if I kept fighting him long enough for him to reach that point then it's my own fault. As far as I could tell I should be able to endure most of Oni Lee's arsenal, providing he doesn't shove a grenade down my throat. The Wiki page had been updated with a new member since the last time I had checked it. They had a new tinker in the gang. Bakuda.

The scream of fear from my passenger was incredible. I quickly clicked the link while trying to parse through the mess of emotions. Whoever this was she was incredibly bad news. This was nearly the level of response that Coil triggered.

The Wiki page was sparse, mostly focusing on her assault on Cornell. Her activities with the ABB had been limited to a few appearances mostly to show the flag to other gangs rather than any demonstration of new technology. That probably meant she was still setting up. Not everyone carried their workshop around in their pocket. The loss of tools, research, and materials could take a tinker nearly back to square one. Once she was set up, that's when things would get serious.

There was a limitation in the fact that she had to build consumable devices. I didn't know how good her manufacturing was, but if the ABB was willing to throw enough resources behind her things could get messy. There had been something of a stalemate between the gangs for years but every time a new cape showed up there were flare-ups. If they were strong enough then territorial lines could be redrawn, but things would usually settle eventually.

Tinkers were different. They were pure force multiplier. Tinkers were capes that didn't typically operate based on a limited set of powers so counters were only effective to a point. Squealer was probably the only reason the Merchants were still a proper gang rather than a couple of parahuman thugs operating out of the bad part of town. If Bakuda was half as good then the city could be heading for a gang war.

I clicked on the video link 'Bomb Threat @ Cornell' and watched it play out. The video did little to reassure me, particularly the effect of the detonations.

So, tinker that triggered in relation to their college life. That hit close to home. Well, she might not have triggered due to that but somehow I doubted she'd make the college her first target if it hadn't had some connection to how she got her powers. I knew how messed up tinkers could get, the long drawn out nightmare that lead to their triggers and how nightmarish the powers could actually get. When I think about what kind of power I could have ended up with it makes it hard to sleep.

The variety of the explosion types either means that she is an incredibly versatile tinker or she has little control over what she is making. Knowing what I do about tinker powers I'm leaning towards the latter. Unknown crafting is a dangerous combination with any tinker ability, but combine it with an explosive specialist and you have a nightmare.

I felt my power try and fail to latch onto a mote from a new constellation. The rate my reach was growing wasn't constant, but it seemed to be getting faster on average. As the mote of power moved past me my reach continued to grow in preparation for the next chance to gain a new ability.

Not for the first time I thanked my lucky stars or whatever gods had blessed me to allow me this ability instead of the tinker powers I would have had coming to me. A passenger obsessed with crafting was a million times better than the alternatives waiting for anyone who triggered conventionally.

It was clear Bakuda was going to be a problem. With those effects I couldn't rely on any level of physical durability to hold me together. I needed a better way of countering her, or I needed to stay out of her way. Right now that seemed like the best option.

I navigated away to the E88 wiki site. There was the common level of general disgust my passenger felt for all members of this gang. The emotions around Purity were a bit more complicated, but no less negative. From what I knew she had somewhat split from the main group and had been doing independent raids. Still, that wasn't what I was here to figure out.

My defensive prospects against Purity weren't looking good. She could bring down buildings and was rumored to have blasts that hit like Legend. I doubted anything short of full tinker tech miracle armor would save me from that. She was the worst of the possible match ups though. Rune, Kreig, Hookwolf, Night , or the twins could probably overpower my defense, though it wouldn't be easy for them. I didn't know how I would stand up against Crusader's ghosts. They apparently worked on some weird Manton Effect interaction, so probably best not to risk a confrontation. Storm Tiger could probably hurt me, but not that badly. With Victor it would depend on how Othala juiced him up. I think I could handle the pyrokinesis she could grant, but I didn't know the limits of the super strength she bestowed. People like Cricket and Alabaster could be difficult to deal with but probably not that threatening.

I probably had nothing to worry about directly from Kaiser. From what I could tell he had limited ability to direct his blades through people. Without significant force I would be looking at a few scratches at worst. Of course, he would also have the easiest time capturing me. That was something I would be doing my best to avoid.

Of the major gangs that just left Coil. My passenger's reactions had convinced me he was a threat, but not why or how. His wiki page still had no hint on his power and just a few clips of the mercenaries he used. His men were at least well equipped. The high powered rifles they used could be a problem on their own, but I didn't like my chances against the tinkertech lasers they had attached. Fortunately they limited their actions considerably and I wasn't likely to run into them at random.

That covered the major threats in the city. I could keep digging through every third string villain or hypothetical matches against the heroes, but that wouldn't be a productive use of time. Likewise I decided against jumping over to the forums. That was a time sink that I couldn't afford anymore. I had a limited amount of time off and still had a huge amount of preparation to do before I was ready to be a hero.

I started making a basic lunch and considered how to spend the rest of the day. I needed to keep working on my physical conditioning, so that meant keeping my diet and getting to the gym. I had to be careful about overdoing my workouts, but I could manage that by lowering intensity and focusing on different muscle groups. I had pretty much stolen my entire training and diet program from a fitness forum and those places tended to have people shouting down any stupid risks in training.

Also, as good as the bracer was for overall defense I could use a subtler option. I would hit the Market and see if someone was selling old kneepads, wrist guards, or some other similar type of protective equipment. If I could get a basic kneepad I might be able to wear it under my jeans to get some constant level of protection without attracting attention. It wouldn't do much against guns, but should boost my durability to the point where melee weapons wouldn't be much of a concern. I didn't want to get my cape career cut short because of a mugging gone badly.

The Market would have to be my first priority. It was already noon and the stalls would have been set up for hours. They would already be pretty well picked over so I'd need to go there right away to have a chance at anything decent. I wolfed down my lunch and headed out.

Because of the nuances of Brockton Bay's public transportation system if you were starting in the Docks it was actually faster to walk to the Market than take the bus. The road access to the Lord Street Market looped around the outside of the city through seldom used and poorly maintained back roads. Bus service to that area was a trial that used the weird fifth color on the bus schedules and varied based on time of year, day of the week, and probably whether Mars was currently in retrograde. Unless you were hauling an amount of goods that made walking impossible it was better to just cut through fields along the coast past the north end of the Boardwalk. It wasn't a clear route, but it wasn't a route for anyone outside the city. You live here long enough and eventually someone would show you the shortcut across abandoned lots, old industrial areas, and the weedy fields in the no man's land between the Docks and Lord's Port.

The Boardwalk disappeared behind me with its designer boutiques and twelve dollar ice-cream and the reality of the city opened before of me. Fifteen years ago this would have been the heart of the city's industry. Lord's Port would have been running constantly and the surrounding region existed to support and sustain the shipping industry. Since that dried up the entire area had decayed to a shadow of its former self. There was still the odd business still active, probably too invested in their equipment to be worth moving and just profitable enough to squeak by, but abandoned lots and decayed buildings were a much more common site.

However, when you approached the market you could be forgiven for overlooking all of that. Gradually the human element of the city started to grow, beginning with the cars of people who parked further out to avoid having to deal with the nightmare that was the Market's parking situation, then the occasional person that had begged off from the crowds for a smoke break. Then the sound started. The subtle roar of hundreds of people in the same place, talking, laughing, bargaining, and haggling. You heard the Market long before you caught site of it.

The place was packed today. It made sense that it would be. Brockton didn't have horrible winters but it wasn't exactly comfortable in February and March. A clear Saturday in early April would be one of the first good outing days of the year and it looked like plenty of people shared that mindset. The people running the stands seemed to have seen it coming since there didn't seem to be an unmanned stall in the entire Market.

I started working my way through the crowd. Most of the stands I could skip after a glance. Handcrafts, surplus designer clothing, costume jewelry, vintage records, or artwork held no interest for me. Unfortunately there wasn't a stall labeled 'Loose Athletic Protective Equipment' that I could make a bee line for. Some people were selling old electronics and tool sets that held a lot of appeal, but I had committed myself to holding back on the tinker scrounging until I had some crafting powers to work with.

It wasn't that I was worried about being exposed. I'm pretty sure whatever hypothetical thinkers monitored purchasing habits wouldn't be tipped off by me buying an old game console and vcr/dvd combo. The thing was I have very limited funds to work with. I didn't want to invest in electronics only to end up with a specialization in vehicle engines or chemistry. Case in point, before I got my last ability I would never have considered the need for isolated pieces of armor.

It was a shame because there were a lot of tempting possibilities here. Even without power assisted crafting abilities there was an appeal in taking apart old machinery. I guess I would never have ended up in an engineering program if I didn't have those instincts. Still, I pushed them down and pressed on.

A quick, and I use that term loosely, circuit of the market didn't reveal any stand specializing in protective sports gear. That left me hunting through individual stalls. For a good portion of Brockton Bay the Market takes the place of a yard sale when the time comes to clean out the garage or declutter the house. It's easy to spot the people using it for that purpose. People who make their living from the Market have a professional attitude. They have well-made signs, neatly organized merchandise, and proper cash boxes. Some of them even have those new smartphone card readers. They provided a stark contrast to people with optimistic expressions and a table full of random junk. Those people were my best chance to find what I was looking for.

It also turned what should have been a simple shopping trip into an ordeal. If I wasn't being strictly conservative with my finances I could have walked into a department store and picked up a whole set of pads in five minutes. Instead I was hunting around through a heavy throng of flea market shoppers trying to find a budget piece of skateboard equipment. It was not exactly the shining start to a cape career I would have envisioned.

Still, given what some tinkers had to go through for supplies this counted as a cake walk. An hour sorting through junk was nothing compared to tinkers who ended up having to rob chemical depos or required rare earth elements to be able to accomplish anything.

I didn't have a problem finding skating pads. The problem was every set I had found so far was child sized. And by that I mean designed for preteen or younger. I don't know if I was seeing the residual equipment from abandoned skating hobbies, or if once they reached teenage years their parents stopped insisting on full sets of pads. Sizing was going to be a problem for me. I had my growth spurt late, but it had decided to make up for lost time in spades. Even stuff sized for teenagers wouldn't work for me.

I felt activity in the Celestial forge and moved out of the flow of shoppers to focus on it. One of the largest constellations was swinging towards me and my power latched onto a small mote from it. I took a moment to focus on the new power. The constellation was 'Quality' and this particular power was called 'Bling of War'. This power didn't strictly speaking give me any new crafting abilities or technical knowledge. Instead it allowed me to design and build things in a much more 'stylish' manner.

It was an aesthetic upgrade. I could add style or even a certain theme to what I built. While it wouldn't help me with the practical requirements of construction or design it would allow me to sidestep the early tinker cliché where they initially debut in a set of gear that looks like it was the product of a junkyard screwing a trash compactor.

Hell, most capes outside of the Protectorate and major gangs fell into that category. I'd seen forum threads joking about the number of capes whose debut costume was either a ski mask or a hoodie. I thought back to the bracer currently resting in my workshop. The bulky hinge, the crude weld lines, the ill-fitting bend of the material. My mind was suddenly filled with a thousand ways I could have done that better. None of them would have improved the protection or accessibility of the item, but it would make it look like the thing was made by a professional rather than a twelve year old left unsupervised in a metal workshop.

I badly needed more crafting skills. I had a very limited ability to make things, but with this power at least everything I made would look excellent, even if it wouldn't function any better than whatever crude thing I could pull together. I made a point to check some of the book stands before I left. If I could get a couple of how to books I might be able to make decent progress on a costume. Since my durability boost extended to my clothing it really didn't matter if the costume I pulled together was terrible quality or poorly made. It would hold up as long as I had a piece of armor to buff it. I knew enough metal work to get something functional bashed together and this power would make sure it looked good.

This did mean I would have to completely rebuild my bracer. It should be a bit easier this time now that I'm not making things up as I go. Still, that was hours of work wasted. That's the life of a tinker, I suppose, it never stops.

One interesting thing was that connecting with this power didn't take all of the reach I had built. Rather than start from zero I still had about half of what I had accumulated. The next time a constellation came within range I would have a much better chance of making a connection to a new power. It was an interesting aspect of the mechanics, and anything that helped me get on my feet faster was good by me.

In the end the best I was able to find were a pair of soccer shin guards. They weren't that tough, but I should be able to wear one without attracting attention. I could probably copy the design and make something out of steel when I had a chance, which would give me better protection, close to what I got from my bracer, without attracting attention. The book search turned up dry. The only 'how to' book I found was on the basics of carpentry. I would really do better at a used book store for that, and that's assuming I didn't end up with my power giving me enough technical knowledge to make everything in those books redundant.

So I had killed two hours and gotten a pair of shin guards out of it. Grant it they came at rock bottom prices, but I had to get better at managing my time. I actually had some projects now, considering I had a crafting boosting power, if a completely superficial one. But I also needed to get to the gym. I promised myself I wouldn't let my workouts lapse because of tinkering. If I wanted to exist outside the workshop or lab I would need to be able to handle myself in a fight. That meant training was essential. Which meant not skipping my workouts just because I had a shiny new ability.

So I left the chaos of the market, looped back through the docks to my apartment and grabbed my gym bag and a snack. The food requirements for trying to build muscle were absolutely insane. When you had to eat, what you had to eat, the ratios, before or after workout, it was nuts. I honestly miss the days I would just focus on distance running.

The gym was fairly quiet and I was able to power through my training without much issue. I finished with a long cooldown and set of stretches, then headed back home. I made an early dinner, then headed straight into my workshop.

The first thing I did was try to recreate my bracer. Fortunately the stock of materials constantly refreshed. I don't know if it would be possible to deplete it with a major project, but none of the light works I've done so far have made a dent in it. All the metals I have in stock are basic stuff. Standard grades of steel, aluminum, and other metals. I have sheet and bar stock and a small supply of simple mechanical parts like hinges and latches. Nothing high tech or even cutting edge. No exotic alloys or treated metals, nothing fiber reinforced, nothing more advanced than the higher end of hobby work.

It did mean I didn't have to worry about restocking. With the state of my finances this was a godsend. Once I got some better crafting abilities I could only guess at what I would be capable of. Most likely I would run into a block in terms of tools and supplies. This was fine for simple projects like this one, but I would need a supply of more advanced components to put out things on the level of a professional tinker.

With an idea of what I was doing the project went a lot smoother but I still couldn't get the fit perfect. I suspected I'd need a lot more experience with metal shaping or specialized equipment for that. Despite sitting a bit awkwardly on my wrist and not being any more durable than my first attempt the bracer looked amazing.

The formerly chunky placement of the hinges and latch now smoothly blended into the design. The weld seams looked so professional that it could be mistaken for being molded in a single piece. There were little touches on the edges that added a sense of sleekness and the surface was beautifully finished.

All the little stylistic touches had taken some extra work, but nowhere near the amount they should have. If I tried to build something like this before getting that last power it would have taken weeks and not come out anywhere near as finished. It was beautiful and it was only my first attempt.

Once I had a theme, an idea of what kind of hero I wanted to be, then I would have to rebuild it to match. For now it was just a beautifully made wrist guard that, thanks to my other power, effectively made me bullet proof.

It was getting into the evening, but I decided to take a crack at another project. With my durability boost I could theoretically head out for hero work. The thing was I would need at least some kind of offensive ability. I may have had access to a magic metal shop, but my knowledge of how to work with it was limited. I'd considered trying to throw together some basic weapon, but given how crude my earlier work was I'd decided to wait until I had some ability to facilitate things.

Well, I had an ability now. Not one that would help with anything advanced, but one that would at least stop me from embarrassing myself when I showed up with a basic weapon.

I was making a baton. It was absolutely the simplest weapon I could make, a metal club. I was adding a little more flourish than just taking a piece of bar stock onto the streets. A bit of work on the grip, some rounding on the top, texturing on the handle, but generally it was a foot and a half of metal that I would be able to hit people with. I wasn't expecting much from this project.

Once again my new power came through. While the function was no better there were little design touches that added a professional air to it. A sense of sleekness and elegant craft seemed to exude from it, despite the incredibly basic design. All the little shortcuts I'd taken were made to look completely intentional rather than as cheats for someone who barely understood what he was doing.

I took some experimental swings with it. The solid metal had a heft to it that would probably mess someone up badly if they caught a blow. The balance was a bit off, probably to be expected what with my complete lack of weapon smithing experience. I had gone for the design because it was the most basic thing I could think of. No worries about technique, grip, or proper form. Hold and swing. I'm sure there were ways to improve upon that, but mainly I wanted a weapon that I couldn't screw up, and this fit the bill.

So there I had it, basic cape equipment. Significantly heavier towards defense than offense, but that was better than the alternative. With this I could actually do it, I could go out and be a superhero.

That led to another problem. Two items, no matter how powerful, did not make a costume. I had a power that could pull together any style I'd want to go with, but I didn't have much to work with on that front in terms of skill, materials, or even a theme.

I had not given much thought to what my cape debut would be like. Sitting before the Celestial Forge had been so intimidating that I kind of assumed whatever I ended up with would create a self-evident identity. Well, now I kind of had one, but what identity was I going to go with? If I went out now I'd be debuting as a highly durable low strength brute with a couple of pieces of nicely made equipment. That was a far cry from the technology hero I had been imagining. It was by no means a bad powerset to have, but considering most of my other powers were going to be tinker based, did I want to go with that?

Not really, but I didn't know what I was going to end up with next. If I got another couple of support or utility powers before I landed something that let me start making high tech items would I be comfortable waiting around for whatever my first crafting power would be? Probably not. I didn't have the burning need to head out and seek combat that some passengers created. All mine wanted was to complete the Celestial Forge. While that would normally make him risk averse there was better growth of my reach when I was active. It had sped up over the last week as I settled into my hero prep and had been getting much faster recently. I knew that getting active in the cape community would be my best bet for landing new powers.

As I considered things I felt my passenger's excitement as a constellation swung close. I closed my eyes and focused on it. It was the same constellation I had failed to connect to with my first attempt. This time my power was strong enough to latch onto a mote as they flew past. Unlike last time this took every ounce of my stored energy to secure the link. Finally I had the connection and could tell what that constellation was.

It was the 'Alchemy' constellation and the mote I had connected to was 'Evermore Alchemist'. With the connection made knowledge flooded my mind. Specifically knowledge of how to combine twenty two mundane materials in thirty five unique combinations that would produce instant effects on the level of a parahuman's abilities. I had not gotten a crafting ability. I had gotten a combo platter of superpowers. And they were serious powers. Some of these could duplicate blaster effects that were strong enough to maim, if not outright kill. I would need to be very careful about how I used them.

The formulas were divided into light and dark alchemy, essentially offensive and defensive. The defensive formula had combinations that could be used to heal. Heal! I was new to the cape scene, and having Panacea in the same city kind of skewed perception, but healing powers were incredibly rare. I'd read a theory that there were no healing powers, that all healing that happened was either a side effect or creative application of another type of ability. That was definitely not the case here.

I took a breath to calm myself down. This was something I would need to assess carefully. I had been expecting maybe some kind of mechanical expertise, or the plans for a set of ray guns or jetpacks. I was not expecting thirty five new powers to be dropped into my lap.

Actually, reviewing the nature of the formula it wasn't right to call them powers. There was a mechanism to this that was a lot more nuanced than most powers. I knew how to trigger base effects by combining reagents, but there was an immense amount of space for improvement and refinement of technique. I would need practice to be able to get the full potential of this ability.

Fortunately, in most cases, the required reagents are fairly common. There was one formula that required a specially built amulet and another that needed a specific and obscure breed of pepper, but most of the rest could be managed with things like wax, water, vinegar, or grease. Some would be harder to find but still relatively easy. Gunpowder was the only one that would be likely to raise red flags and that was only needed for one formula, though that formula was a doozy.

One of the trickier reagents to supply would be the plants. Aside from the aforementioned obscure pepper the formulas also used roots, mushrooms, and acorns. Getting a good supply of those would take some doing.

So, what did I have to work with now? My workshop had replenishing supplies of grease and iron that I could raid. That alone was enough for a couple of defensive formulas. I had water to work with, but that didn't open up any new possibilities. Likewise, cooking oil could work in formulas, but not as well as petroleum products. Still nothing possible there without additional reagents like wax or roots.

Still, I wasn't going to let this go. I got some stock and milled off a small piece of iron. Then I got two lumps of grease. In a movement that felt both completely natural and totally alien I mashed them together and threw the mix into the air above me. It burst into light and coalesced around me, wrapping my body in a reflective barrier.

The Reflect formula created a field that reflected any supernatural effect back at its source. It only lasted a minute, but it was a phenomenal defensive ability and I could pull an effectively infinite source of reagents to power it.

I decided that was enough for now. I had a major power here. Tomorrow I would head out and seriously stress my finances. I needed reagents and more importantly a way to carry and access them in the field. The components of a formula weren't that bulky, barely a handful, but they were consumed on each use. I would have to go out well supplied and would be on the clock in any drawn out fight. Also, if anything would trigger tinker warnings it would be my upcoming shopping spree. There were not that many mundane reasons to buy large quantities of sulfur.

Still, limitations or no, I had an incredible ability. This was a serious power that someone could build their entire career on. For me it was just an incidental part of the Celestial Forge.

I went to bed that night with more optimism at my situation than I had felt in the entire week since my trigger.

Jumpchain abilities this chapter:

Fashion (Highschool of the Dead) 200:
Your clothing and entire body acquire defensive properties equal to the most superior protective items you have currently equipped. Emphasis on protective item- an iron or steel ring won't give you metal-tough skin- the minimum is things like knee pads from extreme sports, helmets- even an apron would count, though all that'd do is protect you from the dangers of a kitchen...

Bling of War (Macross) 100:
It's one thing to have a weapon or vehicle of mass destruction, capable of rending an entire ground force or a squadron to shame. It's another to make it look so damn good your enemies would not dare get near it if they had a lick of sense. By purchasing this perk, you can design your equipment to look much more stylish and carry a 'theme' you prefer. This can range from the clothes you wear, to the weapons you wield, to even the vehicles you pilot into battle. It's all about style.

Alchemist (Secret of Evermore) 200:
Considered a lost art, the science of Alchemy has reawakened in Evermore, and you've been trained in its use. By combining ordinary ingredients together using an alchemical formula, you can transform them into effects that can only be described as magic. You know both Light Alchemy, the art of healing or protection, and Dark Alchemy, the art of attacking. While it's theoretically possible to learn Alchemy at a later point in Evermore, this will let you skip the training and get straight to the mixing and casting, and will make you significantly better at it to boot.

 

[LordRoustabout]

3 First Fight

After another terminally early run I spent the next morning wearing out my shoes and stressing my bank account in an attempt to track down as many reagents as I could. I would have to describe the success of the entire venture as 'mixed'.

While I could use any item that technically met the description of the reagent the quality of what was used significantly affected the efficiency of the materials. For instance, I could use tap water for any formula that called for water as a reagent, but purified water without the chemical additives required much less, and if I used distilled water I only needed a fraction of the volume. Considering the quantity I would need to carry I grabbed a couple of jugs of distilled water from a pharmacy.

Ethanol was going to be difficult to track down. I could in theory use something like vodka, but with that concentration and the impurities present I'd be using insane quantities for each formula. Something like Everclear would do the trick, but it was illegal in New Hampshire. Without ethanol I was losing access to my strongest healing formula and one of my most powerful blasts. I could work around it and had enough other options that it wasn't crippling, but it was still disheartening to run into that obstacle.

Of course, I could always order it or pick it up from a specialty store or chemical supplier. Then I would end up on all the tinker lists. Also I was pushing things as much as I could as far as cost was concerned. I just didn't have the budget for special orders.

A bit of research and a trip to a garden supply store got me a bag of sulfur that would cover enough of my fire formulas to burn down half the city. I stopped by a gas station on the way back and picked up a couple of bottles of motor oil. After that I went straight to the largest grocery store I could find.

Grease and vinegar were easy to find in the volume and quality I needed. I only had one formula that called for mushrooms, so a single carton would hold me for the foreseeable future. I dug through their entire pepper selection but couldn't find anything that would work with my formula. The produce section did have a lot of roots that would do for my assortment of healing formula, though it wasn't as simple as just raiding the root vegetables. It would have been great if I could just buy a bag of baby carrots and call it a day. There was a quality requirement that was kind of aggressive with this reagent. The ginger root worked best, but there were some other options amongst the less common produce that would also do the trick. I was able to stock up, but not for the rock bottom price I had been hoping for.

The butcher counter was able to get me some excellent beef bones properly cleaned and everything. I'd have to break them down to formula size, but otherwise it was a perfect source.

Craft stores turned out to be a godsend for the more obscure reagents. They had clay in spades, though I had to spring for the natural stuff rather than the more processed modeling clay. A huge selection of feathers was stocked, which was good considering I needed a specific type and quality for my alchemy. Wax was as simple as finding the cheapest candles in the store. It would take some processing, but nothing too labor intense. They even had a collection of quartz that could function perfectly for formula that called for crystal, and the last store I checked even had bags of acorns for sale. Seriously, god bless crazy craft people.

The last two reagents I needed to track down were limestone and ash. Fortunately a cashier at one of the craft stores was able to direct me to an even more obscure supply store that had bags for sale for the purpose of soap making. I picked up a sack of wood ash that would keep me for months.

Limestone would be tricky. I couldn't just buy it off the shelf, but a single good sized chunk would cover me for ages. It was part of my best defensive formula, so I didn't want to abandon it, but I didn't have a decent source. I decided to sort it out another day considering I'd made more than decent progress. Fifteen out of twenty two wasn't bad, especially considering two of those didn't exist and two more were highly obscure.

Ah, yes. Meteorite and dry ice. The combination would let me synthesize a call bead. That thing was pretty much the philosopher's stone for this system of alchemy. It let you 'call' on the supernatural power of other people. In theory I would be able to access the powers of other capes with them. It would be incredible if I could pull it off, but the procedure for making the connection was esoteric and the ingredients for the formula weren't easy to come by.

I had also given up on gunpowder at this point. I could combine it with grease for my strongest attack formula but I didn't want the hassle of trying to acquire some without any background in fireworks or explosives. That was just asking for a visit from the police.

If I was going to go on my first patrol tonight I needed to address the pressing problem of how the hell I was going to carry all the reagents I needed for my alchemy to function. There were twenty four formulas I could mix with my current materials. Without a better way of organizing things I'd be lucky to be able to have nine ready to go in the field.

Thus the second half of the day was spent hunting through thrift and army surplus stores for an effective way of managing fifteen different reagents, which had to be grouped into clusters for my available formulas. Not every one of my formulas needed to be on hand, and frankly for most of the dark alchemy I would need to be in a seriously bad spot to break it out. It was a horrifying mix of acid, decay, force, lightning, five flavors of fire and for some reason that I can promise you made perfect sense even if it seemed insane, a summoned swarm of bees. None of those were anything close to non-lethal. I was still going to keep them ready, but they wouldn't be my quick draw options.

My design ability proved to be at least partially active in the area of selecting items for my costume. There was a limited amount it could do if I wasn't making the equipment myself, but it did help me arrange the belts, holsters, and pouches in a way that looks planned and professional rather than slapdash.

The fact that I was rushing out my costume during the same shopping trip was the real burden. I had honestly anticipated staying in the workshop for another couple of weeks, but that was because I assumed my early powers would be design and construction based and I would need a serious amount of buildup time. I didn't imagine I would get immediate defensive powers and a serious array of offence and utility formula so early. If I'm being completely honest I didn't expect to get powers like this at all.

I was browsing through a thrift store when I felt my passenger's excitement as another constellation swung close. My power latched on to one of the smaller motes and secured a connection. The constellation was 'Vehicles' and the mote was called 'Black Thumb'. It was a mechanic based power. Mostly the ability provided me with the full skills of an expert mechanic. An entire lifetime's experience at my fingertips. Not just the abstract or theoretical stuff I'd seen in class, but real world 'diagnose the problem by the sound of the cylinders' master level mechanic work.

The ability also allowed me to upgrade vehicles in a lot of crazy ways without adversely affecting performance in the slightest and meant I could repair and tune up engines even as I was operating them, because powers were crazy like that. It was insane, but that seemed to be the standard for cape powers.

It was also useless to me at this point. Even with the master level of skill I had it would take days to get a vehicle together. Less for something like a motorcycle, but the mechanical expertise didn't come with any improved operational skill. I would be lucky to avoid killing myself if I got on a motorbike. Wait, I had enhanced durability. So I might be fine, providing the effect also stopped my brain from splattering against the inside of my skull during my first collision.

This was a good power, but it was presently badly overshadowed by what Squealer was already churning out on a daily basis. I could guarantee my vehicles would look a lot better than the ones she built, but that was a very low bar. Give me resources and time and I might be able to pull something together that looked like it belonged in the same league as Armsmaster's bike, though it would be nowhere near that level of efficiency.

On the other hand I might be able to make some money on the side doing off the books car repairs. This ability seemed designed to keep engines operating in horrible conditions with almost no resources. I bet I could patch up most car problems with minimal parts and even less time. That application would actually turn the fact that this was mundane crafting to an advantage. I was capable of good work, but aside from a few eccentric upgrades it was all standard stuff any competent mechanic would be able to do. I should be able to pull off the whole 'guy who knows about cars' thing and leverage that to some part time work.

But that was something for later. Still, the prospect of more resources, or at least useful skills helped me justify a bit more splurging than I would have otherwise been comfortable with. I indulged on a longer coat, something with plenty of pockets for reserve storage without being heavy enough to be unbearable once warmer weather sets in. I'd need some kind of head covering and was determined not to start with a hoodie as my only concealment. Hats and helmets could work, but they got expensive and I'd already made a major expenditure with my coat. Instead I picked up a couple of large bandanas that would do the job. Normally that kind of thing would look worse than a hoodie, but I trusted my design ability to pull it together.

The shopping trip was also made easier by my mobile storage. Being able to duck into an alley or side hall and throw all my purchases into the entry room of my workshop made the entire process mostly painless. It would also allow me access to all my alchemy supplies no matter what happened, which was another relief. By mid-afternoon I had accomplished as much as I was likely to without either spending myself into debt or ending up on a series of government watch lists. I headed back to my apartment to prepare for my first night out as a cape.

That night out didn't begin until after eleven o'clock. I may not have a full suite of tinker powers, but it seemed I had enough that it is disturbingly easy to lose track of time in my workshop. The technical knowledge and machine skills from black thumb allowed me to work to a much higher level of quality, even outside of vehicles. There was enough experience with detailing and body work in that skillset that, when combined with the aesthetic skills from my previous ability, allowed some truly impressive design work.

That was why I had a mask now. In my own opinion it was actually a pretty great mask. It contoured to my face perfectly and matched the vaguely sleek and streamlined theme I had managed with my bracer. The entire thing sat close enough that my vision wasn't significantly affected and when combined with one bandana tied over my head and another across my nose and mouth it gave me a striking appearance. It was kind of like a modern take on a knight's visor, though the protection aspect was less important than the ability to conceal my identity.

I'd added a few metal details to my coat as well. Not enough to weigh myself down, just enough to communicate that I was in costume. For some reason the skills from Black Thumb really liked the look of shiny metal, particularly chrome. I'd done the best with what I had in my metal workshop and found a balance. Enough metal to create a distinct look, but not enough to turn me into the walking hood ornament Black Thumb would have wanted.

Walking was an apt word to use here. I had only been out for a few minutes when I decided foot patrols were for chumps. Unfortunately none of my alchemist formulas helped with mobility. Well, one might have, but that was what I needed that weird pepper for.

As bad a reputation as Brockton Bay had for crime it seemed you couldn't just take an evening walk and hope to stumble across it. After an hour of wandering around I started to wonder what the point of this was. I guess I was showing the flag, so to speak, but other than spooking a few people on the street I hadn't done much. I could always head into the heart of a gang's territory and hope that my presence triggered some kind of response, but as good as my defenses were I didn't want to risk that. I might be highly resistant to damage but I could be captured or locked down fairly easily. If I got swarmed I would have to resort to dark alchemy to get out of it, and that meant a series of maiming at the very least. The kind of energy I could throw out was not something to be used lightly.

So the 'walk around randomly' plan was definitely a bust. If I wanted to actually make a difference I'd need to go out with proper objectives. That meant research, scouting, information gathering, and planning. All stuff I didn't have time for with my work/training/crafting schedule. I see why so many tinkers end up on teams.

Maybe I could get a police radio. If I listened to dispatches I might be able to use that to respond to serious incidents. Were dispatches even sent over open broadcast anymore? It was probably encoded, or at least digital. If I had better tech abilities I could probably crack it, but my current skill set wouldn't be helpful.

So all I was accomplishing tonight was walking around in costume and feeling like a badass. Frankly I was ok with that. I might not bring down a villain or stop a major crime, but I know that I could have. Being out here was something positive, both for the city and for my cape career.

All that rationalization fell away when the sound of breaking glass reached me. Yes, I was ok with nothing happening, but if something did there was no way I was going to miss it. My coat flew behind me as I broke into a sprint. My belts, bandoleer, and holsters were secured enough that they kept stable while I ran but the reserve reagents in my coat pockets were bouncing uncomfortably with each step. I'd need to scale those down in the future.

I rounded a corner and nearly collided with a man in a black body suit and red demon mask who appeared in front of me. Literally appeared, as in teleportation. Rather than turn to face me he kept his attention on the mass of shadows that concealed a nearby alley mouth and damaged store front. Instead a copy of him appeared facing me as the first kept watch on the shadows.

I could see large shapes moving within the dark mass and hear the scraping of claws on pavement and broken glass. But I could also see the demon ninja in front of me. Oni Lee. I knew how dangerous he was and his reputation for violence. I didn't know if this was a hero-villain fight or if he was going up against another criminal. Either way he was still a threat, both to me and the city.

Did I want to do this? Was I ready to do this? Probably not, but that wasn't going to stop me. I stared down the demon mask for a handful of seconds as neither of us made a move. Then I shifted my stance, drew my club, and suddenly it was on.

Oni Lee was a much better fighter than me. It was evident by the way the fight opened with an arm reaching from behind me and drawing a knife across my neck. With the steel hard durability of my bracer extending through my body the blade came away without drawing blood, but the sensation was distinctly unpleasant. I swung my club back and tried to catch the ninja, but he rolled out of the way of my clumsy swipe and lunged forward with repeated strikes. The knife bounced off in every instance without so much as fraying the fabric of my coat and deftly stepped out of the reach of any return blows from my baton. More clones started appearing around me, swinging with different weapons. Stilettos, combat knives, machetes, and a hatchet all bounced or skidded off as I weathered the hail of blades and desperately tried to score a return hit.

On more than one occasion I considered reaching for a prepared mix for my attack formulas. Clones were dissolving as quickly as they were appearing and a single fireball should be able to clear the crowd. Still, I held back. I had no way of knowing which of these was the real Lee and didn't want to end up with a corpse on my hands.

That conviction was severely tested as a pair of thin knives snaked through the gap of my mask and found my eyes. I don't care how tough you are, that is not something you can walk off. An attack that would have pierced my brain was no worse than accidently poking yourself in the eye, but it was enough to completely take my mind off the fight. My legs were swept out from under me and four copies of Lee piled on, pinning me to the ground.

I thought that this was just about the worst situation I could be in. Then I heard the pin drop. Pins. All the pins from all the grenades of the clones that were piled on top of me. And the heavy thuds as dozens of small egg shaped metal objects hit the ground around me.

It was simple really. What do you do if you're an experienced parahuman murderer and you're fighting someone too tough for conventional weapons? Escalate. Escalate hard. And in Oni Lee's case that meant grenades. All the grenades. I may have been as tough as steel at the moment but I didn't like my chances against that much explosive. I don't think there's a cape in the city that would be comfortable in my position right now.

I'm rather proud of how I managed to respond to my first legitimately life threatening moment. In the scant few seconds before the grenades fuses triggered I managed to grab one of my prepared formulas from a belt pouch. I spilled every other set of the same formula from said pouch, but I was not worried about the cascade of clay and ash that spread out across the street. I was worried about being able to complete this formula before I got splattered across the entire block.

I mashed the two ingredients together in the precise mixture and channeled the essence of the reagents into the desired effect. The knowledge I had gained from this ability put me on good footing in terms of managing the process under stress. Alchemy was normally a complex art and required careful concentration. I doubt most people would have been able to pull off any result in this situation. What I managed wasn't my best effort, but the formula combined successfully and settled into my body, reinforcing me against harm. I managed it just before the first explosion triggered.

It's a unique experience to be in the middle of a pile of grenades as they detonate. Fragmentation grenades combine the fun of a pulverizing shockwave with the effect of dozens of chunks of sharp metal launched at high velocity. Funnily enough I had considered not prepping the Defend formula. I figured my bracer would give enough durability for everything but cape powers and I had Reflect to counter them. I did not see this situation coming, and it made me very grateful that I decided to play completionist in terms of what I carried with me.

It hurt. It hurt a lot. It was like being in a storm of thunder, beatings, and stabs. I could feel the blasts in my ears, my throat, my lungs. Shrapnel pelted me and the fact that it wasn't penetrating my coat was small comfort when I could feel a bruise bloom with every impact. The fact that my bracer's durability extended to both my clothes and body was probably the only reason I was able to endure. The reinforcement of my alchemy held off just enough of the damage that I was still conscious and mobile once the series of explosions ended and the smoke cleared, but that was not the same as unharmed.

At this point I was ready to break out the dark alchemy and reduce that bastard to a puddle of smoking flesh, but I held back. I had been playing this stupid and it was time to level the field. In the smoking crater I pulled a prepped formula consisting of a piece of wax and two measures of water, held in a small pouch together. I saw the shadow of Oni Lee approaching through the smoke and mashed together my speed formula as I lunged towards him.

This was one of my stronger enhancement formulas and one I would have preferred to field test before using. It did allow faster movement, but only slightly. Mostly it accelerated perception and reaction. It was essentially a bullet time formula. At my level of proficiency it wasn't quite enough to dodge bullets, but it provided an overwhelming advantage against a normal human, regardless of the difference in skill.

Oni Lee's skill level was still damn impressive. Probably the only reason I didn't end the fight in one swing was his reactions that turned with my strike, resulting in a spider web of cracks across his mask rather than the concussion I'd been going for. I ignored the Oni Lee in front of me as another appeared to my right. My baton came around and swiped a knife out of his hand, then continued past to glance off the chest of another copy. Two more appeared within a fraction of a second of each other and I ignored their attacks, instead spinning and bringing my weapon towards the empty street behind me.

My precaution paid off as the form of Oni Lee flickered into being with a silver and red orb in one hand. I brought my club down onto his forearm with all my strength. The light composite of his wrist guard folded under the heavy impact of my solid steel club. I felt a pair of snaps as the club continued down with all its force and watched in slow motion as the assassin's lower arm flopped like a strand of overcooked spaghetti.

The metal object fell from his useless fingers and one by one the copies collapsed into dust until even the version of Lee that was cradling his broken arm disappeared. My speed boost wore off and time resumed its normal pace. I was panting hard enough that the bandana around my neck was flaring with every breath and my body felt like a giant bruise. The surge of adrenalin that had carried me through the end of the fight was crashing and every bit of pain, exhaustion, and overexertion was coming to the forefront.

My attention was drawn to the sound of a slow clap in the direction of the dark alley. The ominous black clouds had faded revealing three monstrous creatures of bone and meat pacing back and forth. The clap was coming from one of the riders, a young man in ren-fair clothes with a stylized mask and small crown.

"Nicely fucking done. You really bruted your way through that fight." He was wearing a slightly sarcastic smirk, but there was a cautious edge to it. "Ten out of ten, full points."

"Not a brute." A blond girl in a purple and black outfit with a domino mask chimed in. "More of a tinker really. He buffs himself to fight."

One of the last two riders, a guy in motorcycle leathers and a skull helmet cleared his throat. "We appreciate the help. Oni Lee is a serious threat and you really helped us out there." There were clouds of darkness leaking around the seams of his helmet and his voice had a strange echoy resonance.

There was a growl from the last rider, a muscular girl with a cheap dog mask. Her growl was echoed by the three monsters. "We could have taken him."

"Maybe," The guy in biker leathers clarified, "but we still appreciate the help."

I continued to stare at the four capes. The reason I hadn't replied wasn't because I recognized them as the Undersiders, a smash and grab villain team so minor I hadn't even bothered to research them since getting my powers. It wasn't because I was squaring up for another fight. It wasn't because of the exhaustion I was feeling. It was because my passenger was basically going nuts.

The emotional link I have with my passenger is complicated. It's always there, but unless I'm dealing with something cape related it tends to be fairly muted. Cape responses vary considerably, but generally villains trigger some kind of negative emotion. That was most certainly not the case here.

The reactions I was getting were complicated and a lot more nuanced that anything I had picked up before. Mostly the feeling was sympathetic, though in different ways for each Undersider. As I swept my gaze across the four of them I felt spikes of compassion, amusement, admiration, respect, and small levels of caution. Before I could respond or try to parse the information I was getting the girl in purple spoke up.

"Grue, we need to leave." Her face was ashen.

"Tattletale?" He glanced around as if looking for a threat.

"Full black out. We need to move now." His body language seemed confused. She spoke again, her voice taking on a desperate edge. "He's reading us!"

The biker, Grue, went stock still for a fraction of a second, then snapped up both his arms and let out a roiling wave of black mist. As it flowed over me I could hear the sounds of the creatures scrabbling over the pavement, but the noise was delayed and sourceless. The cloud of darkness was pitch black and had a murky feel to it. It also didn't seem to be dispersing any time soon.

Did that girl know about my passenger? Was that part of her power? Should I be worried about other people picking up on the connection and information I was getting? I focused on Tattletale and gauged the emotions that were being sent to me. There was the sense that she was dangerous. Well, not physically dangerous but still a threat. There was also a certain amount of faith in her, and admiration. It felt like it was both for her abilities and her character. Concern was there as well. She was in a bad spot. I couldn't pick out what she was being threatened by, but it was something my passenger felt she needed help with.

That was a lot to deal with, and it significantly more detailed than what I'd gotten from any other cape. It felt like other Undersiders had as much information attached to them as well, but this wasn't the time to place through that. I was currently standing in the middle of the road in a cloud of supernatural darkness. Luckily I had something that might help with that.

I reached into my pouches and started fishing out individual reagents. I hadn't prepped this formula for obvious reasons. It had no combat utility and I couldn't imagine a situation where it would be necessary.

Well, that situation was now. I separated out two units of ash and one of wax and combined them in the Revealer formula. I wasn't sure it would work, but it was my best chance of getting out of here without having to feel my way along the walls of buildings.

It worked. Well, it sort of worked. The darkness didn't vanish, but I could make out the shape of things. It was like looking at a wireframe model of the world. Not full vision, but immensely better than trying to stumble my way out of this mess.

It also gave me a chance to appreciate the scene of my fight with Oni Lee. The grenade cluster had created an actual crater in the middle of the street and shrapnel had pockmarked the surrounding walls and broken more than a few windows. That was probably why the Undersiders had stayed back. I was in serious discomfort from that mess. Any normal human would have been reduced to a smear. I doubt even the monster dogs they were riding would have been able to stand up to that.

Speaking of which, I was done feeling like I'd been shoved through a meat grinder. I dug out one of my prepared formulas, a feather and a piece of ginger root. It was the most powerful healing formula I had with the only downside being that I could only use it on myself. I combined the ingredients and tossed the reaction into the air. The restorative effects settled over me and instantly I felt the pain vanish. It did nothing to help the frays and tears of my clothing, but that was a lesser concern. I had been at ground zero for dozens of grenades and managed to walk away from it with nothing but a bit of clothing damage. What must Oni Lee have thought after that?

Actually, what was he thinking? A few seconds of searching had me locate the silver sphere he dropped when I broke his arm. It was basic in its design, simple metal with a single seam and an activation switch protected against accidental triggering. You didn't need mechanical expertise to figure out what this was. When conventional weapons weren't enough Oni Lee had broken out one of Bakuda's tinker tech devices. This was almost certainly some horrible kind of bomb.

It was dangerous just to be holding something like this. I didn't doubt a bomb tinker would have some method of remote detonation. The thing was, how did I dispose of this properly? Tinker tech would be beyond the means of the bomb squad and I didn't have any way of contacting the Protectorate. Also, it may have been a very bad idea, but I didn't want to just get rid of it. This was the very first piece of tinker tech I had held in my own hands. The potential that I could learn from this was making me seriously consider the risks of holding on to it.

If there was a remote detonator then it would have a signal to trigger it. There was also the possibility it was on a deadman's switch and would go off it a signal dropped away, but I doubted that. The chance that Oni Lee could end up somewhere when the signal would drop out and end up at ground zero was too high. It's possible it was on a timer that would detonate if not reset after a fixed amount of time, but that was less likely than there just being remote detonation built in.

One thing I was certain about was nothing could reach my workshop when the door was closed. That was a piece of absolute knowledge that came when I got the power. I had enough steel in stock to build a container that would block any type of conventional signal. It's possible Bakuda uses something exotic and tinker based for her triggers, but I doubt it would be universally implemented in handheld grenades. Not with how recently she triggered.

I felt the Celestial Forge move again as a constellation approached. During the fight with Oni Lee my power had failed to latch onto one of the larger motes from the Vehicle constellation. This time it connected with a small mote from what turned out to be the 'Time' constellation.

The ability my power got wasn't specifically connected with time, but the mote had a link to another much larger mote in the same consolation. Whatever that was, the first ability was necessary for whatever time power the second one represented. And I wasn't exactly disappointed with what I had connected to.

The ability was called 'Scientist: Machinery'. It represented doctorate level understanding of the actual science behind a specific field, in this case machinery and mechanical applications. It also carried an intelligence increase, though what that meant exactly was difficult to gauge. It would definitely help with my pseudo tinkering, but it wasn't some kind of serendipitous power that would let me crack the secrets of tinker tech explosives.

Actually, it was possible that whatever caused this darkness to block light also interfered with other signals. That would mean I had a window to lock down the bomb that would last until this cloud dissipated. I just needed to get to my workshop.

I moved into the alley and hunted around until I found a door that would serve my purpose. I fished out my key, opened the way to my workshop, and barred the portal behind me. The inside was still lit, but wisps of eerie darkness slipped through the gap in the door. I ignored that and headed straight for my lab.

Using every ounce of my new skills I started tearing through my stock of materials to cobble together the most secure container I could manage. Multiple redundant faraday cages, thick plates of steel and an extensive grounding system covered it. The resulting structure would have to be disassembled for it to be moved and was wedged in the furthest corner of my workshop to minimize any damage that could be caused. It was absolutely the best containment system capable of being constructed with my skill set and resources. Unless Bakuda uses some trigger mechanism completely removed from electromagnetic communication this would be able to block it.

I still did all the work with my Force Field formula active and elected to not sleep in my usual workshop adjacent bed.

Force Field was seriously powerful for a defensive formula. It would completely block a single attack regardless of strength. The reason I picked Defend over it this evening was once that first attack was blocked it was completely spent. It would have helped me against only one of the dozens of grenades I had been pelted with. Against this bomb it would be able to save me providing the effect didn't have multiple stages, or a persistent effect, or some kind of environmental change, or a chemical or biological vector. In short it provided some security, but nowhere near enough.

By the time I finished work and changed back to my civilian wear the darkness was fading to occasional wisps of shadow. It was getting to be late enough at night that it could technically count as early in the morning and I had the ill fortune of having to work tomorrow. I trudged back to my apartment in civilian wear, opened my workshop just long enough to grab my blankets and pillow, then collapsed in my apartment in an attempt to get as much sleep as possible before my alarm. I could sort out the rest of this mess tomorrow.

Jumpchain abilities this chapter:

Black Thumb (Mad Max Gauntlet) 100:
You have the skills of an expert mechanic, able to keep vehicles running even in the most inhospitable conditions. Repairing and tuning up engines is your bread and butter, even while they're still operating. You also have a feel for how to upgrade cars in more esoteric ways; hey, it takes skill to add that many spikes and not hurt the handling!

Scientist: Machinery (Girl Genius) 100:
You have a DOCTORATE! And skill in ACTUAL SCIENCE! That doesn't need you to go crazy to work! Admittedly, it won't break the fabric of space and time, but meh. Tradeoffs everywhere you go. You're highly trained in one field, and can easily apply its principles to your work. After all, building a crazed abomination upon the natural order usually requires at least a smidgen of understanding of which bones are supposed to go where (Even if you end up changing them around a little). At the very least, you're also in the genius range of standard intelligence.

 

[LordRoustabout]

3.1 Interlude: Brian

Brian climbed the steps to the hideout with the rest of the Undersiders trailing behind him. On paper this looked like a great victory for the team. Lung was captured and Oni Lee had been crippled. Unfortunately circumstances were more complicated than that.

This had been the first major offensive the Undersiders had conducted and it had been a hard sell for the team. Before tonight he would have thought that hitting Lung's casino was the biggest risk he could live with. The take from that job had been excellent, but it had kicked the hornet's nest as far as the ABB was concerned. Lung was on the warpath and they'd already had to cancel two jobs because of ABB spotters that Lisa had picked out.

Taking the fight to the gang had been a dicey proposition. Alec was in favor of waiting a few weeks for things to die down. It wasn't a terrible plan, and honestly Brian probably would have gone along with it in any other circumstances. Unfortunately that just wasn't an option right now.

He was so close to getting custody of Aisha, but there were expenses that went along with that. He knew his mother was circling and looking for any excuse she could take to contest the case. A drop in income from his 'job', a delay on setting up Aisha's room in his apartment, even extra debt if he tried to use credit cards to bridge the gap, any of those could torpedo his chances of keeping his sister safe. He couldn't afford to sit back from jobs for weeks. Actually, with how vindictive Lung was known to be those weeks would likely spill into months.

Fortunately Brian wasn't alone in pushing for the attack. The boss wanted the Undersiders back in the field and Lisa was in his corner on that. Brian knew Rachel was caring for far more dogs than the three she took on jobs. Because of that her expenses well exceeded what their base salary could cover and she was both hungry for work and defensive of her share. She could not afford to sit things out until the ABB decided they weren't a priority.

They had talked Alec around eventually, but he kept voicing his doubts the whole time. Brian had a sense everyone was feeling the same way, but Alec was the only one complaining about things. Heading out that night had been a terrifying experience. No one was letting their fear show, but the dogs were picking up on it and they were agitated as the team rode out to face the ABB capes.

Brian had planned things out as well as he could with Lisa. No one in the city would have taken the odds for the Undersiders in a fight with the ABB, but he felt they at least had a chance. By striking from ambush and keeping their opponents off balance and separated they could do this. Oni Lee didn't do well in darkness and Lung was outclassed by Rachel's dogs for the first few stages of his growth. If everything went well they could get the drop on their opponents and either finish this or make them cautious enough that they wouldn't risk a confrontation.

Then the night had proven the old adage that no plan survives contact with the enemy. Two new capes in one night. It wasn't unheard of. Brockton had a larger community of fresh triggers, c-listers, and mercenary capes than anyone really gave it credit for. With Lung, Kaiser, Armsmaster, and Dauntless in the same city it was easy to overlook a guy running around in a budget costume doing work on the periphery of the scene.

Hell, until last year Brian would have met that definition himself.

It would have been unusual to just run into capes by chance but no part of this operation was subtle. The tinker had followed the sound of their fight with Oni Lee and the bug cape had found Lung's staging point. It could just as easily have been protectorate heroes as that pair of green capes.

What was unusual was how well both of them had faired against the powerhouses of the ABB. The tinker had taken over a fight that was pushing the entire team to their limits and walked out of it with only a frayed coat while Oni Lee slunk off with a broken arm. The bug cape may have been in a bad spot when they arrived but Lung had been worked over on a level that would normally take an entire team of capes to pull off. If he hadn't been drunk on venom the dogs would have had a serious fight on their hands and Brian couldn't have guaranteed all the Undersiders would have walked away from it.

In theory things went better than they could have hoped for. In practice things were a lot more complicated. Rather than the elation of a successful job the morale of the group was mixed.

Bitch was in her usual foul mood. This job had been purely defensive. It countered an imminent threat to the team, but didn't have any pay or loot. Bitch was here out of obligation and to ensure continued work. With the appearance of the two new capes the normally wary girl was on edge.

Alec was as irreverent as ever, heading straight for the couch and grabbing a controller with one hand and some leftover pizza with the other, looking to all the world like he was completely content with how the night turned out. Brian knew better, but the question of just how much of that was an act was something he was never able to nail down.

Lisa was most concerning. She had recovered from what looked like a real moment of panic and settled into her usually smartass role when dealing with the bug controller, but whatever happened with the other cape had clearly shaken her badly. She had been quiet on the way back and Lisa was never quiet unless something was going very wrong.

Alec glanced over from the couch and smirked. "What's the big deal? Tonight went great. We should have more missions where other capes do all the work for us."

"We didn't need their help." Rachel was in the kitchen getting some food for the patiently waiting Brutus, Judas, and Angelica. Brian knew what she was concerned about. Rachel felt takes were being split too many way already. She would oppose any recruitment attempts, both to protect her share and out of general distrust. The thing was the Undersiders needed new blood. They had reached the limit of what they could handle with four people. Lisa might be spooked, but Brian doubted that would matter as the boss had been pushing for recruitment. A master who could take on Lung was a seriously valuable asset. Whatever the other guy's deal was he had taken an attack that would have put down any bruiser in the empire and come out swinging.

"Are you kidding? Did you see that first guy at work? Oni Lee's lucky to still have a hand after that hit."

"Lucky shot." She paused. "And Lisa didn't like him."

It was rare for Rachel to show any concern for the feelings of another member of the team. Brian wondered if she was actually worried for Lisa or just using it as another excuse to put off recruitment. It could easily be both. The girl was cautious enough regarding candidates everyone supported. Seeing Lisa react like she did probably raised all kinds of fears as far as the tinker cape was concerned.

"Oh yeah. Hey Lisa, what was up with that? Did you start feeling tingly when he looked at you?" Lisa stopped rubbing her temples and shot Alec a seething glare. "That's perfectly normal for a girl your age. You see, when a man and a woman…" Brian's thrown cushion hit him hard enough to knock him clean off the sofa. The idiot laid on the ground laughing to himself and Rachel looked on in disgust.

"Lisa, conference. Now." She gave a quick nod and they headed for the rooms. After a seconds hesitation she went for her own room rather than his. Another bad sign.

Lisa's room was sparse and felt more like an office than a living space. There was a filing cabinet in one corner and a laptop on her desk. Papers were strewn across the room, some unorganized, some in neat piles. The bed looked as untouched as it had when he helped her move it in here. Lisa took a seat on the edge of the mattress and peeled off her domino mask. Brian considered, then perched on the edge of the desk while facing her.

He took a breath. "I need to know what got you so freaked out back there."

Lisa seemed to consider her phrasing, then shook her head and remained quiet.

"Ok, what did you mean when you said he was reading us?" He hadn't wanted to bring this up in front of the others but the possibilities had him in a cold sweat. "Are we compromised?"

"No." Her voice was nowhere near as confident as Brian had become accustomed to. "I don't think so." He took a breath and gestured for her to elaborate. "It wasn't like what I do. It was like someone was feeding him impressions of us. And they were all accurate. Like someone who knew each of us really well was telling him how to respond."

Brian's chest tightened. "How bad is this?"

"I don't know. I've never seen anything else like this, ever. And whatever it was is unrelated to his other powers."

"Do we have to worry about him coming after us? How much does he know?"

"He barely knows anything. That's not what set me off. All he has is this emotional impression of us. Whoever gave it to him is another story."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean whoever is feeding him this impression knows all about us. Us specifically. The stuff he was getting was nuanced and specific to each of our backgrounds. His source, they know everything."

Brian let out a slow breath. "You have any idea who they are?"

She shook her head frantically. "Who, what, I have no idea if they even really exist. I'm flying blind here." He could see how much it pained her to admit that. "It could be some weird thinker power, or it could be someone connected with him, or it could be something even stranger. I can't get information on them and that frankly terrifies me."

"Is he being sent against us? Is that it?" This could be bad. They might be able to outmaneuver him, but there was nothing they had that would be able to counter that kind of toughness. Oni Lee had dropped enough explosives to level a building. Without Lisa's warning to take cover the shrapnel alone would have turned them into Swiss cheese. He was at ground zero and only ended up a little battered.

"No, it's..." She paused as if considering her words. Then a sour smile crossed her face. "That thing? The person, power, whatever. The thing that's feeding him information? It likes us."

"What?" Brian couldn't keep the shock off his face.

"Yeah. Whoever, whatever this is. It likes us. The Undersiders. It likes us as people, as a team. Even Rachel and Alec."

Brian blinked. "Alec?"

"Yeah, even knowing everything about him."

"Well, that's..." He was at a loss for words. Concerning? Comforting? What the hell was he supposed to make of this?

"Both reassuring and terrifying at the same time?"

"Sounds about right." He let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. "You report any of this to the boss yet?"

She shook her head. "Standard mission complete text but no details on the new capes. Though he probably already knows a good chunk of it."

Here came the hard part. "He going to want us to make a play at recruitment?"

She nodded slowly. "Almost certainly. After we blew it with Spitfire he's been pushing heavily for it."

Which meant he wanted bigger jobs. Brian didn't have Lisa's level of contact with the man, but he could tell the direction his team was being steered. "What do you think?"

She considered. "Bug girls more likely. We give her some space from Rachel for the introduction and I'm sure I can talk her around. She's new but she's powerful. We'd be lucky to land her."

"After facing down Lung I doubt anyone would argue with that. We'll have to put it to a vote, but I can't see there being any issues." The caveat 'Except for Rachel' went unsaid. "What about the other guy?"

"After that performance there's going to be a big push to get him onboard, if just to keep him from being scooped up by the competition." Lisa's voice betrayed how she felt about that idea.

"What did you get from him? I mean beyond all that insight stuff?"

Lisa considered. "New cape. Newer trigger than bug girl. She's had her powers for months and has been building towards heading out. Getting equipment, costume, that kind of stuff. He's had his powers for maybe a week. A lot of what he was using was newer than that."

"You said he was a tinker?"

"Sort of. He made his gear, but it was really low tech stuff. It just looked nice. The way he uses his powers is probably closer to Dauntless than Armsmaster. Totem cape stuff, items as a conduit for his power. What he had works for him but not anyone else."

"So basically useless for team support?" Not that that would be enough to kill the pressure to recruit. Not with how he fared tonight.

"There was some mechanical knowledge there. You can tell from how his gear was made. Access to a decent machine shop too. But no, he's not going to be churning out ray guns for anyone."

"With what he pulled it's not like he needs to sell himself on the prospect of propping up a team."

"That was closer than it looked." Brian raised an eyebrow. "He managed a last minute boost that saved his life. There's some continuous durability, but not on the level of that many grenades."

"That what he pulled after the blast? With that weird glow?"

Lisa nodded. "Some kind of enhancement effect. He has the materials for it in those pouches." She paused to consider something, then shuddered. "Early in the fight he was considering going for one of them that would have ended things."

"What, he had something that would have put down Oni Lee?"

"Put down as in six feet down." Lisa's voice was grave. "He was trying to stay nonlethal, but he had some big guns in reserve."

That was concerning. Knowing about it was better than going in blind, but if recruitment went badly they would be facing serious firepower as well as someone they couldn't drop.

"What are we talking about here? How bad could this get."

"I don't know." She waved him off before he could respond. "I don't know because he doesn't know. He hasn't had a chance to test out that stuff. Whatever it is he knows it's dangerous, but he's not clear on the specifics."

Brian winced at that. In terms of 'how bad' that was pretty fucking bad. On the cape scene there were few things scarier than a tinker pulling out some device and saying something to the effect of 'Ok, I'm not sure what this does.'

Then again, he had held back from using them even after Oni Lee dropped an Easter basket worth of grenades on him. That was better restraint than most capes. It was a serious contrast to the bug girl throwing everything but the kitchen sink at Lung in an attempt to bring him down.

Brian had seen the effect of a brown recluse bite once. Once. That was enough for a lifetime.

Still, that was the kind of thing you very much wanted on your side if just to keep it from being directed towards you. Plus that was a significant level of firepower that was precise and tightly controlled.

Brian knew the value of intimidation. He had built his entire reputation around being the monster in the dark. A giant swarm of insects had its own power. It was the kind of thing people would react to before they were consciously aware of what their bodies were doing. Everyone knew the threat of an insect and their minds could easily scale it up. That had a lot more impact than someone who may or may not be carrying around whatever vaguely threatening thing was in his pocket.

"We'll go forward with the bug girl, take a vote once everyone's calmed down. The other guy, we'll play that as it comes."

Lisa shook her head. "The boss is going to push for him. Hard."

"I know." He needed the support to keep Aisha safe, but sometime this whole arrangement was just infuriating. "We see how things progress with the bug girl. We lock her down and maybe we'll get a bit of breathing room on the grenade sponge."

She grinned at that. "Your optimism is adorable."

He winced. "Any chance that this mystery thinker power or whatever he has going on will convince the boss we should stay hands off?"

"No." Lisa's answer was immediate and devoid of emotion. "In fact, with that kind of power if we don't manage to land him the boss will probably make a play of his own."

As much as Brian hated to admit it that seemed pretty likely. Despite working for the boss since the team was founded he still didn't have much of a sense of the man or what his long term goals were. One thing he had picked up was there were serious long term plans in the works. Whoever their boss was, he was either a thinker or playing in the same league as one. Few capes were as territorial as those with that classification.

"Can you manage this? It's going to fall to you to handle the contacts and plan the approaches. With how you were tonight..."

"I'll be alright. Mainly it just caught me off guard." She let out a sigh. "I'll contact the boss and update you when I have a better idea of where this is going."

Brian nodded. "I'll head back out, start floating the idea of recruitment. Might go better if I can ease Rachel into it."

Lisa checked her watch. "Looks like neither of us will be getting much sleep tonight."

"What's that they say, no rest for the wicked?"

That got a slight grin from Lisa but Brian could tell this was wearing her down. He didn't like this. She was right about how hard the boss would push. An unconnected tinker was too tempting a prize and that thinker effect, whatever it was, would push things over the top. They needed to find some way to at least get on good terms with him.

He could leave that to Lisa. In the meantime he gently opened the possibility of recruitment to Alec and Rachel. With Rachel he had to restate every argument they'd used for Spitfire's recruitment and then some. Alec was less than helpful in that regard, but at least wasn't trying to actively sabotage anything. By the time he'd gotten her to at least entertain the idea it was too late to even consider going back to his apartment. As he crashed in his room in the hideout he hoped Lisa was having better luck than him.

They'd need it.

 

[LordRoustabout]

4 Recovery

I woke up on the floor of what used to be my bedroom before I had shifted to sleeping in a pocket dimension. Well, less bedroom and more the bed area of my weirdly shaped studio apartment. It was easy to remember why I had moved as I took in the smells, textures, and general dinginess of my surroundings. I had spent the night with a meager amount of bedding between me and the questionable carpeting of the apartment. It was the best I could do without trying to fit my mattress through the closet door again. That had taken too long the first time and turned into a game of furniture Tetris in my attempts to get the damn thing to fit. Still, with how my back felt right now sleeping one room away from a tinker tech bomb didn't sound as bad as it had the previous night.

My alarm had sounded, but with my limited sleep I was seriously considering skipping the morning run. I figured frantic melee combat has to count for cardio right? I was probably due for a rest day.

That was when I felt a constellation approach within the Celestial Forge. I still had extra reach from my last connection and it had grown further since then. A link solidified to a small mote in the 'Knowledge' constellation.

The ability I latched onto was called 'Not a Stupid Grunt'. The odd name was kind of appropriate because I definitely was not stupid now. My Scientist ability had boosted me to genius. That was a bit abstract since genius is a pretty broad range and quantifying intelligence is a difficult process. I was more focused on the doctorate level knowledge I had picked up from that ability. This ability didn't come with any new information. It was just a straight cognitive booster and it was considerably more pronounced than anything I had picked up before.

This ability would let me out strip any non-parahuman scientist in the world with only moderate effort. Combined with the boost I had already received and my mechanical knowledge from Scientist and Black Thumb and I was probably as good at mechanical systems as most tinkers. Certainly better than any who didn't specialize in the subject.

One thing I had been concerned about was the prospect that this power would alter my mind. My passenger had been open about that. I didn't have the conflict levers most parahumans did, but there was a certain amount of mental alteration that was necessary if I was going to be able to operate at the level of a tinker. It seemed that this was the first significant step in that direction.

Somehow the idea of going to stock shelves for eight hours seemed laughable. This wasn't a 'too good for menial labor' way of thinking. Over the last day I'd gone from moderate understanding of mechanical engineering to career mechanic to the kind of person who would lead an industrial design team to the kind of person whose research would be distributed to industrial design teams. There was no reason for me to keep my day job at this point. My finances would take a hit, but I was pretty sure I could fish a car out of a river and have it running perfectly within a day. I would be able to find a way to capitalize on my powers if just from highly efficient repairs.

It would result in a short term hit to my savings, but I could endure it for a couple of weeks. Quitting two hours before the start of shift was a dick move, but if they weren't going to pay for full time employee's benefits then they shouldn't expect loyalty.

That phone call was less than polite on my manager's part, but the deed was done and I had the full day ahead of me. I started it with the absolute best possible use of my time and went back to sleep.

Three hours later I was rested, fed, caffeinated, and ready to try running at a time other than stupid o'clock. Given it was a Monday there was a different tone to the mid-morning foot traffic, but enough people apparently had flexible enough schedules that they were able to exercise at this time. I wonder if there's ever a time of day when the nice part of the city isn't beset by joggers. Maybe it's just the natural background for a place like this. Clean open area means you get joggers. Cramped dirty areas means drug dealers and homeless people. Though it was probably the boardwalk enforcers who maintained that particular balance.

After my run I effectively took it easy for the rest of the day. After lunch I made my way to the library and spent the afternoon reading. I wanted to gauge the effect of whatever my new intelligence was doing. Information was definitely easier to retain and my reading speed had increased substantially. I wasn't exactly speed reading my way through the entire library but I could see how it would be possible to quickly master a field of study with these abilities. I wouldn't get there overnight, and an afternoon of browsing various subjects hadn't resulted in that much improvement, but a few months of dedicated effort would have me outstripping people who devoted years of their life towards a specific field.

When it came to machinery I was already well ahead of what any non-tinker would be able to manage.

The current issue was there was a limit to what I could pull off with the resources I had available. I could work more efficiently, but the time required to fabricate anything from base components, not even considering the comparatively limited tools available, effectively barred me from anything more advanced. I would need to start hunting down better materials and tools. So far I had been able to hold off tinker scavenging, but unless I got another source of materials and equipment soon that would be my only option.

If I could find work as an auto mechanic, even under the table, that would address my financial and supply problems. I did have some concerns about being able to keep my abilities secret. It would have been hard enough with just Black Thumb on display. Combine that with my Scientist ability and my intelligence booster and I would be setting off every tinker alarm they had. Particularly bad seeing as the only place that would hire someone without experience or credentials would be barely above a chop shop. Get outed as a tinker in one of those places and you're headed straight for gang recruitment.

Those were problems for later. Right now I had to get to training. Proper training, seeing as I had a boxing lesson with Mr. Laborn.

Mr. Laborn didn't precisely run the boxing gym, but he was the most respected coach there. He was also a stickler for respect, punctuality, and proper dedication. Thus I showed up half an hour early for stretches and warmup. I didn't think I was actually going to become a great boxer, but last night proved that without combat buffs I was fresh meat for any decently trained fighter. Oni Lee didn't have any power that boosted him physically and he would have taken me apart about a dozen times if not for my durability power. Just because I could do some pseudo tinkering now was no reason to neglect my training.

Five minutes before our lesson Mr. Laborn arrived. He was an older black man built like a linebacker with an attitude that demanded respect. Doug is the kind of person who's on a first name basis with everyone he's known for more than five minutes. I'm pretty sure Mr. Laborn is still Mr. Laborn to people he's known since his childhood. I moved to greet him, but he waved me off.

"Finish that warmup. I'll be with you soon." It was at that point I noticed the teenage girl trailing behind her with a bored expression on her face. She was wearing work out attire heavily at odds with the rest of the gym. She had on a neon green racerback top that left her stomach exposed and a set of leggings. There was a purple streak in her hair and she had multiple piercings on display. Her attention was mainly focused on the smartphone in her hand with only enough attention paid to the rest of the gym to avoid bumping into anyone. Even when Mr. Laborn went to speak with her she barely raised her head.

The family resemblance was there, if muted. That meant she was his daughter. His teenage daughter. His barely teenage daughter who had apparently started developing very early.

That wasn't what concerned me. The main thing that had me on edge was that my passenger apparently knew her. He had emotional resonance to that girl that was as strong as anything from the Undersiders. I mean, I could quickly rule out the possibility that she was secretly one of them, not unless there were significant shapeshifting powers at play.

Was she secretly a cape? If my passenger could pick out capes in their civilian identities that was a problem. If it got out the violation of the unwritten rules would effectively make it open season on me. Still, I couldn't imagine who she could be. There were some independent heroes and villains in the city that I hadn't read up on, so that was a possibility, but then why was the reaction so close to the Undersiders?

I finished my warmup and cautiously approached them. She looked less than thrilled to be here and Mr. Laborn seemed none too pleased with the arrangement either.

"Joe, I don't believe you know my daughter Aisha." He somehow made the statement in a way that implied 'you will not know my daughter Aisha' so hard I could almost hear it beneath his words.

"No, I don't." I didn't leave any room for misinterpretation. I stayed focused on Mr. Laborn and ignored the highly amused feelings from my passenger.

He gave a curt nod. "Her brother was going to watch her tonight, but he had a work obligation. She'll be working out here during your class."

From the tone of his voice I honestly felt bad for her brother. From everything I'd learned, Mr. Laborn liked order. Mr. Laborn meshed with this gym like they had been made for each other while Aisha could not be doing more to stop from fitting in. I mean, her outfit would maybe have worked in one of those upscale mall fitness centers. Compared to this relic of a building she practically looked like a time traveler, and I'm guessing it was deliberate on her part.

Mr. Laborn seemed perfectly aware of what she was doing and looked about as happy to have her here as she was being stuck in the gym. With the surprise of having this dropped on him I doubted his son was in for a happy reunion the next time Mr. Laborn saw him.

"Hey." Aisha glanced up at me, then back to her phone, then back up with her eyes lingering. The mess of emotions from my passenger wasn't helped by the approach of the Knowledge constellation within the Celestial Forge. My power failed to latch onto the nearest mote, but the combined distraction of all of those things happening at once threw me off balance in a way that seemed to entertain Aisha to no end.

Mr. Laborn's expression was anything but amused. I'm not sure what he saw, or thought he saw, in that exchange but he clearly wasn't happy about it. "I heard you've been training. Let's see how that's working out for you. Vince! Joe's going to need a sparring partner."

I held off a gulp as Mr. Laborn called over the gym's top junior heavyweight fighter. Technically we were in the same weight class, but let's just say Vince wore it better. Vince looked momentarily confused, then spotted Aisha and the penny dropped. He gave me a sympathetic look but proceeded to the ring anyway.

Meanwhile it occurred to me that this was the furthest my power's reach had ever grown. The next time a constellation came by I might have a chance of landing one of the stronger powers, providing this training session didn't kill me first.

"So I see you met Aisha." He started lacing up his gloves. I grabbed one of the well-used sets the gym stocked for newbies and joined him.

"Yeah. So, is she as much trouble as she seems?"

"Worse. She's smelled the blood in the water now. She'll be messing with you until you either run off or she finds a more entertaining target."

I glanced over to see Aisha staring at me. She quirked her lips and her father's frown deepened.

"Or Mr. Laborn kills me."

"Oh, he won't kill you. He has an entire gym full of people ready to do that for him." He saw my expression. "Look, just tough it out and try not to engage her. If you're no fun she'll eventually stop coming around."

"Speaking from experience?"

He shook his head. "Thankfully I've been able to dodge that bullet. Everyone here kind of knows how to manage around her. You'll be ok."

"That mean you're not going to rearrange my face today?"

He looked over at Mr. Laborn, then back to me. "Yeah, that's not happening. Strap in, this is going to be rough."

It wasn't an actual beatdown, but it was probably as close to it as Mr. Laborn could get while still technically being an actual training session. It didn't help that Aisha kept shirking the workouts her father tried to assign her in order to hang around the ring and try to get my attention. My passenger was just amused by this to no end, which only made things harder to deal with.

It was easy to see why Vince was the star of the gym. The guy hit like a freight train and probably would have put me on the mat after two punches. My slight height advantage was meaningless against someone who moved like lightning and punched like he was trying to blow out the back of your skull. I was saved by my abilities, and fortunately in a way that wasn't blatantly obvious. I got the defensive properties of the best piece of gear I was wearing. In this case that happened to be my gloves. Now boxing gloves aren't exactly heavy armor, but they do cushion blunt impacts. Not enough to negate them, just enough that I wasn't being dropped with every hit.

I'm pretty good at toughing out bad situations. Actually for me that's probably more of a character flaw than a virtue. It did mean I was able to make it through a full training session of sparing against a rising contender while remaining on my feet. Not unhurt, just still upright. I think I actually impressed Mr. Laborn, though he's not the kind of person who would typically express that openly. About half way through Aisha transitioned from teasing to cheering on the amount of damage I was taking. By the end of it I was sore as hell, exhausted, but considering the guy who had been using me as a punching bag didn't look much more energetic I counted it as a win.

"Not bad." High praise from Mr. Laborn. "I'm glad you're taking this seriously. Your footwork needs practice. Make sure to work on that before next week." He paused and looked at my face. "Get some ice on that when you get home. You did good."

He intercepted his daughter who was heading my way in earnest and half dragged her out of the gym. I let out a long breath and looked over as Vince approached me.

"Here." He handed me a water bottle which I took gratefully. "Nice work tonight. You've got some potential if you stick with this."

"What, my talent for taking punches?"

"That's most of what boxing is about. No matter how good you are you need to be able to take a hit. I think we can say you have that down."

I nodded slowly. "Well, not that this wasn't great, but I think I'm spent."

"See you next week."

I froze. "What, seriously?"

He just shrugged. "Me or another guy. Mr. Laborn isn't exactly subtle about his daughter."

"Great. Any idea how long until she loses interest?"

"No idea. That girl is kind of all over the place. Could be a couple of days, could be months."

"Hey," This was awkward to ask but I kind of needed to know. "She's like, really young to be playing at that kind of thing. Is everything alright there?"

He clammed up and the good humor he'd shown earlier faded. He quickly glanced around and his voice dropped as he responded. "Ok, you did not hear this from me. Apparently her mom got custody after the divorce. She's a complete piece of work, anyone here will tell you that. Nobody knows exactly what went down, but three years ago she lost custody of Aisha to Mr. Laborn. I wouldn't ask about it, but you should know why Mr. Laborn acts the way he does concerning her."

"Got it." I swallowed. "I hope I don't actually have to say I've got no interest in anything regarding her, right?"

"Trust me, if anyone here got that sense you would be in much worse shape and wouldn't be coming back for another lesson"

That was small comfort. I gave him a nod and he stared off for a bit. "Everyone has stuff they're dealing with. This is just one of those things."

"Right." I climbed to my feet. "Well, I need to get cleaned up and try to sleep this off."

"Ice is going to be your friend there."

I nodded and headed off to think. Three years ago Aisha would have been ten, possibly nine depending on how the dates lined up. For a mother to lose custody things would have to have gone seriously bad. There were only a few things that could justify something like that and from Aisha's behavior it was easy to guess which one was most likely.

I hoped I was wrong. I really hoped I was wrong, but I couldn't see how. The way she acted, the reactions of everyone in the gym, the hushed tones when Vince talked about it. This put a new and depressing spin on how everyone in the gym was treating this. No wonder Vince had been willing to work me over to squash even the hint of something inappropriate. This wasn't some comedy situation with a girl teasing someone to make him uncomfortable. This was a god damn tragedy.

And for some reason my passenger found the situation funny. He had been entertained by it from the moment Aisha had walked in. Beyond the surface level what the fuck was supposed to be funny about this?

That's why I was staring into the locker room mirror trying to dig through every emotional resonance my passenger had associated with her. On the surface it looked really bad. I was standing in a bathroom using what amounted to a thinker power to dig up information on a thirteen year old girl. But fuck it, I had to know. I had to know there was something else there than the irreverent amusement I'd been getting all night.

My body ached and my face was starting to swell, but I wasn't leaving until I got to the bottom of this. Carefully I considered aspects of Aisha's life one at a time and felt the reaction from my passenger. The lack of severity from his emotions was shocking. I was horrified by the entire situation. He seemed to feel she was fine. She wasn't in danger, and he believed she would be safer in the future. Digging back there was serious distaste for Aisha's mother, but not the level of revulsion I felt at the situation. But at least there was something.

I shook things off and started getting cleaned up. I wasn't sure how I felt about this. Maybe my passenger knew more about the situation than I did, but I couldn't see any way this could be anything less than appalling. When I had thought about the exact circumstances that led to her father getting custody there had been concern for her, but not on the level that it seemed there should be. It felt like she had some level of protection, or safety, but even if that was true the situation was still a nightmare. I don't know how you could look at the aftermath of something like that and be amused by the girl's antics.

Maybe I was biased. It could be it wasn't as bad as I was assuming, or it could be she really got the help she needed and there wasn't any trauma tied up in her current actions. It still felt like for the first time since I triggered there was an emotional disconnect between me and my passenger.

There were doubts here that I didn't like to dwell on. I'd had a sense of the breath of my passenger's knowledge since my trigger event. Until now I had honestly been fine following his lead. It made sense that he wouldn't feel as strongly about some things as I did, but I didn't expect the first divergence to be over something like this.

I had to remember who I was dealing with. What I was dealing with. Thanks to my passenger's intervention I had managed to avoid being plugged into one of those continent sized extradimensional meat computers with a conflict obsession. As comforting as avoiding that fate was I had to remember the reason it had happened. The point of all of this was building the Celestial Forge. My passenger was concerned about me, sure, and that was comforting, but primarily that was because I was necessary for that project. My passenger's guidance was great for keeping myself alive, avoiding threats, securing resources, and even predicting disasters. All of those things would impact his primary goal. Moral judgements on the other hand were a bit more suspect.

I was not in a great mood after I showered and trudged back to my apartment. My passenger had been such a source of reassurance that having it called into question risked me falling back into pre-trigger mindsets. The ache of my body didn't help and frankly all I wanted to do was curl up and sleep until noon the next day.

I felt the gentle prodding concern from my passenger. It was comforting. That was what made it so easy to follow his lead. Reassurance, compassion, and resolve even when I wasn't able to muster those feelings myself. I was basically a walking bruise right now. I may have felt low enough to leave things like that, but my passenger cared about my health. A part of my mind said that was only because of my work on the Celestial Forge, but that didn't change the end result. Self-care was important. Leaving these injuries would do no one any good.

I headed for the kitchenette, immensely grateful I had stored extra reagents there. I dug out a feather and chunk of ginger and made sure my windows were covered. As I mixed the formula together the gleaming healing energy suffused me and all my aches and pains vanished. The exhaustion stayed, both physical and mental. For that I needed rest.

I looked over at my pile of blankets disdainfully. I still wasn't secure enough to open the portal to my workshop in my own apartment. I didn't know how well the potential signal was blocked and didn't want any chance of being exposed in my own home. The risk I took last night to grab my bedding still had me on edge. On top of that I also didn't know if there had been a timed detonation yet, and given some of the more aggressive agents she had used in the attack on Cornell I wasn't opening that door without the benefit of several layers of concrete and as many protective formulas as I could manage.

So, isolated from my easy storage I instead committed myself to a quiet night of food, recovery and mindless web surfing. Dinner was the same discount muscle building meal I'd been eating for the last week. It was boring but I'd been focused enough on prepping my cape work for it not to matter. It was a rather sad meal while standing at the kitchen counter, but as soon as the food hit my stomach my mood improved and I felt a sense of relief in my body. Afterwards I got as comfortable as I was able given my lack of furniture and settled in with my laptop.

I considered a night of youtube videos and browsing memes, but decided to try to put the evening towards some productive purpose. I had been putting off my examination of the Undersiders. My passenger clearly knew something significant about them and I had to do my best to figure out what.

It was always tricky to translate the mess of emotions into something actionable. Panacea, for example, was a damn mess that I had intentionally put off sorting through after a full evening analyzing New Wave had only made the situation more complicated. After tonight it was also clear that at least the intensity of feelings didn't always match up to how I would see them. I didn't get the sense that the information was wrong, just a from a different perspective.

I think the problem was trying for a deep dive. That required trying to parse the information I was getting without context or a real understanding of the perspective they were coming from. Surface level reactions were good for now and I could try to break down the emotions triggered by associating them with certain people or actions at a later time.

I went with Tattletale first. Her wiki page was nearly empty. She clearly had some analysis power, though I wasn't sure what precise shade of thinker she was. There was a sense of impressiveness connected to her, so she was probably either wielding a very strong power or had a standard one that she utilized to some incredible extent. There was affection in kind of a familial sense, as well as both caution towards her and concern for her. It felt like she was threatened by something. Strangely I didn't feel that when I thought of any of the other Undersiders.

I moved on to Grue. He had more info, as appropriate for three years in the villain business. His history escalated from petty crime to corporate theft and major robberies. No detail on his power beyond darkness generation. I was really lucky that my Revealer formula let me see through that. Well, sort of see. I would need to refine my use of it before it could be considered able to fully counter that effect.

The emotions connected to Grue was interesting. There was some admiration there, but it felt personal rather than directed at his abilities. There was the same level of sympathy, protectiveness, and affection that seemed to be shared by all the Undersiders. The concern for Grue wasn't exactly directed at him. Something he was doing was important? Well, at least something my passenger felt was important.

I moved on to Bitch. Or Hellhound. Rachel Lindt. Public identity known after she triggered at age fourteen. She could turn dogs into those monster things, though there weren't any precise details on how it worked.

Bitch's reaction had been surprising. Looking at her I'd expect the same level of stuff as Grue, respect for strength and maybe some kind of professional courtesy. What I got was pure affection and sympathy. Given what I knew about trigger events and the fact that she triggered in foster care with a master power there was definitely some level of tragedy there. There was caution, but not any sense of malice with it. She was dangerous but not bad.

I didn't want to keep dwelling on my passenger's reaction to Aisha, but it was interesting that there was more sympathy for Bitch than for her. The sense was whatever happened to Bitch was still in play, that she was still struggling with it, while Aisha had the worst of her situation behind her. No trigger came from a good place, but masters needed a special kind of isolation and trauma to come about. I seriously doubted she had gotten the help she needed after her trigger and there was even the possibility that mental effects from her power or passenger had made things worse.

Still, that was my passenger's judgement. And even with all the sympathy he was feeling there wasn't any reduction in the sense of danger. She might have come from a bad place, she might not want to hurt people, but she still had a body count attached to her name.

When I moved on to Regent's page the reaction brought up all my previous questions regarding my passenger's perspective. There was some admiration, but it was framed in a way that connected it with some serious levels of disgust, but those in turn were linked to sympathy and anger directed at someone else. Whoever he was he had come from a very bad place, much worse than Bitch. The details of that were a bit too much for a lazy night of websurfing and I was approaching a limit to how much of this I could process. I closed the tab and was ready to switch back to the forums when I felt my power activate.

The Celestial Forge moved and focused on one of the arrays of powers. The Toolkits constellation was swinging towards me and my power latched onto a small mote, securing the connection. It was called Laboratorium. I had a new addition next to my workshop.

Specifically I had a full lab that specialized in the analysis of any technological device. It was practically tailor made for cracking the mystery of tinker tech and in a stroke of serendipity I got it right after I acquired my first tinker tech device.

So to hell with the peaceful night in. I had work to do. Nothing like a clear objective to get rid of those niggling doubts. Of course, I still wasn't going to open the link in my own apartment. Fortunately Brockton Bay had loads of abandoned buildings. Since I wasn't looking for comfort I just needed to find the least habitable one I could and open the door in the deepest part of the structure.

The areas of Brockton Bay with those kinds of buildings aren't exactly safe to travel in the late evening. I headed out while wearing a shin guard under my jeans, but that only provided minimal protection. As I walked the ABB tags had given way to Merchant ones and the concentration of homeless seriously increased. Sticking to dark alleys helped me avoid notice but also put me at risk for anyone who might be lurking in those areas.

Thirty harrowing minutes of walking led me to a boarded up and condemned factory. The place had a severe enough chemical smell to it that I doubted anyone would seriously try to live here. I found an unsecured window and slipped inside. The durability boost from the shin guard was enough to not worry about broken glass or loose nails that jabbed at me as I crawled into the building. Inside was pitch black, but navigating by the light of my cellphone led me to the moldering door of a supply closet. Quickly I slipped my key into the door and opened the link to my workshop. And now my lab.

A new door had been added to the entry room across from the access to the workshop. I quickly secured the main door and walked towards the new addition. Clearing a path to it required shifting my mattress and desk slightly, but once that was done I opened the door and examined my new lab.

It was not what I was expecting. I knew everything that would be inside, the computers, the scanner arrays, the documentation. That information was included when I got the power, and to be fair it was all there. What I didn't expect was the particular aesthetic of the lab. Cyber-gothic would be one way of putting it. Techno-Catholic would also work. The computers were closer to shrines than workstations. There were engraved icons on the walls, incense burning in small dishes, and a feeling of reverence to the entire place. Anything that wasn't designed to look like a religious icon was crammed to the gills with technology. Cables, diodes, mechanical arms, tendrils, sensors, optic lenses, and every other piece of exposed machinery imaginable.

Also the place was big. Really big. The church analogy was apt because this was like being inside a cathedral. There had to be two dozen different analysis bays that seemed to be designed to accommodate items ranging from the size of a fingernail to things that would be too big to fit through the door. The largest of them looked like it could hold a small aircraft.

Then there were the skulls. At first I thought they were just part of the décor, an odd and tasteless addition. Then one popped out of a wall as I approached and started chirping at me with a vaguely digital sound. It shifted from one direction to the other, suspended on the trail of cables that linked it to one of the computer stations. At the sound of its keening dozens of other skulls emerged from their resting place. The thing is was they weren't device designed to look like skulls. There were actual human skulls with attached cybernetics.

Where the hell had they come from? This place had just appeared, like the workshop had when I made my key. None of the machinery in my workshop was connected to any real manufacturing company, so it wasn't like this effect was grabbing things from the world to populate it. That probably and hopefully meant that I hadn't just killed several dozen random people for the sake of whatever the purpose of these cyber skulls was.

Actually, taking in the full scale of the place and the number of skulls it was probably a lot more than 'several dozen'.

So where did they come from? On closer examination this place looked old. There was a sense of the ages to it. The skulls had clearly been skulls for years and years. I would guess decades if not centuries, but that made no sense. There were no parahuman abilities dating back before the early eighties. There had been claims but they had all proven to be either bogus or a hoax. How did you get something this advanced and this old?

The answer was obviously the same as questions like 'how does my key work' or 'what was the mechanism behind my Fashion power'. It just worked. There was a fiat declaration that these abilities would work and these things would exist. I'm not sure why a technology analysis lab required a host of integrated human skulls in order to function, but it did and thus they were here. I would have to deal with it.

Once the initial shock faded they lost most of their creep factor. The skulls didn't act like some menacing swarm of reanimated human parts, they acted like a bunch of over-eager puppies. I still had my cell phone out with its flashlight active. Three skulls spun around it, the lenses in their eye sockets flashing. A projection of the phone appeared as a hologram above one of the computer altars and the team of human remains gestured towards one of the scanning beds with as much enthusiasm as a skinless severed human head attached to a coil of mechanical cables was capable of displaying.

At their prompting I placed the phone on the scanning bed and it hummed to life. Dozens of tiny arms and tendrils extended around it, glowing, pulsing, or shining strange lights on the phone. A skull directed me to the holographic display as it began to fill in and provide a cut out of the phone's internal systems. Individual components and their purposes were identified as well as how they fit together.

The language of the system wasn't English, but it used the same alphabet and for some reason I was able to read it. I don't know if it was because of my connection to this place, or if my intelligence boosts had helped things along, but in the process of virtually dissecting my cellphone I was able to familiarize myself with the complete workings of this Laboratorium.

Now came the moment of truth. I would need to transport Bakuda's bomb here. I didn't have the advantage of any signal blocking Grue's darkness might have provided and I would have to remove most of the security measures to transport it. Still, I couldn't have a better opportunity than what was provided by this place. I needed to press forward.

That didn't mean being stupid. I drenched myself in every defensive formula I knew before I even attempted it, even the redundant ones. Fortunately my workshop was not a smoldering wreck when I opened it, nor was it reduced to one as soon as the containment block was unsealed. I left as much of the blocking material in place as I could while I moved it. That left me lugging about seventy five pounds of metal over to my lab.

If the skulls had been excited over my cellphone then arriving with the tinkertech grenade caused them to reach levels of enthusiasm I didn't think a mass of bone and cybernetics could convey. The heavy cluster of metal plates and mesh was taken from me immediately and moved to a large and complicated scanning bed. I was led to what can only be described as a throne. It was on a raised dais that overlooked most of the lab and was surrounded by a half ring of computer altars. There were some disturbing looking cable connections on the chair and the skulls seemed slightly disappointed when they found nothing to attach to on my head or back.

Let me assure you that was not a pleasant sensation.

Mechanical limbs carefully stripped away my haphazard shielding, exposing the tiny bomb. A quick analysis revealed its tracking signal and automatically blocked it while the rest of the sensors went to work. Within minutes I had a complete schematic of the device. Then the computers began extrapolating the function and purpose of various components.

It was incredibly complex. Even with my doctorate level mechanical knowledge, enhanced intelligence, and the advantage of this eclectic but ridiculously advanced lab there were levels to this device that I just couldn't grasp. I wouldn't be able to get enough information to fully understand it without more intense examination.

That would mean losing access to the one piece of tinker tech in my possession, but it was also the only way to really understand what I was working with. From what I could tell from initial readings this was some kind of plasma emitter, only with complicated functions attached, probably to stop it from just baking everything within a hundred meter radius. If the data I had was accurate I doubt Oni Lee would have been able to reach a safe distance if this didn't have some means of containing its energy to a finite area.

I made my decision and activated destructive testing. The tiny sphere was carefully transferred to another sensor bed and dozens of tools rose up to meet it. The bomb floated above the bed in some kind of stasis field as small sections of it were removed and held in suspension. In a strange sense the bomb was exploding in slow motion as parts were removed and left floating around it. More and more data came in as the process continued until all the tiny and impossibly complex components were hanging in gravity suspension over the scanning bed.

My guess was right. This bomb wasn't designed to wipe out a city block, though it had more than enough power for that. Instead there was a mechanism that kept the energy contained to a radius of roughly five meters. Inside that space the conditions would be comparable to the heart of an atomic blast or the inside of a star. Nothing could realistically withstand it without blanket immunity to heat and pressure or some other kind of complex parahuman ability to negate damage.

And I almost had this thing shoved up my ass. Holy crap did I luck out there. I guess Oni Lee must have been getting desperate if he was willing to expend something this valuable to take me down.

Wait.

Oni Lee clones the grenades he holds when he teleports. Is there any reason to think that effect wouldn't extend to tinker tech? The one limiting factor on Bakuda was the fact that her bombs are expended when used. Oni Lee effectively removes that limitation. She could build a device like this, hand it to him, and have him use it hundreds of times without expending the original.

That was a fucking nightmare. There was a serious shift in power in the works coming as soon as they had enough stock to take the fight to the merchants or empire. The only thing that might hold back the chaos is Lung. It's well known that he hasn't pushed as hard as he could have in the past. Part of that is everyone knowing to fall back when he builds up steam to let his power drop, but generally he seems happy with the status quo. He'll probably use this to aggressively secure territory and most likely come down harshly on anyone who challenges him, but not for a full gang war.

Why was my passenger feeling so nervous?

That did not bode well. As much as I was starting to doubt his perspective on more abstract topics when it came to actual threats I was still more than willing to follow his lead. There was something very bad that was going to happen with Bakuda, and probably fairly soon.

Anyway, since I wasn't at risk of dying or being exposed I decided to move my workshop link back to my apartment. That was exactly as arduous a process as the first time, only mitigated by the pocket full of reagents I was now holding to stave off any idiot who tried to jump me. If Speed was enough to take down Oni Lee then it would make short work of any junkies or muggers who wanted to try their luck.

It was once again into the morning hours by the time I returned, but without the hassle of a job I was reassured in the fact that I would actually be able to sleep. Nothing today had led to a resolution to my impending financial difficulties, but I was confident I'd be able to sort something out. Worst case I would be able to grab parts from wrecked cars, refurbish them, and sell them. Maybe even get a stall at the Market if I was really desperate.

That throne seat in my Laboratorium was more luxurious than anything in my workshop or apartment and more comfortable too. If not for the smell of incense, the chirping skulls and the ominous atmosphere it would have been a great place to sleep. As it stood I made due with my mattress in the entryway and kept the door to the lab tightly closed.

The next morning I woke up to the feeling of the Knowledge constellation in the Celestial Forge swinging by me. My power's reach was the strongest it had ever been and was just enough to latch on to a mid-sized mote. The ability was called 'Grease Monkey'. That was a name that badly underrepresented what the power was capable of. So far I'd been stumbling along with basic technical skills or slight upgrades. The knowledge I did get was barely a refinement of modern technology. Even my crafting skills were limited.

That was not the case anymore. Grease Monkey gave me access to an incredible amount of technical skill and knowledge. Advanced robotics, computers, weaponry, spacecraft, and most importantly power armor. Finally I had the ability to make power armor. And it was good power armor as well, not one of those cliché clunky suits that characterize new tinkers.

It was complicated, resource intensive and would take a good chunk of time but I could build or fix just about anything now. I would need some serious resources and machinery to get this off the ground, but once I did I'd be able to handle things like the best capes out there.

I guess this was where the real tinker limitations kick in. Considering what I had available in my metal shop I could theoretically, with enough time, build what I needed to build what I needed to build what I needed to build my serious technology. Even then there would be components, electronics, power sources, plastics, ceramic components, material treatments, and a dozen other aspects of this technology that I would not be able to fabricate with the restocking materials of my workshop.

What was worse, I was dealing with concepts, not finished blueprints. I understood the principles of the machinery, how to make it, and how it could be used to make all those wonderful advanced devices, but I would still have to work out how to fit things together. There was going to be a long period of research and design in order to get a finished product. That meant even more materials and resources. As much as I hated to admit it, barring some kind of miracle ability from my power I would need outside support.

That was a problem. The Protectorate was out, there were too many bad emotions connected to it. Not just discomfort but glaring alarm bells, particularly with Brockton's division. New Wave was a mess I couldn't begin to pick apart. Besides, once the movement for public cape identities fell through they basically became a family team and I didn't think I was ready to marry in just yet. The Guild had a good reaction from my passenger, but you needed to be an established hero and have recommendations from current members. Other teams were either too small to be of note or didn't operate in the city.

I guess there was always the Toybox. With that group you were brushing against villainy, but it would be enough to get established as a tinker. It would also mean solely building for other people. I might be feeling sentimental, but I didn't want my technology to debut in the hands of another organization.

It wasn't totally hopeless. There had to be something I was able to put together with machine shop metal and salvaged components. Plus with my alchemy and resistance boosts I could operate as a cape even if I couldn't get any truly advanced technology together.

Before my morning run but after coffee and toast I decided to sit down with my laptop and try to figure out my next step. I hadn't hit the PHO forums in a while and, while it was mostly speculation, there were some good pieces of advice and information buried there.

Before I checked the tinker boards I decided to skim the Brockton Bay section. Call it pure narcissism if you want, but I kind of wanted to see if there was any comment on my fight with Oni Lee. Honestly even some mention of him running around with a cast would have made my day.

What I found definitely did not make my day.

Lung had been captured. Armsmaster had brought him in after he'd already had a run in with a local gang. The Undersiders? If they were coming from a fight with Lung when I saw them they were in really good shape. Did they run off to face him after I met them? Oni Lee could have fallen back for reinforcements and brought Lung into the fight.

There was also a rumor thread about him apparently being hospitalized. Potential excessive force from Armsmaster. Well, if he'd been weakened already and Armsmaster went in expecting his full strength then it would be easy to overdo it. Still, some of the reports were pretty horrific to the point where I really hoped they were either exaggerations or complete fabrications. Nobody liked the idea of a tinker using bio-weapons.

So Lung was captured and was probably headed for the Birdcage. Did that leave command of the ABB to Oni Lee or to Bakuda? Clearly they would make a play to spring Lung. I wouldn't have given them much of a chance of pulling that off, but that was before their power synergy gave them a limitless supply of tinker tech bombs. Oni Lee could reduce the Rig to slag in under a minute with nothing more than a version of the grenade I had taken from him. This whole situation had the potential to go very bad.

I had more explosives knowledge now than I had the previous night. Most of it was still conventional, for a strained definition of conventional. I mean massively improved versions of normal munitions. Thinking on it I could probably build some kind of micro-neutron bomb if I had the materials, but that was the upper limit of my technological knowledge. I could handle electronic counter measures better as well. I wouldn't want to pit that against a tinker who was specialized in bombs since I'm sure she would be able to counter most of my efforts eventually, but as a single shot in the field it could knock out her remote connections and buy some time.

The problem was I had no resources to build any of that. My workshop was basic in the extreme and I didn't have the finances or supplies to improve anything. Given that I was at least partially responsible for what could happen… wait, my passenger was going a bit crazy. There was a lot of fear and certainty around this. Ok, partially responsible for what was definitely going to happen I needed to take any means available to be able to mitigate it. I didn't want to see this city turn into a nightmare version of Cornell.

As one last thing I searched for any mention of Oni Lee. This wasn't just vanity anymore. I needed to find out what the current strength of the ABB's capes were. A search turned up results that went back years so I limited it to the last few days. Most were mentions in the Brockton discussion boards, comments under the story of Lung's arrests, and speculation on the potential of a gang war. There was one outlier among the results. The 'Connections' section of the board had mentioned him, not in the original message but from the comments on it.

Subject: Stick

Thanks for driving off that black clad ABB guy. Saw you got pretty beat up. Owe you one. Meet?

Message me,

Eye.

The comments had sparked a small debate on whether they were talking about Oni Lee or not and whether it was a fabricated message. That wasn't helped by people from the roleplaying boards showing up. The whole thing had turned into a flame war until the mods showed up to lock the comments.

It was Tattletale. I could feel my passenger's reaction to the message. He was absolutely sure it was her and the prospect of taking her up on the meeting was regarded with near boundless enthusiasm.

I considered my options. There was clearly more to the Undersiders than just petty criminals. They hadn't done anything horrible by the standards of Brockton Bay and from what I'd heard robbed gangs as often as civilians. That said I wasn't about to buy into the notion of victimless crimes. Even just robbing stores had a ripple effect on the health of the city. Insurance wasn't a bottomless pot of money to cover instances like that. Premiums would be continually jacked up until the stores couldn't afford to operate. That was probably why there were so many closed businesses in the bad part of town.

Still, if they wanted to meet I felt I should take them up on it. My passenger was completely in favor of it, but before I knew about Bakuda I probably would have turned them down. The way I saw it there was limited liability with just a meeting, and frankly I needed any help I could get right now, even if it came from questionable sources.

The message was more than a day old. It had been sent on Monday morning from a newly created account. Given the flurry around it that account was probably flooded with messages. Would Tattletale still even be monitoring it? Probably. She was a thinker, and a strong one if my passenger was to be believed. That led to the other concern. I needed to cover myself if I was going to reach out to her. It might not help against a thinker of her level, but I didn't want to expose myself to anyone else. My options were to use a public computer at a library or somewhere similar or try to obfuscate my location and reply from my home connection.

Previously I wouldn't even have dreamed of the second option, but with my new technical knowledge and resources I could probably pull it off. The computers in my lab, despite the quirks of their design, were insanely powerful. Still, they were designed for analysis of technology. I could adapt them to another purpose, but not in the window of time I had. That left the library.

At this time of day it was faster to walk than try to finagle the bus schedules and deal with downtown traffic. At least in mid-morning there weren't too many people crowding the computers. I was able to get access in relatively short order and loaded PHO. I signed in as a guest and drafted a private message. Given the time since the message was posted and the probable number of anonymous replies this could be a dry well. In that case I'd have to create a dummy account and wait to see if she could pick the message out of the mess her inbox had to be. I hoped it wouldn't come to that. Waiting for a reply would slow this down to a crawl and I needed resources if I was going to have any hope of countering Bakuda.

Subject: Re:Stick

This is the guy with the metal stick. Pretty sure you're the girl in purple, but would like confirmation before we go further.

The message was sent and I began wondering how long I should wait for a reply. Thinker was one of the broadest categories of powers and they ranged all over the place. She seemed to have good intuition, but could she predict when someone would reply? If she was serious about this she would have some kind of alert set up on the account. After the thread got locked most of the messages should have dropped off so providing she hadn't given up on the whole thing the one I sent should have come through fairly clearly.

I considered browsing the other forums while I waited, but decided against it. I wanted as little evidence of this as possible. I could purge my history a lot better than I would have been capable of a couple of days ago, but that only covered this machine. There were mundane ways to data mine someone's activity, to say nothing of what other tinkers could pull off. That left me waiting and hitting refresh on the same page over and over.

While I was waiting my power completely failed to grab a mote from one of the constellations I had yet to identify. I watched it spin off inside the celestial forge while I kept hitting the F5 key. My reach was weak after landing my last ability, but it was still growing fast. I'd have a better chance the next time a constellation came into reach.

Finally my screen updated with a response.

Subject: Re:Stick

Confirmation? Sunday night you took a beating that would have been for us and sent the guy packing. Ran off when things were getting too personal, but want to make that up to you.

Me and the boys will meet you in the alley where it happened. 2pm should give you time to get prepared, and you won't need to skip your run. You can dress up if you want but we'll be informal.

Eye

Well, there was her power at work. It seemed kind of intrusive, but my passenger wasn't concerned. I swallowed, hoped for the best, and decided to follow his lead.

Subject: Re:Stick

You're as good as I thought. I'll see you then.

Jumpchain abilities this chapter:

Not A Stupid Grunt (Mass Effect) 100:
That you are not. You are smart enough to be the foremost scientist in your field. This doesn't make you so, but you could get there on your own with not a terrible amount of effort. Still not as smart as a drell, but hey, who is?

Laboratorium (Light of Terra DLC 3 A Grand Day Out - Warhammer 40,000) 100:
Ancient cogitators, arrays of auspex systems, and volume upon volume of documentation supply an Adept with the tools and information necessary to capably analyse a recovered technological artefact.

Grease Monkey (Bubblegum Crisis 2032) 300:
What can you fix or build? What CAN'T you fix or build? Nothing, that's what. From hyper-cars to Buma, computers to Hardsuits, with the right tools and enough time and experiments, you can build it all, weaponry included

 

[LordRoustabout]

5 Negotiation

Once again I was feeling an emotional split between myself and my passenger. The idea of meeting a team of villains led by a powerful thinker should terrify me. My passenger was just ecstatic over the idea and I had to put real effort into not getting caught up in his enthusiasm. It was hard to maintain a sensible level of caution when every thought about how this could go badly was met with overflowing feelings of excitement and enthusiasm.

I did end up going for that run, as much to blow off steam as for the benefits of holding my workout schedule. After all, Tattletale might have been needling me but I still needed to keep up my conditioning. After I grabbed a quick lunch I started preparing for the meeting.

Despite the optimistic feelings from my passenger I was determined to go into this as prepared as possible. The question was what did I want out of this? I didn't think opening with a prognostication of Bakuda's imminent attack would go over well, but countering that was my immediate goal. What could I get from the Undersiders that would help with that objective?

Well, money is the obvious answer. I have no idea the legalities of accepting cash, but at this point even a few hundred dollars would make a huge difference to my resources and schedule. Baring that I would take equipment and materials. The thing was I doubted they had access to much on that front. I'd researched their history and their typical job seemed to land in the mid to low four figures. Taking into account a four way split and any group expenses and I'm not sure how much cash they'd have on hand. They were also a contained team, so that meant no territory to draw resources from and no henchmen or businesses under their control.

One thing I could get was information. If Tattletale was as good a thinker as my passenger seemed to regard her as then getting information on Bakuda or the ABB was a real prospect. That was also the kind of thing that I'd be able to get without compromising myself morally, so it would probably be the best thing to push for.

The question was what did they want from me? I knew how vulnerable tinkers were without group support. Thankfully my reinforcement and alchemy powers put me on much better footing than most tech heroes so a team wasn't absolutely necessary in my case. There was a real possibility I could be looking at recruitment. The idea excited my passenger to no end, but I couldn't see the logic for it. Given their limited resources I doubted there was much they could offer, not unless they had outside support that I wasn't aware of.

When prepping for the meeting I decided my full loadout would probably be excessive. I could change in a nearby alley, but the combination of the coat, belts, and bandoleers would be a bit much. If I limited myself to my mask, coat and bracer I would have at least 90% of my combat effectiveness and not need ten minutes to suit up. The coat could hold some essential reagents, enough to get me out of this if things went bad. My passenger was absolutely certain the meeting wouldn't go that way, but I was determined to be careful.

I headed out early with my jacket, mask, and bracer in a backpack. From what I remembered there was something of a network of alleys in the area that I would be able to hide in. The exact alley was easy to find since there was still the big crater in the middle of the street. The city had put traffic barriers around it but seemed in no hurry to do any actual repair work.

I slipped into an alley that branched off from the meeting place and got into the minimal version of my costume. A bandanna around my head and another over my face, then my mask/visor on top of that. I slipped on my coat and closed it up to cover as much of my t-shirt and jeans as I could. Then I snapped my bracer onto my left wrist and felt the surge of durability. I was still wearing a shin guard as a reserve defensive item, but the security from the heavy steel was massively reassuring. I hadn't brought my baton as concealing that length of steel would be difficult.

Also I was limited to the collection of reagents I had prepped in the pockets of my coat. It wasn't the massive loadout I had gotten used to on Sunday night but it was enough for the moment. In addition to a set of buffing and recovery reagents the handful of dark alchemy formulas I had prepped were enough to level a building. It should be overkill in the event this meeting turned sour.

I sulked at the back of the alleyway and waited for the meeting time. My natural nervousness was somewhat countered by reassurance from my passenger. I wasn't as in sync with him as I had been a few days ago, but I knew he was invested in my wellbeing and if he wasn't overly concerned then that was at least a good sign.

Just before 2 o'clock four figures darkened the entrance to the alley. All of them were in street clothes making me feel a little self-conscious. Just from their silhouettes I was able to pick out Grue, Regent, and Tattletale. The forth was half hidden behind the others. For a second I wondered if Bitch had come along as well, but the figure was the wrong body shape. Tall, but thin and lanky.

Tattletale was in a denim skirt and long sleeved t-shirt while Regent was sporting a white jacket that looked designer, or at least expensive along with jeans and some fairly flashy sneakers. Grue if anything appeared more impressively built than he looked in costume. He was around my height with his hair in cornrows and wore a basic t-shirt, jeans, and boots. The last member of the group was wearing slightly baggy clothes and had her hair tied in a manner that seemed uncomfortable and designed to conceal her face. She was hanging back, trying to get a look at me without giving herself away.

As they approached I tried to pick out some hints from my passenger, but he was so excited about the meeting it was hard to parse anything specific.

"See, back of the alley behind the crates. Just like I said."

I took Tattletale's statement as a signal to step out. There was a ripple of reaction through the group as the light from the alley mouth gleamed off my mask and bracer.

Regent elbowed Grue in the ribs. "In costume too, pay up."

"Like a tinker was going to show up without gear. I told you, no bet."

I felt like I needed to take some initiative here. My passenger might be big fans of them for some reason but I was still meeting with a team of villains. It didn't seem like a good idea to let them completely set the tempo. I gestured towards the new member who was looking seriously uncertain of herself. "You're a bit over capacity. Care to fill me in?"

Tattletale spoke up. "New recruit. She insisted on coming, wanted to be part of the deal."

"Ah." I glanced across the four of them, trying to figure out what I could from my passenger's emotions. He was still caught up in the excitement of the meeting which meant I wasn't getting much helpful out of him. Instead I decided to play things casually. I shifted over to one of the crates and gestured to the rest. "Well, welcome to my alley. Pull up a crate and let's hash this out."

Regent snickered at that and was the first one to approach, settling onto one of the large boxes. Tattletale was next followed by Grue with the new girl hanging back. Grue extended a hand. "I'm Brian, by the way."

I was surprised by the gesture, but my passenger wasn't. Did they do this often, or was it just something he expected of them? I was starting to have serious concerns about the situation, but for the moment decided to follow his reaction and shook the offered hand.

"Lisa." Tattletale introduced herself. She seemed to be trying to maintain a confident front. Regent had no such issue.

"Alec."

My passenger was calming down enough that I was able to get some impressions again. I had the sense that Grue was being open here. There was some sense of duplicity on the part of Tattletale and Regent. I didn't think they were exactly lying, more like were both under new identities. Yeah, from the feeling of my passenger something had definitely happened in both of their civilian lives and they were trying to distance themselves from it.

I wasn't sure how to respond to this. All my prep and I still didn't have a cape name ready to hand out. Plus they were clearly trying to build a rapport and not engaging them would put me at a disadvantage. I didn't like this kind of social manipulation but I also didn't know how to handle it. Instead I peered around Brian at the half concealed final member of the group, if just to buy a few more seconds before I would be expected to introduce myself.

I thought I had felt the limits of the intensity of emotion my passenger was capable of. The feedback I got ranged significantly from consistent background support to occasional peaks around certain topics that highlighted opportunities or potential threats. There were the odd spike of positive or negative feelings that took me by surprise but I thought I'd gotten a good handle on the range of what to expect.

I was wrong.

I can't accurately describe the reaction of my passenger upon seeing the final member of the Undersiders. There was a weight, a significance that dwarfed every sense I'd gotten before. There was momentous consequence to the person standing in front of me that I couldn't even begin to unravel. I was looking at the most important person in the world.

And she was a skinny teenage girl in ill-fitting clothes trying to avoid attention while hiding behind her hair and glasses.

I thought I was prepared for this. I figured my passenger would have some good impressions of the Undersiders that I would be able to filter out to get a decent result from the meeting. Personal affection on his part wasn't enough for me to compromise myself and I was ready to ignore any good chummy feelings and stay focused on my objectives.

That plan was out the window now. If you looked under the glaring intensity you could see a similar affection for this girl as the other Undersiders, but that wasn't the driving force behind my passenger's reaction. Whoever this was she was vital, absolutely vital, to everything.

How do you even begin to parse something like that? How to you deal with the absolute certainty that the person in front of you will save everything in existence? Just trying to feel out the scale of it was incredible. It wasn't just talking about my life, or the lives of the city, or the future of humanity. She was vital to the continued existence of the actual planet.

My passenger's capacity for foresight was something I didn't completely understand. Actually, I wasn't sure how my passenger arrived at most of his insights. I didn't know if it was precognition or a good understanding of current conditions that allowed accurate predictions. What I did know is he had a broader perspective from the outside of what normal people could perceive, but my ability to comprehend it was limited. One thing I was certain of is his desire to steer me away from serious threats. He knew how dangerous this world was, he was often frustrated by it, but was still determined to see the Celestial Forge built here.

There were a lot of his reactions I'd started to doubt but his ability to assess threats wasn't among them. One thing he was absolutely certain of was if anything happened to this girl the world was fucked.

The long period of silence had been getting to the girl and she looked ready to make a break for it. I made a snap decision to keep that from happening.

"You can call me Joe."

The girl stared at me open mouthed. The reactions of the rest of the Undersiders were a mix of surprise and reassurance, with Lisa defaulting to smug.

"You're pretty open about that." Alec inquired.

I just shrugged and tried to play things with an irreverence I didn't actually feel. "I don't have a cape name yet and it's not that much to go on." I felt a nudge from my passenger and looked at Lisa. "And besides, I'm guessing she could figure it out if she wanted to."

That got another flicker of emotion from the blond girl that she quickly suppressed. The new girl didn't look too comfortable with that, but at least wasn't ready to run off.

"How do you know her power?"

It wasn't much, but at least she was engaging me. "She was able to pick up some stuff about me from the other night. That and the way she tracked me down clued me in." I considered if I was comfortable revealing anything more. It couldn't so much harm considering Lisa had already screamed it to the world. "Also part of my power kind of gives me hunches about stuff. That helped me fill in the blanks."

The girl's eyes darted between Lisa and me. Right, stuck between two thinkers. That can't be fun.

Alec just laughed. "Lisa screamed and ran away when she figured out someone was giving her a taste of her own medicine."

The girl seemed shocked at that, but Lisa made a placating gesture. "Just got spooked. It's part of why we're here."

The situation seemed to be weighing heavily on the new girl and I was worried she was going to bolt. Instead she gave me a hard look, then nodded. "I'm Taylor."

"Nice to meet you." I did my best to ignore the reaction from my passenger which could best be described as the hallelujah chorus on repeat. Instead I turned back to the rest of the group and did my best to act casual. "So, what's this you wanted to talk about?"

Tattletale reached into her bag and pulled out a container. It was an old style child's lunchbox with a picture of Armsmaster on the front. Taylor's eyebrows rose when she saw it but she kept quiet and watched Lisa. She handed it to me and waited while I opened it.

I stared blankly at the eight stacks of bills inside the box. Two grand in cash. My mind started processing how long that would cover personal expenses, what I could buy with it, sources of equipment and materials, and what it would mean for my tinkering.

For some reason my passenger was particularly, almost insufferably amused by this situation.

"And this is for?" I left the question hanging.

"You took on Oni Lee for us. We owe you for that. So, you can either take that as a lump sum right now, or you can hear us out."

I considered my options. I'm pretty sure this was stolen money or at least off the books. I wasn't totally up on the laws regarding something like this, but it was probably illegal to receive gifts if you had probable cause to believe it was connected to a criminal venture. By taking it I could be tainting myself and any plans to be a hero would become a lot more difficult.

If I did what she flippantly suggested I could walk away and report this to the PRT. There might be a way to claim the money as a windfall, or that whole spoils nonsense that people go on about online. If not I could probably leverage the event to a meeting with some heroes who would be willing to help me get support. If you pitched this idea earlier today I probably would have done just that despite the fact that I knew it would go against what my passenger wanted.

That was before meeting Taylor, before feeling my passenger's reaction to her. I pretended to consider the deal as I picked through the complexities of it and happened upon a detail that was actually terrifying.

The most juvenile level schoolyard element of cape debates is the 'who would win?' question. Armsmaster vs Chevalier. Myrddin vs Gavel. Rime vs Cinereal. Whenever a cape debate got going you always had the idiots who would default to the Triumvirate, and if beaten to that would go straight for Eidolon. And if someone else was arguing for Eidolon there was always an asshole who would bring up S-class threats.

Thanks to my power I was able to play 'who would win?' with my passenger. He knew the terrifying extent of the power of the Celestial Forge and had a rough idea of how much of it I'd need to counter certain threats. It's how I learned that eventually I would be able to kill an Endbringer.

I also learned I shouldn't kill an Endbringer, that killing an Endbringer without dealing with some other aspect first would result in a worse situation than the current one. But that didn't change the significance of that fact. Eventually. I. Would. Be. Able. To. Kill. An. Endbringer. For me a feat the world had regarded as impossible was just a matter of building enough connections to the forge.

I had been able to evaluate my chances against various other S-class threats. There was always a point where I would eventually be able to handle the challenge. For something like the Three Blasphemies it was actually a lower investment than what I'd need for an Endbringer. To counter Sleeper it was significantly higher, but there was always a point, some level of investment into my power where I could handle things without risk.

So I thought, whatever Taylor will do, whatever she's meant to counter, I should be able to handle that, right?

Wrong.

Even with the entire forge behind me my passenger was only willing to give me long odds against whatever this threat was. Everything I would be able to build, everything I would be capable of, and he couldn't' guarantee I'd be able to handle it. Without Taylor I would be better off fleeing to another solar system then trying to step into her shoes.

Uncertainty is one of the hardest things to deal with. I had come into this meeting with a decent idea of what I was willing to put up with and how I expected it to go, but that was out the window now. I could still walk away from this, but after the bombshell my passenger had dropped that just wasn't an option. I couldn't let this go.

"Alright." I closed the lunchbox. "Let's hear it."

For some reason Lisa seemed momentarily surprised by that, but recovered quickly. "Essentially we want to offer you a partnership arrangement."

That was something I had anticipated, but I didn't expect them to be so open about it. As usual there was a lack of surprise and the feeling of general amusement from my passenger. This was a lot further than I had considered acceptable. This was working with villains, and that wasn't something you came back from easily. Still, with Taylor apparently being of paramount importance to the future of existence I had an obligation to at least hear them out.

"What, you want me to join up?" Interestingly Taylor seemed to react badly to that, but did her best to keep it hidden. "You in the middle of a membership drive or something?"

Brian quickly shook his head. "It's not that. We're looking to commission you."

"Bitch voted against recruitment." Alec ignored the dirty look Brian gave him. "Which is bullshit by the way."

Lisa cut him off before he could say anything else. "We know you're still getting set up. That's a vulnerable position for a tinker to be in." Behind her back Alec made air quotes and mouthed the word 'vulnerable' before rolling his eyes. "We can get you some support without having to stick your neck out there. Not before you're ready."

She was framing it as support without obligation which sounded too good to be true and probably was. "What, you're just going to fund me until I get set up?"

"Not exactly. You agree to this you get two grand a month, no questions asked. That's the same all of us get."

They were salaried? How the hell did that work? "Get from who?"

"It's what the boss pays us to stay active. Take the deal and you get cut in with no obligation for the jobs."

When Brian said 'the boss' alarm bells started ringing from my passenger. Whoever it was they were working for it was bad news. Seriously bad news. A quick glance at Lisa confirmed something. That feeling that she was threatened by someone was registering the same way as the mention of their boss. There was a bad history there. I didn't think she had gotten into this arrangement under the best conditions.

I glanced over to Taylor. This boss was a threat, a serious threat. And one of the people working under him just happened to be essential to the future of the world. If I walked away and something happened to her we were all fucked.

A worse thought occurred. Publically the Undersiders were regarded as a random gang of petty thieves. The fact that they had a boss wasn't common knowledge. There had to be something else going on here. The team's earnings were marginal enough that I couldn't see them sustaining themselves if they were giving a significant cut to someone above them. Additionally they were all getting monthly payouts. Whatever this arrangement was it wasn't about the money they were bringing in. If I had to guess I'd say it had something to do with their raids on other gang's assets.

If I walked away now I would be able to reveal the existence of their boss to the authorities. That would put the actions of the team under greater scrutiny. They wouldn't be able to be used as a third party agent. Best case scenario he cuts ties and the team withers or falls apart. Worst case he steps in to deal with anyone who might be able to compromise him. That would definitely be Lisa, but I couldn't guarantee Taylor's safety either.

I was starting to seriously resent this situation. All I wanted to do was get some information or resources to counter another tinker and suddenly I'm shepherding the hope of the entire world. But what were my other options? Throw Taylor to the wolves and start work on a generation ship and a plotted course to Alpha Centauri?

"So." I spoke slowly, doing my absolute best to hide my emotions. "What would my obligations be under this arrangement?"

Brian cleared his throat. "We've got a big job coming up. High risk, bit of a hard sell, but the idea of some tinker support going in boosts our chances. You agree and we'll cover the costs of materials and equipment and work out a fair price for anything you make."

"So you want my tech." I glanced between them. This was not the worst option. The Toybox managed deals with villains while still holding tenuous rogue status. If I played things carefully I might be able to do the same. There was just one question. "No offence, but do you even know what I can make yet?" I looked at Lisa as I spoke.

Alec cut in. "How about that grenade tanking trick from the other night?" Lisa looked frustrated. I'm guessing she had tried to explain it multiple times already.

"Not going to work." I shook my head. I didn't like sharing information and I couldn't explain how the effect functioned even if I wanted to. Instead I just kept things vague. "I can't set that up on someone else."

He looked like he was going to say something, but Brian cut in. "Call it a show of faith. Two grand up front, two grand a month. We'll work out the details later. If what you do can't work for us we'll split ways, but guarantee three months payment right now."

"You're willing to offer me eight grand when you don't even know what you're getting out of it?"

"That funding's coming from the boss. He's doing it to support this job. After the first run we'll be covering the cost of our own gear."

The boss. The logic behind it was clear. On the scale tinkering worked at eight grand was nothing. Any major gang would be able to throw out that kind of cash without a second thought. The point wasn't to secure services, it was to conflict loyalty and create financial entanglements. The deal would be a liability in any interaction with the Protectorate and encourage me to maintain good relations with the Undersiders. It was a not terribly subtle way of nudging me into the boss's sphere of influence.

On the other hand, if I was a rogue tinker with no aspirations of heroism then this arrangement would basically amount to a hefty down payment and ongoing fee for the privilege of being one of my customers. That's a level of brutal capitalism that you don't typically see outside the higher end Boardwalk boutiques.

The objectives I entered this meeting with were completely out the window. Bakuda was still a priority, but to my amazement I actually had bigger problems than a potential city wide tinker tech bombing spree. There was no way out of this without endangering Taylor. And I suppose the rest of the Undersiders as well. I didn't completely share my passenger's affection for them but that didn't mean I wanted a bunch of teenagers to fall to the mercy of a mysterious crime lord.

I felt a familiar shift and closed my eyes, supposedly in consideration, but mostly to focus on the Celestial Forge.

A new constellation approached and my power was latching onto a mote from it. It turned out to be the 'Crafting' constellation and the mote was 'Smithing'. It covered all aspects of metalworking for weapons and armor to a frankly ludicrous level of skill. Before, my knowledge of metal work in other fields could let me muddle through. With this power I could make weapons and armor that are works of art. Combined with my other skills I'd be able to work faster and better than ever before.

I opened my eyes and looked at the Undersiders. I felt trapped by this entire situation and was beginning to resent everyone involved, even Miss Savior-of-the-World over there. But fuck it, I wasn't going to let loose Armageddon over my own frustrations. Still, I could at least try to mitigate things.

"I'll have some conditions."

Brian brightened. "We can probably work with that. What were you thinking?"

First priority was keeping as much of a lid on what I was making as possible. "For one, anything I make is for your use only. No selling it off, and I'm building for you, not your boss." I definitely wasn't going to be supplying whoever that was. Not with my technology.

He nodded. "We can agree to that."

"We work out a price and production schedule ahead of time. I'm not taking this deal if it means putting off all of my own projects. I'll prioritize your first order, but everything else gets scheduled and negotiated." Negotiations that would no doubt happen with a person my power was regarding as a terrifyingly powerful thinker. Yeah, those were going to go well. Still, I felt I had to say it.

He looked over at Lisa who nodded. "Shouldn't be a problem. We can come up with a timeline and pay scale we agree to." I'll bet you can.

Final point, and the one I was most concerned about. "Lastly, I don't know what this big job is and I don't expect you to tell me. But I'm trusting that you're not going out on some murder or kidnapping spree here. Stay within standard conventions, nothing that breaks the unwritten rules or brushes against a kill order. As long as that's the case I'm willing to work with you."

"Excellent." Lisa stood up. Frankly I had expected more pushback on those points. Either they hadn't been issues from the start or they had absolutely no intention of following them. "Now, want to get out of this alley so we can talk business?"

Well, that was a transparent move. Obviously I couldn't walk around the city like this. Everyone else had exposed their faces and was in civilian clothing. I didn't really have a way to insist on keeping my identity concealed without breaking the momentum of the discussions, which I was absolutely sure Lisa would be able to take advantage of. And if I would be working with them would I actually be able to keep my identity secret from a thinker of Lisa's caliber?

No, on that my passenger was absolutely certain. If she didn't already know who I was she would by the end of our next meeting regardless of what steps I took to conceal my identity. Maybe if I limited things to electronic communications and blind drops I'd be able to buy some more time, but that would defeat the entire purpose of this venture. I had to stay close to them and that meant my identity was going to be compromised.

If it was going to happen I might as well do it on my own terms. I looked at the four of them, then reached up and pulled off my mask and bandanas. I watched their reactions while I rolled them up in my coat and shoved it into my bag.

Brian's entire body language relaxed the moment I took off my mask. He shared a meaningful glance with Lisa who expression had shifted to smug. Given how that seemed to be her default expression I didn't know how much I should read into it. With her power it was hard to trust any reactions I was getting, but through the conversation it seemed like she had been reacting to my passenger's emotions as often as to my own. I didn't know if that meant it was easier or harder for her to get a read on me. Alec seemed largely indifferent to the action and just grinned and hopped off the crate he was perched on. Meanwhile Taylor looked somewhat conflicted by the whole situation.

It was still hard to deal with the intensity of my passenger's reaction to that girl. I hoped, desperately hoped that he knew what he was doing. Not that it mattered now. I was committed to this path and knowing the potential consequences I didn't think I would be able to walk away with a clear conscience. I had committed to building tinker tech knowing it would be used in the commission of a major crime, and somehow that had come out as the best option. Or at least the best option I could arrive at under this storm of emotions my passenger was bombarding me with.

It made me wonder if it would really have been so bad to end up with a passenger who just gave you the type of 'fight the world' instinct that typically required an inferiority complex and a fifth of rye. I mean, you did essentially end up a combat meat puppet for an alien computer, but had to be less complicated than this mess.

Putting that out of my mind I turned to the group. "So, where to?"

Brian looked to Lisa for conformation and she gave him a slight nod.

"Come on. We've got a place."

Jumpchain abilities this chapter:

Smithing (Thundercats 2011) 200:
The ancient art of working with metal to forge weapons and armor. You know how to make beautiful equipment that can survive countless battles and you could even forge a legendary weapon if you dedicated enough time to it, although it'd probably take at least several years to complete.

 

[LordRoustabout]

6 Commission

The events of my meeting had led to my current situation, walking through the docks flanked by a team of villains. Well, teenage villains. Brian had to be the oldest of them and I would still put him at least a couple of years younger than myself. Actually it could be more than a couple of years depending on how early he developed. Alec and Taylor looked like they were half way through high school with Lisa barely older than them. Of course Lisa was a serious thinker. That shifted maturity significantly and you'd have to be stupid to assume any level of youthful naiveté.

I had entered into this situation with the grim impression that I was facilitating a parahuman arms deal. The Undersiders had a much different approach to things.

"You want to stop for pizza?" Alec gestured to a corner pizza place at the end of the block.

"Isn't this a business negotiation?" I get what was happening, it was an attempt to build comradery, but I felt I needed at least a token effort to keep things professional.

Brian just shrugged. "Nothing that formal. We can grab some takeout."

With no serious objection he and Lisa went inside while I milled on the sidewalk with Taylor and Alec. Conveniently the two Undersiders I knew the least about. I had to wonder if Tattletale had set things up that way. Even if it was part of her plans I was still going to take advantage of the chance to get a better idea of who I was dealing with. The street was empty, but I checked thoroughly before I started talking.

"So, if I'm going to be working for you some background would be helpful. I've got an idea of what Brian, Lisa, and Rachel can do, but what about you two?"

Taylor seemed embarrassed by the question. Seriously embarrassed, like borderline mortified. For a moment I wondered if I overstepped. "Um, I can control bugs."

I raised an eyebrow and she pointed at the wall of the pizza place. A housefly landed on it, then followed where she was pointing exactly as she moved her finger. A few more swooped in to a circle around her head in a halo, then flew off in straight lines without so much as a gesture.

It wasn't what I was expecting, but unless she was throwing around some S-class level reality revision power there wasn't much that would fit with my passenger's reaction. Looking at it objectively it was clearly a higher end master power. She had controlled insects she wasn't looking at, suggesting that she either had some passive awareness of them or was able to ignore the fine details. She'd been able to create a precise formation with no visible effort. She hadn't had to check on the positions of the flies at any point either.

From the sense I got from my passenger, which was still blaring whenever I dealt with Taylor, whatever aspect of her saved the world this wasn't it. That is to say, wasn't it yet. That meant either a serious development of her power or that she could scale it up to a ridiculous degree. Questions of her range, detail of control, and maximum numbers, and what exactly qualified as a bug could fill in the gaps, but I didn't want to come off too aggressive and spook her. As much as I wanted to get to the bottom of this I needed a good relationship with these people.

Instead I looked over at Alec.

Rather than say anything he looked through the store window where Brian had just picked up a pair of large pizza boxes. He made a gesture and Brian's leg twitched, with him barely managing to catch himself before he face planted into the pizza he was holding. He glared through the window and stormed out of the shop while Lisa finished paying.

"Ass." He spat the word over the boxes. Alec seemed inordinately happy that Brian was currently incapable of more physical, probably fist based, expressions of his frustration.

"Hey, Joe was asking about powers. I was just being a good team member and helping to enlighten him." His mock innocent tone only seemed to irritate Brian further.

"I see Alec has done his traditional demonstration." Lisa was grinning as she came out of the pizza parlor and even Taylor seemed entertained.

"Interesting." I considered how that power could have worked. "Was that nerve manipulation, or did you trigger the reaction in his muscles directly?"

"Nerves. I can kind of feel them out, but it's a crapshoot on how it's going to work. Still good for throwing people off."

"Huh." That was interesting. "Do you get any feedback from them, or is it broadcast only?"

"Is this important?" Brian cut in sharply.

"Maybe? Still not sure what you're looking for. Any information could help out." Apparently I had pushed a bit too far on this topic.

"Save it for the meeting. We're almost there."

They led me through some empty lots to an abandoned red brick factory with a faded sign labeling it as 'Redmond Welding'. This one was in much better shape than what I had used to access my lab the other night but still looked like it had been out of business for at least a decade. Without my passenger's reassurance I would have been seriously concerned about following a group of villains to a remote and abandoned building, but he was totally confident. In fact there was a sense of anticipation from him. Whatever this was he was looking forward to it.

It turned out the factory was somewhat less than abandoned. Brian let the group in through a side door revealing a lower level that was a mess of old and stripped down machinery. The Undersiders headed for a spiral staircase in the corner. I could tell it had been better maintained than the rested hulks of the rest of the factory's equipment.

The stairs opened into some kind of open plan loft. The main area had a couple of couches facing an extravagant entertainment center. Split off from that was a kitchen area bigger than my entire apartment. On the opposite side was a cluster of rooms with various pieces of artwork differentiating the doors. Throughout the entire place there were little touches of personalization, from the half full bookcases to the random knickknacks, to the very specific arrangement of old pizza boxes and aluminum cans.

I figured they were bringing me to an empty building where we could have a private discussion. At most I expected a safe house or some kind of temporary set up, something disposable or deniable. Instead they had walked me right into their home. They brought me straight to their secret base.

I was shocked at how brazen they were being, and only Taylor seemed even slightly nervous about it. Everyone else settled in with all the casualness of coming home after a long day. Brian dropped the pizza on the coffee table and headed to the kitchen to grab some drinks. Alec basically flopped on the sofa and started fiddling with the various remotes spread around. Lisa perched on the end of one of the couches and cracked open the first of the pizza boxes.

I knew I should expect social plays and power moves from her, but I just couldn't figure out the logic behind this. "You guys live here?"

"Part time. We have other places, but this is home away from home."

"And you're ok just marching me in here?"

Brian returned from the kitchen with two armfuls of soda bottles. "Lisa cleared you. That's good enough for us."

Right. Their terrifyingly powerful thinker. Having someone like that must be as comforting for them as it was nerve-wracking for everyone else. I looked at Lisa, but she was just as smug as ever. There was a note of dread at what else she had been able to divine from me over the earlier conversation, but my passenger's easy confidence pretty much drowned it out.

Problems for another time. I took a seat on the couch and grabbed a slice of pizza. This was technically a violation of the diet I had committed to and had horrible macros, but mentioning any of that was more than I wanted to share. After ten days of cost efficient precisely nutritionally balanced meals the slab of cheesy bread loaded with pepperoni and sausage tasted like ambrosia. I did my best not to show how much I was enjoying it, but Lisa's grin widened slightly.

"So Mr. Tinker, give us your sales pitch." Lisa was looking smug, but shared some of the expectant look I was getting from the rest of the Undersiders.

"Well, what are you looking for?" I didn't know exactly what I was comfortable building for them, so hopefully they wouldn't ask for anything too extreme. "Also what kind of timeframe are we under here?"

Brian considered before speaking. "The job is planned for this Thursday."

"Thursday." My voice was flat. "Thursday as in the day after tomorrow?"

"Yes?"

I clenched my jaw, then forced myself to relax it. "And I suppose it's too much to hope that you're looking for delivery at eleven at night?"

"Well need everything by that morning." He glanced at Lisa.

"8 am should do it, later will cut into our schedule."

"So that's..." I checked my watch. "just over forty one hours from now. And you want it made in that time?"

Brian cleared his throat. "We were kind of hoping you had some old stuff you'd be willing to part with, or something you could finish in time."

I thought back to my early projects and the grand total of what I'd been able to build so far. "Yeah, no luck on any old projects."

"Is this going to be a problem?"

"Well it definitely takes power armor off the table." I let my frustration bleed through every word.

The Vehicles constellation swung towards me and my power latched onto a mote from it. I grit my teeth and pretended to contemplate things while I examined my new ability. It was called 'Aerospace Engineering Makes Things Go Fast'. A rather apt descriptor. The ability was actually closer to what traditional tinker powers provided. It gave an intuitive grasp of a whole range of fields like wind-flow, material sciences, atmospheric drag, tensile strengths, rocketry, and a bunch of similar subjects. It also covered the application of those principles to designing air and even space vehicles.

Combining it with my doctorate level mechanical knowledge, enhanced intelligence and the extreme pools of knowledge I had gotten from my last two abilities turned it into something extraordinary. Grease Monkey gave me the principles for manufacturing a host of flight and rocketry designs. There was already potential for refinement and improvement from my other powers, but this took it to a whole other level. The somewhat janky personal flight system I was able to build could now be upgraded to keep up with the best flying capes in the city. I would be able to push vehicles past the supersonic limits to full space planes. The types of rocketry weapons I'd be able to create would be works of art.

Also, while most of the ability was focused on vehicle application the materials science component had far reaching effects. I already had a lot of technical knowledge and experience. It was hard to explain what the new intuitive grasp was adding, but it was like previously I knew what I was supposed to do and now I FELT what I was supposed to do. The only thing was after I followed my intuition I had the technical knowledge to understand it. That let me refine the materials science aspect of my powers to a frankly insane level. Some of the things I could already pull off in that area with Grease Monkey or Smithing were seriously impressive. This took it into a realm beyond.

I glanced up and found I had the attention of the entire group. Taylor had shed some of her nervousness and Alec dropped his veil of indifference to press me on the topic.

"Wait, power armor's an option?" I swear his eyes were shining.

"Not in forty one hours it isn't."

"But in more than forty one hours it's a possibility?" Even Taylor looked eager for my response, which was probably the most engagement I'd seen from the reserved girl.

"I'd need to fabricate power sources, most of the mechanics, the materials for the plating, any weapons you'd want attached, program the interfaces, and then design a training process to make sure you know how to not tear apart your arms the first time you use the strength assist. So yeah, longer than forty one hours. Substantially longer than forty one hours"

When I finished my borderline rant I had the rapt attention of the entire group. Meaningful glances were being shared between Brian and Lisa and Alec looked like he'd found out Christmas was coming early this year.

"Hey," He leaned forward in his seat. "If you can make all that stuff then why were you beating Oni Lee with a metal chair leg the other night?"

And that was probably something I'd never live down. I really thought I had avoided the 'early tinker embarrassing gear' problem. Taking a steel club with me my first night may have saved my life, but I had the feeling that Alec would never let me forget it. The fact was that no matter how good my technology got I had started my career bashing villains like a cave man.

The rest of the group seemed interested in that as well. I guess if someone was hawking power armor when the most advanced piece of technology they had used predated the spear it created some understandable doubt. I definitely wasn't going to explain the way my power grew, and frankly even if I had these abilities sooner I would probably have been in the same spot. Instead I offered the most reasonable excuse I could come up with.

"Lack of time, lack of resources, lack of training. I've only had my powers for a week. Barely got a workshop set up. I needed an offensive option that I would be able to use. It's hard to screw up with a baton." That at least got a few nods from the others, but Taylor seemed uncertain.

"You went out before you had your equipment ready?" There was an edge of disapproval to her voice.

Hey, I tried. I really tried. How good was your equipment on your first night out?

And why was my passenger laughing at me?

I just tried to brush it off. "I had my defenses taken care of, and was able to get some other stuff ready. I just didn't have the resources for a full loadout." She seemed to be somewhat understanding of that.

"The other stuff was that glowy speed boost shit, right? Can we get some of that?" Alec looked at the irritated expressions from Lisa and Brian. "What? That's what we're here for, right?"

Right, alchemy formulas. "That stuff is a lot more complicated. I need to set it up myself and unless you have me on site it doesn't last long enough to be worth it."

Alec stroked his chin in a contemplative gesture. "You know, we could always revisit that vote."

"No Alec. We've got a deal. We're going with it." Brian glanced at me as he spoke.

"Stupid waste." Alec muttered.

"Um, hey." I shifted my attention to Taylor and did my best to ignore my passenger's elation. "Can someone fill me in on the glowy speed thing?"

Lisa was about to speak, then closed her mouth and turned to me with a smug expression. Apparently she liked putting people on the spot more than she liked being a smartass. Well, here goes.

"One of the tinker things I've figured out is how to combine formulas, combinations of materials to release energy in certain patterns to trigger particular effects. I can use it to enhance speed, defense, stuff like that."

That got varied reactions from the Undersiders but Taylor twigged to the implications right away. "Like powers? You can give yourself powers? You're a tinker who can give yourself powers? You're a tinker?" She looked to Lisa for conformation. She just shrugged in reply.

"Uh, it's really more like high energy chemistry than anything parahuman based. There's a specific mechanism behind the process that my power lets me figure out. Plus some of the materials I need are pretty difficult to find." And some of them I can get from any grocery store, but I wasn't about to let that out now.

"You can't just prep the combinations for us or something?" Alec was keeping cool, but had a hopeful tone to his voice.

"No, there's a lot more complexity than just mixing the components." Setting aside the question of whether I was ready to trust this kind of thing to anyone else, much less villains, the mechanics of Evermore Alchemy were within the same fiat backed certainty as my Fashion ability. I knew they would work, but they didn't fall under any local natural laws. While I could generate the effect I didn't think anyone else could. Well, except for Call Beads.

"What?" Lisa was suddenly looking interested. What, had I shown some hint of what I was thinking? Actually, she was a high end thinker, but how far did that go? She was clearly extraordinarily observant, but I didn't know how much of my internal dialogue she was privy to.

"There is one way that I could prep something another person could use." That got everyone's attention. Damn it. I didn't want to get into this.

Call Beads were serious alchemy. Probably the most serious formula there was. It required dry ice and meteorite fragments and generated small round crystals that could provide a link to the power of other creatures. Normally this would channel the energy of powerful people with a conceptual connection to a particular place. The manifested energy, as much as I didn't like using the word, was basically magic. By making the beads I could create an item that would allow anyone to access that connection by expending them.

The problem was I wasn't sure what I could make a link with. The only entities strong enough to create those kinds of effects were the other passengers. While that could work, and would be devastatingly powerful, I had no idea what the repercussions would be. Passengers were terrifying and barely understood the world they were interacting with. Giving them a link to the world without a very good idea on how that would manifest seemed like a terrible idea. Handing off the link to someone who didn't understand the mechanics of it seemed apocalyptic.

Lisa's eyebrows had climbed into her hair as she watched me consider the problem, and her reaction was starting to make Brian very uneasy.

"Well?" Alec asked, blind to the mood spreading through the group. "What is it?"

I shook my head. "Not a good idea. It needs some really rare materials, so I haven't been able to do even initial tests of the concept yet."

Alec deflated, but Brian cut in. "What can you get us before the deadline?"

I considered my options. I would be really happy if I could have limited my support to defensive and utility items. I could make good armor, even the unpowered armor I made would be excellent. Or I could produce gadgets that would be useful in the field, but either of those options would take longer than I had. Maybe I could upgrade what they already had. "What kind of equipment do you currently use?"

"Alec uses a Taser. Rachel and Lisa don't typically carry weapons. I try to fight unarmed, but I've carried a knife as a holdout." He looked expectantly at Taylor.

"Uh, I was thinking a baton would be good. And maybe a knife, in case of emergencies?"

I hadn't asked about weapons specifically, but that seemed to be where we were headed. "If all you're looking for is dressed up conventional weapons then I should be able to pull something together."

There was a fair bit of disappointment at that. I guess if you've had all kinds of shiny tinker possibilities dangled in front of you then dropping to 'slightly better than normal' would be a disappointment. I looked at Taylor and felt her significance from my passenger again. This wasn't actually the limit of what I could do. My latest power would provide enough insight for me to streamline manufacturing of a host of options. The question was what was I comfortable giving them?

I didn't want to hand out deadly weapons, but they were capes. On an individual basis they were already more dangerous than a lot of what I could make. How much responsibility did I bear if they hurt someone with something I had made? On the other hand, what if I sent them out underequipped and something happened to Taylor?

I considered time, resources, and what I could conceivably make in the next less-that-two days. There was a possibility, and I was just barely comfortable with it. Just.

"Actually..." the entire group turned to me. "if you can get me the materials and equipment I need right away I can probably get a set of monomolecular knives ready in time."

Lisa's eyebrows rose but Alec was the first to speak. "Monmo-what cular?"

"Super sharp blades. Like insanely sharp. They're great if you want to cut through a tank. Significantly less so if you are in any way accident prone." Grease Monkey gave me multiple methods of creating weapons like this in a huge variety of designs. Normally that would require highly specialized facilities and materials, but I was pretty sure that with the right application of metallurgy I would be able to pull off a basic example within the deadline.

Buried under all my concern there was also a selfish edge to this. If they could get me the equipment I'd need for this it would address huge gaps in my own manufacturing needs. It would open the door to a huge number of projects I had kicked down the road, suspended indefinitely, or just not considered in the first place.

"Fuck, sign me up for that."

"I really can't state enough how dangerous these things could be. If you screw around with them you could very easily lose a limb. Using them against someone without a high brute rating or regeneration is full on deadly force attempted murder. I'm not going to even consider this without assurances that you understand what you're dealing with.

"It's a sword that cuts through anything. Of course we'll be careful."

"Knife, not sword. Unless you have five years of fencing experience I give you a sword and best case scenario we'll be sewing your leg back on before the end of the day. Worst case we'll be mopping arterial spray off the celling and sending flowers to your next of kin."

"Fine, got it. Knife that can cut through anything. Very dangerous. Be very careful. Still want it."

I looked around and the rest of them nodded their heads. Even Taylor seemed engaged by the idea.

"We'll go with the knives. Lisa can work out the budget and materials."

"What are we looking at for durability and maintenance?"

I considered Lisa's question. There was regular wear on even perfectly made monomolecular weaponry. I had enough additional skill that I would be able to improve the lifespan, but that wasn't likely with this rush job. I'd have to cheat with amorphous metal and magnetic sharpening, probably particulate hardening for the edge. It wouldn't hold a candle to the top tier mono-edge weapons I'd be able to make with a proper facility.

But on the other hand those weapons were intended to cut through hyper alloys of hardsuits, combat robots, and mechs. Unless they were going up against tinkers with seriously reinforced materials or very high tier brutes these knives should last exceptionally well.

"That will depend on how heavily they're used. They should be able to cut through most conventional materials without a problem, but I can't guarantee their performance against higher level parahuman durability or the work of other tinkers." A thought occurred. There were factors in this world that this kind of weapon had never been designed to deal with. "Oh, force fields. They'll be a crap shoot. Too many possible mechanisms to be able to predict how they'll interact. It might be able to stress some to failure, but others will stop it dead or even cause feedback or damage the weapon."

"We can take that into account. Anything else?"

"Well, I'll be making them as strong as I can, but they're still just knives. If you try to cut through something too thick or dense there's a chance they could get stuck or break. Like, don't try to cut down a tree or quarry stone with them. The edge will naturally degrade with use, but it will still be orders of magnitude sharper than a normal knife."

"Right. And maintenance?"

Well, if I'm making these in my workshop..."If it does break or wear out it will take a couple of days to repair"

Lisa seemed happy with that. "We can talk about that later. How are you for supplies and equipment?"

I ran through what I'd need in my head and a new constellation spun past in the Celestial Forge without my power linking to it. "I'll need to rig an arc furnace for the metallurgy, that'll take some creative assembly, plus magnetic suspension, temperature control, a whole host of alloys I'll need to customize. Most of it should be easy to find, but there are some that I don't know how to track down in time."

"I can help you with that. Can you manage if I have everything ready tomorrow morning?"

I grinned. "I guess if sleep is optional."

"We do appreciate the rush."

There was the sound of a door opening on the lower level and someone began climbing the stairs with bunch of smaller someones behind them. I turned to Lisa. "Your other team member?"

Lisa was looking uncomfortable and Taylor was straight up agitated. I could tell why when Rachel Lindt crested the stairs and glared at me. Three dogs fell into position around her.

"What the hell is he doing here? We agreed, no more new people."

Lisa rose to her feet and made a placating gesture. "He's not on the team. He's that tinker. He'll be working for us, making gear for the next job."

"And you brought him here? What the hell?" She was betrayed, angry and territorial. Everyone was on edge and the dogs were growling and ready to pounce. The situation should by every metric have been terrifying. That is, unless your passenger was euphoric over seeing the last member of the Undersiders and fawning over the dogs with the kind of emotions normally reserved for cute puppies. They were clearly snarling dogs and not cute puppies, but that was the emotion I was getting. I still had my shin guard under my jeans, reinforcing my entire body with the durability of hard plastic and padding with the protection doubled thanks to my clothes. As such I wasn't overly concerned and I could entertain my passenger's perspective.

Unfortunately my lack of a response must have been taken as a challenge. With a whistle the dogs surged forward. The German Shepard latched onto my leg and dragged me off the couch while what looked like a Rottweiler went for my throat. I managed to bring my chin down causing it to bite at my face instead. A one eyed terrier latched onto one wrist and started to grind its teeth together.

Two of these were seriously big dogs, the kind where when they bark you can feel the sound in your guts. They were heavier than they looked too, and the weight of the one on my chest bordered on crushing. On top of that their claws were sharp and they seemed trained on how to use them against their targets. It would have been one of the most physically terrifying moments of my life.

It wasn't. The pain was nonexistent thanks to my durability boost. Claws slid off my skin without leaving a mark and even the full force of the bites failed to do any damage. At worst I felt a slight dimpling in my skin, the equivalent of a pinch. The terror wasn't there thanks to my passenger's overwhelming amusement at the situation. He even found the barking and snarling entertaining.

Recently I had become more than a little frustrated with how my passenger's regard for these villains was playing out. This wasn't one of those cases. Probably the reason I leaned on my passenger so much was the level of emotional support he was able to provide. Right now his good humor was stopping me from panicking in a situation that would otherwise have been traumatizing even if it wasn't actually dangerous. In fact, without the fear, pain, or threat this was just a pile of loud slobbery dogs.

The room had exploded into action with clouds of darkness, the buzz of insects, and a shouting match between Lisa and Rachel. One by one they dropped away as the capes present became aware of lack of concern. My free hand had found the Rottweiler's stomach and was scratching it even as the dog continued to try to eat my face. "Who's a good dog? Who's a good snarly dog?" Whether he was a good dog or not I couldn't say, but my passenger seemed to think so and this was one case where that was proving to be an asset. Eventually the silence of the room and his own lack of progress caused the Rottweiler's and the other two dogs to break off and look to Rachel in confusion. I climbed to my feet and extended a hand to her.

"Hey, I'm Joe. Nice to meet you." She took half a step back and looked at the hand like it might try bite her. Slowly she extended an arm towards one of the dogs, then stopped as Lisa's expression turned dark.

"Whatever." She spat the word at me. "Let me know when he's gone." She stormed off to one of the rooms with her dogs trailing after and slammed the door behind her.

Alec looked over me and whistled. "Dude, are you sure that thing's not for sale, because I would pay big bucks for whatever got you through that."

"Sorry, it's really specific." Lisa's eyes dropped to where the leg of my jeans was covering the shin guard, then back up. She blinked and rubbed her forehead.

I became aware of just how much dog slobber I had accumulated in that brief encounter. Attempts to clean it off just served to move it around. Lisa helpfully handed me a bunch of paper towels.

Brian spoke up. "I'm sorry about that. She's not good with new people." Taylor flinched and everyone pretended not to notice. "Maybe we should cut this short? You good to work out the details with Lisa?"

"Sure, of course. I'll pull together a list of what I need."

The rest of the Undersiders made a valiant attempt to pretend nothing had happened while I went through a list of equipment and materials with Lisa. She seemed somehow off, but I didn't know what to make of that. Of course when dealing with a high end thinker who knew if the signals you got were accurate.

As it worked out, providing everything came through I should be able to finish construction by the deadline, though it would violate my policies about sleep, food and exercise. Lisa was arranging delivery of all the materials and equipment I needed for tomorrow morning. The rush cost would be insane, but it also meant I got more and higher end equipment than I would could have scavenged for. I was meeting her at their base and picking up a preloaded van. She didn't press me on the location of my workshop, which was good because I didn't want to have to explain that particular detail at the moment.

Before I left Alec showed me the scepter/Taser he used in his cape identity. He wanted to see if I could do anything with it. Initially as a personal request, but Lisa rolled it into the rest of the deal. I had the sense she was happy to shift as much cost onto their boss as possible. Given I wouldn't be able to start on the rest without the supplies Lisa was tracking down I was willing to at least make an attempt. As it stood the thing was so poorly made I would probably have thrown in the work for free just to avoid being associated with craftsmanship like that. Seriously, parts of it were hot glued together. Apparently Alec was something of an artist, but that meant he was more used to working with craft supplies than metal and electronics.

Once the logistics were down I said my goodbyes and made my way back to my apartment. In the course of a single afternoon I had gone from an aspiring hero to supplying villains with space age weaponry. I had also gone from occasionally worrying about the way my passenger was steering me to having major concerns on almost every level of our relationship.

The thing was, it was easy to like the Undersiders. Just an afternoon with them and the reinforcement of my passenger's reactions was enough for me to form a connection. They were just a bunch of kids that got hit by powers and wound up in the villain game. I knew how messed up your life had to be to trigger, and how badly triggers could mess up your life. That was evident with Rachel. God, that was a messed up meeting. Did she think I was challenging her? She acted like someone was attacking her territory. I could be sympathetic, but trying what she did on anyone but me would have been a nightmare. It didn't help that every time I thought about her my passenger was basically going 'doggy!' inside my head.

Then there was Taylor. That was a confusing situation. I was getting the sense she wasn't totally on board with the rest of the group, but that might just be her joining up recently. I was still trying to figure out how to deal with the significance my passenger placed on her. Keeping her as safe as possible was the obvious option, but she was in the highest risk line of work in the world. The idea that I could keep her protected was a pipe dream.

And then there was the boss. The person I was actually getting paid by. He was bad news on every level. I didn't know what kind of job he had lined up for them, but it couldn't be good. Best case scenario it was only tangentially related to what his plans were. I knew I would have to confront him at some point, but the question was when and how.

Well, the answer was obviously later and with more powers from the Celestial Forge. I didn't think I could become invincible through these powers, but I did know I would be able to eclipse every other tinker on the planet. I just had to stay alive until then. If that meant playing along until I could stand on my own that was just a price I'd have to pay.

The prospect that I could potentially end up burning all my bridges on the heroic side was sobering. Not so much with the Protectorate, but there were specific members of the hero community that both I and my passenger admired enough that the idea of losing the chance to work with them was troubling.

Mostly Dragon. I don't think there's a tinker alive who wouldn't want to work with her, and the idea that I would have to give up that chance was devastating.

I decided to stop dwelling on the complete upheaval of my life and expectations and just take things one at a time. On the way back I abused my ill-gotten gains and stopped at a non-budget grocery store where I grabbed all the high protein foods I previously couldn't afford. You know, the ones that don't taste like wet cardboard. Well provisioned I headed back to my apartment and dumped everything in my workshop.

Until I got the equipment and materials from the Undersiders tomorrow I was limited in what I could do. I needed some time for planning out the details of my projects. Given the fact that I wouldn't have a minute of spare time once the equipment arrived I took the opportunity to go to the gym. My workouts were rote enough that I was able to think about my project while I went through the motions. It also helped me work out some of my frustrations at the current situation.

That is until a lithe figure slipped into my field of view as I was working the heavy bag. Aisha was in the same outfit as last time and gave me a look that had no business coming from someone her age. I smelled a rat. There had been no sign of her for the first week when I was at this place on a daily basis and now she shows up right after I start a workout? No way that's a coincidence.

I scanned the room to see if I could figure out who tipped her off. A couple of the guys gave me sympathetic glances or just averted their eyes, though the expression I got from Doug suggested everything that transpired today would be reported to Mr. Laborn at the very least. I had no doubt Doug would happily step in to protect Aisha from anyone who took her teasing too seriously.

Speaking of which, Aisha had decided to stretch before her workout, though what she was doing was more a demonstration of flexibility than a proper warmup stretch. I stayed rigidly focused on my own workout, but she kept moving around the gym so she was always positioned in the corner of my eye. My responses to attempt to keep my back to her just resulted in more creative placements. I stayed adamantly focused on my work as I would be damned if I even gave the impression that I was perving on a middle schooler.

That proved to be more conviction than some of the guys in attendance were capable of. Particularly when Aisha started on the jump rope and Doug had to go and have a few words with two of the younger members who went a bit slack jawed. Aisha had a malicious gleam in her eyes as she continued her workout while the two of them were chewed out. I almost hoped she had found new targets, but she was right back as soon as Doug finished.

I really thought I would make it without having to deal with her. I had decided to power through partially because I needed the workout for stress relief but mostly because I knew running off would just encourage her. I made it as far as the end of my sets and was heading towards the locker room. That's when I found Aisha planted squarely in my path. And there was no way past without at least some basic interaction.

"Oh, hey." She acted like this was the first time she noticed my presence. "You're Jozef, right?"

I had been ready for any number of jokes, teases, or inappropriate comments. I had not expected that. Nobody here used my full name. I hadn't gone by my full name since I was in college. As it stood my family were the only people who still called me that. As far as the gym was concerned I'm pretty sure it only showed up on my application paperwork. The way she pronounced it made it clear she had seen the spelling. My eyes darted towards the main office and Aisha smirked slightly.

"Yeah, Aisha? Nice seeing you again." It wasn't, but I needed to get past this conversation and out of the gym. Once again I was at odds with my passenger. He was amused by her antics while I still found the whole situation terrible.

"Likewise." She batted her eyelids in a move that was so blatant and unsubtle that it had to be for the benefit of the people watching. And I had no doubt that I was being watched like a hawk. "You were pretty on point today. Care to give me some tips?"

All I wanted to do was disengage from this situation. As I tried to figure out the best way of shutting her down I felt the Celestial Forge again. My power managed to link to a mote from a new constellation. The 'Magic' constellation. Magic. There was an entire constellation full of magic tinker powers.

This was not a distraction I needed right now.

Splitting my focus between Aisha and my power I did my best to deflect her. "I think your father would be a better option for that. I'm just starting out, wouldn't want to point you wrong."

This particular ability was called 'Enchanting'. It let me make actual magic weapons by marking them with runes. The only runes I currently knew would give the weapon various elemental properties, but I could conceivably reverse engineer any other magic or supernatural weapon and be able to recreate the effects.

Aisha was taking my distraction as something else entirely. I really hoped she wasn't seeing this as interest. Even in the best case she probably figured she was getting to me, which would only draw out this mess even further. She took a step forward. "Oh, I don't know. I think you could teach me all kinds of things."

The revelation of how I could alter reality by drawing squiggles was burning in my brain and I did not have time for this. I took a breath and focused on the girl in front of me.

I ignored her outfit, her behavior, her height, and every other aspect and focused on her face. Suddenly I could see it. I could clearly see just how young she was. With everything else filtered out she came across as the child she actually was.

Aisha's demeanor suddenly changed and she looked uncertain of what to do next. I took the opportunity to capitalize on it.

"Sorry Aisha, I have to go. Why don't you talk to Doug? He should be able to look after you."

I stepped around her and into the locker room. I had a blitz of a shower and was out of there within five minutes. Aisha was actually sitting next to Doug and looked at me with a complicated expression. Doug's gave me a look that was serious but not murderous, so at least he hadn't gotten the wrong idea from the situation.

That girl was trouble in more than one sense of the word. I hated the situation, but like everyone else in the gym I had kind of wound up in a place where I couldn't do anything about it except try to keep it from getting worse.

Still, I had other problems at the moment. As I made dinner I contemplated my new ability. This was an incredible revelation. Alchemy had been close to an array of parahuman powers, but still had enough of a grounding in science that it seemed reasonable for a tinker power. This was pure magic. Literal magic. It was only related to tinkering in that it needed an item as a medium. It was closer to Dauntless's power than Armsmasters.

An image of Dauntless's Arclance sprang into my head. I realized that I could recreate that. The effect would be easy to figure out if I could get ahold of the item, otherwise it would be a long process of experimentation and checking secondary sources and recordings, but I would get there eventually. Could that work for other cape weapons?

This was a rabbit hole. A fascinating rabbit hole that could change the way I functioned as a cape, but still a rabbit hole. Right now I needed to focus on what I could accomplish without adding research projects.

The elemental properties I could grant actually covered a pretty broad category. Basically, I had to describe both the effect and the element in runes. The mechanics were complicated in the extreme, but the strength of the effect scaled with the detail of the runecraft, the method of etching, and the nature of the weapon. I'd never get as much power from a dagger as I would from a broadsword.

The induced effect could be anything from energy discharge to altering the properties of the weapon to some degree. Wind for faster movement, stone for heavier strikes, that kind of stuff. It was even possible to generate quantities of an element, like have a sword trail a spray of water or shards of earth. More advanced applications could even trigger significant effects directly from the weapons, like earth tremors or blasts of fire.

All that would require more research than I had time for, particularly with my schedule. I would have to stick to basic elemental effects for now. I got my baton and an engraving kit from my workshop. I started work on the most basic of basic effects, standard energy discharge. The lightning rune was carved into the shaft of the baton just above the handle. I would have already been able to manage this, but my Smithing power greatly increased the efficiency and detail I was able to manage.

While I worked my power failed to connect to another mote from the magic constellation. It spun off and my reach continued to build.

When completed the rune activated and arcs of electricity danced across the surface of the weapon. This was an interesting possibility. For there to be visible discharge we would have to be dealing with intense amounts of power. Just how much I wasn't sure, but I bet I could it figure out.

I was soon sitting in my Laboratorium command throne watching my modified baton float in a gravity field as sensor tendrils rotated around it. The technology in this room had become a lot less imposing since I got my Grease Monkey power. It was still ages beyond what I was capable of, but I was at least familiar with the concepts at work. If I had a surgical team to help me I could probably even install bio-connection jacks that would allow full integration into the throne's systems.

The knowledge that I was capable of cybernetics and biomechanics was something I would be playing close to the chest. Neither of those fields had a particularly good reputation among capes. I didn't need the attention that would bring, either from the Protectorate or the rogue tinkers who worked in those fields.

Analyzing the baton in this lab was a difficult process. I had expected some issues with the magical nature of the device. I hadn't expected multiple warnings about witchcraft and having to constantly override lockdown procedures for containment of potential daemonic artifacts. I was amazed this place even had those kinds of procedures. After I repeatedly convinced the lab that I did not want the baton frozen in a stasis field until the plasma reconstituter could reduce it to base atoms it was able to provide me with an estimate of the device's power output.

This wasn't even close to the best I would be able to do with my runecraft and it was still putting out astoundingly high voltages. The power output wasn't that impressive, mostly because it built a charge on the surface for a single high intensity discharge. I had half hoped I would be able to use this as a power source for other technologies, but it was appeared to be too unstable to consistently channel. If I wanted to direct the power to another purpose then I would need a better handle on the interaction between this kind of effect and conventional technology. As it stood it was easily a brute level Taser and would probably be lethally dangerous to normal humans.

While I was set up in the Laboratorium I started work on my projects for the Undersiders. My lab computers were actually nearly as good for design work as they were for analysis and sped the process up immensely. I had to cut down a lot of the details and additions I would have liked to include in order to keep things on schedule and in budget, but in the end I had a decent plan for the monomolecular knives, Alec's Taser, and even a baton for Taylor.

The baton was dead easy. With Smithing and my mechanical knowledge I was able to pull together a beautifully made collapsing and expanding baton with an included wrist sheath and a rather clever deployment mechanism if I do say so myself. Still, when your power can cover space age melee weapons and legendary swords a set of collapsing metal tubes isn't that challenging.

I decided to try to get Regent's Taser stick out of the way before I got caught up in the high tech work of the knives. I was able to fabricate new versions of his plastic components and build something that didn't look like it was a Halloween prop. My workshop had plenty of enamel paint in stock, so that was easy enough to deal with. After my Laboratorium scanners broke down the function of his Taser I stripped out every electrical component. As an experiment I tried replacing it with calibrated lightning runes on the inside of the trigger button. Depressing it completed the runic symbol and activated the electrical discharge.

I'd done it. I'd recreated the Taser output without a need for an external power source. Great for Alec, better for the potential of my other projects. If I was going to be working for villains I might as well take it as a chance to refine my technology.

After that I started on the components I could make without advanced materials or equipment. While I was restricted to my machine shop and the basic materials stocked there my new skills more than made up for it. The work I could do was limited to sheaths, casings, some prep work and some detailing. My style ability actually turned out to be immensely helpful. With barely any effort I was able to customize the design of all aspects of the work to the look of each of the Undersiders. Well, except Taylor. I hadn't seen her in costume yet, so I had no idea what her particular aesthetic should be. It wasn't an option to hand her a basic utility knife while everyone else got personalized equipment.

I could check the next morning, but I drew up a few examples in the meantime. By the end of the evening I had most of the design components complete. It at least freed me to focus on entirely technical aspects for the next day. That's where the real blitz of work would start. I ran through the schedule I'd need to follow. Equipment installation and customization, materials testing, fabrication, proving the concept, and then producing all five knives all within a twenty four hour block. Oh God, I had committed to a mad dead line here.

I had elected to get some sleep when another constellation swung close in the Celestial Forge. This one was called 'Size' and the first power was based around miniaturization of technology. Very miniature. The ability was called 'Nanite Sciences' and provided an in-depth understanding of nanite technology. With my current equipment there wasn't much I could do with it, but some of the principles would be helpful in other endeavors.

Nanites were insanely powerful and versatile, providing I could get the resources needed to start producing them. That comparatively small mote had huge potential, but also potential to go horribly wrong. Not quite gray goo levels of wrong, but still substantial. Like, world altering. I would probably get targeted by the Protectorate if the full potential was known. I'd have to keep that low key until I could make sure I could use that knowledge safely and covertly.

That was a big concern with this kind of technology considering the potential it had to get away from me. The power generation and manufacturing aspects of nanite science were phenomenal, but it was the biomedical uses that really set it apart. Things like instant healing, infinite food generation, and all manner of physical enhancements were on the table.

The thing was this could easily escape beyond the scope of the initial parameters. What was supposed to be a healing booster could end up variegating an organism exponentially. Creating exponentially variegated organisms. This could be worse than the case 53s. The possibilities at that point were, well, exponential. Massive physical mutations, integrated technology, shifts to different phases of matter, even complex microbe symbiosis were all possibilities. As a rule any technology that would cause comparisons to Nilbog should be handled very carefully.

That was a sobering thought. Nilbog. God, there was someone I hadn't thought about since I learned how my trigger was originally supposed to play out. If I hadn't been hijacked by the Celestial Forge...

You know what, that's not worth worrying about. Put it aside and focus on the non-monster applications of your new power. No reason to think about any of that, ever.

Yes, there were advantages here. This information would make blade fabrication substantially easier. I knew how to form amorphous metal into a monomolecular edge, but Nanite Sciences gave me an understanding of atomic level technology like nothing I'd ever imagined before. This would shave a substantial amount of time and effort from the project. My schedule just went from borderline impossible to merely nightmarish. Now I just needed to get some sleep before my 24 hour blitz to make sure a team of criminals had deadly weapons ready for their mystery felony.

You know, I would say fuck my life but I'm pretty sure that's redundant at this point.

Jumpchain abilities this chapter:

Aerospace Engineering Makes Things Go Fast (Kerbal Space Program) 100:
You have an intuitive grasp on the mechanics of wind-flow, material sciences, atmospheric drag, tensile strengths, rocketry, so on and so forth, and how it applies to the art of designing vehicles that traverse the sky and space.

Magic: Enchanting (Samurai Jack) 200:
You can grant magical properties to weapons by marking them with ancient runes. Right now you only know how to give weapons elemental properties but you can learn more enchantments by studying other enchanted and magical weapons.

Nanite Sciences (Generator Rex) 100:
You possess in depth knowledge of nanite technologies. With sufficient equipment and resources you could produce and control nanite machines, possibly even recreate the nanite event or maybe figure out how to reverse its effects. But that would take a long time of additional study of nanites out in the world, still you might be one of the few who could attempt this endeavor.
You possess no knowledge of the meta-nanites, and understanding how they work is beyond your grasp

 

[LordRoustabout]

6.1 Interlude: Taylor

Taylor watched the tinker vanish down the stairs as Lisa saw him out of the building. As they left Alec looked up from the game he'd been playing and gave her and Brian a conspiratorial look.

"So, the new guy. You think he's all there?"

Brain walked back from dumping the pizza boxes in the kitchen. "You mean that thing with Rachel? He did take it pretty well." Alec raised an eyebrow. "Ok, more than pretty well. Still, Lisa vouched for him."

The confidence they had in Tattletale's analysis didn't sit quite as well with Taylor. "Uh, should we get Rachel?" She looked at the girl's closed door.

Brian waved her off. "Leave her a bit longer to cool off. I think he spooked her."

"Yeah, 'he' spooked 'her'." Alec made exaggerated finger quotes. "Did anyone see it going down that way?"

Taylor cringed as she felt the stitches from her encounter the previous day. "I know you said he was tough, but I didn't know he could handle that."

Brian shrugged. "I guess if you're tough enough that kind of thing doesn't bother you."

Alec smirked "Mercy remains the privilege of the most powerful."

Taylor blinked. "Was that Nietzsche? You read Nietzsche?"

"Na, must have picked it up somewhere. But Brian has a point. You're strong enough and you can afford to let that stuff slide."

It sounded like he was giving a sideways compliment about the previous day, but the casual way they were talking about such a serious power had her on edge.

She had felt in over her head since they agreed to this plan. In her efforts to quietly nudge the group away from the bank job she had pointed out they weren't really equipped for something like that. Lisa had countered by mentioning a new tinker contact. The prospect of tinker tech equipment had been enough to bring Alec around and mitigated the fears the other members had with the heist. They'd had to plan the job without certainty over what, if any gear could be provided, but with the boss footing the bill everyone was willing to make an attempt.

Lisa had offered to manage the meeting without her but Taylor insisted on coming. She had a chance to gather information on a rogue tinker that was supplying weapons to villains. It would be more information she could turn over to the Protectorate at the end of this.

Only as she learned more the situation turned out to be a little different from that. This guy had jumped in and fought Oni Lee the same night she showed down against Lung. According to Alec he had gear that protected him from explosives and some weapon that let him outfight Oni Lee in the center of a mob of his clones. The assassin had apparently run off with a broken arm at the end of things.

The situation was a little too close to her own for comfort. Alec even suggested recruitment, though Rachel shot that down completely. Lisa didn't' seem too keen on it either, and was preparing everyone for the possibility that the deal wouldn't go through. Still, by lunch they had a solid enough plan for the bank job that there likely wouldn't be any objections even if they had to go without any high tech gadgets.

Which, Taylor realized, was probably Lisa's plan from the start.

When they met the tinker it turned out to be less of a situation where she could dig up information on an arms trafficker and more being an accessory to talking someone into what was at best a morally questionable arrangement. He had insisted on more concerns and conditions than she ever thought of asking for. Then again, he wasn't planning to betray everyone here to the Protectorate.

And even after the entire afternoon she still had only the vaguest idea of what he was capable of.

"How strong would you say he is?"

"The guy took like three dozen grenades at once on Sunday night and came out swinging."

Taylor froze. "He what?"

"Oh, yeah, didn't you see the crater?"

"You said he took an explosion. I didn't know you were talking about something like that."

"He used his formula thing for that. I don't think he's normally that tough." Brian qualified Alec's statement.

Alec just shrugged. "The guy was still at ground zero for that blast. We totally should have gone for recruitment."

Lisa returned from the stairs and shook her head. "He wouldn't have gone for it. We're lucky to get what we did."

Alec set down his controller and turned to face them. "How sure are you about that? Because I think we have someone who could have talked him around." He waggled his eyebrows at Taylor.

She frowned at the boy. "What do you mean?"

He looked around. "Seriously? Am I the only one who noticed? Brian? Lisa?"

"Alec, leave it alone." Lisa's voice was firm but had no effect on him.

"What are you getting at?" Brian sat down next to Taylor on the couch.

He pulled himself up as if making a formal declaration. "What I'm getting at is our new tinker friend has fallen for the bug girl."

Taylor swore she felt her heart stop. "What?"

"I'm serious. He was all disinterested until he saw you. Every time there was a hard choice or it seemed like he was going to bail on the whole deal he'd just look at Taylor and reassessed things. Face it, he's got it bad for you."

"No way." Taylor couldn't even process the idea. All her previous concerns were grinding to a halt as she tried to wrap her mind around this concept "It's just, there's no way that's what happened."

Alec mimed a tear and gave an exaggerated sniffle. "Little Taylor, only a villain for one day and already seducing innocent capes to the side of darkness. I'm so proud."

Lisa sighed and rubbed her forehead.

"Something wrong?"

"No, it's just, I saw this coming, or happening. Whatever."

She nearly went slack jawed at the thinker's words. "Wait, you mean Alec's right?"

"Alec is always right. The sooner the rest of you accept that the happier you'll be."

"Ass. No, that intuition power he mentioned? It kind of tells him how to feel about stuff. Sort of, it's complicated."

"So his power tells him he's in love with Taylor. Same result really." He glanced over. "Bit of a cradle robber though. The guy was what, twenty five?"

"Twenty one. College drop out. I think, there was a lot there to read."

"What does that mean?"

"That power gives him this kind of emotional reaction to things but it also makes him really easy to read." When Taylor gave her a questioning look she clarified. "I mean for me to read. Some of it is so obvious it's hard to ignore."

"The point is he's here because of you. You should totally use your feminine wiles to get him on the team."

Taylor glanced at Rachel's closed door. "I think Bitch might kill him if I tried that."

"Who cares? The guy's a tank." He turned to Lisa. "You sure he's not a brute? I didn't see any gear. He have a hidden force field or something?"

"No, it's not a power. Well, it is a power but not a power." The rest of the Undersiders stared at her blankly. "Ok, it's not based on technology, and it's something only he can do, and it's supernatural, but it's not part of his power."

"So he's easy to read, huh?" He leaned over and spoke in a stage whisper. "Hey Brian, I think the new guy broke Lisa."

"Look, I don't know how it works, or how he's doing it or how he got it, but he had something on his leg that was making his entire body tough."

"So it was like a personal force field? If he's got those we should totally buy one. Or get Taylor to seduce it from him." Alec suddenly choked as a fly flew directly down his throat.

"So that's how he did it?" Brian asked from beside her.

"Yeah, it makes his entire body tough. His clothes too for some reason."

"Sorry," Taylor interjected "This is fascinating and all, but can we go back to the thing where he might be in love with me?"

"I don't think it's exactly love."

Lisa ignored Alec as he leaned over and whispered "It's totally love."

"He does like you though. He likes all of us, but he'll probably work with us as long as you're on the team."

Taylor felt a pit grow in her stomach. That would be until she learned about the boss and got the info to Armsmaster. Could she get him out too? How bad was it to be supplying tinker tech to criminals? God, she couldn't believe that someone might have turned to a life of crime for her sake. For HER.

And this was based in a thinker power? How did that work?

"Is that thinker intuition thing something we should be concerned about?" She tried to keep the worry out of her voice as she asked.

"You know, what with you running off screaming the other night." Alec added with a smirk.

Lisa shot him a sour look before she replied. "No, I've got a handle on it now. His actual power or whatever it is works separate from him. He just gets feelings from it about things and people."

"How the hell is that supposed to be useful?"

"Because the power is actually really good at reading stuff. The emotion link is probably a limiter. A lot of thinkers have something like that to stop them from overstressing their powers."

"Is it like that for you?" Taylor hoped it didn't sound like she was fishing for weaknesses in her teammates.

"I can get headaches if I push myself too far. That's the most common one. Other thinkers have limits on how often they can use their powers, or they start getting less accurate results as time goes on, stuff like that."

"So he has a super thinker analysis power and we shouldn't be concerned why?" Alec was acting flippant but Taylor thought she heard a note of concern in his voice.

"Because most of what he's getting from it is a garbled mess. He's trying to figure things out by how the power feels about things. Honestly I'm probably picking up on it more clearly than he is."

"And you didn't see he was in love with Taylor."

"Because he isn't. Look, going into this I would have given maybe a fifty percent chance of landing the commission. Taylor pushed him over the top. I didn't account for how much of a boost that would be."

"Because he's in love with her." Lisa grabbed a cushion and threatened to throw it at Alec. The boy brought his hands up in surrender and let her continue.

"He leans too much on his power. It's a common problem with thinkers. His own emotions are kind of muted, so he follows what his powers tell him."

Taylor felt a pit in her stomach. That intuition power had seen something in her that convinced him to work with villains. She almost wished it was love, as impossible as that seemed. It would be better than her slapdash undercover work dragging someone else into villainy.

Brian didn't look completely placated yet. "You're sure about this? No chance you're missing anything?"

"Please, I'm reading him so clearly it's like his power wants to be heard. He was upfront about what he could build and he's going to follow through on it. Trust me, I've got this."

"And you finished the negotiations? What's the damage look like?" Everyone in the room turned towards Lisa.

"Not nearly as bad as it could have been and if those things work half as well as he advertised then this is an incredible deal." At Brian's prompting she elaborated. "About ten grand in materials and machinery. That's not counting the extra cost for the rush order. Five hundred per knife and another five hundred if they perform as advertised. Extra five hundred up front for Alec's Taser. The Boss is going to cover everything for this job."

"That's not exactly chicken scratch." Taylor couldn't help but agree. That was what, fifteen grand for a handful of knives. She couldn't imagine throwing around that kind of money. Then again a few days ago she couldn't imagine handing someone two grand in a lunchbox.

"The equipment is a one-time cost so that's a separate factor. As for the price of the knives, do you have any idea what tinker tech sells for?"

"Uh, no?"

"Exactly. No one does because there's no set price. Because there's almost none of it on the market. Everything is bespoke and basically a game of what a tinker is willing to make and what people are willing to pay. He could easily make ten times as much with any other clients, and that's lowballing it."

But he's working here. And trying to keep things contained. And doesn't want people to get hurt. Great job Taylor. Alec was right, you've dragged someone over to the dark side.

"We're getting our money's worth?"

"Look, even if the knives don't work like he claims, judging by what he's made so far five hundred for a knife of that quality is a bargain. If they do then we just lucked out to a ridiculous degree. The real killer will be the maintenance costs."

Taylor frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Tinker tech is stupidly complicated. No one knows how to mass produce it and generally only the tinker who made it can maintain it properly. You buy tinker tech without a support commitment and you're basically running down the clock."

"So we're going to have to keep paying him forever? And after this it's on us for the costs?"

"Unfortunately, but at least he was upfront about how it will last. Dropping performance is better than the catastrophic failure some of that stuff is known for."

"Hey, you think he was serious about power armor for everyone?"

"No Alec."

"Come on, It'll be awesome."

"Even if he keeps letting us rob him as badly as he did on this deal I don't want to think about what that will cost. The materials alone." Brian shuddered.

"But we're pulling bigger jobs now. That was the whole point of this? Work our way up. Well if were rising I want to do that assisted by a jetpack with like built in lasers or something."

Lisa just groaned and shook her head. "Enough about Joe. Everybody needs to rest up and get ready for the bank job. And someone let Rachel out before she goes stir-crazy."

"Joe." Alec over-pronounced the name. "We need to get a cape name for that guy fast. He's a tinker, not a fry cook. If I get a sword..."

"Knife."

"If I get a BLADE that can cut through anything I'm not going around talking about how it was made by the great tinker Joe. All the other sword capes would laugh at me."

"What other sword capes?"

"Well, there's Black Kaze."

"She's birdcaged."

"Dauntless"

"That's a spear."

"Close enough. What's his face from Philly."

"Chevalier. I'll give you that one."

"I'm pretty sure Miss Militia's made a sword before, like one of those marine honor guard things."

"Fine, there are sword capes. I think I can say with confidence that they'll still laugh at you regardless of the name of your tinker."

Alec gave an exaggerated huff and went back to his game.

And just like that everything went back to normal. Petty squabbles, snipes at each other, and lounging in the hideout. Eventually Rachel slipped out of her room and left the building and Alec put on a movie. It was settled. Everyone was still excited about their tinker tech, but there was no more concern. Alec still dropped the occasional joke about her being a heartbreaker, devil woman, man eater, seductress, and any other descriptor he could come up with until she got fed up and sent house flies into both of his eyes. He took it with better grace than she expected and laid off.

The following day she was in no state to handle school. She met Lisa and Brian in the morning to review the last details of the bank job. Lisa was still preparing things in case the knives didn't come through. As Taylor understood it the most they expected to get out of them was intimidation and maybe cracking a few locks. The thought of actually owning tinker tech was incredible, but it wasn't exactly something they were building the heist plan around.

Lisa had gotten her a collapsible baton and had a knife in reserve in case there were any delays from Joe, though she was still confident in things working. Later she and Brian helped Taylor clear out the storage room and moved in some loose furniture to give her a space in the hideout. She wasn't sure how she felt about that, not with her planning to leave the group as soon as she got her information.

That led to her sitting at her kitchen table that evening running down a conversation with her father as she prepared to call in the one favor she had in the hero community. She had already shared truncated details of her time with the Undersiders and done her best to cast things in a normal light.

"So what about that last guy?"

"Oh, Joe. He's not really part of the group. Just someone Brian and Lisa know. Good with machines, and, um..."

Taylor's stomach churned and she doubted it was the lemon and pepper pork chops she'd made for dinner. And of course her father caught on to that. It was one of the things she hated. He either seemed to be oblivious or watching her like a hawk and she could never tell which one it was.

"What is it?"

Uh, how could she explain this? "He's into this girl and she's part of a bad group. I'm kind of worried he's going to end up in a bad place because of her." It was a vague statement and in this city could mean anything from a party girl to potential gang recruitment. To her surprise instead of showing concern her father looked almost nostalgic.

"What?"

"Did I tell you about how your mother and I met?"

"You were both in college, right." Something occurred to Taylor. "You're talking about Lustrum?"

"Your mother was into that pretty heavily. It wasn't as bad at the start, and your mother got out before things got out of hand." He smiled slightly. "I'm sure your friend will be fine."

Taylor knew it was a borderline random anecdote, just something he happened upon. He probably didn't mean to say anything insightful, but it gave her a bit of hope. Get out before things get out of hand. That's what tonight was about.

She wrapped up dinner and her father gave her ten dollars for her 'coffee with Lisa'. She darted out of the house with her costume in her backpack heading to the Downtown ferry terminal. Heading to meet with Armsmaster.

The man's demeanor was completely different from the last time she had seen him. She barely made it through explaining why she was there before he threatened to drag her to the PHQ. The conversation was torture. Trying to dance around anything Tattletale would be able to pick up on or trace back to her while dealing with his obstinate attitude was infuriating.

She had to avoid his lie detector and he was still able to figure out Tattletale was spying on the Protectorate.

It was worse when she tried to call in her favor. No protection. No leniency. "A middle schooler with delusions of grandeur". That's what he called her. She didn't even have a chance to bring up Joe, to ask for some accommodation for the person she had dragged into this.

In frustration she tried to throw Lung's capture in his face, how she gave him the credit, let him take all the glory for that. Then she found out why he'd been at her throat all night.

Lung had almost died. The tinker had dosed him with tranquilizer and knocked out his healing factor. And then blamed her when it almost killed the man. Then he talked about having his equipment checked like it was the worst violation he could possibly imagine. Blaming her for everything.

She barely, just barely, got him to agree to not report the meeting. That was her favor. That was the reward she got for capturing one of the most notorious crime lords in the country. He was willing not to file a report that would get her killed.

She was fuming as she made her way back home. She'd been berated, insulted, and patronized before she could even ask for help. She would have to do this on her own. Get out before things get out of hand. Her mother had done it, so could she.

If Joe was really doing this because he was following his power, because of her, then maybe he'd follow her out. The gear was being delivered tomorrow and if it was good enough, well Lisa had said how valuable tinkers were. The Protectorate would probably take him even if his equipment had helped a bank robbery. After all, she couldn't imagine Armsmaster walking out of a crater like the one she had seen and still being ready to fight.

So she was going to rob the hell out of that bank. She was going to win the Undersider's trust, she was going to expose their boss. And she was going to get out. And when it was done she was definitely going to give all the info to Miss Militia, not Armsmaster.

 

[LordRoustabout]

7 Accessory

I woke up early once again. This was the level of early I had barely tolerated for my morning runs, but this tinker work necessitated it. I needed to get to the Undersiders base and pick up my equipment and I was already on a crunch schedule. Tattletale had promised to have everything ready at seven and I needed to secure the gear as soon as possible. As soon as I was out of bed I felt the Celestial Forge moving again, with my power connecting onto another mote. It was a hell of a lot to wake up to.

My reach was bigger than before and had enough power to latch onto a mid-sized mote from a new constellation. This one was called "Resources and Durability' and the power was called 'Built to Last'. And it was incredible.

I'd gotten some amazing powers from the Celestial Forge, but this was the first one that made me want to laugh maniacally. Its base effect was nice enough as it made anything I personally built pretty much immune to the effects of weather, rust, or time. Without a tornado grinding down on it or some exposure to corrosive chemicals everything I made was going to effectively last forever. This opened up a lot of possibilities for using more reactive metals than were previously available to me since I wouldn't have to worry about corrosion affecting the items performance or lifespan.

The aspect of the power that really, truly thrilled me was an almost unrelated aspect that was seemingly tagged on to the end of it. That aspect perfectly addressed some of my most serious concerns with working for the Undersiders. With this power I could feel out the location of anything I made. No matter if it was lost, buried, gifted, or stolen I would have a vague idea of where it was and would be able to track it down. It wasn't as good as having a GPS tracker on everything I made, but there was no chance anything I built could truly get away from me.

I can't really state how big a relief that was. Being able to track and retrieve everything I made resolved one of my biggest concerns with the kinds of technology I would be able to produce. I might be handing off deadly weapons but I was also handing off a way to monitor the people who were using them. What's more, since this worked on the same mystery principle as my reinforcement power or workshop key there was no way to detect or disrupt it. It would take some effort to keep track of things, but it was a level of security that made me much more comfortable about this entire endeavor.

Speaking of which I needed to get moving. I had just enough time for a slice toast and some reheated coffee from the previous day before I needed to head to the Undersider's base.

It was weird seeing the early morning city again after I had effectively sworn it off. I was on a different route than my usual running trail, but the city still had the same odd 'not quite all there' feeling. It at least meant I made it to the abandoned factory without attracting any attention. While I'm pretty that sure so far I'd only broken tax laws regarding undeclared income, I was still a little afraid of having the Protectorate swoop in at any minute.

Fortunately my paranoia was not validated and I completed the walk to the factory without being swarmed by PRT agents. There was an unmarked van parked in front of the heavily chained doors of the main entrance. I would make a joke about vans like that and their criminal associations, but this one actually managed to look legitimate. It gave off more of a plumbing services vive than that sketchy 'free candy' feeling usually associated with those kind of vehicles. Lisa and a sleepy looking Alec were waiting for me next to it.

"Hey." Lisa waved me over. "Got all the machinery you asked for. Also threw in a few extras as a signing bonus." I raised an eyebrow at her. "Server components, some modern ceramics, a 3D printer, laptops, spare electronics, that kind of stuff."

I looked into the back of the van and saw the piles and piles of boxes neatly arranged. The equipment and materials I had asked for took up maybe half of the space with the rest devoted to the eclectic collection of supplies. "I didn't ask for any of this."

"We had the space to spare and were already paying for rush delivery. I figured if you're still getting set up then this could help."

I wasn't sure if this was a bribe, a social dynamics ploy, or just her taking the chance to charge more to her boss. Whatever her motives it would still be helpful. I wasn't going to turn down free anything right now and though I had padded my requests a bit to get some non-essentials and my remaining alchemy reagents I hadn't tried to go this far.

"Thanks, I appreciate this."

"Hey, you're doing us a favor. This is the least I can do." There seemed to be more meaning to that, but I couldn't parse it before Alec broke in.

"So, with the stuff you were talking about last night. Any chance of getting a lightsaber?"

I looked at the bags under his eyes, and the moderately irritated girl standing beside him. "Wait, did you wake up this early just to try to get a laser sword?"

He suppressed a yawn as he replied. "Hey, hey. That's not what we're discussing here. Lightsaber. Yes or no?"

I thought about it. The actual composition of a lightsaber wasn't clear. There were no details on how they worked or what they were made of. So strictly speaking, no I couldn't build a lightsaber.

However if all you were looking for was some kind of area of extremely high temperature contained in a roughly sword like shape, then that was another matter. Bakuda's bomb was an example of how to confine frankly insane levels of energy to a finite area. Scaling that down to a blade shape would be difficult, particularly since I was still not completely clear on a lot of the principles of that device. A nanite cloud could manage that kind of effect, but the control system would be intensely complicated and frankly you'd be better off just using the nanites to tear apart whatever you hit than relying on heat from short periods of contact.

"I knew it!" Alec's shout broke my train of thought. I looked at him in confusion.

"What? I didn't say anything."

"Yeah, but Lisa wouldn't look so annoyed if you weren't thinking about how to do it." He turned towards the scowling thinker. "And you said I shouldn't ask."

"Yes, you shouldn't ask because you shouldn't have one. I barely trust you with the knife he's making, and even then I've been reading up on reattaching fingers."

"Honestly, arms are a lot more likely."

Her expression suggested she did not appreciate my clarification.

I cleared my throat. "Let's hold off on any energy based weapons for the moment."

"Whatever." Lisa gave me a faint grin. "You good now?"

I checked inside the van. "Yeah, this should do it." I looked at the vehicle with some apprehension. "So, about this van?"

"Listed as belonging to a shell company. Registration's in the glove compartment, but it's probably best if you try not to get pulled over. You can hold on to it for the duration of the job. Another signing bonus."

Well, that was both generous and incredibly suspect. Still, at least they provided a way I could move the stuff without having it delivered to my apartment. I took the keys and made my way to the driver's seat.

Before I left I turned to the two of them. "Oh, I wanted to ask. What's Taylor's costume like?"

Alec gave Lisa a sidelong glance "Why?" He asked, drawing out the word.

"I don't want to make something that will horribly clash with it. I know what the rest of you look like in character, I don't want her stuff to stand out."

Lisa cleared her throat. "Aesthetics aren't really that important for this..."

"Black and gray bodysuit with yellow lenses. Insect theme, including this mandible thing on the mask. Very intimidating, no soft edges at all." Lisa looked irate at being cut off, but let it slide.

"Remember, Thursday morning, 8am. If you're late we'll have to go without you."

To go to their job. The mystery crime. Still, I wasn't going to let them run into danger without some support. Lisa gave me a knowing grin as I climbed into the driver's seat.

"Don't' worry. I'll be there."

"Hold up." She reached into a pocket and handed me a cheap disposable cellphone. "This has the work numbers for both Brian and me programed into it. Check the message once a day and before you make the drop, in case anything changes."

I nodded, checked the phone, then powered it down and pulled the battery. Lisa just smiled when she saw that.

I pulled the van out of the factory's side street and into the Docks proper. I didn't know for sure if I was being tracked, but I wasn't taking any chances. I had come up with a plan the previous night on how to handle this, which was made much easier by the handoff of the vehicle. If one of them had been driving for me this would have been a lot more difficult.

It was funny, before I got my powers I'd only ever driven with an automatic transmission. Now, after a second to familiarize myself with the controls I was handling everything like a pro. None of my powers gave me enhanced driving ability but I had a thorough understanding of engines. In fact I was probably one of the top experts on the subject in the world. I could tell all kinds of little details about the van by the sound of its engine, the grip of its wheels, and even how the weight shifted. Just from the feel of shifting gears I could map out the entire transmission system in my mind. I knew exactly how much acceleration to expect, where my sightlines and blind spots were, and after a few turns all the details of the handling and what that said about the steering system. It was an unusual but highly appreciated aspect of my power.

I had no intention of going to my apartment. A determined person might still be able to track me there, but that was no reason to make it easy for them. Instead I made my way to an underground parking complex roughly where the Docks and Downtown met. It was one of a few such places I was familiar with since it was convenient for a nearby shopping center, basically as close to a mall as you could get in the middle of the city, that had a movie theater in it. Back when I was in college I would head out here every now and then with people from my class.

The thought brought back a load of emotions that I pushed away with help from my passenger. He was still excited about my first serious crafting job and the prospect of working with the Undersiders. I tried to focus on that and not get caught up in the past.

The reason I had come here was the complex was oversized even when it was at peak hours. Right now the lower levels would be nearly abandoned. I drove the van to the deepest floor of the garage and found a maintenance closet near one of the parking spaces. I backed in as close to the door as possible and used my workshop key. The janitor's closet opened to the entry room of my workshop and lab and I started unloading the van.

Rather than pile everything into the entry hall I moved it into the Laboratorium. I didn't have time for a full scan on everything in the shipment, but the scanners were good enough that they would be able to detect any tracking signals or bugs in what had been supplied. I didn't think most people would be dumb enough to try to sneak listening or tracking devices into a tinker's gear, but you should never underestimate the resourcefulness of fools.

Fortunately nothing came up. I sealed off the door and left the van where it was. It could sit here for a couple of days and I didn't trust anything registered to their boss anywhere near my home. Once again, I'm not saying I couldn't be tracked, I just didn't want to make it blindingly easy.

My knowledge of the garage was an asset when it came to sneaking out. I changed clothes with a set from the entry hall and took a side route out. I snuck through one of the underground accesses to the shopping center, then through a large department store that had an exit on the other side of the block. By the time I was on the street I was three blocks from where I had parked and taking a roundabout route back to my apartment.

It was a time sink that I wasn't sure I could afford, but I wasn't willing to take that risk just to save a bit of time. On the way home my power failed to make a connection to one of the largest motes of the Vehicles constellation, but that just meant my reach would continue to grow.

But none of that would help me with my current project. As soon as I got home I piled into my lab and started setting things up. My workshop didn't have a fixed size, instead being as big as it needed to be for its work. It was kind of freaky how adaptive it was. Just entering with a new piece of equipment resulted in the layout having shifted to allow a place for it. Even for the stuff that was still being figured out or designed there was enough room to accommodate.

Most of what I needed to do involved setup. Thankfully the machinery I'd been provided with was as close as possible to what I needed for this application. At most I'd need to do some basic prep work. No, the real difficulty would be the construction of a prototype metallic glass with store bought components and the shaping of said material to a functional monomolecular blade.

I was doing work that the world had never seen before and I was doing it with cobbled together chains of equipment barely adequate for my needs. I'd never felt more like a real tinker.

My rigged up arc smelter would have blown out my entire building's power grid but fortunately my workshop seemed to have a policy that as long as it was for metalwork there were no limits on power consumption. I was actually doing a proper test batch before risking everything falling apart by rushing to the final product as soon as the machinery was ready.

The metallic glass was tricky. I had enough liquid nitrogen for rapid cooling to ensure amorphous formation, but I could decrease the need for that by precise matching of atomic sizes in the alloy. I could understand the science behind it, but without my innate sense of materials science I doubt I would be able to pull it off in these conditions. Likewise the magnetic suspension system to facilitate formation into the blade shape took just about every ounce of knowledge my power had granted me in order to pull it off with the parts I'd been given. The hardest part was maintaining the magnetic shear long enough for both edge formation and reinforcement.

To say it was nightmarish would be an understatement. I was sweating bullets the entire time. Finally, after hours of setup and an arduous amount of tension I had a tiny sliver of dull gray material with an edge theoretically fine enough to cut anything.

I secured it in a vice and tested it on a piece of barstock. The steel went past the two inch blade without the slightest resistance and suddenly I was holding two pieces of steel neatly split apart.

I had done it. I was a proper tinker. This wasn't some tinkerish power or a boosted mundane skill or access to facilities. This was proper, impossible for normal people, tinker tech.

I wanted to shout. I wanted to scream. I wanted to get drunk and party. My excitement was amplified by my passenger. I was a God damn tinker. This piece alone was enough to get me respect on any level of parahuman society. I had always known I was building towards something great, but with the slow burn of my power and the scattered applications I never quite dispelled my doubts. Even with the highs of my reinforcement power, my alchemy, my runecraft, I always doubted a little bit. Not anymore. I was a tinker.

And as a tinker I had massive time commitments that I had stupidly agreed to for a price that was probably a brutal rip off. I currently had eighteen hours to do what I just did, only on a bigger scale and five times over. Also precisely following designs I'd prepared the previous night because I'm too proud to churn out standardized equipment.

I am such a fucking idiot. Why did I agree to this again? Oh, right. Passenger wanted to look after Taylor. Savior of the world and all that. Well, hopefully this helps.

All I can say is thank God for the work I did the previous evening. Without that prep I would probably have gone insane.

I started working my way through manufacturing the Undersiders knives. Because I had to be all stylistic none of them had the same blade profile, so there was custom setup needed for each one. Still, after the prototype proved the concept I was able to build momentum and got into a routine. Smelt, mix, suspend, edge, treat, finish, store. There were a couple of mistakes on the early runs, but I was able to salvage the material and reset. By my third blade I had things going smoothly.

It was still pushing my skills to the limit. I was a master smith with intuitive grasp of materials science and knowledge of a plethora of future weapons and nano-scale engineering. Without any one of those pieces this could have fallen apart or taken ten times as long. As it was I was able to keep a decent pace, drawing from experience I didn't have, knowledge of things I'd never studied, and leveraging laws of physics that I'm not even sure really existed.

Because I wasn't a conventional tinker I didn't have the full benefit of that state of high focus where the world falls away and you lose yourself in your work while basically on auto pilot. There was some investment but it was the normal level of getting caught up in your work. I still had to stay focused and on task through the entire process, checking dozens of aspects of the crafting process and making sure procedures were followed precisely.

The most frustrating thing about the whole thing was my constant realizations of how I could have done things better. Better placement of the machines, refinement of the alloying process, more efficient use of magnetic suspension, and full automation of at least half of the steps. Because of my deadline I didn't have the time to implement any of them. I kept a close eye on the clock as the night ticked on. I was managing to keep my schedule and would have enough time to finish and make it to the Undersiders.

As I was finishing the blade for Lisa's knife I felt my power move again and connect to a small mote from the Quality constellation. This one was called Decadence and was essentially Bling of War taken up to eleven. While Bling of War allowed stylish design and matching themes this ability allowed a level of detail in aesthetic craftsmanship that bordered on the absurd. With barely any additional effort I could make things that would put imperial courts to shame

It was also a lot further reaching than Bling of War. That ability only applied to equipment while this one worked on every possible application of manufacturing from vehicles to architecture and beyond. There was also an interior design aspect of the ability that let me tailor décor for any purpose or environment, including surveillance. Outside of the appearance and efficient use of space that part of the power would let me both locate and place surveillance devices with near perfection.

None of these items were exactly going to look bad, not with my previous style perk guiding the design, but with my new ability I was able to refine my plans for the weapons to works I could be truly proud of without compromising any of their utility.

At six o'clock in the morning I was doing the final touch ups. Most of the items were packed in an oversized Halliburton briefcase that had been included with my supplies. I was just doing the last of the design work for Taylor's knife and baton. I'm rather proud that despite the early hour and the fact that I was being kept upright with caffeine the quality of my work never suffered. I had put extra effort into Taylor's knife and I hoped to God it was enough to keep her safe.

From the way she stood and behaved I doubted she had that much combat experience. I looked at her baton. She didn't seem to have that much upper body strength either, and the question of how well she could handle either of these items was unlikely to have a comforting answer. I looked down at the blade I was working a pattern into. I could help with that. Even in my sleep addled state, with my level of skill it would be trivial to add an enhancement.

I made my decision and started to integrate wind runes into the design. With the advantages of my Decadence ability they blended in seamlessly to the pattern I had started. They would make the weapon lighter, faster, and easier to handle. It should make up for any lack of skill.

While touching up the baton I worked a few earth runes into it, just enough to enhance the force of the swing. More energy transferred on impact. I hoped it would help.
In the end I was just far enough ahead of schedule to make a small item for myself. I had taken apart a keychain sized Swiss army knife and replaced the blade with my prototype from the monomolecular edge work. It was tiny compared to what I had made for the Undersiders, but having an item that could slice through chains or deadbolts like they weren't there was exhilarating. Also it was subtle enough that I could carry it anywhere, unlike the rest of the knives.

At seven o'clock in the morning I packed everything into the briefcase and got ready to make my way to the Undersiders' base. Rather than carry a case full of extremely dangerous tinkertech weapons across a quarter of the city I left it in my workshop. I could duck into an alley near my destination and grab it without attracting attention or risking anything happening in route. Once I was a good distance from my apartment I reconnected the phones battery and checked for messages. Only a text confirming the delivery time. I let Lisa know I was on my way, then powered it down again.

After a full day and night of work I was seriously wondering if leaving the van was worth it. I was tired enough that I felt I would totally be ok with exposing my secret identity to an unnamed crime lord if it meant not having to make this walk. To make matters worse about two blocks from the Undersider's base and just after I had retrieved the case from my workshop the sky, which had been threatening rain all morning, decided to cut out any buildup and jumped directly to a torrential downpour. It served to properly amplify the foul mood that had been cultivated by a combination of sleep deprivation and early morning exercise. I was grateful my decision to leave early prevented me from having to march the entire distance in this soup. When I reached the factory my overly aggressive knock on the door was answered by Alec who greeted me with some encouraging words.

"You look like shit."

"Fuck you. And fuck your schedule. Where is everyone?"

"Upstairs. Come on, Lisa got you a coffee."

I trudged up the metal stairs to find the Undersiders assembled around their coffee table with paper cups and various breakfast items scattered across it. Upon seeing me Lisa approached with a Starbucks cup and a warm towel that I accepted without comment. At this point it wasn't even unusual that she had guessed the way I liked my coffee and timed it to my arrival so it was at just the right temperature. Though if she knew in advance I was going to be walking through that rainstorm I had a few concerns about her willingness to share information.

Rachel eyed me warily as Brian cleared space for my case. Taylor was in the back picking at a scone and glancing at me nervously. The rush of positivity from my passenger upon seeing her banished the worst of the cobwebs from my brain and cleared my head well enough to get through the presentation.

"As promised." I laid the case on the table and flipped it open. "One set of tinker tech weapons, ready to go."

I was proud of the work I had done and was looking forward to showing them off to the Undersiders. Yes, these were weapons and criminals respectively, but this was my first serious tinkering and I was excited to see their reaction. I'm not sure what I expected from my reveal, but dead silence and vacant stares wasn't it. Alec was the first to respond, letting out a long whistle.

"Uh, we asked for knives."

I looked blankly at Brian. "These are knives. And Alec's scepter. And Taylor's baton."

Taylor looked at a metal cylinder in her hand, then at the device in the case. Lisa was rubbing her forehead. Out of all of them only Rachel looked interested.

"There's one for me." It was as much of a statement as a question.

"That was the deal. Everyone gets a knife. What's the problem?"

Rachel had gotten up from her seat and picked up the bowie knife in its rugged sheath. I had designed it off the very rough color scheme that she wore in her cape persona. The hilt had a subtle hint of the shape of a leaping dog while still being as ergonomic for her hand as I could make it. The hilt's design continued onto the sheath in tooled leather, creating the impression of a pack when the blade was in place.

She gripped the handle and pulled the blade free. It was as heavy a knife as I could make without sacrificing its ability to cut through dense material. There was a single gleaming edge and the back had light serrations to provide some utility, but was mostly to fit the aesthetic.

She looked at the edge. "Is it sharp?"

"Yes. Yes, it's sharp. It's very, very sharp. Seriously, did no one fill her in?"

"We weren't expecting you to make her one."

I gave Brian a flat look. "The deal was one knife for each of the Undersiders."

"For each of us. She wasn't there, and we didn't think, after what happened..."

There was a sound of rasping metal from the stairs followed by a thunk sound as a piece of cast iron railing hit the floor. Rachel was looking at her large knife with a mixture of admiration and respect. "They're sharp."

The entire group was staring at the girl and the large knife she was holding. On one hand I had just given a space age melee weapon to a girl who assaulted me the last time we met. On the other the group was apparently alright with her sitting there while everyone else got shiny toys and she came up short like the least favorite child on Christmas morning. That didn't sit right with me but I would have felt a lot better about this if they had at least clued her in before she picked up the thing.

I cleared my throat. "The sheaths aren't monomolecular proof." Rachel glanced over at me. "They're designed to hold the blade in place without contact on the edge, so there's no risk once they're sheathed, but if you're not careful you could cut them apart when you return the blade."

She looked down at the dogs tooled into the surface of the sheath, then nodded slightly. With exaggerated care she slowly returned the blade.

I looked to Lisa. "Can you fill her in on the rest?"

"Sure. No problem."

I turned to the rest of the group. "So what is the issue here?"

Alec was the one to speak up. "It's just we were kind of expecting some kind of tinker looking stuff, not customized museum pieces."

That was what they were having trouble with? "We didn't talk about design so I tried to fit it to theme." I glanced at Lisa. "Is this going to be a problem?"

"More of a surprise really. I don't think anyone was expecting bespoke tinker tech tailored to their personal look." She picked up the purple and black sheath of the long stiletto dagger. I had worked the cross guard to roughly matched the letters she had hidden in the design of her costume. She pulled it free and looked at the gleaming edge of the thin knife.

"I said I was making these to match your costumes. What exactly were you expecting?"

Brian shook his head. "Honestly I figured it would be standard knives with maybe a coat of paint, not this craziness."

Lisa's action seemed to have allowed Alec to overcome his reservations and he snapped up the small parrying dagger. He admired the luxury styled design of the handle and sheath before pulling the blade free. His eyes gleamed as he settled his hand into the grip. I had built a serious cross guard and thumb ring to improve control and protect his hand, hopefully reducing the chance of accidents.

"No Alec."

"What?" He asked innocently?

"You're not testing that on everything in the hideout. Put it down."

But apparently not reducing the chance of 'intentionals'.

He grumbled but carefully sheathed the knife. "Here." I took the rebuilt scepter from the case and handed it to him.

Alec gave it some experimental swings. "It's less bulky. Did you tinker it up?"

"Yeah. The Taser's a bit more powerful and you don't have to worry about charging it anymore."

He examined it and noted the lack of a charging wire for the battery as well as the lack of space to hide a Taser inside the object. He triggered the activation button and watched sparks jump continuously between the prongs of the scepter's crown.

"Put it down Alec." Lisa shook her head. "How long will that last without maintenance?"

It was fairly durable, but it could still end up damaged in combat, especially if they went against higher tier opponents. "That depends on how roughly he treats it."

"So to the end of the day at most."

"Hey!"

"Were you not just considering sticking that in the power outlet to 'see what would happen'?" He scoffed but let the sparks dissipate. "So when you say 'a bit more powerful' what are you talking about?"

"Mostly faster charge. It's not going to bring down serious brutes, and I'd be careful with anyone with a heart condition, but it should do the job."

"Uh, question." I turned to Brian who had pulled his knife from the case. "What the hell is this?"

"That's a karambit."

"Right." He looked at the curved blade in his hand. "And why does it look like this?"

"I tried to match it to your costume. What's the problem?"

Alec seemed to be enjoying Brian's discomfort. "I'm guessing it's that the knife looks like it should be fighting Éowyn from the back of a fellbeast on the fields of Gondor."

Ok, maybe the knife did come off a bit dark and edgy, but this was a guy who went out in a skull mask. What was he expecting?

Brian gave the knife some careful swings. "The grips a bit loose."

"I scaled it for your gloves. Should be fine in costume."

"Relax Brian. Our new tinker friend likes us so much he put all this extra work into our stuff. I wonder why that is? Oh look, Taylor has the biggest knife in the case. Taylor, why don't you go look at what the nice tinker made for you."

Ok, Taylor's knife did kind of boarder on the size of a short sword. She got up from her seat and gingerly took it from the case. When she pulled it from the sheath the room went silent.

It was an 18 inch blade with mono-edges on both sides. The stylized curve gave the vague impression of an insect claw or pincer and the cross guard had a spider web pattern that extended down to the hilt. I had tooled the grip as close to Taylor's hand as I could get it. The blade itself had a similar web engraving that contained the wind runes I had etched onto it.

It may be a bit apparent that it was the first thing I had made after getting my Decadence power.

"It's light."

I nodded. "I tried out some new technology. Should be lighter, faster, and easier to use."

"Hey, Taylor. He made you a special sword Taylor. New technology Taylor. Isn't that nice Taylor? Don't you think..."

Alec cut himself off as Taylor made some experimental swings. The blade sang as it sliced through the air almost too fast to see. There was a flutter from its passing as the scattered wrappers from the forgotten breakfast items flew off the table. When she stopped it the blade's edge was blurred and humming. Everyone watched as it slowly settled back to its normal appearance.

Alec swallowed. "Yeah. Nice knife." Taylor nodded and sheathed the blade with intense caution.

"So, last item. Collapsible baton with wrist sheath." I held up the final piece from the case. "Straps on to your right forearm." She took it and looked questioningly before setting down the knife and attaching the straps to her wrist. "Ok, cock your wrist and flick your arm out like this."

Taylor mimicked my motion and the baton sprang out from the sheath to her hand fully extended. She looked at the weapon questioningly. "There's no seams."

There were, but I'm managed to reduce the appearance of them, especially with the refinements of Decadence. "They're hidden. It's a precise fit." That meant it had more of the appearance of an insect stinger than the staged tubes of a conventional collapsible baton. You could see the connection points if you looked very closely, but mostly it seemed like she had grown a barb from her wrist.

She gave it some swings. "It's too light."

"It amplifies impacts." She looked doubtful. Ok, earth runes for higher striking force would be a bit of a weird concept. Best to just do a demonstration. "Here." I closed the case and set it upright on the table. "Try it against that."

Taylor looked doubtful, but consented when I made a supporting gesture. She wound up with her whole body and stepped into a heavy swing with the thin stick of metal. It impacted the thick aluminum side of the case with a slam and the sound of warping metal. The case launched off the coffee table, hit the railing, and flipped over the side in an unsteady arc before crashing onto the factory floor below.

The room was dead silent as the last echoes of crashing metal died away. Taylor looked at her hand like she was holding a live bomb and the rest of the group was leaning slightly away from her. I cleared my throat. "Ok, full body strikes might be a little much. I'd recommend wrist flicks. Save hits like that for if you run into a brute."

"Or need to breach a door, or cause a seismic event, or" Alec stopped muttering under his breath when Brian and Lisa gave him a warning look.

"Right." She shifted her grip. "Uh, how do I put this away?"

"Flick your wrist like this." She copied my gesture and the baton collapsed back into the wrist sheath. I was pretty proud of that. It had taken a lot of work to make sure the weapon was solid enough while extended but still able to quickly retract.

"Thanks. Thanks." She muttered. It wasn't quite the level of enthusiasm I had hoped for, but I was still happy with the quality of my work.

"So are we good?"

Lisa looked at her knife again, then nodded. "Yeah. Not that I doubt your claims, but second payment after the mission, as agreed."

She fished out an envelope and added the charge for Rachel's knife before handing it over. I hope they didn't think I was doing that just to upsell them. I looked at the girl who was still running her fingers over the surface of the sheath. I also hoped Lisa could covey how to use that safely. I trusted she didn't want to kill people, but she regularly brushed closer than I was completely comfortable with.

Right, I was facilitating a major crime here. Comfortable didn't really come into it. As much as my passenger liked these people I needed to keep some level of emotional distance. It would be easy to get sucked in and I couldn't lose sight of what was happening. Spending time with them it was easy to end up part of their world and suddenly heading out for a felony on a Thursday morning was just a thing you did.

"Well, if that's settled I've been up and working for like twenty six hours. Glad you sort of liked the knives, but I need to get going." Everyone turned towards the window where the rain was coming down in biblical volumes. There was a rumble of thunder that shook the loft slightly and I couldn't hold back a sigh.

"Hey," I turned to Alec. "You want to crash here?" Everyone looked at him like he'd grown a second head. He just shrugged. "If this job goes well we're going to celebrate after. You should join us. No point in running across the city just for us to track you down this afternoon. And it's not like you're any more of a risk staying here."

There were some meaningful looks between the Undersiders that one by one slowly shifted over to Rachel. She unsheathed her knife again, looked at it for a few seconds, then shrugged.

"Fine with me. Do what you want."

Brian shared a look with Lisa, then cleared his throat. "Yeah, that works. We really appreciate the rush job. Least we can do is let you rest on the couch."

There were probably all kinds of good reasons to avoid a villain's hideout, but the exhaustion was catching up with me. Even with the caffeine in my system I wasn't looking forward to the walk back to my apartment. Frankly I was probably going to find a quiet door nearby, access my workshop, and crash for a good six hours minimum. If I was just going to have to head out again after that I might as well stay here. "Uh, yeah, thanks. That sounds good."

I lounged on the couch as the Undersiders did their final prep work. It would have been fascinating and informative but I was too tired to care. I was half asleep during the entire process and by the time they were getting ready to load themselves into vans downstairs I was completely out. I didn't even register their departure before sleep took me.

I really envy noctus capes. They have a general advantage, but noctus tinkers in particular are broken. I'm pretty sure the extra tinkering hours from not needing sleep would be enough to boost anyone's PRT threat rating by at least a point.

Despite how tired I was my sleep wasn't totally peaceful. This was due to my passenger's agitation. Normally he clamped down on his reactions when I was trying to rest. I had the sense that he knew how important sleep was to make sure I stayed functional and didn't want to disturb that. In fact, initially he had even prodded me to ensure I was resting properly. Not directly, just growing concern for my wellbeing if I was pushing myself too long in my workshop. Once I settled into my workout routine with decent sleep hours he backed off, but it was nice having someone concerned about me.

That was why it was so strange to have him disturbing me now. Shortly before noon it reached strong enough levels to wake me up. The driving force was definitely concern over the Undersider's job. Not dread, just eagerness about it. Eventually a failed link to the Vehicle constellation in the Celestial Forge drove me completely awake.

I was still exhausted, but sleep was off the table. I pondered the ethics of raiding a villain's fridge before hunger overrode the moral quandary and I fished out a plate of cold pizza and a bottle of sprite. With my half-asleep brain I elected to try channel surfing, an activity I hadn't engaged in since shortly after I moved out of dorms and didn't bother with cable. It was kind of impressive that the Undersiders had managed to get a connection here, and with this good of a package of channels. Tinker knowledge made it easy to figure out. Bill it to a nearby address, run connections yourself, and you have a huge selection of media with no threat of discovery. No doubt the bill was funneled through the same mess of shell companies that their boss used for the van I had been gifted.

Channel surfing was not as relaxing as I had hoped. Once again this was due to my passenger. Every time I would settle on something that seemed like a decent time killer he would start getting agitated until I started changing the channels again. It was fifteen minutes of cycling through channels before I found out why.

I had looped past the movie stations back to the low numbers. It was here I hit one of the local stations. Honestly I probably would have stopped even without the reaction from my passenger. The subtitle plastered across the live news broadcast was more than enough to grab my attention.

"Live Report: Hostage Crisis at Brockton Bay Central Bank - Wards in Combat with Undersiders"

Fuck.

Jumpchain abilities this chapter:

Built to Last (Assassin's Creed) 300:
Whatever you personally build, be it handheld or architectural, becomes nigh-impervious to weather, rust and time. If it gets lost or buried, you can 'feel' it out too!

Decadence (Dune) 100:
You have the skills to sacrifice neither form nor function when you design, create, or arrange things, which is especially important in a society whose upper crust values opulence the way this society does -- after all, the Emperor's throne is carved out of a single massive gemstone. Whether it's interior decorating, crafting a knife or sword, building furniture or a vehicle... you can make it appeal perfectly to the most crass or the upper crust. You can also figure out the optimal decor for any purpose or environment, which includes the best places to hide discreet surveillance devices.

 

[LordRoustabout]

8 Aftermath

It wasn't the fact that they were committing a robbery that shocked me. Through all the buildup I had steeled myself for a much more serious job than this. Honestly I assumed it was going to be a heist, probably against a harder target than they usually hit. Maybe some tinker tech, maybe corporate secrets, possibly even some kind of art theft. If I had accepted all of those possibilities then a bank robbery should be fine.

But it wasn't. This made no sense at all. This was hitting a bank during the middle of its operating hours. That was just asking for the job to go wrong, and seemingly the hero community of Brockton Bay had answered that request. I didn't know exactly how much criminals walked away with from a job like this but I had heard it was much less than people thought. Honestly the take couldn't be that much better than their other jobs. Given they were doing a five way split now and had dropped over twenty thousand on my services this was the kind of thing that was going to cost them money even if they were able to get away scot-free.

This had to be the boss, and my passenger agreed between his insufferable feelings of amusement at watching the felony in progress. What the hell was this about? It's possible the bank was a front for some other organization, but this was Brockton Bay Central. I really doubted it was a secret Empire mob bank. It could be there was something more valuable on site, some critical item being stored there of key information being kept on the bank's systems. If that was the case then attacking at any time other than lunch hour, you know when banks are at their most crowded, would be a better plan. There was an outside chance that this was just a vanity project. Bank robberies were a terrible idea but they were iconic. If you wanted to build reputation as a villain group then a flashy daylight robbery at an iconic location would do it. It would attract a lot more attention than you would get in reward, so I would still say that was unlikely.

The Undersiders were being funded by someone else. Someone who had been willing to throw huge amounts of money at a very public spectacle of a crime. A crime that by the looks of things had attracted a superhero turnout that exceeded most of Lung's rampages. There was only one explanation that made sense. This was a distraction.

My passenger's feelings confirmed it. That meant I had actually facilitated two major crimes instead of just one. And the first of them had devolved into a parahuman street brawl that was tearing up the center of the city.

That was probably what was really bothering me about this. I had accepted the possibility that they were going to end up against other capes on this job. I had kind of hoped it would be villains, maybe one of the gangs. If they were going to face heroes I assumed it would be someone from the Protectorate or one of the independent teams. I didn't expect that my work would lead to a super powered brawl between a bunch of children in the middle of the city.

The area around the bank looked like a war zone. None of the Undersiders had the ability to cause that kind of damage, and I wouldn't have thought the Wards did either, but the floating artillery cannon in what was clearly Kid Win's design style begged to differ. Said tinker was collapsed in a moaning heap on the street beneath it while Regent rode his flying skateboard unsteadily towards the howitzer sized ray gun.

I was coming in half way through this mess, and figuring out what was going on was an exercise in frustration. For some reason Clockblocker was flying around in a bloody costume harrying Bitch's dogs with help from Glory Girl. Grue was sending up waves of darkness into the air with his clouds already covering half of the street. Regent would occasionally pause his progress towards the cannon to wave at one of the flying capes and send them off course.

The feed shifted to shots of the other wards. Vista was unconscious and Gallant was struggling to move in a collapsed wreck of his armor. It looked like the dogs had used him as a chew toy, but I could recognize some of the damage as being due to one of my monomolecular blades. Probably the Bowie knife I had made for Rachel going by the size of the cuts. That could have gone very badly. A single overeager cut and he'd be lucky to still have his limbs. I was genuinely impressed Rachel would have enough restraint to go for disabling strikes.

It looked like Aegis was frozen under a pile of bugs, but the reporter clarified he had changed costumes with Clockblocker, which also solved the mystery of why Clockblocker appeared to be suddenly able to fly. So it was Clockblocker frozen under a pile of bugs. The high detail of that close-up showed his panicked eyes with time frozen bugs wedged in his nostrils and eyelids.

You know, I'm still not seeing how that power was 'save the world' level but after that image I doubt anyone is going to seriously underestimate Taylor. 'Bug Control' only sounds like a joke power until you see something like that.

Despite being outnumbered things seemed to be shifting in the hero's favor. It was the advantage of having multiple high level flying brutes on your side. Grue was on the ground providing cover with waves of darkness, but it was only doing so much good. The dogs were clearly a threat and Bitch was coordinating them expertly but they were still land bound and their opponents could just swoop out of their reach. Regent had to regularly pause his ascent to throw off attacks headed his way or save his teammates. There was no sign of Taylor or Lisa anywhere.

Glory Girl suddenly broke off from the fight and smashed through the front doors of the bank. Without her interference Regent was able to reach the cannon and start pinning down Aegis with explosive blasts. The output of that cannon was clearly excessive, and not just for a Ward. A core tenant of the unwritten rules is 'try to keep things nonlethal'. A weapon like that might be an appropriate response to Lung, Hook wolf, Fenja or Menja, and maybe Mush when he got a large construct together. Against the Undersiders it was brutal and borderline illegal escalation.

Unless they had opened the fight using my knives. In that case the gloves were off and everything was on the table. I was worried about that, but those weapons weren't exactly subtle in their operation. There would be a lot more body parts lying around if they had decided to use them on the Wards. Even now none of them were holding their weapons, not even Bitch who'd had to roll away from repeated lunges as Aegis tried to pick her off of her seat on one of the dog's back.

Props needed to be given to Aegis. Even with the odds at three to one, six to one counting the dogs, he was holding his own. I didn't know much about his powers other than he had the Alexandria package flying brick thing, but he seemed to be racking up physical damage without letting it bother him. One of the bites on his chest was exposing lung, but he seemed perfectly fine. Functionally fine. He looked like a flying accident victim. If that's the way his 'durability' worked then it cast a dark explanation for why his normal costume was red. Somehow I don't think Clockblocker's going to want that suit back at the end of this. The white plating really made the bloods splatters stand out clearly.

The back and forth continued for a while, but the balance had shifted in the Undersider's favor. The rain was still coming down, but nowhere near as heavy as it had been this morning. Mainly it served to dramatically highlight the cannon's shots or the impact of Bitch's dogs when they launched themselves to crazy heights then slammed into the wet ground. It was an elaborate game of keep away that even the reporter was having trouble dressing up.

The shot suddenly shifted to the bank entrance where Grue was supporting Tattletale and a person who had to be Taylor was striding out in full costume. She struck an imposing figure in her black and gray bodysuit with her yellow lenses gleaming and my blade at her hip. The hair that she'd tried to hide behind was flaring like a mane and she walked with a confidence that I never would have thought her capable of. She seemed like a completely different person from the girl I'd met two days ago.

Regent drove Aegis back with a chain of blasts from the cannon and Grue buried him and most of the street in darkness. Regent lowered himself to the street and the Team clustered for some conference. He then drew my parrying dagger and sliced apart the flying skateboard.

Ok, this was a mess of a situation and I couldn't help but hate myself for the feeling, but my gut wrenched at seeing that. All the technology I had was still based on somewhat conventional physics. I had flight systems I could build but they used thrust. Lift, and aerodynamics. That was a proper antigravity system and I would have loved to have gotten my hands on it. I really hoped that was my tinker powers talking because while watching a major crime and the destruction of a teenager's personal property my thoughts really shouldn't have been 'No! Don't break that! Steal it! Steal it for me!'.

Multiple cameras were focused on the Undersiders as one by one they climbed up and secured themselves to the dogs. Suddenly Taylor froze and lurched to the side. The darkness behind her exploded as Aegis surged out past her. Taylor had sidestepped what must have been his blind charge but he pulled himself into a tight circle and shot at her before any of the mounted Undersiders could react.

I hadn't noticed her hand drop to the hilt of the blade in the excitement of Aegis's mad charge. The aftermath was another matter. Apparently he didn't notice it either as he made his flying grab at Taylor. Her action was barely visible on the news cameras. The aftermath was another story. Aegis continued forward on pure momentum as his body flew apart, pieces detaching and dropping off as he moved through the air. It looked like he'd been sliced into at least half a dozen pieces. His head was severed, but not cleanly. Most of his neck and one shoulder was still attached. Likewise both arms flew off, cut at different points. Additional slashes had split his lower torso and taken off both his legs. In the end the only thing left was a somehow confused looking half-torso with one shoulder and a bit of arm hanging in the air. It bobbed back and forth seemingly at a loss at what to do.

Taylor stood in the aftermath of her act, hair billowing around her and raindrops bouncing off the humming blade of my knife. She looked down at the mess with cold resolve, then sheathed the weapon and swung up onto the dog. That was the last image before the entire street was covered in inky black darkness.

The news broadcast cut back to the studio where the anchor frantically apologized for what they had just shown. He also assured the viewers that Aegis would be fine once he received medical attention, though that seemed to be read from a teleprompter with a less than convincing tone of voice.

I can't fully express the storm of emotions I was struggling with at that moment. Anger. Yes, anger was a prominent one. Anger at this whole situation. Anger at Tattletale for dragging me into this. Anger at the Undersiders' boss for setting this up. Anger at the stupidity of agreeing to rob a bank in the middle of the day. Anger at Tattletale for pushing everyone towards it. Anger at the Wards for their stupid tactics and escalation. Anger at Aegis for not taking the loss and instead deciding to make that one last stupid charge. Anger at Taylor for using the knife when she had a perfectly serviceable baton that would have ended things without a pile of body parts on the local news. Anger at the world for just being this stupid.

And if I focused on how angry I was with everyone else maybe it would let me ignore how much I hated myself for getting into this mess. Yes, all that stupidity on other people's part had led to this but I was a completely willing participant in it. I had agreed to this. I didn't know it would end like this, but I knew what the world was like. I had been so stupid. I had trusted that things would work out. I should have known better.

Now the very first appearance of my technology had it shredding a Ward. Aegis was the kind of popular kid hero who gave safety speeches to kindergarteners and had his face on posters for the Wards program. He had an image the PRT put front and center. It didn't matter if he would be fine 'eventually' because now, thanks to me, that image was a charnel mound. If I hadn't destroyed his future as a cape then I had at least completely rewritten the public perception of it.

God damn it. This was entirely my fault. When I was in college, when I had friends, we would game on Saturday nights. Sometimes Dungeons and Dragons, sometimes various cape RPGs. It was easy to get caught up in the games and a lot of times they went into the early morning. One thing that became clear is no good ideas happened after 3 am. Seriously, some of the stupidest actions you'd ever seen came out around that time. People would forget their abilities, try ridiculous plans, or just make the worst decisions possible. In gaming it was a joke. When outfitting villains with weapons it was a disaster.

That blade was fully enchanted. I had worked wind runes into the entire design, from the cross guard to the tip. Decadence had made engraving the runes easy and apparently a lot more effective than I anticipated. I wanted to blame Taylor for this, but I was the one that handed her a magic sword and hoped for the best. Oh, and I'd basically done the same thing with her baton as well.

"Fuck."

My word echoed around the empty factory loft as the full weight of all of my decisions settled onto my shoulders.

"Fuck!"

All of this wasn't helped by my passenger's continued irreverence at the entire situation. I had facilitated a major cape fight and he didn't care. I had built the weapon that reduced the leader of the Wards to a pile of bloody chunks and he didn't care. I had made Taylor, that shy quiet girl, appear as a ruthless and terrifyingly dangerous villain and for some reason he felt that was appropriate.

"Fuck you!"

In frustration I hurled my half eaten slice of villain pizza across the room where it hit the kitchen wall with a wet smack. I had trusted my passenger. I had followed his lead and this is what it got me? You're supposed to know what's going to happen, to be able to look out for danger. Is this what you wanted? After all of that you don't feel any regrets?

Nothing, just the same irrelevant confidence as before, like this was supposed to happen. I grit my teeth and focused on keeping my breathing calm. The newscaster was going on about the attack. No more clips were being shown, probably because of how the encounter finished. I focused on my passenger's feelings, trying to find something, anything that expressed any level of concern over this situation.

The newscast cut away from the bank story and suddenly I felt it. A spike of concern, worry, even terror.

"Now? Seriously, fucking now is when you think something is wrong?"

I was shouting myself horse to the empty hideout, but it was making me feel just the slightest bit better. Finally, after all of that my passenger finally felt something approaching concern for the situation. I ignored the TV droning on about an amber alert and focused on my passenger. There was actually a sense of urgency and borderline regret. Good. Fucking good that you finally are willing to acknowledge that there might be something less than ideal happening here.

I couldn't figure out what part of this he was so concerned about. I had been given no hint of this coming and suddenly he realized something was wrong. I was too angry to be able to figure out what the associations were. To be perfectly honest I was taking some dark satisfaction from how agitated he was becoming. Suddenly there was something about the situation he had a problem with. I couldn't tell what it was so I sat fuming on the couch and watched my passenger cycle through various shades of panic and anxiety as the news played in the background.

Eventually the news changed over from the story of the missing girl to a report on how traffic was being held up through all of downtown thanks to Grue's darkness choking the streets. My passenger's frantic panic slowly melted down to despair and then reservation. My own enjoyment at his distress was also giving way to the gaping question of what to do next.

I could cut ties with the Undersiders. I mean, technically they hadn't broken the conventions I'd given them. Thanks to the bullshit that was Aegis's powers what Taylor had done was technically nonlethal force. I kind of hated the Wards and PRT for that. They put out a cape that could only be stopped by recreating a seventies slasher movie and bet that no villain would be willing to go that far.

But none of the problems I'd signed up to deal with had been addressed in any way. In fact after that performance Taylor was probably in even more danger. She had just upped her threat profile massively, and thus made keeping her safe that much harder.

Walking away might make me feel better for a moment, but in the end I'd just be piling one failure on top of another.

My power activated again as I felt the Forge move. The Time constellation was approaching again and my power connected to a mote called 'Machinist'.

Damn it, I wish I had this power a day ago. No, I wish I had this power a week ago. The first power I'd gotten from the Time constellation was not actually helpful in reducing crafting time. It was connected to a serious power, but ultimately was just an intelligence booster with decent mechanical knowledge. This power actually sped up my work.

When I say sped up what I mean is to a degree that is truly ludicrous. Twelve hours would be more than enough time to rebuild and upgrade and entire aircraft. This would be powerful on its own, but combined with my other abilities it approached the absurd. What's more it came with even more technical knowledge. New methods of robotics, flight systems, vehicle designs, weapons, power armor, and more. Even high level experimental technology was now on the table.

Remember when I said I couldn't build gray goo? That's not the case anymore. My nanomachine projects just got accelerated from needing years and millions in resources with team support to something I can do on my own in a few months. That can cover everything from instant fabrication of machinery to personal enhancements that outstrip most superpowers to a full on apocalypse if I wanted it.

I took a breath. This is what I had to remember. This is what I was working towards. Every step forward, no matter how ignoble, would bring me closer to the Celestial Forge. I just had to hold out until then. I had to manage until I had enough power. Machinist wasn't even a particularly powerful mote and it had brought me closer to my goals than I could have imagined.

So rather than storm out I stayed in the villains' hideout. They were coming to celebrate and as much as that didn't sit well with me I needed details on what had happened. I needed to start taking more agency in my life and this would be the first step towards that.

I did my best to get some more rest, but I was too wound up for proper sleep. Eventually my passenger pulled himself out of his funk, but seemed a bit more reserved than before. Whatever blind enthusiasm he had felt for the Undersiders was either diminished or he was keeping a lid on it for my sake. Either way I appreciated the gesture. It would take a lot before I would be ready to trust his opinion on any villain again, but it was a step in the right direction.

It was much later in the afternoon when the Undersiders returned. They were out of costume and uniformly looked worn out, but mostly in good spirits. That is, except for Taylor. With the cold indifference she had displayed to her act on the news broadcast I was worried about her, about the kind of person I had given those weapons too. Instead of the conquering hero she looked shell shocked. She was pale and Tattletale was clearly supporting the girl. The thinker was also sporting a clearly injured shoulder, but was mobile enough that it was either a sprain or a dislocation that had been reset. The groups eyes fell on me as they crested the stairs.

I drew my gaze across them, making eye contact with each one in turn. "So, I caught an interesting news story while you were out."

Brian nodded slowly. Tattletale's eyes jumped over to the kitchen where my hurled pizza had left a stain of sauce on the wall. "Anything you have a problem with?"

Yes, several. But that doesn't matter now. "I'd be lying if I said everything sat right, but it's nothing I didn't sign up for."

Brian nodded and a note of concern left the group. "Glad to hear that."

"So, care to fill me in on the details the news left out?" I hoped I didn't come across to obvious.

That broke the tension enough for everyone to settle back into their usual roles. Alec grabbed a laptop and lounged on the corner of the sofa. Brian gathered a pile of leftover takeout and drinks for everyone. Taylor held back and seemed to make herself invisible, but this time with a whole new tone to her apprehension, and Tattletale ran around managing things while also getting me the second half of my blood money.

Their recap of the robbery took the place of our celebration. Everyone was too sore and worn out to want to go anywhere in this weather. Instead it turned into a group story session with details being offered, corrected, commented on, and joked about. That's how I learned about Taylor's idea to keep the customers from doing anything dangerous.

"Black widow spiders?"

The girl nodded. She had slowly opened up over the course of the conversation. Without asking Tattletale had brought her a cup of tea that she was sipping while barely seeming to register its presence.

"I thought it would keep them calm, stop anyone from doing something that would get themselves hurt."

I suppose from an external perspective 'calm' and 'scared shitless' look largely the same. "Then what happened?"

"Everything went fine until the Wards showed up."

"You weren't expecting a response? Isn't Arcadia like right around the corner?" Arcadia is known as the Wards school even outside the city. They are frankly ridiculously well-funded on every level to the point where I'm pretty sure every other school in the city and surrounding area hates them on principle. I know that was the attitude in Captain's Hill and we only saw them when the school teams would play each other.

Tattletale shook her head. "I was expecting a few of them, but we got pretty much the whole team. Everyone but Shadow Stalker."

My passenger was a lot less overwhelming now, but still had his distaste for that cape. I was so focused on keeping my other feelings in line that the reaction must have shown.

"You have a history with her?" Brian looked interested.

"No, it's my power, kind of gives me a bad feeling about her."

Alec snorted. "Makes sense. She's a psycho. Shot Brian in the stomach with a real crossbow bolt. After she was a ward and was supposed to be avoiding that shit. And then he blead all over..."

"Your new couch. We know, you never stop talking about it. Next time I get impaled I'll make sure to avoid your favorite furniture."

I kept my reaction muted, but that was actually another point for my passenger. That was a sign there was something seriously dangerous about that cape, and it was comforting to know at least some of his instincts could be relied upon.

"So did they negotiate for the hostages?"

"No, they just lined up ready to jump us if we made a break for it."

"Seriously? That was lunch hour. There would have to have been dozens of people in there." I didn't mention how stupid it was to pick that time for a robbery.

"Forty counting tellers and staff."

"So did the police contact you?" I needed to figure out how this went so wrong.

"Parahuman crime gets handed over to the PRT. The cops were there but they stayed back."

"So it was a PRT negotiator?"

"Nope." Tattletale popped the word. "Just the Wards. And Glory Girl."

I knew she was needling me, but that was insane. The city left the safety of everyone in the bank in the hands of a bunch of teenagers. Teenagers were idiots. Teenagers were idiots well beyond the point when they were teenagers, I was living proof of that. I'm pretty sure the stupid doesn't drain out until age twenty five, at least if auto insurance rates are anything to go by.

Hell, I'm pretty sure Vista isn't even a teenager yet. Why the hell were they making calls around something like this? Did the PRT seriously think the ability to punch good gave you proficiency in defusing hostage situations? I may be frustrated with the Undersiders and this city in general, but this was demonstrating a level of stupid that made my passenger's aversion to the PRT seemed to have something of a reasonable foundation.

So they were boxed in and between Vista and Glory girl had no hope of escape even with Brian's cover. Clockblocker would have been able to lock down any of them with one hit, and the tinkers had them covered with ranged firepower. With the lack of negotiation they probably expected the Undersiders to either give up or make a desperate run where they could be picked off. That is if they didn't charge in. That would have been a stupid decision for the Wards, but I wasn't thinking very highly of their tactical acumen at the moment.

"Then what happened?"

Alec looked up from his laptop. "That's when Taylor suggested we take the fight to them."

I turned towards the girl and she shrugged slightly. "We had to do something they wouldn't expect the Undersiders to do, and we didn't really have any other options."

I felt a bit of guilt at that. I was a tinker. I was all about options. But short of outfitting everyone with jetpacks there was nothing I could make that wouldn't have defaulted the situation to another flavor of combat. There was also irritation at the Wards. If you want to trap a villain that's one thing, but they set it up in a way that encouraged fight over flight and just trusted it would work because 'the Undersiders run, they don't fight'.

I wondered if the weapons I made pushed them over the edge on that decision, but realistically speaking they would have tried to fight their way out regardless. As depressing as it was the cost/benefit relationship worked out in favor of at least trying to make a go of it.

After that I got details of the early part of the battle. Tattletale had seen through the costume change which would have let them freeze at least one of the dogs. That would effectively have ended the fight since there was no way I could see Rachel abandoning one of her animals. Tattletale filled me in on Aegis's 'invulnerability' which was of such middling nature he would probably have been better named Zombie Boy. Trust the PRT to obscure things through appearances.

Taylor was light on the details of how she brought down Clockblocker, which I was fine with. That close-up on the news had been enough. Alec took credit for dropping 'Browbeat' who had apparently been giving Brian some trouble.

"New cape." Tattletale explained. "Biomancy to bulk up and tactile telekinesis."

"Didn't help him against this baby." Alec spun his Taser around and rested it on his shoulder and action that drew eye rolls from the other Undersiders.

That triggered an accounting of how the other Wards were taken out one by one like a PG-13 slasher film. Brian had tricked Vista to get close to her by obscuring himself with darkness, then punched a pre-teen girl's lights out. Kid Win had apparently been able to teleport his cannon into the battle, just in case my tech envy wasn't strong enough already, but Alec had caused him to fall off. Twenty feet, onto asphalt. That was potentially very lethal. I would feel worse for him, but he was the one who defaulted to deadly force first. As for the other tinker that was Rachel's story.

The big girl was unusually engaged while telling it, and her dogs were picking up on her excitement. "So after that girl made the street trip Judas Gallant hit me with one of his fucking mind blasts." She grit her teeth, but there was a vindictive edge to it. "Pissed me off so much. Probably thought it would make me stupid. People think that." She gave me an accusatory look, but I just gestured for her to go on.

"Didn't go straight for him, got Angelica to take him by surprise, then I got him once he was down." Her hand dropped to the handle of the knife I gave her.

I tried not to look overly concerned. "Is he alright."

She smirked. "I cut all the moving bits and pistons and stuff for his armor. He's fine, but that suit's trash now."

That was a huge relief. It also demonstrated a lot more control and foresight that anyone would have given her credit for. I could tell Rachel wasn't dumb. I doubted her formal education even finished middle school, but she had been looking after herself for a long time. I would be willing to bet that her power came with some understanding of anatomy and biomechanics. She had been able to hit systems on the armor without killing Gallant and with a weapon she'd only had for a few hours.

Alec suddenly chortled. "You guys have to see this."

He spun the laptop around and showed us the gif displayed on the screen. It was a looped clip from the fight of Bitch taking down Gallant. I could tell she was cutting into his armor, but because of the angle of the shot, a partial obscuring of both capes, and the particular movement it looked like something else entirely. There was no nice way of putting it, it looked like an intimate act with Gallant as a less than willing participant.

"Wow. That's really something."

"Hold on, there's more. He scrolled down the page past more variations of same gif and a few captioned pictures of either cape. He stopped on one that had Rachel's masked face photo shopped over the head of a woman in a rather famous seen, captioned "Welcome gentle Sir Gallant. Welcome to the Castle Anthrax."

"I don't get it." Rachel was looking quizzically at the picture.

"You, uh, you don't see memes like that too often." I tried to put aside the fact that I may have destroyed another hero's reputation.

Tattletale clarified. "That's because people posting anything like that about a Ward on PHO get banned rather quickly."

"Spoilsports." Alec turned the laptop around and kept browsing.

"So when all that was going on what was happening in the bank?"

"Panacea tried to kill Taylor with a fire extinguisher." Alec quipped without looking up from his laptop.

I blinked at that. "Sorry, what? What? When did she get there?"

"From the start. Turns out Lisa was prancing around five feet from the most famous healer on the east coast and didn't notice a thing."

"Fuck off Alec, there was a lot going on."

Great. Panacea. Because this wasn't complicated enough both in terms of the local cape scene and my passenger's insight to specific capes. I could tell he was holding back his reactions because I wasn't getting the confusing mess she normally brought on. That said he still didn't feel good about this. "So what, did you swarm her with bugs?" I tried not to imagine the city and probably country's top healer enduring the Clockblocker special.

Taylor shook her head. "No, she did something to my bugs that interfered with my powers, some kind of feedback thing. It didn't end until Lisa pointed it out and I killed the bugs she modified."

That was bad. And unexpected. Panacea's capacity beyond healing was unknown, but the theories got kind of wild. The problem was that disruption of master control was incredibly dangerous. Taylor had enough confidence in her power that she was able to plant deadly spiders on everyone in a building without the slightest concern that one would get away from her. I knew she was towards the higher end of master power, but that was fine and consistent control. Messing with that without understanding it could have resulted in a corpse pile. It seemed recklessness in the city's heroes wasn't limited to the Wards.

"I didn't know she could do that."

Taylor shuddered. "That and more. She was threatening to give me cancer or a heart attack, or just screw with my weight and taste buds."

I tried not to react to that, but it was bad. There was the fact that it confirmed some of the theories about her power's reach, but mostly it was the blatant escalation. When I had watched this on the news I figured the Undersiders had gone off the rails somewhere during the robbery, but this clusterfuck was clearly a team effort. Those threats easily constituted maiming, which is part of the unwritten rules. Though given how much actual crimefighting that girl did compared to her charity work, did she even know about those conventions?

One thing that was clear was that Amy Dallon was a mess. I had actively been avoiding picking through my passenger's reactions to her because there was a huge amount and so much of it was bad. I did know there was concern, and concern on a timeline. That girl was close to the edge and without much support. From what I was hearing this situation was the last thing she needed.

"What happened next?"

Taylor seemed reluctant to talk about this. "I was really out of it because she was messing with me through my bugs. She was calling someone, so I got my baton out and tried to knock the phone away."

"The phone. With that baton." Oh dear God. "Does she still have a hand?"

"She tried to block it with the fire extinguisher." Taylor had used the word 'tried'. I considered what I had built into that baton and what would likely have happened. "It kind of exploded when I hit it." Yep, that sounds about right. Taylor looked absolutely mortified by her next statement. "I may have broken her wrist as well."

"Compound fracture, four places and a sprain on the other hand. She was pissed."

"I didn't know she could swear like that." There was no humor in Taylor's tone.

"It's always the nice ones."

Taylor swallowed. "That's when Glory Girl smashed in."

I nodded "I saw that happen." They had been the ones to walk out of the bank, not the city's top Alexandria package. Whatever they did I really hoped it wasn't a warmup for what happened with Aegis. "How did you get out of that?"

"She held Panacea at knifepoint."

I looked at Taylor who seemed to be fluctuating between shame and determination. "What, with my knife?"

"I don't think she knew what she was dealing with, and I wasn't about to demonstrate it. We kind of stared each other down until Lisa got back."

"Back from where?"

She just smiled at me. "Secrets of the craft."

So potentially the real reason for this entire endeavor. Or a target of opportunity, or she's just messing with me. God I hate this.

My power moved again and made another connection to the Resources and Durability constellation. The ability was called 'Rationing'. It essentially let me take the 'every part of the buffalo' approach to my work. Nothing was wasted anymore. Every scrap of metal, every cast off screw, I could find a use for all of it. Nothing was ever going to be overlooked or wasted again. Effectively it let me push my resources to the absolute maximum value I could possibly extract from them.

It provided a great way to stretch my limited resources. I would now be buying my own supplies, and this would let me get the most I could from them. It would also reduce the amount I'd have to purchase. I could do my best to keep my purchases innocuous, but there was always the chance something would set off an alert. Minimizing the volume would be really helpful with that.

"She tipped me off about the bugs and managed to needle them long enough for us to get an opening."

I didn't like the way she said needle. I doubted it was as simple as teasing the sisters about their fashion sense, and with how far Tattletale could conceivably dig that could have gotten really bad. I didn't think Taylor was in the mood to go into anymore details and doubted asking Tattletale directly would yield any results. I pushed that aside and moved on. "How'd you manage Glory Girl? The blades aren't good against force fields and I doubt even a full power swing from the baton could punch through her defenses."

Lisa looked particularly smug. "Not exactly. Her force field shorts out after each major hit. Gives a few seconds of vulnerability, so Taylor was able to swarm her." That was interesting. That meant it functioned basically the same way my Force Field formula did, only without the auto restore function she was blessed with. "After that we headed outside and well, I'm sure you saw her performance."

Taylor looked like she wanted to crawl into her clothes and disappear. I felt largely the same way and found myself leaning into my passenger's reactions to avoid showing it. He still didn't have the level of discomfort with what happened to Aegis that I did. Tattletale smiled at me and I had to wonder how much she was reading.

"He saw it, the news saw it. And by the looks of things half the internet will have seen it." Alec kept scrolling through a page on his laptop.

"Yeah, that was a striking scene." I kept my tone neutral.

"You think it was excessive?" Taylor asked the room in general, as if slapchopping a hero was something that happened every day.

"It was probably the only way to have stopped him. If Aegis won't back down when outmatched then he can't complain about people escalating against him."

Tattletale was probably right but I doubt the public will see it like that. I decided I needed to change the subject. "How did you break the field?"

"Lisa shot her."

I blinked. "Seriously?"

"Yeah, it was enough to bring down her defenses."

"You didn't mention you carried a gun."

"It's a hold out." It's also against the spirit of the unwritten rules unless it's tinker tech. You can get away with it against brutes, but knowing a cape carries one puts them on shaky ground. You found behavior like that in the Empire, and considering some of the powers capes threw around it was largely a stylistic choice rather than a force limiter.

Was the problem that I felt left out? I knew so damn much about firearms that I could have managed all kinds of modifications in the time allowed. I mean, giving out more weapons didn't sound like it would have made things better, but I could have added some reduced lethality options to it.

This was a tinker rabbit hole that I couldn't get stuck in. We had covered the entire fight up to Taylor's dramatic finish and no one was that keen to make the girl re-live that. There hadn't been any comments on it, but Taylor was still clearly on edge. An afternoon of conversation, tea, and friends had helped her relax to some extent, but it obviously bothered her.

That was a big relief for me. There was actually someone else here that was treating this event like it was serious. I couldn't expect much from Rachel, Brian, or Tattletale, but it looked like Taylor was grounded enough to recognize the significance of what happened. Maybe there was something to my passenger's regard for her.

"Everyone, you're not going to believe this." Alec looked positively ecstatic. "PHO has threads about the Undersider's new tinker, including pictures of him."

My blood ran cold and my mind spun. How? There was no way I could conceive of this happening, not unless we were totally compromised. How could this possibly happen? I had only been around the Undersiders in costume twice. If there were any cameras the first time I would have heard about it by now and the second time I had unmasked. There was no way this made any sense.

There was a ripple of panic and concern through the Undersiders except for Tattletale who just looked frustrated with Alec. He let the confusion build before turning the laptop around.

"Behold, the Undersider's new tinker, named by his fans. Presenting Lord Khepri."

The screen showed a picture of Taylor standing in the rain in front of the bank holding my knife. Beneath it was a list of details including descriptors of the Undersiders' new equipment, the items 'Lord Khepri' was confirmed to carry, theories about the composition of 'his' costume, notes about 'his' capabilities, and a note that an official statement from the PRT was pending.

"They think I'm a tinker? They think I'm a guy?" I couldn't tell which of those statements bothered her more.

"Yeah, I wonder why." Alec drawled. "I mean, this new cape in a professionally made costume shows up in the group at the same time they all get new tinker tech equipment, and that cape uses equipment that's like what the rest of the team uses only better. Why would they think the new cape is a tinker? I can't imagine."

"But I control bugs. How can they think I'm a tinker?"

"There are like five theories being argued about over how you control insects, what kind of technology you use, how you interface with it. Fascinating stuff if you're boring and have no life."

"Tinkers can do that?"

"Controller tinkers trigger from long term isolation, detachment, and depression. It normally results in some kind of drone or minion based technology, but outlier cases can result in specializations that influence living creatures."

The entire room turned to look at me and I realized I had spoken without thinking. That was not a good topic for me and I immediately regretted opening my mouth. Almost instinctively I connected myself up to my passenger and felt the support and compassion that had kept me going since my trigger. With everything else that link entailed I kind of hated myself for leaning on it, but I couldn't afford to deal with that right now.

"I researched that stuff pretty heavily around after my trigger." Which was a more believable explanation than how I had actually gotten that information. I left it at that and the group seemed to understand and back off. Alec as ever was a helpful diversion.

"Taylor, you have fan art! And fangirls!"

He showed off a new thread that had various drawings of Taylor in her costume, though the proportions were clearly leaning towards more of a male body type than she had. Taylor didn't exactly have a curvaceous figure but it seemed one picture with an unflattering angle from the news footage had been enough for the forum community to run with. And they were running pretty hard considering the handful of entries that were just red boxes with the words 'This image removed for violating community guidelines." in them.

"Any idea what Khepri means?"

Tattletale turned to Brian. "Egyptian scarab god."

I whistled. "That's the big leagues."

"What do you mean?"

Tattletale jumped in before I could reply. "Mythology based cape names go almost exclusively to villains. Anyone named after a God is particularly significant. This is actually a huge deal in the villain community, particularly because you didn't pick it yourself."

Taylor looked incredibly conflicted at that.

"When the truth comes out you're going to break all these poor girl's hearts. Well, eighty five to ninety percent of their hearts."

It wasn't much of a joke, but it shook off some of the dower mood that had settled over us. I could tell Taylor was still concerned and frankly so was I, The 'keep Taylor safe' objective would not be helped in the slightest by people thinking she was also the most valuable and exploitable type of cape in the world.

I had gotten the information I'd been looking for and the day was winding down. Rachel was the first to leave shortly after and Alec dove into a video game to the exclusion of the rest of the world. Taylor said her goodbyes and slipped downstairs. I made to follow shortly after her, but Brian intercepted me on my way out.

"I wanted to ask something. You know how you mentioned repair times?"

"Yeah?" Tattletale was hanging back watching our conversation.

He pulled out his karambit. There was a fracture that snapped off the blade right at the point where it curved. "Faced down against Browbeat. Lisa said his biomancy would stand up to normal blows but the knife would be enough to cause him some trouble without killing him." His face turned grim. "You were right about them not being good against force fields. He was able to catch the knife and break it."

"Tactile telekinesis. Pure luck, really. They were fighting in Grue's darkness." Tattletale chimed in.

I looked at the torn metal. That was cape powers at work, low end hypermaterials weren't enough to hold out against the variety of abilities you'd see in this business. I focused on the knife with my detection power. Part of it was here and part was somewhere towards the bay. Whatever broke off didn't stay at the bank. I could get a better feeling if I got closer, but it was a safe bet to say it was at the PHQ probably in either an evidence locker or a lab. Unfortunate, but it would sort itself out.

"The Taser did the trick though." Alec called from the couch without looking up from his game.

"This thing, it's actually a really good weapon. I hate to bring this up so soon, but do you think it can be repaired?"

I nodded. "No problem. It'll just take a couple of days."

He looked relieved. "Sorry to dump the work on you right after a rush job. I can pay you out of my share. When can you get started?"

"Started on what?"

He looked confused. "The repair. When can you start?"

"There's no reason for me to take it. Just stick it in a drawer or something."

"What?"

That had everyone's attention. Alec was looking at me from the couch.

What was this about? I made these things in my workshop. They had fiat backing. "I told you, they break and it will take two days to repair. Just put it aside and wait it out. There's no reason for me to take it off your hands."

"Hold on." Tattletale had a pained expression on her face. "Are you telling me this stuff is self-repairing?"

"Yes?" I looked around at their faces. "Was I not clear about that?"

"No!" her voice pitched up sharply. "No you weren't because that is not possible."

I reviewed my interactions with them. Ok, I hadn't spelled this out, but between my passenger and the rush order I'd been pretty distracted and damn it if I wasn't still exhausted from this morning and the emotional rollercoaster of this day hadn't made things any better. I didn't need to deal with this now. "All the parahuman powers on the planet and there's not one person who can make something that repairs itself?"

"There might be, but this isn't it." She pointed at the broken weapon. "It's a good knife, and nicely designed knife, but it's not going to fix itself."

"How do you know? I thought I was the tinker here." I had a lot of pent up resentment at this situation I was ready to lay on Tattletale regardless of how much she deserved it. Fortunately my passenger seemed to find a frustrated Tattletale somewhat amusing, so for once we were in alignment.

"Half of it's gone. If anything was happening I'd be able to pick up on it."

How much confidence did she have in her power? "Like you could pick up on Panacea being inside the bank?"

She ground her teeth together. "I wasn't looking specifically for her. I am at this, and that thing is not repairing itself."

The other Undersiders were watching this display. I could lay off, but that wouldn't resolve things and would just cause more problems when it repaired. I needed to explain this away.

"I told you, it takes two days."

"You expect me to believe you sold us self-repairing tinker tech? The only self-repairing tinker tech in the world?"

"It's a chunk of metal, not some finely calibrated power armor. And I know that you know that's crap. There's a bunch of tinker tech that sustains itself."

"Not outside of containment zones!"

"Sure, if you want to take the worst examples." I could demonstrate this with my key, but I want didn't shine any light on that. "Tell you what, that things still broken in two days and I'll make you enough knives to supply a kitchen, no questions asked."

Tattletale gaped at me. Brian and Alec gave her a questioning look. She rubbed her forehead and gave me a dismissive gesture. "He believes it, so maybe? I don't know. Fuck it, I'm going to bed." Before she left she turned and gave them a hard look. "Everyone, seriously, look after that stuff." She stormed off and slammed her door behind her.

"Easy to read, Huh?" Alec called after her.

"You know, you should probably have led your sales pitch with that."

"And you should probably give more than forty one hours lead time when you have a project like this." I sighed. I would probably be facing some repercussions for this. Depending on how Tattletale played it I could be getting some less than welcome attention. I would have to be a lot more careful, but at least now I had the capacity to look after myself. I was done being a passive player in this arrangement.

Sleep deprivation did not lead to the best decision making. Unfortunately I wasn't done with the day yet and would have a busy couple of days ahead of me. When I said my token goodbyes and slipped outside it seemed the day wasn't done with me either.

"Uh, hey." Taylor had been waiting in the shadows near the side door of the factory. The girl was a far cry from the terrifying figure she had struck during the bank heist as she stooped in the alley holding a bundle in front of her.

"Hi Taylor." She was clearly working up to something and I decided to give her the time she needed to find her feet. When I watched the broadcast I had been furious at her, but that was mostly a screen for how angry I was for creating the situation. She was the only one who seemed seriously upset by what happened. Maybe everyone else was much better actors than I gave them credit for, but I think it was more likely that the other Undersiders had something of a stronger commitment to the villain lifestyle than Taylor did.

The girl straightened her back and thrust the bundle forward. "I wanted to return these."

It was an old sweatshirt wrapped around my knife and baton, including the wrist sheath. There was a lot of intensity in the act and I couldn't imagine what was going through her head. Seeing as she was probably the only person on this team who might give me a straight answer I decided to see if I could find out what.

"Can I ask why?"

She took a moment to steel herself. "You, you gave us conditions for working with the team. I broke those today. You deserve to have these back."

Well this wasn't something I expected. My passenger still liked Taylor, but since the heist he was at least clamping down on the angelic choir nonsense. I took a breath and considered how to approach this.

"Actually you didn't." She gave me a confused look. "Technically."

"Technically?"

"Technically is a dicey space with the unwritten rules, but what you did was technically a nonlethal act. What happened today, there's a lot of blame to go around and I share a good chunk of that."

She gave me a questioning look. "I shouldn't have given you that sword, or that baton without making sure you knew what you were doing. All of this has been a lot to deal with, I was rushed and sleep deprived and I've been dealing with..." I cut myself off.

"Your thinker power?"

That was something I wanted to dance around. "Yeah, I've been having some problems with it. I'm not sure everything I get from it is as accurate as I thought."

She looked distinctly uncomfortable. "If it's any consolation I don't think Lisa's works as well as she thinks it does either."

"Maybe." I hope. "Anyway, you need to hold on to those." She looked at me, then at the bundle of items in her hands. "I hate to say this, but there's no going back." For either of us. "Everyone you run into from now on is going to assume you have that equipment. You're going to need it just to manage what's coming."

She looked practically ill at the concept.

"Take it, practice, get a better handle on how to use it."

She nodded. "Are you alright with what happened today?"

That was a hell of a question. No, I wasn't, but I was going forward regardless. "I'll find a way to deal with it."

That seemed to be enough for her. We went our separate ways with her heading deeper into the Docks while I looped towards downtown. I would find a way to deal with it, but I was planning to handle that in a distinctly more direct way.

I had important work to do.

Jumpchain abilities this chapter:

Machinist (Gargoyles) 200:
You are an expert mechanic. You can rebuild and improve a helicopter in 12 hours or create a functional motorcycle from spare parts. If honed, this ability will let you make nearly anything from incredibly advanced robots to nanite swarms in only a few months time.

Rationing (Mad Max Gauntlet) 100:
When you don't have much, it's important to be careful with what you've got. You're very good at saving supplies, ensuring that anything you find of use stays found and that it doesn't get wasted by accident. You'll get every last drop of fuel from a can, and never drop some plastic tubing just because you can't think of a use at the moment.